We’ve been lucky with the weather in NYC this September. Many bright, warm days The aftermath of the powerful hurricane that has devastated areas of the South East is now giving us a little rain. Not so lucky there where hurricane Helene was deadly across five states after making landfall on Thursday. Some of the worst flooding the South has seen in 100 years has cut millions off from power and swept away entire towns during its push along the Southeast and into Appalachia.

Books and Films

Books read this month include Meaning Loss by Sanje Ratnavale (reviewed here), The Train to Nowhere by Anita Leslie, Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay, Murder in the Basement by Anthony Berkeley, and a wonderful trip back to childhood with Tuffy, the Tug Boat.

I’ve just started The Walls Have Ears by Helen Fry about the Secret Information Service in WW2. 

One of the key players is Arthur Rawlinson who had served with the West Surrey Regiment in WW1 and  transferred to intelligence duties in France from 1917 to 1918 with MI1(a), the section of military intelligence that dealt with prisoners of war.

At the outbreak of WW2 Rawlinson was called up, given an emergency commission, posted to MI1(H), and worked at the Tower of London. He became deputy director of Military Intelligence (Prisoners of War) and, later, head of MI19.

Between the wars, Rawlinson had a career as a screenwriter and worked on the script for the Hitchcock film, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).

That took me off to watch the film which I had seen before but hardly remembered.  Rawlinson is listed in the opening credits as a scenario developer and the film is full of melodrama, intrigue and devilish foreign elements bent of death and destruction. Hitchcock took the title from a G.K.Chesterton story to which he had film rights. I haven’t read it so that’s up next.

I was very taken with some of the elements of the film. The quick switch from comedy to terror for example. one moment the dancers are swirling on the floor and becoming entangled in the wool unravelling from knitting and the next they are in shock pointing to hole in the window made by the killer’s bullet.

From high farce to horror in seconds.

I loved how Hitchcock shows the scene change from Switzerland to London with the snow covered Alps fading away and the lights of Piccadilly emerging: All the booze thats fit to drink:  Black and White, Sandeman, Guinness, Schweppes.

The macabre dentist scene in Wapping again has elements of farce (misplaced here) and scar-faced Peter Lorre with his blond patch comb-over makes for a very nasty villain. (He didn’t have any English and learned his part phonetically.)  

Lots of other cinematic goodies to enjoy along with a bit of a clunky plot, a clever scene in the Royal Albert Hall (not exactly done with mirrors but almost) and an over-the-top shoot out.

Jacob Lawrence and Elephants

On Friday we visited the D.C. Moore Gallery  in Chelsea to see the Jacob Lawrence “Builders” exhibition before it closed . 

There were vintage reminders at the exhibit that this is election season.