I hesitate to use the term old-fashioned or old school (‘skool’ if we’re appropriating street slang), but it’s how I’d best describe this charming movie. It has a genuine warmth and innocence about it, a throwback to one of those risible but irresistible fairy tales.
The period continues to fascinate, and the film captures with elan the brittle precariousness of the era. Pre-war Vienna, that gilded pan-European late age of modernism, decadent Austria-Hungary’s last-chance saloon before the Great War and destroyer of empires. Something like that.
Once upon a time, I went to Falkirk for a ‘night out’. I can’t remember a distinguishing characteristic about the place save that it was dodgy; it had a Chernobyl feel to it and the bar staff were more difficult to understand than a Klingon speaking in their native tongue. The wheel, however, was something I was convinced I knew well. I always thought it was a sort of Central Lowlands version of a vintage ferris wheel à la The Third Man (1949). I only found out the other day that it’s not a wheel as in a ferris wheel, but something functional and once again … not at all a ferris wheel.
It is in fact a boat lift which connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, and it’s quite the impressive achievement both aesthetically and from a purely engineering perspective. How I didn’t know this I … don’t know. I figure I was just lost in semantic confusion.
I might visit one day, and I now understand why Falkirk experiences a little bit of tourism. I would not, though, recommend its pubs to even Francis Begbie in his pomp.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 