I had intended only to write two pieces about my visit to London and to Northampton but given the impact of seeing the film Renoir and the nature of the Northampton experience it is best that I begin with the intention of restricting myself first to Renoir and the impact of that experience and to some TV..
I decided to stay in and watch the Third Test from Old Trafford on Sky via my lap top on Sunday morning August 4th 2013 enjoying breakfast of two Danish pastries £1.20 and coffee before deciding how to spend the rest of my free time because Middlesex was in the process of defeating Durham during the third morning of the four day scheduled game at Lords. Had I listened more carefully to what fellow Durham supporters had said the previous day or checked fixtures on my computer I may well have gone to the Oval to watch Surrey play Scotland in the 40 40 over game.
The previous evening after returning from the cricket I watched Wallander in the Pyramid one of the, if not the most important of the dramatizations of the books. As with other Wallander dramatizations this season I may write at length when I have read the book although my determination to do some prolonged serious writing this autumn strengthens. In part this arose out fo the Wallander episode but more so because of film about the last years of the life of Pierre Auguste Renoir,
At one level the Wallander, as with Montalbano is a well written detective story which challenges to work out a solution and entertains through the characters involved. However I am drawn to Wallander and to Montalbano because I see so much of myself in them and their approach to life in general, to work and to relationships.
According to Internet research The Pyramid covers the whole career of Wallander in five short stories so that this dramatization only covers the first and the last. In an incident when as a young policeman he misses the opportunity to fire and stop a killer with the consequence that a young woman he admired is murdered. Although the circumstances were such the incident did not affect his subsequent career, he remained tortured by his failure to act and the loss of life involved.
Although 26 years has passed he is confident he has encountered the same villain when following up on what appears to have become a drug war and to pursue the suspect despite being ordered to concentrate on the local villain and leave the suspect to the separate police force involved. At the end of the episode when he is vindicated he resigns because he knows the investigation had become personal.
He has commenced a relationship with the friend of his God daughter who dies from an overdose, using heroin which has not been reduced to a level which removes the risk. The friend is a former addict who is working for the rehabilitation of others and she has is a degree of reality and directness coupled with passion which meets his every need and where for the first time he wants to enjoy life without always feeling guilty and allowing work to take precedence. I am looking forward to the book. He is able to put the past behind and move forward.
There was more striking chords when on return on Wednesday evening I caught up with the second part of the new series opener of New Tricks which coincidentally is set in Gibraltar just as issues about sovereignty begin to boil over fuelled by the attitude for the present Spanish Government and the Tory party led by Cameron. It was no coincidence, I suspect, just as the recent series TV on presented Gibraltar as a little Britain when the reality is the majority are mostly Spanish and speak the local dialect Spanish. I cannot now remember what aspect of the cold case led them to Gibraltar. The main story appeared to be death for young boy to a man who had been a seaman for many years but now worked on the docks where his daughter had some kind of administrative role. The man and the daughter refused to talk about the case and the local senior police officer assigned to manage the visit of the team also advises against giving this case attention, the only inherited cold case which the police officer had been unable to solve. The case is eventually worked put through drawing the boy made at first appearing to be soldiers temporarily resident returning from the Falklands war. However when it is realised the drawings of other children playing at being soldiers the team finds out that the present head of the continuing British military presence on the Rock was a boy at the time and that his father had returned from service in the Falklands. He had used his father’s weapon souvenir from the war as part of the game and not appreciated that it was loaded killing his friend. When confronted he is seen running through the Botanical gardens and taking the cable car to the top of the rock and then considering taking his life but he surrenders full of guilt and grief.
This is he first of three stories in the double episode about cover up with the second the one which brings the team to Gibraltar. This involves the head of an on line gambling company based in Gibraltar, one of his lieutenants who is killed with the police boasting they have one of the best detection rates in the world and murders are rare. The head of the unit is taken out for a meal on the yacht by the owner of the firm who is shown to have a ruthless side and who committed murder as well as attempting to blackmail the father of dead boy.
I record these two stories although from my perspective they are incidental to the main story of interest which concerns Bryan, former Inspector, played brilliantly by Alum Armstrong as a recovering alcoholic whose wife Ester, also played brilliantly by Susan Jameson, shows great understanding and loving support, especially towards his moods and obsessions. He has great capacity to sift through detail and see patterns and connections which others do not, an ability which has always been an asset to me as well as something fo a curse.
He attends the leaving party of Inspector who two decades before was left in charge of young prisoner( black) who died from lack of medical attention when Alan was responsible for had left because of drinking. He had never recovered from the incident believing there had been negligence and had pursued the officer without success as the man had progressed through to retirement. He strikes the man at he leaving party leading to suspension and a disciplinary haring and consequently is not allowed to participate on the trip to Gibraltar. But he goes to Gib despite the sanctions because he cannot function without the work and this leads to him and Jerry ( Denis Waterman) having an adventure which involves being shut in a container, reminding of Mad Dogs, and arriving at a farm in the middle of nowhere in Spain but also in seeing and overhearing an exchange which leads to solving the main story.
On return Bryan’s disciplinary hearing is stopped by the complainant who withdraws saying he felt sorry for Bryan and this angers Bryan unable to explain the issues involved and leads to a confrontation where the retiring Inspector admits that he regarded the prisoner as he did most those taken into custody with indifference regarding them as scum Bryan secretly records this admission which he gives to the boy’s mother saying sorry. The significant aspect is that eh recognises that the man was and remains worthless and that he is able to move forward. The episode also bring into relief the broken relationship with his own son which is to be the main subject of the next programme. Alun has indicated his attention not to participate in the planned 11th series as has present Team Leader Amanda Redman who is being replaced by Tamzin Outhwaite. The main interest of the double episode has been Bryan coming to terms with his past and being able to move on without the work and reverting back to alcohol.
Before coming to the main experience of my last two days in Croydon the opportunity is taken to mention the excellent third episode of the new series of Who do you think you are? with Minnie Driver, now a 43 year single parent with a four year old boy and living in California. This proved an excellent episode as Minnie discovers about her father and his parents and other family members. She is the product of a relationship between her mother who we meet, a former couture model and designer and Ronnie Driver, born in Swansea but whose family originated from Yorkshire.
She discovers that at he age fo 18 her father participated in the first major bombing raid of World War II in which half the flying crews of 120 men did not return. He received the second Distinguished Flying Cross of the War for first putting out a fire with his gloved hands which could have engulfed the plane and during a time when the gun turret in which he sat had all its perspective destroyed leaving his feet dangling in the open air. His plane had to be ditched into the sea and he had been responsible for getting out the life dingy and getting the surviving wounded crew to safety all but his closest friend who died and was left on the plane. Minnie meets the last survivor of the raid, a ground mechanic and who knew her father.
She did not understand why her father never referred to to the award and in fact is said to have thrown the medal into the Thames because he felt he did not deserve it. With the help of military historians she learns that because the raid was something of a disaster his bravery had been put in the spotlight and was give national as well as local press attention including of him showing his medal to his mother, the first time Minnie had seen a photo of her grandmother She learns that the father had two periods in psychiatric units before returning to the airforce, gaining promotion and marrying the daughter of the then Managing Director(?) of Cable and Wireless. The wedding photo uniform makes no reference to the DFC.
She is also able to learn something of her grandfather and in fact although her father’s parents had married after they both became widowed/widower they were not when he was born. She learns that his father’s job had taken him around the country hence the birth in Wales. She is able to uncover a same generation cousin loving in Stockton or was it Darlington although he is twice her age and from her in addition to gaining a photo of the grandfather she learns that he had a half brother who was a repertory theatre actor who married musical actress and that they had a daughter who also performed on the stage. Respecting the woman’s wish not be filmed there is a telephone conversation although it is evident there was also subsequent direct contact.
Minnie has had a successful film and TV career nominated for an Oscar for her role in Good Will Hunting She is noted for having a high profile relationship with its other star Matt Damon afterwards. She subsequently disclosed that her child’s father is a writer from the TV Show The Riches in which she starred in its 20 episodes with Eddie Issard.
On Sunday after a quite morning watching the Test on lap top TV I decided to experience the last showing of a film about the painter Pierre Auguste Renoir which was being shown at the Odeon Panton Street. Before departing for the station I enjoyed the third king prawn sandwich meal deal from Sainsbury’s local.
I missed the train to London Bridge and St Pancras which was just as well because I was going to Victoria and had to stand in the train until Clapham Junction but got a seat for the rest of journey seeing what I assume now to have been one of the Peletons going on the London Surrey 5 hour contest going along the Thames embankment. At Leicester Square Underground station I correctly headed for the Odeon Cinema only to find it closed on arrival opening late afternoon because this was the Odeon Convent Garden and not Panton Street. Fortunately there was a programme notice outside which indicated Panton Street was somewhere between Leicester Square and Piccadilly and with this I remembered where it was, enjoying a slow walk as I had plenty of time with a packed crowd through the Square or dining out on a warm to hot day with the crowd appearing to be continuous all the way to the Circus,
I have not seen before as many visitors to London before with stations and trains full of people with luggage often struggle with the amount and the need to cope with traditional stairways and steps. On arrival I noted a huge party of Chinese looking adolescents on the main concourse at St Pancras and since then have noted two if not three further large parties of between 50 and 100 as well as similar parties of young people from Europe. The scale of the groups and the overall numbers is impressive, especially from China. However in a later conversation I was informed that the groups were more likely from South Korea which fitted into my experience in Croydon
I purchased a senior’s ticket at the cinema for £9 and then went back to the Square to sit on the new marble surround that has been added around the gardens. The work on the central statute continues. I had my headphones to listen to the Test Match.
There were only five people paying to see this French made film, me a young couple and two single women, one of whom I suspect was French or spoke French as she laughed several times before the subtitles appeared.
This is an extraordinary beautiful film where the sounds of south at Cagnes Sur Mer, wind in the trees, the tread of feet in low lying stream water, is left without the addition of music. The effect of the wind reduced the sense of intense heat which is also another feature of the South. As a young man I saw and experienced Renoir at the Tate and purchased a book which includes portraits of his last model, Andree Magdeleine Heuschling later known as Catherine Hessling, who had been sent by Matisse and who became the lover and first wife of Jean Renoir the filmmaker, the second son of Auguste.
The film covers the last two years of the life of Auguste during the First World War when the artist was wracked with arthritis and cared for by a group pf servants who had to carry him to the atelier where he worked from and to the house, and on picnics within the grounds and along a river bed we would describe as a stream on a sedan type chair. He was 78 when he died but looked much older because of the way his limbs had been affected by the arthritis.
He was an artist preoccupied with the flow rather than the line of human figures and still life forms together with a joyous use of colour. the film brings out his aversion to the horror and the trials of the human experience which makes the agony of his condition even more painful to experience. In the film the young woman is sent by Mrs Renoir for her to find that Mrs Renoir although 20 years younger than her husband had died. I am yet to establish if this was cinematic indulgence or Matisse did in fact arrange for someone to pose as Mrs Renoir to get the girl who he believed fitted the Renoir view of flesh and womanhood. Irrespective of the actual body size and shape Renoir tended to enlarge to create the sense of fleshiness which he adored. Renoir painted quickly produced more canvasses than most artists and the Renoir organisation has made available over 1750 of these in the form of a slide show Pierre-Auguste-Renoir organisation where one can order hand painted reproductions of all his works. Just spent an hour viewing the slides and wishing I could afford the property to house the pictures I would buy if i could. The real works cost as much as an International footballer today to buy.
The film uses the arrival of Andree to show us the life of Renoir at that time and through paintings kept at the home we learn aspects of his previous life but this is not a biographical film and unless someone, Jean, through his Life with my Father, book has, and which I thought I have although accept I may be confusing with a book by Jean Cocteau which I certainly do, then several aspect of the film script is speculation.
My understanding is that the mother of his three sons was an established model in Paris when she joined Renoir in Montmartre Aline Victorine Charigot. The eldest Pierre became an actor in film and theatre and plays a role in that extraordinary film Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) and died in 1952 aged 1967. The younger brother is portrayed as a disturbed adolescent because of the death of his mother in 1915 and the lack of a relationship with his father. He is shown as becoming preoccupied by the nakedness of the new model, jealous of her relationship with his father and with his brother Jean who returns home to convalesce after being seriously wounded in one thigh. The film does not record that his ailing mother went to nurse him and refused to allow his leg to be amputated choosing to treat the gangrene which had set in. Once she knew he was saved she had returned to Cagnes Sur Mare where she immediately died after a heart attack. As far as I am aware there is no work on her life published in English although her work as a model is documented through the paintings. Aline is reported in the film to have been responsible for sending away his father‘s model at the time because of the relationship being established with the father and also the son Jean who is upset to find she is not home when he returns home from the war.
The film suggests that Auguste encouraged a relationship between Jean and Andree to develop as a means of persuading him to leave the army and not return to the war. Just when this appears to have worked the son goes on a flight with former comrade and this tips him towards returning as an observer in the embryonic flying corps. At this period in his life Jean appears to be uncertain about his future and one suspects to have inherited his father’s senses and exploring the boundaries of experience. His father tells the tale of commencing work as a porcelain painter after his talent for decoration became evident. Described as a member of a working class family he is also reported to have been able to visit Paris and the Louvre and to have enrolled at an art college both surprising given his alleged antecedents.
When Jean survived the war he returned home and commenced to work as a porcelain painter like his father and he also re-established the relationship with Andree who he marries. In the film she goes away when discovering he has reenlisted and no one knows where she lived before coming to the family home. He traces her to what is presented a decadent club playing traditional jazz, attracting those with a range of sexual preferences and orientations but as with everything else in this film the heightened sexuality is presented in a most artistic and impressionistic manner. He persuades her to return to the household but still goes to the army and the film ends with the sorrow of the girl after a moving exchange between father and son as if they know they are unlikely to see each other again.
Although Jean expresses not vision of what he wants to be or do after the War he is interested in filmmaking and purchases an early projector and then a reel from a silent film, Nowadays four years old are able to work the DVD player and play video games on small hand held screens but then the most simplest of projected image would entertain. My mother acquired a magic lantern after The Second World War which she used to project photos on a sheet fixed to a wall and a first cousin sent to the UK to study electronics created the first black and white TV which enabled the family to watch the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, I still have the screen and slide projector which I purchased in the 1960’s and which reminds that I still experience in my head things which to ones children’s let alone grand children are regarded as historical.
The credits to the film reveal that while Jean went onto justifiable fame because of several of the films he created and to live in the USA and become a citizen, after their separation and eventual divorce Andree is known to have lived in poverty. Images from the film continue to be with and were throughout the whole of Monday when I had planned to visit the Tate or the Whitechapel Gallery, or another film although a study of those at Cineworld failed to ignite interest.
Since returning home I have increased my visual reawakening by looking at fifty brilliantly reproduced prints of the work of Renoir in the Phaidon Art book series which I bought in 1963 for 27/6. There are also nine prints of his work at thee end fo another Phaidon book on Impressionism both at the same time for the same price. His life and work is also covered in the Heron History of Series on Impressionism. Given that eh continued to paint despite being in constant pain over his last years I have been imbued with a great determination to at achieve some literary work to my satisfaction even if at the moment the momentum of my 101 project is slow getting slower.
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