Lesbian Vampires, Swedish Winters, California Death
A fortnight in quote-unquote 'content consumption'
The Best Intentions by Ingmar Bergman
No, I didn’t know that Ingmar Bergman wrote a novel either. I found this in the library two towns over, shelved with two of his other novels, and thought ‘I’m taking you home!’
The Best Intentions ended up being a moody chronicle of Bergman’s parents before his conception, threaded with religious argument and dark Scandinavian winter. I do not pretend to know or understand Bergman very well, despite having seen an unrounded five of his films, but elements were there - the opening of Fanny and Alexander became its hopeful ending, the high-class nerves of Cries and Whispers transplanted to its maternal grandmother. This was not a fun read, but it was a deeply textured one nevertheless.
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
I bought this book after falling in love with the John Schlesinger adaptation, and I am led to conclude that the adaptation was even better than I first thought, and also made at the best possible time (the perpetually grimy, scandalised 70s) to capture the ghost-spirit of the original.
The West novel delves further than film ever could into what everyone has always called a ‘seedy underbelly’. Its two poetic disasters (a collapsing prop hill, a Hillsborough-esque human crush) come off as muted in comparison to the Schlesinger version, and instead it is the small details that stick out through the text, creating a wholly convincing early Hollywood.
The part of studio-Hollywood that sticks to me most successfully is its simple fact of picturesque world domination, of total dominion of the cameraman, of prop departments full of books and picture plates. It was not the on-set collapse that scared me in this novel - rather, it was the passage before it, of the protagonist wandering through a studio lot laid out into a hundred miniature worlds, ancient and modern. In his damning description of the studio system, West (a prophet) manages to predict the Disney theme park empire. Were he alive then, he would surely jolt with recognition at the story of the girl killed in Tomorrowland, crushed between two walls.
Petulia (1968) dir. Richard Lester
The kind of over-designed and over-edited late 60s extravaganza I stay alive for. Its art direction is by Nicolas Roeg (Performance, Don’t Look Now) and his manic, meditative style filters into every area of the film. Flashbacks are interspersed with greater and greater frequency until they become the main storyline, rather like a zebra going from black with white stripes to white with black stripes. The odd religiosity (worship of Hollywood past) so prevalent in gay-adjacent 60s films is very much prevalent here. Female characters are photographed in gorgeous soft focus. Julie Christie is a young upstart, rather like twin-initalled Joan Crawford in her films of the 30s. She wars in spirit with a sprawling housewife and claws her way through the Mexican border. Modern amenities are mocked a la the previous year’s Playtime.
I only wish I had seen a better restoration.
The Vampire Lovers (1970) dir. Roy Ward Baker
Ingrid Pitt is one of the most compelling actresses ever to grace the silver screen, and comes with the second-most romantic backstory after Lauren Bacall. She escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Danzig! She fled East Germany via the River Spree and fell into the arms of her future husband! Whoever was in charge of casting for this film must have been either a) a lesbian, b) a studio exec who decided to Listen and Learn to the sensual whims of lesbians.
The Vampire Lovers is textually a B-movie and artistically an A-movie. The beige peculiarities of 70s horror meld with a hyper-erotic imagined Regency period. Women rip their blouses off and have governesses. Actors gallop about on a Home Counties golf course flooded with dry ice. Here is another film whose poetic happenstance outshines its actual content. (I love you Ingrid Pitt)
Accident (1967) dir. Joseph Losey
I often refer to Joseph Losey as an ‘evil genius’ because he has a strange knack for placing his actors exactly where they should be, in the most devious way possible. He is the Velazquez of cinema - geometric arrangements, jewel tones, mirrors. Arms and legs are a visual language in The Servant. Liz Taylor becomes Moses atop a mountain in Boom!, narrating the commandments of her encroaching death. This film (written by Harold Pinter) uses an unforeseen logic of static painting, sort of like Wes Anderson but a million times less annoying, to weave countless subtexts - homosexual, heterosexual - into a shadowy story.
Several arresting images: the female lead suspended in a car wreck in white feathers, and later a shot of a swan; an array of glass bottles zoomed out far into a Bruegel tableau, a couple (Dirk Bogarde and Delphine Seyrig!) at a red restaurant cloaked by a rainy window. Colours are by Eastmancolor - perfect and underused! The BFI restoration is beautiful and I love my country.
Teardrops on the Wildflowers by Jenny Tseng
This song is legit!
Heartfelt Wish by Ouyang Fei-fei
I can tell this was written and produced by Liu Jia-chang because of its chord progression and nonchalant flute crescendo, both of which can also be found on Fong Fei-fei’s soundtrack to Warmth in the Autumn (溫暖在秋天). This is how I know that I am listening to too much of this music.
Cinderella’s Eyes by Nicola Roberts
I am signing off on this album, which is an essential addition to the Girls Aloud canon.