Where Beagles Dare

The cinema across the bridge in Windsor was out of bounds making it a particularly desirable destination. The usherette knew the drill. I sat in the front row beside the emergency exit and if a beak or member of Pop arrived she’d come forward and I’d bale out.

I remember two films that came out in 1968 – Michael Hordern had roles in both. I don’t think Prudence and the Pill has a cult following. It had less sexual content than I was hoping for. On the other reel though . . .

”The world is grown so bad That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.” (Richard III)

“Do the mountains and the blue Bavarian twilight cause the drum march to rattle into existence – is the music an emanation of the mountains? – or are the  peaks and valleys hauled into view by the march of the drums? Are these Heideggerian questions, or is it just that the Teutonic opening credits – as red as the background of a Nazi flag – could not be any redder against the mountainous blue of snow-clad mountains and the deep blue sky passing for night? The wind is blowing through the mountain peaks, howling in that snowy, Alpiney way, and the drums are more strident, more martial, and there are possibly even more of them than there were a few moments earlier, marching in formation, flying. ‘We were over Germany, and a blacker, less inviting piece of land I never saw,’ writes Martha Gellhorn in The Face of War. ‘It was covered with snow, there was no light and no sign of human life, but the land itself looked actively hostile.’ We feel the same, even if the hostile land is not black – but if it was ‘covered with snow’ then it wouldn’t have been black when she soared over it in 1945 – so the point that needs to be made is that active hostility can look rather scenic too.” (“Broadsword Calling Danny Boy” on Where Eagles Dare, Geoff Dyer, 2018)