For this week’s Rhapsody, we have the second of Alan Hovhaness three Armenian Rhapsodies.
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This week’s selection I decided to watch some adaptions of John le Carré’s spy thrillers. I’ve been a fan of le Carré’s work for a long time. I like the level of cynicism portraying the spy world as a place that eats people up and chews them up. After reading him it’s impossible to take James Bond seriously
The first film on my list, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,directed by Martin Ritt, tells the story of Alec Leamas, played by Richard Burton, a British secret agent who is in charge of getting people across the Berlin Wall. After several of these people are killed he’s sent back to London where he is used in a plan to find the East German agent responsible.
The Spy Who Came Out From The Cold was first Le Carre books I’d read and while I only really got into his work later on this is a good one to introduce us to the dark world of spycraft where being a soldier in the Cold War is just a pointless job and no one is truly “good”.
This film does a pretty good job of portraying this dark worldview with Burton playing the burnt out Leamas with precision.
The second film on My list is The Little Drummer Girl directed by George Roy Hill which takes us away from the Cold War to the shadow war between the Israeli Mossad and the PLO.
Diane Keaton plays Charlie an anti-zionist actress who gets drafted by the Mossad to act as bait for a PLO bomber named Khalil. In the process, she is used, traumatized and lots of people around her die.
Despite a setting where everyone is a pawn it’s relatively optimistic by le Carré, standards.
It’s been years since I read the book and what I remember about it doesn’t go much further than I just described.
I’m afraid I really didn’t get into this one that much, even though Hill’s direction is as competent as usual, as is Keaton’s performance. For me, the most interesting part of the film was the spy craft of the Mossad team, led by a fantastic Klaus Kinski, who is handling and monitoring Charlie. I found myself fascinated by the brutal professionals, shown in every aspect of their work (regrettably I’m not using “brutal” for the sake of hyperbole as can be seen in the fate of Khalil’s younger brother who they apprehend early in the film.)
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For this week’s Rhapsody, we have Rhapsody for Trombone and Piano by Eric Ewazen
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This week I decided to watch films where some of the great Hollywood first began their team ups. (Actually, I had hoped to do this one as a double header with “romantic comedies done right” but while the second film had many fun moments was not a comedy)
THe First on my list we have the first film that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn first worked together in, Woman of the Year . directed by George Stevens. Tracy and Hebburn play sports columnist, Sam Craig and political columnist, Tess Harding who first meet after being called into the Editor’s office to stop a war of words the two have been in that was started after Tess said that there was no point in sports during an interview, something that a sports columnist like Sam can’t let stand.
They quickly fall in love and after a rough start dealing with their two different interests, Tess’s packed schedule they marry after just two dates.
Of course, it’s after the marriage where the hilarity truly ensues.
While this film was fairly well done, I just couldn’t get into it. Perhaps it’s because I’m so far away from the forties it feels like looking at an alien world. I had trouble believing in people jumping into marriage after just two dates, and the way the story mostly took Sam’s side. It frequently puts me off that in too many of these movies intelligent assertive women have to be “tamed” with this movie ending with Tess utterly failing in the kitchen (though I must admit Hepburn’s physical performance in this scene was pretty funny)
My next film, To Have and Have Not, directed by Howard Hawks, begins the professional team, and off screen romance, of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Bogart plays Harry Morgan the captain of a fishing boat out of Vichy controlled Martinique.. After his client is killed before paying him, he finds himself mixed up with some French freedom fighters who need to smuggle one of their people onto the island.
While this is going on he meets Marie (Slim) Browning, (Becall) a beautiful wanderer, singer and sometime pickpocket and a relationship between the two begins as all the craziness builds up around them.
This one is very much a classic. (It’s the film where the “you do know how to whistle?” line comes from.) Becall is amazing in this film with an amazing presence that goes way beyond just her incredible beauty. Her chemistry with Bogart is the stuff of legend.
The other thing I liked about it was its soundtrack performed by composer and pianist, Hoagy Carmichael.
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For this week’s Rhapsody we finish off Dvorak’s Slavonic Rhapsodies with his third and final Slavonic Rhapsody
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Been meaning to start to do some more cast pictures and side art. So here’s my first one with Kate and her cousin (and newest employee) Erika.
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