Charles Drazin's book In Search of The Third Man is, as I said at the beginning of this series of posts, one of the most interesting books that I've read in a long time. And since this blog is mainly about books and writers (rather than films), I have to say that the one thing that Drazin demonstrates is that the cinema is very definitely not a writer's medium.
True, the scriptwriter, Graham Greene, got his own way about more or less everything; he was not dissatisfied with the end product. But he had to suffer endless suggestions for 'improvement' from the likes of David O. Selznick; and few writers, I suspect, would have the emotional resilience and the strength of character to fight as Greene fought. Another factor, of course, is that few of us have the international reputation, both as novelist and screenwriter, that Greene had. The average writer on a film project is treated as is he were one of the cleaners, and his dialogue is rewritten by anyone who thinks he can do better; which is everyone, including the studio cat.
A final thought, if you're interested in Graham Greene: Maud Newton had a piece about Greene on 8 July, and it contains a number of links.
Another point which Drazin demonstrates clearly is that the movie business is, above all, a team game. The director is in charge, but even he will have to contend with the producer, the distributor, the man who does the music, the film editor, and a host of others. Not to mention the actors, who may have their own ideas as to what the film is all about, and how to play their parts. All of these factors have to meld into some sort of whole, and if a success emerges it is more by the grace of God than anything else. Though all participants will subsequently claim that their contribution, naturally, was the key to the whole thing.
The Third Man created, or enhanced, the reputations of almost all the talent involved. Orson Welles was the one who benefited most, though his performance was not all that startling. Joseph Cotten admired Welles as a director, but was not greatly impressed with him as an actor. And Welles himself had his doubts. He begged Reed to let him do repeated takes of one scene -- 37 attempts in all -- and Carol Reed let him. But Reed already knew that he was going to use take 3, which he did. And as Welles went on and on, trying to get it right, the result got worse and worse.
Overall, the film won the Grand Prix at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, which was a just reward. In the following spring, there were three nominations for individual Oscars: Robert Krasker was listed for best black-and-white photography; Carol Reed for direction; and Oswald Hafenrichter, editing. Of these three, only Krasker won.
Just to emphasise the point that movie-making is a team game, it is worth pointing out that Krasker did not, in fact, shoot some of the key scenes in the film! There were three units at work in Vienna: Krasker was in charge of the night unit, Stan Pavey the sewer unit, and Hans Schneeberger the day unit. There was also a 'second unit', headed by John Wilcox, which had the task of filming 'less important' shots while the main unit was setting up something considered vital.
The result of this policy was that the second unit actually filmed what turned out to be the most famous shot in the whole film: the one where Harry Lime's face is suddenly lit up as he stands in a shadowed doorway. Similarly, the final scene on the cemetery road was shot by Hans Schneeberger. Yet Krasker got the Oscar. Such are the quirks of fate and circumstance.
I hope that by now I have persuaded you to see The Third Man, if you have not done so already. But -- whatever you do -- don't watch it on Sky. Because sure as eggs, when you get to that final scene, some superannuated cretin with a loud voice will burst in upon you and demand that you stay tuned and watch Dumb and Dumber Part 64, which follows next.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
The Third Man -- the final scene
I mentioned in an earlier post that Carol Reed's film The Third Man is famous for a number of reasons, and one of them is the final shot of the film.
What happens in this shot has, I think, already been mentioned. Anna Schmidt (played by Alida Valli) has just seen her lover Harry Lime buried -- for good this time. She leaves the cemetery and makes her way down a long dreary road. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) passes her in a jeep driven by Major Calloway. Martins persuades Calloway to drop him off, and then he walks back to meet Anna. When she reaches him he tries to find the right word to say, but she ignores him and walks straight past.
Charles Drazin tells us how this scene came to be shot the way it was. The camera was set up and Alida Valli was taken some way down the road. But Carol Reed wanted her further away, so Guy Hamilton, the assistant director, picked her up in the jeep and drove her to the very end of the road. Then he drove back to the camera and director. When the director was ready, Hamilton waved to the actress, who was now a dot in the far distance, and she began to move.
As she walked -- and walked, and walked -- Hamilton and Reed discussed how the film should end, and whether they should show the final credits over this shot, and so forth. So the actress was filmed walking pretty much for ever.
The director and his assistant joked about the fact that, in those days, it was usual to play the national anthem at the end of a film, and most people bolted for the door as soon as it appeared that a film was over. Would people stay and watch this scene, the two men wondered.
Gradually, it seems to have dawned on Reed that, if he used this enormously long walk, more or less in full, with Kara's amazing zither music to accompany it, it would make a powerful and moving end to the film.
Which, of course, it did.
At any rate, it made a powerful and moving ending as far as anyone with any intelligence is concerned. At the age of sixteen I had a fierce argument with a contemporary (not a bright lad) who argued that the ending was 'stupid' and ruined the film. I told him that it was the best part of the whole thing. I was right, of course.
However, it has to be admitted that the ending was a bit subtle and highbrow for the average punter. It required, perhaps, an intelligent European to appreciate it properly, and I don't suppose Selznick liked it much. But the zither music, if nothing else, held the audience's attention worldwide.
In about 1960 I saw a showing of this film in the Arts Cinema in Cambridge. As Anna Schmidt began her final walk up that long avenue, the projectionist decided that the film was over. He began (a) to draw the curtains across the screen, and (b) to put the house lights on. There was very nearly a riot. In my view the audience would have been fully justified in dragging him outside and hanging him from the nearest lamp post.
It remains only for us to draw together a few final thoughts about this remarkable film.
What happens in this shot has, I think, already been mentioned. Anna Schmidt (played by Alida Valli) has just seen her lover Harry Lime buried -- for good this time. She leaves the cemetery and makes her way down a long dreary road. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) passes her in a jeep driven by Major Calloway. Martins persuades Calloway to drop him off, and then he walks back to meet Anna. When she reaches him he tries to find the right word to say, but she ignores him and walks straight past.
Charles Drazin tells us how this scene came to be shot the way it was. The camera was set up and Alida Valli was taken some way down the road. But Carol Reed wanted her further away, so Guy Hamilton, the assistant director, picked her up in the jeep and drove her to the very end of the road. Then he drove back to the camera and director. When the director was ready, Hamilton waved to the actress, who was now a dot in the far distance, and she began to move.
As she walked -- and walked, and walked -- Hamilton and Reed discussed how the film should end, and whether they should show the final credits over this shot, and so forth. So the actress was filmed walking pretty much for ever.
The director and his assistant joked about the fact that, in those days, it was usual to play the national anthem at the end of a film, and most people bolted for the door as soon as it appeared that a film was over. Would people stay and watch this scene, the two men wondered.
Gradually, it seems to have dawned on Reed that, if he used this enormously long walk, more or less in full, with Kara's amazing zither music to accompany it, it would make a powerful and moving end to the film.
Which, of course, it did.
At any rate, it made a powerful and moving ending as far as anyone with any intelligence is concerned. At the age of sixteen I had a fierce argument with a contemporary (not a bright lad) who argued that the ending was 'stupid' and ruined the film. I told him that it was the best part of the whole thing. I was right, of course.
However, it has to be admitted that the ending was a bit subtle and highbrow for the average punter. It required, perhaps, an intelligent European to appreciate it properly, and I don't suppose Selznick liked it much. But the zither music, if nothing else, held the audience's attention worldwide.
In about 1960 I saw a showing of this film in the Arts Cinema in Cambridge. As Anna Schmidt began her final walk up that long avenue, the projectionist decided that the film was over. He began (a) to draw the curtains across the screen, and (b) to put the house lights on. There was very nearly a riot. In my view the audience would have been fully justified in dragging him outside and hanging him from the nearest lamp post.
It remains only for us to draw together a few final thoughts about this remarkable film.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
The Third Man -- the music
The Third Man was released in the UK on 31 October 1949.
In that year I was ten years old, so I remember aspects of that time quite clearly. One thing I do remember -- and it is something which may not be readily understood by younger readers -- is that, in those days, most people did not have a gramophone. Not even one of those wind-up versions, with a big horn on the end. The only way in which most people could hear recorded music was over the radio. And 'over the radio' meant, for all practical purposes, the BBC.
The BBC at that time had three radio stations. One was called the Home Service, and it concentrated mostly on news, talk programmes, and some light entertainment. The Light Programme was the only station which broadcast popular music, most of which was live but in the evenings there were occasional programmes which featured what would now be called 'pop records'. There was a third BBC radio station, which was not unnaturally called the Third Programme, but this broadcast only in the evenings and was strictly highbrow -- classical music, serious talks, serious drama.
The effect of this situation was that, if a record of a pop song became popular, everybody -- and I mean everybody -- in the entire nation knew about it. Today, I have absolutely no idea what the number one pop record of the day is, and neither, I suspect, have you. The 'hit parade', or whatever they call it these days, is of interest only to teenagers. You and I have our own tastes in music, and we tune in to whatever radio station suits us. But in 1949 the choice was the Light Programme or nothing. Hence everybody knew and heard what was popular.
The reason for this long preamble is that the situation which prevailed in 1949 goes a long way to explaining why the film The Third Man became such a massive hit. It succeeded very largely because of the background music, the main theme of which was issued as a 78 rpm record and became a truly massive hit, known to every single man, woman and child in the UK. And later, when the film was released in the USA, much the same occurred there. It will therefore be illuminating, I believe, to take note of just what that music was, and how the director of the film, Carol Reed, came to choose it.
What happened was this. Soon after the arrival of Carol Reed and his crew in Vienna, they were given a welcome party. Sitting in a corner of the room was a man called Anton Karas, and he was playing a zither. His job was to provide background music while people talked, drank, and ate.
A zither is apparently unknown outside Austria. It is a stringed instrument, usually placed flat on the knee, and plucked somewhat like a guitar; it has been described as sounding something like a cross between a guitar and a barrel organ. Karas himself was a completely unknown musician (in fact he couldn't even read music). He was essentially supplied to the party just as if he was part of the catering team -- he was there to add a little local colour.
To cut a long story short, Carol Reed liked what he heard, and he decided that he would use Karas -- and Karas only -- to provide the background music for his film. The zither was, after all, absolutely redolent of the city. Reed's decision did not go down well with the money men back in London, and he had to fight hard to get his way, but he won.
When the film came out, Anton Karas's recording of 'The Third Man Theme' was released at the same time. Within a month it had sold 500,000 copies, a huge number for that era. Over the years since then, sales have totalled 40 million!
Anton Karas -- the modest and unknown man who couldn't even read music -- became, for a while, an international star. Technically, he was not entitled to a penny from the sheet-music and record sales, but fortunately for him the producers of the film generously gave him a half share. After the fuss was all over, he returned home to his wife and family in Vienna and bought a small bar. It was called, to no one's surprise, 'Der Dritte Mann'. He was welcomed back in Vienna as a hero, because he had restored a sense of pride to that much-battered city.
Shortly before the The Third Man's release, Carol Reed's masterpiece was viewed by Sir Arthur Jarratt, the Chairman of the distributing company, British Lion. Jarratt sent a telegram to the director, congratulating him on what looked likely to be a successful film. There was, he said, only one problem: 'Please take off the banjo.' Such are the amazing insights which are afforded to us by the bean-counters of this world.
Carol Reed showed the letter to his assistant director, Guy Hamilton. 'They don't know a fucking thing,' he said, and threw the letter away in disgust. Hamilton retrieved it, and, eighteen months later, used it to blackmail Jarratt into giving him his first directing job. Moral: when your boss reveals himself to be a compete fool, always hang on to the evidence. It may come in useful later.
In that year I was ten years old, so I remember aspects of that time quite clearly. One thing I do remember -- and it is something which may not be readily understood by younger readers -- is that, in those days, most people did not have a gramophone. Not even one of those wind-up versions, with a big horn on the end. The only way in which most people could hear recorded music was over the radio. And 'over the radio' meant, for all practical purposes, the BBC.
The BBC at that time had three radio stations. One was called the Home Service, and it concentrated mostly on news, talk programmes, and some light entertainment. The Light Programme was the only station which broadcast popular music, most of which was live but in the evenings there were occasional programmes which featured what would now be called 'pop records'. There was a third BBC radio station, which was not unnaturally called the Third Programme, but this broadcast only in the evenings and was strictly highbrow -- classical music, serious talks, serious drama.
The effect of this situation was that, if a record of a pop song became popular, everybody -- and I mean everybody -- in the entire nation knew about it. Today, I have absolutely no idea what the number one pop record of the day is, and neither, I suspect, have you. The 'hit parade', or whatever they call it these days, is of interest only to teenagers. You and I have our own tastes in music, and we tune in to whatever radio station suits us. But in 1949 the choice was the Light Programme or nothing. Hence everybody knew and heard what was popular.
The reason for this long preamble is that the situation which prevailed in 1949 goes a long way to explaining why the film The Third Man became such a massive hit. It succeeded very largely because of the background music, the main theme of which was issued as a 78 rpm record and became a truly massive hit, known to every single man, woman and child in the UK. And later, when the film was released in the USA, much the same occurred there. It will therefore be illuminating, I believe, to take note of just what that music was, and how the director of the film, Carol Reed, came to choose it.
What happened was this. Soon after the arrival of Carol Reed and his crew in Vienna, they were given a welcome party. Sitting in a corner of the room was a man called Anton Karas, and he was playing a zither. His job was to provide background music while people talked, drank, and ate.
A zither is apparently unknown outside Austria. It is a stringed instrument, usually placed flat on the knee, and plucked somewhat like a guitar; it has been described as sounding something like a cross between a guitar and a barrel organ. Karas himself was a completely unknown musician (in fact he couldn't even read music). He was essentially supplied to the party just as if he was part of the catering team -- he was there to add a little local colour.
To cut a long story short, Carol Reed liked what he heard, and he decided that he would use Karas -- and Karas only -- to provide the background music for his film. The zither was, after all, absolutely redolent of the city. Reed's decision did not go down well with the money men back in London, and he had to fight hard to get his way, but he won.
When the film came out, Anton Karas's recording of 'The Third Man Theme' was released at the same time. Within a month it had sold 500,000 copies, a huge number for that era. Over the years since then, sales have totalled 40 million!
Anton Karas -- the modest and unknown man who couldn't even read music -- became, for a while, an international star. Technically, he was not entitled to a penny from the sheet-music and record sales, but fortunately for him the producers of the film generously gave him a half share. After the fuss was all over, he returned home to his wife and family in Vienna and bought a small bar. It was called, to no one's surprise, 'Der Dritte Mann'. He was welcomed back in Vienna as a hero, because he had restored a sense of pride to that much-battered city.
Shortly before the The Third Man's release, Carol Reed's masterpiece was viewed by Sir Arthur Jarratt, the Chairman of the distributing company, British Lion. Jarratt sent a telegram to the director, congratulating him on what looked likely to be a successful film. There was, he said, only one problem: 'Please take off the banjo.' Such are the amazing insights which are afforded to us by the bean-counters of this world.
Carol Reed showed the letter to his assistant director, Guy Hamilton. 'They don't know a fucking thing,' he said, and threw the letter away in disgust. Hamilton retrieved it, and, eighteen months later, used it to blackmail Jarratt into giving him his first directing job. Moral: when your boss reveals himself to be a compete fool, always hang on to the evidence. It may come in useful later.
Monday, July 19, 2004
The Third Man -- casting
The casting of the film The Third Man seems to have been a fairly chaotic process. In his book In Search of the Third Man, Charles Drazin devotes several pages to describing how everybody and his brother was considered for one or other of the main parts at one stage or another.
The three male leads in the film are Harry Lime, eventually played by Orson Welles, his friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), and Major Calloway (Trevor Howard). Among the actors who were suggested for these parts were Cary Grant, James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Rex Harrison, Ralph Richardson, and even (apparently) Noel Coward. In the end, the casting was a compromise. The director (Carol Reed) didn't want Cotten, and the producer (David O. Selznick) did not want Welles.
Orson Welles is certainly the most famous name of any of them today, but in 1948, when casting took place, Welles was regarded as box-office poison. He himself was not particularly interested in the part, seeing it merely as a payday which would enable him to go off and pursue other projects. He signed the contract readily enough (he would sign anything) but then disappeared. When eventually found, in Rome, he took some persuading to go to Vienna.
Even when he arrived, he was not particularly co-operative. His part was essentially a small one, and quite a lot of the scenes in which he appeared were set in Vienna's sewers. Welles took one look at these, and inhaled one breath of the atmosphere, and declared that he wasn't going anywhere near them. So any sewer scenes which included Welles had to be shot back at Shepperton Studios, in England.
Today, of course, we know that Welles dominates the picture. No one remembers much about The Third Man except that Orson Welles starred in it. But that was not the way it appeared to the participants at the time.
About twenty-five years ago, I wrote a couple of scripts for the American producer and director Sheldon Reynolds. Sheldon told me that, originally, Trevor Howard was offered the part of Harry Lime. Howard, however, read the script, and found that Harry Lime appeared on only eleven pages of it. Major Calloway, on the other hand, had a great deal of screen time. So Howard said thanks very much, he would pass on the Harry Lime part but he would gladly play the English Major.
Drazin doesn't tell us this story, so he either doesn't know about it or doesn't believe it. And indeed it does sound a bit questionable to me. Given the general chaos which surrounded casting, it may be true. But it sounds to me like one those amusing and self-deprecating stories which may have gradually developed in the mind of Trevor Howard to entertain his drinking buddies. And Howard, of course, was a strong contender for the much-contested title of the world's most frequently pissed actor. Cotten was also a heavy drinker, and Welles only agreed to turn up for shooting after one of the director's minions got him thoroughly drunk.
Finally, lest anyone accuses us of sexism, we must record that Selznick at least saw the film as a vehicle for Alida Valli. Now a forgotten name, she was at that time something of a hot property. And indeed she played her part so well that one almost takes her for granted.
The three male leads in the film are Harry Lime, eventually played by Orson Welles, his friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), and Major Calloway (Trevor Howard). Among the actors who were suggested for these parts were Cary Grant, James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Rex Harrison, Ralph Richardson, and even (apparently) Noel Coward. In the end, the casting was a compromise. The director (Carol Reed) didn't want Cotten, and the producer (David O. Selznick) did not want Welles.
Orson Welles is certainly the most famous name of any of them today, but in 1948, when casting took place, Welles was regarded as box-office poison. He himself was not particularly interested in the part, seeing it merely as a payday which would enable him to go off and pursue other projects. He signed the contract readily enough (he would sign anything) but then disappeared. When eventually found, in Rome, he took some persuading to go to Vienna.
Even when he arrived, he was not particularly co-operative. His part was essentially a small one, and quite a lot of the scenes in which he appeared were set in Vienna's sewers. Welles took one look at these, and inhaled one breath of the atmosphere, and declared that he wasn't going anywhere near them. So any sewer scenes which included Welles had to be shot back at Shepperton Studios, in England.
Today, of course, we know that Welles dominates the picture. No one remembers much about The Third Man except that Orson Welles starred in it. But that was not the way it appeared to the participants at the time.
About twenty-five years ago, I wrote a couple of scripts for the American producer and director Sheldon Reynolds. Sheldon told me that, originally, Trevor Howard was offered the part of Harry Lime. Howard, however, read the script, and found that Harry Lime appeared on only eleven pages of it. Major Calloway, on the other hand, had a great deal of screen time. So Howard said thanks very much, he would pass on the Harry Lime part but he would gladly play the English Major.
Drazin doesn't tell us this story, so he either doesn't know about it or doesn't believe it. And indeed it does sound a bit questionable to me. Given the general chaos which surrounded casting, it may be true. But it sounds to me like one those amusing and self-deprecating stories which may have gradually developed in the mind of Trevor Howard to entertain his drinking buddies. And Howard, of course, was a strong contender for the much-contested title of the world's most frequently pissed actor. Cotten was also a heavy drinker, and Welles only agreed to turn up for shooting after one of the director's minions got him thoroughly drunk.
Finally, lest anyone accuses us of sexism, we must record that Selznick at least saw the film as a vehicle for Alida Valli. Now a forgotten name, she was at that time something of a hot property. And indeed she played her part so well that one almost takes her for granted.
Friday, July 16, 2004
The Third Man -- the script
The script of The Third Man was written by Graham Greene, and in his fascinating book In Search of the Third Man, Charles Drazin gives a detailed account of how the original story developed in Greene's mind.
By 1948, Graham Greene was already a novelist with an established international reputation. He had also worked successfully with Carol Reed on a previous film, The Fallen Idol. So Alexander Korda commissioned Greene to write a story set against the Four-Power occupation of post-war Vienna.
Greene duly took off and spent two weeks in Vienna, soaking up the atmosphere; this period of research was followed by eight weeks in Italy, which was probably a great deal more comfortable.
Drazin devotes many pages to analysing the origins of The Third Man storyline, and anyone who is interested in the creative process could usefully read the book for the details. Suffice it to say here that Greene was a complex character. During the second world war he had worked for British intelligence, where he was a close colleague of Kim Philby. And Philby, many years later, proved to have been a Russian spy, working at the very heart of the British counter-espionage service! Drazin speculates that Harry Lime was at least partly based on Philby. Both men, the real one and the fictional one, seem to have been amiable and personable, and yet totally untrustworthy.
Once a draft script was available (and even before), the American producer, David O. Selznick, began to meddle with the story.
Selznick is chiefly famous, I suppose, for having produced Gone with the Wind. Over forty years ago I was told a scandalous story about him, and even now I cannot find it on the internet so I will not repeat it here. I will only say that the story portrayed him as utterly ruthless and quite brutal, ready to take any steps to get his own way. And, not surprisingly, since he had invested money in the project, Selznick had plenty to say about the story of The Third Man.
The European talent seem to have regarded Selznick as an unmitigated nuisance. Greene and Reed were required to fly to America for story conferences, of course, and they were obliged to sit through endless 'suggestions'. Even when they were back in Europe, the flow of memos continued. Their technique for dealing with Selznick seems to have been to nod sagely at everything he said, and then to ignore him entirely.
Strangely enough, however, I find myself sympathising with Selznick. One thing is obvious: Selznick understood perfectly the nature of the relationship between materials and effects. And he also knew his audience. Selznick is often portrayed as a vulgar showman, catering to the lowest taste of the great American public. But Drazin's account of his interventions in the scripting of The Third Man reveal that he was always thinking of how the film would look to the average Joe.
To give but one illustration. Harry Lime's first entrance, when his face is unexpectedly lit up in a doorway, is one of the great moments in movie history. But Selznick wanted to know what Harry Lime was doing in the goddamned doorway in the first place. This is not at all an unreasonable question.
Over and over again, Selznick's memos reveal an underlying concern with one important question: what is going to be the emotional effect of this scene on the average member of the public? And that, as I may conceivably have mentioned before, is what the whole business of making movies is all about.
Selznick worried about the character of Harry Lime. Why does Harry have to be such a shit? And if he had to be such a shit, did he have to be American? Joseph Cotten's character, another American, wasn't a shit, but he was a fool. Meanwhile the Brits, Trevor Howard and his sidekick, were out and out good guys. This didn't seem right to Selznick, and he tinkered endlessly with this and that. In the end, everything stayed pretty much as Greene and Reed wanted it.
It is worth recording, perhaps, that Greene was interested in the glamour and attraction of evil. With Hitler and his cronies still warm in their graves, this was a theme of some significance. And what, Greene asks us, is our proper moral response to evil but attractive people, who may, after all, be our friends? The answer Greene gives is that, however regrettable the necessity, it is our duty to hunt them down and kill them.
No one fathers a failure, but (not suprisingly) a great many people later claimed to have made vital contributions to what was the enormous international success of The Third Man. Chief of these was Orson Welles.
Welles, it seems, made one modest suggestion about the script. He proposed that Harry Lime should say something along the lines of the following:
The Swiss, incidentally, are still pretty damn sensitive about Harry Lime's sneer. Only recently a spokesman for the Swiss Embassy in London said very firmly that cuckoo clocks do not come from Switzerland. They originate in the Black Forest region of Germany. So there.
David O. Selznick was another one who seems to have been inordinately proud of his many 'suggestions' for the improvement of the film. And Graham Greene seems to have made it clear, in his own interviews after the film's release, that in his opinion Selznick had next to nothing to do with the quality of the script. Word of Greene's attitude inevitably got back to Selznick, and he ordered one of his assistants to write to Greene and say that he, Selznick, had been hearing that Greene was making 'derogatory remarks' about him.
Greene wrote back to Selznick's minion as follows:
By 1948, Graham Greene was already a novelist with an established international reputation. He had also worked successfully with Carol Reed on a previous film, The Fallen Idol. So Alexander Korda commissioned Greene to write a story set against the Four-Power occupation of post-war Vienna.
Greene duly took off and spent two weeks in Vienna, soaking up the atmosphere; this period of research was followed by eight weeks in Italy, which was probably a great deal more comfortable.
Drazin devotes many pages to analysing the origins of The Third Man storyline, and anyone who is interested in the creative process could usefully read the book for the details. Suffice it to say here that Greene was a complex character. During the second world war he had worked for British intelligence, where he was a close colleague of Kim Philby. And Philby, many years later, proved to have been a Russian spy, working at the very heart of the British counter-espionage service! Drazin speculates that Harry Lime was at least partly based on Philby. Both men, the real one and the fictional one, seem to have been amiable and personable, and yet totally untrustworthy.
Once a draft script was available (and even before), the American producer, David O. Selznick, began to meddle with the story.
Selznick is chiefly famous, I suppose, for having produced Gone with the Wind. Over forty years ago I was told a scandalous story about him, and even now I cannot find it on the internet so I will not repeat it here. I will only say that the story portrayed him as utterly ruthless and quite brutal, ready to take any steps to get his own way. And, not surprisingly, since he had invested money in the project, Selznick had plenty to say about the story of The Third Man.
The European talent seem to have regarded Selznick as an unmitigated nuisance. Greene and Reed were required to fly to America for story conferences, of course, and they were obliged to sit through endless 'suggestions'. Even when they were back in Europe, the flow of memos continued. Their technique for dealing with Selznick seems to have been to nod sagely at everything he said, and then to ignore him entirely.
Strangely enough, however, I find myself sympathising with Selznick. One thing is obvious: Selznick understood perfectly the nature of the relationship between materials and effects. And he also knew his audience. Selznick is often portrayed as a vulgar showman, catering to the lowest taste of the great American public. But Drazin's account of his interventions in the scripting of The Third Man reveal that he was always thinking of how the film would look to the average Joe.
To give but one illustration. Harry Lime's first entrance, when his face is unexpectedly lit up in a doorway, is one of the great moments in movie history. But Selznick wanted to know what Harry Lime was doing in the goddamned doorway in the first place. This is not at all an unreasonable question.
Over and over again, Selznick's memos reveal an underlying concern with one important question: what is going to be the emotional effect of this scene on the average member of the public? And that, as I may conceivably have mentioned before, is what the whole business of making movies is all about.
Selznick worried about the character of Harry Lime. Why does Harry have to be such a shit? And if he had to be such a shit, did he have to be American? Joseph Cotten's character, another American, wasn't a shit, but he was a fool. Meanwhile the Brits, Trevor Howard and his sidekick, were out and out good guys. This didn't seem right to Selznick, and he tinkered endlessly with this and that. In the end, everything stayed pretty much as Greene and Reed wanted it.
It is worth recording, perhaps, that Greene was interested in the glamour and attraction of evil. With Hitler and his cronies still warm in their graves, this was a theme of some significance. And what, Greene asks us, is our proper moral response to evil but attractive people, who may, after all, be our friends? The answer Greene gives is that, however regrettable the necessity, it is our duty to hunt them down and kill them.
No one fathers a failure, but (not suprisingly) a great many people later claimed to have made vital contributions to what was the enormous international success of The Third Man. Chief of these was Orson Welles.
Welles, it seems, made one modest suggestion about the script. He proposed that Harry Lime should say something along the lines of the following:
This suggestion was incorporated into the script, and the lines later became famous. And in interviews, many years afterwards, Welles was happy to allow this one-off suggestion of his to drift into a generalised statement that he had 'written his own part'. Which demonstrably was not true. Every other line spoken by Welles (and there weren't many) was pure Greene.'In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed -- but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
The Swiss, incidentally, are still pretty damn sensitive about Harry Lime's sneer. Only recently a spokesman for the Swiss Embassy in London said very firmly that cuckoo clocks do not come from Switzerland. They originate in the Black Forest region of Germany. So there.
David O. Selznick was another one who seems to have been inordinately proud of his many 'suggestions' for the improvement of the film. And Graham Greene seems to have made it clear, in his own interviews after the film's release, that in his opinion Selznick had next to nothing to do with the quality of the script. Word of Greene's attitude inevitably got back to Selznick, and he ordered one of his assistants to write to Greene and say that he, Selznick, had been hearing that Greene was making 'derogatory remarks' about him.
Greene wrote back to Selznick's minion as follows:
My word, they were a touchy lot. It's amazing that the film ever got made at all.I suggest that you tell Mr Selznick that he should pay as little attention to these stories as I pay to the American stories that Mr Selznick was responsible for writing the script of The Third Man.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
In Search of The Third Man
In Search of the Third Man, by Charles Drazin (Methuen, 1999, and paperback 2000), is one of the most interesting non-fiction books that I've read in a long time. It contains a number of stories and insights which are well worth highlighting, and which generate a few thoughts of my own. But first -- new readers start here.
The Third Man was a film made chiefly in Vienna in 1948/49. On its release it was one of the biggest hits of all time, both in Europe and the USA. It also won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival in 1949, so it was both a commercial and a critical success. The film was 'presented', i.e. financed, by Alexander Korda, who was British (though highly cosmopolitan), and David O. Selznick, who was American. The director was an Englishman, Carol Reed, and the original screenplay was by the English novelist Graham Greene.
The casting was also a mixture of US and UK talent. The 'stars', whose names mean comparatively little today, were Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli. Smaller parts went to Orson Welles, who played the central character, Harry Lime, and Trevor Howard, who played an English officer.
The film is set in post-war Vienna, a city which had been 'bombed about a bit', to put it mildly, and many of the scenes were shot on location. Other scenes were filmed in Shepperton studios in England. The studio scenes, oddly enough, include virtually all the famous sequences which appear to be shot in Vienna's sewers, and also the shot where Harry Lime's 'body' is dug up in the main Vienna cemetery.
The plot of the film revolves around post-war conditions in Vienna. At the time when the film was made, the inhabitants of that city were still suffering from the after-effects of the war. Not only was their city still largely in ruins, but the Viennese were living on an average of 1200 calories a day -- which is a form of slow starvation.
The film makes it clear that this miserable combination of time and place provides endless opportunities for racketeers. One such is an American, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Harry, it turns out, is making big money by selling antibiotics on the black market. But he is not satisfied with just selling them: to boost his profits he dilutes them, which means that, even when patients are treated with Harry's high-priced drugs, they still die.
Harry's old friend (played by Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna and finds that Harry is, allegedly, dead. Only he ain't. Harry has become aware that the authorities (in the shape of Trevor Howard) are closing in on him, and he has found it politic to pretend to die. Even his long-suffering girlfriend (Alida Valli) thinks he's dead.
Eventually, everyone finds out that Harry is still alive. And when he makes a final attempt to escape justice, by fleeing through the sewers of Vienna, his old friend (Cotten) shoots him dead.
The Third Man is a classic of film history. If you haven't yet seen it, you should make the effort; it's easy enough to find on DVD. Be aware, however, that because of 'artistic differences' between the American Selznick on the one hand, and the Europeans (Korda and Reed and Greene) on the other, there were two different versions of the film released. The UK version is 104 minutes long, while Selznick put out a version at 93 minutes. This difference seems to be reflected in the various DVD versions. One DVD extra is the two versions of Joseph Cotten's opening voice-over statement, one to suit Selznick and one for the European market.
The film is famous for a variety of reasons, of which the chief are:
1. Orson Welles's performance. Most critics and film buffs agree that Welles dominates the movie, yet he is only on screen for about 11 or 12 minutes. The Harry Lime character is, however, talked about a good deal.
2. The music. Soon after his arrival in Vienna, Carol Reed heard a local musician, Anton Karas, playing an odd sort of Austrian guitar, called a zither. Reed decided to use this zither player as the sole source of background music in the film. Karas's recording of the theme from The Third Man was a massive hit on radio stations everywhere in 1949/50 and was a key factor in attracting the public into the cinema.
3. The ending. In the last scene of the film, Alida Valli leaves the wintry cemetery where Harry has at last been buried (for real, this time), and walks towards the camera along a straight, tree-lined avenue. She starts in the far distance. She walks steadily towards us, accompanied only by Karas's music, and walks straight past Joseph Cotten, with whom, in the average Hollywood movie, she might have been expected to walk off arm in arm.
So much for the necessary background. Some of the points worth making about all this will follow tomorrow.
The Third Man was a film made chiefly in Vienna in 1948/49. On its release it was one of the biggest hits of all time, both in Europe and the USA. It also won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival in 1949, so it was both a commercial and a critical success. The film was 'presented', i.e. financed, by Alexander Korda, who was British (though highly cosmopolitan), and David O. Selznick, who was American. The director was an Englishman, Carol Reed, and the original screenplay was by the English novelist Graham Greene.
The casting was also a mixture of US and UK talent. The 'stars', whose names mean comparatively little today, were Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli. Smaller parts went to Orson Welles, who played the central character, Harry Lime, and Trevor Howard, who played an English officer.
The film is set in post-war Vienna, a city which had been 'bombed about a bit', to put it mildly, and many of the scenes were shot on location. Other scenes were filmed in Shepperton studios in England. The studio scenes, oddly enough, include virtually all the famous sequences which appear to be shot in Vienna's sewers, and also the shot where Harry Lime's 'body' is dug up in the main Vienna cemetery.
The plot of the film revolves around post-war conditions in Vienna. At the time when the film was made, the inhabitants of that city were still suffering from the after-effects of the war. Not only was their city still largely in ruins, but the Viennese were living on an average of 1200 calories a day -- which is a form of slow starvation.
The film makes it clear that this miserable combination of time and place provides endless opportunities for racketeers. One such is an American, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Harry, it turns out, is making big money by selling antibiotics on the black market. But he is not satisfied with just selling them: to boost his profits he dilutes them, which means that, even when patients are treated with Harry's high-priced drugs, they still die.
Harry's old friend (played by Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna and finds that Harry is, allegedly, dead. Only he ain't. Harry has become aware that the authorities (in the shape of Trevor Howard) are closing in on him, and he has found it politic to pretend to die. Even his long-suffering girlfriend (Alida Valli) thinks he's dead.
Eventually, everyone finds out that Harry is still alive. And when he makes a final attempt to escape justice, by fleeing through the sewers of Vienna, his old friend (Cotten) shoots him dead.
The Third Man is a classic of film history. If you haven't yet seen it, you should make the effort; it's easy enough to find on DVD. Be aware, however, that because of 'artistic differences' between the American Selznick on the one hand, and the Europeans (Korda and Reed and Greene) on the other, there were two different versions of the film released. The UK version is 104 minutes long, while Selznick put out a version at 93 minutes. This difference seems to be reflected in the various DVD versions. One DVD extra is the two versions of Joseph Cotten's opening voice-over statement, one to suit Selznick and one for the European market.
The film is famous for a variety of reasons, of which the chief are:
1. Orson Welles's performance. Most critics and film buffs agree that Welles dominates the movie, yet he is only on screen for about 11 or 12 minutes. The Harry Lime character is, however, talked about a good deal.
2. The music. Soon after his arrival in Vienna, Carol Reed heard a local musician, Anton Karas, playing an odd sort of Austrian guitar, called a zither. Reed decided to use this zither player as the sole source of background music in the film. Karas's recording of the theme from The Third Man was a massive hit on radio stations everywhere in 1949/50 and was a key factor in attracting the public into the cinema.
3. The ending. In the last scene of the film, Alida Valli leaves the wintry cemetery where Harry has at last been buried (for real, this time), and walks towards the camera along a straight, tree-lined avenue. She starts in the far distance. She walks steadily towards us, accompanied only by Karas's music, and walks straight past Joseph Cotten, with whom, in the average Hollywood movie, she might have been expected to walk off arm in arm.
So much for the necessary background. Some of the points worth making about all this will follow tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Letter to guy at Sky
Yesterday I made the point that theatres are in the business of selling emotion. And so, of course, are movie theatres; and, by extension, television companies which offer us movies. I also made the point that some of the people involved in these industries just don't get it. They work in the business, but they don't understand it. (Not an unusual occurrence in many walks of life, in my experience.)
All of which reminded me to share with you a letter which I recently wrote to the Customer Marketing Director of Sky television, in response to a letter of his which was sent to all Sky subscribers.
All of which reminded me to share with you a letter which I recently wrote to the Customer Marketing Director of Sky television, in response to a letter of his which was sent to all Sky subscribers.
Dear Sir,I haven't yet had a reply. But then you wouldn't really expect one, would you?
In your letter dated July 2004, about subscription changes, you say that ‘there are no adverts during the film to interrupt your viewing.’
What you do not say is that, before a film has properly finished, there will almost certainly be a voice-over advertising the next film on Sky, usually in tones which entirely ruin the mood which has just been created, at the expense of many millions of dollars, not least on the part of Sky.
I can only suppose that there is no one in a position of authority at Sky who has the faintest idea what the movie business is all about. And what it is all about is the creation of emotion. This is a highly skilled business, and films which can create emotion successfully tend to make a great deal of money. It is quite absurd, not to mention infuriating, to have some moron from Sky burbling on about the next attraction when one has not had time to absorb the emotion from the film one has just seen. Neither you nor anyone else at Sky would leap up from the table, at the end of an expensive meal, and rush off on a three-mile run. You would let the meal settle. That is precisely what is required at the end of a film. Not only should there be no voice-over before the thing has even ended, but a moment or two of silence after every frame of the final credits has run would also be welcomed.
Perhaps you might, just conceivably, be able to explain this to the brain-dead bean-counters who appear to run your organisation. But I would not bet money on your chances of success.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
The man with the raincoat
Larry Gelbart is a 76-year-old American writer. Last week he was interviewed by The Times in connection with a National Theatre revival of the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This was a show which Gelbart co-wrote with Stephen Sondheim in 1962. (Can't find the link to this interview on The Times site, otherwise I would give it here. But the most interesting part of what Gelbart had to say is repeated below anyway.)
Both in his memoirs and in the Times interview, Gelbart relates the story of an incident which occurred during the Broadway run of Forum -- a show which, in case you've never heard of it, is a comedy.
What happened was this. One night, well into the performance, Gelbart was standing at the back of the stalls. The audience, as usual, was laughing a lot. One man, in an aisle seat near the stage, was having a particularly good time. In fact, he was laughing so much that he could eventually laugh no more. So, in a moment of complete surrender, he took his rolled-up raincoat off his knee and hurled it high in the air.
This story neatly illustrates a number of truths about the writer's task, and about the nature of the entertainment industry. Here are a few such truths for you to ponder:
1. Hotels sell sleep; theatres sell emotion; as do novelists.
2. In the theatre, the nature of the audience's emotional response to the material is immediately obvious; and the response will vary, of course, from audience to audience.
3. In the case of the novel, the reader's response is not so obvious, because most people read in private, but it is there all right.
4. If you are thinking about writing a novel (or a play), you would be well advised to ask yourself the following question: What is there in my novel which will cause my intended reader to hurl his raincoat into the air? If you can't think of anything, then you had damn well better invent something. Quick. Because that is the writer's job.
At this point you may be saying to yourself something along the following lines. Er, let me see now, if the writer's task is to create emotion in the reader, then it might be a good idea to learn something about emotion. Perhaps it would be a good idea to see what the scientists can tell us about the nature of emotion.
To which my response is, Yes, it bloody well would be a good idea to find out what science can tell us about emotion. Congratulations on heading in the right direction. (So many writers, bless their little cotton socks, are so determined to head off into the woods, in entirely the wrong direction. And they just won't be told.)
So now you go looking for learned tomes on emotion. Well, let me save you the trouble. There ain't any. Well, very few. Fact is, you see, the study of emotion is deeply unrewarding for scientists, and since scientists are certainly capable of adding two and two together and making four, they pretty soon recognise the futility of studying emotion and go off and study something else. Something which offers a better chance of career advancement.
The problem with emotion, you see, is that's it's slippery as hell. You just can't get it to stay still under the microscope. Keeps on flopping out and falling on the floor and mixing with last week's biscuit crumbs. And then your results just don't make any sense. And if there's one thing a scientist wants it's a nice clean set of results, which make a well defined line on the graph, and demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt, to within two standard deviations, or whatever, that black is a murky shade of grey.
So you will search in vain for lengthy tomes on emotion. The best book that I have found, in forty years of looking, is Emotion -- The Science of Sentiment, by Dylan Evans (Oxford UP, 2001). It's a small book, only 200 pages long, and it tells you everything that science has so far managed to learn about human emotion. Which, as I said earlier, isn't much.
A harder read, but also worth looking at if you take the business of writing fiction (or drama) seriously, is The Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert.
If you read these two books you will take on board such information as science can give us about the nature of emotion and how it is created. But unfortunately this will not give you the key to the cupboard of fame and fortune. Would that it did. Science does not provide us with a template for the perfect novel or play. As Walt Disney once remarked, 'Making movies is a bit less scientific than Russian Roulette.'
Nevertheless, if you have just understood that the whole point of your novel, or other writing endeavour, is to make that raincoat go up in the air, then you will at least be several streets ahead of the competition. Because so many people -- who otherwise show evidence of being reasonably compos mentis -- just do not get it at all.
A final point. There are two major problems in creating a work which generates positive emotion in an audience. The first problem is creating the work itself; and the second problem is persuading the powers that be that it is a work which will succeed when it is published or produced.
Larry Gelbart, whose story about the man with the raincoat kicked off this train of thought, was involved in creating the television version of MASH, which was perhaps the biggest smash-hit comedy series of them all. And before there was a TV series of MASH, there was a film called MASH. And before there was a film, there was a novel.
The author of the original novel, Richard Hooker, did not have fame and fortune thrust upon him, by publishers who immediately recognised the long-term emotional impact of his work. To be precise, his book was rejected by twenty-one publishers over a period of seven years before eventually finding a home.
Mind you, you should not fall into the trap of saying Aha! My book has been rejected by twenty-one publishers, so when it finally appears it will be as big as a success as MASH. Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. That's the fallacy of the undistributed middle, or some such. Ask a logician.
Both in his memoirs and in the Times interview, Gelbart relates the story of an incident which occurred during the Broadway run of Forum -- a show which, in case you've never heard of it, is a comedy.
What happened was this. One night, well into the performance, Gelbart was standing at the back of the stalls. The audience, as usual, was laughing a lot. One man, in an aisle seat near the stage, was having a particularly good time. In fact, he was laughing so much that he could eventually laugh no more. So, in a moment of complete surrender, he took his rolled-up raincoat off his knee and hurled it high in the air.
This story neatly illustrates a number of truths about the writer's task, and about the nature of the entertainment industry. Here are a few such truths for you to ponder:
1. Hotels sell sleep; theatres sell emotion; as do novelists.
2. In the theatre, the nature of the audience's emotional response to the material is immediately obvious; and the response will vary, of course, from audience to audience.
3. In the case of the novel, the reader's response is not so obvious, because most people read in private, but it is there all right.
4. If you are thinking about writing a novel (or a play), you would be well advised to ask yourself the following question: What is there in my novel which will cause my intended reader to hurl his raincoat into the air? If you can't think of anything, then you had damn well better invent something. Quick. Because that is the writer's job.
At this point you may be saying to yourself something along the following lines. Er, let me see now, if the writer's task is to create emotion in the reader, then it might be a good idea to learn something about emotion. Perhaps it would be a good idea to see what the scientists can tell us about the nature of emotion.
To which my response is, Yes, it bloody well would be a good idea to find out what science can tell us about emotion. Congratulations on heading in the right direction. (So many writers, bless their little cotton socks, are so determined to head off into the woods, in entirely the wrong direction. And they just won't be told.)
So now you go looking for learned tomes on emotion. Well, let me save you the trouble. There ain't any. Well, very few. Fact is, you see, the study of emotion is deeply unrewarding for scientists, and since scientists are certainly capable of adding two and two together and making four, they pretty soon recognise the futility of studying emotion and go off and study something else. Something which offers a better chance of career advancement.
The problem with emotion, you see, is that's it's slippery as hell. You just can't get it to stay still under the microscope. Keeps on flopping out and falling on the floor and mixing with last week's biscuit crumbs. And then your results just don't make any sense. And if there's one thing a scientist wants it's a nice clean set of results, which make a well defined line on the graph, and demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt, to within two standard deviations, or whatever, that black is a murky shade of grey.
So you will search in vain for lengthy tomes on emotion. The best book that I have found, in forty years of looking, is Emotion -- The Science of Sentiment, by Dylan Evans (Oxford UP, 2001). It's a small book, only 200 pages long, and it tells you everything that science has so far managed to learn about human emotion. Which, as I said earlier, isn't much.
A harder read, but also worth looking at if you take the business of writing fiction (or drama) seriously, is The Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert.
If you read these two books you will take on board such information as science can give us about the nature of emotion and how it is created. But unfortunately this will not give you the key to the cupboard of fame and fortune. Would that it did. Science does not provide us with a template for the perfect novel or play. As Walt Disney once remarked, 'Making movies is a bit less scientific than Russian Roulette.'
Nevertheless, if you have just understood that the whole point of your novel, or other writing endeavour, is to make that raincoat go up in the air, then you will at least be several streets ahead of the competition. Because so many people -- who otherwise show evidence of being reasonably compos mentis -- just do not get it at all.
A final point. There are two major problems in creating a work which generates positive emotion in an audience. The first problem is creating the work itself; and the second problem is persuading the powers that be that it is a work which will succeed when it is published or produced.
Larry Gelbart, whose story about the man with the raincoat kicked off this train of thought, was involved in creating the television version of MASH, which was perhaps the biggest smash-hit comedy series of them all. And before there was a TV series of MASH, there was a film called MASH. And before there was a film, there was a novel.
The author of the original novel, Richard Hooker, did not have fame and fortune thrust upon him, by publishers who immediately recognised the long-term emotional impact of his work. To be precise, his book was rejected by twenty-one publishers over a period of seven years before eventually finding a home.
Mind you, you should not fall into the trap of saying Aha! My book has been rejected by twenty-one publishers, so when it finally appears it will be as big as a success as MASH. Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. That's the fallacy of the undistributed middle, or some such. Ask a logician.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Peter Carter-Ruck -- aka Carter-Fuck
Peter Carter-Ruck (who died in 2003) was an Englishman and a libel lawyer. Hence he was (a) always busy, and (b) rich. Towards the end of his career he published a sort of autobiography: Memoirs of a Libel Lawyer (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), a book which, though long-winded in places, is not without interest.
Carter-Ruck was born in 1914, and began to specialise in libel soon after the second world war ended. In his memoirs, he points out that libel has a long history: in ancient Rome the offence was publishable by death, and in 1585 the Chief Justice of England complained about the steady growth in the number of actions for defamation.
Despite the long history of the 'offence', English law provides what is, to my mind, a curiously loose definition of it. Libel and slander both involve defamation, and the best-known working definition of defamation is the following:
A mere misplaced comma can cause endless trouble. In one case a newspaper wrote: 'Miss Y went to the caravan, where she was living with Mr X.' The reporter should have written: 'Miss Y went to the caravan, where she was living, with Mr X.' Or, better still, the reporter should have rephrased the sentence entirely, along the lines of 'Miss Y was living in a caravan at the time. She took Mr X to that caravan.' In any event, Miss Y was offended by the suggestion that she was cohabiting with Mr X, and the newspaper had to pay up.
In other words, from a writer's point of view, the law relating to libel provides a dangerous minefield, into which you venture at your own risk. Carter-Ruck's advice to writers is simple. To be certain that you will never be liable to pay damages for libel, you should 'refrain from writing, printing or publishing or distributing any written matter of whatsoever nature.'
So that solves that problem. Never let it be said that this blog is not useful.
Another interesting remark from this author is his comment that it is always important to have first novels read for libel. They are, he says, 'so often autobiographical and so often introduce fiction to enhance the story, the author overlooking the identifying details.' In other words, it is not much of a defence to cry 'But this is fiction!' if it is perfectly obvious to all your friends who you're writing about. And it is especially not much of a defence if the easily recognisable parties are depicted doing some naughty things over and above what they actually got up to in real life.
Yet another tip -- and, like the one above, it is something which you would have thought was fairly obvious but which is often overlooked. If you must write a novel, and you feature a doctor or a lawyer or an army officer, for God's sake check the official lists of these people and choose a name which isn't there. If you write a whodunit in which the murderer is a Dr Smith of Clapham, you really can't complain when an actual Dr Smith of that parish takes a dim view. But, as Carter-Ruck points out, even the BBC neglected this elementary precaution on one occasion, with expensive results.
The bulk of Carter-Ruck's memoirs are given over to accounts of famous libel cases in which he was involved, either acting on behalf of the allegedly libelled party, or on behalf of a newspaper or magazine.
Some of these cases make for entertaining reading, recalling as they do some of the great eccentrics of the recent past. Through these pages wander such luminaries as Randolph Churchill (son of Winston, and a fairly regular visitor to the libel courts), Professor Harold Laski (a mouth-frothing Socialist of the old school, disowned even by the 1945 Labour Party), and James Wentworth Day (a unreconstructed patrician, but absolutely no sort of fool). Amusing though these accounts of past cases are, one always has to remember, of course, that it was not quite so entertaining to be involved in such a case oneself.
Carter-Ruck was not solely involved in libel. He also handled obscenity cases, and he was the lawyer who advised George Weidenfeld that it was safe to proceed with the UK publication of Nabokov's Lolita in 1959. This was, let's face it, a pretty bold piece of advice, because the obscenity laws in the UK were in a pretty chaotic state at the time, and no UK printer would touch the book.
Another of Carter-Ruck's legal specialisms was copyright, and he was involved in the extraordinarily complicated saga of the film rights relating to some of the James Bond books -- an enterprise so complicated indeed that I will not attempt to summarise it here.
Carter-Ruck does not seem to have been an easy man to work with. For the first few decades of his professional life, he traded, so to speak, as the senior partner in Oswald Hickson Collier and Co. But by the late 1970s there were severe strains within the partnership. In 1981 Carter-Ruck finally walked out, taking several other employees and 1,500 client files with him. Never a particularly sensitive man, he set up shop as Peter Carter-Ruck & Partners, in the very same building as the firm he had just left. Within a few years, however, all those who had founded the new firm with him had left -- including his daughter.
Perhaps it is necessary to add that Carter-Ruck's most lasting fame derived from his almost perpetual battles with the magazine Private Eye, which invariably referred to him as Carter-Fuck. When he once asked them not to use that name, they substituted Farter-Ruck instead.
Carter-Ruck -- or whoever -- died on 19 December 2003. The obituaries were unusually frank. The Telegraph's version was fairly straightforward, but the Guardian's (registration required) was brutal. It was written by David Hooper, a former partner.
Hooper described Carter-Ruck as 'a chancer, out for the maximum fee', and a man 'who did for freedom of speech what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen.' Hooper related that, when he challenged the head of the firm about an apparent piece of double-dealing, Carter-Ruck 'proved unable to give a truthful explanation.' In another instance, a client who lost a case which Carter-Ruck had encouraged him to pursue was told 'a pack of lies.' These are unusually strong verdicts on a man not yet buried.
The comment which I like best, however, was the one offered by the solicitor Oscar Beuselinck. Carter-Ruck, said Beuselinck, had 'that English look, where they smile at you and cut your balls off.'
Carter-Ruck was born in 1914, and began to specialise in libel soon after the second world war ended. In his memoirs, he points out that libel has a long history: in ancient Rome the offence was publishable by death, and in 1585 the Chief Justice of England complained about the steady growth in the number of actions for defamation.
Despite the long history of the 'offence', English law provides what is, to my mind, a curiously loose definition of it. Libel and slander both involve defamation, and the best-known working definition of defamation is the following:
A statement concerning any person which exposes him to hatred, ridicule or contempt or which causes him to be shunned or avoided or which has a tendency to injure him in his office profession or trade.This gives more than ample scope for anyone who is offended by almost anything to take action under the law. And they do, in their hundreds, it seems, every year.
A mere misplaced comma can cause endless trouble. In one case a newspaper wrote: 'Miss Y went to the caravan, where she was living with Mr X.' The reporter should have written: 'Miss Y went to the caravan, where she was living, with Mr X.' Or, better still, the reporter should have rephrased the sentence entirely, along the lines of 'Miss Y was living in a caravan at the time. She took Mr X to that caravan.' In any event, Miss Y was offended by the suggestion that she was cohabiting with Mr X, and the newspaper had to pay up.
In other words, from a writer's point of view, the law relating to libel provides a dangerous minefield, into which you venture at your own risk. Carter-Ruck's advice to writers is simple. To be certain that you will never be liable to pay damages for libel, you should 'refrain from writing, printing or publishing or distributing any written matter of whatsoever nature.'
So that solves that problem. Never let it be said that this blog is not useful.
Another interesting remark from this author is his comment that it is always important to have first novels read for libel. They are, he says, 'so often autobiographical and so often introduce fiction to enhance the story, the author overlooking the identifying details.' In other words, it is not much of a defence to cry 'But this is fiction!' if it is perfectly obvious to all your friends who you're writing about. And it is especially not much of a defence if the easily recognisable parties are depicted doing some naughty things over and above what they actually got up to in real life.
Yet another tip -- and, like the one above, it is something which you would have thought was fairly obvious but which is often overlooked. If you must write a novel, and you feature a doctor or a lawyer or an army officer, for God's sake check the official lists of these people and choose a name which isn't there. If you write a whodunit in which the murderer is a Dr Smith of Clapham, you really can't complain when an actual Dr Smith of that parish takes a dim view. But, as Carter-Ruck points out, even the BBC neglected this elementary precaution on one occasion, with expensive results.
The bulk of Carter-Ruck's memoirs are given over to accounts of famous libel cases in which he was involved, either acting on behalf of the allegedly libelled party, or on behalf of a newspaper or magazine.
Some of these cases make for entertaining reading, recalling as they do some of the great eccentrics of the recent past. Through these pages wander such luminaries as Randolph Churchill (son of Winston, and a fairly regular visitor to the libel courts), Professor Harold Laski (a mouth-frothing Socialist of the old school, disowned even by the 1945 Labour Party), and James Wentworth Day (a unreconstructed patrician, but absolutely no sort of fool). Amusing though these accounts of past cases are, one always has to remember, of course, that it was not quite so entertaining to be involved in such a case oneself.
Carter-Ruck was not solely involved in libel. He also handled obscenity cases, and he was the lawyer who advised George Weidenfeld that it was safe to proceed with the UK publication of Nabokov's Lolita in 1959. This was, let's face it, a pretty bold piece of advice, because the obscenity laws in the UK were in a pretty chaotic state at the time, and no UK printer would touch the book.
Another of Carter-Ruck's legal specialisms was copyright, and he was involved in the extraordinarily complicated saga of the film rights relating to some of the James Bond books -- an enterprise so complicated indeed that I will not attempt to summarise it here.
Carter-Ruck does not seem to have been an easy man to work with. For the first few decades of his professional life, he traded, so to speak, as the senior partner in Oswald Hickson Collier and Co. But by the late 1970s there were severe strains within the partnership. In 1981 Carter-Ruck finally walked out, taking several other employees and 1,500 client files with him. Never a particularly sensitive man, he set up shop as Peter Carter-Ruck & Partners, in the very same building as the firm he had just left. Within a few years, however, all those who had founded the new firm with him had left -- including his daughter.
Perhaps it is necessary to add that Carter-Ruck's most lasting fame derived from his almost perpetual battles with the magazine Private Eye, which invariably referred to him as Carter-Fuck. When he once asked them not to use that name, they substituted Farter-Ruck instead.
Carter-Ruck -- or whoever -- died on 19 December 2003. The obituaries were unusually frank. The Telegraph's version was fairly straightforward, but the Guardian's (registration required) was brutal. It was written by David Hooper, a former partner.
Hooper described Carter-Ruck as 'a chancer, out for the maximum fee', and a man 'who did for freedom of speech what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen.' Hooper related that, when he challenged the head of the firm about an apparent piece of double-dealing, Carter-Ruck 'proved unable to give a truthful explanation.' In another instance, a client who lost a case which Carter-Ruck had encouraged him to pursue was told 'a pack of lies.' These are unusually strong verdicts on a man not yet buried.
The comment which I like best, however, was the one offered by the solicitor Oscar Beuselinck. Carter-Ruck, said Beuselinck, had 'that English look, where they smile at you and cut your balls off.'
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Hiatus
There will be a pause in posts until Monday 12 July or thereabouts.
Two reasons. One, a new computer is being delivered tomorrow. And two, next week there is the annual gathering of NAFAS, the national association of flowering arrangement societies, in Harrogate. Mrs GOB is a keen enthusiast for same, and indeed is chairman of the local branch, so we shall be attending. (And, since you're wondering, there are books on the subject, most of them exceptionally well printed.)
Two reasons. One, a new computer is being delivered tomorrow. And two, next week there is the annual gathering of NAFAS, the national association of flowering arrangement societies, in Harrogate. Mrs GOB is a keen enthusiast for same, and indeed is chairman of the local branch, so we shall be attending. (And, since you're wondering, there are books on the subject, most of them exceptionally well printed.)
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