Michael Connelly, Jess Walter, Charlotte Wood, T.J. Klune, Steven Wright

 

 This week I’ve featured John Irving’s new novel and an older one from Mark Haddon. Here’s a book clean-out in short review form. One must move some books out to make room for others!

 

Mysteries Solved:

 

 I enjoy mysteries, cozy and not. Now that I’ve exhausted most of the Robert Parker collection, Michael Connelly has replaced him as my go-to read. I quite enjoyed The Drop (2011, 387 pages). This is a Harry Bosch novel whose very title involves a twist. Harry has been an LAPD homicide detective for many years about to retire. He’s not on active cases because he’s in the transitional Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) for four years. To keep him out of trouble he’s in the Open-Unsolved unit that looks at cold cases to see if they should be reopened using new methods. Harry is looking into a murder/rape from 1989 and discovers that the now 29-year-old man convicted of the crime was just 8 years old when sent to adult court. Harry smells corruption. At the same time, Harry is handed a new case. The son of City Councilman Irvin Irving is found dead outside a fancy hotel. Irving was once a cop who disliked Harry and now has the power to cut funding for DROP. Shockingly, Irving demands that Harry investigate his son’s demise; he hates Harry, but trusts him to ferret out the truth. Did his son jump or was he dropped from above? Irving is furious when Harry works both cases at once and also finds some time for romance. Not to mention Harry’s deep dive into feuding taxi cab companies.

 

I also enjoyed Connelly’s The Night Fire (2019,  456 pages). This Bosch novel also includes LAPD Renée Ballard, who is new school to Harry’s old school methods. Ballard lives in her car and has been demoted to the graveyard shift after accusing a superior of sexual harassment. She’s tough and fearless, which is exactly what scares Bosch. Renée hangs out in an unsavory neighborhood and is investigating possible homicide when a homeless man dies in a tent fire. For his part, Harry has been given a murder book by the widow of a deceased cop friend. Why? To complicate things further, a judge is stabbed to death in broad daylight in a public park. There is DNA evidence linking a young man arrested for the judge’s murder. He is being defended by Mickey Haller, who knows Harry. Is there a connection between the judge, the fire, and a long ago murder? Get the feeling something much bigger is at play?     

 

 

Inspires: 

Jess Walter is an author who seeks unique ways to tell a story. In his dark satirical novel The Financial Life of the Poets Walter takes potshots at the 2007-09 housing market collapse and financial crisis. The Arizona Republic cogently summed it as a novel that “would be sad if it weren’t so funny and so funny it if weren’t so sad.” At age 46, Matt Prior is living the middle-class dream: a nice house, a lovely wife (Lisa), and two boys. He’s also typical in that he’s leveraged up to his eyeteeth, his kids are struggling in school, and Lisa’s e-Bay business is tanking. Matt foresees the decline of newspapers, but makes the first of a series of bad choices by quitting his job and launching a Website dispensing financial advice in the form of blank verse (no ending rhymes). Who wants a haiku on adjustable mortgages or stock advice in the form of a sonnet? No one. When the excrement hits the air circulation device, Matt is so broke that he needs to raise $30,000 in seven days or he will lose his house. His senile father is no help; he was bilked by a Las Vegas stripper! Matt is wallowing in so much desperation that when he meets a group of young guys of questionable character at the local 7-Eleven he ends up smoking powerful dope with them and surrendering his favorite slippers!  Soon, Matt wants to buy more pot to sell. Not the best idea as it’s illegal, plus there are some serious bad guys who are all about turf. Soon, Matt is the verge of losing his marriage as well, as Lisa seems to be having a Facebook affair with an old flame. (Not that her decisions are any better.) Will the Priors join those families that went down in flames? This is a satire in which you laugh and say “ouch!”

 

 

 

Don’t laugh, but I learned about Stoneyard Devotional (2023, 291 pages) from Sarah Jessica Parker. She’s a serious reader who has served on Booker Prize committees. This novel from Australian author Charlotte Wood was shortlisted for a 2024 Booker. I might have voted for Wood for her skill in compiling a short novel that feels like non-fiction. An unnamed middle-aged burn-out case leaves Sydney to rejuvenate at a rural monastery. She never returns, though she’s neither a believer nor a member of the Catholic Church. She is attracted by the routine and the relative silence. Wood’s novel is  akin to opening a detailed diary recounting the three big crises of her time there. The first is the nunnery’s mouse infestation, by which I mean so many mice that trenches are dug for three-a-day rodent burials. The second rocks the nuns as word arrives of the discovery of Sister Jenny’s bones, who disappeared in Thailand years before. She may have drowned or have been murdered. It sets off a bout of jealousy; Sister Bonaventure was Jenny’s friend but others have been in charge of what to do about a burial. The bones come back to the monastery via Helen Parry, an activist nun who is a world celebrity. She’s a bit like a cross between Greta Thunberg and Nurse Ratched, but she stimulates old memories in our narrator who was once a school mate. Seldom have I read a book that is so inwardly judgmental yet so calm.  

 

Misfires:

 

 

If I were a young gay or trans person, I’d probably love the latest T. J. Klune novel Somewhere Beyond the Sea ( 2025, 416 pages.) Klune writes fantasy novels in which the LGBTI + community takes center stage. My problem is that each of his books has the same story: the prejudice facing those of non-normative sexuality and how love overcomes adversity. Klune novels are easy reads and this is the fifth I’ve perused, but I think I’m done. This is a sequel to Klune’s heralded 2020 House in the Cerulean Sea, which could stand as a sort of Harry Potter for gay folks. This one takes us back to Marsyas Island where Linus Baker and his partner Arthur Parnassus run a home for troubled magical children: Lucifer, Chauncey (a blob), Talia (a bearded female gnome), Theodore (a wyvern) Phee (a sprite), Sal (a were-cat), and new resident David (a Yeti). Jeanine Rowley is the new head of the Department of Magical Youth (DICOMY) and wishes to close down the orphanage because the resident “children” are too “dangerous,” especially Satan’s son Lucifer. It is far too easy to figure out that each character is a stand-in for something else; Rowley represents the intolerant political right, Marsyas and environs are a sanctuary city, Lucy is a victim of labeling, Sal is so big that no one thinks he’s a kid, etc. Klune has already made most of these points in Book One, so he tries to hinge the book on property ownership and crown it with a syrupy wedding. It feels (and is) lightweight. 

 

 

 

If you asked me to identify my favorite living comedian, I’d pick Steven Wright. I love his surrealistic humor, his wry/dry delivery, the brevity of his stories, and his hilarious punchlines. As in music, often a performer is much sharper live than on a record.  Wright’s novel Harold (2024, 256 pages) is an example of this in comedy. Harold is an offbeat seven-year-old who might be high-functioning autistic. He’s clearly bright but experiences the sensation of birds flying into his head whenever he contemplates somethings and deposits Harold in surreal places. The book covers a single day of Harold’s school- and family-life. Harold, like his creator, takes us to some seriously odd places, but I seldom guffawed because what works on the stage didn’t translate on the page.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Red House: Can This Famiy Be Salvaged?

 

 

THE RED HOUSE (2012)

By Mark Haddon

Doubleday, 264 pages.

★★★★

 

You might recognize the name Mark Haddon as the author of the brilliant book and play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The Red House is what he wrote next. It’s not quite the masterpiece of Dog in the Night-Time, but it’s an intriguing novel. Once again Haddon investigates both spoken and perceived thoughts.

 

The Red House follows the trials of an estranged brother and sister who reconnoiter at their mother’s funeral. Based on that sad gathering, eldest brother Richard, an upwardly mobile doctor rents a cottage in Herefordshire on the Welsh border near Hay-on-Wye. The idea is to repair family ties over the course of a week. Good luck with that, as the two families are like chalk and cheese. Richard, a divorcee, has recently remarried. Along with his sexy wife, Louisa, he inherits a stepdaughter, Melissa, a spoiled flirtatious 16 year-old. She’s like something out of Mean Girls.

 

Richard’s sister, Angela, is married to Dominic who has recently lost his job and has been reduced to a sales position at Waterstones (a British bookstore chain). His economic tumble reduces his family to downwardly mobile members of the upper lower class. Angela was once a looker, but after four births she’s on the chunky side, which is nothing compared to being seriously depressed since she lost a stillborn daughter 18 years earlier and can’t shake her blues. Their three living children are 17-year-old Alex, who is part good guy and part horny high schooler; Daisy, 16, who has fallen in with a fundamentalist Christian group; and adorable, but detached, eight-year-old Benji, who often disappears into fantasies and fantasy games.

 

Needless to say, the class divide comes into play, symbolized by the gap between Richard’s shiny Mercedes and Dominic’s old family clunker that he hopes will make it to Herefordshire. On a deeper level, Richard assumes a leadership role as he’s paying for the vacation, though he’s blind and deaf to Dominic’s feelings of inferiority. When the two attempt to bond over beer and outdoor grilling, Richard mainly sees Dominic as a “bloke,” which isn’t a good thing. Dominic thinks Richard is an ineffectual father to Melissa and he is. Melissa is as difficult as she can be, a vocal vegetarian, a foul-mouthed kid, selfish, and prone to doing whatever she wants whenever she wishes. In like fashion, though, everyone thinks Daisy has been brainwashed.

 

It is, nonetheless, a revelatory week. When push comes to shove, each of the characters becomes aware of which of their impulses sustains them and which are destructive. Richard, for example, discovers that he needs to build a relationship with Louisa rather than merely being bedazzled by her looks. The fact that Dominic seems to be flirting with Louisa is one reason, but he also realizes that having a mistress on the side means he can’t be fully in a relationship with his wife. That might seem obvious, but each character in his or her own way needs to learn to be more mature. Daisy has a sexuality crisis of faith and her mother begins to see her children for who they are rather than Karen, the lost child.

 

One of the triumphs of The Red House is Haddon’s skill in giving personalities to each of his eight major characters, no easy feat in a relatively short novel. To elaborate on the aforementioned use of spoken and perceived thoughts, most of the latter are as if we are inside mind bubbles that quite often illumine what they really think and feel rather than what they carefully say. (For Melissa, it’s the opposite!)

 

I will caution, though, that Haddon’s writing style requires some adjustment time. This is not a novel in which the author signposts who is talking or thinking. Haddon relies on his readers to get to know the characters until they can infer who is talking or contemplating. Benji is the easiest to translate. As precocious as he is, he still inhabits an eight-year old’s world, one that’s a mix of amusing imagination and verbalized fears. It will take you a bit longer with the adult characters, but because each metaphorically has a unique worldview, you’ll catch on. This is my way of saying don’t toss the book aside after 50 or so pages because you feel lost; you are actually feeling the way each character feels. You might even feel sorry for Melissa instead of wanting to slap her!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Queen Esther: Irving Recyles but Tells a Good Story

 

 

 

QUEEN ESTHER (2025)

By John Irving

Simon and Schuster, 432 pages.

★★★★

 

I was charitable when I reviewed The Last Chairlift in 2023. It was supposed to be the last novel from John Irving. That didn’t turn out to be the case, as late last year he released Queen Esther. It should have been everything I hate: a (semi-) sequel (of The Cider House Rules, 1985) and deals with shopworn themes such as wrestling (every novel since 1973’s 158-Pound Marriage);  small people (A Prayer for Owen Meany, 1985); a male raised by feminists (The World According to Garp, 1978); confused sexual identity (Garp, In One Person, 2012), a lost limb (1981’s The Fourth Hand), and Vienna (every novel since his first, Setting Free the Bears, 1968). Speaking of bears, they are about the only thing in Queen Esther that’s not been recycled (and that includes Irving's fixation on penises). And yet… Queen Esther has its virtues.

 

John Irving might not be an author who goes to great lengths to avoid repetition, nor is he a careful self-editor. (Queen Esther could use both a developmental editor and a veto-proof copy editor.) All of this said, when it comes to storytelling, Irving can plausibly be compared to Charles Dickens. (Dickens also needed editors.)

 

Concerning the book’s title, in the Old Testament, Esther was married to Xerxes, the king of Persia. She was Jewish, but hid her identity. When Mordecai failed to bow lowly enough to satisfy Haman, Xerxes’ top advisor, Haman sought to exterminate the Jews. Esther’s intervention saved them and is the background to the Jewish holiday of Purim.

 

You’re wrong if you think Irving is making a backdoor political statement; he goes through the front door! This novel has been praised in Jewish sources, both because Irving carefully researched Jewish culture and is respectful of Zionism. Through his characters, Zionism is a desire not to be assimilated or persecuted, as well as moral battle to maintain Jewish identity. (Is it a mere coincidence that Haman is just one letter off from being Hamas?)

 

In the novel, three-year-old Esther Nacht (born in 1905) loses both of her parents to anti-Semites. She is sent to St. Cloud, Maine, which fans of Cider House Rules will recognize as the site of an orphanage (and underground abortion clinic) run by Dr. Wilbur Larch. Larch is an ether addict, but a kindly man who quickly realizes Esther as more world- and book-wise than most adults. After settling in, Esther becomes a beloved resident of St. Cloud’s, though the Jewish identity that she embraces is a problem; there just aren’t many Jews in St. Cloud. Larch finally locates a New Hampshire family to adopt Esther when she’s 15. Tommy and Connie Winslow aren’t Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism, and Esther comes to regard them as her parents and their three daughters as her sisters. When Honor, an unexpected fourth is born, Esther practically raises her. She and Honor eventually share another bond; Honor wants to be a mother but is scared of childbirth and Esther wants to experience pregnancy, but has zero interest in parenting. Thus, a wrestler impregnates Esther and the child, James is given to Honor to raise. As in Garp, “Jimmy” grows up in a houseful of dominant women.  

 

The bulk of the novel is devoted to Jimmy growing up in the 1960s. Esther and Honor persuade him to wrestle in the hope he will suffer an injury that will exempt him from the Vietnam War. He’s fine, but his interest in becoming fluent in German leads him to take his college JYA in Vienna, where he wrestles for exercise. There are two tough Russians who might be able to lame Jimmy, but they become friends rather than manglers. Plan two: If Jimmy can impregnate a woman he could secure a parentship exemption. This part of the novel is long on the ambiance of post-World War II Vienna. (Spoiler: It was gritty rather than elegant.) Jimmy wouldn’t mind losing his virginity to his beautiful tutor, Annaliese Eissler, but she has a more important mission to complete. His roomies in the tawdry boarding house are Claude, a French Jewish student, and Jolanda, a lesbian.

 

Jimmy, like his birth mother Esther, finds himself caught up in a world in which identity and history have imprinted his future. Add a few puppeteers pulling his strings and Jimmy is Garp version II. Some readers have complained that in Irving’s disjointed telling, Esther too often fades into the background. They’re not wrong!

 

Rob Weir

Mrs. Brown: Top Drawer for the Post-Hogmanay Viewing

 

 

 

MRS. BROWN  (1997)

Directed by John Madden

Miramax, 103 minutes, PG

★★★★★

 

New Year’s Day is a holiday, but most people party on New Year’s Eve. Scots certainly do; for them, December 31 is Hogmanay. It roughly means gala day but whether it’s a Scots word, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, or French is up for debate. Today it bears similarities to First Night celebrations, but some places have bonfires, special foods, gift-giving, folk customs, and pipe bands.  

 

It just seemed the right time of the year to rewatch one of my favorite films, Mrs. Brown. I’d not disagree with charges of sentimentality, though I’d counter that it demonstrates how fine acting can carry a film in which relatively little action occurs. One reason why British films are, on the whole, superior to Hollywood movies is that many U.K. actors are classically trained and are hired for their chops, not necessarily their looks. Hollywood creates drama through pyrotechnics, loud music, and over-the-top speeches; British cinema finds drama in human interactions, even if the ”star” is a queen.

 

If you know about the British monarchy, you will have noticed there is a strict protocol for being in the presence of royalty. It prevails, though the monarchy has had no political power since 1689. Royals are to be treated regally and behave as such. You probably also know that little shocks U.K. tabloids as much as a good royal scandal. (Think Lady Diana, Sarah Ferguson’s divorce, and Prince Andrew for starters.) What we learn is that royals aren’t special when it comes to human foibles.

 

Mrs. Brown deals with one of Britain’s most revered monarchs, Queen Victoria (1819-1901). She took the throne weeks after she turned 18, married Albert (her first cousin) when she was 21, had nine children, and was quite happy until Albert died in 1861. We now associate Victorianism with a certain morbidity because the Queen went into mourning for most of the rest of her 63-year reign. When Albert passed, she stayed at Balmoral Castle draped in mourning gear and out of sight for two years. That was not a good thing for two powerful political figures vying for the prime minister’s chair in Parliament, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. As we see in Mrs. Brown, Disraeli (Antony Sher) and his party are sinking in popularity and hope to lure Victoria (Judi Dench) out of mourning to boost Disraeli’s electoral chances.

 

The question is how to get Victoria out of Balmoral Castle in Scotland and back to London’s Buckingham Palace where she can regularly wave to the citizenry. Enter John Brown (Billy Connolly), a former soldier who was once Albert’s ghillie (a gamekeeper).  He is called to Balmoral is to get Victoria to go riding and recover her health so that her closest advisors, Henry Ponsonby (Geoffrey Palmer), Dr. Jenner (Richard Pasco), and her son “Bertie,” the Prince of Wales (David Westhead) can convince Victoria to leave Scotland. (As the English often felt, they hated it there.) Problem: John  Brown was loyal to the queen but not to the toffs surrounding her. Brown reveled in being a rugged Scot who liked tweaking upper-class snobs. A bigger problem: Victoria adored Scotland and Brown. The film correctly infers that the two of them may have been intimate. There was also a rumor that they secretly married, hence the film’s title. (Recent evidence has revived that possibility.)

 

Mrs. Brown is also a story of intrigue and of hubris. As Brown’s star rose at Balmoral, his plotters sought ways to discredit him. Victoria is persuaded to make a triumphant return to London and, for a time, Brown’s ego got in the way and he was out of favor. Still, Victoria refused to dismiss him. He was head of security in 1893, when he died (not of pneumonia as in the film, but of a bacterial infection).

 

What a stroke of genius to cast Connolly as Brown. Billy Connolly is a seriously funny man who is far more coarse and irreverent in real life, just as Dench could herself be. I could go on about the crackerjack acting of this film, including Sher’s wiliness and Gerard Butler’s first role as Brown’s brother. The takeaway is the same; fill the screen with superb actors and let them metaphorically play winner-take-all chess. It was a surprise hit in 1997 and won numerous prizes despite being stiffed at the Academy Awards. Wha’ a bunch o’ glakits!

 

Rob Weir

 

Petite Maman is Touching and Enigmatic

 

 

 

PETITE MAMAN  (2021)

Directed by Céline Sciamma

Pyramide Distribution, 72 minutes (not rated)

In French (with English subtitles)

* * * *  

 

Petite Maman (“Little Mum”) is an enigmatic film. It’s clearly a meditation on grief, but everything else is up for debate. I would call it a work of magical realism, but I suppose it could be a deep dream, a fantasy, or a hallucination. However you interpret it, it’s unusual.

 

Perhaps the name Céline Sciamma sounds familiar. She directed Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), a celebrated and steamy lesbian romance. Because of that and other works such as Tomboy (2011), some analysts expect everything Sciama does to have lesbian subtexts. Petite Maman was actually up for gay film awards, though it would take someone with an agenda and a college sophomore’s misunderstanding of Freudian symbolism to find anything sapphic in Petite Maman. It doesn’t get any more sensual than a pair of 9-year-old girls hugging, and the actors happen to be twin sisters in real life. Were it rated for U.S. audiences, it would be PG-13, and only because it deals with death.

 

It begins innocently enough. As is her custom, 9-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) goes room to room bidding “au revoir” to everyone she sees in an assisted-living facility. When she reaches the room in which her namesake grandmother Nelly was housed, it’s empty; she has died from an unnamed hereditary condition. Nelly’s father (Stéphane Varupenne) and her mother, 31-year-old Marion (Nina Meurisse), are left with the grim task of clearing out the home in the woods where Marion grew up. Marion is shattered by her mother’s death and not even her daughter can cheer her. Marion flees and Nelly and her dad take care of the packing.

 

So far, so sad. Here’s where things get weird. Marion has told Nelly of how she built a fort in the woods when she was young. Nelly goes off to see if anything is left, and encounters a little girl in the act of hauling tree branches to a site and building a skeletal lean-to. Nelly is surprised to learn that the girl’s name is Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) and that her mother’s name is Nelly. When they depart from their daily building project, Nelly returns to her grandmother’s house and Marion goes the opposite direction. Nelly is also surprised on a deeper level by how much small Marion looks like her. As their friendship deepens and a cloudburst soaks them, Nelly accepts Marion’s offer to play at her home. A path leads them to a house that’s identical to the one Nelly’s grandmother lived in, except it’s not overgrown or rundown. When she reciprocates and invites Nelly over, Marion is similarly startled to see a house that looks like the one where she lives with her mother (Margo Abascal).

 

In a scene that some have found hard to fathom, small Marion scarcely registers disbelief when Nelly tells Marion she is Nelly's mother and that Marion’s disabled mother is Nelly’s grandmother. Somehow, time has come unfixed in a way in which the present and the past of 22 years ago coexist. In the short time the two girls are together, Nelly learns a lot about her mother, such as her unrealized desire to be an actress and the deeper roots of her melancholia. In this context, the abrupt and surprising ending makes complete sense.

 

At 72 minutes, Petite Maman is a very short film, yet it is punctuated with still moments that tell us just enough for us to feel the film’s weight. How did either girl get caught in the disruption of chronological time that led to their meeting? Sciamma does not tell us, and that’s a good thing. The point of the film isn’t the particulars of whatever sci-fi or magical explanation is at play, it’s about how a 9-year-old connects with her mother.

 

The Sanz twins are, in a word, sensational. That’s because they are 9 and act 9. (Watch them make pancakes!) They reminded me of my nieces when they were 9, by which I mean they were old enough to question, but not old enough to be cynical about things adults say make no logical sense. As the 17^th-century French moral philosopher Jean de La Bruyère put it, “Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do.”

 

Rob Weir

 

This Poetic Realism Film Rewards the Patient Viewer

 

 

Port of Shadows (1938)

Directed by Marcel Carné

Osso/Film Alliance of the United States, 91minutes, not-rated

French (with English subtitles)

★★★ ½

 

For a modern viewer, Port of Shadows is an odd film to watch. Though it’s only 91 minutes, it seems longer because of its casual pacing, it’s comparative lack of dialogue, and its drab tones. It helps to know that director Marcel Carné was interested in a film-making style popular in the 1930s and 1940s known as poetic realism. Despite its name, it was more associated with film than poetry. The poetic part is that directors often used symbols as metaphors for realistic details. In this one, for instance, we know that its central character of Jean (Jean Gabin) has rough edges bordering on uncouthness because he eats with his knife rather than customary tableware.

 

The look of Port of Shadows is so much like film noir that it is sometimes viewed as one. Perhaps, but you would need to replace many of the blacks with dull gray. The namesake port is Le Havre in Normandy, a major industrial and trade center. It is socked in by fog when Jean arrives, though talking about the fog is a forbidden subject. Allegedly that’s because it hurts the tourist trade, though this could be a joke within a joke as it’s hard to imagine 1930s Le Havre, whose waterfront and factories were too grimy and the city too run down to pass as an outing destination. Plus, it’s on the English Channel, whose chilly waters have seldom been associated with beach culture. Jean is there because he plans to catch a freighter and escape from France. An overnight at Panama’s throws a kink in that plan.

 

Panama (Édouard Delmont) runs a bar and flop house on the edge of the city. He asks no questions and volunteers no information. He is content to play his Spanish guitar and  offer hospitality to anyone who ventures through the door. On the night Jean arrives, it’s the town drunk, a cynical and depressed painter (Robert Le Vigan), and Nelly (Michèle Mogan). At some point during the night gunshots ring out, but apparently no one is injured, though a man named Zabel (Michel Simon) cuts his hand on a splinter. Jean and Nelly are immediately drawn to each other, though they first play a game of tough guy and vulnerable young girl. Nelly is just 17 and has run away from her godfather, Zabel. She insists she’s trying to find out about the fate of her boyfriend, Maurice, who several people have asked about.

 

When it seems clear that Maurice has been killed, Nelly turns her full attention to Jean. Those gunshots outside Panama’s were fired by hoods posing as dangerous mobsters, but Jean recognizes their leader, Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) as a common street punk with a big mouth and the courage of a kitten. (When Lucien, who also yearns for Nelly, tries to confront Jean, Lucien is slapped on two occasions and can hardly contain his tears.) After a date, Jean and Nelly spend a concupiscent night in Jean’s room at Panama’s in the arms of Cupid.

 

Poetic realism films are usually more fatalistic than romantic. Is this one of them? I shall say just these things: a change of clothing, face-shaming, a threat that borders on incest, suicide, mistaken identity, a murder, and another on the streets of Le Havre. Think of Port of Shadows as a film that slowly establishes deep atmosphere as a prelude to several bursts of action. The musical score by the masterful Maurice Jaubert greatly enhances moods without resorting to cliché. The film is in French, but if you’re a person who hates subtitles, no worries; there isn’t much in the way of substantive dialogue.

 

I liked it quite a lot, but my rating is lower because I’m not sure it’s a film for everyone. Much of the plot and relationships between characters is doled out in asides and inference. Although it’s widely available online and on DVD, some prints of Port of Shadows are not well-preserved. Poke around online to find a good one and, by all means, avoid a colorized version. In this case, color is neither poetic nor dramatic. Be patient; the slow roll out of the drama is worth it.

 

Rob Weir

 

Sylvia Scarlet: Great Movie? No!!! Great Camp? Maybe.

 

 

 

 

SYLVIA SCARLETT (1935)

Directed by George Cukor

RKO, 91 minutes

★  (add stars if you like camp)

 

I watched the 1935 movie Sylvia Scarlett with the intent of writing about actors breaking gender roles. Who could resist seeing a movie with Katharine Hepburn in drag? Pretty much everyone! It was a bomb in 1935 and has aged about as well as an apple rotting in an orchard. When famed director George Cukor saw the rushes he begged RKO not to release it. It was so bad that he (unsuccessfully) promised to direct another film for free if they’d trash Sylvia Scarlett.

 

Nonetheless, there are reasons to review it. You may have heard that Katharine Hepburn–now considered a Hollywood legend–once had trouble getting roles. She was pegged as “box office poison and this was the picture that earned that baggage. If  you’ve ever heard the phrase so bad I couldn’t look away, that sums up Sylvia Scarlett. My wife and I constantly remarked, “This is incredibly bad. Should we turn it off?” I even interjected, “Good heavens! Why are we watching this?” Yet, both of us stayed to the putrid end. Without intending to be so, it’s the very definition of camp.

 

It was the first time Hepburn and Cary Grant were in the same movie. Neither could blame it on youth; Grant was 31 at the time and Hepburn 28. The putative story is distilled from two 1918 novels from Compton MacKenzie. Sylvia (Hepburn) is the pigtailed daughter of widower Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn), a gambler. His profligacy bankrupted him to the point where he is being pursued by thugs poised to relieve his debt mob-style. Henry throws clothing into a bag with the intention of hightailing it to France with money and 30 yards of lace he stole from his firm. Sylvia intends to go with him. When Henry insists he’d be an easy mark if traveling with his daughter, she offers money her mother left her and impetuously chops off her pigtails and announces she will be “Sylvester.” A little tidying up and she passes as a teenage boy (sort of like a shaved cocoanut could conceivably pass as an ostrich egg).

 

On the voyage they meet Jimmy Monkley (Grant), a Cockney (ahem!) gentleman. Sylvania/Sylvester smells a rat, but Henry tells Jimmy of his plan for the lace. Henry learns the hard way that Monkley is a grifter in fancy duds. When the boat lands and Monkley fingers Henry so he can get off the boat without being searched for the jewels he stole. Once ashore via unlikely circumstances, the trio decide to work cons as a team. Sylvester blows the first attempt, but Monkley leads them to a mansion whose owners are on a trip. Jimmy, though, knows Maudie (Dennie Moore) the maid. At this point, abandon all logic. After several hours of guzzling the owners’ booze and playing dress-up with their finery and valuables, Sylvester makes Jimmy leave the pearls he stole lest Maudie risk arrest and they vamoose.  

 

Henry is besotted with Maudie, so the trio becomes a quartet. They set off as a traveling troupe of entertainers to bilk country bumpkins. Where did they get the truck and stage? Don’t ask. Likewise forget about Grant’s variable accent. Or whether Hepburn convinces as a snooty teen. “Sylvester” catches the eye of playboy artist, Michael Fane (Brien Aherne) who wants to paint his/her face. Fane invites her to pose at his villa after an odd encounter that implies Fane swings both ways. But she takes the guesswork away by showing up the next day in a dress and bonnet she stole from a beach bather.

 

Sylvia is smitten but is crushed when Lily (Natalie Paley) shows up. Lily is Fane’s sort of girlfriend, but is basically a mean-spirited sot who tells Henry that his love, Maudie, has run off with another man. A distraught Henry drowns himself, though Maudie is rescued from the ocean and from the film. After we play a game of who’s with whom–Jimmy is attracted to Lily–this mess plops into the sickness bucket and ends. It is so bad that the actors playing Maudie and Lily were uncredited. Lucky them.

 

Three years later the Hepburn/Grant combo made Bringing Up Baby, one of the greatest comedies of all time. Who says there are no second chances? It’s just possible, though, that you’ll laugh harder at Sylvia Scarlett.

 

Rob Weir