PLAGUE DIARY 46: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY

I Know Where I’m Going!  (1945)
Another perfect movie. I am not the first to say so. It’s all about Wendy Hillar’s cheekbones. They are glorious, a metaphor for her acting presence. There is something heroic and fiercely intelligent about her, something undaunted. Here, she is — perfectly cast — as a headstrong young woman traveling to Scotland to marry her rich older husband. It’s a Michael Power/ Emeric Pressburger epic. They did The Red Shoes (which you most likely have heard of or seen). And yes, this is an incredibly romantic movie, one of the most romantic movies ever. (Apparently it’s Tilda Swinton’s favourite. It could easily be mine.) I got swept up in it, caught in it’s heart-swelling grasp, because I am a romantic at heart (in case you haven’t noticed). In a way, I Know Where I’m Going! is very much like our life now — because Wendy Hiller’s life  — like ours— has stopped suddenly, at the point when it supposed to take off — and all due to accident of the weather. Her destination is The Island of Kiloran, but she’s waylaid on The Isle of Mull. All along I’ve been cursing everything zen, but I love this movie, and it’s as zen as they come. (I suppose you could call me a ‘zen romantic’.) You see, I only met the love of my life when I paused to look around me. That's the advice I would give to anyone who thinks they can’t find the perfect mate: just turn around. He’s probably fixing your plumbing, or driving your bus. But you’re so intent on trying getting a glimpse of the moon that you forget to look at the stars. (My, this movie has put me into fanciful mood!) So Wendy Hiller is — like us — stranded on The Isle of Mull, but she wants desperately to get to Kiloran and get married.  She caresses her wedding dress, bubbling over with anticipation, all gleaming eyes and bottled-up hopefulness. But while waylaid on The Isle of Mull she meets Roger Livesay, who always wears a kilt (well, I’m up for it!). But Wendy keeps praying to God — and the rafters (because someone told her that God was in the rafters) — to put an end to the gale force winds that stop her from hopping on a boat to meet her fiancee. Then, at a very Scottish party (bagpipes, foot stomping, singing with heavy accents) it becomes clear that Wendy is falling in love with Roger Livesay. (It’s right after she phones her husband-to-be, who you just know — when you hear his pompous voice — is not at all right for her.) And at the terribly Scottish party you realise that she is meant to spend her life on The Isle of Mull, and marry Roger Livesay — who is not rich like her boring husband, just incredibly Scottish. And that would be that. But Wendy Hiller resists, because she ‘knows where she is going’ — and pays a sweet young man named Kenny a huge sum of money to take her to Kiloran on a boat in the middle of the storm. Roger Livesay goes along to protect her, and Wendy Hiller loses her wedding dress in the gale force winds (“Oh — my wedding dress!”). And at the end— as in every romance — you think she is going marry the ancient wealthy fart — but whodathunkit! — she marches up to Roger Livesay (with three bagpipers) and kisses him in the windy grass. It sounds moronic when you tell it; it’s a tribute to great filmmaking that such a manipulative, predictable, romcom plot can snare you in its fevered grasp. Because Wendy Hiller might die on that boat — and it’s all her own fault for being so headstrong, and for valuing money over love. But I Know Where I’m Going! is all about us, here and now, in the middle of the awful enforced mass altruism called COVID-19. Because it’s saying: look around, there is inspiration here, in all the nothingness. Speaking of which — today I had my first deep COVID-19 sadness. Not about saying all these things, no; I am truly headstrong like Wendy Hiller. (I too have cheekbones.) And these blogs are the little boat I’m steering towards the maelstrom. Well when the massive regret hit me I thought I was just sad about aging. The feeling was — ‘I’ll never direct another play again because I’m just too old and controversial!’. But directing plays is nearly the only thing I love. I turned theatre addict playing the ‘cello for my high school production of Annie Get Your Gun. I wasn’t the star or anything; I just fell in love with Irving Berlin’s songs. And that feeling is connected to what is now my present regret: I couldn’t leave Annie Get Your Gun behind, it would have to be a part of me forever -- the camaraderie, the exaltation, collaborating to make something exciting with witty beautiful, talented people, something gorgeous, something to rescue us from this dull inconsequentiality called life. And now suddenly I fear I will never have that experience again. I’m old, and no one will want to work with a scandalous, old, obsessively confessive creature like myself, so near to death. So the exaltation is gone. I’ll spend the rest of my live on the Isle of Mull and my cheekbones won’t do me any good at all. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing? Maybe there’s something to find here, mulling things over, endlessly? Like what?  Like —well, I’ve never needed writing as much as I do now. And. writing has actually become —a kind of —-substitute for sex. (I never realised writing could actually  be a substitute for sex, or that it was kind of the same as sex in an an odd, distinctly unisexual way. But the end of each of these little pieces is strangely like an orgasm for me. And at the height of the editing process I actually do, become unconscious, in a way — 'la petite mort’) So maybe this is all a good thing? Something will come of this physical distancing? But the definition of any movie (whether it’s cowboys and Indians, an action-packed thriller, or Wendy Hiller searching for love) is that moment when the hero and heroine hesitate for a fraction of a second until their lips come together —and then they kiss; body to body, soul to soul. That must — can, and will — happen to me again, n’est pas? But it must happen with a stranger? I’m waiting for him? The one I barely know? And it must happen somewhere in the dark? It will be something like playing the ‘cello for a rousing chorus of Annie Get Your Gun. That’s all I require. And  I pray to the rafters to bring all that back to me, because like Wendy Hiller, the rafters are the only God I know.