Monday, May 07, 2012
Love Story
— Orson Welles on Make Way for Tomorrow
By John Cochrane
No one film dominated the 1937 Academy Awards, but with the country still in the grips of the Great Depression and slowly realizing Europe’s inevitable march back into war, the subtle theme of the evening in early 1938 seemed to be distant escapism — anything to help people forget the troubled times at home. The Life of Emile Zola, a period biopic set in France, won best picture. Spencer Tracy received his first best actor Oscar, playing a Portuguese sailor in Captains Courageous, and Luise Rainer was named best actress for a second year in a row, playing the wife of a struggling Chinese farmer in the morality tale The Good Earth.
Best director that year went to Hollywood veteran Leo McCarey for The Awful Truth. McCarey’s resume was impressive. He paired Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together as a team, and he had directed, supervised or helped write much of their best silent work. He had collaborated with W.C. Fields, Charley Chase, Eddie Cantor, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, George Burns and Gracie Allen — almost an early Hollywood Comedy Hall of Fame. He had also directed the Marx Brothers in the freewheeling political satire Duck Soup (1933) — generally now considered their best film. The Awful Truth was a screwball comedy about an affluent couple whose romantic chemistry constantly sabotages their impending divorce that starred Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy — and a breakout performance by a handsome leading man named Cary Grant — who supposedly had based a lot of his on-screen persona on the personality of his witty and elegant director. Addressing the Academy, the affable McCarey said “Thank you for this wonderful award. But you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”
The picture that McCarey was referring to was his earlier production from 1937, titled Make Way for Tomorrow — an often tough and unsentimental drama about an elderly couple who loses their home to foreclosure and must separate when none of their children are able or willing to take them both in. The film opened to stellar reviews and promptly died at the box office — being unknown to most people for decades. Fortunately, recent events have begun to rectify this oversight as this buried American cinematic gem turns 75 years old.
Based on Josephine Lawrence’s novel The Years Are So Long, the film opens at the cozy home of Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi), who have been married for 50 years. Four of their five children have arrived for what they believe will be a joyous family dinner — until Bark breaks the news that he hasn’t been able to keep up with the
mortgage payments since being out of work and that the bank will repossess the property within days. Bark and Lucy insist that they will stay together, regardless of what happens. With little time to plan, the family decides that, for the time being, Lucy will move to New York to live with their eldest son George’s family in their apartment, while Bark will be 360 miles away — sleeping on the couch at the home of their daughter Cora (Elisabeth Risdon) and her unemployed husband Bill (Ralph Remley). For the film's first hour or so, we see Bark and Lucy trying to adjust to their new surroundings. While George (an excellent Thomas Mitchell) tries to be as pleasant and accommodating to his mother as possible, his wife Anita (Fay Bainter) and daughter Rhoda (Barbara Read) display little patience and dislike the disruption of their routines. Meanwhile, Bark spends his time walking around his new hometown, looking for a job and visiting a new friend, a local shopkeeper named Max Rubens (Maurice Moscowitz).Many filmmakers develop a visual signature that dominates their work, but McCarey employs a fairly basic and straightforward style, using group and reaction shots as well as perceptive editing that places the emphasis on the actors and the story. Working with screenwriter Vina Delmar, McCarey creates set pieces that blend touches of light comedy and everyday drama that feel so correct and truthful that audiences likely feel a sometimes uncomfortable recognition with them. Often, this stems from McCarey's use of improvisation to sharpen his scenes before filming them. If short on ideas, he would play a nearby piano on the set until he figured out what to do. This practice creates a freshness that, as Peter Bogdanovich points out, gives the impression that what you’re watching wasn't planned but just happened. A large part of the film’s greatness also comes from the cast, headed by Moore and Bondi as Bark and Lucy. Both theatrically trained actors, vaudeville star Moore (age 61) and future Emmy winner Bondi (age 48), through the wonders of make-up and black and white photography prove completely convincing as an elderly couple in their 70s.
Moore performs terrifically as the blunt, but loving Bark. Bondi gives an even better turn as Lucy. In one scene, representative of McCarey’s direction and Bondi’s performance, Lucy inadvertently interrupts a bridge-playing class being taught by her daughter-in-law at the apartment by making small talk and noticing the cards in players’ hands. She’s an intrusion, but by the end of the evening, after being abandoned by her granddaughter at the movies and returning home, she takes a phone call in the living room from her husband. Critic Gary Giddins notes that as the class listens in to her side of the conversation, she becomes highly sympathetic — and the scene now flips with the card students visibly moved and feeling invasive of her space and privacy. Then there’s the crucial scene where Lucy sees the writing on the wall and offers to move out of the apartment and into a nursing home without Bark’s knowledge, before her family can commit her — so as not to be a burden to them anymore. She shares a loving moment with her guilt-ridden son George. (“You were always my favorite child,” she sincerely tells him.) His disappointment in himself in the scene’s coda resonates deeply. Lucy’s character seems meek and easily taken advantage of when we first meet her, but she’s really the strongest person in the story. It’s her love and sacrifice for her husband and family that give the movie much of its emotional weight, and the unforgettable final shot belongs to her.
McCarey and Delmar create totally believable characters and it should be pointed out that while friendly, decent people, Bark and Lucy, by no means, lack flaws. Bark doesn't make a particularly good patient when sick in bed two-thirds of the way through the story, and Lucy stands firm in her ways and beliefs — traits that can annoy, but people can be that way. Even the children aren’t bad — they have reasons that the audience can understand — even if we don’t agree with their often seemingly selfish or preoccupied behavior. This delicate skill of observation was not lost on McCarey’s good friend, the great French director Jean Renoir, who once said, “McCarey understands people better than anyone in Hollywood.”
As memorable a first hour as Make Way for Tomorrow delivers, McCarey saves the best moments for the film’s third act. Bark and Lucy meet one last time in New York, hours before his train departure for California to live with their unseen daughter Addie for health reasons. For the first time since the opening scene, the couple finally reunites. The last 20 minutes of the picture overflows with what Roger Ebert refers to in his Great Movies essay on the film as mono no aware — which roughly translated means “a bittersweet sadness at the passing of all things.” Regrets, but nothing that Bark and Lucy really would change if they had to do everything over again.
Throughout the story, the Coopers often have been humiliated or brushed off by their children. When a car salesman (Dell Henderson) mistakes them for a wealthy couple and takes them for a ride in a fancy car, the audience cringes — expecting another uncomfortable moment — but then something interesting happens. As they arrive at their destination and an embarrassed Bark and Lucy explain that there’s been a misunderstanding, the salesman tactfully assuages their concerns. He allows them to save face, by saying his pride in the car made him want to show it off. Walking into The Vogard Hotel where they honeymooned 50 years ago, the Coopers get treated like friends or VIPs — first by a hat check girl (Louise Seidel) and then by the hotel manager (Paul Stanton), who happily takes his time talking to them and comps their bar tab. Bark and Lucy's children expect their parents at George’s apartment for dinner, but Bark phones them to say that they won't be coming.
At one point, we see the couple from behind as they sit together, sharing a loving moment of intimate conversation. As Lucy leans toward her husband to kiss him, she seems to notice the camera and demurely stops herself from such a public display of affection. It’s an extraordinary sequence that’s followed by another one when Bark and Lucy get up to dance. As they arrive on the dance floor, the orchestra breaks into a rumba and the Coopers seem lost and out of place. The watchful bandleader notices them, without a word, quickly instructs the musicians to switch to the love song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Bark gratefully acknowledges the conductor as he waltzes Lucy around the room. Then the clock strikes 9, and Bark and Lucy rush off to the train station for the film’s closing scene.
Paramount studio head Adolph Zukor reportedly visited the set several times, pleading with his producer-director to change the ending, but McCarey — who saw the movie as a labor of love and a personal tribute to his recently deceased father — wouldn’t budge. The film was released to rave reviews, though at least one reviewer couldn’t recommend it because it would “ruin your day.” Industry friends and colleagues such as John Ford and Frank Capra were deeply impressed. McCarey even received an enthusiastic letter from legendary British playwright George Bernard Shaw, but the Paramount marketing department didn’t know what to do with the picture. Audiences, still facing a tough economy, didn’t want to see a movie about losing your home and being marginalized in old age. They stayed away, while the Motion Picture Academy didn’t seem to notice. McCarey was fired from his contract at Paramount (later rebounding that year at Columbia with the unqualified success of The Awful Truth), and the film seemed to disappear from view for many years.
The movie never was forgotten completely though. Screenwriter Kogo Noda, who wrote frequently with the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, saw the film and used it as an inspiration for Ozu’s masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953), in which an elderly couple journey to the big city to visit their adult children and quietly realize that their offspring don’t have time for them in their busy lives — only temporarily getting their full attention when one of the parents unexpectedly dies during the trip home. Ironically, Ozu’s film also would be unknown to most of the world for decades, until exported in the early 1970s, almost 10 years after the master filmmaker’s death. Tokyo Story, with its sublime simplicity and quiet insight into human nature now is considered by many critics and filmmakers to be one of the greatest movies ever made — placing high in the Sight & Sound polls of 1992 and 2002. In the meantime, Make Way for Tomorrow slowly started getting more attention in its own right, probably sometime in the mid- to late 1960s. Although the movie never was released on VHS, it occasionally was shown enough on television to garner a devoted underground following. More recently, the movie played at the Telluride Film Festival, where audiences at sold out screenings were stunned by its undeniable quality and its powerful, timeless message. Make Way for Tomorrow was finally was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection and was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress on the National Film Registry in 2010.
The funny phenomenon of how audiences in general dislike unhappy endings, and yet somehow our psyches depend on them always proves puzzling. Classics such as Casablanca (1942), Vertigo (1958), The Third Man (1949 U.K.; 1950 U.S.) and even the fictional romance in a more contemporary hit such as Titanic (1997) wouldn't carry the same stature or mystique in popular culture if they somehow had been pleasantly resolved. Life often disappoints and turns out unpredictably, messy and frequently filled with loss. Even though many people claim they don’t like sad stories, it comforts somehow to know that we aren’t alone — that others understand and feel similarly as we do about life’s experiences. It’s what makes us human.
Make Way for Tomorrow serves as many things. It’s a movie about family dynamics and the Fifth Commandment. Gary Giddins points out that it’s also a message film about the need for a safety net such as Social Security — which hadn't been fully implemented when the
picture was released. It’s a plea for treating each other with more kindness — in a culture that increasingly pushes the old aside to embrace the young and the new, and it’s one of the saddest movies ever made. At its most basic level, it’s a tender love story between two people who have spent most of their lives together — knowing each other so well that words often seem unnecessary. However you choose to look at it, Make Way for Tomorrow remains one of the greatest American films — certainly a strong contender for the best classic Hollywood movie that most people have never heard of. Leo McCarey would create highly successful hits that were more sentimental later on in his career — including the enjoyable romance Love Affair (1939) and its subsequent color remake An Affair to Remember (1957), starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. He also would direct Bing Crosby as a charismatic priest in 1944’s Going My Way (7 Oscars — including picture, director, actor) and its superior sequel, 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s (8 nominations, 1 win), co-starring Ingrid Bergman, but he never forgot about Make Way for Tomorrow, which remained a personal favorite until the day he died from emphysema in 1969. Leo McCarey did not live to see his masterpiece fully appreciated, but that wasn't necessary. In 1938, he knew the film’s value.It’s a marvelous picture. Bring plenty of Kleenex.
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Labels: 30s, Bellamy, Bogdanovich, Capra, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Ebert, Fields, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne, John Ford, Luise Rainer, Marx Brothers, McCarey, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Renoir, T. Mitchell, Tracy, Welles
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Friday, March 16, 2012
Only Connect
By Josh R
Adapting a classic novel to the screen is a delicate proposition; with so many ways to go wrong, it’s always slightly unexpected when someone manages to get it entirely right. In many cases, filmmakers adopt an overly reverential stance to their source material; the approach is typified by lavish sets, swelling scores, and resplendently costumed actors speaking as though they’d learned all their lines in elocution class. The screenplays can be slavishly faithful to their source material, to the extent that the end product feels like a pop-up edition of Cliff's Notes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there will always be certain filmmakers (or auteurs, if you please) who feel compelled to make radical departures from the original, to the point that the resulting film bears only a passing resemblance to the book that inspired it. The mentality that inspires these modifications is somewhat peculiar, in that it smacks of both overconfidence in one’s own interpretive abilities, and lack of confidence in the book. It is very rare — too rare, if we’re going to be honest — that filmmakers trust and appreciate their source material enough to bring it to the screen without treating it like a sacred relic to be handled with kid gloves, or putting it through the ringer and revamping, augmenting and revising the content beyond the point of recognition (or at least beyond the point where the authors — if still living — could resist the urge to sue.) That’s the reason why Merchant Ivory’s superlative production of Howards End, based on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel, stands as one of the best and most satisfying examples of literary adaptation ever produced for the screen. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of its U.S. release this week, it exemplifies how rich an experience a great writing-directing team can create for an audience, merely by respecting the material and keeping things simple.
Howards End followed 1986’s A Room With a View and 1987’s Maurice as the third film adapted from a Forster novel by the veteran team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their affinity and affection for the material is unmistakable; one of the chief distinctions of Howards End is the ease with which the filmmakers capture the style and tone of Forster’s prose, without getting tangled up in the pursuit of trying to replicate it too faithfully. It should be said that the book — a beautifully written, thematically complex evocation of the rapidly changing social climate of late-Edwardian England — is not an ideal candidate for cinematic adaptation. While not exactly short on plot, much of the action takes the form of conversation, with Forster’s own observations about class, social politics and assorted esoterica (the magical properties of Beethoven’s compositions, for example) taking up a fair amount of space. Jhabvala’s elegant treatment expertly condenses the content of the novel without narrowing its scope; the screenplay manages to be economical without feeling cursory or abridged, or giving short shrift to any of the points the Forster hoped to convey in his illustration of the clashing temperaments, ideas and values of two very different families merging into one.
The repercussions of the unlikely, somewhat uncomfortable union of the Wilcoxes and Schlegels are mordantly humorous on one level, tragic on another. In a way, the novel anticipates what was to happen to Britain in the years immediately following its publication — while Forster couldn’t have augured what was on the horizon (the rumblings were felt in 1910, but the wolf had yet to arrive at the door), his considerations hearken to an impending war abroad that would change forever the rules at home. With the Victorian world poised on the brink of cataclysm, and its quaint, restrictive mandates about class, morality and gender roles being rendered increasingly obsolete, Howards End charts the fallout from a collision of the members of the old guard grounded in the traditions of the past with an intrepid new breed determined to topple the old world order. How far will people go in the vain attempt to hold on to what’s slipping from their grasp, Forster wonders, and how will they adapt in the face of inevitable change? Above all, how do the proponents of two wildly divergent philosophies and outlooks, meeting at the intersection of the death of an Empire and the dawn of a a new era characterized by turbulent social upheaval, not only coexist, but communicate, compromise and connect? The opening epigraph of Howards End is, in fact, “Only connect”; a simple directive in theory, if infinitely more complicated in practice.
The thorny considerations at the heart of the author’s scheme — in a work the critic and essayist Lionel Trilling, among others, considered to be Forster’s masterpiece — are neatly encapsulated in the dealings between a small circle of friends, relations and acquaintances representing three distinct social classes. At the center of the narrative are Margaret and Helen Schlegel (Emma Thompson and Helena
Bonham Carter), two sisters with progressive leanings living on a genteel middle-class income in London — the bohemian social circle of writers, intellectuals and rabble-rousers they frequent is loosely modeled on The Bloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a member. Vacationing abroad, the Schlegels meet and befriend another pair of English tourists, the wealthy business magnate Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave). When Helen accepts an invitation to join the Wilcoxes at Howards End, Mrs. Wilcox's pastoral childhood home in the English Countryside, she forms a hasty, impetuous attachment to their younger son, Paul (Joseph Bennett). When their short-lived flirtation concludes on an awkward, mutually embarrassing note, the two families are briefly estranged. Margaret reconnects with the frail Mrs. Wilcox in London, where their renewed acquaintance soon develops into a strong bond of friendship; Margaret is both intrigued and moved by Mrs. Wilcox’s deep connection to the traditions of the past and the natural world, represented by Howards End. Before her death, Ruth wills the house to Margaret — Mr. Wilcox and his two other adult children, Charles and Evie (James Wilby and Jemma Redgrave — daughter of Corin, niece to Vanessa), deliberately decide to withhold the existence of the will from Margaret’s attention, unwilling to cede ownership of what they consider to be theirs by familial right. 
Through a chance encounter, Margaret and Helen strike up an acquaintance with Leonard Bast (Samuel West), a shy young clerk from a modest, lower-class background. Adopting him as a de facto protege and seeking to improve his prospects, the sisters apply to Mr. Wilcox for advice. Mr. Wilcox gives them a faulty piece of insider information about Leonard’s place of employment — which he believes to be on the brink of ruin — that will eventually result in Leonard leaving his job, and unable to obtain employment elsewhere. Meanwhile, Mr. Wilcox finds himself becoming increasingly drawn to Margaret and, after some tentative attempts at courtship, surprises her with an offer of marriage. She accepts his proposal, to the confusion and consternation of Helen, who struggles to comprehend how her sister can forsake their shared ideals to assume the mantle of a traditional wife and helpmate to a conservative capitalist.
While the prospective in-laws adjust to the shifting dynamics of their changing relationships, Helen learns that the unemployed Leonard and his wife, Jacky (Nicola Duffet), have been reduced to a life of subsistence-level poverty. An enraged Helen shows up unexpectedly at Evie’s wedding with the Basts in tow, and angrily confronts Margaret with the consequences of Mr. Wilcox’s casually given, ultimately very costly advice. Seeking to pacify Helen and avoid further conflict, Margaret applies to Henry for help — while he feels no personal responsibility for the Basts’ circumstances, Mr. Wilcox agrees to provide Leonard with a position at his company. When Mr. Wilcox and Mrs. Bast meet face-to-face, Jacky recognizes him as her former lover. A humiliated Mr. Wilcox is forced to admit to Margaret that he not only betrayed the trust of his previous wife, but did so with a woman far below his station in life, whom he subsequently (and rather callously) discarded after tiring of the relationship. Against her own misgivings, Margaret decides to forgive Henry and keep the engagement intact; in a curt, peremptory note to Helen, she informs her that Mr. Wilcox can be of no assistance to the Basts, and orders her sister to abandon her sponsorship of the couple.
As the now-married Margaret and increasingly rootless Helen drift further apart, the latter has a brief affair with Leonard, resulting in a pregnancy. Upon learning of Helen’s condition — and the status of social outcast conferred upon her as an unwed mother — Margaret asks Mr. Wilcox to allow her sister to stay at Howards End. Henry refuses, believing that Helen’s compromised position would bring disgrace
upon the family. Margaret angrily confronts her husband with his hypocrisy, and repairs with Helen to Howards End in flagrant disregard for his instructions. When Leonard — whose identity as the father of Helen’s child has been ascertained by the Wilcoxes — arrives unexpectedly at Howards End in search of Helen, his appearance results in a violent confrontation with a tragic denouement. While no one emerges entirely unscathed, both the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes find there is room for reconciliation, forgiveness, renewal and — perhaps most critically of all — a fundamental shift in values, paired with hope for the future. While the two families, representing the traditional and the modern, will never view the world in exactly the same way, they have at least managed to achieve a measure of balance. Complete understanding can elude even the most devoted of friends, lovers and family members; if we can “only connect,” those who seek to bridge the gap can, at the very least, respect each other’s limitations and forgive each other’s frailties. Forster poses, but offers no definitive conclusion about, the question of who shall inherit England, and whose values and ideals shall give shape to the future; he only concludes that the future cannot improve upon the past in the absence of a true meeting of the minds. Whenever I watch Howards End — as I do periodically, when the depressingly reductive nature of most films based on books I love becomes too much for me to bear — I’m always struck by the naturalism of Ivory’s approach, atypical not only of literary adaptations, but period pieces in general. While the film certainly is beautiful to look at (Luciana Arrighi and Ian Whitaker’s production design received an Oscar, while Jenny Beaven and John Bright’s costumes and Tony Pierce-Roberts’ cinematography also were nominated), there’s nothing over-scaled, overwrought or just plain over-the-top about the visual component of the film. The world of the Howards End is drawn from recognizable reality, as opposed to a heightened fantasy version of Edwardian times (for a bit of comparison — start grinding your teeth now, Copeland — the design aspects of the following year’s The Age of Innocence were so damn amplified and prettified the thing might as well have been set in Disney World.) This blessedly unfettered approach extends to the way Ivory has managed the members of his cast. The film is refreshingly unencumbered by actors striking the romantic poses of Victorian thespians, or intoning their lines as if they were auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company; it seems hard for many contemporary directors to accept that, even a hundred years ago, people still spoke to each other in a conversational fashion. The characters of Howards End may find themselves in melodramatic situations, but their actions and behaviors never strike a false note, or smack of affectation. Likewise, the original score provided by Richard Robbins — augmented with a few selections by classical composer Percy Grainger — is richly evocative without being intrusive; the music underscores the action while resisting the urge to provide easy, obvious emotional cues.
It’s so easy — and really, a little exhausting — to enumerate and expound upon the plethora of acuminous decisions that went into the making of Howards End, and talk about how seamlessly its various elements fit together; but the creative team (with particular credit going to Merchant) most emphatically demonstrated their love and respect for the material in terms of their casting choices. When it comes to casting projects with ostensibly little in the way of commercial appeal, the standard practice involves enlisting the talents of bankable stars; had Howards End been made by a major Hollywood studio in the early '90s, Forster’s intrepid Schlegel sisters might well
have been entrusted to Julia Roberts and Demi Moore (if that was the film that had been made, methinks yours truly would not be writing this 20th anniversary Tribute.) Certainly, Merchant Ivory wasn’t enough of a financial powerhouse — even in the wake of several notable successes — to afford the type of big names that a Tinseltown outfit might have foisted upon the project. Still, the men who controlled the purse strings could have advocated for more in the way of name recognition (The Silence of the Lambs had yet to be released at the time of the film’s shooting) in drafting the film’s ensemble. Instead, they chose to pair rich, challenging roles with actors of commensurate talent who fit the descriptions provided by Forster. Watching the film, you can’t shake the implausible impression that the author must have been writing these characters with these specific players in mind; every member of the cast delivers an emotionally authentic performance that not only highlights Forster’s keen observations on human nature, but embodies the descriptions contained in his prose with an uncanny degree of exactitude. Fresh from his lip-smacking tutorial on scenery-chewing as Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins showed that he was able to shift gears with surprising dexterity. His Henry Wilcox is a masterful study in restraint, rigidity and misplaced confidence. While he is often unlikable, his unflappable certainty and sense of masculine entitlement have a certain magnetic quality; an audience can still understand why the heroine would be drawn to him almost in spite of herself. It’s to the actor’s credit that by the end of the film, the viewer actually can feel a certain degree of sympathy for this hidebound specimen of Victorian prerogatives who can’t adjust to the changing times, or comprehend how little control he has over his own destiny. Samuel West, with his gawky gait and naturally downcast features, does a very fine job of fleshing out the inchoate yearnings of Leonard Bast, grounding a character conceived on a very romantic level. It would be easy for a more conventional performer to come across as too poetic and tragic for words — fortunately, West brings enough quirky specificity to his performance that he doesn’t simply register as delicate and doomed. James Wilby — who played the title role in Maurice — provides a nice vignette of unctuousness coupled with doltishness as the uncomprehending elder son, whose very lack of imagination renders him capable of destruction. 
As fine as the male cast members are, Howards End really belongs to the women — and they are a wonder to behold. As the least-known member of the principal cast, Emma Thompson received fourth billing as Margaret Schlegel; for graciously ceding that status to Hopkins, Redgrave and Bonham Carter, she received the best actress Oscar, along with about every other prize the international awards-giving community had to offer. To many, her rapid ascent from virtual unknown to unstoppable trophy magnet registered as a bolt from the blue; while she had been impressive on previous occasions, most notably opposite her then-husband, Kenneth Branagh, in the BBC miniseries Fortunes of War, it was by virtue of her revelatory performance in Howards End that her film career was launched in earnest. Really, it’s very fortunate that 1992 was such a weak year for leading ladies, a fact Thompson tacitly commented on during her acceptance speech in wishing aloud for “the creation of more great female roles.” Performances this subtle don’t usually win Academy Awards; even before the voting began, the British novice already had a big advantage over her more established competition by virtue of being in the only film on voters’ radar screens (most of the people I went to school with in 1993 hadn’t even heard of the other nominees’ films, let alone seen them - I remain unconvinced that Love Field and Lorenzo’s Oil played on any screens outside of New York and Los Angeles.) In retrospect, it’s no surprise that the actress' career blossomed as quickly as it did in the wake of that acknowledgement — as Margaret Schlegel, she exhibited some of the special brand of self-possession, equal parts intelligence and radiance, that Deborah Kerr trafficked in so well for more than 20 years as a Hollywood staple, tempered with a quickness and quirkiness unique to Emma Thompson.
There are so many moments in Thompson’s performance to treasure — the staircase proposal scene alone is essential viewing for acting students — and her choices are disarmingly original. With the flashes of wit and halting sensuality she brings to the part, it’s fair to say that her creation is actually an improvement on Forster’s (the Margaret of the novel is a bit on the earnest side), and she brings a sense of dramatic coherency to a character whose motives are sometimes difficult to fully accept at the author’s insistence. Margaret is a spirited, independent woman with a lively, intelligent mind and a practical sensibility; in forsaking her values, she is not merely a sheep being led meekly to the slaughter, but the willing architect of her own moral compromise. It’s the shades of loneliness and yearning Thompson brings to the role, as well as her expert communication of Margaret’s dawning awareness of herself as a desirable, attractive woman and growing fascination with Wilcox’s dynamic clarity of mind and purpose, that make the transitions seem logical.
As great as Thompson is — and really, her performance is both the soul of the film and the motor that drives it — Bonham Carter’s contribution in the role of Helen was and remains greatly undervalued. I particularly appreciate her interplay with Thompson; the actresses complement each other beautifully, and strike up a rhythm that truly suggests (as Forster asserts) that the sisters are two halves of the same whole. When they’re finishing each other’s sentences, or reacting to things in unison with near identical physical responses, it seems natural to accept that these two women have been a constant presence in each other's lives since childhood. When the rift between the sisters goes into effect, Bonham Carter displays a fire and urgency unlike anything in her previous work. Helen’s dramatic flashes of temper, the product of being uncertain of her place in the world once she’s lost her moorings (you still feel the tug of symbiotic sibling relationships once you become a solo act), never seem overstated; the sense of hurt and confusion that fuel her character’s behavior are made explicit, without being hammered home too emphatically.
Finally, there is Vanessa Redgrave, who was initially noncommittal when offered the role of Ruth Wilcox. She relented when Merchant told her she could basically name her own price — a gutsy move for the producer of a film being made on a limited budget. Whatever figure the two resolved upon, her services were worth every pound of Merchant’s money; no other actress could have played the part with the same degree of luminousness and lyricism. There’s always been a vague, dreamy quality about Vanessa Redgrave, coupled with an air of inscrutability — a friend of mine once speculated it might be the product of her having dropped too much acid in the '60s (I don’t believe this for a second — but if drug use will help any of today’s young actresses approximate the qualities of Vanessa Redgrave, I say Get Thee to a Dealer.) The character of Ruth is more of a literary conceit than a flesh-and-blood woman; she’s a symbolic Earth Mother figure tied to the land, the properties of nature, and pre-Christian mysticism; ancestral voices are supposed to reverberate in her presence. With her lovely, elegiac performance, Vanessa Redgrave actually makes sense of Ruth as a person. The shades of wistfulness and melancholy she brings to the part lend Ruth’s predicament — that of an ethereal, isolated onlooker bewildered by the modern world, unknowable even to those who love her most — an almost unbearable element of poignancy. It’s a towering performance, delivered on a human scale.
After all this, it is with a certain degree of reluctance that I’ll admit that Howards End is not bound to be everyone’s cup of veddy British tea. For those who prefer films with less resonance — where everything is pitched faster, louder and without much in the way of subtlety — there are surely no lack of entertainments to provide satisfaction (and numbness). Speaking only for myself, I find it heartening to revisit Howards End — a prime example of how good filmmaking can be when a great director, screenwriter, producer and cast embrace and honor the novel they’re bringing from the page to the screen. Forster’s epigraph should serve as guidance for anyone attempting an exercise in literary adaptation: Only Connect.
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Labels: 90s, Books, Branagh, Deborah Kerr, Demi, Emma Thompson, Fiction, H.B. Carter, Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins, Julia Roberts, Merchant Ivory, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Vanessa Redgrave
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Thursday, February 16, 2012
The waiting isn't the hardest part
By Edward Copeland
Glenn Close's fascination with the story of Albert Nobbs began in 1982, the same year she made her film debut in The World According to Garp where she vividly brought John Irving's character of Jenny Fields to cinematic life and was robbed of an Oscar for her efforts by Jessica Lange's win for Tootsie, when Lange wasn't even the best supporting actress in Tootsie. Before I watched the film of Albert Nobbs, I hadn't heard many complimentary things about the movie but it surprised me. Much of Albert Nobbs, especially in the earlygoing, plays more as a comedy and a solid ensemble brings its canvas of characters to entertaining life, most notably Oscar nominee Janet McTeer. To be sure, Albert Nobbs contains flaws and, ironically, its biggest weakness lies in the performance of the actress whose perseverance got the film made in the first place.
For those unfamiliar with the story of Albert Nobbs, it began life as a short story by Irish novelist George Moore called "The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs" in 1918 about a woman who lives disguised as a man for 30 years in 19th century Ireland in order to find work. Nobbs finds employment as a waiter at an upscale Dublin hotel and hopes to save enough money to open his/her own shop. A chance meeting with a painter leads Albert to discover another woman who lives as a man and has taken a wife as well, giving Albert the idea that perhaps she should take a bride when she makes her escape as well, setting her sights on a young maid who is having a torrid affair with another worker with plans to escape to America.
Simone Benmussa adapted the short story into a play and directed Close in the starring role in the summer of 1982 in a production presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club at Stage I of New York's City Center. Close won an Obie Award for her performance. In the nearly 30 years that followed, Close made it her mission to play the part on film. Close met one of her co-producers, Bonnie Curtis, on the film The Chumscrubber where Close handed Curtis a draft of a screenplay for Albert Nobbs and told her, "I must play this part on the big screen before I die." Now that she finally has achieved that dream, she not only plays Nobbs, Close also co-produced and co-wrote the film as well as the lyrics for an original song sung by Sinead O'Connor over the film's credits.
Albert Nobbs almost came to the screen first under the guidance of Hungary's great director Istvan Szabo (Mephisto) who directed Close in the 1991 film Meeting Venus. She gave Szabo a copy of Moore's short story and soon he handed her the first treatment for an Albert Nobbs movie so he still receives screen credit (though not on the Inaccurate Movie Database) for the treatment along with Moore for his story and Close, John Banville and Gabriella Prekop for screenplay.
In the majority of her duties on Albert Nobbs, Close seems to have performed well. She earned an Oscar nomination for best actress, but a lot of mediocre performances have been nominated (and won) before. Close's take on Albert Nobbs comes off as so stilted and mannered when compared to the performances of everyone else in the cast that she acts as if she's in a different movie. It's only accentuated because the actors and actresses that surround her carry themselves with such ease and that goes for seasoned vets such as Pauline Collins as the hotel's owner, Brenda Fricker as on, Brendan Gleeson, Phyllida Law and newer discoveries such as Mia Wasikowska and Aaron Johnson (the young John Lennon in 2010's Nowhere Boy).
Now, it isn't merely because Close portrays a woman pretending to be a man in the 19th century and Albert Nobbs isn't a comedy, though it does contain a fair amount of humor in it, because Janet McTeer also plays a woman pretending to be a man and she's brilliant. I was fortunate enough to see McTeer live on Broadway as Nora in the 1997 revival of A Doll's House and she was spectacular (and deservedly won the Tony). She wowed again when she earned a lead actress Oscar nomination for her role in the 1999 film Tumbleweeds directed by Gavin O'Connor when he made interesting movies before he turned to junk such as Warrior.
In the lead paragraph, I brought up Tootsie (in a different context admittedly) but Dustin Hoffman's work as Dorothy Michaels in that film is so great because after awhile, you not only forget that it's Hoffman, you believe it's a woman. I wouldn't go that far with McTeer, but I find it more believable that her character of Hubert Page could pass for a man in 19th century Dublin than I could Close's Albert Nobbs. Hell, I'm not sure Nobbs would pass for a human.
You would think when the main character turns out to be a film's major deficit, the film itself would be doomed, but miraculously I enjoyed Albert Nobbs in spite of Albert Nobbs. Somehow, the rest of the cast, the script and the surefooted direction by Rodrigo Garcia (Mother and Child) more than compensate for Close's performance. (It's somewhat ironic because Close gave the only great performance in Bille August's awful 1993 all-star adaptation of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits that featured the rare bad Meryl Streep performance and a cast that also included Jeremy Irons, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Redgrave.)
I do sense that significant sections of the film were edited out based on the presence of actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. He plays a viscount who checks into the hotel with his wife. We see one brief scene that shows a naked man waking up in his bed in the morning and then we don't see him again until he and his wife check out. Something must have been left on the cutting room floor. It didn't add anything, so they might as well have cut out all those scenes.
Much of the behind-the-scenes work succeeds at a high level including cinematography by Michael McDonough (Winter's Bone), production design by Patrizia von Brandenstein (Oscar winner for Amadeus) and costumes by Pierre-Yves Gayraud.
Albert Nobbs always will mystify me. I can think of major problems with the film, but I can't dispute the fact that I enjoyed it anyway. In a way, it's sort of a corollary to my idea that the purest test as to whether a movie works for you or not is if your mind wanders and you get bored. Albert Nobbs held my interest and I didn't have an unpleasant time watching it, even if a lot of Glenn Close's acting choices made me cringe. It's sad. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that when Close loses come Oscar night, that will make her 0 for 6, tying her with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter among actresses with the most nominations without winning (though Kerr's were all in lead and Ritter's were all in supporting while Close splits hers evenly three in each category).
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Labels: 10s, Awards, Deborah Kerr, Dustin Hoffman, Fiction, Glenn Close, Irving, J. Lange, Jeremy Irons, Oscars, Streep, Theater, Thelma Ritter, Vanessa Redgrave, Winona
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Monday, March 01, 2010
Centennial Tributes: David Niven
By Liz Hunt
It’s easy to celebrate the late actor David Niven’s life.
Today, Niven would have been 100. Had he lived, the Oscar-, British Academy Award- and Golden Globe-winning actor probably would have been a dapper, urbane gent with wavy white hair, a pencil-thin moustache and, as always, be 100 percent British.
He died July 29, 1983, at his home in Chateau-d’Oex, Switzerland, after a battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). He is buried there.
His 112 movies include best picture winner Around the World in 80 Days, the film that won him the Oscar, Separate Tables, The Guns of Navarone, the 007 farce Casino Royale and the original Pink Panther.
He was known for his gentle, self-deprecating manner, his light-hand with comedy, his depth as a dramatic actor, his friendships with screen stars Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Roger Moore, and his charming wit — whether aimed at Errol Flynn or a streaker dashing behind him during the 1974 Oscar ceremony.
James David Graham Niven was born in London in 1910. For years, his biography said he was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland, because he thought it sounded more romantic than London.
His father was Scottish, a British military officer who died at Gallipoli on Aug. 21, 1915. He was a landowner who left his wife Henrietta with four children, David, Max, Joyce and Grizel.
Niven’s wit emerged early. He said as a child he felt superior to others because when reciting the Lord’s Prayer in church, he thought it was written “Our Father, who art a Niven…”
When his mother remarried, Niven attended several boarding schools. He hated them, and his grades showed it, but his soldier father’s reputation helped him get into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He left there as a second lieutenant. He was asked where he wanted to serve and he wrote he’d be fine anywhere but the Highland Light Infantry, which was where he was posted. He later transferred to the Rifle Brigade. During his service, he was posted to Malta and charmed a number of highly placed people with his devil-may-care attitude and his dashing looks, a precursor of many of his future film roles.
After his military service, Niven took a number of odd jobs, including by his account, a gunnery instructor for Cuban revolutionaries. He arrived in Hollywood in the early 1930s had bit parts in films such as There Goes the Bride, Eyes of Fate and Cleopatra.
Samuel Goldwyn took an interest in the engaging young man in 1935, adding him to a group of attractive young contract players. He had several small roles for Goldwyn and was loaned to 20th Century Fox for the 1936 Thank You, Jeeves!
It was then he started making friends with fellow actors Flynn and several other British actors in Hollywood, and also made quite a splash with the ladies of the film world.
He had a few supporting roles and carried a few movies before 1939, when he returned to Britain to reenlist in the army’s Rifle Brigade. He left World War II to make two movies to rally British morale, Spitfire and The Way Ahead. Fellow actor Peter Ustinov served as his valet in the army.
Niven married Primula Rollo in 1940 and they had two children. Despite his fighting for six years, he came in second in the 1945 Popularity Poll of British film stars. When he returned to Hollywood, he was made a Legionnaire of the Order of Merit, the highest American order a non-American can earn. It was presented to Niven by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
His first major post-war film was working with Powell and Pressburger in Stairway to Heaven (known as A Matter of Life and Death in the U.K.) about a British aviator who after surviving a certain death must argue for his life before a celestial court.
His life changed when his wife died in an accident during a dinner party at Tyrone Power’s home in 1946. During a game of hide and seek, she opened a door and walked in, thinking it was a closet. It was the basement, and she fell downstairs, landed on concrete and died.
It was a low point in his life. In a 2009 biography of the actor, David Niven: The Man Behind the Balloon by Michael Munn, the author recalls an interview with Niven when he remembered one moment he toyed with suicide. The story was reported in U.S. tabloid the Globe and says that after his first wife died, he decided to shoot himself.
In that report, Niven said, “I took a gun and put the barrel in my mouth and with barely a thought for my children, which was unforgiveable, I pulled the trigger. And the bloody thing didn’t fire.” The act shocked Niven, and while he never knew why the gun didn’t fire, he knew he would live to take care of his children. Gable, who had dealt with the accidental death of his wife Carole Lombard, was able to help Niven with his loss as well.
In 1947, he made The Bishop’s Wife with Loretta Young and Cary Grant, now a holiday classic. He played the title role (the bishop, not the wife). Niven said Grant was a great actor because he pursued perfection in himself.
His comments about friend Flynn were more pointed. “You can count on Errol Flynn, he’ll always let you down.
“Flynn was a magnificent specimen of the rampant male. Outrageously good looking, he was a great natural athlete who played tennis with Donald Budge and boxed with ‘Mushy’ Calahan. The extras, among who I had many friends, disliked him intensely.”
Niven married Hjodis Genberg in early 1948. They adopted two children, (one was his by a Swedish model) and they were married until his death.
After his contract with Goldwyn ended in 1949, Niven could only get small roles, and he joined Dick Powell, Charles Boyer and Ida Lupino to form the television production company “Four Star.” In Four Star Playhouse’s 33 episodes between 1952 and 1956, Niven was able to play the strong dramatic roles he had wanted. While working with “Four Star,” Niven met Blake Edwards, who would hire him years later for another famous role.
For the rest of his career, he switched between big and small screens with ease. He enjoyed the meatier dramatic roles, but the public liked his lighter-hearted roles better.
Twice in the 1950s he teamed with director Otto Preminger, once in the then-controversial 1953 The Moon Is Blue where he and William Holden competed for the affections of "virgin" Maggie McNamara and again in 1958's Bonjour Tristesse where he played a widower whose scheming daughter (Jean Seberg) tried to thwart any potential romantic interests, especially Deborah Kerr.
His luck in film changed forever in 1956, when he played globetrotter Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days, his most successful film and 1956's Oscar winner for best picture. His biggest break came when Laurence Olivier dropped out of Separate Tables. Scheduled for a 1958 release, Niven was tapped to play an elderly and disgraced British military man. He played down his part, saying, “They gave me very good lines and then cut to Deborah Kerr while I was saying them.” His modesty wasn’t necessary. He took home an Oscar, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award for best actor for his reading of Major Angus Pollock.
Hollywood’s recognition of Niven as a serious actor made him a highly paid professional in films and television throughout the 1960s. It was then that Niven began his long flirtation with British super spy James Bond. Ian Fleming recommended that Niven play Bond in Dr. No in 1962. Sadly, producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli thought Niven too old for the part. Niven was not totally ignored. In the Bond novel You Only Live Twice, Fleming refers to Niven and a pet bird in the story is named after the actor. Three years after the book was released, Niven played Bond in the spy send-up, 1967’s Casino Royale, a Fleming Bond novel to which Broccoli didn't own the rights.
Niven wasn’t only an actor. During breaks, he wrote two autobiographies, The Moon’s a Balloon in 1972, and Bring on the Empty Horses in 1975. His novels include Round the Ragged Rocks and Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly, both published posthumously.
In 1976, he joined a great ensemble of actors including Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith and Peter Falk among others in Neil Simon's spoof of both film and literary detectives in Murder By Death, giving Niven a chance to play a variation on William Powell's Nick Charles from The Thin Man films. Two years later, he got to reunite with his war-time valet when he and Ustinov co-starred in the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile.
Niven created one of his more lasting characters, the suave jewel thief Sir Charles Lytton for Edwards’ skewed heist picture that brought Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, 1964's The Pink Panther. The movie spawned multiple sequels and Niven reprised Lytton in two, 1982’s Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther in 1983.
The public was not aware that Niven had been diagnosed with ALS early in the 1980s. By the time filming began on the final two films, Niven could physically appear, but his speech was slurred. Impressionist Rich Little was brought in to do Niven’s lines.
Niven underplayed his strengths with gentle humor, which made him popular on television shows and for witty quotes for newspapers.
“I’ve been lucky enough to win an Oscar and write a best seller — my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre,” he said. “The only way that’s going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentleman’s lavatory.”
As a naked man ran behind him at the 1974 Oscars, very calmly he said, “Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?”
Finally, some thoughts on acting current performers might keep in mind.
“This isn’t work. It’s fun. The whole thing is fun. I hear actors say, ‘I have to go to work tomorrow.’ Nonsense. Work is eight hours in a coal mine or a government office,” he explained. “Getting up in the morning and putting on a funny moustache and dressing up and showing off in front of the grown-ups, that’s play, and for which we’re beautifully overpaid. I’ve always felt that way. After all, how many people in the world are doing things they like to do?”
One final thought for the man who would have been 100 years old. It’s something he never had to worry happening to him.
“Actors don’t retire. They just get offered fewer roles.”
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Labels: Archers, Blake Edwards, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Erroll Flynn, Falk, Gable, Guinness, Holden, Ian Fleming, Lombard, Lupino, Maggie Smith, Neil Simon, Niven, Olivier, Oscars, Preminger, Sellers, William Powell
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Jean Simmons (1929-2010)
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Jean Simmons' long career, which has sadly ended at the age of 80, had such a wide array of varied and great performances, it always has puzzled me why the British-born actress didn't have a larger reputation. Maybe there is a price to be paid for being so prolific for so long and for being so damn good.
Simmons started her film career young back in the 1940s. Her first film was 1944 and by 1946 she already had landed the role of the young Estrella in David Lean's Great Expectations and followed that up the following year with the role of Kanchi in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. For her work as Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's 1948 Hamlet, she received the first of her two Oscar nominations.
She did get her shot at a lot of biblical-era costume dramas, including 1953's The Robe with Richard Burton. Simmons got a chance to do a musical turn as well in the role of Sgt. Sarah Brown opposite Marlon Brando in 1955's Guys and Dolls. 1960 brought her three great roles that couldn't be more different. There was Varinia, the woman loyal to Spartacus. The role that she truly got robbed of an Oscar nomination for was Sister Sharon Falconer, a tent circuit evangelist who begins to believe a bit much in herself beyond the con in Elmer Gantry opposite Burt Lancaster. Finally, there was the frothy fun as the gossipy, fourth wheel watching and spurring on the action in a love triangle between Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum in The Grass Is Greener.
In the mid-'60s, she began appearing on television more, though one film, which I haven't seen, 1969's The Happy Ending, did earn her another Oscar nomination. The remainder of her career was a mix of TV movies and miniseries, feature films and guest shots on TV series. She even appeared on The Odd Couple and received and Emmy nomination for an appearance on Murder, She Wrote. She won an Emmy for her role in the miniseries The Thorn Birds. The last notable feature film she appeared in was 1995's How to Make an American Quilt. R.I.P. Ms. Simmons.
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Labels: Archers, Brando, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Lancaster, Mitchum, Obituary, Olivier
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Monday, August 24, 2009
Using starpower to get fluff off the ground
By Edward Copeland
When you think of them separately, just by the disparity of their film roles, there are few starker choices for romance than Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum, but that's the quandary Deborah Kerr finds herself in Stanley Donen's 1960 film of the play The Grass Is Greener.
It is essentially a five-character comedy and the lightest of fare that would float away into nonexistence if not for the three stars named above and a fun fourth wheel played by Jean Simmons.
Grant and Kerr play the Rhyalls, a down-on-their-luck English pair who have taken to showing off their stately manor to tourists to help make ends meet, meaning the public have more access to their home than they have private rooms. The situation has grated on Hilary (Kerr) until one day an American oil millionaire named Charles Delacro (Mitchum) wanders off the tour and into the private section and proceeds to charm Hilary.
Before she knows it, she's planning a trip to London for shopping and hairdressing and a nice little affair but Victor (Grant) is sharp enough to know what the game is. Hilary mistakes Victor's attitude for indifference but with the aide of a gossipy, fun-loving friend of the couple (Simmons), Victor is determined to keep his wife by inviting Charles to the estate for a weekend, knowing it's when Hilary was planning to return as well.
The only other character of note is the Rhyalls' faithful butler Sellers (Moray Watson), who is really good at following orders.
The Grass Is Greener was written by Hugh Williams and Margaret Vyner, who wrote the original play and the stage roots definitely show. The laughs are not exactly uproarious and Donen does what he can with the pacing, but it's the cast who keeps the film from falling flat.
Grant has to tone down his natural charms to make the competition seem reasonable and Mitchum plays quite against type as the debonair tycoon. Still, Simmons seems to be the performer having the most fun. If it weren't for the cast, The Grass Is Greener would be instantly forgettable.
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Labels: 60s, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Donen, Jean Simmons, Mitchum
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Friday, October 19, 2007
Joey Bishop (1918-2007)
The Rat Pack can reunite at last, assuming they all are in the same place in the afterlife, with the passing of the last member, Joey Bishop. I learned of his passing soon after I learned of Deborah Kerr's, but I didn't have time to write something then. Besides, Ms. Kerr deserved a little time in the spotlight for herself. (Another notable passing announced yesterday: singer Teresa Brewer, who had a string of hits in the 1950s, most notably "Music Music Music.") While I was too young to experience his talk show days (with then-young sidekick Regis Philbin), my first exposure to Bishop didn't come in one of his collaborations with Frank, Dino, Sammy and the gang, but in his actual film debut, 1958's WWII flick The Deep Six starring Alan Ladd and William Bendix. I remember watching it on TV which my dad when I was really young. Bishop provided some comic relief as one of the sailors on the ship who, by film's end, pretends to be dead, just to avoid an overzealous romantic interest he hooked up with on shore leave. Of course, it's the Rat Pack for which he'll always be remembered, for his work in films such as the original Ocean's Eleven and Sergeants 3. He also worked in many other various films, including the film adaptation of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and in more recent outings such as Betsy's Wedding and Mad Dog Time.
RIP Mr. Bishop.
To read The New York Times obit, click here.
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Labels: Deborah Kerr, Mailer, Obituary, Sinatra, Television
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Thursday, October 18, 2007
Deborah Kerr (1921-2007)
That iconic image above in From Here to Eternity is one of many associated with the great Deborah Kerr, who passed away Tuesday in England at the age of 86. With six Oscar nominations and zero wins, she unfortunately holds the record for the most nominations without a win among lead actresses, though at least the Academy saw fit to give her an honorary Oscar in 1994.
Though, as seems to be the case with many of our greatest performers, her six nominations didn't necessarily represent her very best work. Her first nomination came in 1949's Edward, My Son, where she was fine, though really it was a supporting turn. Following that was a nomination for 1953's Eternity, 1956's The King and I, 1957's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, 1958's Separate Tables (another supporting role, and a miscast one at that) and 1960's The Sundowners. For me though, her finest work came in films for which she wasn't nominated, such as her triple role in Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. She scored with them again in 1947's Black Narcissus. Then there were other, less well-known films such as in 1945's Vacation From Marriage and, most especially, her charming turn as an Irish lass who hates the English so much she unwittingly becomes a Nazi spy in I See a Dark Stranger. Often, she was the best thing in otherwise lackluster films such as Otto Preminger's Bonjour tristesse and John Huston's adaptation of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana. This doesn't even take into account the number of huge movies in which she appeared such as King Solomon's Mines, Quo Vadis?, Julius Caesar and An Affair to Remember.
RIP Ms. Kerr.
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Labels: Archers, Deborah Kerr, Huston, Obituary, Oscars, Preminger, Tennessee Williams
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Sunday, April 29, 2007
Centennial Tributes: Fred Zinnemann
By Edward Copeland
If someone asks, "What is a Fred Zinnemann film like?" How would you respond? It's not that Zinnemann, who would turn 100 years old today, didn't make quite a few good and great films and at least one bona fide classic, but is there something you can point to as a Zinnemannesque film the way you might say Hitchcockian or Hawksian? Not really. This isn't to disparage Zinnemann at all. He simply was a solid, workman-like director who ended up making movies worth watching far more often than he made clunkers. He earned seven Oscar nominations as director between 1948 and 1977 and won twice. He also won an Oscar for producing A Man for All Seasons and for the documentary short Benjy in 1951. Some might call him colorless, but his body of work certainly deserves reflection today on the anniversary of his birth.
Zinnemann has directing credits stretching all the way back to 1929, but this is the earliest one I've been able to see and what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be. A simple B programmer about a blind detective (the great Edward Arnold), the mystery may be more complicated than necessary (and easy to guess what's going on in general, if not in specific), but it's a lot of fun. Arnold is great and Donna Reed gives a performance unlike any I've seen from her as a bitter, manipulative young woman at odds with her stepmother. There are some slightly racist scenes involving Arnold's butler that made me uncomfortable, but they are so few that I was able to look aside. Besides, that dog! Friday may well be the most talented dog in the history of film, being a true partner to his blind owner. In fact, in one scene where Friday ends up with the gun of a bad guy in his mouth, I was surprised the canine didn't actually know how to fire it.
Zinnemann scored his first Oscar nomination as director for this moving drama set in post-World War II Berlin where an Army private (Montgomery Clift) tries to help a lost Czech boy find his mother while she similarly searches refugee camps for him. It's a simple, stark tale, but quite compelling, painting a vivid portrait of the desolation of the German city after the war and the timeless tale of people separated by events trying to find their way back together again.
The Search brought Zinnemann his Oscar nomination for 1948, but this taut thriller may be the better film. The always-great Robert Ryan plays a wounded WWII veteran on a mission to kill his former CO (Van Heflin), whom he holds responsible for his misfortune. The film holds the details close to its vest for awhile, and to good effect. Eventually, the stench of vengeance and violence contaminates most of the characters in the film so you're really not certain who will be on the receiving end of the film's title. Unfortunately, the payoff wimps out slightly, but until then the film is riveting, led by Ryan, Heflin and able supporting work, including Mary Astor as a hooker with a heart of stone.
More than anything else, this melodramatic portrait of recovering war veterans remains best known for marking the feature film debut of Marlon Brando. Brando plays an embittered soldier paralyzed from his war injuries. Much of the dramatics do go over the top, but The Men also contains surprising frankness, given when it was made, in terms of sexuality and balancing an antiwar message with a supportive one for fighting men, something that really rings true today, both in terms of the Iraq mess our troops find themselves embroiled in as well as the recent revelations of the piss-poor medical treatment they've received when they've returned home.
In the 2003 documentary All the Presidents' Movies, it was amazing how many occupants of the Oval Office
picked Zinnemann's Western classic as one of the films they watched in the White House screening room multiple times. (In fact, since Eisenhower, it's been the film requested most often by all presidents.) Regardless of your political persuasion, it's easy to see why this tale of one man standing alone against a cadre of villains while all his supposed allies turn tail and run would appeal to commanders-in-chief. Of all Zinnemann's movies, this one remains my favorite. Really, it's the perfect role for the stoic Gary Cooper and having its action play out in real time works better than just about any other attempt to imitate that pattern. (Come on 24 fans, you can't get anywhere in Los Angeles in an hour let alone have all the things that happen on the show in 60 minutes occur.) High Noon works as well even if you don't know or notice its allegorical background of the blacklist. It's a classic that should never be forsaken.While The Member of the Wedding still entertains after all these years, its stage origins remain painfully apparent. Julie Harris is quite good in her Oscar-nominated turn as the tomboy Frankie Addams unhappy with her lot in life and dreaming of something more. (You almost believe that Harris, in her late 20s at the time, is a 12-year-old.) However, the performance that stands out for me is Ethel Waters, the sensible maid who becomes Frankie's confidant. She grounds the film in a realism that some of its more theatrical flairs threaten to unravel. Waters should have been the one up for an Oscar that year.
It's interesting to note that with all the people questioning whether it was too soon for films such as United 93 and World Trade Center to tackle the events of 9/11 that From Here to Eternity re-created the attack on Pearl Harbor a mere 12 years after it occurred, albeit as a glorified soap opera. (Actually, movies began referring to the attack on Pearl Harbor within months of December 1941, but I believe this is the first to actually depict the attack.) Thankfully though, Zinnemann was no Michael Bay and the film still has some teeth (and earned Zinnemann his first directing Oscar). Most importantly though, it has great performances from Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Ernest Borgnine and Frank Sinatra's Oscar-winning turn as the doomed Pvt. Maggio. How Donna Reed won her Oscar I'm not certain. (As Josh R is fond of pointing out, she plays what must be the most virginal prostitute ever put on film.) However, enough remains to make it stand the test of time.
Zinnemann ventured into musicals and he went BIG, i.e. in full-blooded Technicolor, Todd-AO glory transferring this landmark Rodgers and Hammerstein musical to the truly big screen. In a way, Oklahoma! really is
a stage show that should be opened up since a stage is too limiting for this tale of early settlers. Zinnemann takes true advantage of this with some nice shots, particularly the opening which moves the camera through the stalks of a corn field before coming upon Gordon MacRae singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin.'" While the film is good enough, the importance of its stage version doesn't exactly transfer since Hollywood already had produced its own much better musical originals for the screen (such as Singin' in the Rain three years earlier). Despite that, there is much to admire in the songs and some of the performances, specifically Gloria Grahame's fun turn as Ado Annie. This is the performance that should have earned her an Oscar nomination and/or win, not her blink-or-you'll-miss-it work in The Bad and the Beautiful. Rod Steiger is good as the dark Jud, but his performance (and really the character himself) always has seemed somewhat out of place in what is essentially a musical comedy. Eddie Albert does what he can as Persian peddler Ali Hakim, but he's about as much a Persian as Mickey Rooney was Chinese in Breakfast at Tiffany's. (Well, Albert isn't offensive at least).You can probably count on one hand the number of films about Catholic priests or nuns that still have them in their religious vocation by the time the film ends, and this bloated work isn't one of them. Audrey Hepburn does her best as the conflicted nun-in-training, but it's really Peter Finch who steals the show as a feisty doctor that Hepburn works with during some missionary work. It's not only an obscenely long film, it's also an eminently forgettable one.
Also too long, but immensely more fun was Zinnemann's next film, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr struggling to make ends meet in the outback as sheep drovers, with Kerr trying to be the sensible one and Mitchum's gambling spirit always getting the best of him (and their nest egg). She's tired of their wandering ways and wants to settle down, but his rambunctioness always gets in the way. There also are fine supporting performances by Peter Ustinov and Glynis Johns. Still, the cinematography by Jack Hildyard is stunning and there are some great set pieces, particularly a sheep-shearing competition. To say that its Oscar nomination for best picture was more than generous is no understatement.
Zinnemann truly created an odd one with this film that has Gregory Peck (?) playing an exiled Spanish revolutionary and Anthony Quinn as the Spanish official hoping to lure him back to the country to kill him with the news that his mother (Mildred Dunnock) is dying 20 years after the end of the Spanish civil war. Things get complicated further by a young boy named Paco (Marietto Angeleletti) who wants Peck to go back to kill Quinn to avenge his own father's death, but Peck also is torn by a possible traitor within his ranks. Despite the fact that Peck is even a less-convincing Spaniard than Eddie Albert was a Persian, the movie's overriding problem is that it's a world-class bore. It drags on and on to a truly anticlimactic ending. The most interesting thing about it is that it was based on a novel by Emeric Pressburger.
It had been a long time since I'd seen this best picture winner that earned Zinnemann his final two Oscars, one for directing and one for producing, and it plays even better than I remembered. While Robert Bolt's
screenplay does show its stage origins, Zinnemann has turned this story of Sir Thomas More's stance on principle against the will of King Henry VIII into a sleek, compelling enterprise with the look and feel of an epic but a running time of a mere two hours. Central to the film's success of course is Paul Scofield's Oscar-winning turn as More, but Zinnemann does add a lot of nice touches as well, particularly in the great opening sequence showing the travel of a message from Cardinal Wolsey to More. There's also stunning cinematography by Ted Moore and a top-notch supporting cast that includes Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, a young John Hurt and Robert Shaw in his Oscar-nominated turn as Henry VIII, which is a much smaller role than I recall. My 1966 Oscar preferences still lean to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but this film's win is not an embarrassment.
As Fred Zinnemann began his sixth decade as a filmmaker, he turned to yet another genre with this taut thriller starring the cool Edward Fox as a hired gun whose services are employed by embittered former members of the French Foreign Legion to assassinate French President Charles De Gaulle. The story moves on two tracks as Fox, code name The Jackal, pursues his plot and the French authorities, led by Col. Rolland (Michel Auclair) try to determine the killer's identity and to stop him before he is able to act. The film is a bit overlong, but Zinnemann does build quite a bit of suspense, even though we know De Gaulle won't be killed, and Fox is superb as the cold and calculating mercenary.
I saw Julia when it was originally released and I was in grade school, hardly the ideal audience. All I remembered really was that I was bored silly and the scene where a frustrated Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda)
tosses her typewriter out a window (I miss typewriters). So, in fairness, I decided I needed to take a new look, hoping that age would make me have a new view on the film the way I did a turnaround on Reds recently. Alas, 30 years later, I find Julia as boring as I did as an elementary school student. Its awards puzzle me more now than they did when I only had vague memories. Fonda at times is pretty bad. Jason Robards in his second consecutive Oscar-winning supporting turn is fine, but really doesn't have anything to do to deserve the prize. Maximilian Schell's presence is so fleeting that his nomination is a headscratcher. What shocked me the most was Vanessa Redgrave. While she is one of our finest actresses, there was more drama and suspense surrounding her nomination and her winning speech than she gets to create in the film itself. This was Zinnemann's final Oscar nomination as director (though he did direct one more film, which I haven't seen), but Julia is a bore. Pure and simple. Despite his less successful works, Zinnemann produced a lot of good and great movies in his time and I still salute him on his centennial.Tweet
Labels: A. Hepburn, blacklist, Borgnine, Brando, Clift, Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Hammerstein, Lancaster, Mary Astor, Mitchum, Robards, Robert Ryan, Rodgers, Sinatra, Van Hefiin, Vanessa Redgrave, W. Hiller
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