Film Review: Un Maladetto Imbroglio (1959)

This film was a surprise in several ways. The director and star, Pietro Germi, was a noted creator of satires on Italian society, but in this film he produces one of the better police procedural mysteries I've ever seen. A woman is found murdered in her Rome apartment only a week after a neighboring apartment was burgled. Commissario Ingravallo (Germi) thinks the two crimes may be related, and as the investigation proceeds the list of suspects in the woman's death gets longer and longer. The story gets more complicated, but the solution turns out to be simple yet unexpected.

The first thing that struck me about this film was how modern it felt; it has the same style and tone of any contemporary TV cop show in which detectives rely on teamwork and police procedures to get the job done. Not a lot of time is wasted on extraneous characters or events; the film focuses closely on the detectives and their work and that's what makes the film so engrossing. It also feels very contemporary in the way it balances humorous and serious moments. The two are blended perfectly, and the easiest comparison is to say that, all in all, it felt like an episode of the Italian TV series Detective Montalbano. That series is very good indeed so it's not slighting Un Maladetto Imbroglio to say that it resembles a TV show; in fact, it crossed my mind that Andrea Camilleri, the author of the Montalbano mystery novels, may have been inspired by this film.

Pietro Germi was a triple threat as a writer/director/actor and has a long list of credits, most notably Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned. The latter film, in particular, takes a scathing look at Italian society with its story of Sicilian machismo run amok. When the greats of Italian cinema are mentioned, Germi's name doesn't come up often, or at all, but maybe it should.

Related posts:

Film Review: Seduced and Abandoned
TV Review: Detective Montalbano
Book Review: Bell`Antonio by Vitaliano Brancati

Book Review: A Hostile Place (2003) by John Fullerton

It took some guts to write this one. Imagine going to your publisher less than two years after 9/11 with an Afghanistan-set thriller in which your hero, a British mercenary, spends a goodly amount of time slagging the character and tactics of Bush, Blair and their assorted minions in their war against the Taliban. Not surprisingly, this book never got a US publisher or even a review by an American paper that I can find. That's a bit shocking, because even if you disagree with Fullerton's politics or his interpretation of events in Afghanistan, it's hard to deny the fact that based on this novel and This Green Land, his thriller about the Lebanese Civil War, Fullerton is the best writer going at combining action, intrigue, politics and some really fine prose.

The anti-hero of A Hostile Place is Thomas Morgan, an ex-British Army mercenary who's recruited by British Intelligence to be part of a team hunting down Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Morgan has experience fighting in Afghanistan and even speaks one of the languages. Almost from the start Morgan senses that his handlers aren't on the up and up, and he's soon on the run across Afghanistan with no clear idea of whose pawn he is. Morgan is skilled, deadly and ruthless, but he's also keenly aware of the violence and injustices being heaped upon the Afghan people by the west, the Taliban and al-Qaeda. With the help of a young Afghan woman he manages to get himself on Bin Laden's trail, but he soon senses that someone is also following him.

The brilliance of this novel is that Fullerton is able to weave recent Afghan history and his own political opinions into the narrative without making the novel feel like a polemic. At times Morgan sounds like Fullerton's editorial spokesman, but those moments are infrequent, and Morgan is first and foremost a solidly crafted and believable character, not just a mouthpiece. The minor characters, especially the Afghan ones, are all nicely drawn, and Fullerton, as he showed in This Green Land, has an uncanny ability to bring landscapes alive through the written word.  Fullerton is an ex-journalist with extensive experience in Afghanistan and every bit of that experience, with some added righteous anger, has been used in A Hostile Place.

Related posts:

Book Review: This Green Land by John Fullerton 

Robber Barons In the Sky

An NFL owner explains the wildcat offense to his second wife.

I've been a casual NFL fan for quite a while, but it's only in the last ten years or so that I've noticed a regular feature of every televised game. At some point a camera will angle upwards and give us a shot of the owner's private box. Typically, the spacious, discreetly-lit oasis far above the braying crowds is lightly populated by the owner, his spouse, and a scattering of adult children and grandchildren. The men are in suits, the women are dressed for church or a late afternoon reception, and the kids look uncomfortable and bored no matter what they're wearing.

The play-by-play man and his colour commentator sidekick will then lower their voices as though in the presence of royalty and announce that Mr Silverspoon and his lovely wife June (if she's the first wife) or Tiffany (if she's the second/trophy wife) are here and enjoying the game. There's never any visual proof that they're enjoying the game; the owner is usually glaring down at the field while his wife talks to a fractious child or taps distractedly on an iPhone. Meanwhile, the adult heir to the gridiron throne lurks in the background, often sitting right behind dad and helpfully offering him various artery-clogging snacks. The TV announcers will then give us the following: a brief history of Silverspoon's inspired ownership of the team since inheriting it; a sepia-tinged recollection of how Silverspoon's father, Thaddeus Silverspoon, bought the team in 1934 using the profits from his orphan-crushing factory; and, finally, we're treated to a description of Mrs Silverspoon's charitable endeavours, particularly her fine work in bringing toddler beauty pageants to inner city neighborhoods. All this information in delivered in the same reverential tone that one hears in documentaries about endangered species or dead statesmen.

What's interesting here is that the networks feel the need, or are required to, pay obeisance to billionaires on a regular basis. Does a shot of a team's owner paired with some fawning commentary represent added value for the TV viewer? It doesn't add to our understanding of what's taking place, and in terms of visual appeal most watchers would probably opt for another look at the cheerleaders, or even a beauty shot from the Goodyear blimp. The NFL is in some many the ways one of the prime expressions of US wealth and power, and it would seem that 31 billionaires have made it known that they want to be seen on every telecast, a visual reminder that they've made it to the top of the plutocratic heap, or at least had the good sense to be born there. Billionaires usually shun the limelight, but once a week a select few of them like to be seen enjoying their Sauron's-eye view of the most coveted toy in the prize chest of American wealth.

Related posts:

Peanuts, Popcorn & Anti-Capitalism 

Book Review: Pull Out All the Stops! (2010) by Geraldine McCaughrean

I've read two of McCaughrean's YA novels in the past year, (Not the End of the World and The Death Defying Pepper Roux), and it's astonishing to think that a writer this good is, by and large, unknown on this side of the Atlantic. The fact that she mostly writes for the young adult market should have no bearing on how she's perceived as a writer. McCaughrean is simply one of the best and most imaginative prose writers I've come across in the last ten years. No contemporary writer I can think of has her facility for creating memorable images and witty observations. This is a writer who sees the world in a new and imaginative way and effortlessly transmits those images to the printed page. This short paragraph from the novel shows off her many strengths:

Twice a year, the Missouri rises. As it drinks down meltwater or tropical summer rain, it loses its head and runs amok. It swells and throbs like the nightmares in Hulbert Sissney's feverish head. Forgetting the maps drawn up by fastidious river pilots, ignoring the dry baked levees, it simply gets up and stretches itself. Overspilling its banks, unpicking its neat embroidery of tributaries—tributaries like the Numchuk River—it spreads out over the landscape, engulfing water meadows, swamps, landing stages and riverside highways. It is an unstoppable surge of chocolate-brown water lumpy with storm litter, staking its claim to everything. And when it has made its point, and withdrawn, it leaves behind flotsam, like a drunkard's tip on the bar: tree stumps, shack roofs, dead cattle, cartwheels. Even boats. 

Not only is the "drunkard's tip" a wonderful simile, it also brilliantly references back to the beginning of the paragraph with the river's "drinking" causing it to run "amok." Someone should put this paragraph on a plaque and stick it beside the Missouri or Mississippi because there's never going to be a better or briefer description of a mighty river in flood. 

Pull Out is the picaresque tale of Cissy Sissney and Kookie Warboys, two 12-year-olds living in Olive Town, Oklahoma in the 1890s. A diptheria epidemic breaks out and Cissy and Kookie are sent to stay with Loucien Crew, their former teacher who is now part of a traveling theatrical troupe. Accompanying the children is Miss March, their present teacher. The troupe, which is called the Bright Lights Theatre Company, is living in a paddle wheel steamer which one of the Missouri River's floods has left high and dry on land. No sooner have the children got to the boat than the Missouri rises again. The kids and the actors are soon floating down the Missouri into all sorts of adventures. 

McCaughrean knows picaresque. In The Death Defying Pepper Roux the title character traveled around France (in virtually the same time period as this novel) having adventures and meeting all kinds of characters. In this book, Cissy and Kookie join a large group of eccentric characters, and as the boat journeys downriver it picks up more characters on top of experiencing various adventures. It's to the author's immense credit that she manages to juggle all these people and adventures in a coherent manner. There's far too much going on in the novel to summarize it adequately, but it's enough to know that it's all wildly entertaining. And, as always, McCaughrean's prose leads the way. Here's one of my favourite lines in the book about a man who's recovering from a close shave with a runaway grain silo:

The idea had come to him in the middle of the night, when a man with a head wound has all his best and worst ideas.

Given the setting and tone of this novel, I don't think it's a coincidence that that sounds like something Mark Twain might have written. And, just for a contrast, here's a lovely description of some pelicans briefly glimpsed at night on the river:

Pelicans loomed white out on the river, drawn by the light, drifting like Chinese lanterns, indistinct and mysterious.

That's poetry, that is. The only reason I'd rate this novel fractionally lower in quality than the previous ones I've read is that McCaughrean shows a tendency, like a lot of English writers who set stories in America, to view everything through a larger-than-life prism. From an English point of view, everything happens in America on a bigger scale and at a greater decibel level than elsewhere, and in this spirit the novel sometimes feels a bit too frenzied, a bit overcaffeinated. One example is that McCaughrean absolutely goes to town on giving some of her characters outlandish names. English writers often seem to give Americans, especially ones from the Old West, improbable  names, which is very much the pot calling the kettle black (say hello, Benedict Cumberbatch), but that hasn't stopped writers from P.G. Wodehouse on down from doing it. 

McCaughrean has written more than 150 books for all ages, as they say, including some adult novels, so it looks like I have a lifetime's supply of great reading ahead of me.

Related posts:

Teen Pulp Fiction  
Book Review: Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess

Book Review: Crazy River (2011) by Richard Grant

Much like the African river author Richard Grant set out to try and raft the length of, his book about the trip ends up wandering into some dead ends, hits some snags, and comes to an unsuccessful conclusion. But there are some hair-raising adventures along the way and the trip is conducted with enthusiasm and an acute eye for detail.

Grant originally went to Africa to travel the length of the Malagarasi River, something no explorer has ever done. Grant freely admits he was indulging in a childhood fantasy of playing at explorer, and his somewhat successful journey on the river, led and organized by a professional guide with the help of several assistants, makes up the bulk of his story. This part of the book has a variety of scary moments thanks to rapids, hippos and trigger-happy poachers, not to mention the usual agglomeration of snakes, biting bugs, and insufferable heat. There's no doubt this was a dangerous adventure, but, like climbing Himalayan mountains, it's utterly pointless. Grant is putting himself in harm's way purely to satisfy his own ego and to entertain his readership. Grant is fairly candid about admitting his base motives for the river trip, but there's something monstrously selfish about this kind of life-threatening adventuring that I find off-putting. When Grant risks his life he's also putting the emotional lives of his loved ones at risk. Does he ever think how horrible his death would be for his parents? girlfriend? siblings? Is risking their grief worth the ephemeral and pointless honour of traveling an unknown river? Another thing that bothers me about it is that this kind of adventure is almost the ultimate expression of Western wealth and decadence. The people Grant meets in East Africa are constantly fighting and struggling to the limits of endurance to improve their lives, or even just to stay alive. And here comes Grant spewing thousands of dollars in an attempt, as it were, to lose his life. I don't think Grant appreciates the irony of his quest, and it mars his book. And the book's epilogue leaves a very bad taste. You might expect Grant would add some updates about the people he met on his trip. Nope. Instead we get a cliche moan about how difficult it was to adjust to life in the affluent US of A after months in poorest Africa. Duh. This is tired, boilerplate travel writing and it's surprising an editor didn't give Grant a nudge about it.

The rest of the book is a rambling tour through Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, rural Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. Grant was careful to avoid Western comforts and accommodation on his trip and it pays off. We get a worm's eye view of the trials and tribulations of daily life in East Africa, and it's not a pretty picture. What Grant shows us is a region that is crumbling under the hammer blows of overpopulation, corruption, diminishing resources, and national economies that have been grossly deformed by foreign aid. This is all interesting and important information, but it has to be said that other writers and journalists have beaten Grant to the punch in the last decade, most notably Paul Theroux in Dark Star Safari and The Road to Hell by Michael Maren. Both books cover virtually the same ground and issues as Crazy River, and they do a better job of it. Having somewhat slagged Crazy River, it's only fair to mention that Grant's book about Mexico, God's Middle Finger, has to rate as one of the best travel books I've ever read. He was exposed to even more danger there, but it wasn't anything that he was expecting, and what he reveals about a little known corner of Mexico (the Sierra Madres) is fascinating. If you want to get a better understanding of why the Mexican drug cartels are so brutally strong, read this book.

TV Review: Braquo (2009)

The French can make thrillers like nobody's business, but cop shows/movies are something they just don't get the hang of. The main reason is that their versions always feel like self-conscious recreations of US cop shows. Braquo is an excellent example of this. Like The Wire, it's a mini-series with a single story arc that carries us from episode one to eight. Four Paris police detectives, Eddy, Theo, Walter and Roxanne, lose their leader, Max, when he decides to violently assault a murder suspect. Internal Affairs goes after Max who then kills himself. Our team then kidnaps the murder suspect from hospital (Max stabbed him in the eye with a pen) in order to interrogate him about his partner in the killing. Oops! They accidentally shoot him through the head. And from that point on the team is trying to cover up the killing and keep one step ahead of Internal Affairs. But for every step forward in covering up their tracks they take two backwards, all of which involve more killings, beatings, and all manner of things well-behaved cops aren't supposed to do.

It's pretty clear the creator of the show, Olivier Marchal, is taking his cue from The Wire and the grittier cop films from the 1970s ( my piece on '70s "cop noir" is here). Marchal also tries very, very hard to outdo his US heroes in toughness and grittiness. And that's where Braquo gets a bit daffy and unintentionally amusing. His four cops, just to show how tough and noir they are, never, ever smile. I mean it. In eight episodes I might have seen one unironic smile between the four of them. And to further underline their gravitas, they continually look defeated, sour, disheveled and short on sleep. Poor Roxanne looks like she's taken a vow of abstinence from shampoo and combs. If one them had a lighthearted moment they might die from the bends. They also smoke like chimneys and knock back booze constantly. Like a lot of other fictional TV and movie cops these four get to live in some fabulous digs. Eddy, the leader of the group, lives on a river barge; Theo has an ultra-modern apartment; Roxanne shares a big. luxurious townhouse with her older boyfriend; and Walter, the family man, lives in an old house in Paris that is covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. You get the picture.What might be most amusing about this show is that the cops make one bad decision after another, each one getting them into deeper and murkier water. At more than a few points in the series I was yelling at the screen, "You morons! That's your idea of a plan?" But I was doing it in an amused sort of way.

It sounds like I'm slagging Braquo, but I'm not, really. Even with all its attempts to one-up Yankee cop shows, like some little kid trying to impress his big brother, Braquo is still quite entertaining. The acting is very good, it looks great, there's violence aplenty, and the bizarro plot keeps you hooked because it's hard to believe how things are going to get worse for the cops. But they do. I've only seen season one and it ends with a rather monstrous cliffhanger, and it looks like the succeeding season will consist of the team, as per usual, not doing a jot of actual police work, but, instead, there will be a lot of drinking, smoking, bad hair days, torturing of suspects, and assassinations of crims. I just hope Roxanne gets a chance to take a shower. By the way, "braquo" is supposedly Parisian criminal slang for a big heist. I think it's more likely to be Parisian cop slang for "D'oh!"

Book Review: Witchfinders: a Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (2005) by Malcom Gaskill

What do Joseph Stalin and the so-called War on Terror have to do with a nasty spasm of witch-hunting in England in the years 1644-47? Slightly more than you might think. In the 1640s England was in the throes of the Civil War, with the Parliamentarians (flinty, puritanical Protestants for the most part) on one side, and Royalists (supporters of the King and the Church of England) on the other. The country was impoverished, beset with outbreaks of various diseases, and suffering through a series of poor crops. In these unstable, revolutionary, frightening times it shouldn't be too surprising that a portion of the country became seized with a fear of witchcraft.

East Anglia was the epicentre for a wave of witch-hunting led by two men: Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. They toured the east of England discovering witches and handing them over for trial. They were freelance witchhunters, but that didn't mean they did it for free. There was a good living to be made hunting witches, and they kept up their crusade for several years. The "confessions" and "evidence" they came up with ranged from the ludicrous to the nonsensical. Case after case hinged on witches (almost always old women) being accused of having familiars who took revenge on neighbours who had cheated or offended them in some way.

A typical East Anglian witch

What's eerie about the witch-hunting of Hopkins and Stearne is that they were using torture techniques that I, for one, thought had been invented in the 20th century. The pair used sleep deprivation, starvation,  and physical restraint to get their "witches" to confess to just about anything. These are exactly the same techniques used during Stalin's Great Purge. We tend to think of pre-20th century torture as consisting of racks, red-hot pincers, and all the other props from Hammer horror films. Clearly this wasn't the case. By using these techniques the witchfinders could get their victims to fabricate outrageously baroque fantasies about visits from the Devil, the ability to sink ships at sea through spells, and strange creatures feeding off their bodies. And as in the War on Terror, with its rendition flights to torture-friendly countries like Syria, the torturers were able to get exactly what they wanted to hear rather than any kind of truth.

Not a typical East Anglian witch

 One question that isn't quite answered here is why the general populace was willing to believe in these twisted tales. One answer that the author provides is that the hunting and hanging of witches was a way for the community to release pent-up fear and anxiety about England's instability and impoverishment. In short, they were scapegoats. Another possible reason for the credulity of the citizenry is that belief in witchcraft stood on a widespread and firm foundation of folk belief in fairies, brownies, will o' the wisps, boggarts, church grims, and dozens of other supernatural races and creatures. In fact, many of the accounts of witchcraft can be read as aspects of fairy lore transferred to witches. Katherine Briggs was a noted English folklorist, and in her book A Dictionary of Fairies (1976) she has a section on "Blights and illnesses attributed to the fairies." Many of the ailments blamed on fairies are the same ones "witches" confessed to. It's possible that the victims of torture simply recycled fairy tales with themselves in the role of the fairies. There is some support for this theory in Witchfinders when a case in Cornwall is mentioned in which a 19-year-old girl claimed familiarity with fairies. Ministers and magistrates took the view that what she meant were imps, the traditional ally of the witch. It's a clear example of witchcraft being grafted onto a more benign folk belief. And in Keith Thomas' book Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), he points out that Protestant leaders as early as the 16th century were insisting that fairies were simply Satanic creatures in another guise. The Catholic Church had never had any great quarrel with fairy beliefs.

Witchfinders is a nice blend of academic and popular history, and Gaskill does an excellent job of communicating the fear and misery that led communities and individuals to lash out against the weak and the defenceless. Yes, there is an aspect of class and gender hatred to this story. Old, single and widowed woman were, it seems, the underclass of the 17th century. Men could always find work as labourers or soldiers, but unemployed, single, older women had to rely on begging or charity. And no one liked beggars or giving to charity.

And on a side note; if you're a writer looking for some seriously cool names for your next steampunk or period horror novel, give Witchfinders a quick read. Harbottle Grimston, Widow Hoggard, Goodman Garnham, Valentine Walton, and, wait for it, Avis Savory, are just some of the mouthwatering names to be found here.