Best Picture? I don't think so

The 91st Academy Awards will be broadcast on February 24, 2019, and I doubt that I'll be watching. Not only is the whole self-congratulatory exercise overlong, tacky and often boring (except when it's a train wreck), but the influence on the awards of campaigning and of box office success or failure has meant that the Academy has a pretty terrible track record when it comes to honoring cinematic achievement picking winners.

Best Picture has been a category where particularly poor choices have been made. Inspired by this Guardian article, for each of the nine decades of sound films I've chosen a single year (generally among several) in which the Best Picture winner was clearly the wrong film.

Best Picture winner of 1938: You Can't Take It With You, written by Robert Riskin and directed by Frank Capra, based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

You Can't Take It With You has a great cast, including Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Lionel Barrymore. But as I wrote in The Films of Jean Arthur, "A major mistake made by Capra and Riskin is to marginalize the winsome Arthur and Stewart, who disappear for long stretches while screen time is taken up by the 'zany' (i.e. gratingly irritating) antics of the other family members."

The film that should have won: Grand Illusion, written by Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak, directed by Renoir.*

Perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made, Renoir's La Grande Illusion is set during World War I but is clearly intended to sound the alarm about the conflagration about to engulf the world. A group of French prisoners is held in a German camp; while confined there, the aristocratic French officer Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) discovers that he has more in common with the German commandant von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) than he does with his own enlisted men. And both men come to recognize that their code of military honor has become outdated in an age of mass slaughter.

Best Picture winner of 1944: Going My Way, written by Frank Butler and Frank Cavett, directed by Leo McCarey.

I'm not an enemy of sentiment—I think either The Bishop's Wife or Miracle on 34th Street would have been a better Best Picture of 1947 than Gentleman's Agreement—so I can't be too curmudgeonly about Going My Way. After all, it's got opera star Risë Stevens playing, well, an opera star, and Bing Crosby playing a priest whose laid-back fatherliness is just what his new parish's dead-end kids need. Jazz critic and Crosby biographer Gary Giddins calls it "funny and resonant." And, no doubt, immensely comforting for home-front audiences. But it wasn't the best picture of 1944.

The film that should have won: Double Indemnity, written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, directed by Wilder, based on the novel by James M. Cain.

Double Indemnity features the doubly indelible performances of Fred MacMurray as an unscrupulous insurance salesman and Barbara Stanwyck as a seductive siren; together they plot to murder her inconvenient husband and, of course, collect the insurance. It's also formally inventive, narrated in flashback over the course of a single night by MacMurray's character. Infidelity, murder, betrayal: far from offering comfort, Wilder's ink-black noir is distinctly unsettling.

Double Indemnity was hardly the only film noir overlooked by the Academy in the 1940s. If you were putting together a noir festival you'd undoubtedly also include The Maltese Falcon (1941), Laura (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Gilda (1946), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Out of the Past (1947), and Gun Crazy (1949). You can count on one finger the number of those films that were nominated for Best Picture (The Maltese Falcon, which, together with Citizen Kane, lost to How Green Was My Valley).

Best Picture winner of 1958: Gigi, written by Alan Lerner with music by Frederick Loewe, directed by Vincent Minnelli, based on the novel by Colette.

Even for someone who is generally a fan of movie musicals, Gigi can be hard to watch, particularly when Maurice Chevalier's smarmy Honoré is onscreen (yes, this is the film with "Thank Heaven for Little Girls"). The plot, such as it is, turns on whether the virginal but hardly innocent young Gigi (Leslie Caron) will agree to become the mistress of Honoré's nephew Gaston (Louis Jourdan). The sexual politics of the movie must have been jarringly anachronistic even in 1958. Like Chevalier, this film hasn't aged well.

The film that should have won: Vertigo, written by Samuel Taylor, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the novel D'Entre les Morts by Boileau-Narcejac.

In the first post on this blog I wrote that Vertigo, Hitchcock's masterpiece of obsession, is a film that "becomes richer with every viewing." It features Hitchcock's swirling, disorienting camera; Bernard Herrmann's sweeping, powerful score; James Stewart's tormented detective Scotty Ferguson; and Kim Novak's brilliant double role as the coolly erotic Madeline Elster and the pleading, insecure Judy Barton. On its release a box office failure, in 2012 it was chosen in the Sight and Sound Critics' Poll as the greatest film ever made.

As is well known, Hitchcock was regularly snubbed by the Academy. Among his other films from the 1950s are Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and North By Northwest (1959). Remarkably, none of these films (including Vertigo) was nominated for Best Picture.

Best Picture winner of 1968: Oliver!, written by Vernon Harris with music by Lionel Bart and John Green, directed by Carol Reed, based on the stage musical by Bart and the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

Yes, it's tuneful and has charming urchins, but that doesn't make it the best film released in 1968.

The film that should have won: 2001: A Space Odyssey, written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, directed by Kubrick.

A small team of astronauts is sent on an expedition to the outer planets. Because the trip will take years, most of the crew has been placed in suspended animation. But the HAL-9000 computer running the ship has been given secret instructions to alter the ship's mission, and cannot let mere human lives interfere. . .Kubrick's film was the first to depict the possibilities of space exploration with scientific accuracy. He captured both the wonder and the fear occasioned by the vastness of the cosmos, and our anxieties about the destructive potential of our technologies. 2001 was ranked #2 in the 2012 Sight and Sound Directors' Poll of the greatest films of all time.

Best Picture winner of 1979: Kramer vs. Kramer, written and directed by Robert Benton, based on the novel by Avery Corman.

Misogyny masquerading as male feminist enlightenment. Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) abandons her workaholic husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and their son Billy (Justin Henry) to "find herself." Over the course of the next year Ted gradually learns how to be a nurturing dad, and even has to take a lower-paying job so that he can have the time to provide care for Billy. (This is not presented as a dilemma that women are routinely compelled to face, but rather as a sign of Ted's moral superiority.) Joanna returns after a year to sue her former husband for custody of Billy, and in court reveals that (although she's been out of the workforce for a decade) she's now earning a higher salary than he is. Awarded custody, Joanna comes to the realization that Ted is a better parent than she can ever be.

The film that should have won: Apocalypse Now, written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, directed by Coppola, based on the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

This film is a famous mess: Marlon Brando (Colonel Kurtz) arrived on set obese and unprepared, Martin Sheen (Captain Willard) suffered a heart attack on location, and the sets were destroyed by a typhoon. Coppola took years to edit the mountains of footage and produced multiple versions of the film. In the version I saw in a repertory theater in the 1980s, Kurtz's compound is obliterated by a massive airstrike as the closing credits roll, one of the most astonishingly violent film sequences I've ever seen. (Apparently Coppola removed this footage from subsequent versions.) The French theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote that Apocalypse Now is "the extension of the war through other means, the pinnacle of this failed war, and its apotheosis." The film was ranked #6 in the 2012 Sight and Sound Directors' Poll of the greatest films of all time.

Best Picture winner of 1989: Driving Miss Daisy, written by Alfred Uhry, directed by Bruce Beresford, based on the play by Uhry.

In 1989 a powerful film about racism and its continuing legacies featuring revered veteran actors was released. Only it wasn't Driving Miss Daisy.

The film that should have won: Do The Right Thing, written and directed by Spike Lee.

An urgent film that grips you from the first moment of the Public-Enemy-fueled title sequence and never lets go, Do The Right Thing addresses racism (of all kinds), tensions in changing communities, and police violence against black men and women. A great cast includes Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Danny Aiello, Bill Nunn (above), John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Roger Guenveur Smith, Martin Lawrence, Samuel Jackson, Rosie Perez and Lee himself. Unfortunately still as relevant as the day it was released, Do The Right Thing is one of the greatest American films of the past 30 years.

Best Picture winner of 1990: Dances with Wolves, written by Michael Blake, directed by Kevin Costner, based on the book by Blake.

A film that attempts to honor Native Americans, but indulges in discredited white savior and noble savage narratives.

The film that should have won: Goodfellas, written by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese, directed by Scorsese, based on the book Wiseguy by Pileggi.

The story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a mob hanger-on who turns informer, Goodfellas is one of Scorsese's best films. The "Do you think I'm funny?" scene, in which a seemingly offhand comment Hill makes to psychotic gangster Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) suddenly becomes a matter of deadly seriousness, is one of several brilliant set pieces in the film. Another is the sequence just before Hill's arrest, as, high on cocaine, he tries to instruct his wife in the making of a Bolognese sauce, manage a collapsing drug deal, and control his paranoia about FBI surveillance (which turns out to be justified). In the 2012 Sight and Sound Directors' Poll, Goodfellas is tied at #48 with Hitchcock's Psycho (1961) and Rear Window (1954), Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (1955), and Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Best Picture of 1975), among others.

Best Picture winner of 2001: A Beautiful Mind, written by Akiva Goldsman, directed by Ron Howard, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar.

Aussie action hero Russell Crowe as a schizophrenic genius? As you might guess, A Beautiful Mind glamorizes, simplifies and falsifies mathematician John Nash's life story, omitting his bisexuality, his violence towards his wife Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), and their 1963 divorce (they remarried in 2001). As usual for Hollywood biopics, the film goes for uplift over the actual complexity of the subject's life.

The film that should have won: Mulholland Drive, written and directed by David Lynch.

Set on the fringes of Hollywood, Mulholland Drive is a dreamlike neo-noir that turns nightmarish. Lynch masterfully creates an atmosphere of suspense and dread. Characters are doubled and may exist in each other's dreams or fantasies. As with any David Lynch film the narrative is non-linear and open to multiple interpretations. Mulholland Drive was ranked #28 in the 2012 Sight and Sound Critics' Poll of the greatest films of all time.

Best Picture winner of 2014: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), written by Alejandro Iñárritu and others (did it really take four people to produce this script?), directed by Iñárritu.

An utterly insufferable actors' and director's exercise, Birdman is an attempt to remake John Cassavetes' semi-improvisatory Opening Night (1977) using the pseudo-continuous-take technique of Hitchcock's Rope (1948). Neither the director nor the actors seem to be aware of how annoying narcissistic self-regard, inflated self-importance, and rampant self-pity can be. I defy anyone to sit through this turkey more than once.

The film that should have won: The Grand Budapest Hotel, written and directed by Wes Anderson.

Perhaps based in part on Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal's novel I Served the King of England, Anderson's film features an old hotel, a priceless painting, and a murder mystery set against the violent history of Central Europe in the 20th century. In my list of favorite films seen in 2014, I wrote that the movie, a "matrushka doll of a fairy tale, with its stories within stories, is a visual and narrative delight."

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* Because there was no Best Foreign Language Film award in 1938, Grand Illusion was eligible for Best Picture (and was nominated in that category).

Puzzle

Puzzle (2018; written by Oren Moverman and Polly Mann, directed by Marc Turtletaub; based on the film Rompecabezas (2010), written and directed by Natalia Smirnoff)

Puzzle takes place against a background of competitive jigsaw puzzling. While watching it I was struck by the realization that the competitive versions of many activities destroy everything that's enjoyable about them. Competitive eating approaches food as a matter of volume and speed; a voluntary experience further removed from the pleasures of savoring a delicious meal with friends is hard to imagine. Competitive Scrabble is won not by playing long or clever words, but (as Stefan Fatsis' excellent Word Freak (2001) reveals) by memorizing all the permissible two- and three-letter words—and where's the fun in that?

Competitive jigsaw puzzling is a contest to finish in the shortest time. So much for the meditative enjoyment of the interaction of color, pattern, and shape, or in the slow emergence of an image. It is for people for whom the destination is more important than the journey, and for whom the freedom of leisure is oppressive.

Speaking of the freedom of leisure, it is clearly not something that Puzzle's suburban housewife Agnes (a superb Kelly Macdonald) has experienced for many years. As the film opens we see Agnes making painstaking preparations for a birthday party: hanging decorations, inflating balloons, baking a cake. But it's her own birthday that's being celebrated; neither her husband Louie (David Denham) nor her college-aged sons could be bothered to organize the party for her, or even give her a hand. Later, as she's unwrapping presents alone (one thoughtful guest has given her the book Aging with Grace, a moment a less subtle director might have lingered on) she is bemused, but also intrigued, by the gift of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

The next day, after her family is out of the house, she begins working on the puzzle. Suddenly there's a jump cut to the moment when she's placing the final piece. The late-afternoon light tells us that hours have passed; Agnes has been completely unaware of the passage of time. And before the day is over and her family returns she has done the puzzle a second time. When she sits down to do the puzzle she's completely absorbed and utterly focussed, and something in her is deeply satisfied when the final piece is locked in place. The puzzle becomes a daily ritual, and she even begins timing herself to see if she can finish faster. Her response to the puzzle, together with some other clues, make us begin to suspect that Agnes may be somewhere on the very mild end of the autism spectrum.

We also begin to suspect that her pleasure in doing the puzzle has alerted Agnes to the lack of pleasure in the rest of her life. When her son's girlfriend explains that one principle of Buddhism is to recognize that suffering results from the desire for happiness, and so to end our suffering we must stop trying to be happy, Agnes' look tells us how unwelcome this idea is.

Happiness has clearly not been so abundant in Agnes' life that she's willing to give up on the very idea.

Eventually she goes to a Manhattan puzzle store (aptly called Puzzle Mania) in search of more puzzles. She is drawn to two: one a George Romney-style portrait of a mother and child, and the other Goya's voluptuous "Naked Maja." Duty versus pleasure: "I can't decide," she says to the clerk, and takes both.

At the store she sees a notice for a competitive puzzle partner, and contacts him. Robert (Irrfan Khan, who may be most familiar to American viewers from The Lunchbox, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Namesake, among his many other films) is an inventor who has struck it rich. He lives alone in the city and has a lot of time on his hands, which he mainly seems to spend watching disaster footage on the news. (Like Agnes, he seems to find certain repetitive behaviors to be self-soothing.)

Robert introduces Agnes to the competitive puzzle-solving system: separate the pieces by color and by whether they are edge pieces or not. One partner assembles the border while the other works on sections by color. Agnes has followed a much more intuitive process, but as they work together they discover that they are very good as a team. Agnes begins to travel into the city regularly to meet Robert and work on puzzles.

You can imagine a different version of this film in which Agnes' newfound interest in puzzling takes her through a series of competitions ending with a championship victory, and where that victory brings her family to the realization that they've been taking her for granted. Earnest speeches, tearful hugs, upbeat music, fade to credits.

But Puzzle isn't that film, and doesn't want to make it that easy on us. Agnes often behaves in not entirely sympathetic ways: she serves chicken when her son's vegan girlfriend comes over for dinner; she fat-shames Louie with a look of disgust when he's undressing for bed; she lies to her family about Robert and the ever-increasing time they're spending together; and—spoiler alert!—she and Robert become romantically and sexually involved.

Agnes is a clumsy liar, of course, and as she returns home later and later it's obvious to everyone that something is going on. Louie finally asks her straight out if she's having an affair. "We've had sex one time," she tells him, and then goes on to overshare: ". . .and it wasn't good, but it wasn't bad."

When your husband asks you if you're having an affair, he's not asking for a review of your lover. Agnes' response seems unnecessarily hurtful.

—End of spoilers—

So in her pursuit of her own happiness Agnes is not always exactly admirable. And Louie is not an ogre. His great flaw is that he has thought that it's enough for him to work hard to provide for his family. Being concerned about Agnes's emotional needs, or lending a hand with raising their kids or with household chores, was in Louie's view never a part of the bargain. And Agnes seems to have accepted that bargain—until her discovery of puzzling upends her routines and reveals unsuspected capacities.

Puzzle is a thought- and conversation-provoking film which sidesteps most of the ready-made clichés of its genre. At one point Robert says to Agnes, "When you complete a puzzle you know you have made all the right choices." But one of the strengths of Puzzle is that neither Agnes nor we are sure that she is making the right choices. The ending of the film continues this ambiguity, leaving us with the feeling that there is no guarantee that she will find fulfillment. Despite that uncertainty, she's finally gained the strength to make some needed changes in her life, and that newfound strength is what gives us hope for her. No longer focussed solely on her destination, she is trying to find happiness along the way.

Farewell to my youth: Selling my vinyl

Over the past couple of weeks I've begun selling my vinyl records. It feels like I'm saying farewell to my youth—although clearly my youth said farewell to me quite a few years ago.

The symbolic meaning of getting rid of my vinyl seems inescapable. My records represent a decade-plus in which I spent literally hundreds of hours haunting used record stores. I did so not because I was a record collector, but because music was such a huge part of how I defined myself. To say goodbye to my records is saying goodbye to the person for whom each record purchase was a vital selection because it expressed a part of who I was, or wanted to be.

Like every addictive substance, vinyl records were expensive. Being perpetually underemployed I could only afford new ones on very rare occasions, so almost always when there was a record I wanted I had to hope to find a used copy. I was also fastidious about condition, which made my search even harder. Fortunately the Bay Area was home to some great record stores: in Berkeley, Rather Ripped, Universal Records and the Mint Platter; in San Francisco, Recycled, Reckless and Streetlight. (All are now closed.)

I was fortunate to spend my record-hunting years around the time of the emergence of CDs, when vinyl was being significantly devalued. Back then the list price of a new vinyl album was typically $14.98; I generally paid a budget-friendly $3 to $5 for my used finds (about $7.75 to $13 in today's money—then as now about the price of a burrito. Yes, that meant I sometimes sacrificed lunch or dinner to my music habit).

I also sought out a lot of punk and post-punk music that was issued in limited pressings on small labels. Those records, I now discover, have become collector's items. As an example, in 1983 the scene-leading DC hardcore band Minor Threat issued a nine-song 12" EP, Out Of Step. The EP contained an unlisted final track, "Cashing In," that ended with lead singer Ian Mackay singing "There's no place like home. . .so where am I?" It was a moment of naked emotional vulnerability that resonated with my own feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.

On Out Of Step's first pressing that question faded into an echoing silence. But (as I discovered when I brought home my brand-new copy of a later pressing) on subsequent pressings the band added an overdub of an orchestra tuning up. I thought the added orchestra was horribly pretentious and ruined the song. But the first pressing had sold out almost instantly and was unobtainable. So I had to search for nearly two years before I could find a used copy of the first pressing (identifiable by its black, blank back cover).

Out Of Step sold for $3 when it was released. Later I bought my used first pressing for $5, which was then the list price for a new copy, but I thought it was worth it to lose the orchestra. I note that the current median sale price for a first pressing of Out Of Step on discogs.com is $325, and one intrepid (or delusional) dealer has a copy listed at $1200.

It's prices like these that have convinced me that we are near the peak of the market for used vinyl. Sure, there are a lot of techies in my town earning six-figure salaries; perhaps they wouldn't think twice about spending $1200 on an easily-damaged artifact of a culture they are too young to have experienced in person. (Not to mention that spending $1200 for this record is antithetical to everything that Minor Threat stood for and expresses in their music.)

But I also suspect that the time of vinyl-as-fetish-object will be coming to an end in the next few years. None of my friends or relatives with kids in their twenties report that they own records (or any physical media), and almost everyone I know that's my age or older is either in the process of getting rid of their records, or got rid of them long ago. They're certainly not buying new ones.

So it seems as though it's primarily people in their 30s who are buying vinyl; will they continue to do so for another decade? I'm thinking not; the disadvantages of vinyl records—they're easily scratched or warped, they're heavy (an album in its sleeve typically weighs half a pound or more), they require a lot of room for storage, they need to be cleaned before and after every play, and they only provide 20 minutes of music at a time—will ultimately spell doom for the vinyl revival.

On the other hand, this is a prediction from a person who didn't think tablet computers would go anywhere, didn't see the point of smart phones, and didn't think that anyone would want to give up ownership of (and resale rights to) their music and movies in place of perpetual subscriptions. So what do I know?

But I've decided to sell my records now not so much because of their renewed value (although that sure makes it easier), but because I've stopped listening to them and need the space that my vinyl collection is taking up. As part of my grieving process I'm going to offer five songs from vinyl albums that I no longer own. Pretty much a random choice, in no particular order:

1. Buzzcocks: "I Don't Mind" from Singles Going Steady (1979). The Buzzcocks wrote songs about romantic misadventures and the minor humiliations of daily life. Instead of turning their anger outward they turned their dismay inward:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4felcXQVt-8

"I used to bet that you didn't care / But gambling never got me anywhere / Each time I used to feel so sure / Something about you made me doubt you more."

2. Descendents: "Suburban Home" from Milo Goes to College (1983). What distinguished the Descendents amid the noise and rage of other Southern California hardcore bands was their humor and their ability to write irresistible, almost Buzzcocks-level pop-punk melodies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfy9ZqKUJjU

"I want to be stereotyped / I want to be classified / I wanna be masochistic / I wanna be a statistic / I wanna be a clone / I want a suburban home."

3. The Smiths: "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" from The Queen Is Dead (1986). In my discussion of lead singer Morrissey's Autobiography (the "biggest disappointment" in my Favorites of 2014: Books), I wrote that The Smiths "gave expression to certain inchoate feelings of loss, regret, and lack of direction in my post-collegiate 20s. Johnny Marr's crystalline guitar was the perfect accompaniment to Morrissey's arch, funny, and bitterly true lyrics":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy5HTaOZ6EA

"Take me out tonight / Where there's music and there's people / Who are young and alive / Take me anywhere / I don't care, I don't care, I don't care."

4. Prince: "Anna Stesia" from Lovesexy (1988). While I never could pretend to (and fortunately never tried to) carry off Prince's air of omnisexual magnetism, his albums were always sonically compelling. Just listen to everything that's going on in this track. And if even Prince felt lonely, perhaps I wasn't as alone as I thought:

https://youtu.be/SaFv9lBy-Mo?t=990 (song ends at 21:30)

"Have you ever been so lonely / That you felt like you were the only / One in this world?"

5. The Velvet Underground: "I Found A Reason" from Loaded (1970). Like many people, I'd guess, I had favorite sides of all my albums, and would often just repeatedly play my favorite side instead of flipping the record over. One thing that would condemn a side to rarely being played was a lame song in the middle (at the beginning or end it could be skipped). I often wished I could take a hot knife and just carve a groove right through the offending track so that I wouldn't have to listen to it ever again.

The second song on Side Two of Loaded was "Lonesome Cowboy Bill." How the band that created "I'll Be Your Mirror," "I Heard Her Call My Name" and "Pale Blue Eyes" could have committed this utter throwaway to vinyl escapes me. (I blame John Cale's replacement Doug Yule.) But its presence on Side Two of Loaded, and that of "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" on Side One, meant that Side Two almost never got played.

But perhaps a decade after buying this album I rediscovered the second side, and in particular the songs "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" and this one, which despite the smirk in Lou Reed's spoken-word interlude is still delicately beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvsF4FMdagQ

"I found a reason to keep living / Oh, and the reason, dear, is you."

My reason to keep living is still the same as it was then, but my musical cravings have shifted. So I'm bidding farewell to my vinyl, and farewell to my younger self. I can only hope that what comes is better than what came before.

Maria Edgeworth: Patronage

"And a letter which I see in this same hand-writing, madam, if you please."—She gave it;—and then, unable to support herself longer, sunk upon a sofa:—
Illustration by W. Harvey from Patronage. Image courtesy Internet Archive

It was one of my vanities, like your not reading Patronage.

—Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, 1814 [1]

The best-selling novelist of Jane Austen's time wasn't Austen herself, but Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. As a reflection of Edgeworth's popularity, in 1813 her publisher purchased the copyright of her new novel Patronage for £2100. To place this sum in perspective, Austen's publisher had purchased the copyright of Pride and Prejudice (1813) for £110, while the publisher of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) bought its copyright for £700. [2]

In her 1815 preface to the third edition of the novel Edgeworth called Patronage "a slight work of fiction" (p. vii); perhaps a small joke, since the book weighed in at four volumes and more than 1600 pages. Patronage is Edgeworth's longest and most elaborately plotted novel; this may be why Cassandra Austen could not be convinced to attempt it.

As you may suspect from its size, Patronage is stuffed, if not overstuffed, with characters and plot twists. The novel centers on the travails of the Percy family: a shipwreck, a fire, a lost deed and the underhanded machinations of a scheming relative and his unscrupulous attorney cause them to lose their estate and sink into genteel poverty. This, of course, has an immediate effect on the marriage prospects of the two Percy daughters: Caroline, the elder and wiser, and Rosamond, the younger and more romantic.

If the sudden loss of a family fortune affecting the prospects of two daughters with different temperaments sounds at all familiar to readers of Sense and Sensibility (1811), there may be a reason. According to scholar Marilyn Butler, Patronage was initially based on stories recounted to Edgeworth by her father in 1788 and 1789. [3] But the novel was extensively reworked between 1811 and 1813, and Edgeworth may have known of Austen's novel.

She was going towards the house, and did not perceive the young ladies till they were close to her. She turned suddenly when they spoke—started—looked frightened and confused;—
Illustration by W. Harvey from Patronage. Image courtesy Internet Archive.

Unlike the second Mrs. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, the Percy family also has sons, and the loss of the family's standing affects their careers as well. Godfrey is a captain in the army, Alfred has chosen the law, and Erasmus has become a physician. In each field of endeavor having family connections eases advancement, but like most of Edgeworth's fictions, Patronage was intended to convey a moral lesson: to show the virtuousness of those who, "independently of patronage, advance themselves permanently by their own merit." (p. vi)

However, readers are to be forgiven if they draw entirely different conclusions from Edgeworth's narrative. After Mr. Percy decodes a secret document that unveils a conspiracy against the statesman Lord Oldborough, the grateful politician repeatedly uses his influence to benefit the Percy family. At Godfrey's request Oldborough has a worthy friend of Godfrey's promoted to head his regiment. Oldborough also sends much legal business Alfred's way (after first assuring himself of Alfred's competence and discretion, of course). Meanwhile, Erasmus is able to set up a medical practice thanks to his enthusiastic recommendation by the rich merchant Mr. Panton to his equally rich friends. And finally, when the marriage of Alfred's sister to Lord Oldborough's loyal secretary Mr. Temple is delayed when Temple's promised new position doesn't provide as much money as he'd hoped,

Mr. Temple told his friend and master what had delayed his marriage, and why he had hitherto forborne to trouble him on the subject. Lord Oldborough, astonished and indignant. . .applied directly to the highest authority. The consequence was that a place double the value of that which had been promised was given to Mr. Temple. . . (Ch. XLIII)

At every stage the influence of the rich and powerful makes a decisive difference in the lives of the Percys and their deserving friends. In a telling exchange early in the novel, Mr. Percy discusses the question of patronage with the cravenly obsequious Mr. Falconer:

"I have endeavoured to give my Alfred and Erasmus such an education as shall enable them honestly to work their own way to eminence."

"A friend's helping hand is no bad thing," said Mr. Falconer, "in that hard and slippery ascent."

"As many friends, as many helping hands, in a fair way, as you please," said Mr. Percy: "I by no means would inculcate the anti-social, absurd, impossible doctrine, that young men, or any men, can or ought to be independent of the world. Let my sons make friends for themselves, and enjoy the advantage of mine. I object only to their becoming dependent, wasting the best years of their lives in a miserable, debasing servitude to patrons—to patrons, who at last may perhaps capriciously desert them at their utmost need." (Ch. XII)

This somewhat fine argument—that preferment by the powerful is good when exercised for the advantage of the deserving, but pernicious otherwise—was widely assumed at the time of the novel's publication to be the work of Edgeworth's father, the educator Richard Lovell Edgeworth. In Maria's preface to the third edition, she was careful to address these rumors: "It has been supposed that some parts of PATRONAGE were not written by Miss Edgeworth. This is not fact: the whole of these volumes were written by her, the opinions they contain are her own, and she is answerable for all the faults which may be found in them." (p. vi)

Faults indeed were found, both in the descriptions of legal and medical proceedings and in the details of the plot. In the first published version of the novel Mr. Percy is imprisoned for a claimed debt on the wedding day of his daughter, who rather than leaving on honeymoon with her new husband instead accompanies her father to jail. In response to readers' objections this incident was eventually eliminated, but not until the Collected Edition of Edgeworth's novels published in 1825.

The 1825 edition also addressed another reader complaint: the novel's sheer length. For the new edition Edgeworth's half-sisters Honora and Harriet, with her approval, cut about 35,000 words—over twelve percent of the original total. This shorter and substantially revised edition became the basis of most subsequent versions.

Contemporary readers also thought that some characters were based on real-life figures, including Lord Oldborough (Sir Robert Walpole) and the King. But despite the protestations of Edgeworth and her father to the contrary, there was indeed a character who was based on a real person: Count Altenberg (German for "ancient mountain"), whose steadfast love for Caroline Percy meets with obstacle after obstacle.

She endeavoured to go on, but her voice faltered—her colour changed. Rosamond, whose quick eye followed her sister’s, [instantly caught a glimpse of a gentleman coming up the path from the glen. Rosamond started from her seat, and clasping her hands, exclaimed, "It is! It is he!—It is Count Altenberg!"]
Illustration by W. Harvey from Patronage. Image courtesy Internet Archive.

Count Albert Altenberg was based on the Chevalier Abraham Niclas Clewberg-Edelcrantz, a Swedish courtier, writer and inventor, whom Edgeworth had encountered while in Paris with her father in the fall of 1802. On December 3 Edgeworth was writing to her father's sister, Margaret Ruxton, when she had to put down her pen to greet a visitor who was asking to see her:

. . .Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner that will surprise you almost as much as it surprised me, by the coming in of Monsieur Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman, whom we have mentioned to you, of superior understanding & mild manners: he came to offer me his hand and heart!!

My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his attachment, for I have seen but very little of him, and have not had time to have formed any judgment, except that I think nothing could tempt me to leave my own dear friends and my own country to live in Sweden. . . [4]

Edgeworth remained steadfast in her refusal, but with the passage of time perhaps regretted her decision not to marry. In November 1810 she wrote her cousin Sophy Ruxton about a conversation Sophy had had with George Knox, a family friend who had just visited Sweden and met with Edelcrantz:

I hope my dear S—indeed I am confident that when Mr K asked why I did not marry Edle [sic] you answered so as to preclude the possibility of his blaming my father for what was my fault—If I had known my own mind—but that's past and there is no use in thinking of it—except to make myself wretched & ill—which for the sake of myself and my friends I never will do more. [5]

The portrait of Count Altenberg in Patronage certainly suggests that in the intervening years Edgeworth had idealized Chevalier Edelcrantz. Count Altenberg is a paragon of manly virtues: he is described as handsome, polite, charming, agreeable, entertaining, and eloquent; he is discreet, a good dancer, a lover of theater, and a good judge of men's (and women's) qualities of mind and character.

It is this picture of Count Altenberg that may have been one of the reasons for Austen's approval of Patronage—he bears a striking resemblance to Sir Charles Grandison, the exemplary hero of one of her favorite novels. Austen may also have been drawn to Edgeworth's rich cast of characters: the stern but fundamentally good-hearted Lord Oldborough; the scheming Mrs. Falconer and her coquettish daughters Isabella and Georgiana; the upright Mr. Percy and his sons; Rosamond Percy, who in her vivacity and impetuosity is reminiscent of Marianne Dashwood; and Caroline Percy, whose calm, rational surface conceals deep feeling.

The accomplishments, good sense, and exalted sentiments of Count Altenberg, and the marked attentions he had paid her, had made an unusual impression on the mind of Caroline. He had never declared his love, but involuntarily it had betrayed itself on several occasions. Insensibly Caroline was thus led to feel for him more than she dared to avow even to herself, when the sudden change in his manner awakened her from this delightful forgetfulness of every object that was unconnected with her new feelings, and suddenly arrested her steps as she seemed entering the paradise of love and hope.

At night, when they were retiring to rest, and Caroline and Rosamond were in their mother’s room, Rosamond, unable longer to keep her prudent silence, gave vent to her indignation against Count Altenberg in general reflections upon the fickleness of man. Even men of the best understanding were, she said, but children of a larger growth—pleased with change—preferring always the newest to the fairest, or the best. Caroline did not accede to these accusations.

Rosamond, astonished and provoked, exclaimed, "Is it possible that you are so blind as not to see that Count Altenberg—" Rosamond stopped short, for she saw Caroline’s colour change. She stood beside her mother motionless, and with her eyes fixed on the ground. Rosamond moved a chair towards her.

"Sit down, my dear love," said her mother, tenderly taking Caroline’s hand—"sit down and compose yourself."

"My dear mother, you required one, and but one promise from me—I gave it you, firmly intending to keep it; and yet I fear that you will think I have broken it. I promised to tell you whenever I felt the first symptom of preference for any person. I did not know my own mind till this day. Indeed I thought I felt nothing but what every body else expressed, esteem and admiration."

"In common minds," replied Mrs. Percy, "esteem and admiration may be very safely distant from love; but in such a mind as yours, Caroline, the step from perfect esteem to love is dangerously near—scarcely perceptible."

"Why dangerously?" cried Rosamond: "why should not perfect love follow perfect esteem? that is the very thing I desire for Caroline. I am sure he is attached to her, and he is all we could wish for her, and—"

"Stop!" cried Caroline. "Oh! my dear sister! as you wish me to be good and happy, name him to me no more—for it cannot be."

"Why?" exclaimed Rosamond, with a look of dismay: "Why cannot it be? It can, it must—it shall be."

Caroline sighed, and turning from her sister, as if she dreaded to listen to her, she repeated, "No;—I will not flatter myself—I see that it cannot be—I have observed the change in his manner. The pain it gave me first awakened me to the state of my own affections. . .Mother, I beg it as a favour that you will take me away from this place—this place, where but yesterday I thought myself so happy!" (Ch. XXIX)

Patronage may be overlong, overelaborately plotted, dubious in some of its details, and contradictory in its message. But even in a novel that doesn't always match the standard set by Belinda or Helen, scenes such as this one show Edgeworth's keen insight into the painful uncertainties of the heart.

For more on Maria Edgeworth, please see:

• Crossing boundaries: Gender, race and colonialism in Belinda
• Maria Edgeworth: Helen

---

All quotes from Patronage in this post are taken from The Novels of Maria Edgeworth in Twelve Volumes. Vol. VII-VIII: Patronage. J. M. Dent, 1893.

1. Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra Austen, Tuesday 23 - Wednesday 24 August 1814. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablt13.html#letter75
2. Reported in Marilyn Butler, Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography, Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. 490-493. In all cases, purchasing the copyright entitled the publisher to all profits from the sale of the book. As it turned out, although Patronage went through three editions in the course of two years, the publisher, Rowland Hunter, claimed to have lost money on the transaction.
3. Butler, pp. 155-156. There are even more specific parallels with Sense and Sensibility: the younger and more romantic sister is courted in turn by a young man who has a history of seduction and indebtedness (like Willoughby) and a man who is kind and wealthy, but old enough to be her father (like Colonel Brandon). The older sister's potential suitor, we learn, may be engaged to another woman (like Edward Ferrars).
4. Quoted in Butler, pp. 192-193.
5. Quoted in Butler, p. 217.

Favorites of 2018: Movies and television

Favorite films of 2018

In 2018 we cut way back on our viewing, so this short list of favorites is drawn from a total of only about 30 films. And as always my choices were made from films first seen (but not necessarily first released) in the past twelve months or so. We were underwhelmed by a number of movies that lots of other people seemed to love, including The Red Turtle (2017), Academy-Award-winner The Shape of Water (2017), and Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs (2017), so you'll notice that only one of my favorites is a recent film.

Loving Vincent (2017; written by Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, and Jacek Dehnel, and directed by Kobiela and Welchman)

An exploration of the mystery of the final days of Vincent Van Gogh, animated in the style of his paintings. Loving Vincent's visuals vividly render the sensation of swirling motion and psychic turmoil we have when viewing Van Gogh's late work.

I'm somewhat amazed that no one had thought of doing this before, but perhaps an explanation is provided by the daunting technique involved: each of the film's tens of thousands of frames is an individual oil painting. Most scenes are based on specific Van Gogh subjects, but some evoke the photographs of Van Gogh's contemporary Eugène Atget. If the stunning animation overshadows the film's narrative, perhaps that's as it should be—leaving us not with any neat explanations of Van Gogh's tragedy (the film acknowledges that none are possible), but with a renewed sense of wonder at his achievement.

Here is a short documentary describing the process of making the film, narrated by its co-writer, -director and -producer Hugh Welchman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOtwJL4iV8s

Daisies (Sedmikrásky, 1966) and A Report on the Party and Guests (O slavnosti a hostech, 1966)

These two films were both co-written by Ester Krumbachová, a major figure of the Czech New Wave.  

Daisies follows two young women, Marie I and Marie II, as they gleefully violate many of the societal restrictions on women relating to public behavior, food, alcohol, and sex. The two Maries ultimately discover that every rebellion provokes a powerful reaction, and that for women especially, conformity can be deadly.

A Report on the Party and the Guests portrays the subtly shifting dynamics among a group of friends on a picnic in the countryside when they are confronted by an ominous gang of men. Then the men's superior shows up and informs them that it's all been a mistake; the men were sent to invite the group to his al fresco birthday party. A party that everyone is forced to attend becomes a brilliant analogy for political life under the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, and when one of the group tries to leave, the mask of benign paternalism comes off. . .

Both films are essential viewing. For more, along with a discussion of the Krumbachová-written film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970), please see Ester Krumbachová: Three films of the Czech New Wave.

Nayak (The Hero, 1966; written and directed by Satyajit Ray)

After a drunken nightclub brawl and the unwelcome news that his latest film has flopped, Bengali matinée idol Arindam Mukherjee (played by Bengali matinée idol Uttam Kumar) decides it's time to get out of town. But instead of providing distance from his problems, his trip will bring him face-to-face with the increasingly cynical and opportunistic choices that have brought him to this crisis. In his dark night of the soul, Arindam recognizes how empty and unprincipled he has become—but also how many others are struggling in a corrupt and pitiless world. In Nayak, as in his many other masterpieces, Ray offers no easy answers.

For more, please see Nayak: The Hero

Favorite television of 2018

Doctor Thorne (2016)

When Julian Fellowes' adaptation of Anthony Trollope's novel aired on Britain's ITV, The Guardian's Viv Groskop called it "a carnival of cleavage." Add magnificent gowns, elegant interiors, lush greenswards, a literate script and excellent actors, and the appeal of this series to a fan of period drama shouldn't be too mysterious.

The late Jenny Diski wrote of Fellowes, "These purveyors of escapist fantasies of love and landed wealth come directly from the social world and political party that talks compulsively of 'honest, hard-working families' while giving us austerity and cuts in public spending for most, and tax breaks for the already wealthy and overpaid."

Diski is right to point out the grotesque hypocrisies of the ruling class to which Baron Fellowes belongs. But Trollope's Doctor Thorne is anything but a comforting escapist fantasy. It depicts a social and economic system in which two young people who love each other are kept apart because they can't afford to marry. Mary (Stefanie Martini), the ward of Doctor Thorne (Tom Hollander), will likely live out her days alone in abject poverty, while the local landowner's son, Frank Gresham (Harry Richardson), is faced with becoming a fortune hunter and contracting a loveless marriage for financial gain. The inheritance that would enable Mary and Frank to escape these fates is so improbable that it functions as its own critique. So if indeed Fellowes is nostalgic for the heyday of the landed gentry, he chose the wrong vehicle to convey those sentiments.
 
For more, please see Doctor Thorne.

Mr. Selfridge (2013-2016)

A young woman comes from the provinces to the capital city to make her way in the world, and finds a job in a new kind of retail establishment: a department store. At the store—a cornucopia of tempting consumer goods—she must sell to wealthy customers luxuries she will never be able to afford herself. Her immediate female supervisor is strict and severe (and possibly jealous of her youth and beauty). But the store owner is impressed by her ideas (and by her youth and beauty) and becomes her secret ally. The owner is advised by a competent and upright accountant, as well as by a right-hand man who is sometimes skeptical of his boss's radically innovative schemes. Meanwhile, the young woman is courted by her brash male co-workers—but she's looking for a partner who shares her sensibility and ambitions.

If you are a regular reader of E & I, all this may sound quite familiar. In my Favorites of 2016: Movies and Television I included the BBC series The Paradise (2012-2013), based on Emile Zola's novel Au bonheur des dames (The Ladies' Paradise, 1883). It's a wonderful series about the founding of a department store and the (sometimes catastrophic) effects it has on the social and economic fabric of its community.

The ITV series Mr. Selfridge, despite being created by the excellent writer Andrew Davies from (it's clear) the same source material, is not quite as engaging. The series is about the founding of Selfridges, a real-life London department store. The social dimension that is a key focus of the earlier BBC series is only background in the ITV series. And when there is a Mr. Selfridge episode that focuses on larger social questions, as in an episode that deals with the women's suffrage movement, it often falsely back-projects 21st-century attitudes onto its characters.

Also, Harry Selfridge is a far less complicated figure than The Paradise's predatory John Moray. Yes, Harry is a womanizer, but he is also open, aboveboard, always wants the best for everyone, and knows that the answer to every question raised by consumerism is more consumerism (and the series takes his point of view). Far more than The Paradise, Mr. Selfridge is a period-piece soap opera—and only grows more so in the third and fourth seasons.

Nonetheless, the characters are sympathetic, especially Harry's wife Rose (Frances O'Connor), gone by the end of the second season, and the shopgirl Agnes Towler (Aisling Loftus) and her mentor, designer Henri Leclair (Grégory Fitoussi), both gone by the middle of the third season. The series spans two decades, from the Edwardian era to the Roaring 20s, and the sumptuous period sets and costumes are also enjoyable eye-candy.

But in the third season the one-dimensional villain Lord Loxley (Aidan McArdle) and Harry's self-regarding son-in-law Serge de Bolotoff (Leon Ockenden) have quickly grown tiresome. This may sound like I'm damning the series with faint praise, but we're hoping that the appearance of the Dolly Sisters (Zoe Richards and Emma Hamilton) and the return of the witty Lady Mae Loxley (Katherine Kelly) will liven things up in the fourth and final season.

Joni Mitchell: A Woman of Heart and Mind (American Masters, 2003)

Susan Lacy's documentary traces Joni Mitchell's life and work from her mid-1960s beginnings singing as Joni Anderson in Calgary coffeehouses, through her 1970s heyday and her subsequent fall from pop music favor. Lacy has tracked down some rare photographs and film and television footage, and interviewed many of her colleagues, collaborators and former lovers. Even if you think you aren't interested in Mitchell or her music, her determination to explore her own path in the face of what seem at times to be insurmountable difficulties is compelling.

Both Zadie Smith and I have had to radically rethink our responses to Joni Mitchell's music; for more, please read Attunement: Conversion experiences.

Biggest disappointment

Our reduced viewing schedule didn't permit us enough time to see more than a few Bollywood films. We did manage to watch Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat (2018). But despite the presence of three E & I favorites in the cast (Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor), the excellent music and SLB's stunning production design, the film felt like an overlong and schematic ISIS allegory. (The black-clad, black-flag-waving Muslim horde treacherously stabs the Rajasthani hero in the back—and yes, I do mean literally.)

So Padmaavat's heavy-handed script was our biggest disappointment of 2018. But did I mention the excellent music and stunning production design? Here is "Ghoomar," picturized on Deepika Padukone, choreographed by Kruti Mahesh Midya and sung by Shreya Ghoshal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU1tFtk_NFY

As you may have already seen, an utterly unexpected appearance by Shreya Ghoshal was one of my favorite live performances of 2018.

More Favorites of 2018:

• Recordings
• Live performances
• Books