I was put off the cinema for a while by 'Sex & the City' and the murky message of 'Gone Baby Gone',- I hate American films as a rule, but ventured out yesterday for 'In Search of the Midnight Kiss', a a rehash of the early Woody Allen film, 'Manhatten' down to the b/w cinematography, kooky girl-friend and the city as the star. A big surprise is it's set in Los Angeles! It's the story of a night in which a young man lacking a New Year's date is urged to advertise on the Internet and meets up with a very disturbed but amusing young woman As I said, it's derivative, but is also an interesting portrait of contemporary twenty-something relationships. Anybody seen it?

I'm more used to US cities being destroyed rather than celebrated, recently. One TV last week, called 'The Day after Tomorrow', had North America engulfed by a new Ice Age, with Dennis Quaid trying to reach his son trapped in The New York Public Library in a blizzard. It's almost completely buried in snow. The UK is wiped out early on, of course, with Ian Holm as a stiff-upper-lipped weatherman glumly sipping whisky with his two companions as the lights go out. The US President does a hurried deal with Mexico so the Americans can cross the Rio Grande to relative safety. Quite absurd, but the special effects were good.Anybody see it?

Otherwise it's been wall-to-wall Michael Caine here as The Daily Mail is offering a fortnight's worth of of his early films on DVD. I had to cry off the second part of Jack the Ripper last night from tiredness. They all seem to be 'B' movies. I read that Caine once agreed to star in a film because the first line of the script read 'Outdoors- South of France- Daytime'

I did drag my partner along to 'Teeth' today, although he was all for 'Mongol'. I can see that on my own during the week, but I'm not keen on seeing Horror films alone. 'Teeth' was my favourite kind - scary but not the kind that has you jumping out of your seat or covering your eyes, gruesome and really very funny in that the nasties get their comeuppance, not innocents.

A discussion on Radio 4 seemed to think the new realease about Dylan Thomas and his mistress is worth checking out. Normally the literary connection would be enough to make me go but Keira Knightly as a night-club vamp I can't imagine. Can anybody recommend it?

Sheila

Zettel has reviewed this, Sheila - ISOAMK, I mean.

Yes, but with a different emphasis.

I interpreted the film as a homage to LA with the relationship as a plot device. It's what Hitchcock called the 'McGuffin'. There has to be a 'hook' to get people watching, in this case 'will they won't they' in terms of the central relationship, but that's not what the film's really about.

Have you seen 'Manhatten'? Woody Allen wanted to celebrate New York, and this filmmaker wanted to celebrate Los Angeles. The mcs in this film often move in bizarrely deserted areas of the city whilst the camera ranges over sculptured facades and towers. There's a scene in an opulently-decorated abandoned theatre where the girl says 'Isn't it a shame that there are so many out-of-work actors in LA and so many closed-down theatres?' To me that's making a point about how people in their society don't appreciate what they have.

It's the kind of thing I notice in films, and it's what raises this one above, for instance, 'Sex & the City', where there's an awful lot more sex than city but it's the former that interests people.

Sheila

Fascinating, Sheila! I've learned something new tonight! Have you got any more examples of this McGuffin thing?

Hi Jem!

Hitchcock used it to describe his own films, and any one of them is a good example but it's a term that's generally well-known in film circles. Here's a website quote, with my embolding:

'Over the years, the McGuffin has come to have a description formalized as: ‘ A device or plot element that catches the viewer’s attention or drives the plot. It is generally something that every character is concerned with.’ The McGuffin is essentially something that the entire story is built around and yet has no real relevance. Take the 1946 film Notorious, the story of an American agent who sends a woman to spy on her former lover (who happens to be a Nazi) as it is suspected they are plotting something sinister.

What the Nazis have discovered is the power of uranium. Looking at the film closer, the McGuffin is uranium which itself is only a peg on which you can hang the real story of two men who love a woman and the lengths that each of them will go to to prove their love. In fact, the uranium element was a last minute throw in by Hitchcock, he had originally envisioned the Nazis being involved in diamonds (which they would use in munitions building). The switch from diamonds to uranium is a clear indication that it wasn’t important exactly what the McGuffin was, as long as it served its purpose. The McGuffin itself was not important to Hitchcock, he only was concerned that ‘it be, or appear to be, of vital importance to the characters’ (Hitchcock/Truffaut 1983). In Notorious the idea of the uranium is important to the characters but it is, but the actual uranium it’s self holds no importance. This is a slight distinction but an important one. With the McGuffin (uranium) clearly in focus, we can see that one of the great spy films of all time is actually less about the intrigue of spies and more about the machinations of love.

I'm not saying all films are so clear-cut, just that sometimes the apparent plot may just be a hook on which to hang a theme the director's interested in. I've been made more aware of the technique by studying Chinese films of the 80s, which concealed criticism of the contemporary political regime under the protecne of dealing with historical subjects.

It seemed to me that the direct of 'In Search...etc' wanted to make a film about the architectural beauty of Los Angeles and its neglected buildings, so he used the love story as the 'McGuffin'.

Hoever, it's just my interpretation, and I don't claim it's the correct or only way of looking at it.

I have seen a lot of Hitchcock films but I don't like them much.

Sheila

Do you not? One of my favourite films is North by North West. I have to watch it every time it comes on. You might not know this, but for kids doing GCSE Media, Psycho is one of the films on the syllabus. My son loved it, and also The Birds, when I took him to see that on the big screen.

Yes, I liked 'Psycho' but not the way he bumped off Janet Leigh so soon. It's his depiction of women - the 'cool blondes' - I don't like. I've read a couple of biographies and he was definitely a very strange and creepy character. Still, I suppose that's one of the reasons for his success. I like 'Rear Window' and 'Strangers on a Train' best, I think, the latter adapted from a novel by Patricia Highsmith. I happened to see it on a long train journey once. I also like 'The Thirty-nine Steps' and 'The Lady Vanishes'.

I think 'Psycho' was an 'X' rated film when I first saw it. I've seen the shower scene a lot of times on film courses.

I'm currently writing a novel in which people on a weekend course are studying the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Sheila

Yes, I know what you mean about his depiction of women. I saw Strangers on a Train only a few weeks ago at the cinema, remastered, and enjoyed it very much.

Just revisited the synopsis of my shamefully neglected novel (I've only written the first chapter) and I find the film group's theme is 'The Films of Claude Chabrol'. He's known as the 'French Alfred Hitchcock'. Maybe I should change it to Hitchcock after all.

Remastering is excellent. I saw a remastered Terence Davies film called 'Distant Voices, Still Lives', one of my favourite films, a few months back.

Sheila

Yes, I saw that too, Sheila. That's when we started chatting over in Film and TV reviews.

By the way:

A discussion on Radio 4 seemed to think the new realease about Dylan Thomas and his mistress is worth checking out. Normally the literary connection would be enough to make me go but Keira Knightly as a night-club vamp I can't imagine. Can anybody recommend it?

This was slated in The Observer yesterday. Poor script, unconvincing female characters and then you have the problem of Ikea Knightley. Nice frocks though.

By coincidence, my partner is watching a VHS tape of 'Rebecca' as I write this. We've just arrived at Manderley. Mrs Danvers is a right gorgon - another of Hitchcock's favourite female type, like Mrs Van Harper in the previous scene.

I've just posted the first chapter of my crime novel to the crime and thriller writers' group, but I don't suppose I'll get much further with it as I'm trying to prioritise the short stories.

Yes, I read the Sunday Times review - 'IKEA Knightley' made me laugh. I think I'll go all the same.

There's a horrible pub close to where I live, called Dylan's. The pub sign has a picture of Dylan Thomas on one side and Bob Dylan on the other.

Sheila

Just back from 'The Edge of Love' and it should have succeeded. It had all the right ingredients in terms of wartime setting, thrilling storyline and love stories, plus Welsh landscape, songs and poetry. It was just such a mess.It wasn't just Keira, either, although I must say she made the other woman seem like Oscar material just by standing, or lying, next to her. The credits said the convincing one was Sienna Miller, hitherto known only to me from the party pages of LondonLite and Metro.It was cruel, really, to put Keira through it, although she looked OK in the singing scenes and delivered the three numbers that featured her very well - probably only two or three lines from each song.Unfortunatly, she just always looked the same in the rest of the scenes and there were lots of close-ups. In Atonement she was often seen in middle distance or from behind, but here the director seems to have been short of camera angles. The cinematography was confusing at times, which didn't help. Her top lip was the main problem -too stiff in the best British tradition- and I wondered if she'd had Botox. She did well with the South Wales accent, too. It wasn't just her, though - all the acting apart from Sienna was poor and you just couldn't relax into the story.

Sheila

Thanks, Sheila! You've confirmed my prejudices. And how convincing a South Wales accent is would depend on how familiar you are with one, I imagine. My dad was from the valleys so I have lots of relatives with that accent, so I'd need a lot of convincing!

I'm not bad on Welsh accents. My husband is half Welsh -his father was a minerin Abercynon, a bleak village near Merthy Tydfil, until the pit closed and he came to London. We once spent a fortnight's holiday in Swansea, when it rained all the time and we got soaked walking on the Gower Peninsula. We saw Dylan Thomas's house. That's part of why I wanted to see the film. We also used to listen to Richard Burton reading 'Under Milk Wood' from a record. He was from a Welsh-speaking family near Port Talbot. A good friend na and colleague came from Swansea; another close friend and her husband were natives of Newport, and I remember a 'mixed' party of townies and valley people where the difference was explained to me. One of my best friends is from 'Welsh' Wales, near Aberystwyth, whereas the Newport pair didn't even speak Welsh and there was a big cultural gap - they were members of the same small department, unfortunately. I suppose it's not so surprising that there are so many Welsh people in the teaching profession. I think Catherine Zeta Jones comes from Swansea -not that she's a teacher, of course. . Anway, I thought the best thing about Keira was her accent - presumably they had a coach.

I've just remembered - a couple who are main characters in my novel, The Play's the Thing, come from Swansea.

Sheila