James' Db - film, theatre, radio

[Ania]

I updated it, at least...
I added links to the gallery and to trailers and clips (but not to fan videos). It's amazing how many of James' films are on YouTube 

Btw, I had to start the third post with the films - the first two are full! What will I do in 5 years time?? 

[sotl]

Thanks! I added a link in the gallery that points to this thread.

[Yingyang]

Thanks sotl and Ania! 

[Lisa]

I don't know where else to put this...   But has anyone noticed that the Mark and Frog site is no longer available?

Wonder if that means James has switched agency.   

[Ania]

I was thinking the same, Lisa, but I looked at Markham-Frogatt main page and it is not available either. So it's not James changing the agency... I wish he did...

[Yingyang]

Yeah, I think it's just the web host server down or something....

[Lisa]

If you haven't heard it yet, you can hear James narrating Lost Hearts on the BBC Player.  He comes in at 2:51.

http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=cy&u=http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cy/episode/b00pf12h/MR_James_at_Christmas_Lost_Hearts/&ei=Pw84S8HTO4uIsgOkq4zXAw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CA8Q7gEwAzg8&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522james%2Bd%2527arcy%2522%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dnews%26sa%3DN%26tbo%3Dp%26start%3D60%26tbs%3Dqdr:w

[Ania]

I updated Secret Diary with a pic and comments.... So sad it's over... oh, I wanted to say: so sad we won't see Duncan next Thursday...

[Lisa]

Did we ever hear James' recording of Dolce? 

I just finished reading Suite Francaise, so I know a little bit more about his character.

Dolce is the second novel of Suite Francaise. The first novel, Storm in June, covers the exodus of Parisians fleeing the German occupation of their city.  The second novel, Dolce, takes place in the bucolic village of Bussy where the German regiment is garrisoned with the locals.

Bruno von Falk is the dashing 24 year old lieutenant in charge of the German cavalrymen. His soldiers are described as “more informal, friendlier than the others.”

He is the officer who is billeted at the Angellier’s house. When he first arrives, Lucille can’t help noticing that “he was young, slim, with beautiful hands and wide eyes.” “She noticed how beautiful his hands were because he was holding the door open for her.” He wore a purple ring which lit up his complexion “rosy from the fresh air and as downy as a lovely piece of fruit growing on a trellis.”  She can’t stop looking at his large, delicate hand, his long fingers…

A little village girl described him as “really handsome. More handsome than Daddy and all the boys around here.”  The young village girls would sigh for him as he rode his beautiful horse, calling him “the Angellier’s Lieutenant.” “He’d drive me wild, he would. You can tell he’s a gentleman.”

Bruno is sensitive, cultivated, intelligent and well-mannered…a model guest, helping out whenever he can, offering fruits to the cook, asking permission to play the piano which he plays beautifully or to pick strawberries for his dog, Bubi.  On one rainy windswept spring afternoon, “so tender, so strange in the middle of war”, he plays Scarlatti to the “great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside” with all the artistic gentle grace of old Europe resting on his “slim white hands” and she feels that “this is forever.”

Lucille Angellier lived in the most elegant house in village, but lives like a prisoner under the watchful and disdainful eyes of her mother-in-law.  Lucille doesn’t miss the absence of her loutish philandering husband (a mistress in Dijon – a hatmaker), Gaston, who is in a German prison camp, although she keeps her feelings from her mother-in-law who regards her son as a saint and despises Lucille. It’s actually not clear who the mother-in-law hates more (Lucille or Bruno)

Bruno Von Falk has fallen in love with Lucille. While night after night, Lucille grows more sensitive to Bruno’s presence in the next door bedroom. She listens to the sound of his pacing and his ensuing silence of sleep that follows. Gradually, they develop a fragile companionship with a secret ecstasy and heartache for a love that cannot be.   

Nemirovsky is adept at painting the humanity and vulnerable sides of the conquered and the conquerors co-existing uneasily as best they could.  She shows the German soldiers as young men and boys – polite, nervous – to be shipped off to the Russian front at the end of Dolce. The notes Nemirovsky left behind indicated that Bruno would not survive the war in the third book.

Irene Nemirovsky was arrested shortly after she competed the first 2 parts of a planned five part novel. A month later, she died in Aushwitz. Her handwritten manuscript were hidden in a suitcase that her daughter would take with them into hiding. It was a miracle that the novels were finally published in 2004 and James read Bruno in 2006. 

[Montego]

I did not realize that James had done this and that it was related to Suite Francaise.  It is a miracle that her novels were ever published and they are so moving especially knowing how they came to be!

[Lisa]

Yes, James read it for BBC's Women's Hour Drama in August 2006, but I wasn't a fan till 2007, so I've never heard it. 
Did anyone else hear it?   Sotl?   Anne Elliot?   

http://www.imagedissectors.com/audiontube/episode.php?q=5504

I think her books are invaluable & unforgettable as she was writing it as history was unfolding around her.   

[sotl]

I'm afraid I've never heard of it.