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, December 30, 2011
"I'm just glad I'm here where it's quiet…" — Straw Dogs Part I
its 40th anniversary Thursday. If you haven't seen it and plan to at some point, best not to read this.)
By Edward Copeland
When Sam Peckinpah's classic The Wild Bunch opened in 1969, its violence drew much controversy, though many critics saw past the bloodshed to recognize the movie's significance and greatness. Two years later, Peckinpah made Straw Dogs — and it received a near-universal greeting of pans, revulsion and diatribes that accused the film of being a one-dimensional attack on intellectuals and, even worse, an endorsement of the idea that rape victims "ask for it." Liking or disliking a movie always comes down to a person's subjective opinion and ideally — I believe anyway — that assessment should be formed by the artistry (or lack thereof) that's on the screen. When you read the reviews of Straw Dogs from 1971, that seldom seemed to be the case. In fact, many critics who despised the film praised Peckinpah's craft simultaneously. Straw Dogs became the victim of cinematic profiling, watched through the prism of real-world events. People projected views formed by outside experiences onto the movie and slammed it because of what they perceived it to be. There's always been a form of film criticism that chooses to judge movies in a political context and that's fine — it's a free country. However, that school of thought tries to apply that model to every movie, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness (I have good friends who believe that Forrest Gump somehow endorses Reaganism. I belong to the camp that believes if you don't think a film's good, just say so — a negative review need not be complicated with an ideological justification. A movie such as Thor sucks, but politics has nothing to do with why I formed that opinion.) I've went way off topic — this post salutes 1971's Straw Dogs. It's ironic, considering the film's title originated as a variation of the term "straw man," roughly defined as a mediocre argument or idea put out so it can be defeated by a better one. Over the decades, more have recognized the major misinterpretation that Straw Dogs received upon release. Its 40th anniversary offers an ideal opportunity for reassessment and analysis of the film as the complex, layered thriller that I believe Peckinpah made in the first place.
While I'm too young to have seen 1971's films in first run, knowing much of the history, events and certainly the movies that year, violence definitely dominated news and entertainment. Vietnam remained front and center as the South, backed by the U.S., invaded Laos and Cambodia while the war's unpopularity grew with larger protest marches (half-a-million people at one in D.C.) and bigger majorities in polls opposing it (60% in a Harris Poll); according to FBI statistics for 1971, the U.S. murder rate jumped to 8.6 people out of every 100,000, continuing the nonstop rise that began in 1964. Stats also showed that about 816,500 were victims of violent crime and there were 46,850 reports of forcible rape — a crime that often goes unreported which it did then more than it does now; Charles Manson and his followers were convicted and sentenced to death in the Tate-LaBianca murders, though a temporary repeal of capital punishment by the California Supreme Court the following year reverted the sentences to life; Wars were taking place beyond Vietnam. East Pakistan fought Pakistan for liberation, eventually becoming Bangladesh. Later, East Pakistan got into a skirmish with India, but the new country quickly surrendered. another "war" began in the U.S. that still continues when Nixon declared the "war on drugs"; Riots weren't uncommon in the U.S., including one in Camden, N.J., that began after police beat a Puerto Rican motorist to death. A more famous riot occurred at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York when nearly half of the more
than 2,000 inmates seized the prison, taking 33 staff hostages for four days until New York state police retook it. At least 39 people were killed, including 10 hostages; It also was the era of frequent airplane hijackings. Though not a violent one, it was the year the infamous D.B. Cooper got his money and parachuted into oblivion; Coups, usually of the military type, brought down the governments in Turkey, Sudan, Thailand, Bolivia and Uganda, which brought to power Idi Amin. That's not counting the coups that failed. That's just a cursory glance at what an uneasy world it was in 1971. Flowing into this situation were many, many movies, some that played on that fear, others that allowed for a release of that feeling of impotence. A few of the more high-profile examples:One of my all-time favorite critics is Pauline Kael, though I disagreed with her often, but she was completely off-base in what she wrote about Straw Dogs. I've compiled some of the key things she wrote in her New Yorker review of the film:
"Peckinpah's view of human experience seems to be no more than the sort of anecdote that drunks tell in bars."…"The actors are not allowed their usual freedom to become characters, because they're pawns in the overall scheme."…"The preparations are not in themselves pleasurable; the atmosphere is ominous and oppressive, but you're drawn in and you're held, because you can feel that it is building purposefully."…"The setting, the music and the people are deliberately disquieting. It is a thriller — a machine headed for destruction."…"What I am saying, I fear, is that Sam Peckinpah, who is an artist, has with Straw Dogs, made the first American film that is a fascist work of art."
While Kael mostly missed the mark, she came so close to acknowledging that she did see what Peckinpah's intentions were and that they were artistic ones, that it's almost sad. Let's look at those sentences separately. "Peckinpah's view of human experience seems to be no more than the sort of anecdote that drunks tell in bars." Mainly, that's Pauline doing what she loved to do best (and I admit I can be guilty of succumbing to myself) — thinking up a funny sentence and using it. In relation to Straw Dogs, Kael either was blinded by other factors as to what was on the screen or she refused to acknowledge that the story being told had more layers and complexity than a mere anecdote. I'll flesh out my rebuttal on that later. "The actors are not allowed their usual freedom to become characters, because they're pawns in the overall scheme." She's absolutely right here, but she's also being dishonest because as avid a moviegoer as she was she knew that not every film acts as a character study full of finely drawn portraits of the people inside. The woman who routinely answered the question, "What's your favorite film?" with 1932's Million Dollar Legs starring Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields isn't looking for that in every type of movie, especially a genre film and Straw Dogs belongs in the thriller family, albeit one with depth, intelligence and things to say. "The preparations are not in themselves pleasurable; the atmosphere is ominous and oppressive, but you're drawn in and you're held, because you can feel that it is building purposefully." Kael contradicts herself in the same sentence. All movies aren't designed to be pleasure rides, but they still can be enriching. It's the scenario I always posit among friends: You've gathered for a fun evening and you feel like watching Spielberg. What do you put in the DVD player — Jaws or Schindler's List? Just because you settle on Jaws doesn't mean that Schindler's isn't good, it's just not the type of movie you watch for a rollicking good time. The contradiction comes when she
describes the atmosphere as "ominous," which would seem perfectly natural for a thriller and then admitting it held her attention because she could tell it was building toward something with a purpose. As I said, she was so close. That's exactly what Peckinpah was doing and did. "The setting, the music and the people are deliberately disquieting. It is a thriller — a machine headed for destruction." Finally, Pauline acknowledges that Straw Dogs is a thriller and within those two sentences, she doesn't say anything that indicates she thinks Peckinpah violated the rules of a thriller. The last sentence of Kael's that I excerpted shows where she hopped onboard a train to crazytown. "What I am saying, I fear, is that Sam Peckinpah, who is an artist, has with Straw Dogs, made the first American film that is a fascist work of art." Again, she admits Peckinpah's artistry but she claims he has used that gift to make a "fascist work of art." No wonder she prefaced that with "I fear" because one gift Kael always had, even when you disagreed with her (other than great writing skills) is that she made you re-think your opinion. She didn't necessarily change your mind, but she gave you ideas to mull. Her Straw Dogs review provides a rare example where I didn't believe that she believed the words she placed in print. Her review reads as if she wanted Straw Dogs perceived simply as a macho appeal to give in to our violent nature and a screed against intellectuals. That's what she wanted to see, but her heart and her brain seem to be having a wrestling match for control over her writing. The adjective fascist got bandied about a lot in reviews of Straw Dogs. I can see how some slapped that label onto Dirty Harry, even if I think that was an overreaction as well, because Dirty Harry carries political overtones and a point-of-view, but, as I said before, I believe films should be reviewed as films and ideology should stay out of it. What does it say then that a true fascist film such as Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will is a staple of film studies not because of content but technique? The adjective fascist should appear if a character in the movie has fascist characteristics or is a fascist, but to label a movie one — to me that's nearly as offensive as when Tipper Gore, James Baker's wife and the rest of the PMRC wanted to interpret what songs meant in the 1980s and institute stringent record labeling. As Frank Zappa said about their plans at the time, "It's like treating dandruff with decapitation." It also reminds me of what Jon Stewart said about politicians of both parties comparing opponents to Hitler. By doing that, they do a disservice to Hitler, he said, "who worked long and hard to be that evil." With that out of the way, it's high time I start talking about what actually happens in Straw Dogs. Before I do, I will say this: a bit of a pass can be given to Kael and other critics who shared her opinion and lay siege to Straw Dogs for all its perceived sins since the version that they saw wasn't the one I did. Peckinpah had to cut footage to avoid an X rating but on home media, they restored that scene. Granted, it might have elicited the same reaction, but the fact remains that when I saw Straw Dogs the first time, I literally didn't see the same cut that the critics of 1971 did — and the scene excised in 1971 got removed from the film's most controversial and debated scene, leaving only the ambiguous sexual assault that seems to turn consensual and omitting the second thug who undeniably commits rape.
The opening credits always remind me of parts of the beginning of The Wild Bunch, the titles themselves specifically naming that film's actors in semi-black-and-white (or more accurately, black-and-gray) freezes while they're on horseback. No actors lurk beneath the monochrome credits of Straw Dogs — where we first hear Fielding's foreboding score — but beneath the title cards, blurry images recall the ants overrunning the scorpion at the start of The Wild Bunch. When the picture comes into focus and color, we see that what's scurrying isn't insects but children, singing, dancing and playing with abandon — in a graveyard. Three of the youngsters circle a dog, which some interpret as torture. As someone who despises mistreatment of animals (I always say I've been screwed over by humans far more often than by dogs), it doesn't look that way to me. A few of the kids gaze through the cemetery fence at the activities in the center of the small Cornish village in England. American David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) walks back toward his car carrying a box of supplies he's picked up while his wife Amy (Susan George), a native of the village, attracts leers as she struts down the street sans bra.
That shot, coming so early in the film, certainly had a lot to do with putting some of the critics in 1971 such as Kael on edge. She admits in her review that part of her reaction to the film probably stemmed from being a woman and if Peckinpah had placed that image of an extreme close-up of the actress's breasts with erect nipples for no apparent reason and it wasn't brought up again, I'd have been offended as well. When I first saw Straw Dogs, the shot took me aback. That looked like something you'd find in a cheap teen sex comedy in the wee hours of the morning on Cinemax, not in a Sam Peckinpah film starring Dustin Hoffman. Eventually though, it is discussed and you see the purpose — and it's not to say "some women want to be raped." We'll get to that later. I'll finish describing the opening sequence first. The teen Hedden siblings, Bobby and Janice (Lem Jones, Sally Thomsett), help Amy by carrying an antique mantrap that she purchased to her car. Charlie Venner (Del Henney) steps out of a phone booth when he catches sight of Amy. He dated Amy when she lived in the town with her father and the sight of her makes Venner salivate. In this very first sequence, Peckinpah and his editing team of Paul Davies, Tony Lawson (who'd go on to edit Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and every Neil Jordan film since Michael Collins) and Roger Spottiswoode (who also edited Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid before turning to directing) set the quick-cut pattern that will dominate the movie. The director, stereotyped for slow-motion violence, paces much of Straw Dogs with split-second snapshots. Venner makes a beeline for David and Amy's car where Amy introduces Charlie to her husband. David puzzles over the mantrap that Amy bought and tries to place it in the backseat of the car with Bobby's help. David then tells Amy he's going to run into the pub to buy some cigarettes and David leaves her with Charlie, who shamelessly flirts with Amy and tries to get her to re-create old times.
When David steps into the pub, he definitely feels and looks out of place — but it's not because he's wearing a sign that reads BRILLIANT MATHEMATICIAN STUDYING THEORIES YOU PEOPLE COULD NEVER COMPREHEND. No, his clothing, his look, his voice — they all point him out as someone who doesn't hail from that Cornish village as he asks for "Two packs of American cigarettes." However, no one taunts him or mocks him — they have a bigger troublemaker to deal with, one of their own. The burly, bearded Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan), father to Bobby and Janice and the town drunk, somehow manages to maintain a degree of respect from those younger than him. As David has entered for his smokes, Tom wants another round after
the pub's owner, Harry Ware (Robert Keegan), announces closing time for the afternoon. Tom slams his mug down, breaking it and cutting Harry's finger. As David witnesses this, Charlie enters the pub and asks how the work on David and Amy's garage is progressing. David complains that the two men working on it seem to be dragging their feet and Charlie volunteers to come up the next day with his cousin to help them pick up the pace. Sitting quietly in the pub, observing everything, happens to be the town's magistrate, Maj. John Scott (T.J. McKenna). Tom isn't going to take no for an answer, so he flips up the opening to the bar and serves himself. Scott warns Tom that he's had his fun, but he best be off or he'll have to bring charges and Charlie and another man help the drunkard out, but not before he apologizes to Harry and leaves money for the damage as well as David's cigarettes. Vaughan plays Tom well, straddling that line between charming old lush and frightening bastard. After they've left, David gives Harry the money for the cigarettes. The pub's owner tells him he's already been paid. "You have now," David says before leaving. Most of the actor's work has been in British television productions, though he did appear in Time Bandits and Brazil for Terry Gilliam and the HBO series Game of Thrones. 
It takes a bit of a drive to get to Amy and David's farmhouse and since she's driving, Amy takes her husband on a fast and wild ride to get there, partly as punishment for his queries about her past with Charlie Venner. Before they get to the farm, Amy finally admits that years ago when she lived there, Charlie made a pass at her. David and Amy appear a rather unlikely couple, but in rare moments like this or when they're getting romantic, the two do show signs of sexual compatibility. In other instances, not so much. The screenplay by
Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman, based on the novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm by Gordon M. Williams, makes a point of showing that David doesn't respect Amy intellectually and, more than likely, views her as a sex object as much as the leering village thugs do. When the couple arrive at the farm, one of the two workers, Norman Scutt (Ken Hutchison) stands at attention on top of the garage. Amy makes a point of making out with David in the car in full view of Norman, though you can tell it makes her husband uncomfortable. The Sumners get out of the convertible and head separate directions — Amy to the house, David to inform Scutt of his incoming help. When David tells Scutt that Venner and his cousin will be arriving the next day to help him pick up the pace on the garage project, Scutt tells him that he and Mr. Cawsey don't have that much more to do. The name doesn't ring a bell with David, but Amy bumps into Mr. Chris Cawsey (Jim Norton) inside the farmhouse. When Cawsey steps outside, David remembers, "The rat man!" Cawsey helps Scutt on the garage, but his main skill involves exterminating rodents. Scutt asks David if he needs help unloading the mantrap (which really should be referred to as "Chekhov's mantrap" since you know its antique metal teeth shall clamp down on someone before the movie ends) and he gladly accepts. Cawsey explains that the mantraps were set them out in the field to catch poachers. As the three men stand alone outside, Straw Dogs comes as close as it ever will to explicitly discussing current world events occurring in 1971.NORMAN: I hear it's pretty rough in the States.
CHRIS: Have you seen any of it, sir? Bombing, rioting, sniping, shooting the blacks. I hear it isn't safe to walk the streets, Norman.
NORMAN: Was you involved in it, sir? I mean, did you take part?
CHRIS: See anybody get knifed?
DAVID: Only between commercials. (after some talk concerning the mantrap) No, I'm just glad I'm here where it's quiet and you can breathe air that's clean and drink water that doesn't have to come out of a bottle.
David meekly flashes a peace sign and goes inside where Amy calls for the pet cat, who is nowhere to be found. Though the scene has moved inside, we hear the first line of dialogue between Cawsey and Scutt in the yard. Cawsey asks Scutt if he plans to "have a crack" at
Amy. "Ten months inside" were enough for him," Norman replies, apparently referring to jail time. He then inquires if Cawsey saw anything in the house worth stealing and Chris answers no except for one item. He then twirls a pair of panties around his finger. Scutt calls him an idiot, but Cawsey assures him she has plenty and won't notice. "Don't you want my trophy?" Cawsey asks. Scutt says he'd rather have what goes in them. Cawsey tells him that Charlie Venner had a go at her when she lived there with her father and Scutt gets testy. "Venner's a bloody liar and so are you." Tensions in the house simmer more subtly. Amy continues her search for the cat and David mutters, "I'll kill her if she's in my study." Amy inquires as to what he said, pretending she didn't hear, but he doesn't repeat it, but she obviously did because she changes a plus sign in the equation on his study's blackboard to a minus sign. Later, Amy comes and annoys David in his study while he's trying to work. Finally getting the hint, she leaves, though David gazes out the window and sees she's laughing with Scutt and Cawsey who just sit on a wall, not working. She warns them that David will think that they're lazy. 
When she returns to the study, he asks what the three of them found so funny. "They think you are strange," Amy tells him. "Do you think I'm strange?" David inquires of his wife. "Occasionally," she replies. He says she's acting like she's 14, which prompts her to chomp her gum louder, and he lowers her age to 12. "Want to try for 8?" She leaves him alone to his work, though later she calls to him that she needs some lettuce to prepare dinner. David gets up to fetch some from their tiny greenhouse when he notices the change on the chalkboard. "She's playing games now? What is this — grammar school?" he mumbles as he corrects the equation. When he gets to the greenhouse, Norman Scutt informs him that Riddaway (Donald Webster) has arrived to take he and Cawsey home. Cawsey stops by to share some odd little information with David. "I feel closer to rats than to people, even though I have to kill them to make a living. Their dying is my living," Cawsey declares as he climbs into Riddaway's truck and sings a little ditty, "Smell a rat, see a rat, kill a rat/That's me — Chris Cawsey/I'd be lost without em, I suppose/Cleverest thing I've seen around these parts is a rat." Later, Amy beckons David for dinner, but he seems peeved at being dragged from his work again.
A short scene in the pub gets inserted as night falls and a man comes in. Tom Hedden calls to the man, identifying him as John Niles (Peter Arne). He tells him that his brother Henry has been seen around young girls again and he better watch him or they'll have him put away. Tom's oldest son, Bertie (Michael Mundell), says that Henry only was tossing the ball to them, earning an icy stare from his father. John promises that if Henry starts to make any mistake "like he did before" he'll put him away himself. "If you don't, I will," Norman Scutt speaks up. When Henry shows up later in the film, he will be played by an unbilled David Warner in a part that's a million miles removed from his role in the previous Peckinpah film, The Ballad of Cable Hogue.
All of the major players have been mentioned or introduced and for the first time, I'm having to split the tribute to a single film in half. I don't have anything else ready to run anyway. For Part II, click here.
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Labels: 70s, Books, Caine, David Warner, Dustin Hoffman, Eastwood, Fiction, Fields, Hackman, HBO, Heston, Kael, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Peckinpah, Spielberg, Tarantino, Terry Gilliam
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Monday, October 10, 2011
It's not buptkie!
By Edward Copeland
Somehow, artists seem to realize when they're making what will become their final project and usually pick something that serves as some sort of eulogy. For years, director John Huston worked under the assumption that when he foresaw the light coming at the end of his tunnel, he would make a film of James Joyce's short story The Dead and that was what he did. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3, 1987, exactly a week after Huston died on Aug. 28. Though Robert Altman remained optimistic enough to plan future projects, A Prairie Home Companion played as if it were an epitaph on his career and it did end up as his final film.
Hidden deep within the hilarious, surreal nonsense that is Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, W.C. Fields also implies that it will be his last feature film. Though he did make a few cameos as himself in the seven years between the release of Sucker, which turns 70 today, and his death seven years later, Fields never did make another star vehicle after this one — and what a crazy, one-of-a-kind note on which to end a film career. The first time we see Fields in the movie, he's tipping his hat to a billboard of his last film, the classic The Bank Dick. Two child musicians Butch and Buddy (Billy Lenhart, Kenneth Brown) who are identified in the credits as His Heckler wander by and one declares about the movie, "Was that a buptkie?" Fields — playing himself but credited as The Great Man — tells the boys, "You're about to fall heir to a kitten's stocking." One of the kids ask what a kitten's stocking is. "A sock in the puss," Fields replies. That's just a gag — wait until you get to the plot.
The lunacy of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break begins with a bloated cartoon version of W.C. ballooning to spell out the title and show the various credits of those involved in the film. Directed by Edward Cline, who also directed Fields in The Bank Dick, My Little Chickadee and Million Dollar Legs as well as some of Fields' shorts and uncredited work on You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, the screenplay was credited to John T. Neville & Prescott Chaplin (not that either had another screenplay of note) with an original story by one of Fields' many aliases, Otis Criblecoblis (and original would definitely be an understatement). The story is set at the fictional Esoteric Studios, where the Deanna Durbin-wannabe Gloria Jean plays Gloria Jean, except she is supposed to be Fields' niece (she calls him Uncle Bill), a singing actress in a variety of films. Her mother (who doesn't seem to be credited) also has a signed contract with the studio. The two hope that Fields can sell his new screenplay because if he does, it could mean both of them could quit the business and the studio. "Your Uncle Bill's been good to us," Gloria Jean's mother declares. Gloria Jean tells her mother that she found a horseshoe that very morning so mother and daughter blow on it and make a wish, tossing it over their shoulders. Unfortunately, it crash lands on a pile of water cooler bottles.
What's fascinating about Fields here, aside from the truly bizarre notions he presents, is that at times it's as if he's invented his own language (and I don't care who the credited screenwriters were — no John T. Neville or Prescott Chaplin could come up with dialogue such
as what comes out of W.C.'s mouth and not make another impression at some point. For instance, early in the film, Fields runs into a man who hopes he might find a role for him in his next picture — apparently not realizing the film's entire premise rises and falls on whether Fields can get another movie made in the first place. First, the hungry W.C. invites the man to dine with him for breakfast, but he doesn't just say, "Would you like to join me for breakfast?" No, instead Fields phrases the inquiry as "How'd you like to hide the egg and gurgitate a few saucers of mocha java?" The man declines, saying he's already eaten, but asks if he can call him. Fields tells him to call him sometime at his house. "What time?" the man asks. "A couple o'clock," Fields replies. Then again, a lot of the humor follows along line familiar to anyone who's familiar with Fields' work. A particularly nice moment comes when his youthful hecklers nail him in the head with a brick while he's talking with his niece. Gloria Jean picks it up and prepares to hurl it back, but Fields stops her. "Hold your temper. Count to 10," he tells Gloria Jean who follows her uncle's advice. When she reaches 10, he advises, "Now you'll get better aim."In addition to his usual battles with obnoxious waitresses, overprotective husbands, cleaning women who interrupt conversations, etc., the earlygoing of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break plays similarly to many Fields' films with the exception being that he's playing himself and a great many of the performers appear under their own names if not their own profession. For example, the prolific comic character actor Franklin Pangborn plays Esoteric Studios' top producer whose name is Franklin Pangborn. On the other hand, the producer's wife is
played by Mona Barrie, who was not married to Pangborn in real life. Made in 1941, in its own way, the film was a Charlie Kaufman movie made 17 years before he was born. That part doesn't really kick in though until Fields gets into that script conference with Pangborn and the movie he proposes contains so many loony notions and the action bounces at times between the world of the screenplay and Fields' real life, that sometimes the viewer can get confused. In the script, he places himself and Gloria Jean on a plane. "Why didn't you ever marry, Uncle Bill?" Gloria Jean asks. "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for," Fields answers. So in the film within the film he and Gloria Jean play themselves as well, just to confuse things as much as possible. Booze played a strong role in Fields' comedy and in his life and in this, his last feature, he finally shows how much his love for liquor stands above anything else: He'd take a bullet for it. In the plane's lounge, he rests his bottle on the ledge (though he insists to his niece that he's drinking ginger ale) which, for reasons that deny aeronautics, has an open window. His elbow accidentally knocks the bottle out the window and W.C. goes diving out the window — without a parachute — to retrieve it.
When he lands, it's on a mountaintop divan where he bounces like a trampoline. Once he settles down, he meets a beautiful young blonde (Susan Miller) who has no idea what he is — having never seen a man since her mother hid them from her when her father left before her bath. She asks Fields, "Are you really a man?" He tells her, "I've been called other things before." He asks her if she knows a game, which basically Post Office though he names it something else, and enjoys kissing the pretty young thing when her mother, Mrs. Hemogloben, arrives. Her mother is played by none other than The Marx Brothers' favorite foil, Margaret Dumont. When her daughter, whose name turns out to be Ouilotta, tells her mother about the game the man has taught her, Mrs. Hemogloben eagerly wants to play, closing her eyes and awaiting his kiss. Fields can't bring himself to do it and makes a running leap into a basket that runs down the side of the basket. The women see his escape. The mother declares that all men are alike and he's just like her daughter's father who blamed his exit on drinking. Ouilotta asks her mother if she thinks this stranger drinks. "He didn't get that nose from playing Ping Pong." When Fields get to the bottom, he finds the bottle he saved in his jump from the plane has broken in his escape in the basket. "What a catastrophe," he declares.
At this point, Pangborn jerks us back to a semblance of reality by erupting about the screenplay so far. "Just a minute, Mr. Fields, there's a limit to everything. This script is an insult to a man's intelligence — even mine. You drop from a plane 10,000 feet in the air and you land on a divan without a scratch. You play Post Office with a beautiful blonde and then you throw yourself over a cliff in a basket. It's impossible, inconceivable, incomprehensible and besides that, it's no good. And as for the continuity, it's terrible. And for my information, off the record, what happened to Gloria Jean? Where has she been all this time?" He does find her and spells out more silliness involving contests to get Mrs. Hemogloben's fortune and reuniting Uncle Bill and Gloria Jean. In the end, not surprisingly, Esoteric Studios takes a pass and basically kicks Fields out. He decides that he's going to leave Hollywood, making Gloria Jean very sad. "But how can you look out for me when I'm here and you're way down there?" she asks him. "You want to go to school, don't you? You want to grow up and be dumb like ZaSu Pitts?" Fields retorts. Gloria Jean says she knows Pitts and likes her and that's just a character she plays. "But this enterprise on which I'm about to embark is fraught with eminent peril. Much too dangerous for a young lady" of your age and delicacy, he tells her.
Fields puts her off long enough by agreeing to take her to a store where she has to pick something up. While there, a woman has purchased a gift for someone who has just had a baby. She comes out and asks the doorman to hail a taxi so she can get to the Maternity Hospital. Fields offers assistance and the woman climbs and a high-speed one-car chase through Hollywood ensues that simply is hilarious. Keep Bullitt! Keep The French Connection! This high-
speed journey through tunnels, going the wrong way on one-way streets, etc. really puts them all to shame in high comic style — especially since the woman he's driving isn't even pregnant and passes out at his excessive speed. At one point, his car even gets lifted up in the air by the ladder of a fire engine. When he finally arrives at the Maternity Hospital, his car completely wrecked, he's grateful that he didn't have a wreck or he never would have made it. Gloria Jean, who has arrived by other means, gives the final line saying, "That's my Uncle Bill, but I love him." Never Give a Sucker an Even Break isn't the greatest Fields film in terms of a sustained feature, but it's so uniquely bizarre that you find something new each time you see — and if you ever get a chance to read about the original script, it could have been even darker and stranger. My biggest complaint would have to be that for a film that clocks in at 70 minutes long, they have far too many musical numbers, most by Gloria Jean but one sung by the actress playing Ouilotta as well. That's not what I want in a W.C. Fields comedy, but it's a tiny criticism when weighed against the craziness that comes out of this film.Tweet
Labels: 40s, Altman, Fields, Huston, Marx Brothers, Movie Tributes
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Monday, November 29, 2010
“I'm very fond of children…girl children, around 18 and 20…”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
William Claude Dukenfield — aka comedian W.C. Fields — reached the ripe old age of 60 in January of 1940…and though The Great Man had been ravaged somewhat by his tendency to drink to excess (his period of cinematic activity between Poppy in 1936 and The Big Broadcast of 1938 in 1938 was explained by his “drying out” in a sanitarium) he was still at the peak of his comedic powers. Universal had signed him to a film contract ($125,000 a picture, with an extra $15,000 for his “screenplays”) based on his renewed popularity on radio, feuding with comic ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour; in fact, his first film project at the studio featured him verbally sparring with his aural nemeses in You Can’t Cheat a Honest Man (1939).
Fields’ second Universal film was My Little Chickadee (1940), in which he was teamed with comedienne Mae West…and the legend has it that W.C. met his match in West, which is why so many of his scenes were written separately. His third Universal picture, however, would dispel any notions that he’d lost his touch; considered a masterpiece of surrealistic Fieldsian nonsense, The Bank Dick (1940), which was released 70 years ago on this date, remains one of the master comedian’s funniest and finest films.
It’s a bit difficult to describe the plot of Dick — probably because there really isn’t one. What we do have onscreen is the trials and tribulations of one Egbert Sousé (“Accent grave upon the e”), another in a long line of Fields’ small-town (Lompoc) ne’er-do-wells, and this time saddled with the most obnoxious family ever (even his teenage daughter, usually a source of support for his character in other vehicles, is a bit of flake — delightfully played by character actress Una Merkel). Sousé, who starts his day by taking over directing a picture originally helmed by the incapacitated A. Pismo Clam (beloved cinematic inebriate Jack Norton), manages to foil a bank robbery and for his efforts is rewarded with a position at the financial institution (along with a “hearty handclasp” from the president, played by Pierre Watkin).
The chief bank clerk is a creampuff of a man named Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton) — his moniker “sounds like a bubble in a bathtub” according to Sousé — who has intentions of marrying Sousé’s daughter Myrtle once he’s able to support her, and his future father-in-law hurries that along by convincing him to embezzle funds from the bank in order to purchase worthless shares in a Nevada beefsteak mine, purchased from a sharpie (Russell Hicks) Sousé encountered at his hangout, the Black Pussy Café (how Fields got that past the censors I’ll never know). Og isn’t really stealing the money; he’s “borrowing” it, fully intending to replace the missing funds once he receives a $500 bonus from his employer. But with the arrival of bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington (Franklin Pangborn) on the scene, Sousé must put “Snoopy” out of commission before he discovers the discrepancy in the books. By arranging for bartender Joe Guelpe (Shemp Howard) to doctor a libation (Sousé asks if “Michael Finn” has been in the café), Snoopington is incapacitated with nausea, and his condition isn’t helped when Sousé mentions gastronomical delicacies like chili con carne and cocoanut custard pie.
With the sort of deux ex machina luck that befalls all of Fields’ film characters, the beefsteak stock turns out to be a financial windfall — and Sousé is also assisted by collecting $10,000 for a film script and a hefty reward for capturing one of the bank robbers who temporarily escaped but returned to the bank to make another huge withdrawal. His family now on Easy Street, we learn that even though Sousé is now a member of the Fortune 500 old habits — his smoking and drinking — are still hard to break.
There’s never been any film star with a more fascinating screen persona than W.C. Fields. At a time in the industry when self-righteous film censors were determined to moralize and sugarcoat life in the movies, Fields’ character — an individual who drank, smoke, lied, cheated and gambled…and more often than not ended up rewarded for that very same behavior — was a man to both behold and admire. He said and did the things polite society frowned upon, and many of his films spotlighted a warped view of small-town life with obnoxious busybodies clucking their tongues at his outrageous behavior. He had also developed a reputation for despising children (though this has been exaggerated throughout the years), though in Dick you certainly can’t fault him for the negative energy he focuses on his youngest brat who, when she asks her mother if she can bounce a rock off her father’s head is told: “Respect your father, darling…what kind of a rock?”
The Bank Dick, like most Fields vehicles, features the thinnest of plots; mere pegs on which he hangs his physical slapstick and absurdist humor (he delighted in offbeat wordplay; Dick is crammed with words like “assegai,” “paternoster” and “catalpa trees”). Dick was directed by Edward F. Cline, an old Mack Sennett veteran who had also worked alongside Buster Keaton as co-director and gag man, who first met up with Fields on one of my favorites in the comedian’s oeuvre, Million Dollar Legs (1932). Cline also directed a portion of W.C.’s aforementioned Honest Man (the classic Ping Pong match scene) and the entirety of My Little Chickadee, but with most individuals chosen to ride herd on a film starring Fields he was content to just sit back and let The Great Man do his thing. It has been said that Cline (who would also helm Fields’ last starring film, 1941’s Never Give a Sucker an Even Break was a favorite of the comedian because he was the only person in Hollywood who “knew less about making movies” than William Claude.
The screenplay credit on Dick went to “Mahatma Kane Jeeves,” a Fieldsian play on dialogue often heard betwixt a society swell and his butler (“My hat…my cane, Jeeves”). It’s crammed with some of W.C.’s most memorable and funniest dialogue:
ELSIE MAE ADELE BRUNCH SOUSÉ: What's the matter, Pop? Don't you love me?
EGBERT SOUSÉ (raising his hand in anger): Certainly I love you!
AGATHA SOUSÉ: Don't you dare strike that child!
EGBERT SOUSÉ: Well, she's not gonna tell me I don't love her…
EGBERT SOUSÉ: Was I in here last night and did I spend a twenty dollar bill?
JOE GUELPE: Yeah…
EGBERT SOUSÉ: Oh boy, what a load that is off my mind! (Chuckling) I thought I'd lost it…
EGBERT SOUSÉ: My uncle, a balloon ascensionist, Effingham Hoofnagle, took a chance…he was three miles and a half up in the air…he jumped out of the basket of the balloon and took a chance of alighting on a load of hay…
OG OGGILBY: Golly! Did he make it?
EGBERT SOUSÉ: Uh... no…he didn't…had he been a younger man, he probably would have made it…that's the point…don't wait too long in life…
OG OGGILBY (after learning he’s been sold a bill of goods): Oh... I knew this would happen! I was a perfect idiot to ever listen to you!
EGBERT SOUSÉ: You listen to me, Og! There's nothing in this world that is perfect…
And of course, there’s Sousé’s immortal admonition to his future son-in-law when Og gets cold feet about stealing from the bank and investing: “Don't be a luddy-duddy! Don't be a mooncalf! Don't be a jabbernowl! You're not those, are you?” (Fields claimed he found those words in a dictionary — further evidence of the man’s lifelong love affair with words and turns of preposterous phrases.)
The Bank Dick was blessed with a dream lineup of supporting players; Sutton and Pangborn had, of course, worked with Fields on earlier occasions but the cast was rounded out with old pros like Merkel, Hicks, Watkin, Norton, Cora Witherspoon and Jessie Ralph. Second banana Shemp Howard, who was no stranger to supporting comedians as well as taking a turn in the spotlight himself, was cast as bartender Joe Guelpe, the Black Pussy proprietor who administers Sousé’s “poultices” and “depth bombs.” Shemp, however, committed the cardinal sin of being funnier than the star — during filming, he livened up the proceedings with the wild ad-libbing he would later become known for once he replaced his brother Jerome “Curly” Howard in the Three Stooges troupe…something that did not endear him to W.C., whose jealousy of other comics was legendary. Sadly, much of Shemp’s improvisations ended up on the cutting room floor — but I sometimes can’t help but grin when I watch Dick and notice that Shemp’s entrances are accompanied by his whistling of “Listen to the Mockingbird”…a tune that used to signal the start of a Stooges two-reeler (before being replaced by the better-known “Three Blind Mice").
After the release of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, W.C. Fields was relegated to guest star appearances and featured bits in outings such as Follow the Boys (1944) and Song of the Open Road (1944). His many years of “partying hard” ultimately took its toll and he left this world for a better on (not too ironically) Dec. 25, 1946. But he left behind a rich cinematic legacy that continues to draw admirers and fans into the big tent with each passing year; even though film critic Roger Ebert rightly points out that The Great Man may not be as popular as he was at one time he also declares: “No doubt the wheel of memory will revolve to bring him back into fashion, because his appeal is timeless: It is the appeal of the man who cheerfully embraces a life of antisocial hedonism, basking in serene contentment with his own flaws. He is self-contained.” The Bank Dick is the culmination of that cogent observation, and an essential starting point to become acquainted with a true cinematic original.
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Labels: 40s, Ebert, Fields, Keaton, Movie Tributes
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Monday, November 15, 2010
“Is it my imagination, or is it getting crowded in here?”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
The Marx Brothers have never been in a picture as wonderful as they are.” So observed film critic Cecilia Ager, and though she made the comment with regards to A Night in Casablanca (1946), it’s hard not to interpret that she was speaking about the revered comedy team’s cinematic oeuvre in general. We know, of course, that this is not entirely true; the brothers Marx made any number of great comedy films — Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) — and at least two genuine masterpieces, Duck Soup (1933) and A Night at the Opera (1935). Ager was probably arguing that the freewheeling, spontaneously anarchic spirit of the Marx Brothers’ comedy (W.C. Fields once remarked that their vaudeville act was the only one he couldn’t follow) was difficult to contain on film but with the passage of time you can’t deny that they did what they could with the tools that they had.
Depending on the day of the week you ask me, my favorite Marx Brothers vehicle fluctuates between Feathers, Soup and Opera, but because 75 years ago the latter film was first released to theaters, I’ve decided that for the time being A Night at the Opera is my choice for the team’s all-time best.
Wealthy widow and opera patron Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) has employed Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho) to help her break into high society — but the scheming Driftwood seems more interested in taking her to the cleaners, bombarding her with insults and insincere flattery while collecting his fat salary. At a restaurant in Italy, Driftwood introduces Mrs. C to Herman Gottlieb (Sig Ruman), the manager of an opera company in New York, who hopes to sign tenor Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King) to a contract — and Gottfried, pandering to Claypool’s interest in opera, invites both of them to a performance of Pagliacci to see Lassparri perform.
At the opera house, Lassparri — a particularly nasty piece of work — abuses his dresser, the impish Tomasso (Harpo), by striking him with a whip…an act that does not endear him to his leading lady, the lovely Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle). Lassparri then pretends to apologize to Tomasso in an attempt to win Rosa’s admiration, but he’s SOL — she only has eyes for Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones), a tenor with a far better voice than Lassparri but who’s only, in his words, “a glorified chorus man.” Baroni’s fellow music school chum, jack-of-all-trades Fiorello (Chico), has offered to become Ricardo’s manager and to try and make him as renowned as his rival — and successfully signs a contract with Driftwood on Ricardo’s behalf when Driftwood mistakenly thinks Fiorello represents Lassparri.
Now a member of the New York opera company, Lassparri travels by steamship along with Rosa, Gottlieb, Mrs. Claypool and Driftwood — Rosa is saddened that she’s leaving Ricardo behind, but he’s managed to stow away along with Fiorello and Tomasso in Driftwood’s steamer trunk. Having arrived in the Big Apple, the stowaways are being sought by the police for being in the country illegally, and Driftwood loses his position with Mrs. Claypool for being involved with the three men. But when Rosa is fired because of her association with Ricardo, the quartet devise a scheme to wreak havoc during the evening performance of Il Trovatore…and having made a shambles of the presentation, our heroes triumph in having Lassparri ridiculed and establishing Ricardo and Rosa as the newest opera stars for a successful happy ending.
Though it’s considered a satirical masterpiece by fans and devotees today, in 1933 the Marx Brothers vehicle Duck Soup was a huge critical and financial flop…and the Marxes’ studio, Paramount, wasn’t much interested in making any more movies with the brothers after that — in fact, the fourth brother in the team, Zeppo, retired from future onscreen appearances, having grown weary of his role as straight man and love interest. (It has been said that Groucho himself considered packing it in also, leaving things up to Harpo and Chico as a duo.) Because Chico was on good terms with many of the motion picture studio heads due to his love of bridge, he was able to get MGM’s “boy wonder” Irving Thalberg interested in making a film with the remaining brothers in the act.
Thalberg would never be mistaken for a comedy expert, but he theorized that what kept the Marxes from being successes at the box office was that their anarchic personalities — the fact that nothing was sacred to them and that no individual would be spared their relentless comedic wrath — appealed to a rather limited audience. A Marx Brothers film that had structure and a good story — particularly a love story, one that would attract female moviegoers — couldn’t miss, and MGM, “the Tiffany’s of movie studios,” was certainly up to the task. MGM has been criticized (I myself have been particularly vocal on the subject at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear) as a studio with no particular aptitude for comedy, and the films they made with Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy would seem to bear that out. But in the case of the Marx Brothers and A Night at the Opera, the studio and the team compromised: Groucho and Company took care of the comedy, while Thalberg and his crew supervised the rest.
In “taking care of the comedy,” Thalberg gave his stamp of approval to allow the brothers to “road-test” the material in Opera, which they did in front of live audiences in several major cities across the country. Large portions of the script — credited to George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind (story by James Kevin McGuinness), but also containing contributions from Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, George Seaton, Robert Pirosh, Al Boasberg and Keaton — were stitched together for a revue that was gauged for maximum audience reaction. Jokes that didn’t work were tossed out; jokes that did were timed for their fullest laugh-getting potential. This sort of innovation could only have happened at MGM, and was repeated for the Brothers’ follow-up film, A Day at the Races (1937) — even though Thalberg passed away in 1936, the pre-production on that film allowed the Marxes to give that film’s comedy material a similar try-out.
Because of Opera’s successful “audition,” the material in the film truly ranks among the Marx Brothers’ best. Two set pieces in particular stand out as undisputed masterpieces; the first being a dialogue exchange between Groucho and Chico in which the two of them argue over the contract that Groucho wants Chico’s singer to sign. Because Chico is dissatisfied with much of what’s in the contract, the discussion turns into a literal ripping up parts of the agreement until only a tiny sliver remains. When Groucho argues that those remains are in every contract — what is known as a “sanity clause” — Chico laughs loudly and fires back: “You can’t fool me — there ain’t no Sanity Clause!”
The other memorable sequence is what has become known as the “stateroom” sequence. On the steamship, Gottfried has arranged accommodations for Driftwood that you couldn’t swing a cat in…and with the arrival of three more unwelcome guests (Ricardo, Fiorello and Tomasso) Otis’ quarters become very close indeed. Driftwood tells his new roommates that they have to am-scray uster-bay because he’s expecting a visit from Mrs. Claypool, but the trio announces they’re staying put until they’ve been fed. After a hilarious routine in which Driftwood orders a meal the size of Rhode Island (“…and two hard-boiled eggs”) an endless string of people — waiters, cleaning ladies, two ship’s engineers, a manicurist and a girl looking for her “Aunt Minnie” (a nice in-joke reference to the brothers’ famous mom) — invade the room, packing its occupants in like proverbial sardines (a total of 15 in all). When Mrs. Claypool arrives for her rendezvous with Otis, she opens the stateroom door and everyone goes spilling out into the hall.
This classic bit of comedy almost didn’t make it into the movie, by the way. When the Marx Brothers performed the bit in front of preview audiences, it fell flat — but it was kept in the movie by the humor-impaired Thalberg, who gambled that the sequence might play funnier on film than live and in person. (I’m beginning to understand why till the end of his life, Groucho always maintained that the legendary studio head was “a genius.”)
A scene that was in the movie but now apparently has been lost occurred at the film’s opening (it is rumored, however, that a Los Angeles collector owns a complete print of Opera, including the excised scene). Opera originally kicked things off with a musical number set in Italy in which various individuals (a street sweeper, a sea captain, etc.) perform snatches of numbers from Pagliacci — much in the vein of the beginning of the Maurice Chevalier film Love Me Tonight (1932). The sequence ends in the restaurant, where Mrs. Claypool asks a waiter about Driftwood’s whereabouts — the way the film commences today. For years I thought the abrupt beginning of Opera was simply a device to get the comedy off-and-running, but according to film comedy historian Leonard Maltin (whose commentary is featured on Opera’s DVD) MGM trimmed all of the references to the Italian backgrounds during World War II (because the “Eye-Ties” were on the other side of the fighting)…and stupidly used the original negative for the deletions. This (and other bits cut here-and-there) explains why so many previous sources stated that Opera had a 95 minute running time (the film runs 92 minutes in its present form) and despite the rumored existence of the found footage, Warner Bros. has expressed little interest in seeking it out for a long-overdue restoration.
While no one will dispute the classic comedy status of A Night at the Opera, the film tends to take a back seat to Duck Soup in the Marx Brothers pantheon by both fans and critics — my blogging colleague Mark Bourne of DVD Journal has remarked that “something got lost in all that MGMness when the screen’s ultimate anti-authoritarian team starting working the Andy Hardy side of the street.” Film critic Roger Ebert concurs, adding that he “fast-forward[s] over the sappy interludes involving Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones.” But I tend to side with Maltin, who has long championed the opinion that both the musical and romantic sidebars in Opera strengthen the film as opposed to weakening it. Carlisle and Jones are both very appealing as the love interests, and the music (which includes the hit song “Alone”) is far-and-away better than that in the team’s later MGM vehicles (The Big Store [1941], I’m talking to you!); it’s definitely superior to much of that spotlighted in their Paramount features (Marxists sometimes forget that those films, notably The Cocoanuts [1929] and Animal Crackers, also feature tuneful interludes that bring the comedy to a screeching halt)…with the exception of “Hooray for Captain Spaulding,” natch. In Opera, I never fail to be impressed that portions of actual operas (Pagliacci and Il Trovatore) are being sung even as Groucho, Chico and Harpo mercilessly lampoon them.
OK, maybe there is a bit too much MGM gloss (I like how the people in the steerage section on the steamship are impeccably dressed during the “Cosi-Cosa” musical number) but the last time I looked, Opera was a comedy film…not a documentary. The seamless blend of MGM glitz and side-splitting Marxian humor made the film one the team’s most successful (if not the most successful) ventures…and with Thalberg’s passing in the year following Opera’s release, Groucho was heard to comment that the Brothers’ film careers died with him as well. But in the meantime: “…on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor…”
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Labels: 30s, Ebert, Fields, Keaton, Marx Brothers, Movie Tributes
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