D.W. Griffith's Isn't Life Wonderful? 1924

A silent film directed by D. W. Griffith for his company D. W. Griffith Productions, and distributed by United Artists. It was based on the novel by Geoffrey Moss and it went under the alternative title Dawn.

A family from Poland has been left homeless in the wake of World War I. They move to Germany and struggle to survive the conditions there, during the Great Inflation. Inga (Carol Dempster) is a Polish war orphan who has only accumulated a small amount of money from the rubble and hopes to marry Paul (Neil Hamilton). Weakened by poison gas, Paul begins to invest in Inga's future and he serves as their symbol of optimism. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry refers to the film in a letter to Carol Brown dated April 1926; "I say: isn't Life wonderful? (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 12).

Sherrill Grace in her annotations to the Collected Letters Vol 1 states that the film is:

"....about two young lovers who respond to being robbed with the cheerful remark: 'Isn't Life Wonderful?'. They end up living happily married in a pretty cottage. The film stayed in Lowry's mind, and he used it as a thematic motif in October Ferry to Gabriola. See my discussion of the allusion in The Voyage That Never Ends (88-89)."

D W Griffith's Intolerance 1916

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a Judean story: Christ’s mission and death; a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572; and a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC.

Intolerance was made partly in response to critics who protested against Griffith's previous film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), charging that it had overt racist content, characterizing racism as people's intolerance of other people's views. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry refers to the film several times; in his film script for Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night; "Abe gives his own background in movies: "I saw Buster Keaton in Seven Chances - I saw Intolerance." (The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry: a scholarly edition of Lowry's "Tender is the Night" Pg.73 ); later in October Ferry to Gabriola; "No, but what's really funny, it was a D.W. Griffith film, Intolerance — or maybe Way Down East." Or perhaps (and ah, the eerie significance of cinemas in our life, Ethan thought, as if they related to the afterlife, as if we knew." (Pg.29) and in a letter to Downie Kirk dated 13 December 1950; "We went to see the old silent film Intolerance - played straight through without any music at all - a great mistake, since Griffith wrote his own score." (Collected Letters Vol 2 Pg.307 )

MG F-Type Magna

The MG F-type Magna was a six-cylinder-engined car produced by the MG Car company from October 1931 to 1932. It was also known as the 12/70. Fitted with 1 in (25 mm) twin SU carburettors it produced 37.2 bhp (27.7 kW) at 4100 rpm at first, later increased to 47 bhp (35 kW) by revising the valve timing. Drive was to the rear wheels through a four-speed non-synchromesh gearbox of ENV manufacture. The chassis was a 10-inch (250 mm) longer version of the one from the MG D-type with suspension by half-elliptic springs and Hartford friction shock absorbers all round with rigid front and rear axles. Wire wheels with 4.00 x 19 tyres and centre lock fixing were used. The car had a wheelbase of 94 in (2,388 mm) and a track of 42 in (1,067 mm). With its sloping radiator and long bonnet the F-Type is an attractive car capable of reaching 70 mph (110 km/h). 188 of the cars were supplied in chassis form to outside coachbuilders such as Abbey, Jarvis, Stiles and Windover. Read more on Wikipedia 

After Lowry was released Morteonhampstead Cottage Hospital, he decided that he needed a car like (James) Travers but better (Draft Dark as the Grave Wherein Lies My Friend Pg 692). Lowry recalled the MG Magna that Tom Forman wanted to sell and went to London. However, Tom Forman gave him the car as a present. Somehow, Lowry with the help of James Travers got the car down where he was staying at the Vernon Court Hotel in Torquay Devon.(Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 160). Though he took instruction from Travers, Lowry was too nervous to drive the car alone.

In September, Travers invited him to a pub crawl with Bob Pocock and told Lowry to bring the car. Lowry drove from Torquay by himself to Chagford embarking on a drinking spree with Travers and Pocock. After leaving the Three Crowns Hotel in Chagford, Lowry crashed the car on a narrow road while following Travers back to his farm - 'disembowelled it on a great tombstone of a rock' (Gordon Day Malcolm Lowry Pg. 181). Jan Gabrial recalled the car; "He'd wrecked his short-lived MG Magna, but was fortunately unhurt. Thank God I had not been with him when he crashed!" Jan says that though the car was a wreck, Lowry still talked about driving in it to the South France; "When we go to the South of France we must take the MG" (Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano" Pg. 22). Arthur Lowry arranged for the car to be towed back to Liverpool.

Lowry refers to the car in his novel Under The Volcano; "......The English "King's Parade" voice, scarcely above him, the Consul saw now, of an extremely long low car drawn up beside him, murmurous: an MG Magna.....(Pg. 84); in October Ferry to Gabriola; "Nor their towing the MG away — it was still the same one (and one of the few of its kind, that special 1932 four-seater convertible MG Magna "University" model), like the sporting hearse..." (Pg. 115)

Charon

Gustave Doré Charon 

Charon is the ferryman in Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. 


A re-occuring figure in Lowry's work; “Your lights are bright Mr Charon” ‘In Le Havre’; “The ferry, quite as Charon’s boat, knows death” (‘Freighter 1940’ in Collected Poems 143); a Robert Charon was a passenger on the S.S. Brest the ship Lowry sailed on from America to France in 1947 (Letter to John Davenport Collected Letters     Vol. 2 111); Lowry wrote the short story ‘Through The Panama’ based on the 1947 voyage and included the character Charon; “a glum Charon’s boat, plying up and down between mountains” (October Ferry to Gabriola Pg. 49); “So might Charon’s boat appeared, Ethan thought, when hell was nearly brand-new” (October Ferry to Gabriola 287). Charon is also archetype for Scrubby the character in Sutton Vane’s play Outward Bound, which was highly influential on Lowry.