Summer Reading Challenge: Billy Liar

 John Schlesinger's 1963 film version of Billy Liar is a largely faithful adaptation of Keith Waterhouse's 1959 novel. The changes are minor, often done for the sake of condensing the narrative and adding moments that are alluded too in the novel but are filled out in the film. 

The major difference (spoilers!) is that in the novel Liz encourages Billy to go to London, but she herself is going to Doncaster.
The film does a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of the novel, the black and white cinematography perfectly highlights the bleakness of Billy's Yorkshire home, with its grim industrial town and its windswept moors.

Despite his incessant lying, Billy's fantasies and desire to escape from the mundanity of his life are  relatable, and the confusion his stories cause also create some rather humorous moments.

The youth of Billy and his friends, especially Liz, is contrasted by the overreaching hand of death that plays a subtle but prominent part in the story. Billy works at a funeral parlour, his fantasies about Ambrosia often involve wars, his Grandmother is ill, and passes away, even the songs sung at the pub are about dying. In contrast Billy plans peaceful futures with both Barbara and Liz, as all the while their Yorkshire home is being pulled down and modernised. The future is encroaching and Billy seems torn between longing for change and living in fear of it.

Both novel and film present Britain on the edge of this change. The free spirited 1960s are just around the corner. Julie Christie's portrayal of Liz in particular came to represent the 'it' girl of the moment, and Billy is like many young people of the time, torn between his desire for a more exciting life and his duties towards his family. The story also highlights an issue that would become more prominent as the decade went on-the generation gap. The continuous struggles, differences and alienation felt between the young towards their parents and vice versa. In a general sense the young embrace change but the older generation are resistant to it.
As the novel closes it is hard not to want Billy to make his escape, but realistically we know he has to sort out his problems. His final decision is sensible, if disappointing to our sense of adventure, though it is somehow heartening to know that he retains his vivid imagination.
Billy Liar is a humorous and poignant story, and I really recommend both novel and film.

"I had a feeling, one that I wanted to keep. It was a feeling of peace and melancholy" p. 93

"I was amazed and intrigued that they should all be content to be nobody but themselves" p. 112

"I wish it was something you could tear up and start again. Life I mean. You know like starting a new page in an exercise book." p. 144

"What I'd like is to be invisible...You know, to do everything without people knowing, and not having to worry about them, not having to explain all the time." p. 151

Summer Reading Challenge: Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait

I still remember how fascinated I was by the film, A Streetcar Named Desire, when I first saw it. I was in high school and we had been studying the play in literature.
There on the schools television flickered to life this intense, grown-up (well for a teenager!), and complicated story. There was Marlon Brando's intense masculinity and sexuality, the atmospheric, moody music and cinematography and the ethereal, tormented, flighty, mysterious Blanche DuBois-Vivien Leigh.
I confess I have only seen a handful of Vivien's films, though I have watched Gone With the Wind many times, but I have always been fascinated by her, and her life. And I have long wanted to read this book having followed Kendra Bean for some time on Instagram, and having enjoyed reading her blog dedicated to Vivien and Larry.

Vivien took great care to play roles that appealed to her and that she thought would show off her talents. That she played the two most famous literary Southern Belles with such skill is an amazing feat for an English actress. Watching Gone With the Wind and Streetcar it is so easy to forget that she wasn't American!
I found it fascinating how Vivien played so many strong, yet ultimately tragic women-Scarlett O'Hara, Cleopatra, Emma Hamilton, Anna Karenina and Blanche DuBois. In many ways each of these characters reflected something of herself-she was both an incredibly strong, passionate, dedicated woman, but she also experienced great sadness and immense loss.

The other major part of Vivien's life and this book, is her relationship with Laurence Olivier. Their relationship was passionate and tempestuous, both were strong-willed and extremely dedicated to their work.
I was surprised to learn that for a long time Vivien was regarded as a lesser actor to Olivier, and many thought she was only on the stage because of him. Their's is a tragic story, they both loved each other dearly, but ultimately were unable to be together. As Vivien reflected,

"There are only two things in my life which I am absolutely certain I would do over. The first is that I should become an actress-the second, that I should marry Laurence Olivier." p. 169

The book also deals with Vivien's struggles with mental illness, she suffered from bipolar disorder. Having experienced my own battles with mental illness I was inspired by Vivien's story. Though her illness caused her immense unhappiness and problems she remained a consummate professional and a kind hearted, generous friend. Despite what she suffered she did not let it stop her work or her dreams.

New York, 1963

This is a beautiful book and a beautiful tribute to a fascinating, talented woman who left an undeniable mark on cinema history. I feel I learned so much about Vivien, and I look forward to watching more of her films.

"I was not cast in the mold of serenity and in any case, although you may succeed in being kind at twenty you cannot be calm, with all your life still before you, and your ambitions unfulfilled"
-Vivien, p. 24

"Actual beauty-beauty of feature is not what matters, it's beauty of spirit and beauty of imagination and beauty of mind. I tried in Streetcar to let people see what Blanche was like when she was in love with her young husband when she was seventeen or eighteen. That was awfully important, because...you should have been able to see what she was like, and how this gradually had happened to her...you have to evoke this whole creature when she was young and when she was tender and trusting, as opposed to what she had become-cynical and hard, mad, and distressed and distraught."
-Vivien, p. 137

"I have always tried to tackle things that I thought were beyond me"
-Vivien, p. 149

"I don't think life can be considered in terms of depression and elation. I just don't understand people who say they plan their careers...Planning means that the chance opportunity, the unexpected challenge, cannot be seized. And these are the things that make life exciting."
-Vivien, p. 237

Summer Reading Challenge: Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn in World War II

I've been very excited to read this book, being both a massive Audrey Hepburn fan, and a bit of a World War Two history buff!

Whilst most people are aware that Audrey grew up in Nazi occupied Holland, her reluctance to talk about this aspect of her life led many biographers to gloss over it. However, as author Robert Matzen realised, to understand what happened during the Second World War is to understand Audrey and her views about life.
Audrey lived through the Nazi occupation, the Battle of Arnhem and the hunger winter of 1944. She lost close family and friends, and many times her own life was in danger. I really hadn't realised just how close the battle was to her home, and how relentlessly and devastatingly her village was bombed.
Matzen's book is meticulously researched, he's cleared up many points that were either hinted at, or ignored, in previous Audrey biographies-such as her involvement with the resistance, her parents stance on the war, and her family background. We learn about her difficult, but close, relationship with her mother, her passionate dedication to ballet and her work helping in a hospital run by the Dutch resistance.

Audrey with her mother Ella Van Heemstra, 1942

Audrey with her beloved Aunt Meisje and Uncle Otto

Many of Audrey's experiences were incredibly harrowing and traumatic but she retained her love of dance, children and nature. Matzen does a wonderful job of setting the scene, he tries to make you feel as if you are experiencing the sights and sounds of battle, and I think this is crucial in trying to understand just what it was Audrey lived through as a young woman.

Audrey experienced so much in her early years, more than many experience in a lifetime, but despite the horrors she saw, she remained a loving and kindhearted person, devoted to helping others, I have so much respect for how she lived her life, she really was a special soul.
I recommend this book to anyone who may wish to learn more about Audrey, Dutch Girl, does an amazing job of highlighting an essential part of her life story.

Audrey dancing in 1942

"There's a curious thing about pain. In the beginning, it's an enemy, it's something that you don't want to face or think about or deal with. Yet with time it becomes almost a friend. If you've lost someone you love very much, in the beginning you can't bear it, but as the years go by, the pain of losing them is what reminds you so vividly of them-that they were alive. My experiences and the people I lost in the war remain so vivid to me because of the pain."
-Audrey, p. 105

"I don't think you ever forget anything, totally, but life, and especially time, gives you a way to deal with it, to live with it. I have a good cry every so often, like everyone else."
-Audrey, p. 150

"My childhood in Arnhem and in Velp was the most important part of my youth, I was ten when the Germans invaded the Netherlands and I was fifteen when it was all over. They were very delicate, precious years. I experienced a lot then, but it was not all misery. The circumstances brought family and friends closer together. You ate the last potatoes together."
-Audrey, p. 236

Audrey's wartime identity card

Summer Reading Challenge

I'm pleased to say that this year I will be taking part in Out of the Past's Summer Reading Challenge (or Winter if you're me!) I participated in 2016, but only managed to read four books, this year I'm hoping to read the full six!

The books I have chosen are:

1. Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn in World War Two by Robert Matzen

2. Julie Christie by Melanie Bell

3. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

4. Julie Christie by Michael Feeney Callan

5. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

6. Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait by Kendra Bean

(I think Julie Christie might be my theme this year!)

If you would like to participate all the details can be found here-Happy Reading!

L'Eclisse-Monica Vitti (1962)

Monica Vitti's languid beauty is what fills L'Eclisse, we wait to see her on screen. As Vittoria she is cool, bored, troubled, impetuous and intelligent. She goes from laughing to seriousness in seconds, and this creates a reality to a film that is often dream like in it's stark beauty. It is she who displays the emptiness and boredom of modern day life, the sense that there might be something better but it is unattainable in a society that is fixated on the material. The people around Vittoria are obsessed with consumerism, with wealth, in contrast Vittoria takes pleasure from the small things in life, the wind rattling a fence, people walking in the streets, photographs, things that seem to go unnoticed by the fast paced style of living adopted by her contemporaries. Stylistically Vitti is often filmed from behind, so that we see her world, but do we ever truly see her? Perhaps not, but her dissatisfaction with life, though unspoken, is certainly relatable in this day and age.

Fragments-Marilyn Monroe

Happily as time goes by more and more people seem to be coming to the realisation that Marilyn Monroe was not a 'dumb blonde' but an incredibly intelligent, aware and sensitive woman. The tragedy is that for so long Marilyn has been viewed as being the archetypical sex goddess and few have realised the depth of her knowledge and interests. A quick google search of the books she owned and read gives up a phenomenal and impressive reading list that puts the most avid bookworm to shame.
She is at her most fascinating and raw in the 2010 book, Fragments. 

As the title suggests Fragments is a collection of fragmentary pieces, letters, poems, diary entries and self analysis written by Marilyn over the duration of her adult life. The subject matter ranges from her thoughts on her childhood, marriage, career, emotions and dreams. She is sensitive, self aware, melancholic and sometimes humorous. I cannot think of a better book to read in order to know the real Marilyn.
Here is an excerpt from one of her poems that I found particularly beautiful and haunting:

And the silence is alone
except for the thunderous rumbling of things unknown
distant drums very present
but for the peircing of screams
and the whispers of things
sharp sounds and then suddenly hushed
to moans beyond sadness-terror beyond fear
The cry of things dim and too young to be known yet
The sobs of life itself
p. 73

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Arthur Penn's infamous Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is based on the true story of bank robbers Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway). Together they form a gang that terrorises America, robbing and shooting their way to an inevitable but brutal end.

The most arresting character is Dunaway's Bonnie. She's flirtatious, impetuous, intelligent, nervy and loyal. Bonnie is also the most complex character, from the moment the audience is introduced to her we sense her boredom with life, her agitation and her frustrated sensuality.
As the film progresses Bonnie's apparent over exuberance and risk taking behaviour make way for someone intensely frustrated with her position in life. Bonnie is tired of her narrow world, tired of being poor, tired of being a waitress. More than any of the other characters it is Bonnie that the audience sympathises with when she is subjected to the noise and hysteria of Buck (Gene Hackman) and Blanche (Estelle Parsons). And it is Bonnie who rightly sees the dangers of having the screaming Blanche as part of the gang.

There is a jekyll and hyde element to Bonnie. On the one hand she is intelligent and deep thinking, writing poetry, patient with Clyde's apparent impotency and perceptive. On the other she is flighty, reckless and seems to have limited moral boundaries. Or perhaps she is just blinded by love. Whilst Bonnie participates in the robberies and brandishes a gun, she is also a lost girl who longs for her mother and is hurt by her mother's perception that it will all 'go wrong'. Initially the excitement of being on the run sustains Bonnie, but later she asks Clyde what he would do if they could start over, be 'clean'. His admittance that he would continue robbing banks, just not in the same state, seems to dissatisfy her.

There is an intense feeling of claustrophobia in Bonnie and Clyde. Each time Bonnie screams out in frustration over the close living quarters, shared with Buck and Blanche, the audience wants to scream their agreement. Much of the film is spent with five people squashed into cars of varying sizes. There is no room to breathe, no room to move. In contrast, when they are alone, Clyde and Bonnie frequent wide open spaces.

If Bonnie and Clyde exhibit a sort of dangerous glamour, it is a false one, that distances them from the reality of what their lives would be like without crime-what the lives of every other American is like. Set in the Great Depression, opportunities are limited for everyone, and in a sequence that could be straight out of The Grapes of Wrath the criminals come across a family camped by the side of the road with everything they own piled on top of their car. This is a tale of the American dream gone wrong, in part because there was no feasibility of the dream to begin with. A story of the immorality of youth, coupled with the dark underbelly of America's obsession with guns-both from the criminal point of view and from that of the law.

4/5