Day 25: Film with Great Writing
'Oh-ho my dear lady, this is not my business occupation, I wish it were! No, these are my wings, my escape after the cares of the day are over. My business occupation is something unspeakably hideous. I’m in the “Presents from” trade. You know, “Presents from Brighton,” “Souvenir of Tunbridge Wells.” Yes, if tourists only realised, they could save themselves a lot of luggage space by applying to us direct for their holiday memories. And the irony of it, Holland, the irony is... I must design them all myself. I propagate British cultural depravity. Look at this... Anne Hathaway’s cottage... for keeping string in. Wouldn't you infinitely prefer the comparative purity of an old biscuit tin? ... Oh, I... I've thought for years to cut loose from it all, but I never had the courage. “Of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these... It might have been.”’ T.E.B. Clarke’s (Academy-Award-winning) script for “Lavender Hill Mob” (1951) is my choice, for the poetic, moving monologues, genuinely finely crafted dialogues, that even as you’re so absorbed in the story and the characters you are so appreciative of the words that feel like they’re sparkling off a page. And what I love most about it - though it’s not the most brilliant/mad as say “The Ladykillers” - is that it symbolises what is so magic about the early Ealing comedy: how can such lovingly charming, British eccentricity and escapism contain/couch such subtly winking social observation, perhaps the most subtly subversive order of the post-war era film, a little defiant reclamation of a little agency, a little hope? Xo
'Oh-ho my dear lady, this is not my business occupation, I wish it were! No, these are my wings, my escape after the cares of the day are over. My business occupation is something unspeakably hideous. I’m in the “Presents from” trade. You know, “Presents from Brighton,” “Souvenir of Tunbridge Wells.” Yes, if tourists only realised, they could save themselves a lot of luggage space by applying to us direct for their holiday memories. And the irony of it, Holland, the irony is... I must design them all myself. I propagate British cultural depravity. Look at this... Anne Hathaway’s cottage... for keeping string in. Wouldn't you infinitely prefer the comparative purity of an old biscuit tin? ... Oh, I... I've thought for years to cut loose from it all, but I never had the courage. “Of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these... It might have been.”’ T.E.B. Clarke’s (Academy-Award-winning) script for “Lavender Hill Mob” (1951) is my choice, for the poetic, moving monologues, genuinely finely crafted dialogues, that even as you’re so absorbed in the story and the characters you are so appreciative of the words that feel like they’re sparkling off a page. And what I love most about it - though it’s not the most brilliant/mad as say “The Ladykillers” - is that it symbolises what is so magic about the early Ealing comedy: how can such lovingly charming, British eccentricity and escapism contain/couch such subtly winking social observation, perhaps the most subtly subversive order of the post-war era film, a little defiant reclamation of a little agency, a little hope? Xo
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