Reviews

A Swedish friend of mine sent me a DVD of this earlier this year; it has yet to arrive in Britain in any form and it seems to be impossible to order the DVD over the web. In the absence of circulating copies, I have simply been boring anyone who will listen about this amazing film.

'Four Shades of Brown' was funded by Swedish state TV, and written, performed and directed by the Killinggagets group who are well known in Sweden as a comedy troupe. The film is a collection of stories about contemporary Swedish life: the family of a dead horse trainer gather to mourn his passing, an elderly couple on tour with their magic act visit their uptight son in his coastal hotel and pick up an admirer en route, a man tries to connect with his teenage son by showing him the work he does at the pet crematorium, and a weekly 'cookery class' has turned into an encounter group where lost souls discuss their troubled lives. A couple of the strands interconnect: and some people have drawn comparisons with 'Magnolia', but frankly this film is far more original. It manages to be incredibly funny, yet in the end it addresses some very serious issues head-on. This is the most controversial aspect of the film, and on paper it might seem tasteless and impossible to bring off, but it works brilliantly and that on its own is an incredible achievement. This film is quite unique and easily the most astonishing drama to have emerged from a major TV network since the original BBC version of Dennis Potter's 'The Singing Detective' in 1986 (although in some ways it also reminds me of the dark, dark satire of British comedian Chris Morris). It's brave and wonderful and a shining example of what an enlightened state broadcasting system can achieve: Sveriges TV puts the 21st Century BBC to shame.

I visited Stockholm last month and bought several copies of the DVD for friends: but it would be so much easier if some enterprising company gave the DVD a UK release soon. I live in hope.

Patrick Hamilton, the novelist and playwright who wrote the play that 'Gaslight' was based on, has generally been poorly served by Hollywood. The U.S. version of 'Gaslight' is entertaining enough, but the earlier UK film version is a far more authentic slice of Hamilton's brand of Edwardian Gothic. Diana Wynyard is well cast in the 'victim' role, but the main reason to see this film is Anton Walbrook's mesmerising portrayal of obsession and insanity. Charles Boyer is extremely lightweight by comparison, and his casting is symptomatic of Hollywood's romantic vision of Victorian London, a view at odds with Hamilton's dark outlook.

In fact, one of the most extreme examples of Hollywood butchering a fine book is the 1945 version of Hamilton's 'Hangover Square'. The novel is a grim, dark account of London in the period just before World War 2. The film is a baroque Victorian fantasy which, although highly enjoyable as a piece of high camp kitsch (and for an excellent score by Bernard Herrmann), has nothing whatsoever to do with the book, beyond the mechanism of lead character G. Harvey Bone's derangement. Laird Cregar - who played Bone - is said to have brought the book to the attention of the studio and been highly distressed by the resulting travesty of Hamilton's intentions.

Hamilton also wrote the play 'Rope', inspired by the Leopold-Loeb case, which was filmed by Hitchcock in a famous attempt at experimental 'real time' cinema.

To evaluate Pennies from Heaven solely in terms of its use of 1930s dance tunes is at best blinkered and at worst deeply stupid. What Potter did with those tunes was to point up how his characters sought refuge in what now would be called 'pop culture' to escape the grim realities of the time - and he was writing about the 1930s: the Depression, Fascism, Stalinism, etc. And Potter was genuinely fond of the 30s tunes that were used: I don't think the series mocks the songs at all, but their up-beat denial of misery is what makes their use so powerful as they counterpoint the characters' despair.

Whatever else Dennis Potter might have done (I am not an unqualified fan) this series is just about the greatest drama series ever seen on British TV; except, that is, for Potter's last word on his 'lip-sync' method, The Singing Detective, from 1987.