Mary Cassatt: Someone and Not Something

Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed, 1897, oil on canvas, 23 x 29 in.
Gift of the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

I recently watched a thoughtful documentary about the life and work of the American artist Mary Cassatt. (‘Painting the Modern Woman,’ 2023, directed by Ali Ray)

Cassatt created paintings of happy domesticity and maternal love. She produced pioneering prints of serene beauty. And she forged a career for herself in the face of a fiercely conservative establishment – demanding that she be considered ‘someone and not something.’

'I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work.’
Mary Cassatt

Cassatt, born into a wealthy family in Pittsburgh in 1844, was raised in Philadelphia. As a child she travelled throughout Europe, and at 15 she set her heart on becoming an artist. Having studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 1866 she moved to Paris, with her mother and family friends accompanying her as chaperones. There she took private lessons and visited the Louvre each day to copy Old Masters. She began submitting her work to the Paris Salon, the home of traditional Academic art, and in 1868 she had her first success.

'I doubt if you know the effort it is to paint! The concentration it requires, to compose your picture, the difficulty of posing the models, of choosing the color scheme, of expressing the sentiment and telling your story.’

Cassatt returned briefly to the United States during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. But her paintings were rejected by dealers there, and she received no commissions. And so she set off for Europe once again, studying and working in Parma, Madrid and Seville. In 1874 she settled in Paris, where she remained for the rest of her life. She was joined by her sister Lydia and then her parents.

Though Cassatt had some success at the Salon, with time and rejection she became frustrated by its snobbish, unadventurous jury system. Then in 1875 she was taken aback by some pastels by Edgar Degas that she spotted at an art dealer's.

'I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art. It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it.'

The Tea [Also known as: Five O’Clock Tea] Mary Cassatt 1879-1880. Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Degas and Cassatt struck up a friendship and conferred often about each other’s work. She evolved her technique, composition and use of colour and light, and in 1877 he invited her to show with the Impressionists, who had been holding their own exhibitions for a few years. She felt liberated, and from that point on remained an active member of the group until 1886, the only American officially associated with them.

‘At last I could work absolutely independently without worrying about the possible opinion of a jury… I hated conventional art. I was beginning to live.’

Lydia quietly reads the paper, sews and crochets in the garden. She works at a tapestry and takes tea with a friend. Here she is in an elegant yellow gown, seated in a private box at the opera; here driving a carriage, a niece at her side, a young groom at her back. A pensive girl in a plain white chemise arranges her hair in a neat ponytail. A bored infant sprawls across a blue armchair, legs akimbo. A loving mother bathes her sleepy child, feeds her, caresses her and gives her a goodnight kiss.

Cassatt’s subjects do not perform or present. We do not see them as objects of admiration or desire. They are simply individuals inhabiting their own private worlds. These are intimate scenes, yet the characters remain independent, elusive.

Mary Cassatt. The Letter - 1890 - 1891. Dypoint, etching, paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), New York

In 1890 Cassatt was inspired by an exhibition of Japanese prints at the École des Beaux-Arts. 

‘I dream of it and don’t think of anything else but color on copper.’

She responded with a series of her own drypoint and aquatint prints that conveyed the lives of modern females. 

A fashionable lady looks on as a seamstress adjusts her fitting. An attentive hostess offers her bonneted friend a biscuit. A woman at a desk, deep in thought, prepares to send a letter. A half-dressed woman arches over a washstand to bathe. Another perches on a bed as she adjusts her hair in the mirror.
Cassatt’s prints are delicately coloured, exquisitely simple.

Mary Cassatt The Child’s Bath. 1893. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Of course, Cassatt’s wealth had afforded her a great deal of opportunity. But she had to battle prevailing sexism every step of the way. She was not allowed to study nudes at the Pennsylvania Academy, working instead from plaster casts. In Paris she was barred from attending the École des Beaux-Arts. She was constantly chaperoned and restricted by propriety from painting urban scenes. 
Throughout her life, Cassatt was a consistent advocate for female equality, campaigning for women’s right to vote and for girls’ education. She summed up her position with elegant clarity:

'Women should be someone and not something.’

These words still resonate today, and I think they have an application beyond the battle against sexism. 
In the world of work there is a tendency to regard employees as anonymous assets, cogs in a machine, numbers on a spreadsheet; as a resource to be maximised, an investment to be realised, a headcount to be reduced. But progressive modern leaders know that dynamic, effective businesses are propelled by cultures that treat employees as individuals, with their own strengths and weaknesses; their own unique personalities and potential.

Employees should be someone and not something.

Mary Cassatt. Little Girl in a Blue Armchair - 1878. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Cassatt went on to help establish a taste for Impressionism in the United States and she acted as an advisor to some of the great American collectors. She also became a role model for young American artists who sought her advice. She died in 1926, aged 82, at Château de Beaufresne near Paris. She is remembered as a quiet revolutionary.

'Acceptance, under someone else's terms, is worse than rejection.’
 
Time for a festive break.
Have a restful Christmas. 
My next post will be on Thursday 9 January 2025.
See you on the other side, I hope.

'All the lights are coming on now.
How I wish that it would snow now.
I don't feel like going home now.
I wish that I could stay.
All the trees are on display now.
And it's cold now.
I don't feel like going home now.
I wish that I could stay.'
The Raveonettes, 'The Christmas Song’ (R Wells / M Torme)

No. 499

Francis Bacon and the ‘Trail of Human Presence’: If You Want to Get Closer to Someone, You Need to Stand Farther Away

Head of a Boy - Francis Bacon, 1960

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of portraits by Francis Bacon. (‘Human Presence’ runs at the National Portrait Gallery, London until 19 January.)

'How are you going to trap appearance without making an illustration of it?'
Francis Bacon

Bacon’s approach to portraiture was very much his own. His made his figures twist in torment and howl in anguish, so as to express latent anxieties and visceral fears. He distorted the human form, bent and buckled it, so as to articulate emotional intensity. He drew on stimulus unrelated to the sitter, merged identities and subverted reality, so as to establish truth. Warped, bruised and disfigured, corrupted and contorted, painted against black backgrounds or veridian green walls, sometimes his subjects seemed to emerge from the darkness; sometimes they receded into it.  

Self Portrait - Francis Bacon, 1973

‘In painting a portrait, the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person…The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation.’

Born into a wealthy Dublin family in 1909, Bacon was raised in Ireland and England. Scarred by a difficult relationship with his father (who struggled to come to terms with his emerging homosexuality), he had a troubled childhood. He ran away from school and drifted through his teenage years in London, Berlin and Paris, living off an allowance, taking occasional jobs and dodging the rent. 

‘I’m always surprised when I wake up in the morning.’ 

Bacon worked for a time as an interior designer, but, after seeing a Picasso exhibition in Paris, he determined to take up painting. Although he had no formal art training, he had developed a broad appreciation of avant-garde cinema, photography and literature.

 ‘I think art is an obsession with life and, after all, as we are human beings, our greatest obsession is with ourselves.’

‘Portrait of a Man Walking Down Steps’ - Francis Bacon, (1972) © The Estate of Francis Bacon/DACS

While many young artists at the time were exploring abstraction, Bacon committed to portraiture. His portraits of the late 1940s featured screaming men, trapped or shackled within transparent cages, in the midst of unspeakable nightmares, impotent in the face of unknown terrors.

‘I think of life as meaningless; but we give it meaning during our existence.’

Bacon was endeavouring to strip away artifice and display; to reveal the dark truths of human nature, the violence and horror he saw behind our defensive masks and shields. 

‘We nearly always live through screens… I sometimes think, when people say my work looks violent, that perhaps I have been able, from time to time to clear away one or two of the veils or screens.’

From the early 1950s Bacon focused on portraits of friends and lovers: the artists Lucian Freud and Isabel Rawsthorne; the artist’s model Henrietta Moraes (who worked for a time in an ad agency); his partners Peter Lacy and George Dyer; the proprietor of Soho club The Colony Room, Muriel Belcher (who paid him £10 a week and free drinks, in return for attracting new clientele). And he often painted himself. 

‘I couldn’t [paint] people I didn’t know very well…It wouldn’t interest me to try to…unless I had seen a lot of them, watched their contours, watched the way they behaved.’

Initially Bacon worked with sitters in the studio, painting from life. But he became uncomfortable with this approach. 

‘I find it less inhibiting to work from them through memory and their photographs than actually having them seated there before me.’

Bacon turned to his friend Roger Deakins to take photographs of his subjects as a reference. He was also inspired by other sources: by magazine images, book illustrations and film stills; and by old master paintings, particularly Rembrandt’s self-portraits and Diego Velazquez’s depiction of Pope Innocent X.

‘I became obsessed with this painting, and I bought photograph after photograph of it. I think really that was my first subject.’

Three Studies for a Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne - Francis Bacon
© The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved / DACS

And so, in one portrait we see the cracked glasses from the 1925 movie ‘Battleship Potemkin’; a painting of Freud is based on a photo of Franz Kafka; a self-portrait is derived from a photo of Freud; an image of Lacy originates from a holiday snapshot; and a depiction of Lisa Sainsbury has echoes of a bust of Nefertiti.

Bacon’s studio floor was littered with such reference material: pages torn from books and magazines, crushed, folded and splashed with paint: images of Joseph Goebbels, the bloody streets of Moscow during the October Revolution, a road accident, Rodin’s ‘Thinker’, Charles Baudelaire, a sparring rhinoceros.  

‘My photographs are very damaged by people walking over them and crumpling them, and this does add implications to an image.’

As Bacon endeavoured to capture the essence of a particular individual, as he reimagined a singular identity, he merged the image of his subjects with those of his friends and lovers; with his own image and with his reference material. Consequently, his unsettling portraits straddled the divide between distortion and likeness; between fiction and fact.

In seeking to get closer to his subjects, he stood farther away.

‘I would like my pictures to look as if a human had passed through them, like a snail, leaving a trail of human presence and memory trace of past events as the snail leaves its slime.’

'Something small falls out of your mouth and we laugh.
A prayer for something better.
A prayer for something better.
Please love me, meet my mother.
But the fear takes hold,
Creeping up the stairs in the dark.
Waiting for the death blow,
Waiting for the death blow.
Over and over,
We die one after the other.
Over and over,
We die one after the other.
One after the other, one after the other.
It feels like a hundred years,
A hundred years, a hundred years.’
The Cure, ‘One Hundred Years’ (L Tolhurst / R Smith / S Gallup)

No. 498

The Older the Singer, the Slower the Song

A Man Singing by Candlelight, by Adam de Coster, 1625–1635

The BBH Christmas Company Meeting was a big production number. A review of the year’s cultural, commercial and creative highlights, it featured motivational speeches, specially commissioned films and interviews, song and dance numbers, voting and amusing awards.

When I was first asked to speak at the meeting, I was a mid-weight Strategist. I made sure my piece was short and sharp, light and witty. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome.

As I progressed through the business and took on senior office, I had a regular slot at the Christmas Meeting. My section became weightier, my delivery more confident, my jokes more elaborate. 

As Chairman I had a special responsibility for culture and ethics, and I liked to name-check people that had helped out in the course of the year. And so, with every subsequent annual meeting, my ‘thank you’ list grew longer, my illustrations more detailed and my oratory more laboured.

Eventually I realised that I was losing my audience.

I had started out as succinct and to the point. I finished off as rambling and verbose.

I read recently about a study into the changing tempo of songs as artists age. (Tom Whipple, The Times, 26 July 2024)

Geoff Luck from the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland analysed more than 14,000 tunes on Spotify, from acts with careers lasting at least 20 years. He discovered that, for every decade an artist aged, the average speed of their music declined by about 2 beats per minute. So, while Elvis Presley’s 1956 rendition of ‘Hound Dog’ clocks in at 178 bpm, his 1969 hit ‘Suspicious Minds’ is just 117 bpm. Similarly, Michael Jackson’s 1972 song ‘Rockin’ Robin’ is 173 bpm, but his 2001 single ‘You Rock My World’ is 95 bpm.

Writing in the journal bioRxiv, Luck observed:

‘We know that as we age, we tend to slow down. Cognitively, but also physically. In particular, our motor competence degrades as we age. So we can’t move as fast or as accurately…. It’s to do with neurobiological decay rather than just being chilled out or other things like that.’

We may recognise the broad theme of these findings in the world of work.

As we advance through our careers, we are accorded more respect and allowed more time to expand on our themes. Our juniors are reluctant to criticise, to suggest amendments and adjustments. We begin to enjoy having an audience. We start to like the sound of our own voice.  

The older the singer, the slower the song. 

It’s always worth stepping back and reflecting. Could I be more precise, more succinct? Could I make a bigger impact with fewer words? Could I leave them wanting more? No one ever complained about a shorter speech or a tighter presentation. Everyone needs an editor.

'Be sincere. Be brief. Be seated.' 
Franklin D Roosevelt

Perhaps we should take some inspiration from Elton John and Madonna. Luck’s study reveals that, over their long, successful and storied careers, they have bucked the trend, suffering no decline in tempo. They have justified our love.

'I want to kiss you in Paris,
I want to hold your hand in Rome.
I want to run naked in a rainstorm,
Make love in a train cross-country.
You put this in me.
So now what, so now what?
Wanting, needing, waiting,
For you to justify my love.
Hoping, praying,
For you to justify my love.’

Madonna, ‘Justify My Love’ (I J Chavez / L Kravitz / Madonna)

No. 497

Monet and the Power of the Repeated Image

Claude Monet - Charing Cross Bridge, The Thames, 1903

I recently visited a small exhibition dedicated to Claude Monet’s paintings of London and the River Thames. (‘Monet and London: Views of the Thames’ is at the Courtauld Gallery, London until 19 January.)

‘Every day I find London more beautiful to paint.’
Claude Monet

Monet first painted London in 1870, when, as a poor artist, he took refuge there during the Franco-Prussian War. Thirty years later he returned, a wealthy man, and installed himself in a top-floor suite at the prestigious Savoy Hotel, from the balcony of which he had exceptional views of the Thames.

Over three stays between 1899 and 1901, Monet created a series of works depicting Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament (for the last of which he adjourned to a terrace in St Thomas’s Hospital on the south bank). He began the paintings in London, finished them later in his studio in Giverny, and presented them to the public at a successful exhibition in Paris in 1904.

Claude Monet- Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, 1903

‘It has to be said that this climate is so idiosyncratic; you wouldn’t believe the amazing effects I have seen in the nearly two months that I have been constantly looking at this River Thames.’

 Monet was particularly enchanted by London fog. He relished its interaction with light; the fleeting colours; the romantic mood; the way buildings and structures loomed out of it, as if suspended in mid-air.

 ‘The fog assumes all sorts of colours; there are black, brown, yellow, green, purple fogs, and the interest in painting is to get the objects as seen through all these fogs.’ 

 The very particular London atmosphere was later termed ‘smog.’ It was the result of industrial smoke and coal particles mixing with clouds, steam and vapour. Smog was often yellow due to large concentrations of sulphurous emissions. 

Claude Monet- Waterloo Bridge, Gray Weather, 1900

London was the most populous city in the world at the time, and the Thames was its central artery. The area was teeming with traffic, vibrant with commerce and heavy industry. Close to the Savoy an iron railway bridge led into the recently opened Charing Cross Station, and the south bank of the river was peppered with tall-chimnied factories. All of which Monet regarded as admirable symbols of modernity. 

Strange to think how perceptions have changed. Where he saw vitality, we see congestion. Where he saw progress, we see pollution. Where he saw romance, we see health hazard.

‘I so love London! But I only love London in the winter… Without the fog, London wouldn’t be a beautiful city. It’s the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth. Its regular and massive blocks become grandiose within that mysterious cloak.’

The Thames shimmers in the soft golden light, plied by small boats and barges. The horse-drawn double-decker buses grind to a halt on Waterloo Bridge, its grey granite piers glowing pink. The chimneys on the far bank belch smoke; a speeding train trails steam as it heads into Charing Cross; and the horizon merges with the sky. The vista is bathed in radiant colour, a yellow haze, a mysterious, haunting gloom. It turns blue and then orange. A small red sun pierces the fog. The Houses of Parliament, symbol of imperial splendour, float in the distance, shrouded in silver mist, reduced to abstract, shadowed shapes. ‘All that is solid melts into air.’ 

Monet would make a start on a picture and then move on to another five minutes later as the light changed, working on up to twelve canvases at a time. Later, back in the studio, he would exaggerate and enhance effects and colours.

‘My practiced eye has found that objects change in appearance in a London fog more and quicker than in any other atmosphere, and the difficulty is to get every change down on canvas.’

Claude Monet - Houses of Parliament, 1904

Monet observed that the power of his Thames series derived from the way it explored a consistent theme with infinite variety.

[The individual paintings] ‘take on their full value only in comparison and succession of the entire series.’

Strangely perhaps, I was prompted to reflect on the world of commercial communication.

Some years ago, I attended a talk by the esteemed fashion designer and retailer, Paul Smith. He explained that, when it came to window displays, he believed in ‘the power of the repeated image.’ Accompanying a pale blue cotton shirt with a royal blue version of the same shirt; and then navy and deep indigo; next to a twill or a denim execution of the same design; adding a polka dot pattern, a striped print or floral detail. It was theme and variation played by an orchestra of blue garments. And it created a pleasing, harmonious effect. At once both thrilling and reassuring.

[I saw] ‘Wonderful things, but none lasting more than five minutes, it is enough to drive you mad.’

After the success of the 1904 Paris exhibition, Monet was keen to present his Thames pictures in London the following year. Unable to borrow back enough sold works, he tried completing unfinished paintings from the original series. But eventually he gave up. The Courtauld show, featuring 21 views of the Thames, finally achieves his ambition, just 300 metres from the Savoy where many of them were created.

'A foggy day, in London town,
Had me low, and it had me down.
I viewed the morning with much alarm,
The British Museum, it lost its charm.
How long I wondered,
Could this thing last,
But the age of miracles, it hadn't past.
For suddenly, I saw you standing right there,
And in foggy London town,
The sun was shining everywhere.’
Frank Sinatra, 'A Foggy Day (In London Town)’ (G Gershwin / I Gershwin)

No. 496

Look Back in Anger: Context Shapes Content

Billy Howle as Jimmy and Ellora Torchia as Alison in Look Back In Anger at the Almeida Theatre, 2024
Photo: Marc Brenner

I recently saw a fine production of John Osborne’s 1956 play ‘Look Back in Anger.’ (The Almeida, Islington until 30 November) 

There’s a riddle associated with this work. It’s celebrated for precipitating a revolution in British theatre. And yet it’s very rarely staged, and it hasn’t been performed in London for 25 years. Now I think I understand.

 Jimmy: Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm. Just another Sunday evening.

‘Look Back in Anger’ is set in Jimmy and Alison Porter’s shabby one-bedroom flat in a large Midlands town. They have been married for three years. We meet the couple on a gloomy Sunday evening. Alison, wearing an expensive but grubby skirt and one of Jimmy’s shirts, is doing the ironing. Jimmy and his old friend and lodger, the amiable Cliff, are seated in armchairs, drinking tea and reading the newspapers. Jimmy, in tired tweed jacket and flannels, smokes his pipe, while the others puff away at cigarettes.

 Jimmy: God, how I hate Sundays! It’s always so depressing, always the same. We never seem to get any further, do we? Always the same ritual. Reading the papers, drinking tea, ironing. A few more hours, and another week gone. Our youth is slipping away.

Kenneth Haigh (right) as Jimmy Porter, with Helena Hughes, Alan Bates and Mary Ure in the original production of Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court in London in 1956.
Photograph: Charles Hewitt/Getty Images

Jimmy is working-class and university-educated. He practices the jazz trumpet and aspires to become a writer. Having tried a number of jobs (journalism, advertising, selling vacuum cleaners), he now runs a sweet-stall on the market. Reclining in his armchair, he offers cynical commentary on the news stories, laced with references to JB Priestley, Emily Bronte and Vaughan Williams. 

Jimmy: I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. 

Jimmy regards himself as intellectually superior to his friend and wife. He chides them for their lack of spirit, and rages against the inertia in modern British society.

Jimmy: Nobody can be bothered. No one can raise themselves out of their delicious sloth. You two will drive me round the bend soon …Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm – that’s all. I want to hear a warm thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I’m alive!

 Jimmy seems particularly to enjoy taunting Alison, and criticising her family for being upper-class.

Jimmy: You’ve never heard so many well-bred commonplaces come from beneath the same bowler hat. The Platitude from Outer Space – that’s brother Nigel… Nigel is just about as vague as you can get without being actually invisible…And nothing is more vague about Nigel than his knowledge. His knowledge of life and ordinary human beings is so hazy, he really deserves some decoration for it – a medal inscribed ‘For Vaguery in the Field.’

 Jimmy demands total loyalty from his partner (‘Either you’re with me or against me.’). He is also paranoid, suspicious of her motives and anticipating plots. When she leaves the room, he rifles through her handbag and reads her letters.

 Jimmy tries to goad Alison into a response. Eventually he directs his rhetorical guns straight at her.

 Jimmy: All this time, I have been married to this woman, this monument to non-attachment, and suddenly I discover that that there is actually a word that sums her up. Not just an adjective in the English language to describe her with – it’s her name! Pusillanimous!

Jimmy’s insults are getting to Alison. And yet, except for a few muttered complaints, she suffers in silence and carries on ironing. 

 Alison: All I want is a little peace. 

Jimmy is clearly a vile individual. (Alison hypothesizes that he has married her for revenge.) Aggrieved and self-pitying, he justifies his bitterness with the death of his father when he was a child. As if he uniquely understands grief.

Jimmy: Anyone who's never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity. For twelve months, I watched my father dying - when I was ten years old… You see, I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry - angry and helpless. And I can never forget it. I knew more about - love... betrayal... and death, when I was ten years old than you will probably ever know in your life.

 ‘Look Back in Anger’ was an early example of realist ‘kitchen-sink drama’, and Osborne and fellow writers of the time (including Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Arnold Wesker) were referred to as ‘the angry young men.’

Jimmy: The injustice of it is almost perfect! The wrong people going hungry, the wrong people being loved, the wrong people dying!

 The play is famous for sweeping away the sophisticated society dramas of Terrence Rattigan and Noel Coward. Where theatregoers had been accustomed to seeing polite comedies of manners, acted out in elegant middle-class homes and hotels, this work featured genuine working-class characters, facing contemporary problems and articulating raw emotions. 

Jimmy: I suppose people of our generation aren't able to die for good causes any longer. We had all that done for us, in the thirties and the forties, when we were still kids. ...There aren't any good, brave causes left.

‘Look Back in Anger’ was rooted in late ‘50s Britain; in the spirit of lost Empire, economic decline and rising class-consciousness.

It gained its power from its context. In the same way that the radical impact of Impressionism can only be properly understood when set against the stifling conservatism of the Paris Salon; that Pop Art can be viewed as a response to the intellectual purity of Abstract Expressionism; and that Punk can be better appreciated as the antithesis of self-indulgent Prog Rock. The work is the product, not just of an individual’s imagination, but also of the environment.

Context shapes content.

The male critics of the era lionised Jimmy as the voice of disaffected youth, without properly recognising his malice and misogyny. Perhaps class struggle was just more compelling to them than gender equality. Watching ‘Look Back in Anger’ today, the audience does not cheer his sedition. Rather it recoils at his self-absorption and cruelty. The play stands as a striking study in toxic masculinity. And that makes it still relevant.

Helena: Why do you try so hard to be unpleasant?... Do you have to be so offensive?

 In the second act Alison is visited by her father, a retired Colonel who spent much of his life serving in India. He confesses to not really comprehending Jimmy at all. 

 Colonel: Perhaps Jimmy is right. Perhaps I am a – what is it? an old plant left over from the Edwardian Wilderness. And I can’t understand why the sun isn’t shining any more.

Alison observes that her father and Jimmy just have different perspectives on the same world. 

Alison: You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. 

Alison’s point here resonated with me. When I was younger, I felt that society was stuck in its ways; too conservative and conventional; too slow to adopt new ideas. Now I’m older, I worry that everything has moved too quickly; that technology is out of control; that we have lost too much in the upheaval. (And I rather like the plays of Rattigan and Coward.)

 Again, context shapes content. 

 We all need to be mindful that our views are rooted in particular eras; that we regard the world through the prism of our own experience; that our judgements are filtered through our individual assumptions and biases.

 Towards the end of the play, Alison’s friend Helen contends that, far from being a thoroughly contemporary character, Jimmy is a man out of time. I wish that were true.

Helena: Do you know – I have discovered what is wrong with Jimmy? It’s very simple really. He was born out of his time…There’s no place for people like that any longer – in sex, or politics, or anything. That’s why he’s so futile…He doesn’t know where he is, or where he’s going. He’ll never do anything, and he’ll never amount to anything.

'People try to put us d-down, 
Just because we get around. 
Things they do look awful c-c-cold.
I hope I die before I get old. 
This is my generation,
This is my generation, baby.
Why don't you all f-fade away. 
And don't try dig what we all s-s-say.
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation.
I'm just talking about my g-g-generation.
My generation,
This is my generation, baby.’

The Who, ‘My Generation’ (P Townshend)

No. 495

It’s Not Your Fault, But It Is Your Problem: The Price of Leadership is Responsibility

Edvard Munch ‘Vampire ii’

'Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.'`
Sigmund Freud

My mate Steve was a top Account Man. He was personable and practical, creatively supportive and commercially astute. And he brimmed full of optimism and enthusiasm.
 
So, when our financial services clients commissioned an ad featuring a Hollywood Star, they asked Steve to attend the shoot in person, in order to ensure that everything went to plan.

The Hollywood Star was co-operative, easy-going and warm-hearted.

Her Hollywood Agent, however, was more challenging. Brittle and defensive, she was protective of her boss’s time and sceptical of the Director’s talent. At every twist and turn, she criticised and complained. 

As the production reached its climax, the Hollywood Agent demanded that a whole day’s shoot be rearranged to accommodate her client’s social schedule.

Steve tried to reason with her, explaining that the process was carefully constructed and precisely thought through.

At length, the Hollywood Agent tapped her perfectly-presented nails on the table, looked Steve in the eye, and addressed him in her brusque New York brogue.
 
‘Steve, it’s not your fault, but it is your problem. Get it sorted.’

When Steve later reported these events to me, that particular phrase struck home.

When we’re in a jam, we spend a good deal of time disputing narratives, denying fault, attributing blame. But often these debates are irrelevant. They are merely delaying action, postponing resolution.

'The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.'
Joan Didion

In my experience the people who succeed in business, and in life in general perhaps, own the problem and its solution. As the management theorist Peter Drucker observed:

'Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.'

Eventually the scheduling issues were resolved. The Hollywood Star attended her party, the shoot was completed, and the Steve returned home with a decent ad.

The price of leadership is responsibility.

'When they look at me,
What they really see
Is the love you got me feeling,
Like I'm dancing on the ceiling.
I can hardly breathe,
Because you're all I need.
So when they ask me why I'm smiling like a fool,
I blame you,
Oh baby, I blame you.’

Ledisi, ‘I Blame You’ (C Kelly / C Harmon / L Young)

No. 494

Abigail’s Party: Celebrating Suburbia

Omar Malik, Ashna Rabheru, Tamzin Outhwaite and Pandora Colin in Abigail’s Party, © Mark Senior

‘Abigail’s Party’ is a 1977 tragicomedy about suburbia, written by Mike Leigh. (An excellent production has recently been staged at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.)

Beverly: Don't you find shopping boring, though, Ang? Oh, I do - I hate it. He takes me down in the car, and I get me wheely, Tone, and I whizz in, and I grab anything I can see, and I bung it in me wheely, he writes me a cheque, we bung it in the car, bring it home, and it's done for the week, d’you know what I mean?

The drama opens with former beautician Beverly relaxing in her comfortable home at 13 Richmond Road (off Ravensway). She has been preparing to entertain her new neighbours: Angela, a nurse, and Tony, a former Crystal Palace footballer who now works in computers. On the onyx coffee-table she has arranged a tray of crisps and salted nuts, and a couple of cheese and pineapple hedgehogs. She pops her Cosmopolitan magazine in the rack, pours herself a gin-and-tonic, lights a cigarette and cues up Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You Baby.’ 

Angela: Were we meant to wear long?
Beverly: No, no, it’s just informal, you know, so…

When Angela and Tony arrive in their smart outfits, Beverly prompts her husband, overworked estate agent Laurence, to fix the drinks.

 Beverly: Tony would like Bacardi-and-Coke with ice and lemon, Angela would like a gin-and-tonic with ice and lemon, and I’d like a fill-up, okay?
Laurence: Surely.

 The group is completed by another neighbour, Sue, a long-term resident of the street, whose fifteen-year-old daughter Abigail is holding a party at home. 

The assembled guests admire the kitchen equipment, the fridge freezer and rotisserie; the living room furniture, fibre-optic lights and sheepskin rug. 

Beverly: What, the candelabra? Yes, it’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Angela: Yes. Is it real silver?
Beverly: Yeah. Silver plate, yeah.

They move on to discuss cars, foreign holidays and supermarkets. Tony and Angela shop at Sainsbury’s, but Laurence prefers the Co-op because ‘they have a much wider range of goods there.’ 

The class distinctions are subtle, but clear. Divorcee Sue speaks with a Home Counties accent, and her former husband was an architect. She arrives in a blouse and skirt, offering a bottle of Beaujolais and expecting dinner. But the other guests have already had their ‘tea,’ and have correctly anticipated an extended evening of drinks. Angela and Tony are working-class. (Beverly points out that their house is a little smaller than hers.) But they are keen to move up the ladder.

Angela: We’ve just bought a new three-piece suite, but ours isn’t real leather like this – it’s ‘leather look.’

Beverly’s working-class background is revealed by her occasionally coarse language and manners. But through money, property and hard work, she has acquired a certain social status. As Leigh observes of her: 

‘She is totally preoccupied with appearances and received notions of behaviour and taste. A bundle of contradictions, she espouses the idea of people freely enjoying themselves, yet endlessly bullies everybody into what she wrongly thinks they’ll enjoy, or what is good for them.’
Mike Leigh
 
There’s an ambivalence to social change here. On the one hand, the group embraces new freedoms. On the other hand, it seems inherently conservative.

Angela: I think more and more people are getting divorced these days, though.
Beverly: Yeah, definitely, Ang. Mind you, I blame a lot of it on Women’s Lib. I do. And on permissiveness, and all this wife-swapping business. Don’t you, Tone?
 
Through the course of the play, we realise that Beverly and Laurence are unhappily married. They are constantly bickering about mundane household matters; about Laurence placing his executive briefcase on the furniture; about stocking up on lagers and light ales, the appropriate music volume and the desirability of olives. They don’t seem to have much in common. Laurence is proud of his Van Gogh and Lowry prints, and his bound and embossed sets of Shakespeare and Dickens. He proposes they listen to some ‘light classical – just as background.’ James Galway perhaps. Beverly however has more popular tastes.

Beverly: Lawrence, Angela likes Demis Roussos, Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and Sue would like to hear Demis Roussos. So please, do you think we could have Demis Roussos on?

As the drink flows, Beverly begins to flirt with Tony. 

The play brilliantly captures the character of suburban life. The aspiration, materialism and conformity; the subtly calibrated hierarchies; the fear of boredom and the determination to have a good time. There is an underlying suspicion that the real fun is happening off-stage, at maverick teenager Abigail’s party.  
 
‘All my plays and films have, at one level or another, dealt with the tension between conforming or being your true self, between following the rules or breaking them, and with the problem of having to behave the way you think you’re expected to.’
Mike Leigh

‘Abigail’s Party’ also illustrates the central part that brands and consumer goods play in contemporary life; their critical role in marking achievement, belonging and identity. 

The first production of the work, starring Alison Steadman at the Hampstead Theatre, was a huge box office success, and a BBC ‘Play for Today’ version was immediately commissioned. (You can still find it online.) It certainly captured the zeitgeist. Leigh has observed that it distilled the post-war obsession with ‘the done thing’, which, combined with a new ‘aggressive consumerism’, ushered in the era of Margaret Thatcher. 

Still from the original 1977 BBC drama. Pictured L to R: Janine Duvitski, Alison Steadman, Tim Stern, Harriet Reynolds and John Salthouse

Some have criticised Leigh for his ‘disdain for the lower middle classes.’ But his characters are often vulnerable; always sympathetic.
 
‘The play is both a lamentation and a celebration of how we are, but it is not a sneer.’
Mike Leigh

I grew up in suburban Romford. A semi-detached world of mown front lawns, neat flower borders and pebble dashed houses; of shag-pile carpets, rattan furniture and swirly wallpaper; of hi-fidelity separates, LPs and easy listening; of Ford Escorts, Capris and Cortinas; of white socks and cut-down shoes, gold chains and pastel sweaters. I loved Essex, but I was never quite sure it loved me…

Angela: The trouble with old houses is they haven’t got any central heating.

I have often wondered whether suburbia is under-represented in modern media and advertising. Over half of the UK population lives in these outskirts and edgelands. And yet, with the exception of a few sit-coms, our national narrative seems generally to be played out in city apartments and tower blocks; in urban centres and on village greens. 
 
If we ignore the suburbs, we are failing to monitor the frontiers of social change; neglecting the true melting pot of modern mores and cultural values. We are missing out on a critical part of our collective identity.

Beverly: Laurence, we're not here to hold conversations, we are here to enjoy ourselves. And for your information, that racket happens to be the King of Rock’n’Roll.

'Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be the one,
That shines on me like the morning sun.
Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be my spring,
My rainbow's end and the song I sing.
Take me far beyond imagination,
You're my dream come true, my consolation.
Ever and ever, forever and ever, you'll be my dream
My symphony, my own lover's theme
Ever and ever, forever and ever, my destiny
Will follow you eternally.'

Demis Roussos, ‘Forever and Ever’ (S Vlavianos / R Costandinos)

No. 493

Van Gogh, Painting the Infinite: ‘I’m Attempting Something More Heartbroken and Therefore More Heartbreaking’

Vincent Van Gogh, The Sower (1888)

I recently visited an exhibition of some 60 paintings and drawings created by Vincent Van Gogh in two years towards the end of his life (1888-90). (‘Poets and Lovers’ is at the National Gallery, London until 19 January 2025.)

‘It’s my plan to go to the south for a while, as soon as I can, where there’s even more colour and even more sun.’
Vincent Van Gogh, October 1887

In February 1888, aged 34, Van Gogh left Paris to live and work in the south of France. Settling in Arles, he rented the four-roomed Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine for 15 francs a month. Inspired by the beautiful local scenery and the ravishing light, he embarked on a period of industrious creativity, whilst also nurturing thoughts of establishing an ‘artists' home’, a communal ‘studio of the south.’

‘The painter of the future is a colourist such as there hasn’t been before.’

The Yellow House (The Street) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
(c) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Here’s the Yellow House with its bright green shutters and door, a steam train passing over a bridge in the distance. We step inside and see the painter’s pipe and tobacco sitting on a rustic chair; and his terracotta tiled bedroom with its limewashed walls. In the nearby park, two young lovers walk hand-in-hand under the shade of a spreading fir tree.

Now we regard Arles from across the River Rhone on a starry night. A team of stevedores unload barges laden with coal. In the surrounding countryside a sower is silhouetted against an enormous golden sun. A lone ploughman tills the fields and grape pickers labour in the vineyard.  

‘One can speak poetry just by arranging colours well, just as one can say comforting things in music.’

Van Gogh took real views as a starting point, but chose not to reproduce them faithfully. He freely added imagined figures and buildings; changed angles and viewpoints; intensified colours. He sought to convey meaning rather than actuality.

‘To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun.’

Vincent van Gogh ‘Starry Night Over the Rhône’
Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt

In December 1888 Van Gogh had a breakdown and cut off his left ear. He was admitted to the local hospital a number of times over the following months, and in May he checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy, a former monastery nearly 20 miles from Arles. Allocated two cells with barred windows, he used one of them as a studio. Although experiencing further episodes that summer and winter, he continued to work.  

‘I have a terrible clarity of mind at times, when nature is so lovely these days, and then I’m no longer aware of myself and painting comes to me as if in a dream.’

Van Gogh painted the arcaded courtyard; the overgrown hospital garden with its rows of pines and reddish soil; sinuous tree trunks, covered in dense undergrowth, bathed in dappled light. He painted flowering orchards and fields of bright red poppies; vivid blue irises, pink roses and chrome yellow sunflowers; blooming oleanders in a majolica jug.
 
‘I’m attempting something more heartbroken and therefore more heartbreaking.’

One gets the impression that, despite or perhaps because of his poor mental health, he was experiencing life more intensely; seeing more clearly; feeling more profoundly. His skies were the deepest blue. His sunsets were yellow, ultramarine and mauve. His suns were blazing orange and glowing gold. The wheatfields swayed under the mistral, the mountains and ravines quivered in the searing Provencal heat. The cypresses were aflame, the olive groves swooned, and the clouds rolled in over the hills like breaking waves.  

Vincent Van Gogh ‘Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background’

He achieved these dynamic effects with bold dashes, dots and swirls; with rippling strokes and hatching. It was a kind of magic.

‘I want a far-off thing like a vague memory softened by time.’

Perhaps this is a reminder to us all that we should look for the beauty that surrounds us; that we should regard the world more intensely; that even at our lowest ebb, in our darkest hour, nature provides respite, creativity offers relief.

‘Instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite.’

Sadly for Van Gogh, the respite was short-lived. In May 1890 he left the asylum and returned north to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. In July he shot himself in the chest, dying two days later.

'Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do.
Yeah, they were all yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called yellow.
So then I took my turn.
Oh, what a thing to have done,
And it was all yellow.
Your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful.
And you know, you know I love you so.
You know I love you so.’
Coldplay, ‘Yellow’ (C Martin / G Berryman / W Champion / J Buckland)

No. 492

Suffragette for a Day: The Limitations of Immersive Experiences

Surveillance photographs of suffragettes who had been imprisoned in Holloway.
Crown Copyright, courtesy of The National Archives.

2018 marked 100 years since the UK Government passed the Representation of the People Act, giving the right to vote to 8.4 million women who were over the age of 30 and met minimum property qualifications. It was the first step towards equalizing the franchise. 

I thought it would be interesting to watch a play on the subject, but I could find nothing in the mainstream West End venues. And so I settled instead for a couple of tickets to an immersive theatre event.

Early one bright summer’s evening, my wife and I tentatively made our way down into the basement of the Trocadero shopping centre on Piccadilly. We were met by a group of severe women in long heavy Edwardian skirts and white cotton blouses, and informed that we had travelled back in time to 1912. Taken to an office, the two of us were then formally enlisted to the suffragette cause and warned of the risk of incarceration and the loss of our reputations.  

Next we were sent back out onto the street to perform our first act of protest. Handed a piece of chalk each, we had to write appropriate slogans on the paving stones around the Trocadero.  

This seemed simple enough.  With shoppers and tourists traipsing past on either side, I got down on my knees and scrawled in large capital letters:

'Votes for Women.’

I admired my work for a moment, and then added:  

‘Deeds, not words!’

No one seemed to be paying too much attention. Which was fine, as I was a little concerned that I’d bump into one of my former colleagues, whose offices were close at hand.

After a little while, having written the same lines a few more times (my creativity eluded me), we decided that we’d made our point, and it might be time to return to our basement HQ.

In the tea-room, which was decorated in green, white and purple, some of our fellow conspirators were painting banners, making rosettes and learning a protest song.  

We were briefed on another mission. We were to have a secret rendezvous with a man in a bowler hat by the statue of Eros on Piccadilly Circus.  

Before we set off, our instructor assumed a grave expression.  

’I need to check with you one more time. Are you prepared to break the law for the cause?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’ I nervously replied.  ‘Not a problem.’

Above ground once more, we didn’t have long to wait before we spotted a tall gentleman smartly attired in a sombre suit and a black bowler hat. As we approached, we realised he was holding a couple of large stones.

‘I want you both to take these rocks and throw them through the windows of Lillywhites sporting goods store. It’s just over there.’
‘Of course. Got it. All good.’
 
Not a natural seditionary, I nonetheless steadied myself and took aim at a display of cricket equipment. I had just coiled my arm behind my back, when we were seized by a couple of burly uniformed police officers. We were then separated, taken to some grim underground cells and interrogated.  

My inquisitor was sarcastic, aggressive, belittling, and I was given a hard time for my ‘Fenian name.’ To be fair, he didn’t beat me up. Which I suspect would have been on the cards back in 1912.
 
All in all, my immersive experience was rather unsettling. But what did I learn from my day as a suffragette?

The event was certainly carefully crafted and intelligently scripted. And it did bring home the harsh realities of breaking the law for a cause.
 
But at the same time, I concluded that immersive theatre is not really for me. I’m too awkward and self-conscious. I find it hard to let go. And I’m not sure that a piece of personally involving drama could ever do justice to the horrors of oppression.
 
We’re all aware of the view that experience is the route to proper comprehension.
 
'I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.’
Xunzi
 
But perhaps we need to be mindful that immersion is not appropriate to everything and everyone. Sometimes it’s fine just to show and tell.
 
When my wife and I were reunited, on bail, in the tea-room of the suffragette HQ, we exchanged glances.  

‘Maybe we’ve done enough agitation for one day?’
‘Yes, I think so. Let’s go to dinner.’
 

'Comrades, ye who have dared,
First in the battle to strive and sorrow,
Scorned, spurned, nought have ye cared.
Raising your eyes to a wider morrow.
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary,
Toil and pain by faith ye have borne;
Hail, hail, victors ye stand,
Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!
Life, strife, these two are one,
Nought can ye win but by faith and daring:
On, on that ye have done,
But for the work of today preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh a defiance,
(Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)
March, march, many as one.
Shoulder to Shoulder and friend to friend.’
‘The March of the Women’, Ethel Smyth, Cicely Hamilton

No. 491

Big Night: You Don’t Need Words to Express Feelings

Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as Secondo and Primo. Big Night

Pascal: I am a businessman. I am anything I need to be at any time. Tell me, what exactly are you?

‘Big Night’, a 1996 comedy-drama, tells the story of two Italian immigrant brothers struggling to make a success of their restaurant on the Jersey Shore in the late 1950s.

Customer (when her partner is presented with a dish garnished with basil): That looks good. You’ve got leaves with yours.

Co-directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci, the movie stars Tony Shalhoub as older brother Primo, a brilliant, uncompromising chef, and Tucci as younger brother Secondo, the charming restaurant manager trying to balance the books.

Primo: To eat good food is to be close to God.

Paradise is a smart, traditional family restaurant, with tiled floors, white tablecloths and pressed napkins. There is a curved wooden bar, an antique espresso machine and the walls are hung with paintings.

Hitherto the locals have not found the cuisine to their taste.  

Customer: Monsieur, is this what I ordered?
Secondo: Yes, that is a risotto. Is a special recipe that my brother and I bring from Italy. It’s delicious, I promise.
Customer: It took so long, I thought you went all the way back to Italy to get it.

The good citizens of Jersey prefer their Italian food fast and simple, with meatballs and extra cheese on top.

Customer: There are no meatballs with the spaghetti?
Secondo: Sometimes the spaghetti likes to be alone.

Chef Primo is particularly upset when one diner requests a side-order of pasta with her risotto. Secondo pleads for pragmatism.

Secondo: Oh, please, Primo, what are you going to do? Tell the customer what she can eat? Huh? That is what she want. This is what the customer ask for. Make it! Make the pasta, make it, make it, make the pasta! Come on! Let's go!

Secondo has bought into the American Dream and is desperate to make the business a success. Primo, however, pines for a return to Italy. They are endlessly arguing over whether they should make concessions to accommodate local tastes and preferences.  

Primo: If you give people time, they learn.
Secondo: Well, I don’t have time for them to learn. This is a restaurant, not a f**king school.

Situated just across the street from Paradise, Pascal’s is a far more glitzy dining establishment, where the focus is on entertainment and experience rather than cuisine.

Primo: The man should be in a prison for the food he serves.

Pascal’s is a hugely successful business, not least because its slick proprietor has determined to give people what they want.

Pascal: A guy goes out to eat in the evening after a long day in the office or whatever. He don't want on his plate something that he has to look and think, ‘What the f**k is this?’ No, right. What he wants is a steak. ‘This is a steak. I like steak. Mmm. I’m happy!’

Desperate to keep his business afloat, Secondo asks Pascal for a loan, but he is refused. Instead, Pascal repeats a past offer to the brothers to work for him, and he gives Secondo a pep talk.

Secondo: You know everything has just become... too much.
Pascal: Hey, hey, f***ing guy! What this is: ‘too much’? Hey! It is never ‘too much’; it is only ‘not enough’! Bite your teeth into the ass of life and drag it to you!

At length Pascal promises to persuade his friend, the popular singer Louis Prima, to dine at Paradise, thereby attracting some much-needed buzz and publicity.  

On learning of the plan, Primo is sceptical.

Primo: People should come just for the food.
Secondo: I know that, I know. But they don’t.

And so, the brothers set about preparing a lavish dinner for the pop star, inviting some 17 guests to the restaurant, including their respective love interests, Pascal and his wife, a reporter, a car salesman and a Priest.

Secondo: Primo, this dinner tonight is happening. Do you know why?
Primo: No.
Secondo: Because it has to happen. We need it to happen.

The ‘big night’ at Paradise is a truly memorable occasion. There’s decadent drinking, joyous dancing, unrestrained smoking and eccentric party games. And, of course, there’s Primo’s magnificent cooking - including parmesan brodo, tricolore risotto, roasted  fish and suckling pig. The centrepiece of the feast is a timpano, a huge pasta dish with tomato sauce, roasted vegetables and sausage meat, hard-boiled eggs and cheese - all shaped into a dome, covered with dough and then baked.

Pascal: God damn it, I should kill you! This is so f**king good I should kill you!

‘Big Night’ is a fantastic film, filled with great characters, dialogue and drama. It also boasts a splendid supporting cast, including Minnie Driver, Ian Holm, Isabella Rossellini and Allison Janney.  

Big Night

The movie prompts anyone working in commerce to reflect on a common dilemma. Should we stay true to our original vision, or adapt to public tastes? Should we retain our distinctiveness, or adhere to successful conventions? Should we hold our course or bend with the wind? Should we stick or twist?

Primo: You want me to make a sacrifice. If I sacrifice my work, it dies.

Inevitably there’s a spectrum of responses to these questions, and the extremes are the most difficult to sustain. We often end up seeking a middle path.
 
Pascal: Give to people what they want, then later you can give them what you want.

Sadly, the euphoric, indulgent, chaotic ‘big night’ ends in disappointment, tears, truth telling and disputes.

Primo: This place is eating us alive! 

Dawn breaks and the revellers return home. A despondent Secondo enters the kitchen to find young waiter Cristiano asleep on the work surface. Secondo picks up a bowl of eggs.

Secondo: Are you hungry?…
Cristiano rouses himself to help, but is put at ease by Secondo.
Secondo: I’ll do it.

While Cristiano stretches himself awake, Secondo breaks the eggs, then whips and heats them on the stove. Cristiano settles on a counter, chewing a piece of bread, watching.
Secondo takes two plates and forks from the shelves and divides the omelette into thirds. Serving one portion each to Cristiano and himself, he leaves the remainder in the pan. They settle down to eat in silence.

Next Primo enters, hesitantly. Secondo fetches another plate and fork, and gives him the last share of the omelette. As the brothers tuck in, Cristiano leaves. They put their arms on one another's shoulders.
 
This quiet concluding scene, lasting 5 minutes, seems perfectly to sum up brotherly love, comradeship at work, the reluctant resolution that we must ‘get up and do it again.’ 

It leaves us with one final lesson: you don’t need words to express feelings.

'Buona sera, signorina, buona sera,
It is time to say goodnight to Napoli.
Though it's hard for us to whisper, buona sera.
With that old moon above the Mediterranean sea.
In the morning, signorina, we'll go walking,
Where the mountains help the sun come into sight,
And by the little jewellery shop we'll stop and linger,
While I buy a wedding ring for your finger.
In the meantime let me tell you that I love you.
Buona sera, signorina, kiss me goodnight.
Buona sera, signorina, kiss me goodnight.’
Louis Prima,’Buona Sera’ (C Sigman, P de Rose)

No 490