From the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read – Charade by John Mortimer https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 10 out of 10

 From the list of 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read – Charade by John Mortimer https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

10 out of 10

 

 

John Mortimer has two works on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, Charade and Titmuss Regained http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/03/titmuss-regained-by-john-mortimer-10.html , but there is much more to interest readers, such as the Rumpole series, which I look forward to take up http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/rumpole-and-miscarriage-of-justice-by.html

 

Nonetheless, charade only has sixteen (soon to be seventeen) reviews and just about eighty seven ratings, which seems so ridiculously few, especially when we compare this to some preposterous works (not that anybody would reject the associated fame, wealth, well, maybe the fame comes with so much trouble attached, but the mansion, supercars and the pool would be nice, albeit positive psychology studies have looked at the Hedonic Adaptation effect and we adapt to material things, which make us feel good only briefly, and the happiest men, women, non-gender, trans and other have in common strong relationships with family and friends and not a considerable wealth…for the latter, time affluence is better) like Fifty Shades of Grey with its 2.2 million ratings or thereabouts and much less to take from…

We could conclude that the public does not know what to read (there is a thing called wisdom of the crowds, as in they have asked the weight of a cow at a fair and a crowd gave the correct answer and people can predict better, if you have a larger number, but that is because there would be some experts in the crowd and then the excesses are eliminated, but we can also look at how multitudes vote, the monsters they put in the highest office and wonder about how wise these large numbers are, when they buy into Big Steal, Anti Vaccine, Lasers and Wild Fires, and other preposterous conspiracies) and therefore it is good we have this (and so many other notes, number one reviewer for this land no less, until some fake account would start posting copy and paste ‘reviews’ and goodreads has done shit all about it) account of Charade.

 

We do not know the name of the hero and narrator of what can be seen as a superb comedy, a crime story and also a guide on making movies, although if you are looking for the Ultimate Manual on the subject, there is nothing better that you can do than read Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman, winner of two Oscars, for Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, and scriptwriter for so many other great movies http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/05/rumpole-and-miscarriage-of-justice-by.html

‘A director must be an artist, a politician and something of a dictator…films are all a matter of organization, organization and discipline, of course, we don't do much organization to begin with…Just arrange for meals, some rooms and see maybe you  get a chance to say quiet please…you have to start from the bottom’ these are some lessons that the crew of the film unit give our main character, but they do not appear to be applied, he jumps ahead of the queue and then maybe even loses the interest in the business…

 

Upon his arrival at the hotel where the film crew is accommodated, in June of 1944, the young man whose name is interestingly kept secret finds that the hotel staff are very unhappy with the film unit – anticipating, the impression made by most of the them would not be very positive, on the contrary they would look quite arrogant, selfish, self-absorbed and oblivious to the pain of others, or maybe better said, impervious to what is happening in the real world – and there would be tensions between the crew and the military that are supposed to appear in the film, cooperate with the Unit and end up severing the ties…

The hero has had a recommendation from his mother, who had sent a message to the director of the film – a sort of majestic, revered figure among the crew, praised for his impeccable organizing abilities and feared – who has a very close connection with the protagonist (spoiler alert – the director is the father of the young man) and is absconded for most of the time, working until three in the morning, helped by his wife, Angela Upshot, a woman that is certainly abused, isolated, estranged from the husband, according to the (at least some ultra-liberal) rules of this age, but she appears to be somehow content to stay with him – perhaps as an indication to her masochistic tendencies – in spite of the many suitors, and a few lovers she has…

 

The director has five assistants in this tale, Bert is the first assistant and that is a very coveted position, for he gives orders to the second (and then it goes down across the hierarchy) and when they try to praise the job, they also mention that all the girls who want to act (and they are so many) would be seduced by the power of the first assistant (and according to Henry Kissinger ‘power is the best aphrodisiac’) and our hero would be become the fifth – with the hope that in about twenty years, the going rate, he would access to the first position – and take the heat from all the rest, commandeered by the fourth assistant.

However, this being the ‘hero’, he does make very fast progress and would be propositioned for promotions, notwithstanding the fact that the progress made in filming is for a long time (two previous months) nil, since it has been raining and besides, they do seem to be inefficient, with Doris, the operational chief who is quite sadistic and mean, the cameraman, a good professional on the set, but inhumane off it, the army has been cooperating only vaguely…when they are sent a message that they are waited for the shoot, they are interrupted in the middle of a ping pong game (which for the scriptwriter is a proof of the degradation in the army, for they had played more prestigious games in the past, not low table tennis) and the captain is late, while the major has had some business to attend to, which is he is out in town to buy…ping pong balls

 

There is a gruesome element, for the rather hated sergeant dies during the shoot, as he is climbing with a rope and that breaks and the man falls off a cliff (they are preparing for the D Day operations apparently, and there are some dramatic statements on that, the importance of fighting for the country, the shallowness of the filming people) giving room for speculation and sometimes certainty that this was not an accident, but plain murder, the only problem being the identity of the killer, would it be someone who is interested in the widow of the vicious, abusive when he had been alive sergeant, or maybe the scriptwriter, who finds that his shameful past would be exposed by the same individual…