sovay | God would never have put us here to suffer for a race of fiends like that to come after us

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God would never have put us here to suffer for a race of fiends like that to come after us

There is an astonishing moment in Berkeley Square (1933), the most recent of the Leslie Howard movies I was watching last night. It comes late in the film, which has been up to that point a slightly stagy adaptation of a nonetheless thoughtful play about time travel: by living obsessively in his ancestral house in Berkeley Square, studying the diaries of his eighteenth-century namesake and cataloguing the details of all their daily lives, the bookish, withdrawn, past-longing Peter Standish of 1933 has managed to haunt himself back into the past of his own family, slipping into the body of his double across a century and a half while the displaced Peter Standish of 1784 crashes around the twentieth century, probably thinking himself mad or damned—1933 Peter doesn't care, because he believes he's translated himself back to a fragile, vanished world of aristocracy and grace and he'll live out the rest of his life in the time to which he truly belongs. Of course it doesn't work out that way. He knows the broad script he's supposed to stick to, but not the details, not the habits of the time or the in-jokes of his family; he gets the slang all wrong and can only pass off so much as the mistakes of a new-minted American in post-Revolution England. At first it's comical, with twinges of embarrassment for Peter who's trying so hard and so badly fumbling his dream; then it becomes nightmarish, as he realizes the past is a real place with horseshit in the streets and casual cruelties of society and only the most cautious ideas about bathing. Worse, everywhere he goes, people sense something wrong in him—they perceive him as something uncanny, almost like a ghost himself. Nearly a demon. No one wants to meet his eyes. And then finally the girl who loves him—the wrong Pettigrew sister, the one 1784 Peter isn't supposed to have looked at twice—makes him tell her the truth; forces him to raise his eyes to hers, to hold her gaze. "The veil is thin for you," he says: as it was for him, peering into the past.

And the film wrenches. I don't know what I was expecting as the camera cuts from a two-shot in profile to the actress' widening, transfixing eyes, but it wasn't a montage, as modern and shocking as nothing else in this plot: all but commanding him, "I must see!" she's hit full in the face with the future, speed and industry and warfare—gas-masks, cannon-fire, skyscrapers, white-dazzled Broadway, bootleggers and G-men, ocean liners, traffic jams, spinning and dollying and blurring in and out of one another—a rocket-flash of the twentieth century's Peter, white-faced and stricken in a foxhole with shells exploding all around him. I have no idea who directed it. (TCM proposes Slavko Vorkapić, who co-wrote and directed The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1927) with Robert Florey, the short film from the Alloy Orchestra's Wild and Weird that really bowled me over in February. It did have great montages.) It doesn't look a bit like the rest of the cinematography. It smashes the viewer as joltingly as it does Heather Angel's Helen Pettigrew and then it's over, dissolving back into soft-focus and fierce despairing embraces, the eternal hopelessness of loving across a break in time. But for a moment she's stunned by it. It's real horror. And it's a very strange inclusion in a film which is otherwise a kind of elaboration on "Miniver Cheevy," undermining 1933 Peter's gauzy ideas about the romance of the past—he's disgusted with modernity, but it's not restored by the script as a best of all possible worlds. It's still a scary, hurtling, mechanized place. There's just nowhere else he can go. That's a lot more disturbing in afterthought than I thought Hollywood time-and-again romances were supposed to get.

Lovecraft adored the film; he saw it four times in theaters, as was the only way possible in 1934. It was a flawed masterpiece for him—he thought especially that the story failed to take into account the effects of eighteenth-century Peter's sojourn in the present, handwaving it as a dream or drunkenness when Lovecraft thought the man should really have been traumatized, having no benefit of his present-day counterpart's knowledge—"But with all its defects the thing gave me an uncanny wallop. When I revisited it I saw it through twice—& I shall probably go again on its next return. It is the most weirdly perfect embodiment of my own moods & pseudo-memories that I have ever seen—for all my life I have felt as if I might wake up out of this dream of an idiotic Victorian age & an insane Jazz age into the reality of 1760 or 1770 or 1780 . . . the age of the white steeples & fanlighted doorways of the ancient hill, & of the long-s'd books of the old dark attic trunk-room at 454 Angell St. God Save the King!" I find it fascinating he felt like that. There's no escaping into the past of Berkeley Square. (Perhaps that was part of the resonance: it hit me only this afternoon that Peter Standish of 1933 is left in a position similar to many of Lovecraft's protagonists, stranded between too much knowledge and too little agency. The past is lost to him and the present is empty. "Not in my time, not in yours, but in God's" doesn't help much on the human scale.) We winnow the bits we like out of stories. I read of Innsmouth and I'm envious. He wrote "The Shadow Out of Time."

So there's my relationship with H. P. Lovecraft: I would have horrified him personally, but we could have gone to the cinema together. He would have agreed with the montage: "Devils! Demons! Not men!" We'd have stayed for the second feature so long as I said nothing about gills and scales.

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Well, that's existentially depressing. I'd like to keep the fantasy, at least, that if I were dropped in one of my favorite time periods, it would feel right and whole and proper. I suspect that it wouldn't and I'm romanticizing it, but I'd rather not have it proved to me. This way I can at least escape into the fantasy when the 21st century gets to be too much.

This way I can at least escape into the fantasy when the 21st century gets to be too much.

The degree to which Berkeley Square demolishes its fantasy is what interests me about it. There are enough entries in the genre where the past really is a vanished paradise, or the present-day traveler simply disappears into history; failing that, you can always change things for the better or return to the present thankful for it after all. This is the earliest time-travel film I've encountered and right now it's the least reassuring one I can think of, even more so than La Jetée (1962). I really wasn't expecting that.

I appreciate it for being intellectually interesting and deconstructing the trend, but I suspect I wouldn't enjoy it.

Lovecraft adored the film; he saw it four times in theaters...

Panel! Turing's Snow White; Lovecraft's Berkeley Square; Wittgenstein's Copacabana?

Nine

Yes. I think this would be a good one.

Panel! Turing's Snow White; Lovecraft's Berkeley Square; Wittgenstein's Copacabana?

I really want Wittgenstein to have seen The Gang's All Here (1943). In the absence of proof he didn't, I shall imagine him in the front row with his neck craned back and a cold pork pie on his knee, soaking up his peripheral vision with the lady in the tutti-frutti hat.

Right: so if I'm going to pitch it to Readercon, what's the panel here? Intellectual figures and their spare time? The influence of cinema on other, not traditionally associated fields? At the moment, we've just got a genre.

Edited 2012-07-26 17:00 (UTC)

Wow. I generally don't have much interest in films from that era, but that sounds amazing. I may have to hunt it down.

I generally don't have much interest in films from that era, but that sounds amazing. I may have to hunt it down.

Yay! As someone who is interested in films from that era (and will spam you with recommendations if ~~you're not careful~~ you'd like some), I will repeat my caution that much of Berkeley Square does feel like someone just taped the play, but the montage and the movie's ambivalence if not outright pessimism about its central conceit are sufficiently striking that I would recommend it. I'm not sure of its status on DVD. Apparently it was a lost film for about forty years.

I'm less interested generally in the cinematic qualities (I don't care if it's essentially just a taped play), and more on the quality of the script. My lack of interest in early film stems from the fact that it's rarely telling the kinds of stories I engage with; this one sounds like an exception.

Sadly, I don't know that I can get hold of it. No sign of it existing on DVD anywhere I can find, nor any streaming sources. Where did you find it?

My lack of interest in early film stems from the fact that it's rarely telling the kinds of stories I engage with; this one sounds like an exception.

What kinds of stories do you engage with?

No sign of it existing on DVD anywhere I can find, nor any streaming sources. Where did you find it?

It was showing on TCM! Man, all the films I like are inaccessible. Except for the ones that Criterion has inexplicably brought back into print and I'm always faintly afraid they'll vanish.

Mostly I like drama, of either the historical or spec-fic variety. But I tend to get kicked out of emotional engagement with the story by various factors, like bad history, really fake-looking special effects, or acting styles that register on me as highly artificial, which is why older movies often fail for me.

On the other hand, a good enough script can make me ignore all of the above issues.

I'd never actually thought of HPL being a cinema-goer! The story this film puts me in mind of is "He", enough that I had to check the publication date on it.

Am I right in thinking you see a lot less of 1784 Peter than his twentieth-century counterpart? It sounds fascinating, bleaker than I'd expect from a Leslie Howard film.

I'd never actually thought of HPL being a cinema-goer!

Me neither! I have this image of him sitting with gritted teeth through the newsreels and cartoons.

The story this film puts me in mind of is "He", enough that I had to check the publication date on it.

I don't think I know that story at all. Tell me about it?

Am I right in thinking you see a lot less of 1784 Peter than his twentieth-century counterpart?

Yes; we see him in a sort of prologue before the bodyswap takes place and then we shift forward in time to follow 1933 Peter. He's never onstage again, but we hear from other characters that "contemporary" Peter over the last few days has been behaving incredibly strangely, drinking heavily, getting himself thrown out of clubs, swearing at everyone around him for being ghosts. A story which followed both of them would have been really interesting, but that missing other half is kind of what Lovecraft had to write for himself. With, you know, more aliens and unspeakability.

It sounds fascinating, bleaker than I'd expect from a Leslie Howard film.

See above to

lignota! It wasn't bleaker than I'd expect from a Leslie Howard film, because the more I've seen of him, the more I think he's been remembered unfairly for a conventional role (Ashley Wilkes, Gone with the Wind) when in reality he starred in some really weird stuff, but it was orders of magnitude bleaker than I was expecting from a Depression-era time-travel fantasy. There's not even a consolatory present-day girl at the end. I thought those were de rigueur.

Edited 2012-07-26 17:57 (UTC)

"He" was written in 1925 or '26. It has your standard disaffected narrator moving from New England to New York, and hating it. One night he meets a stranger in eighteenth century garb who tells him a story about a squire who gained knowledge of time, space and magic from Native Americans, then poisoned them with "monstrous bad rum". The stranger shows him past and future visions of NY so terrible (or perhaps he watched the film of "Reanimator"!) that the narrator's screams summon the Native Americans' ghosts, who drag the squire into some Hell.

Summing it up, I think I'd prefer "Berkeley Square".

Would I like it?

Would I like it?

I have no idea. I think you would find it intellectually interesting. For sheer enjoyment, there are probably other films starring Leslie Howard I'd recommend to you first.

Every time you post you just continue amaze me with your insight.

Every time you post you just continue amaze me with your insight.

Thank you. I post about things which interest me; I'm glad you enjoy reading.

He would have agreed with the montage: "Devils! Demons! Not men!" We'd have stayed for the second feature so long as I said nothing about gills and scales.

It would be hard not to with him around. I don't think I would much like other conversations with the man, much as I am indebted to his work.

I don't think I would much like other conversations with the man, much as I am indebted to his work.

Hee. It is true it would be almost irresistible. Or name-checking Yiddish.

The Thomas Covenant novels were hard to read, and I eventually stopped trying to keep up with them, because of the heinous behavior and emotional detachment of the dream state when the protagonist was beyond the limits of his ability to cope in a new environmental reality, unbelievable in even fine details. While a logical consequence, and a conscious opposition to the trope of credulous acceptance of the fantastic by transportees from our world, it was deeply disturbing, and hard for me to maintain a belief that I'd behave any better. Not drunken stupor or delirium, but the defense of what amounts to a psychotic break: this is patently not reality as I've experienced it consistently over a long lifetime, so it must be a dream. The problem is the fine grain details by which reality consistently differs from dreams and the lack of volitional engagement typical in lucid dreaming. As fantastic and unbelievable reality may appear, it seems to me it has compelling qualities that exclude dreaming as an acceptable explanation, precluding liberation of uncivilized behaviors and objectification of other people.

I didn't know that "The 1929 Broadway production was an enormous success with Leslie Howard" (I knew it was a play, not that Leslie Howard starred in it on Broadway), thank you Wikipedia.
Also, the author John Balderston had just had an even bigger hit with his stage adaptation of _Dracula_; he also wrote the script for the Universal film.

As fantastic and unbelievable reality may appear, it seems to me it has compelling qualities that exclude dreaming as an acceptable explanation, precluding liberation of uncivilized behaviors and objectification of other people.

I stalled out on Thomas Covenant because I couldn't hack the prose, honestly, but I believe I know the plot point to which you're referring. I'm with Lovecraft in thinking that 1784 Peter shouldn't have been able to shake off his experience of 1933 as lightly as the story seems to think (especially considering the effects of the same few days in the eighteenth century on his descendant—Lovecraft objected specifically that present-day Peter finds no reference to the exchange in any of his diaries when other alterations in history can be perceived), but I'm not sure if you're arguing the same or whether you just mean that the human mind when confronted with the impossible should opt for assuming madness over dream states. Probably it depends on the local definition of impossible. I'm thinking of a scene in Phyllis Gotlieb's A Judgment of Dragons (1980) in which a large red telepathic cat from the twenty-fifth century is explaining why she's safer running around an early nineteenth-century Polish shtetl in her own shape (it's a long story) rather than assuming the illusion of a human stranger "or a least a blackberry bush, make yourself inconspicuous"—"Espinoza, as a Solthree I must go on two legs and I get nowhere; in my own shape, if someone sees me—well, the people here believe in demons, and whatever they are, I am not far from what they look like—so they say, 'Oh, God help me, there goes a demon!' and shiver and say their prayers. If they see a blackberry bush running by in the street, they think they are going crazy and start screaming. Forget it!"

Probably it depends on the local definition of impossible.

This is a remarkably useful and teasing phrase, and I feel like it should go somewhere.

Absolutely ditto!

This is a remarkably useful and teasing phrase, and I feel like it should go somewhere.

Should you desire it for a title, you are welcome to it!

This quote from the telepathic cat is *wonderful*.

I've had the experience in dreams of having a waking-world mentality, that is, of being unsettled and confused by the fluid shift in situation, and yet not (as more usually happens) realizing that this means I'm dreaming. I recall in one dream thinking that maybe it did mean I was going crazy. As when I've worried about that in real life, my primary reaction was to try to act as inconspicuous as possible so as not to call my (possible) condition to anyone's attention. Meanwhile, I expended energy trying to make sense of the situation. Eventually my mental state became more dream-friendly, and then the shifts and fluidity no longer bothered me.

Eventually my mental state became more dream-friendly, and then the shifts and fluidity no longer bothered me.

You would probably adapt to a fantasy universe very well.

Fascinating film. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it.

At first it's comical, with twinges of embarrassment for Peter who's trying so hard and so badly fumbling his dream; then it becomes nightmarish, as he realizes the past is a real place with horseshit in the streets and casual cruelties of society and only the most cautious ideas about bathing.

Yes. I know the past too well to want to live there. Which starry-eyed realism, of course, is why I've been fascinated with alternate history ever since first I found the concept. In Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium (1962), someone mentions a world with an England [paraphrase]"very much like the Restoration period, but with indoor plumbing, electricity, and quite respectable medical care."

Which would have it's own problems and unpleasantnesses and one would have as much trouble fitting in there as anywhere else, of course, but I understand the lure of dreaming such a place, or its equivalent.

Worse, everywhere he goes, people sense something wrong in him—they perceive him as something uncanny, almost like a ghost himself. Nearly a demon. No one wants to meet his eyes.

Impressively nightmarish, that. I've had the feeling at times, myself. Sometimes it's easy (and I suspect very dangerous as well) to imagine that one is in fact a time traveller or an alien anthropologist or a something that has somehow been swallowed up in the business of day-to-day living here and lost track of the actual job.

Lovecraft adored the film; he saw it four times in theaters, as was the only way possible in 1934.

Fascinating, that.

So there's my relationship with H. P. Lovecraft: I would have horrified him personally, but we could have gone to the cinema together. He would have agreed with the montage: "Devils! Demons! Not men!" We'd have stayed for the second feature so long as I said nothing about gills and scales.

Indeed. Well, if he were to be horrified by you it would be his loss.

Edited 2012-07-27 17:11 (UTC)

Sometimes it's easy (and I suspect very dangerous as well) to imagine that one is in fact a time traveller or an alien anthropologist or a something that has somehow been swallowed up in the business of day-to-day living here and lost track of the actual job.

There are some very fine stories on this premise, I believe.

Well, if he were to be horrified by you it would be his loss.

Hah. Thank you. But have you read Lovecraft's letters? I can understand having a panic attack in Brooklyn if you're used to living in solitude in Providence, but the proximity of dark-eyed people from different countries is not legitimate reason to hate a city.

He knows the broad script he's supposed to stick to, but not the details, not the habits of the time or the in-jokes of his family --the lesson that no amount of study can substitute for reality--in some respects. Study WILL let you know details that even people at the time will not necessarily know, but the faces siblings will make at each other, favorite jokes too well-known ever to have been written down--those things you won't get.

I've had a vague notion for a story hanging around in my head, waiting for actual plot to happen (various unsatisfactory ones have presented themselves) that involves Jonathan Edwards. In one scenario, I imagined a shade of him in the present, and like Lovecraft, I imagined that he'd have thought himself damned--but only briefly.

How did you feel about the 1700s character's experience in the 1930s? It sounds like it wasn't really important for the movie, but were you satisfied with it?

but the faces siblings will make at each other, favorite jokes too well-known ever to have been written down--those things you won't get.

Yes. They're hard enough to retrieve after a generation, never mind a hundred and fifty years.

Jonathan Edwards. In one scenario, I imagined a shade of him in the present, and like Lovecraft, I imagined that he'd have thought himself damned--but only briefly.

I'd read that.

How did you feel about the 1700s character's experience in the 1930s? It sounds like it wasn't really important for the movie, but were you satisfied with it?

I don't know. It would have been a very different kind of movie if it had tracked both of them equally, although it would only have taken a line or two more to establish the aftereffects of 1784 Peter's unplanned trip to the future. I almost wonder if an earlier version of the script did balance them: there's a strange, wistful line from him in the prologue, on hearing of Blanchard's successful crossing of the Channel in a hot-air balloon. "It's starting—this age of speed which we will never live to see." He doesn't sound foreboding; he's sorry to miss it. One imagines him as shocked by the realities of the future as 1933 Peter by the past. I don't think I would have liked his cautionary story as well, though. It's always worth looking forward.

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God would never have put us here to suffer for a race of fiends like that to come after us

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More on Berkeley Square connections

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