This 1957 black-and-white gem, director Sidney Lumet’s cinematic debut (he had worked for some years in television), has lost none of its riveting intensity in the half century since it first appeared on screen. The movie features, along with Henry Fonda, some of the finest character actors of the day (and any other day, for that matter): Lee J. Cobb, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Ed Begley, Jack Klugman, E.G. Marshall. In 12 Angry Men, these actors offer as fine an ensemble performance as can be seen in the movies.

On just about the hottest day of the year, twelve men—all of them white—retire to the jury room to deliberate the fate of a young Hispanic man who has been accused in the stabbing death of his father in their New York City slum apartment. Shortly after the jurors assemble to deliberate the fate of the defendant a “preliminary” vote is taken; the result is 11 votes for guilty and one (from Juror #8, played by Fonda) for not guilty. Juror #8 does not claim that the boy is innocent; he simply believes that “It’s not easy to send a boy off to die without talking about it first.” His vote provokes derision, indignation, and disbelief from his fellow jurors.

What unfolds over the next eighty minutes is an intriguing murder mystery, a character study—times twelve—and a display of virtuoso film directing.

The so-called facts of the case are revealed by the jury members when they are asked to convince Juror #8 to change his mind. The prosecution’s argument rested upon the testimony of several witnesses, the uniqueness of the murder weapon, the boy’s criminal and arrest record, and the apparent flimsiness of his alibi. Juror #8 immediately begins to pick holes in the case and to raise doubts in the minds of some of the other jurors. The second vote is 10-2, and the dismantling of the case continues, to the increasing frustration of several of the jurors. More and more of them are beginning to be convinced, however, and join #8 in the questioning of the evidence.

When the final major piece of evidence is cast into serious doubt the vote stands at 11-1 in favour of acquittal. And in a powerfully dramatic ending the last holdout tearfully yields.

As the evidence of the prosecution is refuted piece by piece, the character of each juror is revealed. Those who appear the weakest—a very old man and a milquetoast banker——are the first to display their inner strength; they grow increasingly confident as others join their ranks. The loudest and most adamant in their insistence on the young man’s guilt reveal their racial prejudice and their personal bias, their protests growing increasingly strident as the vote swings against them. Each man is a unique individual and each actor gives an acting lesson in rendering his character.

The greatest of these, in my view, is Lee J. Cobb, Juror #3 and the last to change his vote. When asked to give his reasons for voting guilty, he says calmly, “Here’s what I think, and I have no personal feelings about this; I just want to talk about facts.” He lists, from notes he has taken, some of the major evidence in the case. But gradually, brilliantly, he shows us that indeed he does have very personal feelings about the case: he is angry and grieving over his estrangement with his own son and he wishes to punish him—and perhaps all young people—vicariously by sending teenager to the electric chair. His anger intensifies, along with his anguish, as he is increasingly isolated.

The film essentially takes place in a single location: the jury room. Director Lumet brilliantly sidesteps the danger of boring the audience by creating an immense variety of shots and by keeping the actors in motion throughout the film. In one 30-second sequence, in which the camera does not move, one man leaves the frame, another stands up, then another, another enters the frame, then another, and one man crosses the frame from left to right; throughout the scene the argument continues, with one man even speaking outside the frame.

Lumet continually increases the tension through camera work, by making the atmosphere “more and more confined.” He says, “As the picture progressed, I used longer and longer lenses; in other words, brought the walls in closer, brought the ceiling in closer, just to make it even more claustrophobic. And I also kept dropping the eye level: in the beginning I was above eye level, middle third of the movie at eye level, last third of the movie below eye level.” Extreme close-ups also contribute to the dramatic effect as do changes in the light, from natural daylight, to the dark of the storm, to the artificial electric light of the room itself.

In his book Making Movies, Lumet explains how he saves money on a shoot. In the jury room, he divided the four walls into Wall A, Wall B, etc. Because “whenever the camera has to change its angle more than 15 degrees, it’s necessary to relight…” a very time-consuming and therefore expensive process. So all the scenes in which the camera faced Wall A, for example, were shot before the lighting was moved to Wall B, and so forth. Using this process means that “the actors are shooting completely out of sequence.” In 12 Angry Men, “Lee Cobb arguing with Henry Fonda [they were on opposite sides of the table in the film] would obviously have shots of Fonda (against Wall C) and shots of Cobb (against Wall A). They were shot seven or eight days apart. It meant, of course, that I had to have a perfect emotional memory of the intensity reached by Lee Cobb seven days earlier. But that’s where rehearsals were invaluable. After two weeks of rehearsal I had a complete graph in my head of where I wanted each level of emotion in the movie to be. We finished in nineteen days (a day under schedule) and were $1,000 dollars under budget.” The budget for 12 Angry Men was $350,000, a miniscule amount even in 1957.

It is a testament to the skill of this first-time director and to the skill of the actors that 12 Angry Men, a miserable flop at the box office, turned out to be a timeless masterpiece.

Image Credit

12 Angry Men poster @ Wikipedia

Intriguing Murder Mystery, Brilliant Character Study: A Review of “12 Angry Men” is a post from: Life As A Human

‎”I hear America singing…” Walt Whitman. Equally, ” I hear you singin’ in the wires…” Jimmy Webb.
I love the color of the fog this morning, the temperature of the light transforms morning in the valley into a sacred moment, a pause at the end of something. Up here in the land of ancient trees and dreams to last a lifetime we celebrate winter where we find it, in bare branches and surprising blue skies, in pearling fog and quiet, sunlit, wet, electric, mornings after the heavy rains and howling winds.Inside it all, a belief in the good times to come. Got some miles this morning, came home to a sharp right in the wire haiku outside the house. All the best of everything to all of you for 2012-it is time, past time, to let the good times roll.

Tarmac Meditations-New Years Part 2 is a post from: Life As A Human

Two seminal American films were released in 1967; each dealt with the issue of racism and each featured one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time. Both were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture; one of them won the award.

The films were In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The big star was Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field, To Sir with Love). In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, which had been delayed two days because of the assassination of Martin Luther King less than a week before.

In the Heat of the Night is the story of Virgil Tibbs, a young black police officer from Philadelphia who is arrested for murder as he waits for a train in the fictional town of Sparta, Mississippi. Once his identity, and innocence, are established, his boss asks him to assist the town’s sheriff (Rod Steiger, who won the Oscar for Best Actor) in solving the murder. During the course of the investigation, Tibbs is subjected to all kinds of racist attacks, verbal and physical, not to mention the utter ineptitude and stupidity of the local police force (who arrest at least three people who could not have committed the crime). But Virgil is a proud and stubborn man and one damn smart cop, so he sees the investigation through to the arrest of the real murderer.

Steiger is brilliant as Sheriff Gillespie, a lonely outsider himself, who struggles with the conflict between his racist upbringing and environment and his growing respect, admiration, and even fondness for Virgil Tibbs.

Because the murdered man was the head of a team sent to build a new factory in the town, an enterprise that would employ a significant number of black people at wages equal to those of white workers, the local plantation owner, a dyed-in-the-wool racist, is vehemently opposed to the project. His opposition makes him a suspect in Tibbs’s view, and in an unforgettable scene, when he questions the plantation owner about his possible involvement, the man slaps Virgil in the face; Virgil immediately slaps him back. In a short documentary entitled “The Slap Heard around the World,” one of the special features on the DVD, a number of African-American entertainment celebrities and academics talk about the significance of that scene and its powerful effect on the African-American community in 1967.

In the featurette, Reginald Hudlin, president of entertainment at BET, says of that historic cinematic moment: “…it got down to ‘You will respect me on a fundamental physical level’ and that is unprecedented in cinema history. It is a complete game changer and it’s one of those things where you suddenly…there’s this ocean of pride that hits you and fills you up. And we will be forever in debt to everyone associated with that film for that moment. So thank you to [Director] Norman Jewison, thank you to Sidney Poitier, thank you to everyone who made that moment happen….”

The behind-the-scenes drama of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was nearly equal to what ultimately appeared on screen. One of its stars, Spencer Tracy, was dying of cancer; it was uncertain if he would even be able to finish the movie. His co-star, Katharine Hepburn, had also been his lover for a quarter of a century (Tracy, who was Catholic, never divorced his wife). There was also a power struggle on the set between Hepburn and director Stanley Kramer. And Columbia Pictures decided to cancel the film a few days into production, ostensibly because they could not get insurance on Tracy; Kramer and Hepburn put their salaries up as collateral, effectively calling the studio’s bluff.

Spencer Tracy died, at the age of 67, two weeks after completing the movie.

In the movie, Poitier is Dr. John Prentice, a highly respected specialist in tropical medicine, who happens to fall in love with Joey Drayton, the daughter of liberal San Francisco newspaper publisher Matt (Tracy) and art dealer Christina (Hepburn, who won the Oscar for Best Actress). The couple plan to marry, very soon, so Joey brings the doctor home to meet her parents so that the couple can inform them of their plans and get their blessing, which she breezily assures him will be a matter of mere formality, given the strong liberal views of Matt and Christina Drayton.

Powerful and stubborn opposition to John and Joey’s plans comes from unexpected quarters: the Draytons’ black maid (“I don’t care to see a member of my own race getting’ above hisself!”), Matt Drayton himself, and John’s working-class father. The tension is heightened by the fact that Dr. Prentice is leaving for Geneva on the evening plane and has quietly informed Matt that unless he gives his blessing there will be no wedding. But Drayton is convinced that John and Joey are rushing into marriage without having given sufficient thought to the tremendous difficulties they will face as an interracial couple in the 1960s. Mr. Prentice is even more adamant in his opposition. It takes John’s mother (the wonderful Beah Richards, who also appears briefly in In the Heat of the Night) to convince Matt to change his mind. The movie ends with Matt’s stirring and powerful speech of love and support.

These are iconic films and Sidney Poitier was, in the 1960s, an iconic actor. Handsome, intelligent, articulate, he was perhaps the ideal figure to represent the newly and proudly liberated African-American, a man who could stand his own against a bigoted white plantation owner and match him slap for slap, who could speak with a white newspaper publisher as an equal in intelligence and social and professional status. Poitier was an inspiring replacement for the stereotypical step-‘n-fetchit or I-got-rhythm black man that had been relegated to the back seat of the cinematic bus for decades.

Katharine Houghton, who played Joey in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, spoke with Poitier at length on the set. Poitier told her that “he was extremely aware of the role that he played, that he chose to play above-average people, noble, heroic figures. And he told me that he was being criticized by the black community for doing that, and that it was very, very hard for him because he felt to a certain extent—and I don’t know if this would have been his word—that it was unjustified, that he, in his lifetime and his career, had created a certain niche for a black man in cinema.” Poitier also told Houghton that he planned to curtail his acting career and become a director. While he did continue to act into the 1970s, it is the four big films of the sixties—Lilies of the Field, To Sir with Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner—for which he will be remembered as an actor.

His iconic status notwithstanding, was Sidney Poitier a great actor? In my humble estimation, he was not. Perhaps he would have developed into one had he given himself permission to step out of his self-appointed role and explore the potential of his range. But it was a cultural icon, not an outstanding actor, that slapped the bigoted plantation owner and delivered the classic line to the cracker sheriff (“They call me Mister Tibbs!”). Nevertheless, by making himself the image of the new African-American, equal in every way to a white man, Sidney Poitier earned a place of honour in cinematic history.

Are In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner great movies, as well as iconic ones? Again in my humble opinion, not when compared on overall artistic merit with certain other films of the era—Lawrence of Arabia, Midnight Cowboy, The Lion in Winter, To Kill a Mockingbird. But they are good films, with compelling stories and some outstanding performances. And their iconic status, the important historical position they rightly lay claim to, and the memories they summon of a particular era lend them a cachet that will keep these two films alive, interesting, and relevant to audiences for generations to come.

I wonder if the same might be said for Philadelphia.

Image Credits

In The Heat Of The Night poster @ Wikipedia

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner poster @ Wikipedia

Three Icons of American Cinema in 1967 is a post from: Life As A Human

The DVD of this film was given to us as a gift by a departing homestay student; it was one of several movies he gave us, all of which he had seen and loved, and which he thought we would enjoy as well. The very large difference in age and character between us should have rung my “sceptical” bell, but I suppose we were touched enough by his gesture to have cast aside any doubt about the appropriateness of his selections.

My first impression of The Pursuit of Happyness was that it was one of the most agonizingly suspenseful movies I have ever seen, and I don’t mean this in any positive sense. The relentless parade of increasingly unfortunate events suffered by the main character, Chris Gardner (Will Smith), and his young son had me squirming in my seat for much of the picture. I kept hoping—in vain as it turned out—that the next incident would signal an upturn in Mr. Gardner’s fortunes. Only in about the last three minutes of the film were we rewarded for our positively saintly patience with some kind of redemption.

The story goes something like this: Chris Gardner is a salesman with big dreams, as in dreams of $$$$$$$$$$$. He and his wife use all of their savings to buy a whole bunch of bone scanning machines, which Gardner then tries to hawk to doctors, clinics, hospitals. As the movie opens, sales are not going well, the rent and bills are not being paid and the Gardners, who have a very young son, are not getting along. Gardner desperately tries to hold everything together with his salesman-like bravado but the family’s life continues to unravel. The wife leaves, Gardner and the son get kicked out of their apartment and then out of the motel they are living in and end up sleeping in shelters, and he loses a couple of bone scanners and has his bank account cleaned out by the IRS.

One day, in the midst of these trials, Gardner spots an expensive red imported sports car parked by the curb; the owner turns out to be a stockbroker. Chris decides then and there that he is going to become a stockbroker. The odds against his success in this endeavour are ridiculously high: First he must be selected as one of twenty interns who will work for Dean Winter and learn the trade; then he has to beat out the other nineteen for the one job that is waiting at the end of six-month internship.

Chris Gardner is a smart, witty, and determined man, and at the very end of the film he is chosen out of the twenty to become a broker at Dean Winter. At the end of the film, we learn that he goes on to found his own brokerage firm and eventually sells a minority share in that company for a very large sum of money.

Happy ending. Well, if happy ending means I was glad the movie was over, then yes, The Pursuit of Happyness ended happily. But if this film, which was “inspired by a true story,” was meant to in turn inspire viewers to do whatever it takes (including putting a son or daughter through virtual hell) to get a job that is going to put enough money in their pocket to give them financial security (and bolster their already significant ego at the same time), I am not sure if this is a message I would want to be giving.

I did not feel sorry for Chris Garner, nor did I cheer him on (except in the sense that I wanted him to achieve sufficient success—really quickly—to put me out of my misery). He is an egotistical, irresponsible jerk who cares only about himself. I could not help but feel that his determination to keep his son when his wife was leaving him and his gritty resolve to succeed at Dean Winter were also manifestations of an ego out of control. I wonder what lessons the son took away from the experience his father put him through.

This is not a movie I would ever watch again, nor would I encourage a young person to buy into its message.

This is a slightly revised version of a review posted on my blog, “Confessions of a Liturgy Queen” on March 10, 2011.

Photo Credit

Wikipedia

Big Ego Chases American Dream: A Review of “The Pursuit of Happyness” is a post from: Life As A Human

As with Another Year in 2010, my favourite movie of 2008 was one that was for the most part overlooked, in this case Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon.

In 1977 brash and ambitious British talk-show host David Frost (played by Michael Sheen) managed to convince disgraced former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) to grant a series of television interviews. To lure Nixon to the cameras Frost used $600,000 he did not have and a reputation as a soft-pedaling interviewer who would not pose difficult questions, particularly about Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up. Frost was confident that the U.S. networks would be falling over each other to purchase the interviews.

But he had miscalculated: his reputation, and his perceived pretentiousness in out-scooping them, turned the networks off and they refused to have anything to do with the project. Frost was now forced into a desperate scramble for sponsors, which, along with the constant need to reassure investors—and in fact to squeeze even more funding out of them—makes up part of the drama of the movie.

But the real drama is in the interviews themselves. The fear on the side of the Frost team and the general consensus among the media savvy is that Nixon will control the interviews and use them in an attempt to exonerate himself. In fact, the former president hopes they will springboard him back into political life.

The taping, conducted in the home of a “Republican businessman,” starts out just as everyone had expected. Despite being blindsided by Frost’s opening question in the first interview (“Why didn’t you burn the tapes?”), the wily Nixon quickly seizes control of the sessions with labyrinthine explanations of White House internal procedure, lengthy anecdotes, and clever self-justification. Frost lacks the experience and the journalistic ruthlessness to go on the attack. His team is frantic.

Nixon again trumps the British interviewer in the second taping session, on Vietnam. The third session, on foreign policy, looms as disaster. Frost overhears one if his American political advisors comment, “So if he beats him up like that on Vietnam, imagine what he’s going to do with his real achievements.” The third interview is in fact so bad that two members of the crew are overheard to say “they never voted for him when they had the chance, but if he ran for office again today, he’d get their support.” Frost’s team is furious but the talk-show host remains relentlessly upbeat and challenges anyone “who thinks we’re going to fail” to leave the project. No one does.

The turning point comes when Frost, alone his hotel room despairing over his failure to secure sponsors, receives a call from Nixon, who has obviously had a few drinks. Nixon delivers an angry, self-pitying monologue in which he compares his humble background, his current plight and his hunger for exoneration and the limelight to Frost’s. Frost recognizes how desperate Nixon is to “win” the final contest—over Watergate—and the fate of the “loser,” a fate that each of them dreads: obscurity.

While the outcome of the final interview is well known to those of my generation, I will not reveal it here. Suffice it to say that the Watergate session is the dramatic high-point of the movie. The contest between Frost and Nixon and the interviewer’s attempt to steer Nixon into an apology for the Watergate cover-up are deeply engaging.

The performances of the two principals in this film are nothing short of brilliant. Sheen’s portrayal of a man whose oversized ego may have finally gotten the better of him but whose steely nerve and unbreakable will push him out of despair is nuanced and convincing.

Langella’s turn as Nixon is in my opinion the best acting performance of 2008. A few years ago, I attended a live HD broadcast of the New York Metropolitan Opera production of Madama Butterfly. The female lead, Cio Cio San, a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl, was played by a corpulent white soprano who had to be at least 45 years old. I believe I even laughed out loud when she first came on stage. By the second act, however, her acting and singing had me convinced that she was Cio Cio San. While the disparity in appearance between Langella and Nixon is not nearly as great, it took several scenes for the actor to be transformed in my mind to his subject; the transformation, once it was made, was complete. Even in the close-up scenes of the interviews, I believed I was watching Richard Nixon. The drunken monologue prior to interview four is equalled in its magic only by Viola Davis’s heart-breaking encounter with Sister Aloysius in Doubt.

Frost/Nixon is no more a political film than Doubt is religious or theological. It is a very human story, a story of self-delusion, disappointed ambition, and wasted talent beautifully rendered by the acting of Sheen and Langella and by the cinematography of Salvatore Totino and the editing of Dan Hanley, Mike Hill, and Robert Komatsu.

Photo Credit

Movie Poster @ Wikipedia

Nixon’s Final Humiliation: A Review of “Frost/Nixon” is a post from: Life As A Human

Following the release of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, Bosley Crowther, film critic of the New York Times for 27 years, wrote a short but devastating review. In it he called the movie “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cutups in Thoroughly Modern Millie.” Following Crowther’s review and others that were equally dismissive, the film was removed from distribution.

But the tide of negative criticism was stemmed and ultimately reversed by younger critics like Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, the former calling it “a work of truth and brilliance,” the latter penning a long piece in the New Yorker defending the movie as “the most excitingly American movie since The Manchurian Candidate.” As a result, Bonnie and Clyde was re-released and went on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed movies of the 1960s. Bosley Crowther was replaced at the Times in early 1968.

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty play the infamous Depression-era couple who from 1931 to 1934 blasted their way through five states, stealing cars, robbing banks, and killing numerous police officers before finally meeting their end in a barrage of machine gun fire. In the brief span of their life on the lam Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow became outlaw legends despite the fact that they were pitifully, and sometimes comically, inept bank robbers.

Part of their allure came from the belief that Bonnie and Clyde were lovers, and in the movie they are indeed engaged in a rather adolescent romance and live pretty much as a couple. But Clyde is impotent, so to Bonnie’s increasing frustration, for most of the film the relationship is not consummated. If Clyde had not been able to finally perform the act, which in defiance of all narrative logic he was, the viewer might think that the impotence represented Clyde’s failure as a bank robber and as a human being.

The film is populated with a cast of hangers-on, including C.W. Moss (wonderfully played by the baby-faced Michael J. Pollard), a composite of three real-life Barrow gang accomplices, Clyde’s older brother Buck (Gene Hackman), a petty criminal who gets caught up in Clyde’s misbegotten vision, and Buck’s wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons, who won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role in the film). Bonnie and Clyde’s nemesis is Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who tracks them down and participates in their execution; Hamer is played by Denver Pyle.

In her essay in the New Yorker, Pauline Kael posed this question to critics who claimed the film glorified criminals: “Why the protests, why are so many people upset (and not just the people who enjoy indignation), about ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, in which the criminals are criminals, Clyde an ignorant, sly near-psychopath who thinks his crimes are accomplishments, and Bonnie, a bored, restless waitress-slut who robs for excitement?”

The problem with Bonnie and Clyde is not its realism; the fundamental flaw of the movie is that it attempts to create an interesting story out of essentially uninteresting characters. There is nothing about “an ignorant, sly near-psychopath” or “a bored, restless waitress-slut” that moves me no matter how stylish, how fresh, how realistic the filmmaking approach. Bonnie and Clyde are shallow, self-centered children out on an extended joyride that happens to involve the brutal killing of other human beings; neither is better or worse at the end of the film than he or she was at the beginning.

At no point in this movie do I feel like laughing or crying; at no point am I moved to ponder the effects of the Great Depression on the already poor; at no point do I care what happens to the protagonists.

Bonnie and Clyde recorded their exploits on film and in doggerel, “dramatizing their lives” for an eager audience of newspaper readers and thereby propping up their own fragile egos. It is certainly possible to understand the interest of an impoverished American public in a pair of anti-heroes who are sticking it to the establishment and its lackeys. At a distance of thirty, fifty or eighty years, however, they must surely be seen as the cardboard characters they truly were. If I am mistaken in this view and there was a measure of depth to Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, this movie has failed utterly to capture it.

Photo Credits

Movie Poster @ Wikipedia

The Bloody Road to Boredom: A Review of “Bonnie and Clyde” is a post from: Life As A Human

Perhaps the greatest joy of the Christmas season for a young person lies in the delicious anticipation, in the events, rituals, traditions, and the sounds and smells that contribute to the build-up of excitement that peaks on Christmas morning. For us as children, decorating the classroom in late November, buying and trimming the tree in the second week of December, tasting the shortbread, the fudge, the Christmas cakes, the Nanaimo bars that emerged in an almost continuous parade of plates and trays from my mother’s kitchen, seeing the pile of wrapped gifts get larger and larger as the 25th approached, watching the Christmas TV programs, and hearing the carols on the radio—all of these made sleeping at night and paying attention to school work near impossibilities.

I cannot remember the first time I saw it—I mightn’t have even been that young—but the 1951 black-and-white production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, with Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, stands out as one of the highlights of the Christmas season both in my childhood and in my adult years.

A series of encounters in the first few moments of the film, which is set in London on Christmas Eve, gives us a clear picture of the character of Mr. Scrooge, surely a stand-in for all the mean-spirited people of the world. When approached for a donation to the poor, Scrooge utters the infamous lines: “Are there no prisons? And the union workhouse, are they still in operation? The treadmill and the poor law, they’re still in full figure, I presume?”

Mr. Scrooge’s uncharitable nature is offset by the goodness of characters like his nephew Fred, his employee Bob Cratchit, and of course, Cratchit’s unfortunate son, the crippled Tiny Tim. The simple but happy family life of the Cratchits, crammed as they are into a tiny hovel, is contrasted with Scrooge’s solitary existence in a large but empty and gloomy house. After begrudgingly granting Cratchit Christmas day off to be with his family (“Be back all the earlier next morning”), Scrooge goes home, where he is greeted by the ghostly image in the door knocker of his dead business partner Jacob Marley, a premonition of what is to come.

The story is familiar to everyone who read the novel or has seen one of a plethora of versions of A Christmas Carol. Marley, who wears the chain he forged in life (“I made it link by link and yard by yard! I gartered it on of my own free will and by my own free will I wore it”), appears to a frightened Scrooge to warn him that he will be visited that very night by three spirits so that he may still avoid the fate of endless wandering that Marley now suffers.

The Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge on a journey of his tragic childhood and youth and offers a glimpse of the hardened young businessman he becomes. The final leg of this first journey is the death of Jacob Marley on Christmas Eve seven years before. When Cratchit conveys the news that his partner is not expected to live, Scrooge replies, “Well what can I do about it? If he’s dying, he’s dying” and insists on remaining in the office until closing time.

The Ghost of Christmas Present, a Christ-like figure, leads Scrooge to the happy homes of Bob Cratchit and of Scrooge’s nephew. Along with the warmth and fellow-feeling of Christmas he is forced to hear what others think of him. Yet he is praised and pitied by his clerk and by his relative.

By the time the Ghost of Christmas to Come, a silent spectre in the form of the Grim Reaper, greets Scrooge, Ebenezer is still protesting that he is too old to change. Yet he must submit to visions of the Cratchit family mourning the death of Tiny Tim and of his housekeeper, his laundress, and his undertaker selling the items they have stolen after his own death.

Scrooge awakes in his own bed on Christmas morning, a changed man after the spirit has shown him his own grave stone. The new Ebenezer is giddy with happiness that he has avoided the fate suggested by his last visitor and that it is still Christmas Day so that he can begin undoing the miserly reputation he has spent a lifetime creating. After anonymously sending a very large turkey to the home of Bob Cratchit, he visits his nephew and in front of the shocked company, asks if he may still accept Fred’s invitation for Christmas dinner. The little speech he tenderly delivers to his nephew’s wife whom he has treated so badly is particularly touching: “Can you forgive a pig-headed old fool for having no eyes to see with, no ears to hear with all these years?”

For me, there can be no other Ebenezer Scrooge but Alastair Sim, who plays the role to its delightfully melodramatic hilt. And there can be no other version but this imaginative and cinematically beautiful production of A Christmas Carol.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Photo Credit

A Christmas Carol movie poster @ Wikipedia

A Delightful Christmas Chestnut: A Review of “A Christmas Carol” is a post from: Life As A Human

I love the writing of British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Of the several novels I have read, The Remains of the Day, the story of a blindly devoted English butler whose misguided loyalty to his profession and to his master have led to a wasted life, is my favourite. The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1989.

When the Merchant-Ivory film was released in 1993, I was anxious to see what this esteemed pair had made of Ishiguro’s story. I was not disappointed. I have recently purchased the DVD and watched the film again, only to discover that the sublime enjoyment it offered me twenty years ago has only increased. The movie is not entirely faithful in reproducing the details of the novel; however, the atmosphere—one of both tragic and absurdly comic waste and loss in the midst of aristocratic gentility—brilliantly and lovingly depicted in the novel, is beautifully preserved by screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and director James Ivory.

Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) is butler to Lord Darlington in the years between the end of World War I and Darlington’s death, in national disgrace, after World War II. The epitome of the gentleman’s gentleman, Stevens is blindly committed to the loyal service of his master and to the meticulous preservation of every protocol incumbent to that service and to the tradition of a great household such as Darlington Hall. There is no room in Stevens’ world for displays of emotion, no matter what form they may take, as such displays would interfere with the proper running of the household and detract from the high level of professionalism on which Stevens has so greatly prided himself.

Of the novel, author Ishiguro says, “I intended the story to be one that could take off quite easily into the metaphorical sphere so that people could actually apply it to their own lives, wherever they lived, whenever they lived. I wanted it to be a universal human story. If I was writing a how-to book on how to waste your life, the English butler idea encapsulated two very decent ways in which you could waste your life: one was emotionally and the other was politically.”

As the most trusted member of the household, Stevens is privy to Lord Darlington’s dubious dealings with Nazism prior the Second World War, dealings that cause him to be branded a traitor during and after the war. Despite his clear knowledge that his master is either cynically using his influence to support the Nazi cause or being duped by Hitler and his minions, Stevens persists in his protestations that Darlington is a wise and well intentioned man and that it is the place of neither the butler nor any other servant to criticize or confront Darlington. Such an attitude is later to cause Stevens both serious regret and great embarrassment.

The housekeeper at Darlington Hall is Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), a highly competent, if rather young, woman who freely expresses both her opinions and her emotions, often to the consternation of Stevens. Through the course of the film it becomes quite clear that behind his great façade of professionalism Stevens harbours feelings for Miss Kenton, feelings which he is incapable, through long habit of repression, of either acknowledging or expressing. Miss Kenton, for her part, is in love with Stevens, but consistently frustrated in her attempts to convey those feelings, leaves her employ at Darlington Hall to marry a man she does not love.

In the end, Stevens’ pride in his professionalism cannot sustain him. He is an old man left presiding over a drastically reduced staff in a household that has since the death of Lord Darlington in large part been dust-sheeted and is now owned by a retired American congressman. The aging butler has just returned from a journey to the West Country where he hoped to convince Miss Kenton, now Mrs. Benn, who has once again left her husband, to return to Darlington Hall as housekeeper, ostensibly to relieve a staffing problem but in reality to recapture and perhaps bring into blossom the romance that he had suppressed twenty years earlier. The futility of this endeavour is, of course, a metaphor for Stevens’ failure to live a fully human life.

In reading the novel one is struck by the formality of the language of the narrator, Stevens himself, but the alert reader soon becomes aware that this is an empty formality and that Stevens is only half a man. Because the film is so overwhelmingly visual—the producers have succeeded brilliantly in reproducing the grand household of the English tradition and its inner workings—the viewer can easily be seduced into partaking in the sensual pleasures provided by the set and costume designers, the cinematographers, and the impressive estates themselves (five homes were used in the filming of the movie). All the more reason, of course, for multiple viewings.

In watching the film one is also moved to feelings of pity for Stevens as a man who is perhaps so much a captive of the rigid and rule-bound tradition of service that he does not realize until it is too late that he has wasted his life. These feelings are encouraged by the glimpses of humanity that Hopkins gives us in his brilliant portrayal of Stevens.

Unlike many film adaptations, it cannot be said that the movie version of The Remains of the Day is a lesser work than the book. The film is, in my view, a separate, but equal, pleasure.

Photo Credits

Movie poster from Wikipedia

A Life of Service, To An Empty Ideal: A Review of “The Remains of the Day” is a post from: Life As A Human

I saw this Woody Allen movie twice this summer and was moved each time by the beautifully imagined and realized journeys into Paris of the 1920s and, more briefly, of La Belle Époque taken by the protagonist Gil Pender (played by Owen Wilson), a screenwriter and aspiring novelist with a strongly romantic bent. How seductive the salons, bars, nightclubs, and cobbled and gaslit streets where a writer can commune with the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein and listen to Cole Porter play and sing the tunes that became standards of the American songbook!

Gil Pender is a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He is also a very unhappy Hollywood screenwriter who has long wanted to write a novel and is currently working on a story about a man who owns a nostalgia shop. Gil has come to Paris with his fiancée, Inez, the shallow, snobbish daughter of rich, conservative, and shallow, snobbish parents. It is clear from the start that these two are absolutely not meant for each other. Gil adores Paris and wants to stay; he loves wandering the streets—even in the rain, perhaps especially in the rain—exploring the little shops, watching people in the sidewalk cafés. He believes that Paris is where he can finish his novel, completing the transformation from Hollywood hack to true writer.

Inez, on the other hand, is the stereotypical philistine American tourist: Paris is okay but…. When she meets up with another American couple, she is immediately enchanted with the excruciatingly pedantic Paul, who knows everything about everything French. Gil is repulsed by the falsehood of this little circle and begins spending more time on his own.

One night when Gil has once again opted out of enduring the tedious company of Paul and his girlfriend—and Inez—the aspiring novelist gets lost on his way back to the hotel. He ends up sitting on the steps of a church just before midnight. As the church bell begins to chime the hour, a gleaming 1920 Peugeot Landaulet pulls up to the curb and stops. The cab’s passengers, clearly in a festive spirit fuelled by champagne, urge him into the car. Gil quickly gives in to their exhortations to join them in their revelry and is whisked off to a lively party at a timeless location in the City of Light.

At the party Gil soon becomes aware that the company is unusual. The fellow playing the piano and singing is remarkably like Cole Porter. And a young woman introduces herself as Zelda Fitzgerald; when she learns Gil is a writer she calls out to “Scott” to come and meet him. The look on Gil’s face when he realizes where he has landed is worth the price of admission alone. The romantic young novelist is soon swept into the literary world of the Fitzgeralds. He meets Hemingway, then Stein, then Picasso. And then he meets Adriana (gorgeously and deliciously played by Marion Cotillard), the wistful romantic who mirrors his own character.

Night after night he returns to the church and is transported to the literary and artistic world of the twenties to which he has become so romantically attached. It is interesting that Allen has made all the great figures into caricatures: the self-absorbed Zelda, the party-loving Fitzgerald, the cliché-spouting Hemingway, the grandiloquently vapid Dali. When he asks Hemingway to read his manuscript, the great man defers to Stein, who offers the most unhelpful advice—in fact, it is no advice at all.

It is only Gil’s mirror image, and his love object, Adriana, who is a fully developed character. Gil of 2010 loves the 1920’s; Adriana is drawn to La Belle Époque. And when an elegant carriage conducts them to Maxim’s and they meet Lautrec, Degas, and Matisse, who offer her the opportunity to remain in the golden age of Paris, Gil realizes the folly of trying to live in a past era and spurns Adriana’s offer to join her.

Meanwhile in his daytime wanderings, Gil has met Gabrielle, the proprietor of a shop that specializes in old records. He is drawn to the shop one day when he hears the singing voice of Cole Porter—the same voice he heard at the magical party. He chats briefly with Gabrielle, who is attractive and warm but definitely not the siren that Adriana represents. Nevertheless, the viewer senses a certain wisdom in Gabrielle and the vague initiation of a kinship between them.

I will not reveal the final unfolding of the plot although the astute reader will likely have guessed. Suffice it to say that Gil not only recognizes that we must all live in the now, but more important, we must all be who we really are; as long as we continue to deny our true nature, our true path, our true bliss, we will remain in a confused and conflicted condition.

Wonderful performances by all the players, including the caricatured jazz-age celebrities. My personal favourites are Marion Cotillard (you cannot take your eyes off her when she is on screen), Kathy Bates (a favourite in everything she does), and Adrian Brody as Dali. I wonder how long it will take viewers to realize who Own Wilson is channelling as Gil.

All in all, this is both a charming and deeply meaningful film.

Photo Credit

Movie Poster @ Wikipedia

This article is a revised version of a posting that appeared on my blog, Confessions of a Liturgy Queen, on August 20, 2011.

A Romantic Journey to Truth: A Review of “Midnight in Paris” is a post from: Life As A Human

Here is what New York Times critic Vincent Camby wrote about True Confessions when the movie came out in September 1981: “Quite simply it’s one of the most entertaining, most intelligent and most thoroughly satisfying commercial American films in a very long time.” I have to agree that this is indeed a nearly flawless film.

The movie stars Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall as brothers, Desmond and Tom Spellacy, the former a monsignor, the latter a cop, who become embroiled in a murder case in 1940s Los Angeles. Tom, an angry and bitter crusader for justice, clashes with the powerful but less than savoury friends of the archdiocese, of which his brother is the very ambitious chancellor. In the end, no one is free of the odour of lust and greed and the hunger for power. The monsignor becomes the scapegoat for the sins of the archdiocese and is banished to a parish in the desert, the same parish to which he was ordered to pasture an elderly priest whose self-appointed role as clerical conscience was more than his jaded cardinal could tolerate.

A web of sin and corruption connects nearly every character in this story; the tawdry and tainted atmosphere—noir on the surface but actually something deeper and more disturbing—is almost palpable. The innocent and wayward are the victims of the powerfully evil, and as the movie ends there is but a tiny glimpse of redemption in the self-awareness of the monsignor and the tentatively expressed love between the brothers.

The writing in True Confessions is nothing short of superb. There is barely a contrived or artificial note in the entire film and not one scene is predictable. When Tom Spellacy meets the parents of the murdered girl at the train station from where they will accompany her body home, he discovers a clue that will connect a big-time property developer to the case. The father is talking about his daughter and produces a small notebook in which she has written a sweet but sophomoric poem that the father begins to read but cannot finish. He gives the notebook to Spellacy who completes the poem and discovers on the same page a telephone number. In any other whodunit (which, of course, this film is not) the notebook would simply have appeared and the number been found as the detective searched through the pages. Here, however, the pathos of the father’s loss completely disarms the viewer and overshadows the discovery of the number until a subsequent scene when a reverse directory reveals that it belongs to the developer.

The characters, even the most minor of them, are fully drawn, from the madam in the “$5 cathouse,” subtly and beautifully portrayed by Rose Gregorio, to the parents of the dead girl, who appear in only one scene. And unlike the caricatures of bishops we see in films like The Third Miracle and Priest, the cardinal in True Confessions, played by Cyril Cusack, is so brilliantly understated in his inhumanity we are compelled to believe he is real.

The performances of De Niro and Duvall, as well as several of the supporting actors, are also outstanding. Canby:

“Mr. De Niro and Mr. Duvall are at the peak of their talents here. They work so beautifully together it sometimes seems like a single performance, two sides of the same complex character. But then the film is stuffed with memorable performances. They include those of Mr. [Charles] Durning and Ed Flanders, as the most prominent laymen in the monsignor’s parish; Burgess Meredith as Seamus Fargo, an ancient, crotchety, seriously committed monsignor who’s being given the expedient sack in the course of the film….”

True Confessions is more a morality tale than a classic film noir. In the movie, the powerful and corrupt, whether they be businessmen or cardinals, may be clever enough or well connected enough to escape the judgment of the law, but they cannot avoid the final judgment—eternal damnation by the body of the faithful to the miserable hell endured by all cinematic villains.

Every time I watch this film, it stays with me for days after. Highly recommended.

Photo Credits

Robert De Niro in True Confessions @ Wikipedia

This review is adapted from a March 7, 2010 posting on my blog.

Bleak House of God: A Review of “True Confessions” is a post from: Life As A Human