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12 Responses to “We’ve Always Drowned Your Voice With Our Shouting”

1. 1 Elva November 22, 2012 at 10:17 am

   Don’t remember seeing this one. Will see if they have it on Netflix. Will let
   you know at a later date. Really enjoy James Mason’s work.

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   • 2 bluenred November 22, 2012 at 10:26 am

     You can just watch it right here on the computer. ; )

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2. 3 Miep O'Brien November 23, 2012 at 10:36 pm

   Thanks for that. Now I want to go watch everything F.J. McCormick has ever been in. He’s like Buster Keaton. Awesome.

   The intrepid Kathleen, not so much. Irish accent fail is strong here. But women weren’t allowed to have anything but thin roles for so long. Her controlling the ending is strong, though.

   Stunning sets, backdrops, side play. The bar scene is terrific. The painter is pretty funny too. The second half of the film is so different from the first half.

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   • 4 bluenred November 23, 2012 at 10:51 pm

     Glad you found things worthy.

     Yes. Kathleen allowed to control far more than the norm, for any wimmins, there in 1947. All the stupid boy shit, had to end. She ends it.

     And in doing so, resonates back to the sleepy granny in the chair, earlier in the film, recalling all the fine boys who’d died, similarly for no reason, back in the spring of her life.

     And, there, why I say in the intro, that “The Troubles” quartet, beginning with this film, continues, and then ends, with the final Sheridan/George film, in which the protagonist, expected to do the usual boy shit, drops his gloves, says “no,” and climbs out of the ring.

     The bar scene and the painter scene come from LSD. Synthesized by Hofmann in 1938; not around much, yet, in 1947. But, judging by this film, I have many times felt the director, Carol Reed, may have happened onto some. That or the “natural” equivalent: he is said, in all the film histories, to have suffered some sort of mysterious and unspecified mental “breakdown,” around that time.

     The second half is so different from the first half because the first half is all about sunnily striving to force dreams onto reality. While the second half is all about desperately flailing to suck from reality, dreams.

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     • 5 Miep O'Brien November 23, 2012 at 11:03 pm

       Thanks, good points. I did think the last half was different because of E.J. McCormick, though. Most of the action is centered around him. The first half is so utterly serious, the second half has all that nutty and slapstick stuff suddenly in the middle of all this melodrama. I like it, it’s unusual. Like Trainspotters.

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       • 6 bluenred November 23, 2012 at 11:17 pm

         F. J. McCormick. Sure. Here: the slime and the sleaze. Smoothbrain; knuckledragging; but still a spark.

         I don’t see the second-half “action [] centered around him.”

         But then, everybody sees differently.

         As I see no “nutty and slapstick stuff.”

         As I loathed Trainspotting.

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3. 7 Miep O'Brien November 23, 2012 at 11:27 pm

   Well, he’s not playing an appealing character, but I think It’s probably harder to play an unappealling one. And he drives so much of the action. Danny is pretty much just a prop at that point, even though the plot is centered around him.

   The bar scene had elements of slapstick and the whole part with the painter was off the wall. That was what I was referring to.

   Sorry you didn’t like Trainspotters. It’s a rough film, I know, and its overall amorality is undeniable. No accounting for taste

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   • 8 bluenred November 23, 2012 at 11:42 pm

     Danny, throughout the second half of the film, is dying, and F.J. is just one of the stations of the cross.

     The bar and painter scenes, to this mind, cleave closest to Reality.

     The people who pushed out Trainspotting didn’t Truly know drugs. That’s all. ; )

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4. 9 Miep O'Brien November 24, 2012 at 12:02 am

   As you document so effectively in your blogging, reality is frequently pretty damned weird.

   My drug experiences have not included shooting heroin, so I am in no position to judge the veracity of the representation of such in Trainspotters. I liked the film for its odd juxtaposition of tawdriness and craziness with the upbeat attitude of the narrator.

   I am more of a reader of fiction than a watcher of films, and I have little luck matching tastes with people there either. So my expectations in this department are low to non-existent. It’s fun watching old black and white classic flicks though. There are many I’ve missed.

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   • 10 bluenred November 24, 2012 at 12:51 am

     The further you know, the less the tastes match.

     When, finally, all the way out there, all on your own, there is no match at all.

     I know you, out in that place.

     That’s why, I like that, sometimes, you come along on this ride. ; )

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     • 11 Miep O'Brien November 24, 2012 at 1:07 am

       I envision humans in this culture spherically. There are a whole bunch clustered in the middle, and the further out you get from the middle, the further away (on average) the rest of us are from each other. What we primarily have in common is not being in the middle.

       That doesn’t mean anyone is necessarily terribly isolated, just that the population density is a lot lower.

       Still, it’s important to distinguish differing minds from differing ethos. There are outliers who hew to wretched ethos. Being interesting is not enough, by itself.

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       • 12 bluenred November 24, 2012 at 1:27 am

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