I hope you all had fun with those lovely romantic clips (well, the NORTH BY NORTHWEST one wasn't that romantic unless it was the story of a crop duster expressing its passion for Cary G by stalking him across a cornfield) last month. I thought this month I'd delve into Hitchcock's early career in England and specifically look at two of my favorite films of Alfred Hitchcock's that mightn't be so familiar to modern audiences, THE LADY VANISHES and THE 39 STEPS.

In my prior incarnation as a wage-earner in Sydney, I was lucky enough to catch a visiting British Film Institute collection of the director's British work touring to mark the centenary of his birth in 1899. It was fascinating to watch the director develop from the creepy silent THE LODGER (starring Ivor Novello who features in GOSFORD PARK  as Jack the Ripper type) through to the last masterpiece of his British period THE LADY VANISHES in 1938. David O. Selznick, who was always on the watch for talent, persuaded Hitchcock to go to America after that and it was in Hollywood that he made his most famous films. But some of these earlier ones are definitely worth a look. 

The joy of watching a whole cavalcade of films was seeing that it took Hitchcock a while to find his feet as an artist even if some things were there right from the start. An understanding for character in action. The black humor. The suspense. A dark romanticism.  Prickly but intense sexual tension. In a Hitchcock film, the path of true love rarely runs smooth! It's always interesting to see that even a genius doesn't always create a work of genius every time. Some of these films were downright clunky and I don't just mean the early film technology.

By the time he came to make THE 39 STEPS in 1935, though, he'd pretty much worked out his style and what he wanted to say. And the camera work is brilliant - there's a brilliant scene where the screaming mouth of the woman who discovers the murder victim cuts straight into a train tunnel where our hero is escaping the murder charge. This is such a fun film and uses the device of the innocent man pursued relentlessly and for seemingly no reason (NORTH BY NORTHWEST is another example). Robert Donat (who is wonderful in the part!) falls foul of a ring of spies and finds himself chased all over the Scottish Highlands and into the arms of beautiful Madeleine Carroll who at first wants to betray him but ends up on his side (very NORTH BY NORTHWEST). In one scene, they're handcuffed together and the dialogue bristles with sexual awareness and danger. Great stuff.

Here's the original trailer:

My favorite of these early films is Hitchcock's last British work before he went to Hollywood, THE LADY VANISHES. I think that's because the romance in this one is such fun. Michael Redgrave, who is actually extremely sexy, and Margaret Lockwood strike sparks off each other from the moment they're forced to share a room at an overcrowded and rather rustic inn in the obscure (and fictional) eastern European country of Bandrika. Our heroine is heading back to London to marry her stodgy fiancé Charles. Our hero is a specialist in ethnic music - lots of fun moments when he makes dreadful sounds on obscure folk instruments and she attempts to squash his pretensions. They express their tension in witty squabbling until they're drawn together to foil the spies who spirit away a lovely old lady Margaret Lockwood meets on the train. Poor Margaret! Nobody will believe the old woman even existed, let alone that she's in danger. Great hijinks and suspense ensue.

This is a clip of the ending:

"You heartless, callous, selfish, swollen-headed beast!" They don't write dialogue like that anymore! And isn't that a great kiss?

Seriously, see if you can track down these films. They're smart and funny and beautifully done.

Today, I'd like to talk to you about a museum in London that's a bit of a hidden treasure - and just the thing to gladden a romance writer's heart. It's Leighton House in Kensington, the home and studio of famous Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton. Befitting a piece about an artist, you'll notice LOTS of illustrations this month!

Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) was the most famous English painter of the Victorian era, feted as a genius in his lifetime. He was the President of the Royal Academy, was knighted in 1878, given a baronetcy in in 1886 and made a baron in 1896 (the first painter to be elevated to the British peerage). He enjoyed his newfound aristocratic status for only one day before he died of heart failure.

There's actually an awful lot of beautiful Victorian art in Australia. Homesick Brits (or at least those with the money to indulge in art collecting) bought thousands of works by establishment English artists and a lot of that has ended up in our art galleries. The first time I became aware of Lord Leighton's work was when the Art Gallery of New South Wales did a big exhibition about 19th century orientalism in European art. There were lots of beautiful paintings of girls in harems and Middle-Eastern scenes and among the most exquisite pieces in the show were a series of Leighton's harem sketches. Beautiful little watercolors of the women of the seraglio going about their daily lives.

Leighton traveled widely in the Middle East so it's quite possible he'd witnessed the scenes he painted in real Turkish, Egyptian and Algerian harems. What strikes me about the pictures I've included in this column is how tenderly he portrays the women. Isn't that painting of The Music Lesson just gorgeous?

One of my favorite Leighton works is Cymon and Iphigenia  (the one of the man watching the girl sleeping) which is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I didn't live far from the AGNSW and got to know the collection pretty well. There's a strange and very compelling atmosphere to the picture. You're not quite sure whether Cymon is up to no good! Aren't the colors beautiful? The painting has a similar lush sensuality to Flaming June. Clearly Leighton liked snoozing women.

Leighton's most famous work - and the piece that has since launched a million greeting cards - is Flaming June. Victorian art was deeply unfashionable after World War I and into quite late in the 20th century. In 1969, Flaming June was passed in at auction because it didn't reach the reserve of $180. Doesn't that blow your mind? I'd sure spend that much on it! After that, a Puerto Rican businessman bought it for an art museum in his home country which is where it still resides (Museum Ponce).

Best-laid plans have gone agley here as I'd really intended to talk about Frederic Leighton's house, which is beautiful and exotic and well worth visiting. It's like a piece of fantasy Arabia dropped bang smack in the middle of London suburbia. So I'll get onto the museum in March's My Favorite Things.

Please pop back next month for BETTER LEIGHTON THAN NEVER PART DEUX.

Well, having had a nice rave about Frederic, Lord Leighton's art last month, I'll now talk about what I originally intended to cover. The house and studio in Holland Park (near Kensington) where he lived for most of his life from 1866 until his death laden with honors and admiration 30 years later.

The house is very unusual for a Victorian design, isn't it? A bit like a Tuscan villa and a mosque got together one drunken night and had a puppy. Actually given that Leighton spent his youth in Italy then traveled widely in the Middle East, that idea isn't completely away with the fairies.

Nothing however really hints at the mind-boggling glories within. The street outside is pure London suburbia. Inside the house is a gorgeous Oriental fantasy of blue and white and gold. The Arab Hall with its fountains, marble columns, filigree grille work and dazzling ceramics was added in 1877 and decorated with the thousands of tiles Leighton had collected in his travels. There's even a sculpted peacock sitting on the elaborate balustrade at the bottom of the staircase. It's like walking into one of Annie West's sheikh books!

It's such a gloriously over-the-top romantic space - and I don't know if this is still the case, although I suspect it might be - when I visited in April 2007, it was almost completely empty. Hardly anyone else I know has visited this beautiful house. It's one of London's hidden treasures.

Apparently the house is even more spectacular now as it's just had millions of pounds spent on it in a major refurbishment completed in 2010. Hard to imagine it being even MORE splendid! The gold nearly burned out my eyeballs when I visited pre-restoration.

Upstairs it's like another world. This was the artist's studio and it still contains a lot of his paintings. What struck me, though, was how Spartan Leighton's living arrangements were. His bedroom is as he left it (well, I'm sure they've swept it since!). One measly single bed and no real creature comforts. Such a contrast to the ostentatious, luxurious display in the public parts of the house below. Leighton lived alone apart from his servants and never married (it's possible he was gay and there are rumors that he fathered a child with one of his models). You wonder if he might have been lonely in his magnificent custom-designed house, although when you read about his life, it's obvious he was a man who relished many close friendships. 

Leighton House is terrifically easy to get to. You just take the underground to Kensington and walk from there (it's probably about 15 minutes). If you're looking for something a little bit different and exotically beautiful when you visit London, I highly recommend checking it out.

Here's a link to the official website.

Yes, I know, that's a truly awful pun! All I can say is it fits with the Rodgers and Hammerstein theme of My Favorite Things.

2012 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the brilliant Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (here's the link to the Wikipedia page). He's the guy who launched the posters for a thousand university rooms with The Kiss. It's stunningly romantic, isn't it? Klimt lived between 1862 and 1918 and The Kiss is one his later works, painted in 1907.

Klimt was part of the Secessionist Movement in Vienna before World War I. You can see Art Nouveau influences in the intricacy of design and the almost Celtic use of spirals and curves. In his day, his work was often considered too scandalous for words, and I think even now, we respond to the deeply sensual eroticism of his images.

I must have been in my early teens, the first time I saw prints of Klimt's work. And yes, I'm pretty sure the first one I saw was The Kiss. Immediately I was drawn to the extreme structural formality of his canvases mixed with the strong sensuality, particularly in relation to the depiction of women. I was a girl who'd grown up reading romance novels; these Klimt paintings were like psychedelic takes on the clinch covers so dear to my adolescent heart.

In my twenties, I was lucky enough to visit Vienna and even luckier to see many of Klimt's works on display. The Belvedere has a wonderful collection which gives you an idea of the range of his work outside those few iconic images. I also attended an amazing exhibition of Vienna in the first 20 years of the 20th century (this had EVERYTHING, including Franz Ferdinand's bloodstained jacket) where they'd sourced a lot of Klimt's work from private collections.

I think Klimt is an artist who doesn't display to full effectiveness in reproduction, especially for those sumptuous paintings of his gold period (including The Kiss). I've included another example, the famous (and at one time most expensive painting ever sold) Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, now in New York. The gold he uses so prolifically is REAL gold so when you see the actual paintings, the rich effect is impossible to describe. Apparently he was influenced by the mosaics in Ravenna and Venice; if you click on this link to the mosaics at San Vitale in Ravenna, you'll see the similarity in composition.

He also painted some beautiful landscapes, using that same geometrical detail that still conveys the organic nature of the burgeoning growth. Isn't that painting of a birch forest gorgeous? So deep and mysterious, it draws you in like a traveler down a shadowy path.  

For all its beauty, there's something deeply unsettling in a lot of Klimt's work. You'll see what I mean when you look at his depiction of the Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War, Pallas Athene. This is not a lady you'd like to meet down a dark alley!

I also love the picture of The Golden Knight. I haven't seen the original of this one, it's in a museum in Nagoya in Japan. Maybe one day. Isn't the horse magnificent? I also love the way he's painted the background, like the floral decoration on a renaissance tapestry. For me, it's that mixture of the fantasy and the real, as well as the sheer beauty of his images, that makes Klimt one of my favorite artists.