Vespers in Vienna (I)

I spent a good chunk of Friday doing two things:

1. Thinking it was Sunday
2. Reading a novel called Vespers in Vienna

Why did I persist in believing it was Sunday? I suppose because of all the Mass-going and playing these days. I went to Mass Thursday night, and Organist Son played not only Thursday evening but also Friday morning, plus there was football on television all day, so yes, it was just like a weekend.

In the end, it was a win, because about once an hour I experienced the pleasure of realizing that no, tomorrow is not Monday and I actually have a couple more days to think about school…

Anyway, to the novel. Quite interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in our venerable, cluttered and overflowing Reed Books, looking for gifts. I happened upon this novel, one by Bruce Marshall that I’d never heard of…and bought it for myself.

(Available for one-hour at a time through the Internet Archive here.)

Bruce Marshall was a prolific Scottish writer, a convert to Catholicism, who wrote books that occasionally turned on Catholic themes and characters – most famously Father Malachy’s Miracle and The World, the Flesh and Father Smith. Both well worth reading. His Catholic characters aren’t as fraught and doomed as, say, Greene’s, but despite the humorous and lighter tone, they aren’t frivolous, either. They battle with matters of faith and doubt, belief and unbelief, both within and in the world.

Vespers in Vienna is set in post-war Vienna, which of course meant that I kept picturing the landscape of The Third Man in my head as I read. Briefly put, it’s the story of a British Colonel Nicobar, sent from Rome to Vienna to sort out some problems, which turn out to be mostly centered on repatriation of refugees to the Soviet Union. Tensions of all sorts abound, but the primary tension erupts from the rather ingenious plot point of having the Colonel and his retinue billeted in a Catholic convent during their stay.

It’s a short novel, but with – as I sit here and try to toss out a quick post on it, I realize – an impressive array of issues and themes thrown in the mix. You’ve got:

• A brutal, jaundiced view of military procedure and personalities
• An understanding of war from the point of view of an exhausted man who’s been through two of them
• The landscape of Austria and specifically, Vienna, in which authority is shared between four powers (the US, England, France and Russia)
• The confusion and shifting alliances and views of present and former allies
• The growing menace of the Soviet Union
• The politics of refugees and repatriation

And then…faith!

• The conflicts – friendly, but not superficial – between characters on spiritual matters in general, and specifically as they relate to war – most of the related conversations are between Nicobar and the Mother Superior of the convent, but others get involved as well, including a Russian colonel and the Austrian brother of one of the sisters, who’s returning from time held as a POW by the Russians.
• These conversations are honest and hard-hitting, as the characters explore the questions of how humanity can stop killing each other, what religion in the modern world has to offer, and the Church’s silence on crucial aspects of the recent conflict.
• It also features a crazy-trust-in-God character who might just make a miracle (like disappearing a pub) – or something close to it happen. In this case, the Mother Superior determined to imitate her order’s founder, who miraculously flew to Rome in the 16th century to intervene with the Pope – and she’s going to do the same thing, but of course, now, she can take a plane….

Now. I’m going to write another post later with some quotes and scenes from the novel that you might find interesting, but I’m going to finish this up with a couple of points on tone and the film adaptation of this novel.

It’s a Bruce Marshal novel, which means that it is a fast, frequently funny read. The narrative voice is somewhere between outright satire and gentle character study. It’s a fascinating balance, but typical Marshall – there’s no doubt, even as his characters sometimes behave absurdly and speak their parts as you’d expect them to (the clueless officers on all sides, mostly) – there’s something serious at stake here. Marshall doesn’t write just to poke fun at hapless military and Church types or to skewer just for the dark pleasure of it. The central characters, in particular, are struggling with real issues and seem to be on real journeys of some sort or another. It’s a tone that is very hard to pull off – ending one chapter with yet one more rather humorous bureaucratic misunderstanding and beginning the next one, without a breathe, with an attempted suicide. In lesser hands, it would be clumsy and even offensive, but Marshall pulls it off, every time.

Which brings us to the film. Since I didn’t know the novel existed, there would be no reason to know of the movie, either, but here you go. Released in 1949, it’s called (wait for it)….Red Danube.

Get it? Red as in Commies, amiright?

The two pieces I read on the film ( here and here) – which has a stellar cast, including Walter Pidgeon, Ethel Barrymore, Peter Lawford, Angela Lansbury and Janet Leigh – both indicate that Hollywood grabbed the property postwar in part to prove its anti-Communist bonafides. And that it’s not very good. Life is too short for me to search it out and actually watch it, but what I’ve read shows me pretty wide divergences from the book. Yes, the cast of characters is the same, and the central plot point – help the dancer avoid repatriation – is still there, but much else was changed. And done so to really highlight the anti-Soviet element of the book and, it seems, to diminish the very sharp satirical edge that characterizes the novel’s treatment of the military and even the war, period.

I think what might be happening here is something beyond the hope of making a Big Serious Film in those postwar years. I just think it’s a lot harder to balance that satire and seriousness on film than it is on the printed page – oh, it can be done, of course, but it’s difficult and takes great care and talent. This particular director was no Kubrick, obviously and the moment probably worked against it, even if anyone wanted to preserve that sensibility.

I mean, compare and contrast tone of text and film trailer:

The colonel wasn’t quite sure if he knew what democratic dogma meant, but he didn’t like to ask the brigadier for a definition, partly because he didn’t think that the brigadier knew either, partly because the brigadier was already talking on the telephone again, this time about whether sandwiches were to be served with drinks at quadripartite meetings; so he put on his hat, saluted and went out.

When he returned to his office the colonel found the Roumanian general and his subordinates still looking for the sixty thousand loyal Roumanians who had fought on the side of the Allies, but they didn’t seem to be looking very hard, because they were all listening to Audrey who was sitting on top of her desk swinging her legs and talking world affairs.

“My dear general, I’m certain there’s going to be another war although I don’t suppose so really,” she was telling the top of the general’s monster hat, her face full of the confident emptiness of youth.

I can tell you which one *I’d* rather spend a few hours of my life on….

The other point to make is that Marshall, while clearly not shying from the unique peril the Soviets posed in the post-war era, has a broader picture to paint. His concern is human brutality, period – and why we keep treating each other this way, and what force exists that can change us. Is there anything?

Part 2 here.