Sunday Express

I’ve seen the light, we need the dark

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OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, who died last week at the age of 104, was the last star from the golden age of Hollywood. She did things her way and she had a steel core beneath that beautiful face and radiant smile. In 1943 when her contract with Warner Brothers ended, the studio claimed she owed them an extra six months for the time she was suspended for refusing to take the soppy roles they offered her. Arguing that Warners was violating labour law she took on the powerful studio system and, amazingly, won.

She was less successful when, aged 101, she sued the makers of Feud, a series about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford which she said portrayed her (she was played by Catherine Zeta-jones) in a false light. But she took her victories and defeats with the same good grace.

The new book about Harry and Meghan called Finding Freedom is meant to give their side of the story. But it has backfired badly showing them as needy, whingeing, undignifie­d and – sad to say – thoroughly dislikeabl­e.

Always serene, never self-pitying or playing the victim, the indomitabl­e Olivia de Havilland was Hollywood royalty. Harry and Meghan are royalty living in Hollywood. They could learn a thing or two from Dame Olivia.

MOSCOW’S cinemas have re-opened but the Russian culture minister Olga Lyubimova says only “light-hearted and simple” films will be screened on the grounds that Muscovites were “tired of sitting at home and may not be ready for heavy dramas right now”. I’m not sure it works like that. They may well be tired of sitting at home (aren’t we all?) but “lightheart­ed and simple” isn’t necessaril­y the answer. And aren’t “heavy dramas” what Russia does best? Dostoevsky never felt the need to write a sitcom.

During the Second World War there was a sort of semi-official British ban on horror films because it was thought they would be bad for morale. That sounds reasonable but did it make psychologi­cal sense?

The Hollywood producer Val Lewton, responsibl­e for a number of 1940s horror films for the RKO studio – such as Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie – saw things differentl­y. He thought wartime audiences welcomed dark, dangerous themes as long as it didn’t involve the mass slaughter of war. Counterint­uitively it was only after the war had ended that Lewton felt that there was a hunger for comedies and cheerful spectacula­rs to reflect the new world.

One of my favourite telly binges during lockdown has been The Bureau, the series about the DGSE, the French equivalent of MI6 or the Cia.these spies have a rotten time. Raymond had his foot amputated by Islamic State, Guillaume was captured and was forever being beaten up, tortured and carted around in a wooden box with only a dog’s severed head for company. Henri, who was shot while “in the field” (and had only gone because he couldn’t resist one last mission before retirement) seemed to be making a good recovery and then he just up and died in the ambulance.the spooky girl with the high voice was captured by IS and escaped but now has panic attacks at inopportun­e moments.

It’s grimmer than grim and I couldn’t enjoy it more. On the other hand, something like The Durrells which would surely count as “light-hearted and simple” would cast me into abject gloom right now. The BBC’S adaptation of Gerald Durrell’s My Family And Other Animals about his childhood in Corfu in the 1930s was a delight. But the sight of that sun-drenched idyll, all that bonhomie and retsina – and no talk of twoweek quarantine­s – would have me longing miserably for the way the world was before March.

Just as sad music doesn’t make you feel sad, so dramas about awful things don’t make you feel worried or upset. If they did there wouldn’t be murder mysteries or horror movies, or war films. Escapism comes in many forms. And there’s nothing more cheering than the sight of someone having a worse time than you.

 ?? Picture: SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY ??
Picture: SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY

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