Since 2013 I have set myself a challenge of reading 50 books a year and then I track my progress on Good Reads.
I fell three short in the first year but have hit my target ever since. This year I gave the maximum five star rating to six titles: Continue reading
The seemingly unstoppable momentum that culminated in what many regard as the greatest movie of all time was the basis for ‘The Road To Xanadu’, the compelling first volume of Simon Callow’s four-part biography of Orson Welles.
Prior to Citizen Kane, Welles brought his radical vision and insatiable creative energy to bear on innovative radio broadcasts and ground-breaking theatre productions.
Having achieved so much at such a young age, the remainder of his career was, by common consensus, anti-climatic. Welles himself joked of his movies that he started at the top and had been working his way down ever since.
Volume 2 of his story is therefore an attempt to explain what went wrong when this larger than life actor, writer and director seemed to have the world at his feet. Continue reading
What a surprise! Citizen Kane is again voted all-time best American movie.
Another day, another list.
This one seeks to itemise the 100 best American movies ever made (stifled yawns!)
Film critics from around the world were polled by the BBC with each being allowed to pick their 10 faves.
No matter how many ‘experts’ contributed, these lists remain highly subjective and are mostly more interesting for what is excluded. Continue reading
In the book version of Graham Greene’s masterly The Third Man, he wrote a romantic ending for Anna Schmidt and Holly Martins.
He was unconvinced by Carol Reed’s uncompromising conclusion but when he saw the movie, he changed his mind.
The first time you watch it, you think for all the world that Anna (Alida Valli) will link arms with Holly (Joseph Cotten) and they will make a life together, united in grief over the death of Harry Lime (Orson Welles).
You have to admire Reed’s boldness as the long walk from the cemetery concludes with Anna walking off screen without so much as a glance in the direction of Holly. He lights a cigarette and tosses away a spent match. Roll credits.
This is the umpteenth time I’ve seen the movie and this closing scene gets me every time – the best ever ending to a movie in my humble opinion.
MOBY DICK directed by John Huston (USA, 1956)
There’s is some dispute about screenwriter Ray Bradbury’s experience of Herman Melville’s epic novel. According to Wiki he confessed to John Huston that he’d never managed to get through the whole book, echoing the feelings of many readers, including me.
However, a strongly contradictory perspective is given by Philip Hoare. Writing in Leviathan, Hoare claims that Bradbury “read the book nine times and wrote fifteen hundred pages of script to reach a final one hundred and fifty”.
I suspect the truth may lie someway in between these two accounts. Huston is credited as co-writer and my gut feeling is that the director had a more intuitive grasp of the source material than the Sci-Fi author.
Either way, reducing the scope and complexity of the novel to a feature length film is a daunting and nigh on impossible task. Continue reading
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