: heaven
: the upper atmosphere
Top of the week, readers. On the agenda today? The pool. And job applications.
Born today:
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
The most famous writer of American noir, Chandler was born in Chicago but moved with his divorced mother to England at the age of seven. He studied international law in France and Germany but returned to Britain with aspirations of the literary life. Early ventures included loads of book reviews and rotten poetry. He then returned to America, worked an array of odd jobs, and later joined the Canadian Army during WWI and saw action along the front in France. After his discharge, he ended up in L.A., married a woman almost twenty years his senior, and worked his way up the ladder of an oil syndicate.
He was a bit of a scoundrel, engaging in heavy drinking and affairs. He soon started writing for pulp magazines. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. The novel, made into a famous, if impenetrable 1946 film with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, introduced Chandler's greatest character : private eye Philip Marlowe, a hard-bitten, wisecracking, world-weary, sharp-as-tacks private dick investigating the labyrinth of rot of late mid-century Southern California.
He wrote six more Marlowe books - including Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943), and The Long Goodbye (1953), all of which were adapted for the screen. Chandler also tried his hand in Hollywood, garnering Oscar nominations for his sterling adaptation of James M.Cain's (a a peer) Double Indemnity and his original script The Blue Dahlia, a noir with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.
Despite a relatively small literary output, Chandler was considered - and is seen today by critics and readers - as one of the masters of the genre. He wrote fast-moving, complicated plots, imbuing them with sadness, sensationally witty, hard-shelled dialogue, lawlessness and dignity. His L.A. was a bleak, rotting mess, with Marlowe wading through it like a knight searching for honor. The author influenced at least one generation of writers - from Ross Macdonald to Michael Connelly, from Walter Mosley to Robert Parker.
*
Film Review
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2012)
Directed by Lasse Halstrom
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas
***
It's almost impossible to dislike this movie. An adaptation of Paul Torday's novel (the script is by Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy, who wrote Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, and The Full Monty), directed in a warm, comforting way by Lasse Halstrom, the film gets by on the unique, odd winsomeness of its concept and the charm of it leading players.
Ewan McGregor plays a fubsy, socially awkward fish expert is plunged against his will into the vision of a rich sheik to bring the sport of fly-fishing to the very un-salmon-y climes of the Yemen desert. Emily Blunt, who could probably summon up some good chemistry with a catatonic invalid, plays the sheik's consultant.
What follows is a gentle, engaging drama about faith and fish, with McGregor's character coming to realize that, against all facts and figures, this crazy plan might just work; he falls in love with Blunt, who is still mourning for a boyfriend away in Afghanistan. The movie more or less avoids melodrama, and Kristin Scott Thomas adds some snap and bite as the Prime Minister's press secretary. McGregor is terrific as always. Morocco fills in for Yemen, and if the film probably doesn't bear much scrutiny (would it be a good idea to introduce invasive fish to an environment they've never been in?) it does leave you with a smile on your face.
*
Today's entry in my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time is...
Elizabeth Taylor
as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
The finest, most powerful of the Taylor-Burton vehicles, director Mike Nichols' and legendary screenwriter Ernest Lehman's triumphant, lacerating adaptation of the classic Edward Albee play is an acting showcase, but Taylor reigns above all in a role any actress would kill for: alcoholic, embittered, catty, crumbling, acidic, flirtatious, flinty Martha, the wife of a small-potatoes professor at a New England college. Taylor slugs away here, giving her at all, getting under everyone's skin (including ours), tiptoeing the line between blowsy bravura and overacting. This is the perfect introduction to what the big deal about Taylor as an actress was, and by the end, when the source of Martha's sadness is more or less revealed, we realize we've seen a tour-de-force.
*
A painting today? How about a work by birthday boy Jean-Jacques Henner, a portrait and landscape painter who won renown for his nudes, nymphs and naiads.
L'Alsace. Elle Attend
1871
oil on canvas
Musee National Jean-Jacques Henner, Paris
Henner (1829-1905) was born in the southern Alsace region of France. Following the 1870 war, Alsace-Lorraine switched over to German hands, and this painting was given as a gift to Leon Gambetta, a French statesman opposed to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Henner too lamented the loss of his birthplace. The painting was not of a real person, but of an allegorical figure, of Alsace herself, seen here as a lady in mourning. It was done during a naturalistic period for the painter. The tri-colored cockade worn by the woman on her bow of course represents France.
Images courtesy of:
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/images/chandler.jpg
http://www.film.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/salmon-fishing-in-the-yemen03.jpg
http://www.movieactors.com/freezeframes-77/VirginiaWoolf21.jpeg
http://www.histoire-image.org/photo/zoom/bes01_henner_01f.jpg
Information:
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/chandler.html
http://www.musee-henner.fr/en/alsace_elle_attend
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