Raymond Chandler’s Pearl
Over on his blog Tom Williams, who is working on a new biography of Raymond Chandler, has an interesting piece about the early story ‘Pearls are a Nuisance’ in which he makes the intriguing suggestion that the story might include a private joke between Ray and his wife Cissy, whose first name was ‘Pearl’:
‘Pearls Are A Nuisance’ is one of Chandler’s more unusual stories. It appeared in the Dime Detective in 1939 and is narrated by a heavy drinking, 6ft something Anglicized American by the name of Walter Gage who talks ‘the way Jane Austen writes’ despite his size and muscles (he played football in college we are told by his adoring girlfriend, Ellen). When Ellen asks him to track down some stolen pearls without the owner (her employer) knowing Gage is lead to a similarly sized thug and former chauffeur called Henry Eichelberger and, together, to two set out to find the pearls. The story has all the hallmarks of a typical Chandler tale: betrayal, a corrupt but wealthy woman, a beautiful girl. But it sticks out from some of his other stories for several reasons. Firstly there is something of Ray in Walter Gage.
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The Critic Inside Me
I’m going on holiday in a couple of days, so I won’t be blogging for the next few weeks. One of the reasons I’m grateful to get away for a while is that it gives me an excuse not to go see Michael Winterbottom’s film adaptation of The Killer Inside Me. Okay, it’s based on a seminal 1952 Jim Thompson novel, but the extremely graphic violence that is depicted in the movie is enough to persuade me not to go. One reviewer even likened it to Torture Porn. Besides, I’ve never watched a film directed by Michael Winterbottom that has engaged me on any emotional level. They may be cleverly structured and well acted but they are usually joyless affairs (such as 24 Hour Party People (2002)). I doubt he can capture the essence of Jim Thompson’s work.
Clifton Webb as the acerbic critic Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944)
Rereading my last paragraph makes me realise how much I enjoy slating a book or a film rather than praising it — which in turn makes me feel old! I was amused to read that crime writer Philip Kerr has apologised to Allan Massie for writing a scathing review of Massie’s latest book on its Amazon page. I reported last week that Kerr did this as revenge for Massie writing bad reviews of Kerr’s last two books. Perhaps Kerr could find comfort in watching a little known Vincent Price horror movie called Theatre of Blood (1973). The film is every critic’s worst nightmare. Price plays a hammy Shakespearean actor named Edward Lionheart who has spent his life receiving bad notices and being denied a coveted acting award from a group of reviewers known as the Critic’s Circle. Lionheart fakes his own death and then comes back to take his revenge on his critics by murdering them by gruesomely ingenious methods taken from the plays of Shakespeare. The film is on one level a comment on Price’s acting career and is remarkably good fun.
The entire film is available to watch on YouTube. Here’s the opening scene. Enjoy:
Henning Mankell on the Gaza Aid Flotilla
Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell was on board one of the aid ships intercepted by Israeli forces on route to Gaza earlier this week. He has been talking about the ordeal to the Guardian and seems in little doubt that the Israelis arrived with the intention to fight:
“I think the Israeli military went out to commit murder,” Mankell said. “If they had wanted to stop us they could have attacked our rudder and propeller, instead they preferred to send masked commando soldiers to attack us. This was Israel’s choice to do this.
“And it was the most stupid thing they could have done, because look around, Israel has never been so criticised in the world as of today, and if you ask me, this blockade will be over within the next six months.” Via
It has been a busy day for crime fiction bloggers with the dramatic news that Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell was on one of the Gaza-bound aid boats stormed by Israeli forces yesterday. He was not hurt apparently, but he may be in custody.
A slightly more lighthearted story was reported in The Daily Telegraph — crime writer Philip Kerr is an internet troll! Apparently Kerr was so aggrieved by two scathing reviews that historian Allan Massie wrote of Kerr’s last two novels that Kerr got his revenge by slamming Massie’s latest book on its Amazon page. The offensive review must have been taken down as it does not seem to be there any more. A literary feud or an internet imposter?
Also at the Telegraph is the obituary of the actress Carol Marsh. The late Miss Marsh played Rose, the naive young wife of the vicious hood Pinkie Brown, in the film version of Brighton Rock (1947).
Dennis Hopper (1936 – 2010)
It was very saddening to hear the news of the death of Hollywood maverick Dennis Hopper today. Hopper had an illustrious and unconventional career as an actor, director and painter. Crime fiction fans may well remember him best for his excellent, underrated and erotically-charged film The Hot Spot (1990), adapted from Charles Williams’ Hell Hath No Fury (1953). The film is a testament to Hopper’s skill as a filmmaker, and a fine addition to the neo-noir genre.
Below is the original trailer for the film.
The End of the James Bond Film Series?
Those of us who were looking forward to seeing the planned 23rd film in the James Bond series will just have to content ourselves with dipping into our DVD collections and rewatching some of the older films, after it was reported that the pre-production on Daniel Craig’s third outing has been indefinitely postponed. MGM’s well publicised financial problems, the lukewarm critical reception to the last Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008), and the fact that audiences may finally be getting sick of endless revamps, reboots, remakes and reinterpretations of classic films and classic characters have all contributed to the fact that we won’t be seeing James Bond 23 any time soon.
This is worrying news for Bond fans. Some Bond films are better than others and there have been a few real stinkers in the series now and then, but the series only just underwent a major revamp (as Casino Royale (2006) was in essence a prequel to all the previous Bond films as it shows how Bond earned his 007 licence to kill status) and for it to be in trouble so soon afterwards is not a good sign. Every time a new actor plays Bond it is in some ways a revamp, but if the new film is delayed long enough for Craig to lose interest in the part, how will they replace him without once again skewering the continuity and tone of the series? The longest gap yet between Bond films was the six- year hiatus after Licence to Kill in 1989. It took a new Bond in Pierce Brosnan, and a whole new approach to the films in the 1990s, to revitalise the series. As Quantum was released two years ago, and as production on a new film won’t start till at least 2012, we could be looking at an equally long wait. Perhaps too long? I’m being pessimistic, and I hope I’m wrong. Also, a rethink of the Bond series after Craig’s last two outings in the role may be called for. Craig, like Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton before him, has succeeded in portraying the darker side of Ian Fleming’s hard-drinking and womanising spy. But although the Craig films are satisfyingly dark and fast-paced, they lack some of the wit and delightfully British eccentricity that made Roger Moore’s Bond films so enjoyable. Moore had his faults of course, he never took the role too seriously, and he wasn’t particularly interested in challenging himself as an actor. But still he holds the record as the longest serving Bond, starring in seven films over twelve years from 1973 to 1985. The series could do well if it tried to recapture some of the charm and humour he brought to the role.
Moore’s first Bond film was the voodoo-themed Live and Let Die. In the scene below, Bond is trapped in a swamp surrounded by crocodiles and can only escape by jumping on the backs of one crocodile to another! It may not be art, but it’s cinematic gold! Enjoy.
When Stieg Larsson died suddenly in 2004, all of his estate automatically defaulted to his father and brother. Larsson’s life partner, Eva Gabrielsson, was left with nothing as Sweden’s inheritance laws do not recognise cohabiting couples. The couple never married, as Larsson was a target of neo-Nazi organisations due to his investigative journalism on the subject, and marriage may have made their address easier to trace. Larsson was working on a fourth book in his Millennium series when he died, and now the manuscript officially belongs to his estranged family, but Miss Gabrielsson has refused to hand it over. Fans of Stieg Larsson’s work have now set up the website, SupportEva.com, to campaign for Miss Gabrielsson to inherit the proceeds and administer the rights of the Millennium series. Miss Gabrielsson claims to have made significant contributions to the Millennium series and this situation is blatantly unfair. SupportEva.com is asking for Larsson fans or anyone who is interested in ending this injustice to make a small donation to help pay for Miss Gabrielsson’s legal fees. Here’s the link to the website.
Jon Ronson on Criminal Profiling
Jon Ronson has a fascinating article in the Guardian titled ‘Whodunnit?’ It charts the rise and fall of criminal profilers, and how certain profilers achieved near celebrity status with their psychological insights, before it all went horribly wrong with the police investigation of the Rachel Nickell murder case. Well worth a read.
Wallander and the British Eye View
The recent showing on British TV of a second series of the BBC’s Wallander has added to an already growing interest in Scandinavian crime fiction. The success of Henning Mankell’s books, featuring the troubled police detective Kurt Wallander, is easy to explain: Wallander himself is a compelling character of real depth and the plotting is strong. But what stands out for me in both the books and the BBC series is the landscape and the atmosphere. In fact these beautifully made standalone episodes would seem to be more about atmosphere, emotion and feeling than anything else, including detection.
The emptiness and quietness, the unassuming provinciality of Ystad and the surrounding area, mean that the brutal killings Wallander investigates stand out in sharp and vivid contrast. The BBC’s TV adaptation has been described as ‘Norse Morse’, partly because it shared the same Sunday evening slot as the long-running TV series based on Colin Dexter’s novels, partly because Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander seems superficially to be a reworking of John Thaw’s Inspector Morse. But perhaps it’s also because, like sleepy, comfortable old Oxford, rural Sweden, especially beautiful Skåne, just doesn’t seem like the sort of place where bad things might happen.
It’s a common trope in detective fiction of course. Where would Agatha Christie be without her country houses and sleepy villages? But I wonder what this conclusion says about British TV audiences. In reality Oxford is a busy, even overcrowded city, yet it exists at some level in the popular imagination as a semi-rural small town with ‘dreaming spires’ and otherworldly though alarmingly venal Dons. On that basis Ystad seems the perfect location for a Morse for the twenty-first century: it is mostly rural (Brits have a particular fascination for the countryside, despite mostly living in cities and suburbs); it is a paragon (by British standards) of well ordered society and well managed public services; it is far enough away, and expensive enough, for most Brits never to have been there. There is perhaps a hint of schadenfreude here–smug Sweden turns out to be not so great after all–but there is a quiet melancholy in the BBC series, and in the Swedish adaptation also aired in the UK, which is an appealing antidote to some of the more noisy British-based crime series and to the perceived brash grubbiness of Britain itself.
What Henning Mankell himself has done with Wallander is understandably a little different and more pointedly Swedish. At least part of the appeal of the novels is that they unpick Sweden’s idea of its own orderliness and security in the decades since the 1980s, a political point that is watered down almost to homeopathic levels in the British TV series. On the other hand the contemplative, melancholic atmosphere combined with Wallander’s bleak determination seem to say quite a lot about what British audiences think of themselves and where they would rather be, right down to the nostalgic theme tune and the popularity of Wallander’s haunting, ethereal ringtone.
From Mad to Bad: Season Three of Mad Men
(Contains Spoilers)
The reviews for season three of Mad Men have been almost unanimously glowing. I can only assume that I was watching a different programme, as I found all thirteen episodes to be highly disappointing and tedious. Mad Men has garnered many awards, critical praise and ever- increasing ratings since it began in 2007. Like many viewers, I quickly became hooked on the show. Its depiction of 1960s America through the prism of the personal and professional lives of a cast of characters working for a fictional advertising agency based in Madison Avenue, New York City, is both fascinating and bewitching. You become entranced and appalled at the life of Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm), the creative director of Sterling Cooper who oversees million-dollar advertising campaigns in a cut-throat industry, drinks and smokes to excess and regularly cheats on his beautiful wife. Draper’s behaviour is the norm for the characters of this world. This was not only a time of financial boom and increased access to contraception, it was also a time of casual racism, sexism and homophobia. In one of the many subtle ironies of the show, some of the characters appear horrified at the racially motivated violence occuring in the Deep South, whilst being unaware of their own inherent prejudices. But then there so many good things to say about the first two seasons, stylish direction, compelling performances, complex and engrossing storylines and a meticulously researched attention to period detail. The series creator, producer and head writer Matthew Weiner previously worked on The Sopranos, and there are many parallels between the two shows. There is the theme of characters struggling to balance their personal and professional lives. Also, the rules of the advertising world are as fascinating as the rules which govern how the Mafia operates in The Sopranos. Both shows depict a sub-culture which operates very differently to other aspects of American society. Mad Men also has parallels with crime fiction; most strikingly through its elaborate backstory centred around around a criminal act. Don Draper was born Dick Whitman to a desperately poor family, but he faked his death whilst serving in the US Army during the Korean War and assumed the identity of an officer killed in action. Thus, the symbolism of character names– ‘Draper’ shields Dick Whitman’s real identity from the world.
So what went wrong with Season Three? Well, firstly it became apparent from the opening episode that Matthew Weiner and his co-writers had tinkered too much with the format of the show. Season three begins with all of the employees at Sterling Cooper in a rather gloomy mood because of the unpopular policies of the British firm which has bought out the company. The problem with putting new British characters in charge is that it makes many of the existing characters irrelevant. Plus, the Brits seem like pale imitations of the Americans in the firm, albeit they are portrayed as stereotypical upper-class twits. Perhaps an American audience might like this form of portrayal; personally, I found it excruciating to watch. But subtlety was definitely not a factor in how these episodes were written. In episode one, an accounts man is sacked and proceeds to roam around the office yelling obscenities and throwing furniture. This felt like an unpleasant way of grabbing the audiences attention. And there was a lot more of this blunt, shocking tone. The much talked about lawnmower accident felt like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie. The storyline concerning Sal’s closeted homosexuality has lost all its nuance and inner drama. It was not convincing that after years of repressing his sexuality, Sal would suddenly jump into bed with a bellhop at a hotel. It was also rather lazy writing to have their tryst interrupted by a fire in the hotel, conveniently sidetracking any dramatic repercussions of events. I could go on, but I suspect I’ve ranted enough. There were other storylines that were stronger and more convincing, yet I finished watching the episodes with a sense that the greatness of the show had been lost, and I doubt it can be regained in the upcoming season four.
Unconvincing- Sal and the bellhop after the hotel fire
The Venetian Vase 