MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS: GIR-RUL POWERRR

So first Ginger Sov arrives from France with a stand-up do and wicked piercings. And she's all like Scotland's my country and accent and everything and you gotta make me queen. And she tells Posh Sov she wants to be BFFs. But Posh Sov's like fuck MQS! That ginger bitch is more in line for my throne than I am, so she tries to hook her up with the super-fit squeeze she fancies, but Ginger's too woke for that and she hooks up with Darnley, who's like next in line to Posh's throne after Ginger, but he's like anyone's, an-ny-ones! after a couple of red bull and meads. Ginger's also pretty sporty, ridin' horses and winnin' battles and stuff, but then Posh goes all Scary with these poxy bumps and scars and she uses a ton of goth makeup to cover them up and hide her real face. Then she watches horses giving birth cause she's jealous of Ginger's now Darnley's Baby Momma and the baby's another one who could steal her throne. But the Ian Paisley preacher guy with the huge false beard is all like she's a whore and a papist so they kill her gay singer song writer guy who also slept with Darnley and her best-bud kidnaps and rapes her and like this goes on for two hours....like an extended episode of Neighbours

I exaggerate. Sure there isn't much new in Mary Queen Of Scots; in fact it is a lot like the 1971 film, which itself seemed based, uncredited and with liberties taken, on Antonia Fraser's wonderful biography, There are two major themes to Mary's life: Mary vs Elizabeth, which is in part England vs Scotland, but more the English Virgin Queen versus the younger, prettier, French version. The other is Mary versus the Scots establishment, particularly the church, John Knox versus the Pope, intertwined with the usual Scottish betrayals and in-fighting over their crown and the big one in modern eyes, men over the 'mostrous regimen of women' or as Mary should have called it, 'We Too'.

But to put it simply, the major question in any story about Mary is her own agency: how much she acts and how much she is acted upon, and the biggest problem with this film's approach to that is how it ultimately reverts to cliché whenever it needs to make the dilemma of agency personal. When Mary decides she loves Darnley they ride off on their horses, away from the following lords, to the accompaniment of the inevitable helicopter shot. Later when Elizabeth watches a mare weaning her colt, she is mesmerised to the point of giving herself a shadow-puppet pregnancy. This horse metaphor is so good the movie will come back to it again.

They are serious about the centrality of the distinction between Mary and Elizabeth. The Virgin Queen suppresses her desire to the point of sending the man she loves to woo Mary. Mary, on the other hand, gets married three times, and, if the movie is to be believed, has sex one time with each husband. This is an extreme point of view, based partly on the 1971 film's reading of Darnley's gayness and partly on the filmmakers decision to make Mary the victim of Bothwell, which requires them to ignore a large chunk of her life after her kidnapping and rape, which is probably the most contentious of all the readings of Mary's life. They get around the alternate reading, that Mary might have been part of Darnley's removal, that she went willingly with Bothwell, got pregnant by him (a miscarriage was the result) and stayed with him until they lost the battle of Carberry Hill.

But the film's variations with history are not something that serious, at least if you can justify them in character, and that is the hard part. Bothwell is sympathetic to the point he turns on Mary: the possibility he is actually acting with her or to protect her is unraised. I don't have problems with most of the other deviations, apart perhaps Mary's having a Scots accent. Her English was likely better than, say, Bonny Prince Charlie's, but he had been raised in the French court.

Of course Mary and Elizabeth never actually met, but arranging a secret meeting between them is not a dramatic absurdity. The problem with this meeting is that the arresting shot of the laundry drying and the two queens manoeuvring around the hanging sheets (or whatever they are), each keeping out of sight of the other, loses its visual impact quickly. It's also larding-on the presentation of Elizabeth: after being struck with the pox, she relies on heavier and heavier doses of make-up, creating thicker and thicker white masks, until she looks almost like an sf movie villain.. In case you don't realise that the real woman is hiding behind the mask, the visual metaphor will be flung in your face until you do. Given too that Mary does not age from the time she first sets foot in Scotland until she is executed (oh, did I just spoil the film for you?) while Elizabeth ages rapidly is more of a dramatic license than actually having them meet.

The other major problem I had was the birth of Mary's son. By making Rizzio, generally referred to as her secretary, obviously gay, the movie registers its view on the accusations of her having an affair with him. When Mary's actual birthing is shown in detail as gory as Rizzio's murder, it is like RoseMary Queen Of Scots' Baby: the child is outsized and almost misshapen, which probably reflects the general opinion of the Presbyterians of the time. And when we see the young boy, he looks decidedly like Rizzio—and nothing like the picture we see of the young James I of England, which indicates that Mary won the long game over Elizabeth; dying but leaving her heir to take the crown.

There are things to like here, particularly in the interior scenes, which are dark and claustrophobic, and even occasionally lighted to reflect contemporary paintings. But overall it is directed and shot like a series of music videos (Elizabeth would be a natural) or commercials, a sort of short-span story-telling. I think of the visuals of John Ford's Mary Of Scotland, which makes Mary (Katharine Hepburn) into a Holy Catholic martyr, after its love-story with Bothwell (Frederic March) – which are consistent and build toward its climax, one which reflects Ford's obsession with Hepburn as much as anything else.

Saoirse Ronan is excellent as MQS—despite being limited by never aging—and I like her better than Vanessa Redgrave, who seemed too dominant, even while Glenda Jackson was more harsh. Ronan's finest moments come as she realises her position as Queen is nowhere near enough to triumph over being both a Catholic and, most fatally, a woman. Whereas, for Elizabeth, that problem is overcome by, in effect, denying her womanhood. Here Margot Robbie is more limited by the reading of Elizabeth's increasing one dimension of frustration, but there is something to be said for her starting out on more of an even footing. Guy Pearce as William Cecil is perfect, almost stealing scenes from Elizabeth. Brendan Coyle (Lennox), James McArdle (as a weak Moray) and Martin Compston as Bothwell all fill their costume drama roles well, while David Tennant as John Knox is appropriately intense, all Ian Paisley burning eyes hiding underneath a fake beard worse than the ones worn by Tom Berenger, Richard Jordan and Joseph Fuqua in Gettysburg, the greatest fake-beard movie of all time. And a special shout-out to Ian Hart as Maitland, who somehow manages to look (though not sound, thankfully) exactly like Harvey Keitel.

In the end, Mary Queen Of Scots is perhaps too much costume and not enough drama, and the various tensions between countries, relgions and queens are all subsumed into the crucial question of womanhood. Unfortunately, that seems resolved primarily in fashion terms, the movie becomes all costume no drama. Although the execution scene is visually stunning, especially when Mary is stripped of her cloak, a note from history might have been brought it more final drama. Because it took the executioner three strokes of the axe to severe her head completely. Even in dying, Mary was denied her agency.

Mary Queen Of Scots, directed by Josie Rourke

screenplay by Beau Willimon based on the book by John Gay

JAMES M CAIN'S COCKTAIL WAITRESS

The reasons why James M. Cain was more successful than Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett during their lifetimes, and the reasons why he is the least read of the three today are connected, and they have to do with morality. This was a point reinforced for me by The Cocktail Waitress, Cain's lost last novel, written in 1975 when he was 83, and tracked down and then edited together from various versions by Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime.

Cain's writing sold more to his contemporary audience partly because it escaped the confines of the genre ghetto of 'mystery' –his stories usually have crime within them (though the killing of Monte Beragon in Mildred Pierce, for example, is something added by the movies), but not detective heroes, so they could play to the somewhat higher-brow audience who looked down on the pulp magazines that spawned Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. More important, though, was the world of steamy, obsessive, noirish sex which Cain's characters inhabited. He wrote material that the highbrow critics hated, but which the middle brow audiences ate up, a form of sexual slumming which inspired a slew of followers, of whom Erskine Caldwell may be the most notable. And though today he's remembered for the films his novels inspired, it's worth noting that it took Hollywood 12 years to work up the gumption to produce a diluted version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Of course, what was hot stuff to my parents' generation, and when I was a kid in the Fifties, is pretty tame nowadays. Which is one of the reasons Cain fell somewhat to the wayside. Another was that, as his late-blooming career went on, his work dealt more and more with his obsessions, and his stories became less and less compulsive.

But what made his stories compulsive is also what made them acceptable in the Thirties and Forties, and what makes them less compelling today. They are underpinned by a powerful sense of morality, a morality which insists that sin, inevitably, be punished, while simultaneously portraying the intoxicating delights it offers before the punishment comes due. Cain's stories are about people caught up by forces they cannot control, forces which will inevitably destroy them. It is a world created by an Old Testament God, and if that makes the original Cain, or Job, or David, the first noir protagonist, so be it. It's not like this is a secret, among Cain's later novels are titles like Sinful Woman and The Root Of His Evil. His God may well have departed the scene; not for nothing did Albert Camus call Cain 'America's greatest writer', but that sense of retribution is never far away, and often his characters see it coming.

Hammett's protagonists resonate with modern audiences because they are almost anti-heroes; they know the world has its sins, that people are corrupted, and they function within that world, partaking of it but never succumbing to it, never letting it take control of them, living by their own code of what demands punishment. Chandler's Marlowe also knows the world is corrupt, but he copes with it like an idealist who's become, as idealists do, a cynic. He constructs a facade of not caring, defined by cracking wise, to protect him from the corruption. What makes Elliott Gould's Marlowe so accurate in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, the reason by it's generally either loved or hated by Chander fans, is the understanding of this character, which Leigh Brackett and Altman nail perfectly. Their Marlowe is the most accurate depiction of what's REALLY going on underneath the facade, as opposed to the what the readers (and perhaps author) really thinks is going on, since Robert Aldrich and Buzz Bezzerides' deconstruction of Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly.

In this sense, The Cocktail Waitress is a veritable cocktail of Cain's Old Testament themes, a small masterpiece of self-deconstruction. Joan Medford, the eponymous waitress, narrates the tale, and when it opens her abusive husband has just died in a drunken car crash, which at least one cop still suspects her of somehow having caused. Her son is in the care of her in-laws, and her sister-in-law Ethel, who can't have children of her own, desperately wants to keep him. Joan is simply trying to make ends meet, but needs to prove she can support herself and her son, so she takes a job as a cocktail waitress at the Garden of Roses. She catches the eye of an older millionaire, Earl K. White III, and of a younger man with big plans, Tom Barclay, who says he drove her home from her husband's funeral, and claims she blew him a kiss when he left.

The set-up is brilliant, and you can see where it's going. Joan is obsessive about making a success, and enough money to get back her son. Her need becomes overwhelming. Earl quickly becomes obsessed with Joan, and offers to marry her, but with a catch—he has a heart condition, and has been told by his doctors that he could never stand the strain of sex. His passion could literally kill him. Joan quickly becomes obsessed with Tom—even though on their first 'date' he takes her to a topless bar cum whorehouse. But her passion is just as dangerous to her need as Earl's is to him. It's like a condensed version of Cain's classic characters and themes rolled into one: Postman crossed with Mildred Pierce crossed with Double Indemnity (you wonder if the character is called Joan in reference to Crawford) with a bit of Cain himself thrown in: he was suffering from angina as he wrote the book, and was 83, (I wondered reading the strip club scene if he'd seen The Graduate and been inspired). Tom is Walter Neff crossed with Beragon, Earl is partly Nick, partly Mr Dietrichson. But the real question is who Joan is, and that's where the beauty of this novel lies.

As you might expect, things get complicated, and then go wrong, and eventually one accident is followed by another death, and coincidence begins to mount. There's a trial scene, and then a vicious twist at the end which clever readers will have seen coming, but which, in terms of Old Testament justice, is cruel and unusual, and which makes clear what Cain has been doing all along: setting us, the readers, up for a fall, just as he did so brilliantly in Postman. But here, he's done it with the female first-person narration (remember, Mildred Pierce is told in third person; Postman in the first by Frank Chambers). Cain's sense of Joan's voice, which seems believable at first, now is revealed to be downright compelling: we have watched the story through her eyes, and we are forced to re-evaluate the entire story, and our own preconceptions and sympathies, as a result. Although we have the sense of impending doom, Joan never shares it, and this creates a wonderful tension, because we, as readers, accept her voice. 

The Cocktail Waitress is not a 'great' novel, and  it will carry less impact to a modern audience unfamiliar with Cain; in fact, judging by some of the reviews it appears that is the case. But its publication at this time makes it a perfect coda to Cain's career; he is remembered now mostly for the movies he inspired. I'd love to see it turned into a film; after all even Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslett was a success (Guy Pearce's Beragon stole that show--though the HBO adaptation did return Lucy Gessler, as Mildred's friend, to a larger role, giving Melissa Leo a chance to shine; there is an equivalent character in The Cocktail Waitress too). The question would be whether you use the late Fifties/early Sixties period (the end of the era of morality: pre-Beatles and the rest) or go contemporary, because we are currently mired in an age that combines both licentiousness and prudery in ways that make the Roaring Twenties/Depression Thirties seem balanced. With the popularity of Mad Men, and copies of it like The Hour, and the success of Mildred Pierce, period might work better; this I think could be the breakthrough role for Jessica Chastain.

There has been huge re-evaluation of Cain in recent years. Postman was picked for the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list; Double Indemnity is one of the AFI's 100 best American films. This novel is a moving reminder of what made Cain so compelling in his time, and what makes him so today. It may not be the place to begin reading him, but once you've started to move beyond the classics, to the more obsessive works (The Butterfly, Galatea, Serenade and Past All Dishonor, for example), it's a good place to see clearly what he's up to, and what he's capable of doing with his writing.

The Cocktail Waitress by James M Cain

Hard Case Crime/Titan Books £16.99 ISBN 9781781160329

This essay will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetrime.co.uk)

THE KING'S SPEECH: THE LONDON FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE

The buzz around The King's Speech, which started when it won the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival, was confirmed last night at the London Film Festival's American Express gala showing at the Odeon Leicester Square. With an compelling performance by Colin Firth as 'Bertie', King George VI, at its heart, this is a film concerned not only with courage and personal triumph, but one which celebrates old-fashioned virtues of duty and loyalty. In setting up a parallel between the courage required to overcome his stammer, and that required to assume his role as King when his brother proves incapable, and then to lead his country into war, screenwriter David Seidler has crafted a story which strikes many of the same chords as Chariots of Fire did thirty years ago, with a similar degree of unlikeliness given the current tenor of our times. Perhaps that is why it seems so appealing.

In fact, Seidler's script began life as a play, and it really plays out as a series of exceptional two-handers, in which director Tom Hooper allows the actors to flourish. Firth's is a bravura physical performance, twisting himself around his speech impediment, but it draws on the kind of inward, repressed characters he has played before, in say The Single Man or Where The Truth Lies, and gradually reveals his character's immense inner resources. Helena Bonham Carter, as Queen Elizabeth segues perfectly from testing her formality with Geoffrey Rush as the lugubrious Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who eventually helps Bertie overcome his stammer, and revealing the person beneath that formality with Firth. Firth and Logue's scenes are like a royal odd couple, battling at its finest, with Rush's assertive, but sometimes naive, colonial commoner set off against Firth's withdrawn and lonely aristocrat. Logue's consulting rooms are like a small theatrical set; he is a failed amateur actor, and it's as if he's luring the Duke of York into his own amateur production. Other two-handers will follow, most effectively Bertie with his father, George V (Michael Gambon) and his brother David (the abidicator, Edward VIII) played brilliantly by Guy Pearce full of weakness covered with a thin veneer of surface charm. Even when the set-pieces open up, Hooper often isolates the point of impact into a two-shot, again most notably when Claire Bloom is incapable to react to her son David's tearful break-down on his father's death making him king.

By opening up the play in such a careful way, Hooper also delivers scenes which have the power of soliloquy--by leaving Firth in half the frame as he recalls his brother Johnny, dead at 13, he suggests Bertie's loneliness, which arises literally from the unfilled space familial affection should have provided. It makes the scenes with his own daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret more telling. Hooper comes back to this half-frame often; Bonham-Carter, in another perfectly-judged performance, enters it to provide that love; Logue pops through it like an uncontrollable primitive force. Seidler is also very good on issues of class--something where Logue himself (and his wife, well played by Jennifer Ehle) serves as a commoner constrast to Mrs Simpson (played by Eve Best with remarkable physical similarity, but perhaps, as with Spall's Churchill, too strong a single note). It's no surprise the film gathered such an exceptional cast, since Seidler's script allows so many of them moments of real emotional impact, and because Hooper's careful direction allows them to shine in those moments.

Where the film is perhaps weakest is in the broader historical sense, where it really does need to open out. The same was true of Hooper's John Adams, at its best in the scenes where Paul Giamatti's Adams either negotiates one on one or shares the screen with Laura Linney's Abigail. Here, it results in a lessening of the tension of the two biggest external dramas, the abdication and the coming of World War II. We know the outcome of both, and they might have detracted from the focus on Bertie and Lionel, but somehow the intertwining of personal and political might have had more hefor. It is most obvious in Timothy Spall's caricature of Churchill; in a film where few of the actors try to become superficially the characters they play, yet catch their essences perfectly, Spall's Churchill, pleasant enough and making the point he's needed to make, seems out of place even compared with Anthony Andrews' restrained Baldwin (recalling that Derek Jacobi, here the Archbishop of Canterbury played Baldwin opposite Albert Finney's bravura Churchill in The Gathering Storm).

But the focus is Bertie's battle. Not only with his stammer, but to open himself up, to accept a friend, to overcome the psychological trauma that Logue, like a modern psycho-therapist, gets him to reveal. Seidler was a stammerer as a boy, and King George was an inspiration to him; having learned this, it's easy to see that inspiration still reflected on the screen. This may be why the film has gone down well in North America, the sight of a royal reaching his inner 'we' is too good to be true. It's also very funny, which may help it in this country too: the scenes of Bertie using curse-words to help overcome his disability originally saw the film rated '15' here, but it has now been opened for 12 year olds and parental guidance, lest their children absorb some history as well as vocabulary. It's suitable for them, it's entertaining for anyone, it's thought-provoking and uplifting, and it's a masterclass in acting. It is the kind of film that may leave women laughing as well as men crying, and Toronto is right, it certainly will be contending for Oscars.