The Hour

The Hour is 360 minutes too long

The Hour is a bold attempt on the part of the BBC to weave together a suspense thriller, a political drama and a social satire to produce a work that provides a commentary on the state of British society in the mid-1950s, as reflected and refracted through the camera lens and its treatment of current affairs, and which tries to explain the way in which society and television was fighting to break out of its straightjacket. Unfortunately it does not really succeed and though one can see what the producers were trying to achieve it falls lamentably short.

The politics of it does not convince, and nor does its depiction of television in this era, which was still hidebound by the conventions and technical limitations of the time, in particular the fourteen day rule which precluded the coverage of political questions which were going to be debated in Parliament within a fortnight. This was mentioned by the characters but then seemingly disregarded. Of course, the point was that they were smashing through the barriers, but it nonetheless fails to convince. It was indeed the Suez crisis that brought about the effective demise of the 14 day rule, but as a result of the pioneering efforts of Granada and ITV (only brought into being one year previously) not the BBC.

More generally the whole ambience of The Hour (both the show itself and the show within the show) is that of a later era, the mid-sixties perhaps rather than the mid-fifties. When I first saw the trailers for the show I guessed from the look of thing, the graphics, the central characters, etc that it was circa 1963 and that the show within the show was something akin to That Was The Week That Was. Television current affairs was simply not that spontaneous, rebellious or innovative in 1956, and the show fails to convey the sheer stodginess of life at that time in Britain. There are quite a few seeming anachronisms, particularly in speech and manners, though admittedly one can never being completely sure of that, and some things jar horribly. It is inconceivable that a presenter would be brought on impromptu to do an interview in shirt sleeves. Both Romola Garai and Ben Whishaw look wrong for the period, and seem vaguely as if they have been time-warped back from sometime in the 1960s. Again this may be deliberate on the part of the programme-makers, to demonstrate that they are trail-blazing, avante garde figures, but I doubt it.

Moreover, much of the plot was obscure and failed to make any sense, and some scenes were plain ludicrous such as the fight scene in episode 3 between Whishaw (Lyon) and the MI6 chappie within the hallowed precincts of the Beeb itself. (Incidentally MI6 deal with espionage overseas not counter-espionage within the UK which is the remit of MI5). Characters are imbued with astonishing powers of prescience and political erudition way beyond what they would have possessed in real life (a common failing in historical dramas). Lyon has already managed to identify John F Kennedy as a major figure, and the characters greet Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal as a seminal event long before its real significance was apparent (I fancy that Suez was very much a slow burner as a political issue). This is probably designed to demonstrate the character’s insight but it merely reveals the way in which the drama has been written with the benefit of hindsight and the script’s failure to capture the real essence of the way people thought and felt during the period in question.

The oft-made comparisons with Mad Men merely serve to underline the superiority of that series in almost every respect. All in all the hour is a bit of a waste of time - 360 minutes of it to be precise.   

Bobby Fischer Against The World

Bobby Fischer Against The World

Directed by Liz Garbus (2011)

HBO co-production

Running time 91 minutes plus special features 28 minutes approx.

Available on DVD from Dogwoof, £9.99

This is the much-hyped documentary about the life and career of Bobby Fischer, told by means of contemporary interviews with friends, colleagues, journalists, organisers, etc, interleaved with archival footage and photos, to create an intriguing portrait of the most controversial and, in the view of many, the greatest chess player in the history of the game. I had heard a great deal about this film and wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I was certainly not disappointed. The centrepiece of the film is inevitably the famous 1972 world championship match between Fischer and Spassky, around which Garbus weaves the story of his life up to that point and the course of his life afterwards. Of course we all know the story forwards and backwards, and it has been told many times in the numerous books about Fischer and the match, but nonetheless it is still fascinating to watch again the footage of that momentous match and (for those of us old enough to remember the sixties and the seventies) to re-live those times: the world of Nixon, Kissinger and Brezhnev; of Watergate, Vietnam and race riots; above all of the Cold War, for which the match inevitably became a symbol.

There is much footage that I have never seen before, such as Bobby’s appearance on “I’ve Got A Secret”, the US equivalent of “What’s My Line” in 1958, as a callow fifteen year old in jeans and t-shirt, and on talk shows over the years up to his appearance on the Dick Cavett show in 1972, in addition to material often shown. Fischer emerges inevitably as a brash, arrogant, yet complex and tortured soul. We can chart his development as a player and a person from that crew-cut teenager to the smartly suited young man of the 1960s, up to the Reykjavik match, and from that to his sharp deterioration thereafter, both physically and mentally, until his re-emergence in the early 1990s, now as a bulky, lumbering, heavily bearded middle-aged man. The film is, inevitably, a bit light on hard chess content, but nonetheless there is a moderately good account of some of the early games of the 1972 match, such as the “bishop blunder” of game 1 and the masterpiece of game 6, but one cannot expect too much in this regard because the film is surely pitched at a non–specialist audience.

There are fascinating vignettes from people such as Larry Evans, his long time friend and collaborator, and Anthony Saidy who was close to Bobby at the time of the match, and with whom Bobby was staying in New York. (Saidy looks and sounds like he should be in the Sopranos - if he made me a draw offer I wouldn’t refuse!) Kasparov inevitably makes an appearance as an interviewee, and is predictably scathing about the 1992 re-match, just as Fischer was contemptuous of the Kasparov-Karpov matches of the 1980s which he insisted – without ever providing any evidence – were fixed. There is intriguing material about his mother, Regina, a remarkable woman, suspected of Communist sympathies and on whom the FBI had a bulky file, and whom he subsequently rejected.

There is much material on the post-1972 Fischer, who effectively retired from chess by making impossible demands on organisers and arbiters and became a recluse, and who then, after his sanctions-busting re-match against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, became an enforced exile, in various countries. Searching for Bobby Fischer became a furious pastime for sections of the media. Then there came his virulently anti-Semitic and anti-US comments, particularly after 9/11; and finally his arrest in Tokyo at the behest of the US, the offer of citizenship from Iceland, his move there, and finally his death in 2008 at the age of 64.

The special features include an item on the battle over Fischer’s estate between his Japanese wife (which seems to have been a marriage of convenience), his Filipino girlfriend and her daughter (whom she claims implausibly to be his) and his nephews, which is still being contested in the Icelandic courts. I have one slight gripe. The photograph of Fischer on the front cover of the DVD (and which is used in all the promotional material) has been accidentally reversed (fortunately he is not sitting at a proper chessboard so there are no board reversal issues).

There is a great deal of riveting archival material here, and some penetrating insights from a large cast of chess players, friends and commentators. It raises many questions, not all of which it can answer. Did Fischer desert chess after 1972 for fear of losing? Was he clinically psychotic towards the end of his life? What was the effect of his mother on his early development as a boy and did his monomaniacal concentration on the game warp his character? But, all in all a fascinating study of tormented genius, grippingly told.

Incidentally I have heard that there are plans to make at least two other films about Fischer. Are these documentaries or feature films? If the latter then I have always thought that James Woods would be ideal for the role of Fischer, due both to his facial and physical resemblance and his line in brash, arrogant characters.

The King's Speech

I have now finally got to see this much hyped film. As I expected from the trailers and from the various comments and reviews I have read the film is rather a travesty of history, and utterly misrepresents the characters and events of the time. No surprise there then, since it is rare for a commercial feature film to portray historical events with any degree of verisimilitude.

I think that Colin Firth is badly miscast as George, and though he struggles hard with the role he fails to convince chiefly because he is physically so wrong - too tall, too good-looking and altogether too commanding a physical presence. Also Helena Bonham-Carter is perhaps rather too pretty and shapely for Elizabeth. Others, too, are physically wrong for the roles they play, such as Baldwin and Churchill. Guy Pearce on the other hand is very convincing as the raffish and devil-may-care Edward (David) and in fact the believability of his portrayal tends to throw into sharper relief the "wrongness" of Firth as George, as for example, in the scene when Edward mocks and belittles him. The whole scene utterly fails to convince. Some of the other parts, however, are well played and a delight, especially Geoffrey Rush who is brilliant as Dr Logue (though I confess I have no idea what he was actually like), and it is interesting to see Ramona Marquez, so amazing in "Outnumbered" as Princess Margaret Rose.

But much more important than the miscastings, is the general tone of the film and its misrepresentations of the political and social realities of the time. Crucially of course is its depiction of attitudes towards Nazi Germany and the looming threat of war. The film credits many characters, but especially George V (a bit of a dimwit by all accounts) with extraordinary political insight and prescience. He at one point foretells and rails against Britain being squeezed, politically, between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. The Royal Family are being recruited into the ranks of anti-appeasers, against all the evidence that they were generally rather non-political, and deeply conservative insofar as they were political at all. Certainly one cannot accept the idea of either George V or George VI as arch anti-appeasers. (At least this film was better, in this respect, than an ITV production I recall from a few years ago which has George, quite ludicrously and unhistorically, attacking Chamberlain's appeasement policy in conversation with Roosevelt on his American tour).

The portrayal of Churchill as a supporter of George, when he was a die-hard supporter of the lost cause of Edward, is also egregiously wrong. Many other things jar horribly, such as Baldwin "telling" George that Chamberlain is to succeed him as PM, rather than merely "advising" him as was of course the constitutional position.

Most egregious of all the historical falsities is of course the final scene, which depicts an event which I am fairly sure never happened, namely the broadcast from Buckingham Palace to the nation on the outbreak of war. Of course it is understandable that the film-makers should need a climactic scene, for dramatic reasons, in which the "hero" overcomes the enemy, or in this case, overcomes his own weakness and inadequacy, and moreover does so in the context of using this personal triumph to rally the nation in a time of peril, for otherwise the film would just tend to trail away. But even if we are to accept this dramatic licence, I can scarcely believe that the broadcast would have happened in the way depicted, with George going out onto the balcony in front of a huge crowd of cheering people. This was horribly, crashingly, glaringly wrong. The nation was surely in a deeply sombre, despondent and apprehensive mood at this precise juncture, and no such scenes would have occurred. This was much more in keeping with the huge outpourings of celebration that occurred at the conclusion of the war, not at its commencement.

All in all an entertaining and stimulating film, well directed, with good production values and some outstanding performances, but badly marred by its historical inaccuracies, and misrepresentations of the attitudes and cast of mind of many of the characters portrayed.