Sunday 29 January 2017

Review of the 2016 film 'Swallows and Amazons'

So at last the deed has been done.

Chance circumstances meant that I had an evening alone at home so I watched the new film adaptation of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ on DVD, I was able to prepare myself for this and so I was not disappointed. Everything I had gleaned from watching that first minute or so previously was confirmed, the team behind this production had acquired the rights to the book with the intention of making the film they really had in mind.

The starting point for the production team seems to have been to make a film that would appeal to children, in their view to do that it had to include spies, secret documents, guns and almost impossible chase scenes to top and tail the production (the one in the opening sequence ripping off nearly every film version of the ‘Thirty-Nine Steps’ in the process.) All of these additions to appeal to their notion of ‘modern’ children were in the lazy style of Enid Blyton’s writing – if the plot is flagging just introduce a totally improbable incident to grab everyone’s attention and hope they keep watching. This was made worse by taking elements of Ransome’s novel, changing them slightly, then slotting them in to the production, often out of narrative sequence, done so as a merely wasted attempt to try and keep the Ransome purists happy (the meeting by the Swallows with the charcoal burners being the worst example, the loss of the Amazon’s pocket knife being one of the most distorted.)

It was interesting that in the DVD ‘extras’ the writer and director make comments in interviews claiming, in as many words, that they wanted to be faithful to Ransome’s original. From the very first scene where an on-screen caption tells us the year is 1935 we can see that this intention of faithfulness soon got pushed aside by both of them.

Once the pre-credit sequence is over the actual credits use a cartoon style map of the lake, which topographically is completely wrong in comparison to Steven Spurrier’s in the book. It also contradicts the descriptions Ransome gives of where places are in relation to each other, on which Spurrier based his maps.

The film looks good, mostly, in terms of the cinematography of the English countryside but then fails when the Swallows reach the island. Though we know Wild Cat Island is a product of Ransome’s imagination it has its origins in Peel Island, and as the children walk around trying to find a suitable campsite it is just too big (in the original novel John swims around the island, I think even if he is a strong swimmer he would be hard pushed to do so with this island. Once the Amazons arrive on the island any illusion is destroyed. The ‘secret harbour’ is revealed and it is just a woeful inaccurate reconstruction and we are left wondering why they just didn’t film at the real place as was done for the 1974 film. The secret harbour does actually exist, possibly the production team had not been told. Many of the scenes involving buildings, exterior and interior, suffer from over set dressing based on an idealised form of what 1930s streets and interiors looked like.

The interpretation of the characters created by Ransome are let down in the film by the casting, characterisation and some poor acting. One of Ransome’s strengths as a writer, and to an extent illustrator, was his ability to give the reader a rounded view of even minor characters with very few words and through his simple black and white line drawings. The makers of the film seem to have been determined to change the nature of all of them completely, so for those of us familiar with the book we are constantly having our mental image of each one challenged and not in a good way. Mrs Walker’s detailed Australian roots are abandoned in favour of her being a woman brought up in the Scottish Highlands. Mrs Blackett, one of the few characters we are actually told little of in the entire series of novels other than as a widow with her ability to run her household and deal with her servants, is portrayed as a disorganised Pre-Raphaelite Bohemian individual living in a house that seems to be the reverse of Doctor Who’s Tardis (we are shown an exterior shot of Beckfoot, a large house facing the lake, which then cuts to an interior shot of a cramped dining room you would expect to see in a terraced house of the day.)

Four of the six children have no resemblance to the individuals we know through Ransome’s book; both John and Susan are too old for how Ransome described them (and the ages he gave them when planning the novel.) John comes across as pompous, overbearing and on occasions totally indifferent to his siblings and sometimes he is rude and hurtful towards them. Susan, the prototype ‘domestic goddess’ beloved of many devotees of the books, is shown to be a domestic ignoramus. Her only other attribute seems to be that she spends much of her time on screen moaning to John about how he treats her, behaving as if she is a put upon wife in a crumbling marriage. Nancy, who looks much younger than John though we know her to be older, and Peggy both come across as an almost last minute add-on to the plot, with the actors performing as if they have been brought in at short notice and have no idea what the film is about or what they are supposed to be doing. They also spend much time bickering with each other as if one of them has posted something the other didn’t like on Facebook. Titty and Roger are a different matter.

Before the film was made production details released to the media created some controversy in the renaming of ‘Titty’ as ‘Tatty’, something I commented on my first post here, yet strangely the portrayal of the character is almost a homage to the way Sophie Neville played Titty in the 1974 film except, unfortunately, there are scenes where she screams and screams like a spoilt brat (or more accurately like the infamous Violet Elizabeth Bott in the Richmal Crompton ‘William’ books.) Roger, considered by many to be the weakest casting of the children in the 1974 film, is a slight improvement in this version but in places, again like Titty, some of his scenes are almost a homage to that earlier version.

When we come to Jim Turner, Captain Flint, Nancy and Peggy’s uncle. Of all the characters in Ransome’s novels he is one of the few that we are giving detailed illustrations and descriptions of – memorably that he is balding and ‘fat’! In the 1974 film Ronald Fraser had his weaknesses in his portrayal, but he did actually look more like the character Ransome intended. Similarly, it was the intention of the film makers to make use of the relatively recent revelation that Ransome was a spy in Russia, but of course by 1935 he had left all this behind him and was making a living through journalism with the intention one day to write a novel that would appeal to children, though not specifically for them.

The script on occasions uses lines verbatim from the original novel, as comforting as this might be for those of us that know the book they are often put in to the mouths of other people for no obvious reason. When the Swallows find the Beckfoot boathouse with intention of capturing the Amazon’s boat only to find it not there, in the book John comments that this is ‘It’s an old pirate trick…’, in the film this is now spoken by Roger who only moments before been frightened, out of all proportion, by the two dummies left in another boat by the Amazons (an invented addition to the scene.)


There were parts of the film where, if I pushed aside in my mind all my knowledge of the original book, it was quite enjoyable but even then some aspect of the modern day, particularly language or character’s behaviour, would spring up and remind me I was watching a travesty of an adaptation of one of the great works of children’s fiction.

Tuesday 17 January 2017

Revised review of 'Swallows, Amazons and Coots' by Julian Lovelock

When the Lovelock book was published I read it and posted a review on Amazon, this is a revised version of that with some second thoughts.

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There are many adult enthusiasts of Arthur Ransome’s ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series of children’s novels, and some of us have waited a long time for someone to produce a detailed academic analysis of the books that would support and help to explain to those that have not read them his reputation and standing as an author.

Previous publications have dealt with not just the novels but with Ransome and his life before and during the writing of his children’s books, most notably Peter Hunt’s ‘Approaching Arthur Ransome’ that also emanated from academia. Other, excellent, books dealing just with the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series have been written by very knowledgeable devotees such as the late Roger Wardale and established writers such as Christina Hardyment, but Julian Lovelock’s study is the first academic work to tackle each of the novels in depth.

Lifelong readers of Ransome, such as myself, have anticipated this work but having now read it I’m rather saddened to have to admit that I found it disappointing and in my view did not do Ransome’s books justice. This is not to say I disagree with Lovelock’s analysis entirely, obviously everyone has their own view of the nature of them but there are some aspects of his study that I would strongly argue against.

In recent times, mainly since the nineteen-seventies, Ransome’s books have been, unfortunately, dismissed by some as being very middle class and portraying a best forgotten world that ceased to exist many years ago and so having no relevance to children anymore. There are lengthy arguments to be had to refute this view, and a work such as Lovelock’s has the potential to do so. Yet despite these criticisms all twelve of Ransome’s books are in print and continue to sell in hardback and paperback editions, and in two-thousand and sixteen a new film version of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ was released (though it is an adaptation, unlike 1974 film, that takes great liberties with the novel, so those coming to the book after seeing the film will wonder where much of the plot came from.)

Lovelock’s study devotes a chapter to each of the books outlining the plot and then discussing them and aspects of the characters as they are portrayed, some of which are considered in more length than others.

For me, one of the strangest aspects in his analysis is that he seems able to see comedy in every one, sometimes making lengthy references to it, even describing ‘Coot Club’ as a “…comic melodrama…” (p.92) and ‘The Picts and the Martyrs’ as having “…laugh-aloud comedy…” (p.193). In all my readings of the books over fifty years I cannot say I have ever seen them as having a comedy element. Nor have I seen any such references to a comedic content in books written by enthusiasts or the many academic papers about them available Online. For example Hunt makes no reference to humorous writing other than a passage dealing with the pug William in ‘Coot Club’ “This is about the only occasion in the whole canon where Ransome indulges his sense of whimsy…” (p.127)

Yes of course children’s fiction can be humorous, as a child I was an enthusiastic reader of Anthony Buckeridge’s ‘Jennings and Derbyshire’ series and Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’ books all of which I found to be very funny as they were intended to be. In comparison Ransome’s books though they have moments where something is said by one character that is then found comical by the others these passages have never struck me as humorous for the reader, they are just a natural observation of how the characters interact. This concentration of the supposed ‘comedy’ in every novel by Lovelock somewhat distracts from the analysis of each of the book’s plots and characterisation.

Ransome, as he made clear during his own lifetime, was not a children’s writer and always maintained he never wrote for children. It is this aspect of his books that makes him a great writer of what gets classified as children’s fiction and why he still maintains such a high standing. His greatest skills were to draw the reader in, to explain how things are done and to show that in dealing with adults children can be far more wise and sensible. Unfortunately, this aspect of his work is not explored to its deserved depth by Lovelock. For many, myself included, Ransome provided not only absorbing reading, explanations of many things of a practical nature but an escape from an actual childhood to one not burdened with issues that can blight that period of life.

Where I do agree with Lovelock in his analysis of the novels is that the books should be seen  “… as products of their era;” (p.16) I have always argued in forums and other Online sites that they are all a snapshot of England (acknowledging that one book ventures in to Scotland and two are primarily set overseas) as it was in the nineteen-thirties and how Ransome viewed it along with his own childhood and how he wanted that to have been. Because of this, we have to make some allowances over the very occasional use of language that today would be unacceptable (fortunately rare, unlike other popular children’s authors of the time), and attitudes in the social relationships of some of the adult characters.

Lovelock provides analysis of some of the characters as if we are able to see in to their minds and so understand their actions and motivations, this is a tempting idea for many which has led to a great deal of ‘fan fiction’ being posted on the Internet. The root of this kind of writing and analysis is easier than for some writers as Ransome based many of his characters on real people, and in the case of Dick and Dorothea Callum fictionalised versions of himself. The only ones we have carte blanche to do so with is Nancy and Peggy, as the former is a major character and driving force in nearly all the books it is a path that many have followed in such contributions to ‘fan fiction’ but it does make it more complex when analysing the original works.

As with most authors we have little or no idea what the writer had in mind when they created the people that populate their works, in Lovelock’s book he attempts to do so to fit in with his own theory of the overall view Ransome is trying to convey. For Lovelock this seems to be “…that the novels reflect the dying British Empire and its values…” (p17)

To me this would seem to be a quite difficult position to argue for, Ransome is well known for being a journalist on the then ‘Manchester Guardian’, a newspaper that has always taken a left of centre view politically and for spending a lot of time in Russia with a close relationship with revolutionary leaders. But is this enough to assume that he had views that were supportive of the end of the British Empire and all it represented? It is possible to glean from the novels that he saw the decline of ways of life in the areas of the countryside that the books are set, and that he regretted it.

Despite my misgivings it is an interesting read for the Ransome enthusiast, but one where I was always wanting to argue back and felt an opportunity had been missed.

Saturday 14 January 2017

New road in 'Secret Water' 'The Town'






In Walton-on-the-Naze (the 'town' in 'Secret Water') a road has been named after Ransome. It is the entry to a new development of shops and houses on the site of the old Martello Caravan Park, Tendring District Council are also to consider naming some of the roads on the development after characters in 'Secret Water'.

For those who know the area this is the Google map reference - 

Arthur Ransome Way 

It is where the B1034 bends around to run through Walton as the High Street, there is a junction opposite All Saints Church.