I Know Where I’m Going!
(dir. Powell & Pressburger) (1945) A fey Scottish romance even the chaps will enjoy. Joan Webster needs to get on the boat to the island of Kiloran, in the Scottish Hebrides, in order to marry her much older former employer, Sir Robert Bellinger.. Bad weather foils her, but during the wait, she befriends a young naval officer home from leave. He wants to get to Kiloran as well… Rich performances abound, with Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey entirely perfect as the two stranded travellers. Hiller, in particular, totally convinces, as a haughty lass who dissolves in the face of the unstoppable force of…
Continue Reading →A House for Mr Biswas
(by V. S. Naipaul) With Transparent Things, the best nihilist comedy ever: a long, lovely, sad, frustrating look at defiant failure Mohun Biswas. Full of ‘amazing scenes’ and family strife in Trinidad. When Biswas daubs brightly coloured spots of zinc cream on his face and goes out onto the footpath to watch the world go by, it is hard not to laugh till you cry. The notoriously scratchy Mr Naipaul has produced an impressive oeuvre down the years, but this is certainly his best book. He has written that it is…
Continue Reading →His Girl Friday
(Howard Hawks) (1940) High speed comedy with no feelings spared. Cary Grant’s and Rosalind Russell’s finest hour. Hilde has left Walter and the newspaper business behind, or so she thinks….
Continue Reading →Gyn/Ecology
(by Mary Daly) The Gravity’s Rainbow of feminism, an inspired sample-bag of misogyny, a panoply of male sadism. Arguably an insane tract, nevertheless the facts are there – they are indubitable and to this mere male reader, quite compelling.
Continue Reading →The Green Man
(by Kingsley Amis) The landlord of “The Green Man” pub has an alarming drinking problem and wandering hands. Also, there is some monolithic horticultural product about, that could cause further alarm. Amis senior’s famous book, Lucky Jim is superior to this slight work but this novella is so weird and perverse it is almost decadent.
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