The Beasts of Sydenham

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a phenomenal success.  In the five and a half months that it was open to the public, an estimated six million visitors passed through the doors of the Crystal Palace as the exhibition building became known – and at a time when the population of England and Wales was not quite 18 million.  But what to do with the building once the doors had closed? Suggestions ranged from simply leaving it in situ to the more outlandish scheme of rebuilding it as a tower.

Sir Joseph Paxton, the building’s architect, set up the Crystal Palace Company with the aim of moving the building from Hyde Park in central London to Penge Hill in Sydenham. The newly constructed Crystal Palace boasted 50 per cent more floor space than its predecessor and it was filled with courts representing different cultures and time periods. It was conceived as an ’illustrated encyclopaedia’ through which visitors could progress from one subject to the next. This notion of physical space as a means of presenting information was also applied to the large shield-shaped park laid out below the palace. It was here that the artist and sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins decided to attempt something new. Inspired by Richard Owen’s monographs on the extinct giant reptiles of the Mesozoic era, he felt compelled to create a series of large sculptures of extinct creatures for public display.

Hawkins drew concepts for each of the animals, based on the published work of Owen and others. Satisfied with the designs, he created scaled-down clay models, which were refined to meet Owen’s standards, based on the available scientific knowledge of the time. Hawkins then made life-size clay models, from which metal casts were produced. The larger models, such as the Iguanodon, were built in situ (near the lowest lake in the park),,by pouring concrete into moulds surrounding foundations of steel and brick. Even before they were unveiled, the reconstructions were being discussed and speculated over. The Illustrated Crystal Palace Gazette reported ‘The grounds adjoining to the new road from the Rock Hills Sydenham to Penge… is the site being prepared, in hollow basin, mounds, and upheaved tumulae, for the representatives of the antediluvian world.’

This term ‘antediluvian’ refers to the biblical Great flood. One popular belief was that the extinct animals had been killed in the flood and it was even suggested that the dinosaurs’ demise was due to their being too large to fit in Noah’s ark. This, of course, wasn’t the accepted scientific theory, but it was the one presented in newspapers at the time. Another view was that these creatures were ‘the inhabitants of this earth before the abode of our first parent Adam’.

Speculation about the models came to a head on New Year’s Eve 1853, when Hawkins held a banquet at Crystal Palace Park. The table and chairs were set inside the mould used to make the standing Iguanodon, (and not inside the model itself as the famous Punch cartoon suggests). The guests included the leading scientists of the day, with Richard Owen, in his only recorded visit to the park, seated at the head of the table.

Although unfinished when the Sydenham Crystal Palace was opened by Queen Victoria in June 1854, the Geological Illustrations, to give them their official name, were a sensation and a major part of the unique experience of the park. The models were accompanied by an array of merchandise, including guidebooks written by Owen, small-scale models and engraved prints and posters. They also featured in satirical cartoons, many suggesting that the ‘antediluvian monsters’ were more terrifying than illuminating.  Those involved with the project believed that the experiment in visualising extinct animals would significantly further the causes of geology and palaeontology, among the other natural sciences. Others agreed, with The Crystal Palace Herald reporting that the models were: ‘A great visual idea, of much importance to scientific instruction, this portion of the Great Exhibition will be second to none’. Hawkins thought that children in particular responded to tangible things rather than to abstract words. He summed up the driving idea behind the Crystal Palace as being ‘one vast and combined experiment of visual education’.

On opening, the set of completed models on display comprised of Anoplotherium, Dicynodon, Hylaeosaurus, several species of Ichthyosaurus, Iguanodon, Labyrinthodon, Megaloceros, Megalosaurus, Megatherium, Mosasaurus, Palaeotherium, Plesiosaurus, Pterodactyl and Teleosaurus. These models are the most famous result of Hawkin’s labours but the park also featured three islands, each representing a different geological formation and era of time andan ‘exposed cliff face’ showing the litho-stratigraphic order of the rock formations in which the fossilised remains were found.Both Hawkins and Owen planned to introduce more extinct animals at Sydenham: there were plans for a mastodon, mammoths and a moa. Owen even suggested including a dodo.

The relocation of the Crystal Palace failed to live up to expectations.  After the great success of the Great Exhibition, it was thought that any amount of money involved would be recouped, but Joseph Paxton wished to push the grandeur of the Sydenham palace to the extreme, seemingly regardless of the cost. From the start, the Crystal Palace Company was operating beyond its means. Relocating to Sydenham left them with a debt of £1,300,000 (equivalent to £96.5 million today) that was never recovered. The building itself was not adequately insured and when the north transept burnt down in 1866, it was never rebuilt. The Geological Illustrations consumed time and raw materials and having cost £13,729 by the middle of 1855, the company decided that the range of animals already on display was sufficient.  Despite protests and their evident popularity, the project came to a stop.  Contemporary maps of the park show the site of a mastodon that never materialised. The steel frame for a mammoth was 18 foot high when work stopped. The model would have required 50 tonnes of clay.

The financial woes of the Crystal Palace Company also explain why the models were not protected from the rigors of time, either from physical damage or the more telling advances in scientific knowledge. The discovery of Hadrosaurus in 1858 showed that this dinosaur walked upright on its hind legs. A similar conclusion was drawn for Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, confirmed in 1878 by the  discovery of near-complete Iguanodon skeletons in Bernissart, Belgium. This discovery also revealed that the dinosaur’s’ ‘horn’ was actually a thumb claw, betraying the most famous ‘mistake’ in Hawkins’s reconstructions. Subsequent discoveries would further erode the reputation of the models. When American geologist Othniel Marsh visited in 1895, he said ‘There is nothing like unto them in the heavens, or on earth, or in the waters under the earth.’ They were further discredited by Henry Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Museum in the book Extinct Monsters, when he stated that Hawkins was ‘occupied for years in unauthorised restorations’. Woodward noted that the toad-like Labyrinthodon and Dicynodon should have been more akin to salamanders, while ’Iguanodon did not usually stand on all-fours but more frequently sat up like some huge kangaroo…’ This particular notion has since been superseded.

On the night of 30 November 1936, a fire tore through the palace, burning so brightly it was seen in eight counties. 100,000 people watched the Crystal Palace’s destruction in 1936.  Amongst them was Winston Churchill, who called it ‘the end of an era’.  By morning all that remained of Joseph Paxton’s masterpiece was red hot steel and pools of molten glass. Although the Crystal Palace Company attempted to maintain the park as a going-concern, the Trustees of the company were disbanded in 1951 and the park was given to London County Council.  With the building lost and the park very much altered, the models are the most visible evidence of the ‘experiment in visual education’ that lay at the heart of the Crystal Palace scheme. 

Today, the models are largely known for their inaccuracy. It is undeniable that they quickly became outmoded, but it is their outmodedness that now makes them so valuable.  By studying past attempts to communicate science we get our best record of contemporary understanding, and in setting their ideas about these animals literally in stone, Hawkins and Owen created a unique record of the state of scientific understanding at the time. Though our understanding has since advanced it does not make their attempt less valid. Rather, it shows that our understanding of the natural world is never definitive, but subject to change.  But equally any restoration or interpretation can be superseded.  A gallery or model can be outmoded after a few years or even sooner. There will always a requirement to review, more to discover and more to communicate to others.

Exploring The Lost World

First published in 1912, The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle is generally considered to be the first dinosaur story. The thrilling adventure yarn – familiar to millions – is a true landmark of popular culture. 

Initially serialised in the Strand Magazine, the story is told to us by journalist Edward Malone. In order to win the love of his fiancé, Gladys Hungerford, Malone has agreed to accompany Professor Challenger on an expedition to South America to investigate tales of a plateau where dinosaurs still exist. Together with the sceptical Professor Summerlee and big game hunter Lord John Roxton, they start to find evidence to support Challenger’s theory. Accessing the isolated plateau by climbing a rock pinnacle and felling a tree to form a bridge, they become trapped when the bridge is destroyed by treacherous aids.

As Conan Doyle’s characters explore, they discover numerous prehistoric species that have survived in this isolated corner of the world. The plateau is wondrous but dangerous, roamed by vicious pterodactyls and carnivorous Megalosaurus. The explorers also discover that it is home to a tribe of natives who are at war with a species of primitive humanoid – a form of ‘missing link’ between Homo sapiens and the great apes. The explorers help the natives defeat the ape-men and in doing so win their friendship. Eventually, the chief’s son shows the explorers a way down from the plateau.

When the characters return to London to share their discovery with the scientific community, no-one believes them until they produce a young pterodactyl they have brought back. The creature quickly escapes, causing alarm, but undeniably proving their case. Hailed as heroes, they retire to Lord Roxton’s rooms where he reveals another export from the plateau: diamonds valued at £200,000. With the proceeds from these precious stones, Challenger plans to open his own museum and Summerlee retires to catalogue his fossils. Malone (rejected by Gladys, who has married a solicitor in his absence) and Roxton plan a return expedition to the lost world.

Arthur Conan Doyle had broad-ranging interests: alongside his keen advocacy of spiritualism, he was interested in judicial reform, criminology and palaeontology. His home, Windlesham in Crowborough, East Sussex, was on the Weald – an area of rock formations that date back to the Upper Jurassic (145.5–150.8 million years ago). This contributed to the author’s fascination with prehistoric life and, in the spring of 1909, he wrote to the Natural History Museum requesting an expert come and view what appeared to be Iguanodon tracks found at a nearby quarry. Conan Doyle hand-drew the tracks in his letter and the discovery directly inspired a passage in The Lost World, where the first evidence of Iguanodon on the plateau also takes the form of footprints.

In November 1911, Conan Doyle wrote again to Arthur Smith Woodward, the Museum’s keeper of Geology reporting that ‘we have something in the old quarry that is beyond me’. He claimed that this mysterious object was ‘not an impression but a body’. However, when geologist Charles Dawson was dispatched to examine it, the body proved to be a ‘mere concretion of oxide of iron and sand’. The experts perhaps viewed him as a happy amateur, but Conan Doyle persisted in his hope of finding extinct reptiles in some state other than fossilised. In September 1922, he wrote to Smith Woodward stating he had seen an ichthyosaurus in the Aegean Sea.

Conan Doyle started The Lost World in October 1911 and, for details of the prehistoric life, he referred to Extinct Animals by E Ray Lankester, then Director of the Natural History Museum. This book, described by its author as ‘[nothing] more ambitious than attempt to excite in young people an interest in a most fascinating study’, contained illustrations and descriptions of many species Conan Doyle included in his adventure. However, he interpreted some of the science in peculiar ways. In Extinct Animals an image of an ichthyosaurus skull shows the parietal foramen, a hole which in modern reptiles contains a photoreceptive organ call the parietal eye. The Ichthyosaurus in The Lost World has a visible third eye on top of its head. Also, despite a clear description in Extinct Animals of Megalosaurus as bipedal, Conan Doyle’s animal walks on either two or four legs and resembles a horrible toad.

Conan Doyle may well have been inspired by the model dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Park, opened in 1854. The reconstructions, including a quadruped Megolosaurus, were already deemed obsolete by the 1900s. Like the fictional plateau, the exhibition in Sydenham featured a mixture of species from different time periods, all apparently living together around a lake. From Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs to the much more recent Toxodon and Irish elk, almost all of the species at Crystal Palace appear in Conan Doyle’s book.

Conan Doyle also took an interest in exploration. In 1909 he spoke at a luncheon for Ernest Shackleton and later appeared with Robert Falcon Scott at a fundraiser for the British Antarctic Expedition. The following May he jovially admonishing American explorer Robert Peary for making the job of storytelling much harder. Previously it had been possible to write about remote parts of the world without fear of contradiction. Now that so much of the world had been explored, he asked where ‘the romance-writer is to turn when he wants to draw any vague and not too clearly-defined region’.

The answer apparently lay in the Amazon Basin. At a time when the border between Brazil and Bolivia was poorly defined, Conan Doyle’s close friend Percy Harrison Fawcett led the Bolivian Boundary Commission, tasked with preventing border disputes. When Fawcett returned to England, he brought with him tales of the Huanchaca Plateau and an impenetrable jungle where anything could be hiding.

Conan Doyle knew that exploration had led to the expansion of the British Empire, through the acquisition of new territories. He also recognised that the Empire required defence. Covering a quarter of the globe, and home to 285 million people, it was difficult and expensive to police. Britain’s small professional army was surrounded by the larger, conscripted, armies of her European neighbours: old enemies like France and Russia, and a more recent concern – Germany. The less than glorious victory of the Boer War led to genuine fears that a future conflict might lose Britain her colonies or even her independence. These worries were countered by a brash imperialism that permeated middle and upper classes British culture. In 1907, Robert Baden-Powell set up the Scout Movement to promote health, exercise and teamwork in boys. There wasn’t an implicit military connection, but he stated that they should ‘be a brick’ in the ‘wall of Empire’.

In the years preceding The Lost World, Conan Doyle wrote several Roman-era short stories, as allegories for contemporary British issues. The Last Galley was a fable about Britain’s naval superiority in the face of expanding German sea power. The Lost World’s brash imperialism is evident the admiration heaped on Roxton’s military skills and in the plot’s focus on British explorers aiding natives in defending their territory against an inhuman aggressor. Malone enthuses that, following his adventures on the plateau, he should receive a commission as correspondent in the next Great War.

The Lost World was adapted into a film in 1925 by American film-maker Willis O’Brian, using stop-motion effects to realise the dinosaurs. The movie reduces the book’s militaristic tone by adding a female character to the party and many subsequent adaptations have followed suit, overlooking Edwardian social conventions to add romance to the story. The 1925 movie also removes the conflict between the natives and ape-men, while the belligerent presence on the plateau is reduced to an actor in an ape costume and a chimpanzee. Even the treachery that traps the explorers is replaced by a brontosaurus feeding on the felled tree. Perhaps, after the First World War, the book’s soldierly fervour was considered inappropriate for cinema audiences.

By downplaying the battles between humans and ape-men, the story is refocused on exploration and scientific discovery. Although the original text is arguably diluted, the most exciting element is retained, and even magnified. The notion of an isolated place where prehistoric animals continue to thrive was first explored in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, but Conan Doyle was the first novelist to make this a central premise of his work, thus creating the archetypal dinosaur narrative. The narrative has reoccurred frequently since 1912, with tales in which people discover some remote location inhabited by creatures long thought to be extinct, become trapped and must endeavour to escape.  Jurassic Park is essentially The Lost World combined with a fear of modern technology.  At its core is the thrill of the unknown and this tale is an adventure that audiences of all ages can enjoy. As its author stated:

I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man,
Or the man who’s half a boy.

Viewer's Commentary: Batman (1989)

00:00:00:              Despite being a confirmed Bat-fan, when I was a kid, I wasn’t interested in Batman.  I didn’t like the character or any of his stories.  The reason for this is that the only exposure I had to the character was through repeats of Adam West TV show.  Cultural historians like to claim it was ironic, archly self-aware, even subversive pop art.   But it was unexciting, emotionally empty and formulaic.  Worse still it took arguably the greatest character to come from comic book literature and reduced him to a primary coloured, jobbing idiot.  It was produced at a time when comics weren’t considered anything other than for kids, so it was irreverent and forgettable.  But the main problem was that it wasn’t remotely thrilling.  The title sequence, where an animated Batman and Robin fought a crowd of armed thugs was the most exciting part.

As for a lot of people, this film introduced me to Batman as a dark avenger and a character with a tragic origin and the psychological issues rising from that.  I won’t say this is what Batman should be like, but it was the first time I felt Batman and his world could deliver excitement and intrigue.

00:00:18:              The camera tracks through canyons etched in stone that are revealed to be the Bat insignia.  We also have Danny Elfman’s often derided theme music.  It suits this melodramatic take on the character and this main theme became pretty much definitive for a long time.  It was subsequently used in Batman: The Animated Series.  Check out this with-lyrics version by Goldentusk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPBgYeanZ0.

00:02:28:              Is the ‘Gotham City’ caption here really necessary?  We know Batman lives in Gotham City so it’s basically saying ‘this is a Batman movie’.  What have the last 2 ½ minutes been about then?

00:02:47:              This opening scene with the family being mugged at gun point echoes the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents, seen later in the film.

00:04:25:              This shot of Batman on the balcony and the way the mother’s scream is faintly overlaid at the start suggest Batman is watching the mugging take place.  Why doesn’t he intervene?  He appears to wait for the crime to be committed in order to then take down the criminals.  Cool shadow effect at the end of the shot though.

00:04:50:              The exchange between the 2 muggers on the roof introduces the ‘urban legend’ element of the Batman character nicely.  The weaker, more cowardly criminals are scared of Batman, while the bolder ones don’t believe he’s real.  Both these things could work to his advantage.  But this conversation also shows one of the problems with this version of the character by suggesting Batman killed “Johnny Gobbs” – more on that later.

00:05:35:               We get our first clear view of Batman.  While Michael Keaton has a volatile intensity that suits the role, he lacks the physicality for it, being shorter than the other lead actors and not athletic enough.  Much of what he does as Batman seems to be for effect and it’s often rather slow going.

00:06:45:              Enter Billy Dee Williams, aka Lando Calrissian, as Harvey Dent.  It’s not clear what Harvey Dent is doing in this film.  This scene and a few other hints suggest he’s attempting to prosecute Gotham’s mobsters in his role as District Attorney.  The rest of the time he seems to be a glorified mayoral aide.  There’s no hint either that he might one day become the villain Two-face.  Williams did take the role on the agreement that he would play Two-face if a sequel was made.  He had a clause in his contract to that effect which Warner Bros. then had to buy out when Tommy Lee Jones played the character Batman Forever (1995).  If Williams had portrayed Two-face, you have to wonder if he would have had half a moustache.

00:07:30:              The late Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon.  At 65 when this film was made, he feels like a jobbing detective with a week left until retirement.  This James Gordon is such a non-person that he doesn’t even fill the function of providing exposition – he’s simply here to direct the uniformed policemen.

00:07:48:              Jack Nicholson as Jack Napier is smooth, sinister and vain; a very eighties gangster.

00:09:24:              Lieutenant Eckhardt, played by William Hootkins, is a combination of two comic book characters.  He has the appearance of Detective Harvey Bullock, but is corrupt and serves a mob boss, like Arnold Flass from Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One.  He also has some wonderful lines: “Shoot to kill, know what I mean?”

00:09:27:              Alexander Knoxx, (Robert Whul) was created for this film.  His line about Batman being on the police payroll might be a reference to comics from the 1950s and 60s and the Adam West TV show when Batman and Robin were deputised into the Gotham Police Department in order to remove the moral ambiguity of their crime fighting.

00:11:54:              Burton’s version of Gotham is, predictably, a mixture of Brutalism and Gothic architecture, as seen in this establishing shot, with industrial buildings next to City Hall.

00:12:40:              This cartoon of a bat in a pinstripe suit and the trademark boxed signature in the corner is the closest thing to a cameo by Batman co-creator Bob Kane in any Batman film.  He was going to cameo in this film but was ill and time constraints meant his scene couldn’t be rescheduled.  Whilst he visited the set of this and the next two films, he never appeared on screen.  Kane died in 1998.

00:13:11:              Enter Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale.  The list of people that were considered for, approached or auditioned for this role is huge.  Sean Young (Bladerunner) was originally cast, but broke her collarbone filming a horse-riding scene that was subsequently written out of the film.

00:14:41:              The scene with Jack Palance as the mob boss Carl Grissom.  This scene has several things foreshadowing Jack Napier’s transformation into the Joker, such as his purple suit.  This seems to be put there to bridge the gap between the character he is now and the character he changes into, as well as to suggest the inevitability of his fate.

00:17:27:              The fundraiser at Wayne Manor.  Here we first see Bruce Wayne.  Keaton’s Bruce Wayne is suitably distracted and playboy-ish.  He’s definitely better out of the batsuit than he is in it, but there’s not sufficient difference between his public and private versions of Bruce Wayne for the playboy act to feel like an effective of a cover-up.

00:19:15:              The scene in the armoury.  The implication here seems to be that Bruce Wayne got the inspiration for the bat suit from various suits of armour from around the world.

00:23:13:              The shoot-out at Axis Chemicals.  There are some great 1940s visuals in this sequence, such as the trilby sporting gangsters and the police in their Chicago style jackets and uniforms.  The composition of some of the shots here is very similar to panels from Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke one-shot comic, one of about five landmark Batman stories that also informed Christopher Nolan’s take on the character.

00:25:09:              In a particularly vicious moment, Batman appears to fire his grapple hook into a man’s face and leave him hanging over a precipice by his ruptured cheek.

00:26:03:              The classic punching the guy without looking trick.  This was taken up by the Animated Series and used in several episodes.

00:27:42:              Napier shoots Eckhardt.  Batman is in the vicinity and does not intervene, much like he didn’t intervene in the mugging earlier.

00:28:13:              Jack falls in the vat of acid.

00:28:30:              First instance of the problem that dogged every Batman in every film until The Dark Knight; the weight and stiffness of the bat suit meant the actor had to perform a full-body ‘bat-turn’ rather than turn their necks.

00:29:53:              The scene with the giant dining table, which optimises the Keaton Bruce Wayne.

00:32:51:              The cosmetic surgery scene.  There’s a hint of Frankenstein’s monster, combined with a dig at the 1980s’ obsession with plastic surgery.

00:36:16:              Enter the Joker.  Every great villain needs a great entrance and here’s (this) Joker’s; you hear the voice, then the laugh, then you kind of see his face, but not quite.  Finally he steps into the light, all chalk-white skin and red lips and shoots Jack Palance.

00:37:33:              Bruce Wayne sleeping upside down.  Firstly, all the blood running to his head would cause brain damage, loss of motor skills and eventually death.  Secondly, Vicki Vale wakes up, so potentially sees him hanging from his feet - like a bat.

00:37:50:              Back to the Joker.  The Joker’s static grin was actually invented for this film.  The Joker never had a fixed facial expression in the comics.  In fact in his earliest stories from 1940, not only does he not have a fixed grin, but it’s not emphatically stated whether his skin is chalky white or he’s just wearing make-up.

00:38:46:              “I’ve got to go out of town for a few days.”  Why does it take ‘a few days’ to mark the anniversary of Bruce’s parent’s deaths?  Or is he dumping Vicki?  It’s not clear.

00:40:06:              The Joker in flesh coloured make-up is freaky.  His mouth looks like some sort of tropical plant.  This shot is really over-saturated for some reason, as if it was from the sixties’ TV show.

00:43:34:              Vicki finds the newspaper’s file on Bruce Wayne is empty.  As wealth and celebrity go hand in hand, especially when the person in question doesn’t seem to work for their money, (think Paris Hilton), surely there would be photos of him.  Bruce Wayne would need to stay in the public eye to some extent otherwise this reclusiveness would raise suspicions.

00:47:29:              The shoot-out at city hall.  There’s only one cop outside and he does nothing when the Joker kills the mobster right in front of him.  Bruce does nothing either, mind you.  He seems stunned at Napier’s return, but he could trip him up or something.

00:53:42:              The Joker hijacks the news transmission to announce he has put his poison into Gotham’s cosmetics.  This story device is used in most iterations of the character.  Of course it’s a useful means of exposition, but it’s more fundamental that that.  The Joker wants the attention: why else would he dress as a clown?  It also allows him to announce his crime to the general public, ensuring maximum fear and chaos.  The Joker in this film has a number of plans, most of which he succeeds in.  First he takes control of Gotham’s crime syndicates.  Then he spreads death and fear with poisoned beauty products.  Then he plans to “improve” the paintings in the museum by childishly defacing them.  Then he plans to seduce/ abduct Vicki Vale.  It’s generally held that Nicholson steals the film from Keaton’s Batman and it’s not hard to see why.  In contrast to the Joker, this Batman has no plan.  He does not proactively fight crime or corruption, nor does he prevent crimes from occurring.  This Batman is entirely reactive.  When faced with this mass poisoning he finds out how the poison works rather than tracking down the perpetrator.

00:55:37:              The news readers look terrible, but the main characters look fine.  We don’t see Kim Basinger with a massive zit on her nose.

00:57:09:              The Fluegelheim Museum.  Even the art gallery looks like a factory.  Maybe this is where they got the idea for the Tate Modern.

00:59:21:              The Joker and his thugs vandalise the museum.  The goons have gone from being 1940s gangsters to dressing like 1980s pop stars, with ray-bans and fake leather jackets: another odd stylistic turn.  Whenever I see the Joker knock over the brass of the ballerina with his arm I think ‘ouch!’  The painting that Joker spares is Francis Bacon’s ‘Figure with Meat’ (1954).

01:04:07:              Vicki douses the Joker with water.  The different make up effects on the Joker are great.

01:04:11:              “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”  This is probably the most famous line in the film.  It belies, however, the many unexplored avenues of Batman’s character.  There’s so much emphasis on the mystery that we don’t really get to know Bruce Wayne or how he became Batman in the years since his parent’s murders or where his gadgets come from.

01:04:46:              The batmobile.  Referred to thankfully as ‘the car’, it’s certainly impressive, but watches carefully and it’s not very practical.

01:05:20:              It has a very wide turning circle due to its long chassis.  In a few more seconds it uses a grappling hook in order to turn corners.

01:06:20:              This alley way, which Vicki and Batman run down, in order to have a fight with some goons, is the same one in which the mugging occurs at the start of the film.  The desire to give Gotham a very specific look meant building sets rather than using locations.  The relatively small budget, or the way it was allocated, limited the number of sets, making the film world seem rather small.

01:09:25:              Out in the country lanes, this batmobile comes into its own.  It looks very cool, as it kicks up spray and leaves in these shots filmed near Pinewood Studios

01:11:17:              Vicki compares the Joker and Batman, to which Batman retorts “he’s psychotic.”  This Batman fires grappling hooks into people’s faces and throws people off buildings, so…

01:13:11:              Batman appears to knock Vicki out with bats from under his cape.

01:15:08:              Bruce goes to tell Vicki that he’s Batman on the basis of one night together.  This seems to undermine the importance of his mission as Batman.  Still, this scene is handled pretty well, with a mixture of vulnerability and machismo.  How would you tell someone your biggest secret?  Where would you start?

01:19:21:              Bruce Wayne faces off against the Joker.  This is a great scenery chewing moment for Keaton and about the only scene where he’s not entirely overshadowed by Nicholson.  At least until the “Never rub another man’s rhubarb” line.  It’s another give away that he’s Batman.  He then leaves while the Joker and his goons are still in the apartment.  Did he stop to think they could be murdering Vicki while he does his disappearing act?

01:23:03:              Bruce looks at a map with Axis Chemicals circled.  Now, if he knew Napier/ the Joker had become the de facto owner of Grissom’s businesses, including Axis Chemicals and that he was using chemicals to attack Gotham, why didn’t he make the connection and shut down Axis straight away?  Why didn’t the police work this out?

01:26:32:              We finally see the murder of Bruce’s parents.  It’s overtly stylised, with cantered camera angles and echoing footsteps in perfect time.  When Martha Wayne is shot, she looks more like she’s slipping on a banana peel.

01:28:14:              The Joker killing Bruce’s parents was unpopular decision in 1989, but it makes some sense in the context of this film, making the main conflict, that between Batman and the Joker, personal and helping contain it to a single movie, (they could not be certain the film would be successful enough to get a sequel in 1989) as does killing him at the end.  It does however beg the question of why Bruce continues being Batman after he has avenged his parents.

01:28:29:              Alfred lets Vicki into the batcave: another unpopular element of this film.  She’s a reporter and by being let into the cave, Alfred has essentially handed her the scoop of her career.  In all the Burton and Schumacher films, Bruce is readily prepared to tell the love interest his secret, despite the obvious danger to which that information would expose them.

01:29:27:              Vale asks why Bruce needs to be Batman. “Because no one else can.” is his rather empty reasoning.  That said, with such inadequate policing in Gotham, it’s not entirely untrue.  A better reason might be that Gotham needs him to be Batman or that he has to protect the innocent.  But the reasoning for this Batman might be more along the lines of “So I can randomly kill and maim criminals to make up for the short comings of Gordon’s police department whilst simultaneously making myself feel better about my parents’ tragic but also slightly comical deaths.”

01:30:03:              Vicki Vale is in the batcave.  Why doesn’t Bruce get her to stay there?  It would save him a lot of bother later on.

01:31:40:              Batman kills six people blowing up Axis Chemicals.  If you discount the unknown number of victims of his poison, the Joker and Batman kill 9 people each.  Interpretations of Batman where he kills at will undermine the heroism of the character.  Once you have Batman killing people then he’s no longer serving the law but an arbitrary version of justice of his own creation.  As someone who has witnessed murder first-hand, he should be working to prevent that happening, rather than becoming a killer himself.  This film actually has the morality of a western.  In an apparently lawless setting (Gotham), justice is metered out by a single sheriff, deputy or bounty hunter (Batman) against an outlaw or gang of outlaws (the Joker and his goons), with only a supposed moral high ground separating them.

01:34:13:              The batwing.  Whilst Batman had used planes in the comics before, this kind of bat-shaped jet was invented for this film and then carried over into Batman Forever and the Animated Series.  Unfortunately its appearance here leads to one of the film’s weakest moments about five minutes from now.

01:37:25:              Knox jumps on the bonnet of Vicki’s car, but she carries on driving.  Knox was originally going to be killed and this seems to be a hangover from that.

01:40:25:              Despite the massive targeting system on the batwing and its arsenal of mini-guns and missiles, Batman fails to hit the Joker.  The Joker then brings down the batwing with a single shot from a handgun.  This dreadful moment entirely undermines the credibility of Batman as a crime fighter and of the film generally.  And the batwing takes ages to crash land.

01:42:05:              Batman emerges from the wreckage of the batwing and follows the Joker and Vicki into the cathedral.  Typically for a Tim Burton film, this is an absurdly Gothic set.  It looks like nobody’s been in here for 50 years.  Maybe it’s so they can fill the ten minutes until the helicopter arrives, but everyone is walking very slowly.

01:45:07:              The Joker uses his acid-spraying buttonhole to send a giant bell crashing down the tower, narrowly missing Batman.  This is a great moment, encapsulating the ingenuity and nonchalant destruction which is central to the Joker character.

01:46:14:              The Joker’s goons attack Batman in the belfry, but how did they get up here?  The Joker’s helicopter presumably hasn’t arrived yet or the Joker would have left.  With the stairway blocked by the bell, they couldn’t have used the stairs to get up either.

01:46:55:              Batman fights a goon who looks like the soul musician Ray Charles.  This is the best fight in the film, with good blows exchanged, but Batman never kicks arse as much as he has his kicked in this fight.  There’s a nice contrast between Batman fighting and the Joker and Vicki dancing.

01:48:36:              Batman throws Ray Charles down the tower to certain death.  Hurrah for Batman.

01:50:25:              Batman fights the Joker, who doesn’t resist or defend himself.  So we have a blood-smeared Batman beating up a man who hardly seems able to throw a punch.

01:50:55:              ‘I was a kid when I killed your parents.’  This would appear to mean the Joker knows Bruce Wayne is Batman.  If so, why not kill Bruce Wayne when he’s not wearing the bat suit?

01:51:53:              The Joker referring into Batman as Batsy was taken up by Bruce Tim and Paul Dini, the creators of the DC Animated Universe, (including the recent Arkham computer games) to such an extent it became a sort of bizarre pet name.

01:54:18:              The Joker falls to his death.

01:55:53:              The bat signal is unveiled.  It seems strange that the city authorities would welcome the help from a man who has dropped someone off a high building and killed eight others.  Then again, when the police force is this ineffectual, maybe relying on a murderous, unhinged vigilante is your only option.

01:57:28:              The end credit roll.  It’s easy to find fault in this film when you compare it to Christopher Nolan’s take on the character and his world, which feels so accomplished, even definitive.  Nolan’s movies were made with a far larger budget between 16 and 23 years later.  That said, much of the source material that informed Nolan’s approach was written by the late 1980s.  Setting aside the preference for style over content arguably expected from a Tim Burton movie, the shortcomings of this film are primarily due to a lack of investment in the character of Bruce Wayne/ Batman.  In 1989, a primary goal was to have a Batman that was very different to Adam West.  Burton, perhaps inspired by Frank Miller’s (vastly over-rated) The Dark Knight Returns gives us a Batman who is not merely opposed to criminal activity, but fascistic in his dealing with criminals.  The moral difference between Batman and his enemies is smeared.  This Batman is also entirely reactive – the Joker does something and Batman responds.  The Bruce Wayne/ Batman character does not set the narrative in motion, his enemies and other supporting characters do.  So what we have is a version of Batman who waits for crimes or atrocities to occur and then responds with gratuitous force.  This is not a very compelling take on the character.  Being made at the tail end of the decade of “greed is good”, the character was perhaps bound to be more self-centred than altruistic.  While more hard-line or otherwise rougher-around-the-edges interpretations of the character exist, versions of Batman that confirm his humanity and altruism rather than his focusing on his monstrous side make him a character far more worthy of our attention, who is exciting and compelling.  Batman is a reasonably accomplished and enjoyable piece of cinema.  It earns a place in movie history as a year zero for comic book adaptations and for Jack Nicholson’s Joker.  But it’s not the real Batman.

Star Wars: The Big Question

Seeing an advert in Metro for Star Wars Episode I 3D a while back, someone asked me “Do you like Star Wars?”  And I replied, “That’s a big question.”

Ten years ago, I would have described myself as a Star Wars fan, but not a Star Wars nerd.   I know the name of the alien that attacks Luke in the cantina in Star Wars; I don’t know its life story.

I don’t actually remember seeing the original films for a first time.  I vaguely remember not being sure if the Hoth battle was in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, but I’ve always had Star Wars in my life.  Growing up in a household of 3 brothers, we inevitable had a large collection Kenner action figures and vehicles – all decidedly worn and torn from use.  We had the films recorded off the telly and would watch them regularly.  We also had the wonderful Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back Mix or Match Storybook.  Star Wars was a powerful story full of excitement and danger and it shaped my life in a number of ways.  I think I have a strong moral compass and those original films with their distinct good and evil characters attributed to this significantly (not to diminish the part played by Mum and Dad).  It also shaped my sense of romance, burdening me with the misconception that I was Han Solo and I could find an unattached princess (but I did eventually).

The films were rereleased in 1997.  It was exciting to get see them at the cinema (the first time for many), but the special editions heralded the first signs of future woes.  CGI technology granted George Lucas the ability to create anything he could imagine and increase the scale and detail of many sequences.  But many of those additions add nothing to the story or worse, actually detract from it.

A major offender here is the scene between Han and Jabba the Hutt.  In the now defunct 1983 documentary ‘Making of a Saga’ Lucas clearly states his reasoning for dropping the sequence  from the 1977 release when it became clear the special effects needed for Jabba wouldn’t work.  It tells you nothing at all you don’t already know from the earlier scene with Greedo.  And it detracts from the moment when Luke first sees the Millennium Falcon and dubs it a ‘piece of junk’.  These are far more convincing reasons for leaving it out than restoring the sequence simply because it was possible to add a CGI Jabba (which looks crap in all its incarnations).  To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, they were so busy seeing if they could do something, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

At about this time I mistakenly studied “media” at college.  This involved a lot of studying narrative and film.  I gained a new appreciation of the saga that could be viewed as an archetypal myth filled with characters from Propp’s theory and elements from Norse, Greek and biblical legend.  My interest became in the story and how it was presented.

As well as marking the twentieth anniversary of Episode IV, the special editions also began the countdown to Episode I.  Before discussing The Phantom Menace, let’s consider how much it had to deliver.  Firstly it was a fourth instalment in the most successful and admired film franchise of all time.  It had to feel like a Star Wars film without looking like it was twenty years old.  It had to take a few oblique references across three films and meld them into the beginning of a coherent story.  The film needed to appeal to new, young audiences whilst simultaneously sating sixteen years of speculation.

On initial view, I didn’t hate The Phantom Menace; it was merely disappointing.  Aside from the brevity of Darth Maul’s screen time, the main problem was how frivolous it all seemed (yes I know it’s a film).  It wasted so much time – time that could have been spent exploring the Star Wars universe, with its new complexities of politics, slavery, corruption and formal jedi training.  But these opportunities were squandered on “comedy” droids, slap-stick sequences and too much pod-racing.  One new piece of detail, that the ability to use the force is dependent on your blood meant that rather than anyone being a potential jedi, it was something only a select minority could achieve.  And although the jedi were far more athletic than in the original trilogy, they were transformed into a centralised elite and their inability to foresee a future the prequels constantly foreshadow or detect the evil around them, makes them less than masterful.

It was only with subsequent viewings I really got annoyed with Jar-Jar Binks.  While I recognised that he served a function of bringing the Gungan Army on side for the final battle, he serves no function at all for the majority of his screen time, seemly created specifically to baby-sit youngsters through the film.  At times he detracts from the plot, ruining the scene when Anakin and Padme first meet, which could have quite touching if it hadn’t been for Jar-Jar’s “goofing” (and some horrendous lines).

Attack of the Clones initially looked like it would be a return to form; less Jar-Jar, no kids, guys in white armour and a guy who looked like Boba Fett.  Episode II wasn’t received much more favourably than its predecessor and suffers from most of the same faults.  The slapstick, provided by C-3PO, grates even more when the overall tone of the film is meant to be one of gathering darkness.  This sense of impending doom takes a heavy toll on the central character.  We know Anakin Skywalker will become Darth Vader.  The prequels signpost this rather than showing him as the good guy he apparently was pre-helmet.  Anakin from Episode I aside, he possesses little heroism and even less pathos, changing from wholesome all-American kid to stroppy teen to angry young man.  This makes the love story of the prequels rather hard to swallow.

While many wrote of the prequels off, this wasn’t when I fell out of love with Star Wars, mainly due to the restorative power of Episode III.  The opening space battle is visually stunning and gives us a glimpse of a heroic, if stubborn Anakin.  It also solidified the Star Wars galaxy, as Clones had hinted, as vast in scale with complex political manoeuvring involving brutal and dirty armed conflicts.  There is something powerful about watching the republic be destroyed from within.  If you watch it as a single film and mentally divorce it from its chronological predecessors or successors, Revenge of the Sith is great sci-fi /fantasy film about a noble society being corrupted into a dictatorship while the protagonist is simultaneously destroyed by his own inner demons.  When viewed as part of a six part saga, it breaks down due to the sheer amount of story needing to be told – most of the critical plot of the prequels occurs in the last two thirds of Sith.  Then Sith actually raises more questions than it answers and the prequels remain an unsuccessful experiment in telling a story back to front.

What ultimately undid my “fandom” was that post-Sith the admittedly already massive Star Wars marketing machine seemed to go into overdrive.  First there was the Clone Wars, which was bartered as being canonical but seems to be an exercise in recycling elements and characters from the films into more merchandise, at the expense of any plot points from the films.  It is inferred in Sith that Anakin and Count Dooku haven’t met since the duel at the end of previous film; in Clone Wars they seem to run into each other every week.

Also since the movies wrapped up, Lucasfilm seem to have become innately aware of the cultural status of Star Wars and there’s been an explosion of new licensed merchandise to cash-in on it.  Now this may seem rather naive – obviously the vintage action figures and even the Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back Mix or Match Storybook were also part of a prolonged marketing campaign, but either because I’m aware of it now, or because it appears to be an attempt to deflect attention from the short comings of the prequels, it’s more offensive.  The last few years has also seen Star Wars characters in commercials.  The worst example of this is the recent Vodafone advert with Yoda perusing lightsabres or “handsets”.  This advert, plastered on a giant hording, embodies the undoing of my Star Wars fandom.  Perhaps my tastes just changed; perhaps I want something more morally ambiguous, grittier and more complex from films these days.  But I think the commercials and the endless t-shirts emblazoned with weak gags and the over-priced toy lines were what did really did it.  Thinking of Star Wars as a mythic story for our time is troubling.  It’s depressing to think the Beowulf of my time isn’t an epic poem; it’s not a novel or even a film saga; it’s an enormous cash cow.

The Curious Case of Francois Courvoisier

In the process of writing the post, The Genius of Jack Sheppard, back in 2011, I had to discard a section recounting a separate but interesting and somehow prevalent story.  If I had included it, the post would have wound up being way too long or I would have to have chopped out a lot of other stuff.  Therefore I decided to write a separate post for the material that I could not fit into the first.  For some reason I don't now recall, I never actually posted it.  Now, rather belatedly, hear it is.. .

Our story begins on the morning of 6 May 1840 at the London residence of retired MP Lord William Russell.  Maid-servant Sarah Manser was, as usual, the first to wake, at 6.30am.  She left the attic room she shared with the still slumbering cook and knocked on the valet’s door to wake him.   As Sarah descended the stairs to the back drawing room, all was quiet in the house.

When she got to the drawing room, she discovered Lord Russell’s writing desk in disarray, with drawers turned out and papers strew about.  Among them was a screwdriver from the butler’s pantry.  Going down to the ground floor, Sarah made a second unusual discovery; his lordship’s cloak lay a short distance from the street door.  On and around it were various items of gold and silverware from the house.  Opening the dining room door in order to go and pull back the shutters, Sarah saw the disarray in this room and knew the house must have been robbed in the night.  She went to the door of valet’s bedroom and called, ‘Courvoisier, do you know of anything being the matter last night?’

With a simple ‘No’, the door opened, revealing the 28 year old Francois Benjamin Courvoisier.  The Swiss valet-come-butler was fully dressed save for his topcoat.  No more than ten minutes had elapsed since Sarah first knocked on his door.  It had always taken Courvoisier between thirty and sixty minutes to dress.  The two servants made a brief search of the house until Manser urged that they should inform Lord Russell.  The valet entered the old man’s room first, crossing to open the shutters.  The light thrown from the large street-facing windows revealed Russell lying on his side and bloodstains on his pillow.  His throat had been cut.

On seeing this, Sarah screamed and fled the room.  She initially headed for her attic room to inform the cook, but decided instead to go rise the alarm in the street.  Servants from neighbouring households responded to the call and sent for the police, who occupied the house and began a thorough search of the property.  Over the next few days various officers found items and cash belonging to Lord Russell hidden in various places around the house, including the butler’s pantry.  They did not find any compelling evidence of a break-in, other than the debris littering the ground floor rooms.  Suspicion quickly fell on Courvoisier and he was arrested and incarcerated in Newgate Prison.

A media maelstrom quickly sprung up around the trial.  Aside from the obvious interest in such a grisly murder, Russell was uncle to the Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell.  To further complicate things, Courvoisier pleaded Not Guilty.  The trial lasted 3 days, with the defence pursuing the lack of conclusive evidence, as well as implying Manser was the guilty party.  All this was to little avail when during the trial several items from the house turned up at a French hotel where Courvoisier had previously worked.  Courvoisier refused to change his plea, but was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death.

So, you ask, where’s the connection with Jack Sheppard?  In the nineteenth century, just as in the eighteenth, there was a public fascination with condemned criminals, particularly if they had done something as shocking as murder a peer of the realm in his bed.  When Courvoisier gave his confession the papers rushed it into print.  Below is a transcript, taken from the Morning Post of 25 June 1840 and rendered as close as possible to the original printed version.

“After I had warmed his Lordship’s bed I went down stairs and waited about an hour, during which time I placed the different articles as they were found by the police.  I afterwards went to the dining room and took one of the knives from the side cupboard.  I then entered the bedroom and found him asleep.  I went to the side of the bed and drew the knife across his throat.  He appeared to die instantly.”

“FRANCOIS BENJAMIN COURVOISIER

“Prison of Newgate, June 23 1840

“This declaration was made before me this 23d of June, 1840 “William Evans, Sheriff”

This is how it appeared on broadsheets and in many newspapers.  Elsewhere, such as in the Morning Post, there was the following addendum.

The sheriff questioned [Courvoisier] a good deal on the acknowledgement that he had so long contemplated the murder as well as the robbery, and he persisted in stating the murder was premeditated, and not, as had previously been stated, the suggestion of despair at losing his character.  He declared and he wished the sheriff to let it be known to the world that the idea was first suggested to him by reading and seeing a performance of Jack Sheppard.

Enter William Harrison Ainsworth, friend of Charles Dickens and serial misreporter of English history.  Having essentially fabricated that the highwayman Dick Turpin rode from London to York in a single night in his first novel Rookwood, Ainsworth then turned his attention to John Sheppard.  When it was published in 1839, Jack Sheppard; a Romance was phenomenally successful, far outstripping Oliver Twist in terms of sales.  Among the historical alterations Ainsworth made in the book are moving much of the action from the narrow streets of central London to the new Victorian suburbs of the North West – Finchley, Willesden and Dollis Hill.  More significantly he added the brutal stabbing to death of Mrs Woods, the wife of Sheppard’s master, by one of his associates.

Biographies of Sheppard had appeared in print regularly for the past 112 years, but the implication in Courvoisier’s confession was that it was Ainsworth’s book that ‘inspired’ him, the reference to reading and seeing a performance referring to the many theatrical versions which were commissioned in 1839-40.  The stage was then set for social reformers and moralists to decry Jack Sheppard as a major cause of juvenile delinquency and crime, in an early incarnation of the debates on violence in film, comics and computer games.

Without getting into the wider debate on media influence here, let’s examine the facts relating to F.B. Courvoisier.  According to printed biographies, he had arrived in England five years previous to the murder.   At that time he was "wholly unacquainted" with the English language.  It seems unlikely he would have learnt enough in that time to devour novels, much less attend the theatre.  During this time he worked first as a waiter, then as a valet – not occupations that would have afforded much leisure time.  Also, the Morning Post article and the facts of the case indicate the murder was premeditated rather than a whim to recreate scenes from fiction.

Most significantly, nowhere in the available archival material does the mention of Jack Sheppard appear as a direct quote from Courvoisier.  In every instance it appears after the close, in the body of the article.  The only direct source for this connection is a 3 stanzas-long broadsheet poem that appeared shortly before Courvoisier’s execution.  This might indicate it was not entirely legitimate.  Ainsworth certainly went to some lengths to oppose this slur on his work, asserting in letters to a number of newspaper editors that Courvoisier had “declared he had neither read the work in question nor had made any such statement.”  It is possible that Ainsworth actually visited the condemned man in Newgate.  William Evans, the Sheriff of London and Middlesex countered this by writing his own letter supporting the original statement about the book by simply quoting said statement, which is like saying dogs can talk because I just said they can.  All this conjecture came to an end on 6 July when Lord Russell’s former butler was taken from Newgate to the Old Bailey and put to death.  The execution was reported the following day in the Morning Post, concluding

 “It appears that the work called “Jack Sheppard” has had, in the opinion of those who had the opportunity of observing the prisoner, nothing at all to do with the murder.”

However, the suggestion had caused enough concern in the right places that something had to be done.  The Lord Chamberlain, who had authority to veto the performance of any new plays, decided to refuse any performances of “Jack Sheppard”.  You might see this as an oppression of artistic and civil rights, but in practise it was one of the most lacklustre pieces of censorship in history.  For every play that was refused license, far more were overlooked or simply changed their titles and the names of key characters.  So for the next forty years, Jack Sheppard received such alias as Jack Idle, Thomas Idle, Dick Wastrell and Robert Chance whenever someone wished to dramatise the jail-breaker’s life (or at least Ainsworth’s take on it).  At one performance of a play called ‘OId London’, a member of the audience actually stood up and declared “why, if it isn’t Jack Sheppard!’  This was not, one suspects, the only time there was laughter at the censor’s expense.  By 1880 the Lord Chamberlain (probably a different individual) abandoned the policy and plays entitled "Jack Sheppard" were now permitted without any disguise.  Sheppard, the irrepressible jail-breaker was once again free.