The Road to Bologna and Il Cinema Ritrovato (1) - Setting foot in Finland, Eric Ambler, Pinacotheca Brera, In contemplation...

Eric Ambler

Trying to avoid the turmoil of Charles De Gaulle or Malpensa airports my travel agent came up with a flight via Tokyo, a four hour wait and a 12 hour flight to a Helsinki  entrance to the EU. Customs took five minutes and there was literally nobody in the queue at Passport Control. That was it. The connecting flight to Milan then just involved collecting a bag and walking out to a fixed fare Euro 110 to the hotel. On the freeway, possibly because the fixed fare is an affront to all taxi drivers trying to earn an honest living (viz Don Ameche's Tibor Czerny in Midnight) the cab, a Mercedes hit 160k for  more than a few moments.

On the various planes I galloped through an Eric Ambler thriller which I bought and inscribed with my name in 1983. It takes a while for some tomes to get to the top of the pile. I suspect Ambler is no longer read very much at all but his career as a novelist, as  a novelist/source for some fine movies by some fine directors (Norman Foster/ Orson Welles, Jules Dassin, Jean Negulesco, Raoul Walsh for starters), as a scriptwriter adapting other material and writing originals, is a remarkable one. The novel I read "Doctor Frigo" was one of his later efforts. It chronicled with remarkable prescience the progress of a coup in a small South American country. It also displayed a remarkable degree of authenticity in describing a range of medical conditions and treatments which were central to the narrative.

Meanwhile the passenger next to me from Tokyo to Helsinki got through Kore-eda's Monster, Todd Haynes May December  and some sort of romcom called Puppy Love.

No trip to Milan is complete without a visit to the Pinacotheca Brera with its extraordinary collection of Italian art. Mantegna's "Lamentation of Christ" never fails to stun as does the gallery's Caravaggio "The Dinner at Emaus"

The gallery is also dominated by its two sculptures of Napoleon, who wanted the place to be Italy's Louvre. 

You can find pictures and more musings, because I said all this  just a year ago... 

I must stop repeating myself..and there are bookings to be made. Not sure I should admit the pleasurable prospect of new restorations of Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties, George Stevens The Talk of the Town, Louis Feuillade's Judex and Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair. I know I know...everyone has seen those before and needs no reminders.