On a walk near Okehampton, Devon, came across this tunnel under the main road. It’s main function is to allow cattle to be moved from one field to another safely, but also part of the cycle and walking path.
Flashdance is a confusing film. It’s a film most famous today for it’s theme song. A film that at times seems like an excuse to play some pop videos between moments of (contrived) drama. A film whose camera regularly moves lazily along shots of a female bodies. A film that exudes the power of young woman to excel at … welding(‽) … dancing … and yet makes the very same young woman dependent on a man to kick start her dream. A film that is maddeningly fun and enjoyable despite all that.
The film starts strongly, a young woman cycles through the streets of the very much working class Pittsburgh (last seen sending boys off to Vietnam in The Deer Hunter) as some up-tempo 80s synth pop pumps. We may be poor, but we are happy is the message.
It’s the kind of city where a young, very definitely not white woman, can get off her bike and get to work on some welding at her local steel plant. It’s the kind of city where a few jump cuts later, the same woman can dance erotically at a very tasteful nightclub where the girls are pretty but never naked (unlike the sleazeball joint we come across later). It’s the kind of club where the young hunk who runs the steel mill hangs out, cause he likes a beautiful woman, but he very definitely wouldn’t to slum it with the hoodlums who just want naked flesh.
The boss is delighted to discover he employs the young woman, and who wouldn’t be pleased that Jennifer Beals is turning up in your place each day? However, she has principles, it’s not just that she won’t share a sandwich with him, she won’t date bosses – we all know how that’s going to work out.
The woman has ambitions. She watches ballet on TV, she goes to the local dance school to make an application, where the beautiful white girls and the receptionist all eye her up and down disdainfully. Is it her working clothes? Is it cause her skin isn’t white? It spooks our woman and she runs out. The establishment has won!
Luckily the friendly bit of the establishment, Mr Boss Man, comes and sees her again. He even rescues her when she’s being threatened outside the club by creepy guy from the sleazy strip club. But she still rejects his help and cycles home … and he follows her all the way, trailing her in his Porsche. If you’re the kind of person who thinks ‘Every Breath You Take’ is a love song, then this will seem to you to be a romantic gesture. In truth it seems to be just another example of how men harassing women until the only solution is to give in is presented as good in films.
Anyway, it works. She lets him in. In the sexiest moment in the movie, she takes off her bra under her over large sweatshirt. Some critics at the time said that Flashdance was ‘pornographic.’ This is one of those moments they were likely thinking off. We see nothing, but boy, the mind really makes you think.
All is going well with young woman and Mr Boss Man, they walk along train lines, slag heaps, cause they are in Pittsburgh, it’s gritty, working class, it rains there, and you don’t take a girl to the park.
What you should also not do is use your wealth and privilege to get your woman an audition at the dance school that she has previously run away from. This interference seriously messes with her. She is clearly scared of the change of life that a successful audition will bring, she’s also a sister and likes doing things for herself. After the death of a old woman who was a mentor to her, she relents and attends the audition.
Here we get the famous ‘flashdance’ sequence, a mix of modern dance and the then fairly new break dancing moves (she’d seen it performed in the street earlier). Everyone loves her, she’s a success, and rushes out to meet Mr Boss Man.
The film ends. We don’t know what happened next, but we guess they live happily ever after and she dances around the world.
It’s all good fun, but the film does raise (and not really solve) some major issues.
Why did everyone react to Beals’ character when she appears in the application room at the dance school. Seems like a clear bit of colour prejudice, yet the film never directly addresses her colour. We have a mixed-race actress play the leading romantic role in a film, who has her image spread across all the publicity material, and no-one mentions her background. I like to think this was the most powerful statement the film makes, that for once colour doesn’t matter….
But then we also have to address the fact that while there is only very brief nudity in the film (and not from the lead characters), this is a film that delights in the female body. While it turned later that Beals had a body double for much of the dance scenes, we are definitely encouraged to see and feel her sexuality. Scenes such as the first dance sequence with the water falling on her, the Maniac song sequence, or when she’s in the restaurant with little on under a suit jacker, linger on the idea that ‘this girl is hot.’
So a mixed-race woman gets to play the lead, but then is basically playing ‘sexy girl.’ Mmh.
But she’s sexy girl with principles. She doesn’t do lunch with the boss, until she does do lunch and a lot more. She hates that he uses his power to get her an audition, yet truth is he needs to use his white privilege or she wouldn’t get her foot in the door.
What is Flashdance then telling us about 1980s USA? I’m not sure even Flashdance even knows. Did they accidentally stumble upon a semi-liberating plot while accidentally making a casting statement? Yes, most likely that’s it. This film feels annoying and frustrating, it’s close to being something, then finally isn’t. It’s a feeling, but what?
Today is the anniversary of the Bristol Bus Boycott, a protest against the Bristol Omnibus Company and the TGWU trade union’s refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews. At the time it was legal to discriminate in employment decisions based on race. The protest was successful and on 17 September 1963, Raghbir Singh, a Sikh, became Bristol’s first non-White bus conductor.
In a world where rap music could lazily and racist labelled ‘the music of Black criminals,’ as BBC Radio 1 DJ called it, came the joyous, surreal world of De La Soul.
Themed around the concept of a game show, 3 Feet High and Rising was mind-blowing in its infectious rap. Music impossible to listen without just feeling a bit happier than you started.
Sampling everything from educational songs, Johnny Cash, Liberace, Michael Jackson and onto Hall & Oates (yes, those white ‘soul’ brothers), and three million other bits in-between. The opening song, The Magic Number contains at least 9 song samples, see whosampled.
If you’ve never heard this album, that may well be you are a child of the digital age, those samples were potential the death of this album in the digital age. Every single sample needed new clearance to have the music available on Spotify et al. But finally, it’s happened, one month after the death of founder member David Jolicoeur
Now you could just skip through the many stand-out tracks: The Magic Number, Eye Know, Say No Go, to name but three, but this is just a collection of classic tracks, it’s an experience, take the journey. It’s never too late to have joined the DAISY age
It starts with just a street name and threatening ‘something has happened music’
We quickly learn it’s a murder. A man is floating in a swimming pool. We are promised the story of this man. The narrator knows it, fully. (Is this a hint of who’s telling the story – watch and find out!)
Not long after, though it’s actually a flashback, as is almost the entire film, a woman walks into an office and says a lot of bad things about the screenwriters work (by now it’s been established, he’s Joe, the main character), who’s standing right behind her. It’s a movie, a real American movie, so you know a young blonde woman doesn’t walk into an office talking at length unless she will be important. The writer, who’d been hacked off, will fall in love with the critic, and she will try to unearth his hidden talent. Tell me I’m wrong.
All this happens, but it’s only a side-show in Sunset Blvd rather than the reason you’re watching. Since the film is made by Billy Wilder, that film, the film that exclusively weaves a love-story between two kindred spirits, a film made a million times in Hollywood, would still be worth watching. But I remind you, this film may be a love story, but it’s not exactly that story. There’s more.
Joe, the screenwriter, is broke, and as part of his escape from creditors finds himself at a run-down property on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It looks abandoned, judging by the old 1920s car and the unkempt garden and swimming pool that hasn’t been filled in years. (An empty unused swimming pool, you’re just laying trap for later, aren’t you Mr Wilder?) Just as he’s trying to work it all out a voice from in the house calls him. It’s a woman. Is this kind of film it’s always a woman and it never goes well. I haven’t spoiled it for you, it starts with a dead man in a pool, remember?
The woman is Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson. For the next hour the film takes us on a journey where we struggle to make out fiction from Hollywood fact. Gloria Swanson plays a former silent movie star whose star is on the wane (as hers was by the time the film is made), her chauffeur in the film is her ex-husband and former film director, just as the actor playing the role, Erich von Stroheim, was a former director. Joe and Norma watch an old silent film, ‘Queen Kelly’ which starred Gloria Swanson and was directed by Erich von Stroheim. There is another scene where they visit Cecil B. De Mille, who is making a real film, later released as Samson and Delilah. There are dinner guests who are all former silent movie stars (I recognised Buster Keaton).
And now take a deep breath, as that’s a big part of the story, but it’s only part.
Norma is trapped in a fantasy of reality. As she famously says, ‘I am big, it’s the pictures that got smaller.’ She still receives fan mail, but it is fake, sent by her chauffeur to keep her happy. She doesn’t realise that her use to Paramount Pictures isn’t her and her star power, it’s the old car, which could be a useful prop. To her, there is no reason why a man half her age, Joe, wouldn’t fall in love with her. She’s a star!
Then there’s Joe. He’s broke. He’s offered money to work on a screenplay with Norma. He takes it as he needs to pay off his debts. He really wants to believe he’s being true to himself by also writing a real, high-quality screenplay, with Betty (the sassy woman from the office – who’d have thought that would happen? Except me in paragraph two.). But soon he is also taking gifts he claims not to want: a platinum watch, a gold cigarette case. When he’s buying an expensive suit and coat the assistant has clearly seen this scenario before and suggests he goes with the more expensive option since the woman is paying.
There we have it, American Gigolo may have been made in 1980, but we have one right here in 1950. The emasculated American male.
There are a few twists and turns, we find out who the dead man in the pool is. We conclude with one of the greatest last scenes in film history. Gloria Swanson has been acting genius throughout, always taking her character to the max, but never so far beyond that you stop caring about her. The over-acting, as we may see it today, is perfectly in keeping with a silent movie star and the need to convey so much more with a look or an action when there are no words to aid meaning.
Finally, she descends the stairs. Then she says one of the contenders for great last lines in a film ever (and Billy Wilder has two of them, this along with ‘Nobody’s perfect’ from Some Like it Hot):
“There’s nothing else. Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my closeup.”
Her fingers stretch out for the camera. She moves forward to us. Fade to black.
Helena (Isabelle Adjani) arrives, walking down a cold, hard, dirty metallic stair, dressed in exotic evening wear, her hair a perfect stylistic mess. This is how to make a film entrance. She is ready for her close-up, Mr Bresson.
I could watch this the rest of my life and not be disappointed. Sunset Boulevard, but on the Paris Metro.
(Later in the same scene the dialogue jokes about her hairstyle, she accuses Christopher Lambert’s character, Fred, of having his hair in a mess, he says, ‘look at yourself.)
This is Subway, a 1985 film from Luc Bresson and an early entrant in the cinema du look.
Helena has been told to meet Fred at the metro. In classic movie magic fashion, she knows exactly which station, though he never mentions it. How does she know? Have they done this before? Is this how they met? The station they meet at is spacious, many platformed, and yet, first time she glides down the right stairs.
(There is a whole other film that could have been made here where she spends the whole movie not meeting Fred as she works her way round the metro network. Or is the reason she walks so slowly and suspensefully is not that she has seen Fred and isn’t sure how this will go, but that she’s tired, this the tenth platform she has tried. This the film I would have made.)
There is a lot of fun, like this, to be had in Subway. There’s the French Connection style opening of a long car chase. A long sequence introducing the main detective character that just features him and a squad of policemen walking into the metro, occasionally having problems with ticket barriers (symbolising that they are not at one with the underground environment the way the roller skaters and the homeless are?), and generally looking like they have accidentally entered the film via a failed audition for a western. There is the labyrinthic setting of the metro, with more places to hide or have adventures in than the sewers of Vienna. There are the quirky characters whose reason to be living in the metro is never explained, only that they are obviously part of another society, a literally underground one, that flourishes under fluorescent lighting.
And there is Isabelle Adjani, who starts the film dressed for a night on the Paris social scene, downgrades later to some overlarge padded shoulders, later still finds a white bomber jacket and only slightly uncombed hair, before ending the film in a checked shirt and a man’s suit jacket, single-handedly kicking start the grunge movement.
All of this is played out to a musical backdrop that is pure 80s no subtility synth pop, often provided by the minor characters. Even at the time I wasn’t sure if the music was supposed to be cool, or part of a parody, a kitsch 80s version of cool jazz.
It is not clear why they are in a band (except it gives them a gang identity, of sorts), why Fred is walking around with a song idea, though he is no singer and no musician. Is it cheaper than renting rehearsal space? A play on the fact that busking is a typical underground station way of making a living. Or is just that it’s really handy in allowing a final act where the music explains the scene in front of us? I hope it is this one.
Then there is this beautiful scene. The tenderness of the dancing, the intensity of the looks, the inappropriateness of the gentlemen’s excuse me. Ingrid Bergman may have been the greatest at looking down meaningfully in film history (watch all the times she does it in Casablanca) Isabelle Adjani is killing with small, gentle smiles and mascara.
https://youtu.be/VY0ooMIs42Q
Fred: Why do I love you? Helena: Because I am an amazing woman.
The French are often accused, or even celebrated, for films that are intellectual, full of depth, if only I were just more educated and could work it all out. The joy of Subway is that there is not much more to it than what you see on the screen. Moving pictures.
I was travelling on the metro when I saw this woman. The trip was long, long enough to imagine her story.
There is an audio version at the end of the page.
She was travelling home alone. There had been an argument and he’d refused to come. It wasn’t the first time that he had acted so. Because she had smiled a moment too long at a waiter, agreed with the ‘wrong’ person in the conversation, dared to ask a stranger directions rather than trust he knew where he was going. Or today, because she had talked too long with another student after the lecture.
By now he should have been sending messages, apologising, explaining he loved her really, sometimes he’s just so jealous that he can’t help himself. There were always messages. Calls. Usually it was right after, often late night after he had been drinking. She needed to be alert to these, it was worse if she failed to reply immediately.
But there were no messages. But there was no ping, no vibration. Was it the lack of signal between stations or this was it? He’d actually meant what he’d said. He was gone?
As Sudului became Brancoveanu, past Eroii Revolutiei, the longer stretch to Tineretului, she began wonder. How many times would she be sat on an underground train, standing at a bus stop, alone in apartment, waiting for him to calm down? Was she to spend the rest of her life sitting alone at café tables refreshing apps in case now was the time? Should she be feeding herself coffee at all times of night because he would call and she must answer?
She wanted love. She loved feeling loved. He was only like this as he was so devoted to her. Wasn’t he?
Piata Unirii came by. They had once spent a summer evening walking round the fountains. He had looked so handsome that day, had told her how he planned to be with her forever. But then, in act of what she thought was playful love, she had pushed him a under a stream of water, it had hardly touched him, yet he raged.
The train rolled on to Universitatii, where they had first met at the university, she’d bought the last sandwich from the kiosk, and to save the vendor from his verbal assault, she agreed to let him have it.
To Romana. They’d eaten strawberries in the café garden, bought a book of Edwin Morgan poems. He said the seller had only included a bookmark – a bookmark! – cause he wanted her.
She opened her bag, fumbled for her phone. There it was, fallen to the bottom again. She took it out. Placed it on the seat next to her. Stood up. Her stop. Victoriei.
When I was a child I struggled to learn to speak. I was quick at those other skills that you might want a child to have: toilet trained, walking, I could even write my name (with both hands!) before I was able to speak.
I only gained mastery of speech thanks to a determined mother who fought for my right to have help, and the speech therapist who trained me in producing sounds accurately and with ease.
Listening to this podcast about speech therapy in the Turks and Caicos islands brought memories, listening to a child trying to accurately say ‘sh’ as in ‘shoes’ was just like how I remember learning to say ‘s’ like ‘snake.
As it's Burns Night, January 25, I've decided to make a traditional Scottish flatbread called bannocks. Why this bread? Well, Robert Burns wrote about many of the common things of Scottish life, from mice to lice! He wrote about our most famous food, the haggis, but he also has a poem about Bannocks.
In the past beremeal would be used for this recipe, but it's almost impossible to find today, so I've used flour. Try itself by using the recipe here, https://scottishscran.com/scottish-bannocks-recipe/, and following the video. #robertburns #scotland
One of the abiding memories of those of us of a certain age in 1981 is Terry Hall and company packed into a 1961 Vauxhall Cresta, driving past of the concrete wastelands of east London and telling us all about a ghost town where bands no longer play. It’s the quintessential hit of early Thatcher’s Britain. The claustrophobia of the video, the bleak lighting, creating an intense sense of doom.
The song was by the Coventry band The Specials, a multi-racial band playing ska-based music, recording on the TwoTone label. A band whose existence the top of the charts, with Terry Hall singing alongside Neville Staple, showed the power of working together.
Not all of Terry Halls’s career was full of the bleak misery of Ghost Town. Some of The Specials other popular songs were more joyous, there’s even a song called Enjoy Yourself!
Hs solo career continued with this mix of the political – The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum – the fun pop – It Ain’t What You. There is the perfect pop of Our Lips Are Sealed.
Terry Hall died today. If you don’t the man and his music, then I suggest you have a look at this article.
Much as it may sound like a personal insult – ‘you’re such a clootie dumpling!’ – a clootie dumpling is in fact a traditional Scottish dessert, which gets its name, the clootie part at least, from the fact that the dumpling is made by boiling the ingredients in a cloth or clootie.
I’ve never made this before, and on reading recipes it seems to be more a test of patience than deep cooking skills – up to four hours from start to finish! Oh well, it’s a day off, so we have time and can try (and most of this time is sitting and watching it boil for three hours, so can wonder off and do other things).
Let’s start at the beginning then, the ingredients:
The ingredients
200g Plain Flour – additional flour will be required for flouring the cloth and surface of the pudding
I’m vegetarian, so no suet for me, and have substituted with solid baking margarine. Can’t find treacle in the shops, but could find molasses, a more typically American ingredient but as far as I can tell it’s about the same, a black sickly sweet liquid made of sugars. Don’t have exactly the right dried fruit, but close enough. Close enough is my cooking moto.
Mixing it all together – using a spoon doesn’t work well!
To start we mix all the dry ingredients together, simple so far, then add the eggs and treacle. The aim is to make a ball that is bound together. Doing this with spoon doesn’t get me anywhere, so time to get the hands stuck in – as usual I forget to flour them first, so my hands are covered with a gooey mess quite quickly. Nonetheless, this works and we have something that looks like what it is – an uncooked pudding.
The next step is the introduction of the clootie. I have an old teacloth I am using. Lay it flat on a worktop and cover it lightly with flour. Move the flour around by hand to make sure it’s evenly spread. Once done, add the dumpling mix to the centre and bring the clootie together and tie it.
The dumpling on the clootie.And now tied!
This is the point when I remember the mention of string in the instructions, and I don’t have any. A quick look round the flat establishes the best I have is some thread, and taking a few strings together I am able to tie by clootie.
Now we find a pot, put a small plate upside down in the bottom, to prevent the dumpling being stick on the bottom of the pan, place the dumpling in the pot and then cover with boiling water. All good!
The dumpling is in the pot with boiling water.
This is where both care and patience is needed. It is supposed to boil for three hours, patience!, and shouldn’t boil dry, so care needed to keep topping up the water. Finally, it’s done.
Take the clootie dumpling put the pan and drain it using a colander. Once it’s cooled down, take it out the colander, place on a cooking surface and unwrap. However, do this carefully so that the flour that was on the cloth doesn’t all come off the dumpling, ideally it forms a ‘skin.’
The pale dumpling with its skin.
The dumpling as this point is a bit pale and very wet. This where drying out is needed, so place it in an oven for between 5 and 15 minutes, depending on how wet it is. The baking here will also turn the flour on the outside of the dumpling brown, giving it an appetising look.
Browned after being baked for about ten minutes.
And I’ve done it! Not sure why I’m surprised, but when taking it out the oven my clootie dumpling looks like what it’s supposed to be. Perhaps a little flat, had I tied it tighter I think it would have retained more of a ball shape, but for a first try, I’m pleased.
So how do you get? It’s really your choice. With custard is common, or cream, or if you’re strange like me, plain yoghurt!
Clootie dumpling with yoghurt – it would have been better if I’d remembered to buy ice cream!
And finally, as St Andrew’s Day, top it off with a fine whisky!
