Harewood Has Become Quite The Documentary Maker (About Which TheOrator.Press.On.Insta Posted Earlier This Year Having Watched A Number of His Previous Documentaries And His David Dimbleby Lecture ). We Love Italy Too So We Simply Couldn’t Resist When We Saw This Programme Advertised On Sky Arts TV Recently.
A Two Hour Documentary, Just A Few Days Before Christmas Was Quite A Big Ask But We Have To Say ‘Bravo’ As The Time Flew By And It Was A Delicious Dickens Deep Dive. As It’s The Festive Season We Share Share With You That So Moving Was This Pre-Christmas Italian Escape, That We Were Moved To Tears.
Dickens Has A Way of Making One Do That. Harewood Is Forever Honing His Presentation Skills. And It’s Also The Festive Season. So That’s Our Excuse. It Happened In The Second Part of This Two Part Excellent Documentary.
But Here’s The Thing. Whilst Being A Champion of The Poor, Dickens Was Not As Philanthropic As First Thought. That’s A Discovery TheOrator.Press Made On A Dickens’ Journey All of Our Own Earlier This Month, Much Closer To Home. What A Coincidence! Ironically Dual Chance Happenings Are Something Dickens Was Very Much Interested In.
But Like All Good Stories There’s A Beginning, A Middle And An End So We’ll Save That For Later And Instead Start Where David And Dickens Began Their Italian Adventure…
In Genoa.
Allora.
Andiamo!
Harewood’s ‘Dickens In Italy’ Visits Genoa
A Carillion Is A Collection of Connected Church Bells, Housed In A Church Bell Tower, Which Rings Out When Played With A Keyboard, Struck By A Tool Known As ‘A Pair of Clappers’. (Hence The Expression Going Like The Clappers.)
In Genoa David Meets Valerio Ruggerio A Bell Master At The Church of San Doneto And Witnesses How Church Chimes Are Made.
The Sound of These Very Same Bells Are Renowned To Have Inspired ‘The Chimes’ Written By Dickens In 1843, And Published January 1844.
A Christmas Carol Was Also Written In 1843 But It Was Published Later In The Same Year. This Redemption Story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Old), Next To The Dynasty Story of Oliver Twist (Young) (Written 5 Years Earlier In 1838) Would Become His Most Famous Work.
The Cricket On The Hearth Was Written In 1845. The Battle of Love Was Published In 1846.
The Haunted Man And The Ghost’s Bargin of 1848 Was The Last of His Five Christmas Novellas.
Easy Rider!
Harewood’s ‘Dickens In Italy’ Visits Rome
Having Visited Italy A Number of Times We Know That Navagating Italy’s Mean Streets Is Not For The Faint Hearted ( Even As A Tourist Just Crossing The Road). So Harewood Especially Impresses As He Appears To Deal With Them Rather Smoothly Whilst Driving Around The Country.
Detective Comminsario Montalbano Would Be Proud. Infact In The First Episode of This Two Part Italian Travelogue, Actor Michele Riondino, Who Plays The Young Montalbano (#IlGiovaneMontalbano) @Michele Riondino, Met Up With His Fellow Thespian @davidharewood And It Was A Pleasure To See These Two Fine Actors Conversing Together In One of The World’s Greatest Countries, In One of The World’s Greatest Cities, Despite Neither Being Fluent In Each of Their Respective Languages.
Despite The Detective Series Being Predominantly Set In Sicilly Not Rome. David Does Not Do Sicilly But He Does Do Napoli.
In Episode Two (of Two) He Also Mets Up With Another Italian Actor From Another Italian Crime Drama, The Popular But Grisley ‘Gomorrah’ About Napoli’s Underworld, Maria Piacalzone @mariapiacalzone.
It Was Her Introduction To A Group of Theatre Students That Became So Moving. Their Shared Accounts of How Theatre Helps Them Personally And Her Account of How Easy It Is To Travel From Major Misbehaviour At School Age, Into To Petty Crime Later On, And Then Ultimately Organised Crime Becoming The Final Destination, Are Amongst The Most Poignant Pieces of This Production.
Suffice To Say Now TV Is The Sky Arts Catch Up Service, For Those Who Haven’t Seen This Masterpiece Yet.
Harewood’s ‘Dickens In Italy’ Visits Venice
Another Great Element of The Documentary ‘Dickens In Italy’ Is Harewood’s Engagement With Various Italian Academics As He Courts Their Opinion On All Things Dickensian. In This Process He Gives A Number of Readings. To Us They Seem Over All Too Soon. Too Short In Length. We Were Left With A Feeling of ‘Please Sir Can We Have Some More?’ Because They Are So Engaging.
But These Real Life, Real Time, Real Italian Receipients of His Readings Seem Suitably Satisfied, Clearly Possessing A ‘Quality’ Not ‘Quantity’ Mindset. Italians Are Famous For Being All About ‘Quality’ Not ‘Quantity’. So Their Satisfaction Is A Big Compliment To Harewood Indeed.
He Also Narrates This, His Own Italian Documentary, And Has The Voice And Diction of A Trained Shakespearean Actor, Which Serves Him (…And Us) Very Well Throughout. Bravo @section52films We Have Great Expectations For Your Future Works!
The Dark Side of Charles Dickens
Sky Arts TV Thurs Dec 21 2023 8pm An Associate But Solo Production By Section 52 Films ‘Dickens: Phantom & Fiction’ Takes A Dedicated Deep Dive Into The Dickens Fascination With Human Psychology, Ghouls, Ghosts, Goblins And The Supernatural. Here Viewers Can Enjoy Longer Readings From The Darker And Scarier World of Charles Dickens.
Sky Arts TV Tuesday December 19 2023 8pm – 10pm (Available To Stream On Now TV)
Whilst Dickens Sympathized With The Working Classes, He Ultimately Supported The Merchant Classes When Legally Tested In A Famous Uprising Case In The Caribbean
Apart From Some of The Charles Dickens Novels What Is Also Scary Is How A Narrative & Image Can Be Built Around A Person Which Is Involves A Major Misrepresentation.
Whilst Dickens Is Discovered To Be More European In Perspective Than First Realised, The European Perspective On Africa And The Caribbean Involves A Painful History And Histories of Empires That Are Still Impacting African And Caribbean People Today.
Here The Colonial Perspective of Dickens Exposes Itself In The Story of The Infamous Jamaican Morant Bay Uprising of 1865.
John Stuart Mills And Granville Clarke Who Would Become A Supportive Voices For Emancipated Africans And Caribbeans.
Jamaican National Hero: Church Deacon Turned Martyr, Paul Bogle Led The Morant Bay Uprising of 1865 (Five Years Before Charles Dickens Met His Own Death).
TheOrator.Press Discovered Recently On A Visit To Bermondsey That The Lesser Told Tale of Dickens Is That Whilst His Popular Writings Expressed Sympathy And Empathy For The White Working Classes His More Secret Writings Referred To Black People As Savages And His Actions Spoke Louder Than His Words When He Became A Member of The Eyre Defence Committee.
This Group Helped Raise Funds For The Jamaican Governor’s Legal Defence After He Faced Charges For His Suppression Atrocities During And After The Morant Bay Uprising.
Indeed As Dickens Himself Knew All To Well, Things Aren’t Always As They Seem.
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