Yesterday evening we watched Hitchcock’s The Birds, an intriguing work of art. I wanted to know more, particularly about the abrupt ending, so I surfed on the internet and came across a wonderful monograph, ‘The Day of the Claw: A Synoptic Account of Hitchcock’s The Birds’, by an Australian expert on Hitchcock, Ken Mogg. What Mogg very cleverly demonstrates is that Hitchcock’s and Evan Hunter’s screen play was not only, as acknowledged in the credits, based on Daphne Du Maurier’s 1952 short story of the same name, but its inspiration was also drawn, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, from a series of works of fiction including: The Food of the Gods (1904), by H.G. Wells; The Terror (1917), by Arthur Machen; Our Feathered Friends (1931), by Philip Macdonald; Le Hussard sur le toit (1951), by Jean Giono; The Mind Thing (1961), by Frederic Brown; and, most strikingly of all, The Birds (1936), by Frank Baker. But Mogg is not interested in implying plagiarism but, rather, in demonstrating the underlying philosophical and cultural influences which these works all shared to a lesser or greater extent and also in highlighting the very deliberate and considered genius of Hitchcock. The director once famously declared that film critics who ignored ‘pure cinema’ and concerned themselves only with the content of his films were like a gallery visitor who wonders whether Paul Cézanne’s apples are sweet or sour. Mogg’s monograph, an unexpected and delightful diversion, demonstrates why Hitchcock is considered a genius by his own kind.

Summer reading again. Last summer I got through the first two volumes of Clive James’s ‘Unreliable Memoirs’. I have just finished the third volume, May Week Was in June, covering his period at Cambridge University. In the preface he admits that he hadn’t initially thought of writing beyond the first two volumes. Just occasionally, the commercial imperative shows through; we learn twice, for example, that the chalky blue of a spring sky ‘matched the sundials of Caius’. But May Week Was in June is as rich in wonderful aphorisms and chuckle-enducing one-liners as its predecessors. James went up as what in Oxbridge parlance would be called a ‘mature’ student, meaning he was a little bit older than his fellow undergraduates. He clearly fully exploited this tactical advantage. Among his contemporaries, the young and fiercely impressive Germaine Greer plays a star role and future Monty Python, Eric Idle, is clearly destined for greatness. There are evocative cameo portraits of Florence and Venice in the 1960s – I almost fell out of my chair when he described Florence’s Trattoria Anita – a wonderfully down-at-heel place where I must have eaten most Friday evenings for three years in the 1980s – and there was an uncomfortably familiar ring to his descriptions of Oxbridge undergraduates trying too hard. He is excellent on why even the failures (think of Shelley) never escape Oxbridge’s grip. ‘Where else in the world,’ he laments as he seems finally about to leave the university, ‘would I ever fit in except here, where I had never felt the least urge to fit in?’ It is cheerfully conceited stuff, but the critic is disarmed in anticipation by his cheerful and frank admission to the crime.

Today being grey and overcast, we visited two historic, strategically located defensive points at the northern end of the Lago di Como. The first, il Forte di Fuentes, was built in 1603 by a Milan-based Spanish Duke and mostly destroyed in 1796 by Napoleon as a peaceful gesture to the Grissons. The second, the First World War Forte Montecchio, is located on a hill just alongside the first. Both stand at the mouth of the Adda, the main river feeding the Lago di Como, and overlook two valleys, the Valtellina and the Valchiavenna, and both were built in anticipation of invading forces descending down either valley towards the Po Plain. However, uulike Fuentes, the Forte Montecchio is largely intact. Indeed, a stupendous example of Italian military architecture, it is the best preserved fort of its kind still standing in Italy. It probably owes this to the facts that, though a key structure in the ‘Cadorna line’,  it never saw true action but was nevertheless maintained in some sort of military usage until 1981. Now, a jovial and erudite guide shows visitors around the Fort. It was built in one year and was obsolete by the end of the next. This was because it was built with massive walls to withstand cannon attacks but with relatively thin roofs that would not have been able to withstand attacks from Austrian howitzers and mortars. In any case, the expected Austro-Hungarian invasion never came. Interestingly, the Fort’s four cannons (perfectly preserved to this day) were designed primarily not to fire on any advancing force but, rather, to destroy bridges, railway lines and canals – a case of deliberate friendly fire. The place is wonderfully atmospheric – down to stencilled Mussolini-era mottos (‘courage is a habit!’) – and would surely be a great film set. A small but well-illustrated guide, by Stefano Cassinelli, is available from Guide Macchione, for ‘White War’ enthusiasts and is well worth its cover price.

Like our counterparts in the other EU institutions, no doubt, Gerhard Stahl, SG of the Committee of the Regions, and I did a quick remote check on our e-mails this morning to make sure that all was well, only to discover this was decidedly not the case. We are putting out the statement below, available only in French for the time being. Thank goodness this happened on a Saturday night in August! I shudder to think what might have happened if it had occurred at any other time in any other period. (The European Parliament, it will be recalled, had a similar lucky escape with the ceiling of its Strasbourg hemicycle. We seem to share the same lucky star!)

Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche, le 7 août 2010, une partie du faux plafond qui isole les espaces Atrium 5 et Atrium 6 dans le bâtiment Jacques Delors s’est effondrée pour une raison inconnue. L’incident s’étant produit en dehors des horaires de travail, les secrétaires généraux du Comité économique et social (CESE) et du Comité des Régions (CdR) soulignent qu’il n’y a que des dégâts matériels à déplorer. Pour faire toute la lumière sur l’incident, les deux Comités ont informé et saisi le propriétaire et garant de la construction, le bâtiment étant toujours couvert par la garantie de 10 ans en matière de travaux de construction. Le secrétaire général du CdR, Gerhard Stahl, souligne : ” Malgré leur importance, cet incident n’a heureusement causé que des dégâts matériels, puisqu’il s’est produit pendant la fin de semaine. A partir de maintenant, les atria des 5e et 6e étages seront inaccessibles pour une période indéterminée. Nous procédons également à la révision de tout espace comportant des faux plafonds similaires à celui qui s’est montré défaillant”. Le secrétaire général du CESE, Martin Westlake, ajoute : “A ce stade, la raison de l’incident n’est pas encore claire, mais les parties compétentes, y compris le propriétaire du bâtiment, ont été informées et les actions nécessaires ont été demandées par les deux Comités. Tout est mis en œuvre pour que les travaux de réparation démarrent dès que possible.” Par précaution, l’accès à l’espace sinistré a été interdit jusqu’à nouvel ordre. Des agents de sécurité veillent au respect de ces consignes. Les atria 5 et 6 du bâtiment Jacques Delors qui abrite le CESE et le CdR ne sont pas occupés en permanence, mais servent périodiquement d’espace d’exposition et de réception pour les deux Comités. L’Atrium 5 est aussi un espace de passage pour le personnel entre les bâtiments Jacques Delors et Bertha Von Suttner.

Summer reading time again. First down is True Tales of American Life, edited and introduced by Paul Auster (with grateful thanks to Paul C for the gift). I am a great fan of Auster’s fiction though, as readers of this blog will know, I think he has gone off the boil a little with his last few novels. When I first saw True Tales I thought ‘what a brilliant commercial project!’ Basically, through a radio programme slot, Auster encouraged his listeners to send in their own (true, short) stories. Of the four thousand-odd pieces submitted to what became the National Story Project, Auster selected 179 and these, edited by him and a team of helpers, became the published compilation. Each author is personally mentioned, of course, so the book was guaranteed considerable sales (relations, friends…). However, by the time I had got a short way into the book I had banished such cynical thoughts. The trademark of Auster’s fiction is coincidence rendered meaningful by subsequent events, and the best of the stories in the book out-Auster Auster in this regard. Scientists, psychologists, mathematicians and statisticians would doubtless have explanations for all of the apparently inexplicable coincidences and premonitions recounted by Auster’s contributors, but that is not the point. For, in telling their stories, these Americans tell us all about themselves and their land. Take, for example, this fragment: ‘A branch line of the Milwaukee Railroad ran from Sioux Falls through Vienna and Naples and on up to Bristol…’ Take any map of the US and Europe is all over it. It’s as though somebody plucked up all the names of European towns and cities, chucked in a few indigenous Indian names for good luck, then shook everything up and cast them randomly over the map. Some of the contributors were just one generation away from the immigrants who had first toiled to render so many inhospitable parts of the land habitable. If I had to choose one story from this book it would be South Dakota, submitted by Nancy Peavy, which recounts the mysterious disappearance of a local rich girl from a small German-Danish agricultural community on the South Dakota plains. Fields in that region had to lie fallow for many years, and the mystery was only finally resolved when such a field was at last put to the plough and her remains, together with those of an aborted foetus, were found; the victims of a botched job by a back street abortionist. If I have one quibble, it is with the title. It should have been True Tales of American Lives.

In the evening we at last got to see Christopher Nolan’s  Inception, our summer treat. This is a tour de force, up there with Lynch’s  Mulholland Drive. Di Caprio is brilliant. His forte is clearly the tormented individual but he is going to have to be careful, this film coming hard on the heels of Shutter Island, that he doesn’t become typecast in dream-within-dream films. In its own way, this film is as referential as Castle in the Sky (see previous post), and it seems it is now de rigeur for Hollywood directors to splice in homages to the cinematic greats (and to great cinematic moments). But this is one of those films that is not only brilliantly acted and brilliantly filmed but also brilliantly edited. Apparently, Nolan had been interested in such a concept, of dream-stealers and dream-manipulators, since he was sixteen years old and the risk with such long-term projects is that they become over-written and over-wrought. But that is not the case with Inception – a film with a plot that is, thanks to Nolan’s clever editing, truly what you choose to make of it. And, unlike Shutter Island, there is no POV problem because any point of view is possible. Great fun!

This afternoon I chaired my last big meeting before the summer break. The European Economic and Social Committee’s members are elected for a mandate (previously of four years, from now on, under the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions, of five years). Towards the end of the mandate, the Member States’ governments make proposals for membership under the next mandate. In our parlance, the beginning of the new mandate is known as ‘renewal’. Last year the administration set up a task force to start preparations for the renewal process, which will take place this October. We now have most of the Member State lists of new members in, and so we know that ‘turnover’ will be between a quarter and a third of our membership. The guiding spirit of my mandate as Secretary General is ‘serving the members better’, and the guiding spirit of our renewal task force is ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression’. This seventh meeting of the full task force went very well. Colleagues have excelled themselves in their efficiency and good will and it was a dream of a meeting to chair. I could not have imagined a more satisfying way of finishing before the summer break.

All asthma and allergy sufferers will know what I am talking about. It has been a tough old year. In addition, there have been several peaks in atmospheric pollution in Brussels during the hotter weather. When we have not wanted to scratch out our itchy eyes, or sneezed uncontrollably, our chests have wheezed heavily. But this night it rained, and it rained properly; not just a passing shower but a proper, long, downpour. I got a chair and sat out on the terrace and breathed in nice, cool and above all washed air. It was a simple pleasure and a delectable one.

I had promised to take the family to see Inception in the evening (see next post). But by the time we got to the cinema there were no places left. So the sprogs were left to choose a mutually agreed DVD. Their choice, exceptionally, was a Japanese anime film, with the English title Castle in the Sky. I thought I could slope off and do something else whilst they watched, especially when I saw the date of the film – 1986! But I ended up watching the whole thing and being enchanted. Afterwards, I googled it out of curiosity and found that it was, or had been, ranked as the second best animated film of all time. It’s proper title, Laputa, which is also the title of a Jonathan Swift novel, signals its ambitions, and there are so many diverse cultural references in the story that it would be difficult to know where to begin. In any case, it was an unexpected pleasure. It was also a trove of metaphors. One I particularly liked was a robot who still faithfully tends his masters’ domain, even though the masters have long since become extinct. How often, in our societies, do we continue to do things long after the original reason for doing them has gone?

A while back we got the complete boxed set of digitally re-mastered James Bond films and we have since been working our way through them. Last night it was the turn of From Russia With Love, regarded by many (says the Wiki entry), as the best ever Bond film and based on the 1957 Ian Fleming novel that President J.F. Kennedy listed as being among his top ten books of all time. What I hadn’t known was just how ill-starred the production had been: for example, the man playing Ali Kerim Bey (the British Intelligence Station Chief in Istanbul), Pedro Armendáriz, was in growing pain and died of inoperable cancer whilst the production was still going on; the helicopter carrying the director, Terence Young, and the art director and a cameraman crashed into the sea off Argyll whilst they were scouting scenes for the climactic boat chase scene – the helicopter sank but they all survived; Daniella Bianchi’s driver fell asleep early one morning and she suffered facial contusions that delayed filming by two weeks; and three stuntmen were seriously injured at Pinewood Studios when a controlled explosion got out of control. Forty-seven years on, the film is still great fun and we much enjoyed it. My better half and I also found it enjoyable for nostalgic reasons. In August 1981 we travelled by rail from Venice to Istanbul (it took three days) and then travelled around Turkey with next to no money for a month. Our train followed the route of the Orient Express but it was the cheaper version, full in the beginning of Yugoslavs heading back to their country from Italy, their rolled up money hidden in empty cigarettes. From Sofia onwards, the train filled up with Turkish gastarbeiter, weighed down with stashed Deutschmarks, their purchasing power increasing with every kilometre they travelled to the south. We ran out of food after a day-and-a-half. We managed to buy some provisions from platform sellers but I shall never forget the generosity and hospitality of our fellow passengers. Nor shall I forget Istanbul and the Turkey of that time (Bodrum was a small, sleepy town then, for example, and not the tourist resort it has since become). And we shall forever remember a picnic on the plains of Troy with food industriously assembled by two cheerful and friendly thieves who’d picked us up as we hitchhiked to the site of Troy itself. (The film jolted these pleasant memories because much was shot on location in Istanbul and on the Bosphorous.)