Detective Zen

We've been watching a three-part series called Zen, about an Italian detective working in Rome. There were going to be more in the series, but it was cancelled...ratings weren't good enough, of course.

The series is based on three books by English writer Michael Dibdin, and strangely enough, the first of the books is actually the third in the series; so plainly there's been some mucking about with the original stories.

The most curious thing about the series, it seemed to me, is that it's filmed in Rome almost entirely with British actors. There's no attempt by these actors to speak in anything but their ordinary accents, including a Northern one and an Irish one. But the main female character in the story is played by an Italian, and the actress, Caterina Murino, has a distinct Italian accent. Which makes you wonder why everyone else doesn't have an Italian accent too. Rather odd.

Rufus Sewell plays Zen, a policeman with integrity - presumably since it's mentioned so often this is something of an anomaly - and he does the role well. But the plots, at least in the TV versions, are pretty muddled, and there are regular characters who come and go without any introduction. They seem to turn up as needed and then are forgotten again.

There's a slight underpacing about the series; it's not that it needs to be all action, but somehow there's a feeling that it could all go just a bit faster and wouldn't lose anything by it. And there's an underlying sleaziness in regard to Murino's character: the policemen in the department have laid bets on who will sleep with her first. This distasteful process continues right through the three episodes, and reduces the impact of some of the characters. Perhaps it's a common thing in Rome. As is police corruption, apparently.

Young Montalbano

We began watching the crime series, The Young Montalbano tonight. I've mentioned the original series, Inspector Montalbano on a couple of occasions recently, and how we've enjoyed it. The Young Montalbano has a different cast, of course, though some of the characters from the others series gradually make their way into this one, a decade or so younger than before. Montalbano has plenty of hair at this point; his older persona is close to bald. Michele Riondino in no way plays under the shadow of his future self; he's as confident in his role as Luca Zingaretti is in his.

It's a little weird trying to match up a different set of actors in your head, but you find you quickly become attached to these ones too, because the series has been as well cast as the original, and the opening episode had plenty of verve and energy, along with the typical sharpness of mind that characterizes Montalbano; the delight in seafood; the craziness of Catarella (younger, but no less dense and no less frenetic); the bending of the rules to make sure justice prevails, and those wonderful old Italian faces that seem as true to their situation as if they were brought in off the street to play themselves.

Italian crime series

Back in December we started watching a series on DVD called Inspector Montalbano. I think we've managed to get through all that available now, and have a different set on hand called The Young Montalbano, which we haven't started yet, because we're still finishing off Fog and Crimes. More about that in a minute.

The Montalbano series was always worth watching, with intriguing characters - there are some marvellous well-aged Italian faces amongst the casts - and stories that kept your interest up throughout, even though there were often little by-paths that only minimally connected to the overall picture. Montalbano is a man of considerable integrity, amongst other things, but there's one curious element to his character which bothers me. He and his longstanding girlfriend, Livia, who live in separate cities most of the time, have an on-off relationship that never seems to quite come together enough for them to actually marry each other (and we're talking about a couple who are in their early forties when the series started).  Occasionally Montalbano has wound up with another woman in an episode, (wound up in the sense of being intimately involved) and while you can kind of understand that his true love is far away, it does seem to undercut the integrity of the character as otherwise seen. This is emphasized more because on a number of occasions, when one of the less savory characters in the stories is boasting of his/her love life and various women/men, Montalbano and his offsider, Fazio, frequently exchange glances of disapproval, and Fazio (whose home life is never mentioned) in particular seems to have a high moral sexual code.

When we started watching Montalbano we had also been watching Judge John Deed, a British series in which a maverick Judge deals to the law as he sees fit, much to the irritation of the other Judges. This series isn't a patch on Montalbano, but again there's this curious contrast between integrity on one hand and lack of it on another. Deed seldom makes it through an episode without having some sort of an affair with one woman or another, to the annoyance of the woman who is the regular in the cast. These women include his ex-wife.

Which brings us to Fogs and Crime (Nebbie e delitti), another Italian series. This also has a police inspector, Soneri, who's in his forties, and has a live-in girlfriend whom he can't quite make up his mind to marry. In the most recent episode, Soneri was sorely tempted to have a little affair with a young girl he met in the course of his investigations. Wisely he opted out, and turned around to make some repairs to his normal relationship. Let's hope he retains his integrity in this sphere, which will make him a better man than Montalbano or Deed.

Natasha Stefanenko,
the co-star of Fogs and Crimes

Montalbano is set in a fictitious town in Sicily, where the sun never stops blazing and where everything is light. It's so hot you seldom see anyone on the street - we're always wondering where all the extras are. There's an element of sophistication too, to Montalbano's lifestyle, and lots of eating of seafood. Fogs and Crimes is set in the real town of Ferrara, in the north of Italy, and lives up to its series title: there is an almost continual fog, heaps of rain and a dreariness about the place, the people, and the settings. Soneri spends a good deal of time in his favourite ristorante too. Ferrara is a World Heritage Site, and certainly the buildings are lovely, but you wouldn't want to live there if the weather is anything like the series presents. I imagine it's not, and probably the citizens of Ferrara get fed up of seeing their counterparts scurrying out of the rain or barely being able to see through the fog.

Though the two series have many similarities in characters: the helpful offsider; the bumptious lieutenant character who's good at his job but knows it; the annoying Chief of Police, always wanting things wound up; the wonderful blonde leading lady (a part Russian in Fogs and Crimes); the innumerable transients: Tunisians, Poles, Russians and so on.  But there are enough broad differences to make both series well worth engaging in.

Maybe multitasking

Sometimes the things you write about have a kind of surreal lack of sense, such as the following item:
good zoom h4n at Guitar Center.

The individual words seem clear enough, but combined together they're strange. And unfortunately clicking on the link doesn't seem to help much either. Maybe I've been doing too much gardening today, in the heat, and my brain has lost its capacity to think clearly.  Or maybe it's because I've spent the week working on my next book, which is about prostate issues and their complications, and I've lost my ability to focus on anything else.

Or maybe it's because my wife is speaking Italian at me and I'm trying to think in two languages at once.  Or, as she's now doing, reading some ridiculous maths problem on Facebook out to me. How many things does she think I can cope with at once? Plainly she reckons I'm much more capable of multitasking than I thought.  Except that I had to ask her to remind me of the word multitasking anyway.

Inspector Montalbano

We've been watching the first episodes of the outstanding Italian TV series, Inspector Montalbano. When I say 'episodes' I'm actually referring to full-length TV movies; the episodes run to about 100 plus minutes each.

They're set in Sicily in the fictitious town of Vigata, and feature the blunt and muscular character of Montalbano, a man who admits that he's better at being in charge than deputizing, and who, in spite of his gruff exterior, has a solid emotional core. He runs his troop of underlings with an iron fist, although his lieutenant, Fazio (Peppino Mazzotta), knows that much of his behaviour is bluff. On the other hand, he's quick to complement those who do well - though the complement may be somewhat backhanded.  He has little time for superiors who don't do their job well, and is more likely to insult them as kowtow to them. He can interview a suspect to the point where the person finally gives way and reveals that they truly are the murderer, something Montalbano will have known all along. And he's not above bending the official rules in order to allow someone to go free who shouldn't get into further strife, or to investigate a person's apartment while the person is actually there (or even when they're not there!).

Luca Zingaretti was born to play the role it seems, and certainly he's spent a good few years at the sharp-witted detective, from 1999 to 2013, in some 26 stories. His longsuffering girlfriend, Livia, is played by Katharina Böhm, an Austrian actress. Though Böhm appears to speak the lines, she's in fact voiced by an Italian actress, Claudia Catani. They're supported by a marvellous cast of regulars and one-episode actors, and the production values are superb, the photography in particular.

We've got a 3-DVD set out of the library of the first episodes. I don't know whether there are more available but we'd be happy to watch them if there are, English (sometimes odd) subtitles and all. Subtitles mean you have to concentrate more than usual - especially at those times when the Italians are explaining at an express train speed, and the subtitles are barely keeping up with them.

Two comedies

I thought Weleda was the name of a flower, but it turns out to be a brand name for a line of health products.  These products are sold worldwide, even in New Zealand, but I've never heard of them.  Plainly all that advertising has been wasted on me, guys!

Equally, in the last two days I've watched a couple of movies that were also completely unfamiliar to me.  One is Italian, the other French (though most of the cast is Russian, and the first half of the film takes place in Moscow).

The Italian one would have to be the most lightweight movie I've seen in a long time.  It's called Pranzo di Ferragosto, has its director (Gianni di Gregorio) in the leading role as Gianni, a fifty-something bachelor who lives at home with his mum, drinks a lot of wine, seldom pays his bills and in general seems a bit of a waster.   Ferragosto is a major Italian holiday, and dates back two millennia.  Pranzo is merely a word for dinner, or lunch.   Because Gianni is in debt he finds himself having to look after three old ladies for the holiday as a kind of barter system for not paying his bills to his landlord and his doctor.   Along with the mother, the women take over, in the nicest quietest gentlest way, and if Gianni thought he had enough to do with placating his mother, he soon finds four women are more than quadruple the problem.   There's almost no story apart from that: the old women discover each other as friends and confidantes, Gianni runs round feeding them a lot and trying to get them off to bed (rather like adolescents) and in the end everyone comes out happy - or at least a little happier.

The four women in the cast are all non-professionals, and do a lovely job of conveying the four very different women in the story.  Not that 'lovely' is the word to apply to the actress, Valeria di Franciscis, who plays Gianni's Mum.  With a hideous wig that barely balances on her head, and a face covered in enormous dark spots, and strongly indented wrinkles and lines, and scarlet lipstick across thin lips, she must be one of the ugliest actresses ever to be seen in the movies.  But that's what old age does to people: makes them a lot less pleasant to look at than they were when young.  The other three women are a good deal less ugly, though they have almost as many lines and wrinkles.  

Mélanie Laurent

There are a lot of older people in the French film too - The Concert.  Because it concerns people who are no longer in the prime of life, age is something of a factor, though not quite to the extent it is in the Italian movie.  The Concert is about a once-famous Russian conductor now reduced to working as a cleaner in the Bolshoi Theatre.  This was the result of him having a number of Jews in his former orchestra and not being willing to give them up in order to further his own career.  As a result of a fax slip-up, he decides to persuade the former members of his orchestra to reform and take a trip to Paris where (supposedly) they've been invited to perform in lieu of the LA Orchestra, who've had to drop out.  With some difficulty he collects together the musicians from all sorts of reduced circumstances, as well as taking on as manager the very man who interrupted his last concert all those years ago, and made a laughing stock of him. 


In spite of that outline of the story, this is actually (for most of the film) a comedy - in fact it verges on farce at times.  The characters are all larger than life and some are drawn with very broad strokes.  The only truly serious character in the film is the young violin soloist (played by the gorgeous Mélanie Laurent) - her past and the loss of her parents haunts her somewhat, and she turns out to be part of the reason behind the mad trip to Paris.  Laurent has the unenviable task of 'playing' the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (in a reduced version) at the end of the movie: this would have to be one of the best simulations of violin playing I've seen in a movie.  


There's a large cast that works well together, wonderful music and the most interesting subtitles I've ever seen.  Several of the Russians have to speak French during the movie, but their French is obviously a bit less than perfect, and this is reflected hilariously in the subtitles.  


Of the two movies, I wouldn't greatly recommend the Italian one, unless you're content just to take it as it is: a piece of fluff with a minimal message about old age.  The French one won't be to everyone's taste either - it doesn't entirely seem to know whether it's a comedy or a farce or even a drama, but still manages to pull itself off.  Nevertheless, as an evening's entertainment, it has a number of good points, not least the wide-ranging music.  

Sitzprobe

Sitzprobe literally means a 'seated rehearsal' and it's a term used in opera and musical theatre to describe the time when the singers first get together with the orchestra, before a production is presented publicly.  The aim is for the two groups, the singers and the musicians, to put the music together. The equivalent Italian term is prova all'italiana, which sounds to me as though it should mean to test everything in Italian, but obviously doesn't. 


Tonight the cast and orchestra of Grimhilda! will hold their sitzprobe.  The use of the word has had most of the cast asking, What the heck is a sitzprobe? because I don't think it's a term usually used in amateur musical theatre circles.  Perhaps people doing amateur opera use it; I'm not sure. 


I'm familiar with it because in the days when I worked with opera singers, the term came up constantly, and the event itself was always interesting.  The singers would get all theatrical and start to show off, and the musicians would turn on their slightly superior looks and pretend that actors/singers and musicians should barely be allowed in the same room.  However, after the initial impact of having to sit down together and get the thing moving, they'd all become friendly and it would go swimmingly.  


Well, 'swimmingly' might be a bit optimistic: it would go fairly well, because the first meeting of the singers with the orchestra is always quite stressful for the singers.   They've been working for weeks with nothing but a piano, and suddenly all those sounds they've been used to have been transformed into sounds they aren't used to, and it's quite off-putting.   Nothing sounds right. 


Which is why we hold sitzprobes (I'm sure the German plural is something different, like sitzproben, or whatever, but I don't actually know).   Tonight is going to be interesting, to say the least!

Noel Coward

I'm reading The Privilege of His Company by William Marchant at the moment - it was lent to me by a friend. It's a book about Noel Coward and gives quite a different picture of him than I'd ever come across before: he's seen as a gracious and generous man, one who is happy to mentor a young writer and help him to success. Of course the wit and urbanity is there (although Coward frequently lectures Marchant against urbanity in the book), and the theatrical stories...and, most importantly, the understanding of stagecraft which to me is the most interesting part of the book.

I think what is perhaps now forgotten to a great extent is the admiration other actors had for Coward, and this permeates the book. They loved him because of his generous nature and personality; there were few airs about Coward, and no arrogance.

It brings to mind a scene in one of his films - one of several made late in his life, none of which were particularly remarkable in regard to the parts he played. This film was The Italian Job which, on a recent viewing proved to be a pretty unremarkable piece of filmmaking, and worth less than its following (and sequel) warrants. Coward is one of several well-known British actors in it (Irene Handl makes a brief - and rather coarse - appearance, for instance) and his first main scene is in prison, where he's treated with great respect by all the inmates...and the staff (who basically allow him to do what he likes). This was his last film, made only 3 or 4 years before his death, and Coward doesn't look particularly well. He was seventy at the time.

This first (longish) scene has Coward doing nothing more than walking slowly down the stairs of the prison clapped in time by the inmates. He waves his hand in a regal gesture. It has nothing to do with the movie, but perhaps a good deal to do with the veneration he was naturally given by other actors and directors.

La Dolce VIta

After watching the possibly-pseud, Babel, a couple of nights ago, seeing La Dolce Vita again after more than fifty years brought on similar misgivings. Is it really a classic? Does it say anything at all, apart from condemning paparazzi? Is there actually any acting in it, or were ninety percent of the cast merely playing themselves?
When I first watched it, in the enormous St James theatre here in Dunedin, the place was packed. A typical Saturday night out for most of the people in the audience. By the time the movie finished, the place was half empty. Fellini had managed to alienate most of his audience.
Nearly fifty years on, the film is highly regarded by anyone who writes about it, and Fellini’s name has entered the film history books as being one of the great film directors. There’s no doubt he was that. Quite apart from La Dolce Vita, he made increasingly detailed and visually-stunning movies that kept on hammering away at certain themes, particularly the loss of self in an existential society.
The films also became increasingly long: La Dolce Vita itself finally reaches its last scenes after some 160 minutes, and the rather overblown Satyricon, while only 128 minutes, seems endless.

So what are the plusses?
LDV boasts superb cinematography, with wonderful use of the wide screen, and a black and white view of the world that is a feast for the eye.
In spite of my remarks above about the acting, there are any number of fine performances in the film: Marcello Mastroianni holds it all together, while playing a character who’s losing his soul; Anouk Aimee is Maddalena, promiscuous to the core because she doesn’t know how else to live her life; Yvonne Furneaux is Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, who first appears just after having tried to kill herself because Marcello continually neglects her in favour of more seductive and powerful women; Alain Cuny is the world-weary philosopher who proves to have no inner life after all; Anita Ekberg plays herself pretty much, but does it wonderfully. There are hundreds of others, some of them given moments of high comedy, some given moments of drama, some playing people full of tosh, some playing people spouting arty nonsense, some playing dilettantes, some playing people whose lives consist of nothing but endless, tedious parties, where happiness is almost completely absent. And there’s the not-to-be-forgotten Annibale Ninchi, who plays Marcello’s father, seeming at first to be more virtuous than his son, but proving to be just as empty.
There is the directing. The details are endless: so many things thrown into the mix that it’s impossible to pick up all the clues as to what’s happening. The extraordinary moments: the famous Trevi fountain scene (or Ekberg’s calling to the wolves just before this); the procession of aristocrats first looking for a ghost and then walking in the dawn (‘I’ve never seen the dawn before’) like a procession of ghosts themselves; the trumpet-playing clown, Polidor, who calls a host of balloons to follow him, after playing a typically Felliniesque piece of melancholy (compare the trumpet playing in La Strada, for instance). And on and on. But beyond this is the putting together of a dozen or so sequences which are each as extraordinary as the other.
The script. Such an open-ended script as this can barely exist. Fellini prompts us to think in certain directions, but continually throws us off-course. He lets us empathise with Marcello one moment, and then loathe him the next. We are dropped into emotional relationships but given only the minimum of clues. We are handed hundreds of sharply-drawn characters, and left to wonder at who these people really are. (Only a handful of characters appear in more than one sequence.) And always, always, we’re asking ourselves: Why? Why does Marcello commit himself to this lifestyle? Why do so many of the people hate life? Why do the paparazzi invade people’s privacy with such disdain? Why do at least two of the main characters wear sunglasses at night? What is the anger underneath Marcello’s handsome exterior? How does he manage to include himself in so many different circles?

The cons. The film is too long. The final party scene, in which Marcello has apparently reached his nadir, adds little to the film, and merely makes us loathe him all the more. The sequence before this, with the aristocrats, comes at a point when the audience has been saturated with people. And though it includes an important scene, it seems to me to wander off course towards the end.
Still, if those were the only quibbles, the film would still remain an extraordinary achievement. As a work of art it has so many layers most viewers would never get to the bottom of them. As a work of filmmaking, it is superior still, even fifty years after it was made, to many other films that attempt something similar. And curiously, in spite of its age, it doesn’t appear dated. Apart from the odd piece of women’s fashion, and the styles of the cars, little has changed.

The Snail Sticks Out

Snail
Originally uploaded by mfcrowl

I’ve been thinking about uploading the photos I took of Dunedin murals for a week or so now, after I discovered another site where there were some displayed. Mark Leggatt has a lot of graphic stuff on his blog, but there’s also a link to a ‘group’ on Flick.com where a bunch of people have got together to display Dunedin murals and street art. I’m not sure where the dividing line between the two is, as some street art is superb (and some rotten) and some murals are superb (and some rotten).
Anyway, I have about twenty-five photos of murals up now, and there’ll be more to follow.
There’s also a rather random photo of a snail. I just happen to like it.

One of the stranger search requests on HitTail this week is 'joyce kilmer in italian'. The person searching didn't get much joy, because Kilmer doesn't seem to have been translated into Italian - at least not as far as the search engine (Alot) was aware. However, a verse from a long poem by Kilmer called Delicatessen came up a lot on the search results. It's not a poem I know, but here's the relevant stanza:
Here is a shop of wonderment.
From every land has come a prize;
Rich spices from the Orient,
And fruit that knew Italian skies...

Practicing not quite enough...

I haven’t been playing much music while I’ve been on holiday. Partly it’s a matter of having had much less access to a piano, and partly it’s laziness. Where we’re staying at present there’s a piano, and I’ve been working on a Bach piece, the Italian Concerto. (At least I think that’s what it is: I have this great ability to ‘know’ something until I come to try and write it down correctly.)

I was just reading one of my old posts again, about trying to play the first sonata by Michael Tippett. Compared to the Tippett, the Bach is a breeze, although I still have a few sticky patches to contend with. It’s not helping that my fingers aren’t feeling at all flexible at the moment; typing on the computer isn’t a substitute for playing the piano, even though you’re using the same digits.