Other Things
Matter
The sweet
dream of love
can come and go
dropping in and out
like the reality of fairy clouds
because
other things matter
can come and go
dropping in and out
like the reality of fairy clouds
because
other things matter
The romance
of love
the glittering beauty
fades, disappearing
the blue sky darkens
feelings change
because
other things matter
the glittering beauty
fades, disappearing
the blue sky darkens
feelings change
because
other things matter
The memory of
love
hurting, or bringing smiles
its fragrance lasting forever
but life goes on
because
other things matter
hurting, or bringing smiles
its fragrance lasting forever
but life goes on
because
other things matter
(written
after watching "Brief Encounter" 1974)
Fairy Clouds -- MyGrannyOwnzYou 
Kathryn Altman wrote that her husband, director Robert Altmann, once had “nothing to do and he went to a theater in the middle of the afternoon to see a movie. Not a Hollywood movie: a British movie. He said the main character was not glamorous, not a babe. And at first he wondered why he was even watching it. But twenty minutes later he was in tears, and had fallen in love with her. And it made him feel that it wasn't just a movie." The film was “Brief Encounter,” a 1945 film about a guilt-ridden unrequited love affair starring Celia Johnson (who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress) and Trevor Howard. Directed by David Lean (nominated for Best Director and, with Anthony Havelock-Allan and Ronald Neame, for Best Adapted Screenplay), the movie shared the 1946 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and cane in second in a 1999 British Film Institute poll of the top British films. The screenplay was written by Noël Coward (based on his own 1936 play, “Still Life,” which he had also directed and starred in). The original drama was part of a 10-part cycle called “Tonight at 8:30,” which was performed in various combinations of three plays at each performance. (It consisted of only six plays when it premiered at the Manchester Opera House in October 1935; Coward took an expanded set to London the following January, but “Still Life” did not premier until May.) Afterwards, the cycle was restaged in whole or part; for example, “Still Life” was not included in the 1948 Broadway revival in New York or in London in 1981. Theatre Guild On The Air presented two broadcasts of “Still Life,” with different casts,one on ABC in 1947 and one on NBC in 1949. In 1951, “Still Life” was presented again on American television on the "Schlitz Playhouse of Stars," and in 1991, BBC took the whole series to television. A radio adaptation was made in 1946 and broadcast four times over the next two years, with different casts; a 1947 radio adaptation by Maurice Horspool was performed in 2009 on Radio 2 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the BBC's Maida Vale Studios, and another radio adaptation (of the film) was broadcast in 1955. The next year Coward made a new version with only two characters. The film was remade in 1974, starring Richard Burton and Sophia Loren, and aired on the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” on American television, but the reception was so poor that the planned cinema release internationally was canceled. Andrew Taylor adapted the screenplay and script in 1996, and in 2008 a new version that combined both sources (and added new musical elements) was adapted and directed by Emma Rice. The play/movie was also the basis of a musical (“Mr. and Mrs.”) in 1968 and an opera in two acts by John Caird (with music by André Previn). Coward thought "Still Life” was “ the most mature play of the whole series.”
ReplyDeleteThe “fairy clouds” in Heather’s poem refer directly to a pair of lines recited in the film, "When I behold, upon the night's starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance" from John Keats’ “"When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be." The rest of the sonnet goes like this:
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.