Igenlode Wordsmith

The weather was nice yesterday, so I went for a walk; a quick stroll between stations, with a 600-foot climb as destination in the middle. The National Trust had helpfully provided steps — the path had less-than-helpfully directed us straight up the steepest part!

In the course of the afternoon I met a handful of other walkers. They were dressed up straight out of the outdoor catalogues in trousers with zip-off legs, multi-strapped rucksacks, twin striding poles, and ergonomic sandals; I was traversing the English countryside in linen jacket, corduroys and brown Oxfords, with a sleeveless jumper slung round my neck. I'm not sure which party found the other more bizarre...

Over the last few weeks I've spent a good deal of time and effort (not to mention cash) on Robert Donat at the National Film Theatre, and I'm still rather disappointed. I'd love to be a fan, but I'm afraid I'm not... and I'm not sure why. After all, he has the voice, the accent, the artistic credentials, the technical ability; he's deeply respected by people I admire, bracketed together with Leslie Howard as an example of 'the sensitive hero', and allegedly a matinee idol to boot.

The good looks I admit I can't really see — the older he gets, the more he looks like Kenneth More, which is fine if you happen to be Kenneth More (whom I enjoy watching), but isn't that flattering in anyone else. But this, of course, really isn't Donat's fault and shouldn't be significant. After all, I'm a fan of Charles Laughton, whose appearance couldn't be described favourably with the best will in the world...

What I don't get from Donat, I suppose, is any sense of charisma — any trace of the 'star' quality that ought to compel attention from out of the screen. He isn't exciting as such; he disappears perhaps a little too entirely into his assorted roles, is perhaps a little too generous when sharing a scene with his co-stars. I don't know.

He is certainly technically accomplished, with many of the films placing a strong emphasis on his ability to age himself up and/or transform his persona; ironically and rather painfully, this is a young man's game. He is far more convincing playing the ancient Mr Chips in his mid-thirties than he is playing a twenty-year-old William Friese-Greene in "The Magic Box", fifteen years of ill-health later.

He also undoubtedly speaks poetry beautifully, an ability also showcased in various productions, and his vocal abilities are flexible and very wide-ranging. What he too often doesn't seem to manage — and I don't know why not — is to engage me with the character emotionally.

I've now seen all the famous films — "Goodbye, Mr Chips", "The Citadel", "The Count of Monte Cristo", "The 39 Steps", "The Winslow Boy" — and a number of the others: "The Cure for Love", "The Ghost Goes West", "Perfect Strangers", "The Adventures of Tartu", "Lease of Life". The most accomplished and sophisticated is probably "The Citadel", in which I found myself drawn into the character in a way that happened with few of the others (my main disappointment here lay in a fairly heavy-handed voice-over scene used at a pivotal point in the plot; not Donat's fault, but it shook me out of the film). The two Donat pictures that I actually enjoyed the most, however, were those dismissed as mere wartime propaganda pieces: "The Young Mr Pitt" (sadly not present in the National Film Theatre's recent season), and "The Adventures of Tartu". (And as the preposterous Tartu, he also looks his most flattering — clearly he should have indulged in pomade more often!)

Both films benefit from a lively sense of irony, and both have more emotional depth than one would expect. Much of "Tartu" is a larger-than-life humorous romp — with Donat's skills of transformation deployed in an impersonation the actor appears to be thoroughly enjoying for a change — but it also has some very tense moments, and at least one point where it appears to be heading for a very dark irony indeed. "Mr Pitt" verges on hagiography but refrains from pulling its punches where mob psychology is concerned, while including some charming domestic comedy and a touch of (probably ahistorical) romance; it's far more than a mere flag-waver, with considerable intelligence and wry humour.

Since I also quite enjoyed "Knight Without Armour" (although it suffers from uneven script development and a director over-enamoured of Marlene Dietrich's glamour), I can't help wondering if I don't require a counterbalancing vulgar dose of propaganda thrills to enable me to appreciate the over-rarified spheres of Donat's talent... :-(

(Incidentally, what happened to the 'currently watching/listening to' feature on MySpace blogs? I rather miss it.)

{N.B. reposted from MySpace blog (like other entries of this vintage)}

You know it's autumn when you set out to go for a long walk and end up spending the best part of an hour gathering sweet chestnuts! The trees were absolutely full of them; I could hear the sound of the nut cases falling all around, and every so often one would tumble down within eyesight. Normally 'wild' chestnuts are shrivelled and not worth having — or else the squirrels get all the best ones — but here I was right on the spot, and the nuts were almost the size of horse chestnuts.

I made a makeshift sack out of a knotted silk scarf (what do you mean, you don't carry a square of silk in your inside breast pocket in case of emergencies? ;-) and picked out as many as I could find until the sun started to go down — then hurried for the next hour to get to the station before dark! When cooked, my spoils tasted just like the 'real' ones, and burst open in a most satisfactory manner; there is something very primaeval about eating food one has collected for oneself. Inevitably, some had insects or bad bits in them, but I gave the remnants of those to the rats — their teeth are a much better size for nibbling round the problem than mine are.