'Who Pushed Taylor Off the Pier?': Why The Big Sleep Is a Little Confusing

'Your story didn't sound quite right.’
'Oh, that's too bad. You got a better one?’
'Maybe I can find one.’

‘The Big Sleep’ is a classic 1946 detective thriller directed by Howard Hawks, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Private investigator Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is commissioned by wealthy invalid General Sternwood to extract his troublesome younger daughter, Carmen, from extortion over gambling debts. But nothing is straightforward: Sternwood is also keen to locate his trusted bodyguard who has recently disappeared; his older daughter Vivian (Bacall) seems unduly curious about Marlowe’s brief; and Carmen is being inappropriate.

'She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.’

When Marlowe embarks on his enquiries, he discovers a drugged Carmen beside the dead body of the blackmailer, and a hidden camera with the film missing. This sets him off on a trail of vice, violence, corruption and infidelity; of sophisticated clubs, hired guns and poisoned drinks. There’s a disappearing corpse, a mugging in the car park and a shooting at the apartment door. 

'You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.’

Marlowe navigates these challenges with a cool head and worldly cynicism. And he meets his match in Vivian - reserved, sharp tongued, quietly amused - and not entirely to be trusted. 

'Why did you have to go on?'
'Too many people told me to stop.’

Marlowe and Vivian are clearly attracted to each other and they spar flirtatiously whenever they meet.

Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're frontrunners or come from behind… I'd say you like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free…
Marlowe: You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.

They make a compelling couple. The suited Bogart, hard-boiled and obstinate, nervously touching his ear lobes when he thinks, striding through the mean streets in battered trench coat and fedora. Bacall, her head tilted down, her eyebrows arched, her feline beauty gliding across the screen in trousers, loafers and velvet shirt; in hounds-tooth jacket and black beret; in gold lame evening gown.

‘The Big Sleep’ has a labyrinthine plot, with key characters we never see, seven murders and numerous double crosses and false leads. It’s difficult to keep up.

Of course, the complexity was written into Chandler’s original narrative. But it was exacerbated by the troubled production process. Bogart and Bacall had embarked on an affair, and, with his marriage on the rocks, Bogart was drinking heavily. Bacall’s agent, concerned by her recent box office flop, and the fact that Martha Vickers as Carmen was dazzling in every scene, demanded rewrites that diminished the younger sister’s role and gave Bacall a chance to shine. The resulting edit did not entirely make sense.

On one occasion, Bogart, perplexed by the death of one of the minor characters, marched onto the set and asked Hawks:

'Who pushed Taylor off the pier?' 

Equally confused, Hawks could get no explanation from scriptwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett. So he sent Chandler a telegram, asking him to clear things up. But the author couldn’t answer Bogart’s question either. 

At length Hawks concluded that strong character development and powerful individual scenes should take precedence over narrative coherence. 

'I never figured out what was going on, but I thought that the basic thing had great scenes in it, and it was good entertainment. After that got by, I said, 'I'm never going to worry about being logical again.''

This may give us pause for thought.

Given the necessary brevity of advertising communication, we go to great lengths in script reviews, pre-production conversations and research to ensure that everything contributes to a simple powerful story with the brand at its heart; that every script, casting, wardrobe and set decision has a logic; that it is all pointing in one direction. 

But as we iron out irregularity and polish off inconsistency, so we also diminish character, credibility and memorability. Even in our reduced format, texture, tone, quirks and foibles matter.

Thankfully Marlowe and Bacall emerge from ‘The Big Sleep’ in tact and together. With the chief villain lying dead in the hallway, they sit in a gloomy parlour awaiting the police. Marlowe sketches out the story he will tell Sternwood and the cops; and the treatment best suited for Carmen. Everything seems resolved. 

Vivian: You've forgotten one thing… Me.
Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.

'She is watching the detectives.
"Oh, it's so cute."
She's watching the detectives,
When they shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
They beat him up until the teardrops start,
But he can't be wounded 'cause he's got no heart.’
Elvis Costello, 'Watching the Detectives'

No. 331

The Exterminating Angel: Will Our Natural Inertia Constrain Industry Reinvention?

‘The best explanation of this film is that, from the standpoint of pure reason, there is no explanation.’
Caption at the beginning of ‘The Exterminating Angel’

Luis Bunuel’s 1962 film ‘The Exterminating Angel’ begins with an aristocratic dinner party on Providence Street. Curiously, as the guests arrive, the stewards, cooks and domestics are busy making excuses and slipping away from the mansion. 

'The help becomes more impertinent each day.’

Nonetheless a skeleton staff remains, and the visitors enjoy a long, indulgent feast, peppered with hearsay, slander and sharp remarks. After dinner they stroll into the drawing room for more drinks and a piano recital. So successful is the evening that the guests seem reluctant to leave. Some take preliminary steps towards going, but don’t quite get round to it. They begin to overstay their welcome.

Gradually it becomes apparent that, for one reason or another, the guests can’t leave. There is an invisible barrier at the edge of the drawing room – something psychological, not physical - that they just don’t feel able to cross.

'Wouldn't it be a good joke if I sneaked up and pushed you out?'
'Try it, and I'll kill you.’ 

Eventually they all bed down where they have been partying. But after an uncomfortable night they wake up confronting the same problem. They want to leave, but they cannot. 

The group’s self-control and composure deteriorate. They argue with each other, plot and conspire. The old and infirm fall ill. Some of the guests conceal a corpse in a cupboard. And in another a couple conducts a romantic tryst. They slaughter some hapless sheep that have wandered into the room, and turn to Masonic codes and Kabbalah rituals. A woman sees a severed hand crawl across the room towards her. She squashes it with a desk ornament.

‘We turned this room into a gypsy campground.'

As the internment continues, a crowd of onlookers gathers outside. But they are equally incapable of breaking the deadlock. To add to the confusion Bunuel repeats certain short sequences of the film, creating the impression that the characters are stuck in some sort of time loop. 

Over the years critics have endeavoured to interpret ‘The Exterminating Angel.’ It seems to be a dark satire on the thin veneer of civilisation, the savagery that lies just beneath social etiquette and proprieties; on the hopelessly detached world of the elite, and their condescension towards the lower orders. Some have proposed that Bunuel was specifically criticising Franco’s regime in his native Spain. 

'I believe the common people, the lower class people, are less sensitive to pain. Haven't you ever seen a wounded bull? Not a trace of pain.'

More broadly ‘The Exterminating Angel’ implies that communities, cultures and corporations are prone to inertia, to repeating anachronistic behaviours and beliefs even when they have determined to change; that we are not as free as we may think.

Boxed in by consensus, custom and convention, we consistently struggle to accept that the world no longer conforms to our cosmology; that things have moved on. We claim we want to break free, but we don’t know how to.

In the communications industry, for all our visionary talk of new models, new platforms and new behaviours, we have in the past found it hard to change. We create initiatives and frameworks, launch disciplines and departments, coin phrases and aphorisms. But we remain addicted to habitual practices and familiar routines. 

Of course, as we emerge from the pandemic, we have a better chance than ever to reinvent the industry. New ways of working have already been embraced. Agile thinking comes more naturally now. Nothing is quite as it was. Perhaps finally we will be able to leave the party.

At the end of ‘The Exterminating Angel’ the bourgeois guests manage to escape the cursed mansion. They attend a church service to give thanks – only to find they have been trapped once again by an unseen force. Outside the church there are gunshots and riots on the streets. Bunuel seems to be suggesting that revolution is the only answer.

'We wouldn't change this thing even if we could somehow.
Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us.
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too.
But they can't touch me now.
And you can't touch me now.
They ain't gonna do to me
What I watched them do to you.

So say goodbye, it's Independence Day.
It's Independence Day
All down the line.
Just say goodbye, it's Independence Day.
It's Independence Day this time.'

Bruce Springsteen, ‘Independence Day'

No. 325

The Old Dark House: The Risks Posed by Repressed Emotions

‘You will have to stay here. The misfortune is yours, not ours.’
Horace Femm, ‘The Old Dark House’

‘The Old Dark House’ is a 1932 film directed by James Whale, the master of horror, based on a novel by J B Priestley. It’s a brilliantly atmospheric, gothic confection, blending fear and suspense with comedy and romance. And it has at its heart a resonant psychological theme.

Young marrieds Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart), driving at night through the Welsh countryside with their blithe pal Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas), lose their way in a heavy storm. They are assaulted on all sides by floods, thunder, lightning and landslides. The couple bicker.

'For heaven's sake stop. Let's look at a map or something.'
'My view is we're not on a map.’

At last they come across a grim old farmhouse where they are greeted by the heavily-scarred mute butler Morgan (Boris Karloff). The property is owned by punctilious Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) and his half-deaf sister Rebecca (Eva Moore). Horace is nervous about letting them stay the night. Rebecca is downright inhospitable.

'No beds! They can't have beds!'

Eventually the Femms concede to the visitors’ pleas. While Margaret changes into dry clothes, sanctimonious Rebecca warns her that this is a cursed house. 

'They were all godless here. They used to bring their women here - brazen, lolling creatures in silks and satins. They filled the house with laughter and sin, laughter and sin.’

As the old woman speaks, her reflection is warped in the bedroom mirror. She turns to Margaret and feels the fabric of her gown.

‘Fine stuff, but it'll rot.’

Suddenly she touches Margaret on her chest. 

‘Finer stuff still, but it'll rot too!’

The storm rages, windows blow open and doors slam shut. The wind whistles through the rooms, the electricity goes on the blink and the candles cast long shadows. 

Two more hapless travellers arrive seeking shelter: hearty northern industrialist Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his jovial young companion Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond).

The group settle down to an awkward supper of beef, bread and pickled onions. Femm repeatedly offers:

‘Have a potato.’

There are class tensions at play here and romance is in the air. But there is also a sense that the guests are not revealing their true selves - that they are hiding behind polite social conventions.

‘Here we are six people sitting around and we’ve been talking now for nearly two hours. What do we know about each other? Not a thing.’
‘How reassuring.’ 

What’s more, trouble is brewing. Morgan, the burly butler, has taken a shine to Margaret, and he’s dangerous when he’s drunk. A mysterious cackle is heard coming from upstairs. And there’s a padlocked room with a tray of half-eaten food left outside.

At the heart of the mysterious events in ‘The Old Dark House’ are family secrets. The Femms are haunted by the untimely death of their sibling many years ago. And they are ashamed and afraid of the madness that runs in their family.

‘You’re afraid, Horace. You’re afraid, aren’t you? You don’t believe in god and yet you’re afraid to die. You’ve seen his anger in the sky and you’ve heard it in the night, and you’re afraid, afraid, afraid.’

We also come to realise that the visitors that night have their own secrets, their own regrets, doubts and fears.

Seemingly carefree Roger has in fact been scarred by his service in the Great War. 

‘I presume you are one of the gentlemen slightly, shall we say, battered by the war?’
‘Correct, Mr Femm. War generation, slightly soiled. A study in the bitter sweet. The man with the twisted smile.’

Gladys confesses she is a failed chorus girl who only accompanies Sir William to make up her income. Her real last name is not DuCane, but Perkins.

'If I were better at my job, I probably wouldn't be weekending with you.'

Sir William is still in love with his young wife, who died in shame some years ago when she was snubbed by the local elite. After her death he single-mindedly turned his hand to business as an act of vengeance.

'When you've started making money, it's hard to stop. Especially when you’re like me. There isn’t much else you’re good at.’

There is a sense that the visitors to ‘The Old Dark House’ are not merely unwitting victims of its curse. They, and their anxieties, are in some way the cause of their nightmarish ordeal. 

Indeed, while one could interpret the movie simply as an archetypal haunted house drama – just without a ghost - it also seems to be a critique of class-ridden, war-ravaged British society, of the damage done by unspoken traumas and unresolved tensions.

In the world of commerce we have a tendency not to enquire too deeply into our colleagues’ personal lives, their backgrounds and backstories. We imagine this stuff is best left outside the office. But bottled-up emotions - unconsciously repressed memories and consciously suppressed feelings - can impede performance, hamper collaboration and damage wellbeing at work. They can bedevil a business as much as they haunt an individual. We’d all be better off talking about it. 

‘The first duty of a psychotherapist is to create a safe space, a situation where difficult and sometimes dangerous truths can be articulated and explored without fear of judgement, rejection or condemnation.’
Frank Tallis, ‘The Act of Living’

Sometimes it’s important to take a step back from the day-to-day grind and ask the fundamental questions: How did you get to where you are today? What experiences shaped you? What are you worried about? What’s holding you back? How will we get the best out of each other?

At length, after much drama, the visitors to ‘The Old Dark House’ survive their ordeal. The storm passes, the floods subside and the dawn breaks.

'So, I'm really dead and gone to heaven?'
'No, it's morning and we've only just left hell behind.'

'I know that you don't understand.
'Cause you don't believe what you don't see.
When you watch me throwing punches at the devil,
It just looks like I'm fighting with me.
Julien Baker, ’Shadowboxing'

No. 322

‘I am a Woman of Activity’: Alice Guy-Blaché, the Persistent Pioneer

Alice Guy-Blaché (behind camera tripod) on the set of The Life of Christ, in Fontainebleau, France, in 1906.Photograph: courtesy of Collection Société Française de Photographie

'There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art.’
Alice Guy-Blaché, 'Woman's Place in Photoplay Production', Moving Picture World, 11 July 1914

I recently watched a fascinating documentary made by Pamela B Green about the French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché (‘Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché’). 

Guy-Blaché witnessed the birth of cinema and became the first female film director. For 10 years she was the only female director. In a career that spanned more than 25 years, she was also a screenwriter, producer and studio head. She pioneered the use of narrative in film, inspired Eisenstein and was admired by Hitchcock. She helped create modern movie-making. 

Let us consider what we can learn from her story.

1. Be Curious

Alice Guy was born in Paris in 1873 and raised in Switzerland, Chile and France. Her father, who owned a bookstore and publishing company in Chile, was concerned when she expressed ambition to work in the theatre.

‘My father said, “No! Never! Actress? I'd rather see you dead." You know how the bourgeoisie was at the time.’

Alice trained as a stenographer, and in 1894 she got a job at a manufacturer of cameras and other optical devices, which subsequently became Gaumont et Cie.

‘I knew nothing about photography. Absolutely nothing…I had to learn everything.’

In 1895 Alice attended, with her boss Leon Gaumont, the first demonstration of film projection by the Lumiere brothers. 

'It seemed extraordinary to me. It filled me with adoration. It was the birth of cinema.’

Alice set about familiarising herself with her employer’s stock of cameras and with the mechanics of the business. And Gaumont acceded to her request to be taught how to make a film, ‘on the condition she didn’t let the mail suffer.’

2. Be Inventive

Early motion pictures documented everyday life: workers leaving the factory, street scenes, trains coming into the station, waves crashing on a beach. Alice determined that her first film should tell a story - albeit a very brief one. 

Shot in 1896 with a hand-cranked camera mounted on a tripod, and lasting less than a minute, ‘The Cabbage Fairy’ features a cheerful nymph who plucks babies from a magical cabbage patch. It is considered the world's first narrative film.

3. Be Ambitious

From 1896 to 1906 Alice was Gaumont's head of production. She directed dance and travel films, animal and stunt movies. She employed some of the first special effects, including hand-tinted colour, double exposure, close-ups, and running a film backwards. She learned to use Gaumont's revolutionary Chronophone system, which recorded sound on a wax disc and synchronized it with the film. She hired and trained writers and directors, set designers and art directors, and she ran weekly production meetings at the Gaumont studio in Parc des Buttes Chaumont.

‘And so, bit by bit, we improved what we did.’

Gradually Alice became more ambitious for her output. Her 1906 film ‘The Life of Christ’, dramatising illustrations from the Tissot Bible, comprised 25 episodes and employed 300 extras.

4. Be Active

In 1907 Alice married Herbert Blaché, a London-born colleague at Gaumont.

'Actually, I didn't want to marry an Englishman. Englishmen aren't very nice.’

The couple moved to the US where Herbert was appointed Gaumont’s production manager, and in 1908 Alice gave birth to their first child in New York.

But Alice was reluctant to settle down as a housewife.

‘I had had experience of the picture business – I knew it thoroughly and it seemed a shame not to put my knowledge to some good advantage when there was so much room.’

After working for a while with her husband at Gaumont, in 1910 Alice founded The Solax Company in Flushing, New York. 

‘I am a woman of activity. I still want to work and I think I can make money.’

5. Be Diverse

Alice was the first woman to run her own studio, and she hired and trained the first American female director, Lois Weber.

At Solax Alice created films about marriage and parenthood, seduction comedies, chase films and Westerns; military movies, song and dance films and political pictures. She consistently wrote strong roles for women. She also directed the first film with an entirely African-American cast, ‘A Fool and His Money’ (1912).

6. Be Commercial

Solax went from strength to strength. In 1912, while pregnant with her second child, Alice built a new, technologically advanced studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which had become the home of early American cinema. The production facility had stages built under a glass roof, administrative offices and dressing rooms; a set-fabrication workshop, costume-design department and a film-processing laboratory. 

In a feature article at the time the New York Dramatic Mirror observed of Alice:

‘She stands as the dominant figure in a motion picture factory and studio which she organised and built.’

7. Be Natural

Alice pinned up a large sign in her Fort Lee studio instructing her actors to 'Be Natural'.

Although many of Alice’s films have been lost or destroyed, you can still find a number of them online. Most are simple sketches under 10 minutes long. They are concise, insightful and often very witty. And, as suggested by Alice’s motto, they exhibit remarkable naturalism. 

‘The Drunken Mattress’ (1906) features a mattress that takes on a life of its own (rather like a modern duvet joke). ‘Madam’s Craving’ (1907) presents a pregnant woman who can’t resist stealing a child’s lollypop, a drinker’s absinthe and a homeless man’s herring.

Still from  ‘Madame a des envies’ 1907 Directed by Alice Guy-Blaché

In ‘The Sticky Woman’ (1906) a lady at the Post Office instructs her maid to lick all her envelopes. A top hatted gentleman, rather excited by this, steals a kiss from the maid, but becomes glued to her mouth. When they are eventually cut free, the man’s moustache is left on the maid’s top lip.

‘The Consequences of Feminism’ (1906) takes a comedic look at what life would be like if the roles of men and women were reversed. The men do the housework, while the women sit about reading the paper, smoking and drinking.

In the poignant ‘Autumn Leaves’ (1912) a young girl, whose older sister has consumption, overhears the doctor say: ‘When the last leaf falls she will have passed away.’ The child goes out into the garden and ties some of the falling leaves to their branches to stop this prognosis coming to pass. 

A number of factors led to the demise of Solax. First there was the Edison Trust, an agreement between major film companies, distributors and Eastman Kodak, which constrained independent filmmakers and prompted many to move west to Hollywood. Then there was Herbert. Although he was a less capable filmmaker and businessman than Alice, he insisted on an active management role at Solax. He was also unfaithful. In 1918, he left his wife and children to pursue a career in Hollywood.

Solax accumulated debt, the studios were rented out to other companies, and, after a fire in 1919, what remained was auctioned off. 

Alice, who had almost died from the Spanish flu while filming her final film ‘Tarnished Reputations’ (1920), divorced her husband and returned to France. Despite her extraordinary experience, she struggled to find work in the film industry there.

‘People don’t want to hire white haired women.’

Gradually Alice’s contribution to the motion picture industry was erased. In the early years of cinema plagiarism had been endemic and record keeping erratic. An official history of Gaumont failed to mention her, film critics misattributed her films to other directors, and no publisher was interested in her memoire. What’s more, since few of the early pictures survived, Alice was unable to correct these injustices.

‘At the head of the Gaumont company, I think I was responsible for a good part of the success of the pictures department. But in France, especially in that time, and more especially for women, I had to fight hard to keep my rank…I only claimed the title of the first female director that I alone was entitled to.’

A subsequent American documentary about Fort Lee stated that Herbert had founded Solax. Here too Alice’s role in the story of film, along with that of many other women directors and producers, was written out. 

'Wall Street money comes in the front door, women are forced out the back door.’
Stephen J. Ross, Professor of History, USC

Alice lived quietly with her daughter in France and Switzerland, and then in 1964 she returned to the US, settling in New Jersey. In 1968, at the age of 94, she died in a nursing home. 

Alice Guy-Blaché had overseen the production of more than 700 films. She had been a vibrant creative force, a shrewd businesswoman, a persistent pioneer. She teaches a great many lessons for people working in the creative industries today:

1. Be Curious
2. Be Inventive
3. Be Ambitious
4. Be Active
5. Be Diverse
6. Be Commercial
7. Be Natural

But there is a final critical lesson that we should all take from Alice’s story:
 
8. Always give credit where credit is due.

'She was more than just a talented businesswoman. She was a filmmaker of rare sensitivity with a remarkably poetic eye. She was more or less forgotten by the industry she helped create.’
Martin Scorsese

'We really thought we had a purpose.
We were so anxious to achieve.
We had hope,
The world held promise,
For a slave to liberty.
Freely I slaved away for something better.
And I was bought and sold.
And all I ever wanted
Was to come in from the cold.’

Joni Mitchell, ‘Come in from the Cold'

No. 321

Last Year in Marienbad: Setting Ourselves Free from Stories and Storytelling

‘You still wait for someone who will never come. Someone who may never come, to separate us again, to take you away from me.’

'Last Year in Marienbad' is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It’s an elegant exploration of memory and dreams, of the process of thought. It is wilfully enigmatic. And it sets to one side conventional approaches to narrative structure.

An unnamed man (Giorgio Albertazzi) paces the long corridors of a baroque chateau hotel - past a few silent servants, past empty salons with stucco ceilings and gilt ornamentation; past hallways with sculptured doorframes, grandiose chandeliers and crystal mirrors; past potted palms and walls hung with sombre oil paintings and horticultural prints.

There’s a performance of an Ibsen play in the hotel theatre and the formally dressed audience sits in rapt concentration. When it’s over the guests talk in hushed tones. Their conversation is banal. Sometimes they stare, impassively, like statues frozen in time and space. A couple argue.

‘You confine me in a whispering silence worse than death. Like these days that we live through, side by side, and almost hand in hand - our mouths forever apart.’

Our man addresses a beautiful Chanel-clad woman whom he finds standing in a doorway (Delphine Seyrig). 

‘You haven’t changed. I feel I left you only yesterday.’

He shows her round the hotel, explaining the architecture. They dance. She is amused, charmed perhaps, but cannot recollect ever having met him.

‘It was not me. You must be mistaken.’

He, however, is sure of it. 

‘It was last year. Have I changed so much? Or are you pretending not to know me?’

He recalls their first encounter in the gardens at Frederiksbad. He remembers the precise location, her posture, their conversation. They had a romance and agreed to meet one year later.

‘You’ve still the same faraway eyes, the same smile, the same sudden laugh. The same way of holding out your arm to ward off something in the way, of raising your hand to your shoulder. You’re wearing the same perfume.’

The couple wander about the hotel and the opulent geometric gardens - along gravel paths, past pools, waterfalls and hedges.

And then he is alone again, walking through the labyrinth of halls, foyers and corridors, in silence.

The other guests play at cards, dominoes and matchsticks. Some compete at target practice. The woman has a partner (Sacha Pitoëff), a mournful fellow, who, whilst repeatedly winning the games, keeps a wary eye on her movements.

‘I suggest a different game, a game I always win.’
‘If you can’t lose, it’s not a game.’
’I can lose, but I always win.’

Our man encounters the woman repeatedly at different spots around the hotel. She persists in denying that they have ever met, and asks to be left alone. He begins to lose confidence in some of the details of his story. Perhaps they first made their acquaintance in Karlstadt or Baden-Salsa. Or Marienbad?

We notice that, on the various occasions we have seen the woman, she has been wearing different dresses. Conversations are repeated. The chronology and locations are scrambled. The gothic organ music of Francis Seyrig is unsettling. The people in the garden cast long shadows, but the trees do not.

'Last Year in Marienbad' is certainly puzzling. 

Is the man trying to recall events or wishing them to be true? Is he an author pondering different storylines? Is he Orpheus attempting to recover Eurydice from Hades? Is he the woman’s psychoanalyst? Is it all going on in her head, not his? Did he assault her? Did her partner kill her? Is everyone dead?

Director Resnais suggested that the film explores cognitive mechanics.

'For me this film is an attempt, still very crude and very primitive, to approach the complexity of thought, of its processes.’ 

Whatever the explanation, we are invited to consider untrustworthy memories and illusory dreams. 

We replay events in our minds, in the theatre of our imagination. We precisely recall isolated moments, fragments of conversation, while vaguely forgetting the context, the before and after. We have memories of memories. We reconstruct the past as we would wish it to have been. We reconfigure recollections to relieve our doubts, our regrets, our guilt. We are unreliable narrators of our own lives.

‘There is an experiencing self, who lives in the present and knows the present. Then there is a remembering self, and the remembering self is the one that keeps score.’
Daniel Kahneman

Certainly the film was revolutionary in its day because it cast aside conventional narrative and plot development. It offered instead a complex set of thoughts, moments and impressions. And in so doing it presented a different kind of truth.

Of course, stories can be insightful, educational and entertaining. Of course, they provide reassurance. They make sense of the world. They bind us together. 

But stories also reduce our understanding of the past to crude linear constructions, rationally ordered and causally connected. We instinctively find patterns in events and experiences. We assign cause and effect, agency and victimhood; heroes and villains, beginnings, middles and ends. And yet life, experience and relationships are rarely so neat. Thinking, remembering and imagining are seldom so tidy. Sometimes stories over-simplify. Sometimes narratives are partisan. And in the modern world of unchecked falsehoods, stories and narratives too easily become conspiracies. 

Resnais suggests that we should occasionally hold in check our natural instinct to impose order, to locate obvious explanations. Sometimes a more compelling truth can be found if we set ourselves free from the constraints of stories and storytelling.

At the conclusion of 'Last Year in Marienbad' the couple endeavour to leave together at midnight.

'The grounds of the hotel were symmetrically arranged, without trees or flowers, or plants of any kind. The gravel, the stone and the marble were spread in strict array in unmysterious shapes. At first sight, it seemed impossible to lose your way. At first sight... Along these stone paths and amidst these statues, where you were already losing your way forever in the still night, alone with me.’

'There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all.
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.’

The Beatles, ‘In My Life’ (J Lennon / P McCartney)

No. 319

The Syncopated Business: The Breathtaking Genius of the Nicholas Brothers

The Nicholas Brothers were two of the greatest dancers of the 20th century. Self taught in the black vaudeville theatres of Philadelphia, they combined rhythmic tap with acrobatic tumbling and balletic grace. They performed breath-taking leaps, spine-tingling vaults, heart-stopping flips, skips and spins. They made jazz and swing music visible. They were style, charm and elegance personified - pure unadulterated joy.

Fayard and Harold Nicholas were born in 1914 and 1921 respectively. They grew up in Philadelphia where their parents led the orchestra at the Standard Theater, their mother at the piano and father on drums.

When Fayard was a baby, his mum would take him to the theatre in a bassinet.

‘She would set me right beside the piano… as she was playing and my dad was playing and the rest of the orchestra. So that’s how I got rhythm.’

Fayard became an avid student of the vaudeville acts that he saw at the Standard. Using the small family apartment as his studio, he set about teaching his younger brother Harold the dance steps he had observed on stage.

‘I was showing him a step and he was having trouble getting this step. And I said “Listen, we’ll do it tomorrow. I see you’re having a little trouble now.” He said, ”No. No. I want to do it now.”’

Their father also took an active interest in their developing talent and gave Fayard some valuable advice.

‘Son, what you’re doing, it’s great. I like it. But don’t do what the other dancers do. Do your own thing… Listen. When you’re performing, don’t look at your feet. Look at that audience - because you’re entertaining them, not yourself.’

Fayard and Harold put their father’s guidance into practice, performing at the Standard as the Nicholas Brothers. Soon they were dancing in theatres around Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Baltimore. 

'We were tap-dancers, but we put more style into it, more bodywork instead of just footwork.’

In 1932, when Fayard was 18 and Harold was 11, the Nicholas Brothers were signed as a featured act at Harlem's Cotton Club, appearing onstage alongside the likes of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. 

In pristine tuxedos and with brilliantined hair, the Nicholas Brothers spin and skip, twist and turn, slip and slide. Fearless and joyful, they dance on tables and up walls; summersault and do the splits. Their bodies float, their arms fly - with effortless elegance. They’re all high jumps and wide kicks. They levitate. Their act is punctuated with comic flourishes. They click their fingers, clap and adjust their bow ties. Holding a handkerchief between both hands, they skip straight over it. It’s physical poetry. 

In 1936 producer Samuel Goldwyn commissioned the brothers to appear in ‘Kid Millions’, which became the first in a series of Hollywood movies. In 1940 Fayard and Harold moved to LA and for several decades they divided their time between films, clubs and concerts, Broadway, television and tours of Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

Fayard: We did vaudeville, we did nightclubs, we did movies, we did television. We have done everything in show business except opera.
Harold: Did you ever want to do opera?
Fayard: Oh, yes, I’d do a tap dance in opera and sing ‘O Sole Mio.’
Harold: A tap dance in opera?

Inevitably the Nicholas Brothers’ careers were constrained by the racism of the times. At the Cotton Club they performed in front of entirely white audiences and they would only be invited to join the clientele after the show because they were so young. Their appearances in movies were also limited to short isolated sections of so-called ‘flash dancing.’ They were never given character parts and were rarely allowed to sing.

'They weren't writing dialogue for blacks unless they were chauffeurs, maids or something like that... We were never written into the script. They just didn't know how.'  

The actor and dancer Maurice Hines sums up the injustice:

‘Imagine what the Nicholas Brothers could have done if they had the opportunity. Oh, it’s frightening. But maybe that’s why they weren’t given the opportunity.’

The Nicholas Brothers’ most celebrated dance sequence is in the finale of the 1943 movie ‘Stormy Weather’ (which starred that other legendary dancer Bill Robinson, Bojangles). 

Cab Calloway has been performing ‘Jumpin' Jive’ with his orchestra. Fayard and Harold, dressed in immaculate tails, leap up onto a table, exchange a few phrases with Calloway and take over. They swing with the rhythm, skip exuberantly across the orchestra's music stands and strut on top of a grand piano in call and response with the pianist. They leapfrog down an oversized flight of stairs, completing each step with a split. And they rise from each split without using their hands. 

Blimey. And it’s all filmed in one shot without cuts or edits. 

I read somewhere the Nicholas Brothers characterised as ‘syncopated dancers.’ Their dancing is not neat and uniform. Rather it is complex and asymmetric. They dance in and around the beat. They each retain their individuality.

I’m no music scholar, but I’ve always liked the idea of syncopation: the thought that dance music in particular gets its intoxicating swing from an interrupted rhythm, a broken regularity, an out-of-place stress or accent. On BBC Radio 3 recently the writer Tom Service described syncopation as the slight calculated violation of what would otherwise be a metronome’s mechanical beat.

Imagine a Syncopated Business: moving in time, in rhythm, as one - but propelled by deviation and displacement, gaining its essential groove from deliberate disruption of conventional patterns, from changes in stress and emphasis. That for me is the very definition of a successful creative organisation. 

The Nicholas Brothers had a 60-year career, performing on stage, in film and television well into the 1990s. Harold died in 2000 and then Fayard followed him in 2006. You can see a celebration of their remarkable talent in the 1992 documentary 'We Sing and We Dance.'

The film features a charming illustration of their very special relationship:

Fayard: I was speaking for both of us.
Harold: You have to speak for yourself… And then I speak for myself… But that doesn’t mean that we’re not still brothers.

'Lucky number.
Dreaming of lucky numbers.
Hoping that those lucky numbers will show for me,
Numbers gonna show for you and me.’
The Nicholas Brothers, 'Lucky Number’ (The Black Network)

No. 315

The Fallen Idol: ‘We Make One Another’

‘You know what happens to little boys who tell lies…’
Mrs Baines, ‘The Fallen Idol’

'The Fallen Idol' is a fine 1948 drama directed by Carol Reed, based on a short story by Graham Greene.

The film is set in and around the French Embassy in London over a weekend when the Ambassador is away. We watch events through the eyes of Phillipe, the Ambassador’s eight-year-old son (Bobby Henrey). Phillipe observes from the balcony, through the banisters. He spies from the fire escape, through the hall window. He has only a restricted view of the adult world and he only partially comprehends its complexities.

Phillipe idolises Baines the butler (Ralph Richardson), a reserved, gentle man who keeps him entertained with exotic stories and imaginative games. But the boy is not so keen on Baines’ wife (Sonia Dresdel), the cold, strict and joyless housekeeper.

Baines, trapped in a loveless marriage, has been secretly courting a secretary who works at the Embassy. Phillipe stumbles into the couple meeting in a teashop.

Phillipe: Funny, isn't it? Julie working for the Embassy and all this time she was your niece.
Baines: Yes. It's a scream.

Baines asks Phillipe to keep their encounter to himself. It will be their little secret.

‘Give me your handkerchief. It's things like that give secrets away.’

Events come to a head. There is a quarrel and Mrs Baines falls down the Embassy’s grand marble staircase to her death. The police are called. Impressionable young Phillipe wants to protect his friend, but at the same time feels compelled to tell the truth. He must reassess his fallen idol.

The film concerns itself with secrets and lies. Baines lies to Phillipe about his adventures in Africa. Phillipe lies to Mrs Baines about his pet snake MacGregor. Baines lies to his wife about his affair. Mrs Baines lies to Phillipe to find out what he knows. It’s a picture of a social order sustained and corrupted by falsehood.

Phillipe must learn that some lies are well intentioned and innocent, while others are all-consuming and corrosive.

Baines: There's lies and lies.
Mrs. Baines: What do you mean by that?
Baines: Some lies are just kindness.

At a critical point in the story Baines endeavours to explain to Phillipe the failure of his marriage.

Baines: There are faults on both sides, Phile. We don't have any call to judge. Perhaps she was what she was because I am what I am. We ought to be very careful, Phile. 'Cause we make one another.
Phillipe: I thought God made us.
Baines: Trouble is, we take a hand in the game.

I was quite taken with this idea: ‘we make one another.’

We spend a good deal of time nowadays asserting our individual freedom and personal responsibility. But sometimes we neglect to consider that personal responsibility extends to the impact we have on others. By our words and actions we shape the way people think, feel and behave. We set the tone, determine the norm. We create context.

This applies as much in business as it does in ordinary life. Leaders must recognise that their role is not just to fix corporate vision and strategy; to meet commercial targets and goals. They must also define corporate culture and values: establish the ethical environment in which staff can perform; set the standards by which colleagues are expected to behave. We are making one another.

It’s sometimes believed that to succeed in commerce you have to be hard-hearted and cold-blooded. And yet I read recently about a study conducted by researchers at University of California that challenges this assumption. 670 students were asked to take a personality test. Ten years later the subjects were interviewed again, along with their respective work colleagues. It transpires that those students who had been aggressive, manipulative and selfish progressed no further in their careers than the kind and generous ones. Indeed the selfish students’ failure to form good relationships with their colleagues had constrained their advancement. In an interdependent world nice people don’t finish last.

In the middle of the police investigation into the death of Mrs Baines, a smart little man interrupts proceedings to adjust one of the Embassy’s ornamental clocks. When asked to come back later, the man persists, and explains that the procedure really must be carried out on the first Monday of every month.

‘They behave much better if they’re looked after.’

'You can't hide your lyin’ eyes,
And your smile is a thin disguise.
I thought by now you'd realize,
There ain't no way to hide your lyin' eyes.’
The Eagles, ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ (D Henley / G Frey)

No. 310

Gaslight: A Case Study in Psychological Abuse

‘I’ve been noticing, Paula, that you’ve been forgetful lately. Losing things…Now don’t be so worried, Paula. It’s nothing. You get tired.’
Gregory Anton, ‘Gaslight’

I recently watched the 1944 version of ‘Gaslight’, a psychological thriller set in Edwardian London, adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 stage play of the same name.

This fine film, directed by George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotton, tells the story of a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane. It gave birth to the term often applied to psychological abuse: ‘gaslighting.’

Paula Alquist (Bergman) has been raised by her aunt in a large house on Thornton Square. When the aunt is mysteriously murdered, Paula is sent to Italy to study music. There she meets and marries accompanist Gregory Anton (Boyer). 

Despite Paula’s understandable qualms, Gregory insists that the newlyweds take up residence in the long-vacant townhouse on Thornton Square.

‘It’s all dead in here. The whole place smells of death.’

Paula’s return to London is unsettling. The old house is cluttered with her aunt’s possessions; with heavy curtains, elaborate ornaments and antique furniture – and all covered in dustsheets. Gregory resolves to clear everything away into the attic. He also determines that Paula is not well enough to go out and gives the servants strict instructions not to admit visitors.

Now that they are established in their new home, Gregory becomes increasingly cold and brusque. In a brief moment of intimacy, he gives Paula a broach that had belonged to his mother and her mother before that. He puts it in Paula’s handbag for safe-keeping as they set off on a rare trip out to visit the Tower of London. However, on their return, the broach is gone.

Paula: I know it was here. I can't understand it. I couldn't have lost it. It must be here…
Gregory: Oh Paula, didn't I tell you? How did you come to lose it?
Paula: I must have pulled it out with something, I suppose. Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Gregory, please forgive me…
Gregory: ‘Forgive’ my dear. It’s not as serious as that. It’s not valuable.
Paula: But your present to me, your mother's broach. And I wanted to wear it - always. I don't remember opening my bag, but I suppose I must have. You did put it in there?
Gregory: Don’t you even remember that?
Paula: Yes. Yes, of course I do. Suddenly, I'm beginning not to trust my memory at all.

The relationship that had initially seemed passionate and romantic starts to fray. Gregory reveals himself to be quick-tempered and controlling. He begins flirting with the new maidservant in front of his wife. 

Nonetheless, Paula is delighted when Gregory offers to take her to the theatre. But just as they’re about to set off, his mood darkens.

Gregory: Paula, I don’t want to upset you. If you will put things right when I’m not looking, we’ll assume it did not happen.
Paula: But what, Gregory, what? Oh, please don’t turn your back on me. What has happened?

A small painting has been taken from the wall, leaving an incriminating shadow on the wallpaper where it once hung.

Gregory: Will you please get it from wherever you've hidden it and put it back in its place?
Paula: But I haven’t hidden it. I swear I haven’t. Why should I?… Don’t look at me like that. Someone else must have done it.

Gregory insists on interrogating the servants about the picture in front of the embarrassed Paula. At length, when he sends her upstairs to look for the missing item, she locates it behind a grandfather clock.

Gregory: So you knew where it was all the time.
Paula: No. I didn’t know. I only looked there because that's where it was found twice before. I didn't know, Gregory, I didn't know.
Gregory: Now, Paula, I think you'd better go to your room.
Paula: We’re not going to the theatre?
Gregory: Oh, my dear, I’m afraid you are far from well enough for the theatre. Now come...

After the argument Gregory leaves the house to work in his nearby studio and Paula retreats in tears to her bedroom. But even here there is no respite. The gaslights dim mysteriously and she hears muffled footsteps coming from the attic above. 

Accused of theft and lies, distrusting her memory, feeling isolated and alone, treated like an invalid, unsettled by her husband’s flirting, assaulted by strange sounds in the night, Paula begins to doubt her sanity.

Events come to a head when Paula escapes the house to attend a music recital. Gregory insists on accompanying her. As the pianist holds the audience in thrall, Gregory quietly reveals to his wife that his watch is missing from its chain. When he locates it in her bag, she lets out a shriek of dismay. Gregory takes her home.

Gregory: I've tried so hard to keep it within these walls - in my own house. Now, because you would go out tonight, the whole of London knows it. If I could only get inside that brain of yours and understand what makes you do these crazy, twisted things.
Paula: Gregory, are you trying to tell me I'm insane?
Gregory: It's what I'm trying not to tell myself.
Paula: But that's what you think, isn't it? That's what you've been hinting and suggesting for months now, ever since…since the day I lost your broach. That's when it all began. 

Gregory now reveals to Paula that her mother was insane and died in an asylum. It’s all gone too far. He has asked two doctors to visit in the morning.

Thankfully Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron (Cotton) is on the case. He has been curious about the unsolved murder of Paula’s aunt and suspicious of Gregory’s behaviour since the couple’s arrival in town. He intervenes in the nick of time.

It transpires that Gregory is in fact the murderer of Paula’s aunt. Plotting to get his hands on the deceased woman’s jewels, he tracked Paula down in Italy. He has been secretly searching through the aunt’s belongings in the attic to locate the missing gems. The flickering gaslights were caused by his turning on the attic lamps, thereby reducing the gas supply to the rest of the house. What’s more, Gregory has been scheming to have his wife institutionalized, so that he can continue his search unhindered. 

The detective explains all to Paula.

‘You're not going out of your mind. You're slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.’

‘Gaslight’ is a case study in psychological abuse. We may note the many ways in which the evil Gregory goes about his task. He prompts Paula to question her memory and presents her with evidence of her kleptomania. He suggests she is tired and unwell; highly-strung and hysterical. He deprives her of social contact and embarrasses her in front of others. He feigns concern for her wellbeing and treats her like an infant. Even his frequent use of her first name diminishes her.

Of course, we now recognise these as the tactics employed in abusive relationships.

I found myself wondering whether modern businesses could also be accused of psychological manipulation.

Traditionally brands have demonstrated gaslighting traits in the healthcare, beauty and cleaning sectors. Can you pinch an inch? Are you beach body ready? Do you check under the rim? Why do you read so slowly? I suspect that, even in 2020, some brands and influencers are still gaslighting their customers. The endless repetition and gentle insistence. Subtly suggesting, quietly quizzing. Preying on fears and insecurities. Condescending and controlling. Prompting people to doubt their own judgement. Treating them like children. 

Consumers deserve better than this. At its best persuasion is consenting, enjoyable, useful. It is a conversation, a dialogue, an exchange. At its worst persuasion is cynical, manipulative, exploitative. We should all be mindful of this distinction.

At the climax of ‘Gaslight’ Paula finds herself alone in the attic with her now arrested and bound husband. He pleads with her to recall the good times together; to pick up a knife and set him free. At first she seems still to be under his spell. But then she sets down the knife.

'If I were not mad, I could have helped you. Whatever you had done, I could have pitied and protected you. But because I am mad, I hate you. Because I am mad, I have betrayed you. And because I'm mad, I'm rejoicing in my heart, without a shred of pity, without a shred of regret, watching you go with glory in my heart!'

'Every time I get the inspiration
To go change things around,
No one wants to help me look for places
Where new things might be found.
Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out?
What's it all about?
Each time things start to happen again
I think I got something good goin' for myself.
But what goes wrong?
Sometimes I feel very sad.
I guess I just wasn't made for these times.’

The Beach Boys, 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times’  (B Wilson / T Asher)

No. 308

Complacency Corrodes: Remembering to Resell Our Relationships

'I've always heard that the ideal marriage should be something of a mystery. That your husband should remain a kind of stranger to you. Someone whose acquaintance you'd like to renew every day.’
Jill Baker, ‘That Uncertain Feeling’

'That Uncertain Feeling' is a fine 1941 romantic comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch. 

Merle Oberon stars as Jill Baker, a society woman in her mid 20s who has developed intermittent hiccups. At a friend’s recommendation, she visits a psychoanalyst. He suggests Jill’s problem may be more than physical.

Psychoanalyst: Most people know nothing about themselves. Nothing. Their own real personality is a complete stranger to them. Now, what I'm trying to do is to introduce you to your inner-self. I want you to get acquainted with yourself. Wouldn't you like to meet you? Don't you want to get to know yourself?
Jill: No. You see I'm a little shy. 

After an exploration of Jill’s condition, the psychoanalyst concludes that her hiccups derive from irritation with her husband Larry.

Jill has been happily married to insurance salesman Larry, played by Melvyn Douglas, for 6 years. However, she reflects on the fact that she can’t get to sleep at night because of Larry’s heavy breathing and she is woken every morning by his gargling. She resents that he considers it unnecessary to shave before dinner if they don’t have guests; that when she’s on a diet, he eats steak. She is vexed by the affectionate poke in the stomach he gives her every now and again. And she notices that their conversation when he returns from the office is mostly monosyllabic.

Moreover, when Larry does engage Jill it’s to discuss his less than fascinating work issues. The final straw comes when he asks her to host a dinner for prospective Clients at the recently merged Universal Mattress and United Furniture companies.

'Success in business is fifty per cent hard work and fifty per cent the right cigar.’ 

Jill determines that her relationship with Larry has run its course. Soon her head is turned by eccentric pianist Alexander Sebastian.

Alexander: Let me warn you that I say what I think. I'm a complete individualist… I'm against Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, Nazism. I'm against everything and everybody. I hate my fellow man and he hates me.
Jill: It sounds rather amusing.

When Jill embarks on an affair with Alexander, Larry is mortified. His colleague advises him to apply his talents in salesmanship to win her back.

‘There’s only one thing you have to sell - yourself. The most important Client you ever had in your life is waiting for you. And her name is Mrs Baker. Now you’re the best salesman in the business. There’s nothing wrong with your marriage. You just have to resell it once in awhile.'

And so Larry plots a series of schemes to defeat the maverick pianist and regain Jill’s affection. 

‘You’re going to accuse me of something which I’m going to deny and you’re not going to believe.’

‘That Uncertain Feeling’ is something of an undervalued screwball gem. It’s fascinating to see a mid-century depiction of psychoanalysis, and indeed I was quite taken by the thought of meeting myself. An awkward encounter, I imagine. No doubt we’d find each other rather annoying.

In particular I was impressed by the film’s characterisation of complacency corroding a seemingly happy relationship. 

We take each other for granted. We cease to demonstrate interest or solicit opinion. We make assumptions about our present based on our past. We become absorbed in our own plans and preoccupations. Our conversation becomes monotonous, repetitive, predictable. We fail to recognise and rein in our irritating habits. 

Complacency can be a variegated condition. I had a colleague who thought he was on tip-top form: engaging, charming, full of bright ideas. But in fact he was only luminous and appealing when he was at work. At home he was an exhausted, inarticulate lump slumped in an armchair watching telly. Eventually it all came to a head. 

I’m sure complacency can be just as damaging to professional as personal relationships. On reflection I’m not sure I was the best office mate. I now regret the piles of paper with which I surrounded myself, the communication by Post-It note, the Boots Meal Deal consumed in silence at my desk every lunchtime. 

I had a Client once who came in to complain. He was thinking of putting the business up for Pitch. It wasn’t that the team was doing anything wrong exactly. But the meeting that he should have been looking forward to each week had become rather tedious. And he found the ‘metabolism’ of the relationship was just incredibly slow. 

'The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.'
Benjamin E. Mays, Civil Rights Leader

Of course complacency can be conquered. We can wake up and be attentive. We can commit our time and invest our attention. We can be interesting and interested. Like Larry, we can resell our relationship.

Perhaps we should all pause to reflect - maybe even book an appointment with ourselves. Those intermittent hiccups we’ve been suffering could indicate a more fundamental malady.

'Conversation don't come easy.
But I've got a lot to say.
If you look at what we once had
Well, it feels many moons away.
But I came for you.
I've dreamt names for you.
It's true.
No one makes me high like you do.
And I craved for you.
I lost sleep with you.
No one loves me quite like you do.’

Lucy Rose, ‘Conversation'

No. 302

‘Find Hungry Samurai’: Team Building Lessons from a Japanese Master

‘Of course you’re afraid of the enemy. But don’t forget: he’s afraid of you too.'
‘Seven Samurai’

‘Seven Samurai’ is a 1954 epic drama set in sixteenth century Japan, co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa.

A small village has been repeatedly ravaged by bandits, and the inhabitants learn that their tormentors plan to return after the harvest. 

'Is there no god to protect us? Land tax, forced labour, war, drought and now bandits. The gods want us farmers dead!’

The villagers send a delegation into town to hire rōnin, masterless samurai, in the hope that they may provide some protection. Lacking money to pay for the warriors, the farmers are initially treated with contempt. However eventually they find Kambei, an experienced samurai with a noble spirit. 

With his help they recruit six more men: a trusted former comrade, a youth who’s keen to learn, a taciturn master swordsman, an amiable strategist, a hearty joker and an enthusiastic fraud.

When the warriors arrive at the village they are greeted with suspicion. The locals’ previous experience of samurai has been violent and exploitative. 

'All farmers ever do is worry, whether the rain falls, the sun shines or the wind blows. In short, all they know is fear.’

But the samurai gradually earn the villagers’ trust and they set about converting meek farmers into a fighting force. Soon the villagers are learning combat technique, battle tactics and how to operate as a unit. 

'This is the nature of war: collective defence protects the individual; individual defence destroys the individual.’

Kambei surveys the village with a map, plotting where to expect the enemy assaults; where to build barricades and moats.

‘Defence is more difficult than attack.’

At length the stockades are constructed, the training is completed and the crops are harvested. The villagers begin to speculate that they may be lucky this time: perhaps the bandits won’t come after all.

'A tempting thought. But when you think you're safe is precisely when you're most vulnerable.'

Of course Kambei is right, and soon the hostilities commence. Central to his strategy is his intention to lure the bandits into the village one by one.

'A good fort needs a gap. The enemy must be lured in. So we can attack them. If we only defend, we lose the war.’

All goes to plan. The mounted bandits can only break into the village in ones and twos. And once inside they are picked off by groups of farmers armed with bamboo spears. 

But the fighting takes its toll on the villagers too. With their strength fading and their numbers dwindling, they prepare for the final all-out attack. Kambei orders that the remaining thirteen bandits be allowed into the village all at once. 

The magnificent climactic scene takes place in a torrential morning downpour. Confused horses twist and turn in the mud, stamping and snorting. Determined villagers crowd around desperate bandits, screaming their battle cries, goading them with their spears. Fearsome samurai wade in the water, swinging their swords, slashing through the enemy armour. It’s chaotic and brutal.

‘Seven Samurai’ was an international success and was adapted into the 1960 western 'The Magnificent Seven.’ It inspired many subsequent action and adventure films, and is credited with establishing the 'assembling the team’ motif that has become familiar in so many war, caper and heist movies.

‘Seven Samurai’ suggests lessons for anyone in business engaged in recruiting and managing a team.

Kambei didn’t just sign up the six most talented samurai. In the first place the villagers couldn’t afford them. But also he knew that the best individuals don’t necessarily make the best team. Rather Kambei recruited a balance of youth and experience, of strategic and fighting skills, of swordsmanship and archery. He embraced hard-nosed puritans and eccentric mavericks. He recognised the need for humour to build morale. And he drilled the team tirelessly before they faced the enemy.

I was particularly struck by the words of the village elder at the outset of the drama.

'Find hungry samurai. Even bears leave the forest when they are hungry.’

I couldn’t claim to have been the best leader of a Planning Department. But I was conscious of the need for diversity of skills and character; for building community and delivering value. And I tried to avoid the obvious hires - people with big reputations, big wage demands and low motivation. I liked to find talent in unfamiliar places; to fish in less popular ponds. I always hired people I liked, admired and trusted – people with appetite. I found hungry samurai.

Though the samurai emerge triumphant from the conflict, their victory comes at a heavy price. At the end of the film the three surviving warriors look on from the funeral mounds of their comrades as the villagers joyously plant fresh crops. 

‘So. Again we are defeated. The farmers have won. Not us.’

'When you come to me
I'll question myself again.
Is this grip on life still my own?

When every step I take
Leads me so far away.
Every thought should bring me closer home.

There you stand making my life possible.
Raise my hands up to heaven,
But only you could know.

My whole world stands in front of me.
By the look in your eyes.
By the look in your eyes.’

David Sylvian,’ Brilliant Trees’ 

No. 299