Following on from my rewatch of Reuben Reuben, I thought I’d post another short blog, as I’ve been presenting a re-evaluation of Dylan Thomas recently. I also introduced a friend, being slightly apprehensive, as you are when you share something you love with someone else, but thankfully she loved it too. It really is a shame it isn’t more widely known or available, though it apparently needs trigger warnings these days.
The interesting thing on rewatching is how actually unlike Dylan Thomas the main character is. True, outwardly and according to myth there are parallels to the poet in the film, and the writer, Peter de Vries, who was a friend of Thomas and knew him on the American tours imbues his main character with mythic Thomas-style witticisms and legends (such as the tip-stealing), but McGland is actually a lot more sympathetic than Thomas ever was, and knows and owns his flaws in a way the original never did. For the purposes of the film (and book) he also settles in one place for an extended period, and has an amicable relationship with his estranged wife, plus crucially, tries to take control of his own destiny, in a way Thomas never could or did.
There are some fantastic performances, not least by the wonderful Tom Conti and Kara Wilson (who I never twigged was the same actress to play the art teacher in Grance Hill until I looked her up now – I knew I knew her from somewhere!) and Roberts Blossom (the film is partly based on a separate story, Spofforth, about his character), and the bittersweet ending is perfect for the film, but I won’t get distracted by gushing about it any more (except to recommend you tracking it down and watching – it is currently available on YouTube) and I’ll return to the point.
Representations like this have fuelled the Dylan Thomas myth, and in the public perception he is still maybe more of the Gowan McGland than the reality, and the gruelling extended reading tours he undertook were because he needed the money rather than because he enjoyed them. Plus they gave him the attention he often craved, though it was the personal support he longed for rather than just public adulation (hence the affairs with Reitell and Kazin, which they themselves admitted were driven by his need for companionship and connection than any particular sexual drive). That isn’t to say that Thomas didn’t enjoy attention from the public from performing, just that it wasn’t the big driver, and by the end it was inextricably linked with the need to ‘perform’ as the drunken poet, as was expected. Thomas was insecure in many circles, about his lack of formal education and his roots, and it was likely that stunts like his appalling behaviour at his hero Charlie Chaplin’s house (which he regretted hugely afterwards) were because those present didn’t seem interested or engaged with Dylan himself, only with the clown they wanted to be entertained by, or attempting deconstructions of his complex work, which he would rather let stand in its own right.
Despite the throwaway remarks about hack work, Thomas was actually happier for periods of his wartime employment as it meant engrossing himself in films (and the process of film making), and making pin money writing anonymous detective fiction reviews, as both were true loves of his, in which he didn’t have to ‘pretend’, and could just be himself, and be accepted and admired for things he enjoyed doing, with little pressure. They also, as I’ve written before, formed fertile training grounds for experimentation and innovation, which came out in his later poetry and Under Milk Wood, which began one of its earliest iterations as a film script about the Home Guard.
Two things Reuben Reuben does portray accurately though, are those brief moments when McGland is forced to confront what he’s become, and the obsession with his health, and in the film, this is via his teeth. Thomas suffered bronchially (not to the extent he sometimes complained) but genuinely, and as time went on, was the victim of panic attacks and night terrors, and death. These are presented rather more rationally and softly in the film, but ill-health is a major influence in the latter part of Thomas’s life (just look at some of the New York photos to see the physical change), and the fears of the nuclear age, of abandonment, of old-age, and loss of control are, I believe, central to his psyche. The Thomas of the last few years cuts a far sadder figure than tends to be presented.
In Reuben Reuben, the poet McGland never has to contend with those final years, and despite the trajectory he is presented with, is too much of a coward to take his own life in the way he explains. The ending is perfect for the film, and I think, had Thomas been able to chose the method of his own demise, he would have been delighted and amused to have it taken out of his hands in the way it is here. It would maybe have been a far better legacy than the common myth, or the reality, or how he died.
Stay safe,
Kit xx