Sunday, October 09, 2011
A Lady and a Gentleman
By Eddie Selover
It’s ironic that the most elegant and sophisticated couple in film history met in the back seat of a car. Myrna Loy and William Powell were making Manhattan Melodrama, a movie as formulaic and dull as it sounds, and the director W.S. Van Dyke was in a hurry as usual. "My instructions were to run out of a building, through a crowd, and into a strange car," Loy wrote 50 years later. "When Woody called, 'Action,' I opened the car door, jumped in, and landed smack on William Powell's lap. He looked up nonchalantly. 'Miss Loy, I presume?' I said 'Mr. Powell?' And that's how I met the man who would be my partner in 14 films."
The key word in that anecdote is "nonchalantly." That was the style Powell and Loy developed in the mid-'30s—cool, dry, and airy despite whatever melodrama, Manhattan or otherwise, happened to be unfolding around them. In fact, the more dramatic the situation (for example, a wife catching her husband with another woman, or someone waving a gun around) the more distant and amused they became. Trapped, like all the other actors of their generation, in clichéd plots and by-the-numbers scenes, they looked at each other skeptically — he with lips pursed, watching to see how she would react; she with narrowed, suspicious eyes as if he had arranged it all in a transparent, failed attempt to please her.
Their impact was so strong that their detached superiority itself became a cliché — dozens of actors from Dean Martin to Maggie Smith to Bill Murray have used it over the years to signal cynical disbelief at the movies they’ve been stuck in. What Powell and Loy had that nobody ever quite duplicated was a deep mutual understanding and respect. They were peerlessly adult and worldly (they were never called by their first names, like Fred and Ginger — that "Miss Loy" and "Mr. Powell" is very telling). But they weren't stuffy about it. They may have treated the plots and characters around them as a private joke, but they locked in on each other with tremendous focus. After their first film, Van Dyke paired them in The Thin Man, which made them a world-famous team and bonded them forever in the public’s mind. But it's their fifth film, Libeled Lady, which premiered 75 years ago today, in which their romantic chemistry is at its most potent and moving. It's probably their best movie.
One measure of how wonderful Powell and Loy are in Libeled Lady is that they turn the other actors into run-of-the-mill supporting players. When your co-stars are Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy, that's saying something. Harlow and Tracy play the contrasting couple — the floozy and the tough mug who go toe-to-toe with the two urbane sophisticates. They’re good, but in this case they're not in Powell and Loy’s class. The movie was made a couple of years after the enforcement of the Production Code, when MGM was trying to fashion a new persona for Harlow. She had become famous playing trollops, poured into skin tight satin gowns, her unworldly platinum hair and hard, angled face shining in the key light. Once the Code was in force, they began to tone her down, and here she has evolved into a fairly standard movie tart: loud and ungrammatical, but with a slightly dinged heart of gold. Harlow gets top billing in Libeled Lady, and she’s capable and likable, but she’s also a bit tiresome as she stomps her feet and launches into yet another tirade.
I don’t know what to say about Tracy. Katharine Hepburn once compared him to a potato (she meant it as a compliment), and that’s pretty apt. He’s solid and meaty. He’s there. But he’s not very exciting. There’s a case to be made for Tracy as the most overrated actor of his generation; he’s still considered some sort of giant, but it’s more residual reputation than actual achievement. He never could play comedy, or more accurately, he wasn’t personally funny aside from whatever business or line they gave him. In comedies, he tended to act like an overgrown puppy, putting his head down, looking up with his big brown eyes, shuffling and stumbling, raising his voice to bark at the other actors. In Libeled Lady, he plays a standard '30s part—the ruthless, manipulative, anything-for-a-story newspaper editor. Cary Grant made the same character charismatic and hilarious in His Girl Friday, but the best Tracy can manage is to be a good sport.
Here’s the plot: Loy is the richest girl in the world, who is suing Tracy’s paper for libel over a false story about a romantic entanglement. The suit would ruin the paper, so Tracy hires Powell to seduce Loy and put her in a compromising position; in order to make Loy look like a homewrecker, he convinces his own fiancée Harlow to marry Powell… platonically. It’s a tightly woven farce plot, none of it very original even at the time, but it serves to keep the four stars at cross-purposes so they can bicker and double cross each other. It’s like the ancestor of a sitcom. The director was Jack Conway, an anonymous MGM hack whose chief virtue was that he knew how to keep things moving briskly. Libeled Lady is almost a perfect catalog of '30s movie comedy situations and devices — people bite each other, elegant gowns are kicked away impatiently, insults are hurled and then topped. As written by Maureen Watkins, the author of Chicago, some of the wisecracks are pretty good — for example when Harlow complains that someone talked to her like a house detective. “How do you know what a house detective sounds like?” Tracy demands and she fires back: “Doncha think I read?”
What makes Libeled Lady memorable is the delicacy and heart of Powell and Loy’s playing. At first, of course, they’re adversaries. Hired to make love to her, he begins by trying to ingratiate himself with her on a trip on an ocean liner: isolating himself with her, subtly arranging for physical contact, telling her what beautiful eyes she has. As he comes up with one sleazy strategy after another, she regards him with infinite and increasingly open shades of distaste. Her father (Walter Connolly, the perennial sputtering father of screwball comedy) is an avid fisherman, so Powell works that one, pretending to be a fishing expert. When Connolly excitedly tells Loy that Powell is an angler, she replies that yes, he seems like quite an angler. This leads to an extended scene in which the three go trout fishing in a raging river, and Powell takes a series of pratfalls and spills while trying to appear like a world-class fisherman — he has a very wet instruction book in his creel basket, though he can't hang onto it for long. One of the great comic sequences of the decade, it led to Howard Hawks making an entire movie around the same premise called Man’s Favorite Sport? (unfortunately, Rock Hudson was no William Powell).
Eventually, Powell’s pursuit of Loy leads to them falling genuinely in love, and at that point something wonderful happens. With all the mechanical farce conventions ticking away around them, you expect him to be exposed, and he is. You’re ready for the inevitable confrontation, hurt feelings, and breakup that lasts up through the final explanation and forgiveness, but it never comes. She instantly understands what’s happened, and there are no recriminations…even though he’s still technically married to Harlow. Powell and Loy are too mature, too wise, too grown up for tedious spats. Audiences loved The Thin Man movies, and still do, for their portrait of a witty, companionable marriage full of teasing and wisecracks. Libeled Lady shows the courtship phase of that same relationship, and it’s as satisfying as you always hoped it would be.
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Labels: 30s, Astaire, Cary, Dean Martin, Ginger Rogers, Harlow, Hawks, K. Hepburn, Loy, Maggie Smith, Movie Tributes, Murray, Rock Hudson, Tracy, William Powell
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Friday, June 24, 2011
Peter Falk (1927-2011)
One more thing…before I get started talking about the great Peter Falk, who died Thursday at 83 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, as memorable as his creation of Lt. Columbo was in the pantheon of iconic television characters, he needs to be remembered for far more than just that role, even if it may have been his most famous — maybe even his best — and earned him four Emmys and 10 Emmy nominations. He also did considerable screen work and some Broadway. He was capable of the most searing drama of John Cassavetes and the broadest of comedy. He was a talent.
As with many actors of his generation, he began his career on live television in the 1950s, appearing in many of the shows that featured theatrical productions staged for viewers at home as well as the occasional guest appearance in an episode of a recurring series. According to IMDb, his first television appearance came in 1957 on Robert Montgomery Presents in a presentation of Return Visit. This came shortly after his Broadway debut in 1956 in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan where Falk played an English guard. Also in the cast as a member of the ensemble was none other than Robert Ludlum, before he abandoned acting to become a novelist. Also in 1956 on Broadway, Falk appeared as a servant in the comedy Diary of a Scoundrel whose cast included Roddy McDowall, Howard da Silva, Margaret Hamilton, Jerry Stiller and future killer on multiple episodes of Columbo, Robert Culp. Falk didn't return to Broadway for about seven years, concentrating on television and movies.
In 1960, he made his film debut in Pretty Boy Floyd. The same year, he also appeared in Murder, Inc. as a violent hit man for the notorious crime syndicate of Jewish gangsters run by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter in the 1930s. It earned Falk his first Oscar nomination as best supporting actor. He still stuck mainly to TV after that, though an appearance on a 1961 episode of The Law and Mr. Jones won him an Emmy. He hit most of the big series of the time at some point: The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Untouchables, Have Gun — Will Travel.
In 1961, he made another big feature, this time with some big names. He co-starred with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford in Frank Capra's remake of his own Lady for a Day, retitled A Pocketful of Miracles. Falk played gangster Ford's none-too-swift sidekick and it earned him his second consecutive Oscar nomination for supporting actor. Movie roles started to come easier after that, though he still did a lot of television, including an appearance on a 1962 episode of The Dick Powell Theatre called "The Price of Tomatoes" that garnered Falk another Emmy nomination.
As the film roles started coming more frequently, he took advantage. In 1963, he was one of the two cab drivers caught up in the chase for the money buried under that big W in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The next year, he appeared in The Rat Pack vehicle Robin and the 7 Hoods when it was released. He did take time off to return to Broadway in 1964 to star as Stalin in The Passion of Josef D. by Paddy Chayefsky. In 1965, he joined Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis for The Great Race. That same year, he tried his hand as the lead of his first television series, The Trials of O'Brien, but it only lasted one season.
Heading back to the big screen, he made the comedy Penelope with Natalie Wood in 1966; Clive Donner's adaptation of the play Luv in 1967, again with Lemmon and with Elaine May; and Anzio in 1968 featuring a cast that included Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan. Falk also made a TV movie in 1968 called Prescription for Murder that introduced the world to a homicide detective named Lt. Columbo, even though he would not reappear again until 1971.
In 1970, Falk made his first collaboration with John Cassavetes in Husbands. Cassavetes' films remain an acquired taste for just about everyone, film lovers included, but he brought out sides and shadings in Falk that you never saw anywhere else. He directed Falk again opposite his wife Gena Rowlands in 1975's A Woman Under the Influence and his portrait of a blue collar Italian husband trying to deal with a mentally unbalanced wife really is a thing of wonder. Falk and Cassavetes worked again on screen together in 1976's Mikey and Nicky, a very unusual portrait of a friendship, only it was Elaine May in the director's chair in that case. Cassavetes even appeared as one of the killers on an installment of Columbo. He made a cameo as himself in Cassavetes' underrated Opening Night. He worked for Cassavetes on his final film, Big Trouble in 1986, which reunited Falk with Alan Arkin and Andrew Bergman, Falk's co-star and writer of The In-Laws, but I haven't seen that one since word was not good.
In March 1971, Lt. Columbo appeared again in a television movie called Ransom for a Dead Man, but that fall, Columbo became a regular series — or as regular a series can be when it's on irregularly. It was part of NBC's rotating lineup of Mystery of the Week and would share its time slot with McMillan & Wife and McCloud. Columbo stayed on the air until 1978. Then, in 1989, ABC brought the rumpled detective with the broken-down car back. They tried an alternating format, but their other series sucked so they just continued doing occasional Columbo movies until 2003, only Falk also was the executive producer now. He also wrote an episode. He directed two outings back in 1972.
In early 1971, Falk made his last appearance on Broadway in the original production of Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue. He and Simon must have been good partners, because Falk later appeared in two original spoofs that Simon wrote for the big screen. The first was 1976's delightful Murder By Death with
a truly all-star cast: Eileen Brennan, James Coco, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, Estelle Winwood and, of course, Truman Capote. Also playing a small role, and up until then probably most recognizable as Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family, a younger James Cromwell. The premise had the stars playing spoofs of famous literary detectives and Falk plays Sam Diamond, which means Sam Spade which to most people means Bogart and Falk does a hilarious Bogart satire. So funny in fact that Simon resurrected it in the 1978 film The Cheap Detective where Falk did Lou Peckinpaugh with another all-star cast in a spoof of all Bogart films. It wasn't as good as Murder By Death, but Falk was just as great.
Falk had another release in 1978, now largely forgotten, that I haven't seen in years but that I do remember enjoying when I was a lot younger and that was The Brink's Job. Directed by William Friedkin, it told the true story of a hard-luck would-be criminal who manages to rip off an armored car for a sizable amount of cash. He's surprised to find that the robbery doesn't even make the news and after some snooping, he discovers it's because Brink's has such poor security they didn't want it reported. Of course, it goes to his head so he and his gang plot an even bigger score. In 1979, Falk made what's probably one of the purest comic pleasures put on film, a movie so funny that even having Arthur Hiller as director didn't screw it up. Of course, I'm referring to The In-Laws where, frankly, I think Falk's off-the-wall portrayal of Vincent Ricardo and Alan Arkin's work as dentist Sheldon Kornpett, his flabbergasted, unwilling partner in hijinks, both deserved Oscar consideration in this crazy farce written by Andrew Bergman. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so, but don't get the recent remake by mistake. Serpentine!
The remainder of Falk's film credits contained two certified gems and a lot of misses such as 1981's All the Marbles, where he managed female wrestlers; a cameo in the underwhelming The Great Muppet Caper the same year; 1987's Happy New Year, where the makeup was the star; Cyndi Lauper's try at screen fame in 1988's Vibes; a mobster in the dumb 1989 comedy Cookie; and 2001's Corky Romano. However, he did appear in some films that earned some good notices that I didn't see such as Joe Mantegna's directing debut of a David Mamet script called Lakeboat in 2000. He also made a very funny appearance in the first season of The Larry Sanders Show. The two film classics he made post-1979 were Wim Wenders' exquisite Wings of Desire, where he played himself but he had the ability to talk to the angels (click here to see the scene), and The Princess Bride, where he played the kindly grandfather reading the story to his sick grandson (Fred Savage) and us.
He wasn't done with the stage yet either. In 1998, he earned raves appearing off-Broadway in Arthur Miller's Mr. Peters' Connections.
What a range and I can't even add up the hours of enjoyment this man has given me through his work all my life. Thankfully, the work still remains to enjoy.
Rest in peace, Mr. Falk.
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Labels: Arthur Miller, Awards, Bette, Capote, Capra, Cassavetes, Chayefsky, Glenn Ford, Guinness, Hitchcock, Larry Sanders, Lemmon, Maggie Smith, Mitchum, Neil Simon, Niven, Obituary, Robert Ryan, Sellers, Tony Curtis
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Sunday, January 02, 2011
From the Vault: Richard III
And therefore — since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days, —
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Richard III, Act I, Scene I
Prove a villain he does in what may be the most imaginative, entertaining film adaptation of a Shakespeare play ever.
Adapted from an acclaimed stage production, Richard III transplants the Bard's historical play from the 15th century to a fictionalized England of the 1930s, where a bloody civil war rages and the pseudo-fascist Richard of Gloucester conspires to seize the throne from himself — at the expense of many family members.
When we first see Richard on screen leading an attack on reigning King Henry and his troops, a gas mask hides his face and causes Richard to breathe heavily and evoke a far more humanistic movie villain — Darth Vader. The allusion to Star Wars ends up being wholly appropriate because this is Shakespeare revised to be a movie, not just a filmed version of the play.
Sir Ian McKellen plays Richard, repeating his stage triumph and showing why he often earns the label of the foremost Shakespearean actor of his generation. This is Shakespeare delivered conversationally with as much respect for the context as the poetry. McKellen doesn't cradle the lines as if he fears they're so delicate that they might break: he charges full throttle and brings Richard to brilliant, rousing life.
An excellent cast supports McKellen, including Annette Bening as Queen Elizabeth, Nigel Hawthorne and John Wood as Richard's brothers Clarence and Edward and Maggie Smith as his mother, the duchess of York.
Lesser known but recognizable performers such as Kristin Scott Thomas as the widowed Lady Anne and Jim Broadbent as Lord Buckingham, Richard's co-conspirator, also add to the fun. The cast's weak spot turns out to be Robert Downey Jr. as Earl Rivers, Elizabeth's brother. Downey's line readings sound so awkward that it comes as a relief when he's dispatched by Richard's henchman (Adrian Dunbar).
Richard Loncraine directs Richard III at a galloping pace and though some purists may dislike cuts in the text, the omissions do not come at the expense of the story's flow, unlike the recent film of Othello.
Too often people of all ages treat Shakespeare as if his plays are museum pieces, treating them more like medicine they have to take than entertainment. With this film, perhaps that view can change as its stunning visuals and realistic action manage to keep reluctant viewers' attention while McKellen's exquisite acting helps the words penetrate their mind.
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Labels: 90s, Bening, Broadbent, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Remakes, Robert Downey Jr., Shakespeare, Star Wars
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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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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Harry Potter and the half-baked script
By Edward Copeland
With the arrival of each new Harry Potter film, I've made it clear that I've never read any of the books yet I've been amazed how each installment grew in depth and quality once they got rid of director Chris Columbus from the first two installments. The previous entry, Order of the Phoenix, slipped a little and was the first of the films that felt to me as if it had been condensed to the point that a lot had been left out from the book. However, Imelda Staunton's delightful performance, the best in the entire series, more than made up for that film's flaws. This time, with director David Yates returning to helm Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was the first time, even including the Columbus efforts, where I watched most of the time bored and dumbfounded.
As with all the other adaptations, the Half-Blood Prince was written by Steve Kloves, the man whose great work as writer-director on The Fabulous Baker Boys inspired J.K. Rowling to select him to adapt her books to the screen in the first place. However, the Half-Blood Prince plays like a muddle. By the time it reveals who the Half-Blood Prince is, I still had no (and still don't have any) idea what that really meant and what its significance was.
As in Goblet of Fire, Harry's friends Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) stay pretty much segregated to the sidelines except for one sequence where Grint proves quite charming and funny when Ron becomes enchanted by a love potion. Daniel Radcliffe still does fine as Harry, but this time out the heavy lifting seems to be handled even more than usual by the veteran British pros such as Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman.
The actor who shines the most in this outing is the series' newcomer, Jim Broadbent, playing a former potions professor that Dumbledore (Gambon) lures back to Hogwarts because of the connection he had to Lord Voldemort back when he was just a student named Tom Riddle and hadn't turned to evil. Every note Broadbent strikes — fear, guilt, excitement — seems just right. He's really the only aspect of the Half-Blood Prince that saves it from being a complete bore.
Director Yates' pacing is way off here. The atmospherics are solid as usual, but I don't know why this chapter came off as seeming so messy. The final book in the series is being broken up into two movies, so perhaps that will eliminate some of the problems of leaving things out, but it concerns me that Yates has been entrusted with the reins once again since his two efforts have been the weakest non-Columbus outings in the film series.
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Labels: 00s, Broadbent, Gambon, Maggie Smith, Rickman, Sequels
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Monday, March 31, 2008
R-E-S-P-E-C-T? Not as far as I can see.
By Josh R
Forget whatever Mom and Dad told you. Respect is not always a good thing. Not everyone — or everything — deserves it. Sometimes it’s only right to be disrespectful.
Before anyone accuses me of being a bad influence, please note the use of qualifying
adverbs to mitigate these statements. Apart from the high-ranking hawks who regard those sissy Geneva Convention mandates as impediments to achieving World Peace, no one is claiming that respect — for international law, the social compact or one’s fellow man — is an overrated virtue. That said, when it comes to the process of adapting a film into a musical, assuming an overly reverential stance toward one’s source material can not only be foolish — it can be fatal. If treating the original like the Holy Grail makes for a work of theater that feels like a pale imitation (*cough*Young Frankenstein*cough*), it’s best to rethink the soundness of the concept. If the source material isn’t very good to begin with (*cough*Footloose*cough*…drat these allergies), then by all means, don't treat it with reverence. Don’t be tolerant or considerate — don’t spare people’s feelings. Tear that sucker down. Be brutal. As a film, the 1980 musical Xanadu was, and remains, virtually unwatchable. Perhaps best remembered as the vehicle which brought Olivia Newton-John’s acting career to a crashing halt, there's very little to be said in either its favor or its defense (if pushed, I'll grant that the art direction is borderline acceptable, in its tacky, Dance Party USA kind of way). The lame-brained plot — presumably devised at a slumber party and written out in glitter-pen with a smiley face in each O and a heart atop each i — told the story of a Greek muse taking human form to help a hapless hunk realize his artistic potential by opening up a roller disco. Tongue in cheek? Try tongue in place. Not even the presence of Gene Kelly in a supporting role lent an iota of credibility to the concept, or brought any redeeming value to the entire lunatic enterprise; it was always destined to be less Singin’ in the Rain than Singing to Cause Pain. Even at the dawn of the '80s, an era not exactly known for good taste, the moviegoing public still knew a stinker when they smelled one.
Understandably, the news that Xanadu was being adapted for the Broadway stage did not initially inspire a great deal of confidence. For all those who wondered if the people behind the decision to retrieve this glittery corpse from its mirror-balled, midnight movie grave were actually serious, the answer is — and for this we must all give thanks — of course not. The creators of Xanadu not only acknowledge how bad their source material is; in holding it up for ridicule, they subject it to the sort of skewering that goes well beyond innocuous parody. While the silly, peripatetic spectacle cutting a broad swath across the stage of the Helen Hayes Theatre in pastel-colored spandex is an affectionate send-up, it strives above all other objects to impress upon audiences just how remarkably bad the original film is. To that end, it succeeds, and the result is never less than trashy, snarky fun. As to whether or not a silk purse has been made out of a sow’s ear, I’m inclined to think not. That the jokers behind the stage incarnation have managed to get a brightly colored polyester handbag out of the most unprepossessing specimen in the pen is victory enough, and theatergoers who expect nothing more than a good time aren’t apt to leave feeling short-changed.
Any fear that the librettist Douglas Carter-Beane (The Little Dog Laughed) will be approaching his source material with anything other than the lack of respect it so richly deserves is dispelled early on, when the heroine chirpily declares her intention to take human form, don rollers skates with pink leg warmers, and speak with an Australian accent — in this case, so thick it practically bleeds Vegemite. Kerry Butler, the bright-eyed, angel-faced comedienne who memorably created the role of drippy tagalong Penny Pingleton in the Broadway production of Hairspray, delivers a merciless parody of her cinematic predecessor — her cheerful evisceration of Newton-John is spot on, right down to the infamously breathy delivery. Even if the actress’s performance is bit too knowing to fully capture the dreamy, slightly dazed quality that made the Aussie singing sensation such a soft-focus antidote to the flashy excesses of the glam-rock era, she’s still about as sunny as Dorothy Hamill doing a toothpaste commercial, with a vapid wholesomeness that shimmers with the same synthetic twinkle as her frosted lipstick. Like Ms. Hamill, she is also incredibly adept on skates — so much so that the 4.8s posted by some members of the Greek chorus during her spiral sequence seemed criminally low. Needless to say, Ms. Butler’s Clio/Kira is drawn less from the realm of Greek mythology than Me decade American kitsch; she’s unmistakably Olivia Newton-John, but as if played by Marcia Brady during open mike night on The Love Boat. If the characterization seems more in keeping with the sort of broad, shtick-laden impersonations of Forbidden Broadway sketches than the sort you’d expect to see in a full-length book musical, that’s in keeping with the tone of the show itself; she’s amusing enough to make you overlook the fact that everything she does exists on a purely one-dimensional level.
The same came be said of her strapping leading man, Cheyenne Jackson, who speaks in perpetual tones of dawning awareness as the embodiment of sensitive-hunk cluelessness. He’s the All-American boy as a sweet-natured simpleton; his super-short, super-tight jean cut-offs have apparently cut off all circulation to his brain. Perhaps because the tone of the show is so broad, and the rest of its cast favor a style so exaggerated, Tony Roberts seems a bit too restrained in the silver fox role originated by Kelly — his breezy, dapper charm is out of place in a show that seems pitched squarely over the top. Restraint is not a term that could applied to the scenery-chewing antics of Mary Testa and Jackie Hoffman, who steal the show every time they appear onstage as Clio’s scheming sisters, Melpomene and Calliope. A bosomy, brass-lunged belter in the Lainie Kazan mold and a shrunken troll-doll reminiscent of Jack Gilford in drag, this wonderfully mismatched duo provide the evening with its musical and comedic highpoint, a shrieking, cackling rendition of “Evil Woman” that is delivered in a key best described as Screaming Queen.
It’s really only when these two shameless hams are center stage that Xanadu rises to the level of a guilty pleasure. That it doesn’t manage to stay there for the entirety of its 90-minute running time has more to do with how simple its ambitions are, as opposed to the extent to which they are realized. While Xanadu hits its mark with perfect aim, it must be acknowledged that the mark has been set awfully low. The entire point of the show is to demonstrate how entertaining stupid can be — but smart humor is ultimately more nourishing than the brainless variety, and one can only consume so many Little Debbie’s snack cakes before the stomach, and the mind, begin to rebel. Calliope remarks in an aside to the audience that the show is basically “like children’s theater for 40-year old gay men”; that’s an apt assessment of the level on which it functions, and the degree to which the proceedings plays out like a live-action cartoon. While the right part of my brain had a perfectly good time laughing along with Xanadu’s silly gags and one-liners, the left part was rolling its eyes and marvelling at the fact that so many grown-up people in the audience were apparently willing to pay good money for pure, unadulterated schlock. There's a market for Statue of Liberty paperweights and I Love New York ties in Times Square; Xanadu is likely to appeal to the same demographic.
Still, I'm not a complete snob, and there’s something to be said for a show that keeps an audience laughing, and has no pretensions to be anything other than what it is: Junk Food. That being the case, Xanadu is at its best when it’s slathering on the cheez whiz and having fun at the expense of bad '80s movies. When the action moves to Mount Olympus, where Zeus and the other Greek Gods hold court, its no accident that they look and sound like Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith and Ursula Andress in Clash of the Titans. The Electric Light Orchestra’s easy-listening score, consisting of disco-inflected compositions reminiscent of B-sides of Bee Gees albums, is infernally catchy, and director Christopher Ashley’s clever use of space is, in many ways, the show’s best asset. By the time the onstage audience members are called upon to crack their glo-sticks and dance along to the titular anthem, it’s clear that good sense has no place in Xanadu. It’s stupid and silly — perhaps too much so for my taste — but neither of those terms are used in the spirit of an insult or a reproach. For fashioning its audiences with a good time, Xanadu actually deserves a measure of respect.
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Labels: Gene Kelly, Maggie Smith, Musicals, Olivier, Theater
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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Centennial Tributes: Laurence Olivier
"I take a simple view of living. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it."
Lord Laurence Olivier
By Edward Copeland
Lord Laurence Olivier was often referred to as one of the all-time greats on stage and I wish I could have seen him perform in that capacity. He co-founded with Sir Ralph Richardson a new Old Vic Theatre Company in 1944. Later, he was one of the founders of the Royal National Theatre in 1963. He retired from the stage in 1974. He also was the fifth actor to be given the honor of burial in Westminster Abbey. Despite his legendary status as a stage actor and appearing frequently on Broadway between 1929 and 1961 and directing two productions after that, he only received a single Tony nomination for acting (for The Entertainer in 1958) and he lost. As it is, myself and many others have had to make do with his admittedly massive body of screen and television work, work which the actor often expressed embarrassment about, understandable when you consider some of the roles he took, presumably just for the paycheck.
Really, Olivier is the one who inspired me to use my running gag "All British actors are whores." That's not to say he wasn't great, but it did often exemplify itself in his seeming willingness to appear in just about anything that passed his way. At the same time, he did manage for a long time to hold the record for acting Oscar nominations among men with 10 nominations until Jack Nicholson tied him with his nomination for A Few Good Men and passed him with his nomination for As Good As It Gets. Instead of just going chronologically through his works that I've seen, I've decided to divide this tribute into four acts.
"My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself; my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself."
Olivier's first Oscar nomination came in 1939 for the film which really put him on the map as far as movies were concerned, Wuthering Heights. Really it is one of the few times he played an almost purely romantic role on film, seeming to slip into more character-type parts almost immediately afterward. Still, his Heathcliff can make hearts flutter to this very day. in 1940, he scored his second consecutive nomination as best actor and worked with the legendary Alfred Hitchcock on Rebecca, the only Hitchcock film to win best picture, even though Hitch failed to pick up director. Olivier's Max de Winter perfectly blended mystery as to what his character may or may not have done to his previous wife with enough appeal to understand why Joan Fontaine's unnamed second wife would fall for the rich and eccentric man living in the wondrous estate of Manderley with the housekeeper from hell, even if his marriage proposal was vague enough that he had to add, "I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool." As World War II preoccupied most of England, Olivier originally joined the actual
war effort until given a pass to lend more support through the arts and so his next Oscar nomination came in 1946 with Henry V, which also marked Olivier's first outing as a film director. Shakespeare's tale of the English king and his battles was transformed into a rousing morale boost for British moviegoers when it debuted there in 1944, though it didn't land in the states until two years later. He didn't win as actor, but the Academy bestowed an honorary Oscar to him for his work as actor, director and producer in bringing Henry V to the screen. Two years later, Olivier returned to the best actor ranks in another Shakespeare adaptation, Hamlet, and this time he earned a directing nomination as well. Perhaps
Shakespeare's most famous play and certainly the most famous role for any actor interested in the Bard, Hamlet earned Olivier the prize for best actor and won best picture as well, though Olivier lost director to John Huston for Treasure of the Sierra Madre. His Hamlet, as was his Henry V, is very good, but for me he approaches the roles as if the words might break, a tendency I see too often in Shakespearean turns. I wonder if his Shakespearean performances would play differently for me if I saw them on the stage. It was five years until Olivier's next best actor nomination and once again it came from Shakespeare and in a film he directed. This time, Olivier sank his teeth into the great villain that is Richard III and to me, it plays as his first truly great Shakespearean role on film, though I still prefer Ian McKellen's Richard III both in terms of performance and as a film. In 1960, Olivier made it into the best actor finals again, this time for repeating his stage triumph as Archie Rice
in Tony Richardson's film of The Entertainer, also notable for his first film teaming with his third and final wife, Joan Plowright. For me, of all the Olivier film performances I've seen, Archie Rice remains the best. His next nomination returned him to Shakespeare again, this time for a film he didn't direct. His Othello is jarring at first, when he enters the film in blackface using a gait that's reminiscent of Antonio Fargas as Huggy Bear on Starsky & Hutch. Once you get past that though (and the makeup is good), it turns out to be his best Shakespearean performance on film yet. It's fascinating, because you see that the older Olivier got and the longer he worked with the Bard's words, the better he got at it. His movie Hamlet
was better than his Henry V and his Richard III bested Hamlet, but Othello beats them all (and wait until we get to his King Lear on TV). The supporting cast is a mixed bag. I didn't care much for Frank Finlay's Iago and after decades of enjoying the steel and wit of many a Maggie Smith performance, it seems weird to see her as frail Desdemona, but then again it beats Julia Stiles any day. His next nomination in 1972 came for his acting duel with Michael Caine in Sleuth, but imagine for a moment how the movie world would have been different if Olivier's health had been better in the 1970s. In his DVD commentary on The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola admits that he had two choices for Don Vito: Brando and Olivier, but Olivier's health forced him to decline, though the studio would have preferred him. Four years later, his next nomination came for the
first time in the supporting category for his superb turn as the Nazi-in-hiding Christian Szell in Marathon Man, a chilling portrayal that heightened fear of the dentist as much as Jaws did for swimming in the ocean. Two years later, he went from the hunted to the hunter with his final Oscar-nominated performance as the Nazi hunter seeking to stop Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) and his plot to clone little Hitlers in The Boys From Brazil. Though, as if they wanted to make sure he got a little something, the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar the same night."I believe in the theater. I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thoughts. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size."
Olivier won five Emmys for his acting work on television and two of those wins were for performances that probably come closest to approximating what it would have been like to see him on the stage. I was unable to see his first win for a 1960 special of The Moon and Sixpence or his 1975 win for Love Among the Ruins, which paired him with Katharine Hepburn. I did see his 1973 win for a production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, and I must say he was great as the elder Tyrone, the tired actor not nearly as great as he wanted to be nor that he thought he was. The production itself is as flawed as the 1962 film version starring Katharine Hepburn and none of the other cast members really soar the way Olivier did. I also saw his winning performance in the 1982 British miniseries Brideshead Revisited, whose reputation far exceeds the production's actual worth. Olivier only appeared in two of the 11 laborious chapters and I was sort of surprised as it unfolded that he beat the far-more interesting work by John Gielgud — until I saw the episode Olivier won for, which happened to be the final installment. His performance overpowers the entire episode (thank goodness something did) as a family's dying patriarch. The finest television work I saw him give
(and the best Shakespeare I've seen him perform) was his final win for a 1984 production of King Lear. Watching Olivier as the troubled monarch who can't tell his good children from his bad was a joy to behold, despite Gordon Crosse's overbearing musical score, and he truly does the mad scene justice. I once saw a stage production of King Lear and during an intermission, an audience member commented that what Lear really needed was a good estate planner, but what the play really needs is a great Lear and Olivier provided that."I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor, to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself."
Olivier also appeared in many other notable films, some of which attracted award attention, even if not for him. The same year he made Rebecca, he also played Mr. Darcy in the great 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, even if Greer Garson was too old for her part. The next year, he appeared in the great Powell-Pressburger film 49th Parallel aka The Invaders, as well as perhaps his best collaboration with second wife Vivien Leigh in That Hamilton Woman. You know, it's always odd to hear Leigh act with her own British accent. Another film worth checking out is William Wyler's 1952 film Carrie, one of Jennifer Jones' best efforts as a girl looking for success in the big city of Chicago but running into a spate of bad luck and falling for a married restaurant manager (Olivier). Also, it goes without saying that anyone would be remiss if they missed Olivier's campy turn as Crassus in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. Kubrick basically disowned the film, but it's still worth seeing, if only for the ridiculous amount of innuendo in the scenes between Olivier and Tony Curtis.
"Without acting, I cannot breathe."
For most of the 1970s until the end of his life, Olivier battled many illnesses and I have to hope that they explain some of the motivation. Sometimes, the roles worked out in spite of themselves (I can't imagine that he expected that his fine turn in A Little Romance or the movie itself would turn out as well they did.) Other times, they turned out to be a campy treat in spite of themselves such as his role as Zeus in Clash of the Titans, which also contained a fun turn by fellow Brit Maggie Smith as the devious Thetis. However, other times things didn't turn out nearly so well and Olivier's work turned out campy and over-the-top in movies that ranged from the dull 1979 Dracula where he hammed it up as Van Helsing to the disaster that was Neil Diamond's version of The Jazz Singer where Lord Olivier took the role of the singer's cantor father intoning, "I haf no son." Then there is something that goes beyond the pale in putridness, his role as an American auto magnate (with an awful American accent in the soapy adaptation of Harold Robbins' potboiler The Betsy. The Betsy also proved that it's not just Brits that need paychecks, because I can see no other explanation for the presence of great American actors such as Robert Duvall, Jane Alexander, Tommy Lee Jones and Edward Herrmann in this 1978 lemon. Fortunately, I never saw Olivier take on the role of Douglas MacArthur in the fabled big-budget monstrosity Inchon, most notable for being financed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church (better known as "Moonies") and owner of The Washington Times newspaper. Hell, death hasn't even stopped Olivier who, through the creepy magic of CGI, turned up as the villain in 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, released 15 years after his death.
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Labels: Archers, Caine, Coppola, Duvall, Fontaine, Garson, Gielgud, Gregory Peck, Hitchcock, Huston, K. Hepburn, Kubrick, Maggie Smith, O'Neill, Olivier, Shakespeare, Tony Curtis, V. Leigh, Wyler
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Monday, October 23, 2006
Mum's the Word
By Josh R
Of all cinematic prototypes, few may inspire as much nostalgia and affection as the classic British domestic. Victorian fictions portray them as colorful cockneys with round faces, comical features and preternaturally cheery natures — as endearing as household pets, and with the same kind of puppyish devotion to their masters. Of course, these pets have a practical utility, and their presence in the home is the ultimate stamp of a life of luxury. Who hasn’t fantasized about being waited upon hand and foot by a hyper-efficient collection of butlers, maids and cooks who execute their duties in crisp, self-effacing fashion and keep the household running like clockwork?
Envy then the Rev. Walter Goodfellow and his wife Gloria, as played by Rowan Atkinson and Kristin Scott Thomas, in the new film Keeping Mum, which is currently playing in select cities. A timid village vicar and his sexually frustrated wife, they inhabit a postcard-pretty cottage in the English countryside, juggling the duties of parenthood, the tedious obligations of parish life, and their own barely acknowledged frustrations with the dullness of it all. The family situation is far from perfect — the vicar is haplessly put-upon by his parishioners and too unassertive to do much about it, his wife is contemplating an affair with her caddish golf instructor, their teenage daughter has begun exploring the mysteries of sex with just about anyone she can get her hands on, and their sensitive young son is the kind of walking target school bullies fantasize about.
All seem resigned to a life of quiet, if genteel, desperation — that is, until Grace Hawkins, their new housekeeper, arrives magically on the scene like an angel from the blue. Lovably eccentric and devoted to a fault, Grace is the kind of servant that would make even Queen Elizabeth II grin with giddy satisfaction. She can cook like a dream (“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” she chirpily declares), is equally adept as a confidante as she is at performing household chores, knows all the racy passages from the Bible by heart, and has a solution for seemingly every problem. Dispensing cozy comfort at every turn, she makes Mary Poppins look like a slatternly slacker by comparison. Of course, she occasionally has to kill someone, but if it’s all for the betterment of the family in her care, then where’s the harm? Equal parts sensibility and sentiment, she’s the kind of old-fashioned thinker who believes that all of life’s problems can be solved with a nice cup of tea — and if that won’t suffice, a shovel to the head will do just as nicely.
As if this isn’t recommendation enough, the lovable old sociopath happens to be played by the divine Dame Maggie Smith, an actress of peerless comic ingenuity who knows how to wring laughs from even the flimsiest of set-ups. If the film is the kind of featherweight confection with only slightly less substance than a plate of shortbread and a pot of Earl Grey, the redoubtable Ms. Smith comes miraculously close to making it seem like a five-course dinner. It’s been a long time — far too long — since she had a comic lead to call her own, and her fans will be gratified to know that her sense of timing and gift for priceless inflection haven’t diminished a fraction of an inch. A vision in tweed and sensible shoes, her presence here brings to mind Margaret Rutherford, the plummy-voiced, doughy-faced clown who graced many British comedies of the postwar era; the film itself, a pleasant little trifle that’s not nearly as clever as it would like us to believe, feels like something from that period. If you enjoy the sort of gently risqué, mildly droll Ealing comedies of the 1950s — the kind that usually starred Alec Guinness or Alastair Sim — Keeping Mum may provide a warm rush of nostalgia. If this sort of thing isn’t to your liking (and I know plenty of people who gagged at the similarly twee charms of modern-day Ealings like Waking Ned Devine and Saving Grace), you’ll probably still get a kick out of Smith. Whether brewing up endless pots of tea, helping the vicar to write his sermons, or cutting the brake lines on the bicycle of an 11-year-old bully, she radiates charm, warmth, and a blissfully happy sense of true-blue lunacy.
If Keeping Mum doesn’t give Smith the opportunity to show what dizzying heights she can truly be capable of, it is nonetheless a welcome showcase for her distinctive talents and persona. This isn’t Dame Maggie in full comic flight — you’ll have to look to 1985’s A Private Function for the most recent example of that — but she nevertheless transcends the limitations of the material quite effortlessly, as does Kristin Scott Thomas, who mines her character’s tense exasperation for deliciously sly humor. Rowan Atkinson is reliably funny in nebbish mode, and as for Patrick Swayze, as the libidinous American golf pro — well, if you’re not a fan of the actor, rest assured that Nanny Grace will see to it that his presence in the film, which she judges to be disruptive to the family’s happiness, will be mercifully short-lived.
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Labels: 00s, Guinness, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith
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Monday, June 26, 2006
The Prime of Dame Maggie Smith
By Edward Copeland
I recently audited The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for the first time in a long time — and for the first time in its proper widescreen ratio. While the movie was about how I remembered it, what definitely stood the test of time was the Oscar-winning performance of the great Maggie Smith. While in her later years, she has settled into a certain mode of role for the most part, she's still one of our greats and I regret that I've never been able to see her perform on stage.
As for the movie itself, it's more notable for its acting than its drama, though chunks of the dialogue are quite good. In addition to the great Maggie, there is solid work from her real-life husband Robert Stephens as the caddish art teacher, Celia Johnson as the prim head of the private school and Pamela Franklin as one of her most-seemingly devoted pupils with an agenda all her own.
In fact, the final faceoff between Smith and Franklin may be one of the best acting duets ever put on screen and really gives the film an emotional payoff that it might not otherwise deserve.
Of course, by now the setup of an eccentric, iconoclastic teacher has become a cliche in films such as Dead Poets Society, The Emperor's Club, Mr. Holland's Opus and far too many others to mention by name. Jean Brodie gets by because Smith makes her into such a force of nature that you can't help but stay tuned. Nowadays Maggie Smith is probably best known to younger viewers as Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, but there is so much more to her worth looking into. (Besides, all British actors are required by law to appear in a Harry Potter film — in fact I believe Paul Scofield is fighting that in court.)
Just three years after Jean Brodie, she earned another Oscar nomination for the delightful Travels With My Aunt. Six years after that, she scored another Oscar win for supporting actress — one of the best supporting wins in my opinion — playing a boozy Oscar-nominated actress on her way to her big night — and she loses. Her scenes with Michael Caine are really about the only thing worth recommending in this otherwise lame Neil Simon outing. Smith had better luck with Simon two years earlier, playing a parody of Nora Charles in the fun spoof Murder By Death opposite David Niven.
She even showed she could do "serious" murder as well, appearing in two Hercule Poirot outings Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun with Peter Ustinov. Now, it seems as if Dame Maggie has settled into a groove of upper-crust British roles, earning supporting nominations for Merchant Ivory's A Room With a View and most recently Robert Altman's Gosford Park.
She's not above being a little daring as well, as in her great work in the HBO movie My House in Umbria where she seemed to have no hesitation at flashing viewers a bit of her aging bosom.
Smith is a class act, equally adept at comedy and drama. I hope she can still get some really juicy parts because she deserves them. I still regret that I've never had the chance to see her on stage, so I really hope that she's got some great screen work ahead of her to satisfy me.
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Labels: 60s, Altman, Caine, HBO, Maggie Smith, Merchant Ivory, Neil Simon, Niven, Oscars, Television
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Monday, December 26, 2005
From the Vault: Hook
Parallels between director Steven Spielberg and the character Peter Pan have circulated for years, stemming from the director's perceived lack of maturity in his work and his admitted desire to film the Pan story himself.
Now comes Hook, which should close the book on both the criticism and Spielberg's tendencies by allowing the director to get Neverland out of his system. Unfortunately, all Spielberg has come up with is an overproduced and underconceived yawner of a movie.
Hook's premise shows promise, especially in the early scenes. Peter Pan has departed the land of the Lost Boys to move to America and grow up into Peter Banning (Robin Williams), a career-obsessed corporate attorney who spends more quality time with his cell phone than his wife (Caroline Goodall) or his children (Charlie Korsmo, Amber Scott).
Fulfilling one of the few promises he ever keeps, Banning takes the family to London to visit his wife's grandmother Wendy (Maggie Smith) — the real Wendy from the Peter Pan stories. She remembers Banning's past, though his memory omits everything that happened before he was 12.
Afraid of heights and open windows, Banning seems apprehensive about the Darling family home and soon sees why when his kids are abducted by a man who signs his note Captain James Hook. Thus, the stage is set for the most tedious, cluttered movie in recent memory.
Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts) whisks Banning back to Neverland to reclaim his lost perpetual youth and face off with the vengeful Hook in order to retrieve his children. It's not just Pan's youth that was lost, so was the movie's premise.
The principal idea (What if Peter Pan grew up?") seems to be all there is. No real sense of what that would really mean appears in the film. All that remains is an extremely long setup followed by an extremely boring payoff consisting mainly of an amnesiac Banning running around with the Lost Boys in some Regarding Henry-esque voyage of self-discovery.
Portraying Hook falls on the capable shoulders of Dustin Hoffman, who looks like Terry-Thomas and talks like William F. Buckley Jr. Hoffman, along with Bob Hoskins as his sidekick Smee, seem to be the only ones having fun in this film. Unfortunately, their limited screen time prevents them from sharing that spirit with the audience.
Hook has that glossy Spielberg feel and the requisite bombastic John Williams score, but it's bloated and lacks magic. Spielberg's talent seems to be missing, especially in Hook's poorly choreographed and confusing action scenes.
The sets explode with so many artificial details that at times you want to avert your eyes from the excess. About an hour and 15 minutes into Hook, a youngster a few seats down from me asked his mom, "When will it be over?" Unfortunately, the answer was another hour away and that finally kills Hook.
If all elements had been tightened and the script seemed more like an original than a lukewarm remake, Hook could have been a classic. As it is, this is just a fairly well-made exercise in tedium. One can only hope that Spielberg can now move his talent forward and stop stagnating in Neverland.
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Labels: 90s, Dustin Hoffman, John Williams, Julia Roberts, Maggie Smith, Robin, Spielberg
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