Morning Is Broken
New Forgotten! Over at the Daily Notebook. This one’s very much forgotten, and very much deserves to be remembered. Sublime.
New Forgotten! Over at the Daily Notebook. This one’s very much forgotten, and very much deserves to be remembered. Sublime.
June 17, 2010 at 4:41 pm
I think the ‘appeal’ of Maxwell Reed is debatable. According to Joan, he only lured her into marriage by drugging and ‘date-raping’ her. Once they’d had sex, Joan as a nicely brought up young lady “simply had to get married.” Their union, predictably, was a disaster.
It all depends, of course, on whtehr or not you accpet Joan Collins as a reliable witness. Believe it or not, in this case I sort of do.
June 17, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Oh, the sinister sublimity of Eric Portman, the tortured hohma-seck-suahl in whose veins ran not red blood, but inky black bile!
He casts a foul spell over an entire English village in GREAT DAY (44), undermining its plucky “can do” spirit of anti-Fascist resistance.
June 17, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Oh, Eric Portman! How you made Vivien Leigh seem so competely UN-neurotic, by comparison with your own seething, deep-seated self-loathing in DEEP BLUE SEA (55).
June 17, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Oh, Eric Portman! How convincing you were as a Nazi for Powell and Pressburger. How could they have known how much of a Nazi sympathizer you were, dear boy? Uncanny, that. And that was before you squeezed what was referred to as “glue” all over village “gels” in sylvan rural England, you dear vile loathsome terrorist, you! What depths of depravity and perversity did P & P sense in you?!
June 17, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Oh, Eric Portman! How could you not help signalling your repressed lust for Guy Rolfe in Hamer’s THE SPIDER AND THE FLY (49)? The perfect symmetry of Rolfe’s long, lean frame no doubt also inspired the poor dipsomaniacal director, whose alcoholic self-detestation so mirrored your own!
June 17, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Portman, I thought, lived a quiet country life in a cottage with his partner, his sexuality no secret to anyone in the village, and a source of zero controversy. But I may be quite wrong.
Still, he brings all kinds of tensions to bear in his work, some of them no doubt informed by psycho-sexual-social pressures.
June 18, 2010 at 9:39 am
Is it Eric Portman or Eric Porter who plays the demonic aesthete in Terence Young’s spectacular CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS? I can never remember which one is which.
June 18, 2010 at 11:14 am
Right the first time DW.
June 18, 2010 at 11:21 am
Glad to hear that, as CORRIDOR is one of my favourite unknown films of the 40s. If Terence Young had made only that film, he might now be recognised as a visionary talent. Alas, he spent the next 40 years busily turning himself into a hack.
June 18, 2010 at 12:34 pm
As I mentioned in my comment on The Daily Notebook, CORRIDOR OF DREAMS was my introduction to Portman. A memorable performance in a memorable film, a bit slow at times, but the music and cinematography are haunting. The film that introduced Christopher Lee to the world as well, although the female lead, Edna Romney (I think, if I’m right I’ll be shocked), is the film’s one real flaw, adequate but unexceptional.
June 18, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Edana Romney. I was close.
June 18, 2010 at 5:39 pm
I have a soft spot for Edana…she’s like Valerie Hobson minus the acting ability. For all her limitations, she does shocked gentility rather well.
June 18, 2010 at 6:20 pm
And she also wrote the thing, I believe. Wrote herself a good role, anyhow.
June 21, 2010 at 6:17 pm
I doubt that anyone else would write her a one-line role as the maid.