More Travel

We are just back from another 2 week visit to London and vicinity.  While I had expected to be in Vienna in October, I gladly settled for London in late August and early September.  One of the reasons for the early travel (it was still high tourist season when we arrived) was because a film of Deb's was showing at a film festival that she has always wanted to visit.  The Women Over 50 had selected a film of hers for the fifth time, so we finally made the journey to Lewes to experience the event.  We had visited The Depot Cinema informally in May.  Deb came home with a runner up certificate for She Makes a Moving Picture, which received high praise from the judges.  The festival was a full one day affair, divided into blocks.  I attended the first block, where Deb's film screened, then literally headed into the hills for some spectacular downs walking.  Deb spent the entire day at the festival.

 

Another reason for our London trip was to continue our walking segments of the London Loop and the Capital Ring.  As in May, we completed one Loop segment and two Ring segments.  While only two Ring segments remain to complete, we still have four more of the longer Loop segments to do.  We also increased our cultural doings quite a bit this time, after a very slack attempt last May.  We visited the National Gallery, Apsley House, Courthauld Gallery, Guildhall, Temple and three Roman ruins within London.  In Eynsford we visited a Roman ruin and a castle ruin, while in Lewes I visited the ruins of a large priory.  We even saw several Banksy works of art, one of them in situ still and the others on pub walls.  Of course we managed to squeeze in a few pub visits as well, even discovering a new fabulous oasis for craft real ales.  

 

It was an exhausting trip with no days off, though a few times we returned early to the hotel for a quiet evening lying on a bed, feeling our feet tingling from much walking.  We flew with Air Canada from Windsor, leaving on a Wednesday and returning exactly two weeks later.  All flights went well except our final journey home from Toronto to Windsor, which ran just over two hours late.  Our final day was a 22 hour marathon of a very long bus ride and the two flights home.  Much more about the trip will be forthcoming over the next two weeks on the Travels Abroad blog, link in upper left margin.  We managed to meet with Caroline once; our second visit was cancelled due to bad weather and some transport problems for Caroline.

 

First photo of the trip, as we set out from Highgate on segment 12 of the Capital Ring.  Sadly we never got to try the whiskey.  This billboard was on the side of the Boogaloo Pub (not visited).

 

There are hardly any red box telephones remaining in London.  These are set up as an art display outside Smithfields Market. 

 

One of our relaxing evenings at the hotel we managed to watch a Criterion movie offering via Deb's phone and tablet.  She made it magically appear on the hotel TV and we lay in bed and watched the remarkable Ashes and Diamonds, a Polish film from 1958 directed by Andrzej Wadja.  Somehow,this masterpiece had slipped past us until now.  It is a totally amazing film from start to finish, with many moments of brilliance and genius.  The plot has to do with the assassination attempt on a pro-Russian (communist) speaker coming to a small town to try and convince the workers to join the communist party.  Opposition party members first fail in their attempt, killing two innocent men instead by mistake.  The film has plenty of tension and release, as the main assassin character falls in love with a barmaid at his hotel and nearly pulls out of the attempt.  This is a riveting film from start to finish, with superb writing and excellent photography supporting the good acting.  Highly recommended!

 

Now showing on Criterion.  The poster is a tribute to the film's best shot,

an upside down Christ on the cross.  

 

Thursday night, amidst loads of laundry, we watched an oddball film, deemed a "sunshine noir" by Criterion.  Violent Saturday is a 1955 film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and several other recognizable character actors.  The action takes place in a small Arizona town (filmed in Bisbee, AZ, a place we have visited a few times).  The film is ostensibly about a bank heist to be undertaken by three out-of-town criminals, but it also partly a Douglas Sirk melodrama about various inhabitants of the mining town.  So, a film that is a cross between a soap opera and crime drama.  Results are mixed, but as it is filmed in Cinemascope with De Luxe colour, the film is always great to watch.  Mature plays the hero who stands up to the criminals, getting shot himself and rescued at the last moment by Borgnine, who plays a pitchfork wielding peace loving Amish farmer who is pushed over the edge by the criminals.  He gets no credit at the end for his heroic and life saving action.  Definitely worth watching, especially on a 50" TV screen in a small room.

 

Leaving Criterion Sept. 30th. 

 

I'll be back with trip updates soon.  Check back in a few days.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 
 

 

 

Three Odd Film Noir

By definition all film noir are odd, but we have recently watched three that are Odd (note capitalization).  In January the Criterion streaming channel has a whole bunch of films we would like to see, so we have now watched 6 films in a row leaving January 31st.  Most recently have been three "B" pictures worth noting, all in beautiful b & w.  Most recent came The Man I Love, a 1946 film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Ida Lupino.  Though it has some soap opera moments, this drama jumps all over the place, telling three stories during the course of the movie.  What is most interesting about this film, however, is how strong a woman Lupino is.  The film centres on her, and she handles the part with a solid type of acting seldom seen in female characters, especially in the noir genre.  She is tough and tender, smart and talented, as she sings her way into top nightclubs.  She falls for a down and out jazz pianist, and they almost make a go of it.  By the end it appears as if they are not totally washed up, but still might manage to get together later.  Robert Alda plays the owner of the nightclub where Lupino sings, and manages to create one of the creepiest creeps who ever crept into a movie.  A dizzy blonde, mother of twin babies and wife to husband Johnny, also manages to upset audiences with her lifestyle.  An unusual film, and worth a peek for Lupino's performance.

Leaving Criterion January 31st. 

 

Before that came Pickup Alley, a 1956 film starring Victor Mature as a globetrotting cop on the trail of bad guy Trevor Howard, who is being assisted by Anita Ekberg.  A few things make this film unusual for a film noir.  First of all, it is filmed in Cinemascope.  Secondly, we get to travel the world, instead of only staying in New York or LA.  The sleazy film title has nothing to do with this film, made fun because the police are looking for Trevor Howard but don't know what he looks like.  London, Paris, Rome, and Athens all feature somewhere in this fairly fast paced thriller.  Sadly, Mature hardly makes it as a hero cop.  He seems to do very little acting in this film, going through his lines like an amateur.  Ekberg is, of course, rather cute, though her part is not very demanding.  Can she act?  We would hardly know for sure from this film.

 

Leaving Criterion January 31st.

Earliest of the three came Human Desire, an American Fritz Lang directed remake from 1954 of La Bete Humaine, from a story by Emil Zola.  Glenn Ford stars as a passenger train engineer who runs headlong into trouble when he falls for a married woman, played by Gloria Grahame.  Her overbearing husband, played by Broderick Crawford, is a jealous man, and an alcoholic who lets off too much steam and is fired from his job at the railroad yard.  The film, especially at the very beginning, features some of the worst background matting this viewer has ever seen.  Glenn Ford guides his train through the mountains, across bridges, and into tunnels, though when the camera pans to him we see Midwest flat farmland in behind him out his cab window.  Weird.  Ford is mostly emotionless in this picture, hardly acting at all.  Grahame is okay as she goes through the motions of loving Ford to help her get rid of her husband.  We learn that her past is a sordid one, beginning when she was 16.  Will Ford, freshly back from Korea, kill her husband for her?  Good tension is built up to this climax.  I much prefer the earlier French film starring Jean Gabin, but this one has its moments.

Leaving Criterion January 31st. 

 

In local news, I did some fun things this week.  Last Sunday I went ice skating for the first time in 14 years.  Public skating at the local arena is on Sunday at 5 pm.   I managed to skate for 30 minutes without falling or crashing into someone (It was rather crowded).  Seniors can skate on Wednesday afternoons, but our schedule is currently too filled with medical appointments, so I will stick to Sundays for now.  On Tuesday morning I dropped Deb off at her physio appointment (for TMJ) in Amherstburg, then went on to walk a segment of the local rails to trails path.  It was a very cold day (about 25 F) with a nasty little breeze, but once I was into the forest it was okay.  It was strange to be walking here in January, but we had had no snow.  The marsh was frozen over and could have been travelled on skates.  We haven't gone above 30 F for nine days now, and some of the nights have been bitter.  Then on Thursday morning I went over to Dr. Seski's home and put in an hour on his incredible 7' Fazioli piano.  I was able to run through my entire program, and it went pretty well.  He played a Brahms Intermezzo for me.  I may be back into the piano group on occasions when they have smaller gatherings.  Last time there were only three of them.

 

From my trail walk on Tuesday morning.  The marsh is frozen solid.

 

Tonight (Friday) it is snowing, our first real snow event this season.  We might get 2" or a bit more, so we should awaken to a white winter wonderland.  If so I will take some pics tomorrow morning and add them here. 

 

Mapman Mike