Triumph and Demise
(Paul Kelly) An account of the Australian Federal Labor Government 2007 – 2013. Kevin Rudd, his bete noire Julia Gillard, et al, stalk about like characters in The White Devil, passionless and brainless villains. You could play ‘Sortes Virgilianae’ in respect of some of the players, substituting DSM 4R.
Continue Reading →Tristan und Isolde
Beware matchmakers. Beware writing opera when in lust with Mathilde Wesendonck. Beware love-of-death; it leads to the death of love, or death-porn. Wagner must have seen himself as Tristan to Mathilde’s Iseult, Lancelot to her Guinevere, when he shelved the Ring and forged perhaps the most beautiful opera of all. T & I poses a number of problems. Its staging should be spare yet lush. It requires a measure of taste and discretion, for Wagner wrote this work while well-unzipped (he expected the work to be censored unless it was played as parody) and the material can stray dangerously near…
Continue Reading →Tosca
Callas wouldn't cop Spoletta
(Melbourne, 2010) What on earth were alleged professionals thinking with this? A set from Rebus or The Wire and a finale where Floria, rather than hurtle over the parapet, has her brains blown out by Spoletta? It is such textual vandalism that renders Joseph Kerman’s sneer (a ‘shabby little shocker’) as true. Grumbles with setting and textual vandalism aside, Nicole Youl was a fine leading lady and the incomparable John Wegner a formidable, ferocious and frightening Baron Scarpia.
Continue Reading →Thirteen Days
(by Robert Kennedy) (film directed by Roger Donaldson) This matter-of-fact monograph of the Cuban missile crisis by a central figure is very readable and, considering it was probably whipped up ahead of RFK’s tilt at the Presidency, quite fair (note, by contrast, that in the vivid film of the same name, a key, in fact, critical adviser, Llewellyn ‘Tommy’ Thompson, an Eisenhower appointee, is nowhere to be seen). Kennedy needs and wields no purple prose: his writing is clear, taut and free of cant. For a career politician, this is singular in itself; for an account of a moment on…
Continue Reading →Sweet Smell of Success
(dir. A MacKendrick) (1957) Great late melodrama, Lancaster rarely better, Tony Curtis never better. “I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” The sparse camera direction would gladden David Stratton’s heart, only producing the odd flourish where it enhances the scene (e.g. in “21”, where the camera’s eye swings from Manny Davis to Miss James and cuts back to J.J. Hunsecker, who is saying that every hep person knows that “ This one is toting that one around for you.” ). [NB: Vale Martin Milner, R.I.P. 6/9/2015, who was stout but dull as Steve Dallas…
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