Sickert in Bath and Bathampton

This weekend we decided to explore the links between Bath and one of my favourite painters, Walter Sickert.

Sickert lived until 1942, but is indelibly associated with images of late-Victorian London. (He's probably most widely known today, alas, as perhaps the most stupid of all suggested Jack the Ripper suspects, a demonstrably false suggestion, started in the 1970's by a fantasist called Joseph Gormley who claimed to be Sickert's son and the great-grandson of Queen Victoria, and repeated more recently by the absurd novelist Patricia Cornwell).

I especially love his paintings of the popular entertainments of his day, which are given an additional dash of socio-historic interest by the fact that his work spans the transition between Edwardian and Jazz Age popular culture: he painted some endlessly atmospheric scenes of London's Victorian music halls in rich, gloomy, glowing colours, but one of my favourites of all his paintings is one strangely (presumably randomly) titled Jack and Jill, which is in fact based on a newspaper photograph Of Edward G. Robinson and Joan Blondell in Bullets or Ballots.
Lit from below, Robinson looks like a squat, malevolent Punch, his protruding cigar seemingly made of the same material as his face. It's just wonderful.


But despite his close association with London, Sickert loved Bath.
He first came for the first of several prolonged visits in 1917, and wrote to the painter and patron Ethel Sands:
"Bath is it. There never was such a place for rest and comfort and leisurely work. Such country, and such town. And the mellifluous amiability of the west-country gaffers and maidens, all speaking the dialect which became the American we know and love."

During these initial working visits to the city, Sickert roomed at The Lodge, a small but impressively stylish house, tucked away on Entry Hill, a not inconsiderable uphill walk from the city itself.


He worked at studios located at number 10 Bladud Buildings, in the heart of town (and just opposite the street where we live!)


Four years before he died, however, he decided to move to the area permanently.
With his third wife Thérèse he settled on the lovely village of Bathampton, just outside the city. The first flurries of snow were just beginning to settle as we set off on Saturday morning to pay him a call.


They bought a spacious, rambling property, St George's Hill House - difficult to photograph, unfortunately, because it's at the end of a long and tree-shrouded driveway. This is the best we could do:


Sickert settled happily into his new surroundings, and enjoyed being a local celebrity. He would invite villagers and children in for tea and to talk about paintings, and agreed to judge a local fancy dress competition, and paint a portrait of the winner.
He also joined the local art society - as an ordinary member, turning down the offer of a vice-presidency - and lectured once a week to the students at the city's art college. (His keen eye for the beauty of the everyday had not deserted him: on observing the tenants of a dowdy nearby apartment block drying their washing on the iron balconies, he said to the students: "Look how these people with their few poor things are writing poetry for us.")

Here's Walter, with his superb beard, and his wife Thérèse in the garden of Hill House:


And here, some time before the beard had reached the above stage of enviable perfection, he is lecturing at Bath's Victoria Art Gallery:


Oddly, despite the profusion of plaques all over Bath celebrating its many famous residents and visitors, neither The Lodge, the studios at Bladud Buildings nor Hill House bear any visible indication of their connection with the great man.

Sickert died in Bathampton in 1942, and is buried in the local churchyard:


The reason that such a notable resident received so dowdy a headstone is that he died during World War II, and so was given a wartime utility gravestone.
This one, in fact, is a 1980s replica: the original had fallen to pieces.

Two other local celebrities also rest here: Arthur Phillip, first Governor of Australia and founder of the settlement that is now Sydney...


... and William Harbutt, the inventor of plasticine!


Apropos of nothing much, here's a stone pig we saw under a Bathampton tree:


And here's Snowy, Bath's famous Art Deco listed polar bear, who we passed on the way to Sickert's lodgings on Entry Hill:


Lastly, here are a few of Sickert's paintings of scenes in and around Bath, matched up with their real locations as they were this weekend. Damn those cars!

Mid-Atlantic with a blush of Russian: Your one-stop Keira news round-up

With Cronenberg's Dangerous Method almost upon us - and I must say it's starting to look rather better than I feared from early accounts, which probably only means it's got that much further to fall - Keira's been all over the news this month, in a variety of odd mini-stories, topped off by a first class photo session for Gentleman's Quarterly, as I still like to fool myself into calling it.

And since this is Movietone News, after all, I thought I'd bring together in one post the pick of all the great new Keira stuff out there, on the assumption that you'll welcome having it all at your fingertips, rather than have to go trawling through upwards of a dozen print and online outlets, or - option 3 - saying: "to be honest, I don't know what all the fuss is about" and leaving it at that.
I've also included some of the GQ pictures, so you don't forget who it is we're talking about.

Actually, there was a time when I wouldn't have dared waste your time with mountains of Keira trivia, but since my American friend James Nicholas declared her 'the patron saint of Movietone News' I feel it's my duty, somehow.
So pour yourself a gin fizz and we'll all go on a Keira-in-the-news tour.

First up comes the news that she doesn't own a television.

Keira Knightley: Why I Don't Own A Television is courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper with a certain highbrow reputation, hence this 'top-end' Keira story.
Turns out that the reason why she doesn't have a TV is the same reason why I don't: because all the programmes are rubbish. So she earns ten points for that, but unfortunately has three taken away again for saying that she watches football in the pub. She almost certainly doesn't really - at least, I've never seen her in a pub. But that's not the point. She should have learned by now that no amount of making out she's Joe Schmo is going to change their minds in Plasma Land, hence the caddish comments beneath the article.

Which leads neatly into this revelation:
Keira: I get less criticism in the US.
This snippet of the GQ interview seems to have got all the attention, with Keira explaining that while American audiences are generally supportive, the British can be nasty, and actually make her cry.
This splenetic riposte - Americans are stupid enough to like Keira Knightley, from what purports to be 'Cosmopolitan's best celebrity blog, 2011' - amply proves her point, calling the US "just about the only country gullible enough to buy her schtick of being a not-ugly posh English girl of no-fixed-talent".
Call it predictable chivalry on my part if you must, but this site really does read like the work of a drunk twelve year old.

We leave the top-end Telegraph 'no TV' type of story some distance behind us now, and pass down the rutted track to Weirdsville, where a story that seems to have originated with your super soaraway Sun has been doing the rounds in no small measure:
Keira Knightley practiced 'sex face' in mirror for Dangerous Method role
"I asked psychoanalysts about it and they said, 'sex and anything like that is trying to release pent-up emotion'. So I worked with that and sat in my bathroom and pulled faces at myself for two days."
The result, apparently, was a 'sex face' authentic enough to convey its merits to David Cronenberg via Skype.

Praise indeed from the director of Shivers, I'd say. And also a fine example of people without televisions making up their own amusements.


The best thing about Dangerous Method looks set to be Keira doing a Russian accent. I've seen clips of it and it does sound pretty terrific.
Here she is talking about doing a fake Russian accent while talking in a fake cockney accent. Sorry about the nasty lead-in music.



Not entirely sure what that bit about the tics are on the face and they're not funny means either, but pretty good for all that, I'm sure you'll agree.
Well all good things must come to an end, and I even I can't go on trawling the internet for Keira stories forever. There are, after all, fires to be lit and buffalo to be caught.

But I'll leave you with Keira singing 'Maybe It's Because', the only good bit in the film The Edge of Love.

On the Titfield trail

Today we walked from Bath to the lovely little village of Monkton Combe, better known to fans of Ealing comedies as Titfield, in The Titfield Thunderbolt.

Monkton Combe Station was the stand-in for Titfield Station in the film, and we decided to find out where it was - past tense intended, because sadly the station itself no longer exists.
Nonetheless, its exact site can still be located, thanks to one fortuitous landmark and the bizarre survival of just one original feature.

The village itself is charming in the extreme, and almost eerily quiet and still.

Gentlemen, be upstanding...

And is there...

Yes, there is!

In the local churchyard, we found the grave of the famous First World War veteran Harry Patch, who was 111 years old when he died in 2009.

The local inn was fabulous, with a blazing log fire beneath a splendid oil painting of a slumbering dog.
And the mustard came in a dish, not in one of those naff little sachets.

Best of all, they had photographs of the production of The Titfield Thunderbolt on the wall.

This is the landmark that enabled us to pinpoint the relevant road: an original eighteenth century lock-up, unusual in that it contains two adjoining cells:

Surrounded by houses, it's easily missed, but it leads directly to Mill Lane, clearly identifiable in the film:

And here, at the end of the lane, is the site of Titfield Station.
All that remains are those two iron gate posts, on either side of the garage, almost spooky in their isolation...


Next week, we find Shangri La and Oz.

Britons confused by artistry; compensation offered...

“Odeon Liverpool One can confirm it has issued a small number of refunds to guests who were unaware that The Artist was a silent film. The cinema is happy to offer guests a refund on their film choice if they raise concern with a member of staff within 10 minutes of the film starting.”

Good grief... (read on)

Please Consider Uggie... plus Cameo seasons and competition winners

All you regglars'll know I was seriously nervous about going to see The Artist, from the fear that it could not possibly live up to the promise of its trailer. My friend Damian swayed me in the end; he got in touch to say that it really was as good as it looks, to the point that even the fonts were authentic. And this is a man who knows a thing or two about movie fonts.
So yesterday we crossed our fingers and went to see it and by heck it really is sensationally good. I've reviewed it at Movietone Cameos.

The film is full of great performances, but the undoubted star is Uggie the dog, who delivers a multi-layered performance of exceptional subtlety and skill. So much so that I am delighted to see there is a movement afoot to overturn the speciesist shortsightedness that has rendered him ineligible for the Oscar he so richly deserves.
There's more on the campaign here, including a link to the 'Consider Uggie' Facebook page.

By the way, and speaking of Movietone Cameos, after months of at best sporadic activity interspersed with wide slabs of stasis, the site(hereafter referred to as the aforementioned) is undergoing something of a relaunch this year.
You could all be forgiven for forgetting there ever was such a blog. The original idea was, because I don't tend to do short reviews of individual films here, to create a place where I could index all the reviews I've done over the years for other people's magazines and books, and also websites like the BFI's ScreenOnline, and especially the reviews I did for those awful Movies You Must See Before You Die books that got edited and partially rewritten, to the brink of illiteracy and bravely beyond, without my permission.
But what I also wanted to do, and spectacularly failed at, so heroic is my laziness, was make the site into a kind of evolving film journal in which I would record every film I see.
And it is in that capacity that I have vowed to bring it back from the grave. My aim is to post something new every morning, and I've managed it this week at least, so if you feel like dropping by it would be lovely to see you there.
Something else we're doing, the wife and I that is, that I'm linking-in with the relaunched Cameos is watching films in self-curated seasons.
Every month we take it in turns to pick a subject for a season and choose the films we want to see for it, and I'll put reviews up on Cameos as we go.
There are ground rules: modern American romcoms are okay now and then but not permitted in a whole month-long season; Angela in turn has prohibited me from suggesting "any of your 'house of blood' type films".
I get to go first because I just do and that's all there is to it, and so this month it's Fay Wray. (I sense little by way of surprise.)
You can find out what the current season is by going to 'This Month at Cameos' at the top of the page, and then by clicking the link you can isolate all of the films under that heading.
Your comments on the way will, as always, jolly us both along no end.

Now on to our competition winners.
We had two copies of the new Steve McQueen biography and two of Piper Laurie's autobiography up for grabs, and the lucky Steves were
Heather Terry and The Lady Eve,
while the fortune-dusted Pipers were
Russell Peterson and Sherry Smith.
Thanks to everyone who took part, and congratulations to the lucky four. Your books will be mailed next week.

There's more Movietone Books up next, with features on the Marx Brothers, Leslie Halliwell and the next of my Movie Books I Couldn't Live Without.
So meet you back here soon, and in the meantime, don't forget to consider Uggie...

My All-Time Favourite Movie Books: “Louise Brooks – Portrait of an Anti-Star”

This is one of those books that takes me back instantly to the early nineteen-eighties, when I was just embarking on my love affair with old movies.

I had of course never heard of her until she died in 1985, and the BBC showed an old documentary, Diary of a Lost Girl, Pandora's Box and, charmingly, Overland Stage Raiders (still one of my all-time favourite Brooks movies; still one of the very few westerns I watch for fun.)
I'd just turned twelve, and hitherto my old movie crush had been Marlene Dietrich, who had transfixed me in a BBC Saturday matinee double-bill of Destry Rides Again and Seven Sinners. But Brooks was something quite different, and my memory, rendered hyperbolic by time, insists that within a few minutes of watching her in Pandora's Box my voice had broken.

The book is a kind of scrapbook of various essays, articles and bits of ephemera. There are loads of photographs, not glossy or glamorously reproduced but, it seemed to me at the time, almost a portal into a world of slightly dark, slightly decadent allure.
I didn't know there were old movies like this, or old movie stars.


How I came upon it is a story inextricably interwoven with the geography of the city of Plymouth.
Plymouth’s city centre has been massively restructured in recent years. It was never the most charming of shopping centres: thanks to our proximity to the Royal Naval Dockyard at Devonport it had been more or less razed by the Nazis during the war, then rebuilt in the Attlee years as a series of distended grey concrete blocks which, viewed from above, had a distinct and ironic touch of the Albert Speers to their fearful symmetry, but from the ground must have seemed unbelievably austere and lifeless compared to what had been there before.
Nonetheless, it was a design that still revealed the touch of a human hand. Not the work of a creative imagination, clearly, but you could still see the brushmarks for all that. What has now replaced it, with no war as excuse for further tampering, is incomparably worse, a drunken computer's nightmare, dominated by an enormous video screen hovering like a War of the Worlds tripod where once the eye was led gracefully through a straight avenue leading to the famous Plymouth Hoe, where Drake famously played snooker while waiting for the Vikings.

And Drake, our city's most famous son (with the possible exception of Wayne Sleep) gave his name to the site of my first encounter with this book: the Drake Circus shopping complex.
This was, depending on who you asked, either an ugly concrete rabbit's warren or a fascinatingly eccentric radiating splurge of subways leading in several directions to and from a central open air tapestry of mainly small, friendly shops. But I always thought that entering it was a bit like entering a secret cave, or passing through one world into another.
As a child, my mother and I would come here every Friday on the bus, get off at the library just on the outskirts, and pass down into the first tunnel which, like them all, offered a mysterious choice of directions (mysterious in that we always took the same route, and it was some little while before I was old enough to be there on my own, and find out where the adjacent passages actually took you).
Always there was a cheery busker, and with tiled walls depicting scenes from Plymouth’s past, these longish, dark and echoing tunnels were not remotely frightening. Week in and out we passed through them, never for a second entertaining the thought that they contained even the latent potential of threat, as indeed they did not at that time.
The first tunnel took you to a kind of central courtyard, where we would stop and feed bread to the pigeons. (This was the highlight of my week, partly because a goodly percentage of the bread ended up in me rather than the pigeons.) We then took the left path, into the Drake Circus complex itself.

The first thing you saw was the back entrance of C&A. The front was right at the other end of the complex, a fact I found incredibly impressive. Sometimes we would use C&A as a kind of unofficial subway into the town proper, but they eventually caught on to this and stopped people using the back entrance, so we had to pass through Drake Circus itself.
First on the left was a cheery, dimly-lit café, where tables would be routinely shared by strangers, and we would sometimes stop for a bowl of 'soup of the day', also known as minestrone. On the right, a wool shop.
Then on the left, the first Tesco supermarket I had ever seen. The exact layout of its two floors remains so vivid in my mind that you could give me a shopping list and I would know exactly where to find each item, something I still can’t do in my local Sainsbury’s after six months of regular usage.
But we will ignore Tesco’s today and march onward still, because we have another destination in mind.We will not even turn right, where at the top of one of the only outside escalators I have ever seen stood my favourite childhood shop: an Aladdin’s cave called Arcadia: two massive open-plan floors with, on the ground, paperbacks, magazines, annuals, sweets and records, and on the top, a wonderland of toys.
No, we are heading straight ahead, to a small but enchanting bookshop called Chapter and Verse.

Here is where my earliest memories of solo book buying are located, where I turned so many vague potential interests into lifelong passions, with careful purchases of judiciously chosen stock. Here is where I bought my first book on ancient Egypt (Romer's Egypt by John Romer) and my first book on Hitchcock, and my first Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion.
It seems to me there are no such bookshops now: they either sell nothing or everything, neither option really conducive to the kind of chance discoveries from which true devotion to a subject is built. Just as multi-channel television has killed the potential for stumbling upon and sticking with a film or programme you would not have chosen to watch but might just change your life, so too has the book superstore. If you know what you’re looking for, great, but stumbled-upon epiphanies are rare.
Chapter and Verse was shaped by human imagination. Space was at a premium, so stock was carefully chosen and the books were all good. And there, staring at me one Friday, was that amazing face I had just seen on television, the provocative, shiny haired, black-red lipped, hypnotic eyed, impossibly beckoning visage of Louise. The films had impressed me, but it was this book that made me her slave. For a few weeks I would simply go into the shop and browse through it, but soon enough I succumbed, as all men did around Louise, it would seem.

Of course all the iconic glamour shots were there, but the one that held my eye the longest was this one, a candid of her on a set, surrounded by books and eating a sandwich:

In later years, there would be other, technically better books about Louise to add to my shelves, but none were ever quite as exciting as this first one: I bought her own memoirs, collected as Lulu In Hollywood soon after, then a few years later Barry Paris's biography came along; just recently Peter Cowie's coffee-table tome became the ultimate photographic record of this most photogenic of all stars. Now, comes the mouthwatering news that her private journals are being prepared for publication.
My own view of Brooks has changed over the years too: my complete initial capitulation to her erotic hypnosis was eventually tainted by cynicism when I realised how well she stage-managed her decline, and how so many of the bad breaks that killed her career were brought about by her own stubbornness and vanity. But the delight I take in flicking through this book has never weakened for a second, and thus it belongs at the very top of my list of film books I cannot imagine life without. I only have to look at the cover to be transported back to that time when the cerebral passions of cinemania were first mixed with the more instinctive fixations that mark the transition from short to long trousers.

As for Chapter and Verse: well, we had many more pleasant encounters to come, but it disappeared eventually, as all things too good for this world must sooner or later do. And eventually, the entire Drake Circus complex was demolished and rebuilt, seemingly freehand, with whatever materials happened to be lying around at the time.
The original was by no means a pretty thing: it was grey, it was shadowy, and cold even in Summer. What it has been replaced by, however, is something only a computer could love, and I'm proud to say it was the 2006 inaugural winner of the Carbuncle Cup, the prestigious award given by architectural magazine Prospect to honour the most egregious eyesores in Britain.

(Movietone Books continues next year)