Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853–1928) created this beautiful work after reading Keats’ 1819 poem, or ballad, of the same name. This is quoted below. The poem itself is a sort of fairy tale gone awry. The knight at arms finds a women who is ostensibly in love with him, only to find her deserting him after their first and only night together. The poem itself is quite frappant and I shall leave you to read it.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Dicksee, Frank; La belle dame sans merci; Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives
This splendid painting captures the moment after the knight at arms places the belle dame on his steed, and she leans over singing a faery’s song. We can see the garland on her head and the bracelets made by the knight on her head and arms, respectively. The knight is besotted with his new beloved. The expression on his face and the possessiveness with which he grips onto the horse are both evident in the painting’s rendering. The horse seems to be the only one who is with the programme and sees what is coming, having bowed his head in shame, almost.
The knight’s armour is done beautifully. I should note that while Dicksee was never a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, his work does show the extent of their influence on his artistic vision. The lighting, the subject matter, the beautiful colours, the red flowing hair of the belle dame herself – all of these elements form a striking picture. The portrait in my view does homage to Keats’ masterful poem.
The predominant mood is one of enchantment, intensified by the idyllic setting of the English countryside: ‘I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful – a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild… I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; For side long would she bend, and sing A faery’s song.’ A fascination with chivalry had lasted throughout the nineteenth century, typically combining romantic escapism with a cautionary note of the ‘femme fatale’. Art UK
I shall leave it to my dearest to explain the vicissitudes of Monsieur Keats’ poetry. I was quite taken aback by this poem on second and third reading. It is beautifully crafted, symmetrical and pierces through the reader. The reader finds him or herself on the hill, with the knight at arms, alone and deserted, bereft of swiftly developed love. These two are a beautiful combination of art forms, I am grateful to Charlotte for sharing these with me.
Goodness me, where to begin? It is not often that I notice a masterpiece while I am watching it, but Nanook was just that. This was a documentary film made in the early 1920s, after two failed attempts in the 1910s. It follows Nanook, a master hunter in the Ungava region of Hudson’s Bay in Canada, and his family through their life in the Arctic wilderness.
Inuits from the Ungava region of Hudson’s Bay, Nanook, his wife Nyla and their infant son survive the Arctic wilderness by adhering to traditional methods of ice fishing, igloo building, and walrus, fox and seal hunting.
This is a black and white, silent 100 year old film. This is a hard sell for many but I tend to throw myself into films without much research. This movie, directed by Robert J. Flaherty, was the first commercially successful feature length documentary film. Flaherty followed Nanook and his family for one year and portrayed the most surprising and harsh episodes from the life of the family. We see their eating habits, hunting, sleeping habits and even their building of an igloo. The film is silent but for some music, though I have seen some showings available with live music. This must be quite an experience!
Flaherty consciously selected his cast and suggested episodes to convey the harshness of Nanook’s struggle with his forbidding environment. But rather than breaking the rules of the still-undefined documentary tradition, Flaherty worked according to the principles of Inuit art, by which the spirit of an artefact emerges during its creation and not as the result of some preconceived design. Consequently, this remains a remarkable piece of film-making and humanist anthropology… Empire
Why do I like this film? I have read and can dismiss some of the critics’ concerns about the family’s clothing being old, the igloo being too large (to accommodate for the cameras) and the selected episodes chosen to convey some drama. However, in spite of this, I believe this to be a relatively faithful portrayal of a family’s life. Indeed, some of the members of Nanook’s family ended up helping the camera crew, manning cameras and fixing some of the tripod legs as filming went on. I was moved by the lengths to which Nanook would go to protect his family and provide for them in the almost un-livable wasteland they inhabited. The ingenuity of the Inuit methods of survival are such that at points I could not quite believe what I was watching. Overall this was a very impressive and moving portrayal of a family living in impossible conditions, and, as the director notes in the opening slides, being among the happiest people in the world in so doing.
Please do watch this film. It is on Youtube for free.
Hello and good greeting, as Ed Balls would say. Welcome to this month’s edition of ‘I am working too hard so have a few album covers rather than five’ Favourites. See below this month’s picks of top shelf covers.
Takin’ It To The Streets – The Doobie Brothers (1976)
Picture the scene – it is Monday evening. I have just sat through a 7.5 hour mediation at work over a relatively small claim for some encroaching vegetation. I am shattered beyond the normal level for a Monday. Charlotte, my guardian angel, comes over and cooks me a beautiful walnut, pear and gorgonzola risotto. It Keeps You Running by the below band comes on. I am in heaven. Enjoy this splendid cover!
The Dreaming – Kate Bush (1982)
Oh Kate Bush, my lionheart. The below has features as our resident writer Nick’s album of the month for May 2022. I could not help but pay his impeccable taste homage in having this as one of the three favourites. Depicting a passage from the song Houdini:
The album cover depicts a scene described in the lyrics to the song “Houdini”. In the picture shown, Bush is acting as Harry Houdini’s wife Bess, holding a key in her mouth, which she is about to pass on to him. The photograph is rendered in sepia, with just the gold key and Bush’s eye make-up showing any colour. Wikipedia
Queen – The Miracle (1989)
This absolutely horrifying number was Queen’s 1989 album. The album was recorded as the band recovered from Brian May’s marital problems and Freddie Mercury’s HIV diagnosis in 1987 (which was known to the band, though not publicised at the time). The cover itself is very strange indeed. I am not sure that I possess the vocabulary to describe the level of horror this induces inme. The merged eyes are particularly disturbing. But it is certainly a memorable cover!
Join me next month for the July Edition of (?) Favourites.
Operation Mincemeat itself was a successful 1943 deception operation, designed to convince the Nazis that Britain would invade Greece rather than Sicily. The result of this deception would be that the Nazis would move their resources to Greece, enabling the Allies to invade Sicily with little to no resistance. The deception method used was quite unique. Two British spies Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), working alongside Jean Leslie (Kelly Macdonald), obtain the body of a homeless man, stash faked secret documents on it, invent a personality and background for him and have him wash up on a Spanish beach.
Though occasionally undone by its Sunday-teatime tendencies, this is a spirited and gently entertaining slice of wartime espionage, with sharp, wry performances from the ensemble cast.
This was a good film overall, the performances were solid and the two former Mr Darcy’s were a formidable team. The tension of the operation was well presented. I was not fond of the unnecessary and fruitless love triangle which distracted us from the main plot. Also there were two instances of gratuitous suggestive action on the part of a British double agent in Spain. These were totally unnecessary and rather put me off.
This is another of the “home front wartime” Britfilms, such as Munich: The Edge of War, Their Finest, The Imitation Game and Darkest Hour, all probably inspired by the Oscar-winning success of The King’s Speech, which have their emphasis on domestic morale, strategic ingenuity and political shenanigans, rather than battlefield action. Operation Mincemeat is watchable enough, but perhaps can’t find a fictional way into the stranger-than-fiction outrageousness of the scheme itself. Guardian
Overall however, this is a comfortable film, with excellent costuming, solid performances and wonderful set design. See the trailer below:
I almost feel that I cannot write this review. What I saw at the cinema was beyond my powers of description. Michelle Yeoh, James Hong, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis are a powerhouse team. Evelyn (Yeoh) is juggling so many aspects of 21st Century living, while losing touch with her daughter (Hsu) and becoming estranged from her husband (Hong).
Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is trying to complete her tax audit, throw a Chinese New Year party to impress her father (James Hong), navigate a possible divorce and avoid alienating daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu). She’s also the last hope of the multiverse — tasked with fighting an evil entity threatening to destroy, well, everything. Empire
The first scenes of the film set out the difficulty of Evelyn’s situation. She ignores her husband who is filing for divorce, she has estranged her lesbian daughter, she is terrified of disappointing her father and worse, she must face Jamie Lee Curtis who plays a phenomenal role as a very physical tax auditor called Deirdre Beaubeirdra. Incidentally, Deidre has won multiple awards for her steadfastness. The shape of the award itself will not be described on this blog. From there, a version of her husband from a parallel universe (the Alphaverse, don’t you know), explains to her that a great evil is coming (Jobu Tupaki “an agent of pure chaos”)and that she was the only one who could save the world. He opens her mind to a multitude of alternative universes where she can be whatever she wants to be: a chef, a martial art star, and a famous actress. From the point where her Alphaverse husband passes her a note ending in “don’t forget to breathe”, the film takes off.
Evelyn must Verse jump to learn and use skills from her alternative selves and take on the forces of Jobu Tupaki. What follows are some of the wildest, most inventive, mind blowing fight scenes I have ever seen. There are so many things I have never seen in film before, and some things I hope never to see again (an alternative universe where Evelyn and Deirdre are lovers, with hotdogs for hands, for one).
It is thunderously cinematic, revelling in the simplicity of filmmaking’s most basic tools, while deploying them to their maximum potential. And it is brilliantly performed — Stephanie Hsu is revelatory as the multifaceted Joy; Quan is astonishing in his cinematic comeback, an action master who’ll make your heart explode too; Jamie Lee Curtis has a blast exaggerating the monstrous physicality of a no-bullshit tax officer; and Yeoh is perfection, drawing on every skill from every role she’s ever played to bring Evelyn’s many lives to life. Empire
The backbone of this extraordinary and sensory overloading film is that this is a family story. At its heart is a mother trying to re-connect with her daughter and husband, having allowed the noise of modern life to get in the way of what matters. There is a very touching scene where one of the universes visited saw Evelyn and Joy as two rocks, perched above a beautiful canyon. They are discussing the meaning of life and wondering whether they will discover some greater truth which will make them feel like “even smaller pieces of sh*t”. This film is about acceptance and it is wild in its portrayal of filial and parental duty. I shall leave Empire to have the final word, as their eloquence is something to which I can only aspire:
A pure firework display of technical bravado, wild invention, emotional storytelling, comedic genius, action mastery and outstanding performances, Everything Everywhere All At Once is everything cinema was invented for. Empire
