Saturday, April 21, 2012

THE BAD SEED 1956

* Spoiler Alert! Major plot points are divulged for critical discussion and analysis.

For the most part, I don't see anything inherently wrong in a film morphing from one kind of entertainment into another over the course of its "screening life." By this, I mean movies—a populist entertainment /art form presumed of a certain marketable topicality at the time of their release, are, by nature, vulnerable to the vagaries of time. A movie can start out as one kind of entertainment...say, thoughtful social drama...but, due to changing public tastes, evolve into something that gives pleasure to countless hundreds in new, totally unexpected ways (i.e., unintentional humor or high camp).
Rhoda Has Intimacy Issues
Some movies, like John Huston's The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) and George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951), feel as powerful today as I imagine when first released. Then there are those movies dismissed or misunderstood in their own time (Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter) that receive the benefit of revisionist reassessment.  
But occasionally, a movie just seems to take its place in our collective consciousness as a work superficially cloaked in the trappings of its time. Though they may be about such timeless human issues as love, death, survival, and hope, the matter in which those issues are addressed can brand the film as hopelessly dated. 
For Adults Only - No One Will Be Seated During the Last 15 minutes
A "Catch Your Breath" Intermission at Each Screening!


One of the earliest legit films to actively advertise itself as suitable for "Adults Only," The Bad Seed was taken to task for what many perceived to be its sensationalist and misleading ad campaign. Criticism was leveled at the film's advertising copy and graphics that hinted at sexual impropriety being at the core of the film's big secret ("The most terrifying rock-bottom a woman ever hit for love!").

Not surprisingly, the type of movies most susceptible to becoming relics of their time are those most determined to be daringly up-to-date upon release. A surefire recipe for instant obsolescence is to take over-emphatic, up-to-the-minute immediacy, multiply it by sensationalism, and add a dash of self-seriousness. The result is usually something so mired in a particular time, place, and mindset that it becomes near-impossible to take seriously in any of the ways originally intended. 
The Bad Seed's roots in old-fashioned theater are reinforced by its often stagy blocking  

When psychoanalysis was new, juvenile delinquency in its infancy, and post-war conformity at its height, Maxwell Anderson's Broadway 1954 play The Bad Seed (adapted from the 1954 novel by William March) must have been quite the eye-opener. A thriller about a sociopathic 8-year-old serial killer sounds like a weed among the roses in a Broadway season that saw the premieres of Peter Pan and The Pajama Game. But the chillingly original premise and, by all accounts, remarkable performance of little 9-year-old anti-Shirley Temple, Patty McCormack, made The Bad Seed into a solid hit. Co-star Nancy Kelly won the Tony Award for Best Actress that year. And in a rarity for Hollywood, virtually the entire principal cast of the play was recruited to recreate their roles for the 1956 film adaptation.
Nancy Kelly as Christine Penmark
Patty McCormack as Rhoda Penmark
Eileen Heckart as Hortense Daigle
But not everything that plays well across the footlights survives the magnification of the movie screen. Suffering from a perhaps too-faithful adaptation that had characters standing around talking for fitfully long stretches while engaged in a lot of theatrically fussy "stage business." The combination of the minimal action and close-up lens trained on The Bad Seed only served to amplify the dubious premise of its plot (hereditary homicidal tendencies) while failing to add much in the way of either verisimilitude or spontaneity to the progressively melodramatic proceedings.
Henry Jones as Leroy Jessup
Evelyn Varden as Monica Breedlove
William Hopper as Kenneth Penmark

Navy Colonel Kenneth Penmark and wife Christine seem to have the ideal child in their little Rhoda: an angelic, near-perfect package of pigtails and ruffles, blessed with girlish grace and good manners. But, when Kenneth is called away to Washington for business, Christine (who appears to be wound a little tight from the get-go) begins to suspect that Rhoda's immaculate façade isn't perhaps masking a more disturbed, darker personality dysfunction. The mysterious death of a local schoolboy and Christine's epiphanic discovery of her birth lineage lead her to believe that little Rhoda might be a budding serial killer: a possessor of a hereditary "bad seed" gene passed on to Rhoda by Christine herself. What to do? What to do? What to do?

Al Hirschfeld
I make light of the preposterous-sounding premise, but quite honestly, when removed from the gimmicky "serial killer gene" plotline, The Bad Seed is pretty solid thriller material. It might have even tapped into the post-war/ McCarthy-era "banality of evil" zeitgeist of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (released the same year) had it managed to sidestep the theatrical histrionics and showed more faith in presenting a dark vision of idealized suburban perfection.

The Torment of Truth
Paul Fix as Christine's father, Richard Bravo
-telling her she might want to table those plans for a family reunion-


The Bad Seed was a sensation on stage, but almost too much for the screen. The play's original twist ending had to be retooled so that evil didn't prevail, plus a tacked-on coda was introduced that had the entire cast return (even those who didn't survive) to give the screen equivalent of a curtain call bow. When I was a kid and The Bad Seed scared me senseless, this "See, it's only make-believe!" addition did what it was supposed to do; save the film from being too disturbing and grim.  
As an adult, that silly roll call ending just feels like such an odd choice, the way it wrenches you out of the drama before you're even ready.
Topically The Bad Seed benefits from the uniqueness of its narrative perspective. Though horror movie screens overflow with little monsters now, I can't readily think of another film before this that dared deal with the topic of a child being capable of murder. Despite this novelty, The Bad Seed is ill-served by how deeply the plot (and far too much of its dialogue) is entrenched in then-novel, now-outmoded Freudian psychological theorems. As a result, a great deal of emotional drama gets submerged beneath reams of expository dialogue. And while the suspense and tension are generally well-handled, its overall effectiveness is undermined by some of the performances' overwrought and overrehearsed theatricality. 
Joan Croydon as Miss Claudia Fern 
Clearly, Miss Fern already harbors suspicions about Rhoda.
But isn't that always the way...the parents are
always the last to know their kid's a homicidal maniac

I couldn't have been much older than Rhoda when I first saw The Bad Seed on TV (which is also likely the last time I ever took the film seriously), and I recall it being quite the shake-up experience. I was raised in a middle-class neighborhood where kids were brought up to be seen and not heard. To be obedient and polite, to say "Please" and "Thank you," and to never, but NEVER speak back to grownups. So it shocked the hell out of me to see a little girl who could have stepped out of an episode of Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver behaving so monstrously. The idea that a kid could exert any power over their own lives at all was alien enough, let alone plan and carry out vicious murders with nary a trace of remorse.
Jess White as Emry Wages / Gage Clark as Reginald Tasker

Although I was a fan of horror movies as a kid and loved to be scared, I must say I didn't mind that the deaths of little Claude Daigle or handyman Leroy were never shown in The Bad Seed. My fertile imagination furnished all the gory details. I remember being very torn up by the grief of Eileen Heckart's Mrs. Daigle, and the sound of the gunshot near the end nearly sent me flying off the sofa. My strongest memory is of Rhoda's final trip to the boathouse. It was spooky enough that she was out alone at night in a rainstorm, but I thought maybe her maddeningly clueless father would wake up and catch her red-handed with the medal. That bolt of lightning hit me like ...well, a bolt of lightning. OMG! I had NEVER seen a kid killed in a movie before, and that image stayed with me for many a nightmare.
Frank Cady as Henry Daigle 
A medal should be awarded to anyone who can see this actor and not think of General Store owner
Sam Drucker of Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction. I certainly can't.

Youth and naiveté definitely have their advantages with some movies, so at least I get to say that I had one pure, unironic experience of The Bad Seed before the unintentional laughs set in and The Bad Seed, almost imperceptibly, went from serious to hilarious in my eyes.

Granted, the film's pitch had always been a little high, but with maturity, the passing of time, and changing tastes, The Bad Seed started to look as dated and reactionary as one of those "social guidance" films of the '50s and '60s. 
The patent phoniness of Rhoda's "good little girl" act is so obvious it instantly brands the adults in the film as idiots. However, it also simultaneously turns Leroy into the film's clear-eyed hero and the collective voice of the viewing audience. Happily, the gradual inability to take The Bad Seed seriously only made the film more watchable, not less.
"Have you been naughty?"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
In real life, it takes little effort for me to see most children as monsters. But making them look menacing on the screen is extremely difficult. The 1976 film The Omen neatly sidestepped the pitfall the wan 2006 remake fell into (headfirst) by framing the action in ways that left the child's evil nature ambiguous. In the original film, the child behaves normally, leaving the audience to project whatever it wanted onto his angelic, inexpressive pan. In the remake, someone got the bright idea to have the child actor perpetually scowl and glower into the camera...the result being the surely-unwanted effect of making it look like little Damien is perpetually suffering from a devil of a tummy ache. What makes Patty McCormack so memorably creepy in The Bad Seed is that she's like a schoolyard bully dreamt up by Murder, Inc.
The only reason this scene gets laughs is that Patty McCormack is scarier than hell in it. Who'd ever think a little girl in pigtails and a pinafore could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?

These days, when the bratty behavior of children is endorsed, encouraged, and regarded as business-as-usual in every sitcom and movie comedy, I wonder if a film like The Bad Seed would even work today. Indeed, the superb thriller We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) is an excellent example of how a "bad seed" scenario can be handled in a serious and dramatically compelling way. 
But Rhoda Penmark is both a product of her time and a victim of it. 
The ladylike decorum expected of little girls in the '50s is so passe, everything about Rhoda comes across as anachronistically comic, severely undercutting her intended menace. In movies today, little girls who look like Rhoda Penmark are the victims of girls who look like Wednesday Addams. 
Monica Breedlove, the Freudian landlord, is a particular favorite of mine.

The gift that keeps on giving when I watch The Bad Seed now is that Rhoda's brattishness calls to mind so many pop-culture icons of bad behavior...like Neely O'Hara and Alexis Carrington. Her outbursts and threats make me giggle, not just because one doesn't expect such malevolence coming out of a child kitted out to resemble a Chatty Cathy doll, but also because she's carrying on in a way we've long come to associate with grown-up entertainment industry brats and divas. Rhoda is rude, ruthless, selfish, self-involved, single-mindedly determined to get what she wants, and impervious to the suffering of others. I'm thinkin' Madonna or Kanye West.
The Original Material Girl

PERFORMANCES
Nancy Kelly and Eileen Heckart give the kind of robust, herculean performances that usually garner Oscar nominations, and indeed both (along with McCormack) were, in fact, nominated for Academy Awards. Both are really very good, though neither actress lets up "acting" for even a second. Kelly's stylistic excesses and singsong way of conveying sincerity may induce laughter, but her character's anguish is really affectingly played. Heckart has some great material to work with, and much of it she plays with real poignance. But a little too much theatrical "drunk" shtick creeps into the characterization for it to avoid the occasional lapse into overkill. 
The film's true star...and what an absolute marvel she is...is 10-year-old Patty McCormack. Although her performance is over-rehearsed to within a hairsbreadth, her Rhoda is an alternatingly chilling and hilarious characterization that has deservedly become iconic. An audaciously dark depiction of youthful duplicity—imagine Leave it to Beaver's Judy Hensler as a serial killer—Rhoda absolutely refuses to listen to anyone's drummer but her own. The way she exploits and subverts the expectations of traditional gender roles to her personal advantage feels like an act of guerrilla rebellion against the impossible image of female perfection and passivity she only superficially embodies. Rhoda Penmark is one of cinema's classic villains.
Leroy, Sex Bomb
In much of The Bad Seed's intentionally misleading publicity campaign, Leroy, the maintenance man, was presented in the context of some kind of sexual indignity suffered by the heroine 


THE STUFF OF FANTASY
No longer a viable suspense thriller (not for me, anyway), The Bad Seed does work remarkably well as a satirical black comedy of American paranoia in the mid-'50s. McCarthyism took root when post-war America was just starting to look within its own backyard for threats to the so-called "American Way of Life." What did it find? Well, juvenile delinquency, for one. And what else is Rhoda but a steely-eyed juvenile delinquent in Mary Jane shoes? (OK, a juvenile homicidal delinquent, but I'm trying to make a point.) As the perfect little angel who'll stop at nothing to get that coveted Penmanship Medal, Rhoda is camouflaged anarchy let loose on idealized "normalcy." 
Like many a con man, crooked politician, or gangster throughout history, Rhoda manages to get away with murder (heh-heh) by presenting a false but reassuring front of conformity. Everyone is so slow to pick up on the rather obvious clues of Rhoda's guilt because….well, little girls just don't do that sort of thing. The reliability of appearances and the rigid adherence to societal roles were very real in the '50s, making it easier to accept that everyone buys into Rhoda's too-good-to-be-true act. 
The screenplay of the wholly forgettable 1985 TV remake of The Bad Seed failed to consider how much society's perception of childhood had changed post-Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist, making the updated version come across as more antiquated than the original. 
A better remake, in spirit, if not in actuality, is The Good Son, a 1993 against-type departure for the unaccountably popular Macaulay Culkin.
You Gon' Die

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Despite its daringly original premise and first-class credentials, I'm afraid the movie that once promoted itself as "The most shocking motion picture ever made!" containing "The most chilling moment the screen has ever unleashed!" is, for me, now mostly an enduring camp staple. And though I'm aware that The Bad Seed continues to freak out entirely new generations of first-time viewers fortunate enough to catch it while they're still of an impressionable age (before their cynic genes kick in), my joy comes from familiarity. Make that overfamiliarity.
I still watch The Bad Seed often, each viewing being a somewhat home-grown MST3K experience where my partner and I talk to the screen, recite lines of dialogue, and affectionately laugh at the self-seriousness of it all. 
In her adult years, actress Patty McCormack has embraced The Bad Seed's cult/camp statusShe frequently appears at screenings, judges Rhoda look-alike contests, and answers questions about making the film (her DVD commentary offers a wealth of behind-the-scenes info). Mining the camp factor, the play version of The Bad Seed has become a favorite of 99-seat theater productions, often with an adult male cast as Rhoda. People seem to have a deep affection for The Bad Seed, either due to childhood exposure to the then-frightening film, or a later-in-life cult appreciation for the way the laughs come at the expense of the film's sincere over-earnestness and '50s mindset, not the performances.
In the Censorship Code-sanctioned denouement, Rhoda returns to the pier to retrieve the coveted Penmanship Medal and gets more than she bargained for. In the play, Rhoda survives while her mother commits suicide.

Some time ago, I saw a stage production of The Bad Seed and was surprised to discover that one of the big shocker set pieces of the play was a nocturnal walk through the house by a restless Christine after the death of Leroy. It's a stormy night full of thunder and lightning, and as Christine moves to close an open window, a flash of lightning reveals the charred corpse of Leroy lunging out at her. It must have been a big "gotcha" moment back in its day. But on the night I attended, the actress playing Christine had so much trouble lifting the window blind, she was ultimately obliged to politely hold the stubborn curtain aside to facilitate her own persecution. Matters weren't helped by Leroy missing his key light, leaving him thoroughly in the shadows, resulting in Christine appearing to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat with her living room curtains. 
The Bad Seed opened on Broadway on December 8th, 1954


BONUS MATERIAL
Popping up now and again on YouTube and definitely worth the watch is the fabulous 1963 Turkish remake of The Bad Seed titled Kötü Tohum. Starring real-life mother and daughter Lale Oraloğlu and Alev Oraloğlu, it's a very well-made adaptation that hews closely to Maxwell Anderson's play but deviates from it in the most compelling ways. 

 
More shocking than anything you'll see in the film itself is this bit of mind-blowing behind-the-scenes cheesecake showing prim Nancy Kelly keeping the crew "entertained" between setups (more likely, giving her gams some air on the hot set). Meanwhile, Joan Croydon (Miss Fern) fails to get into the spirit of things.

Possibly the most egregiously off-the-wall of the many misleading ads concocted to market what was apparently very a difficult-to-market movie. Seriously, what were they thinking when they dreamed this one up?



Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

Friday, April 13, 2012

DARLING 1965


I've a limited exposure to the British New Wave—that post-war cultural movement in theater, literature, and film which propelled the lives and concerns of working-class England to the forefront and ushered in the '60s vogue for socially conscious kitchen-sink dramas like Look Back in Anger (1956) and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)—but of the few films I have seen, most have been distinguished by their decidedly testosterone-laden, male-centric perspective. So much so that in a great many cases, the “Angry Young Man” genre description could just as well serve as a plot synopsis. 
In these films, the leading men are depicted as a rebellious, restless bunch, ofttimes violently chafing at the constraints of the British class system. Meanwhile, the women are largely portrayed as either fun-killing domestic drudges standing as ball-and-chain obstacles to the hero’s independence, or sexually available conquests whose troublesome biology (they do get pregnant at the most inconvenient times!) brands them potentially dangerous anchors to a life of lower-class squalor.
The "Honeyglow" Girl
The ideal of the modern woman
Not to discount Look Back in Anger in its entirety, but I loathed the passive roles played by Mary Ure and Claire Bloom. Ure’s submissive doormat reminded me of nothing more than Wilma Flintstone as the browbeaten housewife in the teleplay, The Frogmouth. By contrast, I very much liked Simone Signoret’s worldly older woman in Room at the Top (1959) and Rachel Roberts’ complex widow in This Sporting Life (1963). But for all of their depth and dimensionality, neither character (tellingly, perhaps) came to a particularly good end. It ultimately took doe-eyed Rita Tushingham in Tony Richardson’s marvelous A Taste of Honey (1961) to provide a welcome change-of-pace from all this masculine disagreeableness shrouded in societal disillusionment. In my narrow experience, Tushingham’s spirited Manchester teen remained the lone feminine voice of the Brit-based genre until one day when I happened upon John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar (1963) and that force of nature known as Julie Christie.
Julie Christie’s entire role in Billy Liar can’t amount to more than ten minutes of screen time, but as the easygoing, independent-minded Liz (a girl so unlike the other clingy, provincial, ready-to-wed women in the film as to be another species of being), Christie emerged the only one I even remembered. The frank simplicity of her performance, coupled with her refreshingly open, guileless glamour, proved to be something of a bellwether moment in the British New Wave. A turning point of sorts, in the evolution of women in British cinema. Come the mid-'60s, the reversal of England’s post-war economic decline signaled a gradual abandonment of these sparse and spartan tales of social oppression. Instead, Northern England’s working-class suburbs were replaced by the burgeoning mod scene of swinging London, and the by-now familiar class rebellion commentary gave way to observant social satires taking pot shots at provincialism, consumerism, and the emergent dominance of youth culture.
Julie Christie as Diana Scott
Dirk Bogarde as Robert Gold
Laurence Harvey as Miles Brand
Roland Curram as Malcolm
Although the years have softened its bite somewhat, John Schlesinger’s Darling is a darkly comic, corrosive criticism of the swinging London jet set as embodied by its blithely self-centered, casually amoral, unrepentantly superficial heroine. Julie Christie’s Diana Scott is a London model possessing looks, self-confidence, charm, vivacity, ambition… in short, she personifies everything contemporary society deems worthwhile to possess. She’s everyone’s darling, and, as the pop lifestyle magazines are quick to point out, the world is hers for the asking. Unfortunately, Diana’s outwardly appealing free-spirit independence is born of a rootless, restless dissatisfaction; a nagging internal deficiency her beauty and instinct for opportunistic survival conspire to help her to ignore. As the film ends, Diana, who is always looking out for herself, is ultimately left with just herself.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Perhaps because of all the macho bullying behind so much of it, I’ve never much warmed to the whole “Angry Young Man” genre. Angry Young Woman…now that’s another matter. Only two films come to mind: the above-mentioned A Taste of Honey; and the rarely-mentioned 1985 Meryl Streep drama, Plenty. A film that,  while not technically an example of the genre, is a wonderful female-centric perspective of post-war British disappointment.
There is no obvious Angry Young Woman in Darling, but there is something akin to rage at the center of what is eating at the never-satisfied-for-a-moment Diana. You see it in today’s films. Those romantic comedies where women are characterized by how much they shop and the label of the clothes on their backs. The films where the women are near perfect physical and intellectual specimens, yet their very "femaleness” is a weakness that dooms them to relationships with doofus schlubs like Seth Rogen. Those awful Sex and the City films where the over-privileged girlfriends can’t stop complaining or bemoaning their first-world problems for a minute and just count their blessings…it’s the same thing (Indeed, Diana Scott would fit right in with Carrie Bradshaw and her “I want it all, but I'm pretty sure I won't be fulfilled when I get it” tribeswomen).
Sexual liberation yields little more than serial dissatisfaction
I don’t know about you, but when I see compulsive consumerism of the sort engaged in by women in today’s films as some sort of empowering birthright, I can’t help but feel there are some real hostilities and angers being repressed and swallowed up in this obsession with fashion. I can’t believe the battlefield of women’s liberation has become the local outlet store. 
What I like about Darling is how relentlessly it lampoons this culture we have fashioned for ourselves that sells people ideas of "lifestyles" rather than encourages us to find an actual life. Like a similar character played by Jacqueline Bisset in the 1970 film The Grasshopper, Christie’s Diana Scott has been led to believe that “liberation” is a complete lack of ties to anything. Even herself. As she flits from one dissatisfying situation to another, it never dawns on her that she has been sold a prepackaged, consumerist bill of goods as to what real freedom and happiness is. The chic trappings of the swinging lifestyle promoted by mod London are chiefly beneficial to the shopkeepers, stores, and businesses. For Diana, climbing the ladder of upward mobility ultimately offers her nothing more than increasingly sumptuous surroundings to feel desperately lonely in.
Having it All
PERFORMANCES
I’m mad about everything in this film, but Darling is far from being the favorite film of many. Some find it dated, others complain of the satire being too heavy-handed; even the late John Schlesinger stated in later years “(Darling) seemed altogether too pleased with itself” and claimed his film was guilty of “epigrammatic dialog” that came off as self-consciously hip. Where all opinions converge and most everyone is in agreement (even Schlesinger) is on the topic of Julie Christie's star-making performance. So natural a presence that the film takes on the feel of documentary whenever she’s onscreen. You can't take your eyes off of her.
I've always wondered if the career of popular '60s British actress Judy Geeson (To Sir, With Love, Bersek) was either plagued or assisted by her more-than-passing resemblance to Julie Christie 
An entire generation fell in love with Christie because of this film and it’s not hard to see why. In this her Oscar-winning role, Christie exhibits that appealingly straightforward quality that would characterize her entire career. She displays an incredible range and finds the humanity and humor in a character not exactly likable. It’s always interesting when a smart actor plays a not-very-bright character. Christie doesn’t condescend in her portrayal of the shallow Diana. She conveys the character’s intellect in terms of a keen, almost animal awareness of knowing which way the wind is blowing and shifting her sights accordingly. Julie Christie is just a marvel here and endlessly resourceful in getting us to know more about a character who knows absolutely nothing about herself. 
It's difficult for me to think of Darling as being dated when Julie Christie's Diana Scott is just another talentless, self-promoting, arrogantly ignorant, opportunistic phony. You know,  like any one of a number of today's Kardashians, Lohans, Snookies, and regional "housewives." 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
In films with lead actresses as talented and drop-dead gorgeous as Julie Christie, it's not uncommon for the male characters to fade into the background. Not so with Darling. In fact, I can’t think of a film with a more solid, impressive, and eye-pleasing male cast. As a nice change of pace, the men in the cast are, by and large, more sensitive and emotionally needy than the heroine. Few actors have combined suave masculinity with vulnerable sensitivity as persuasively as Dirk Bogarde. As television reporter Robert Gold, Bogarde’s grounded sincerity (so easily read in his expressive eyes) casts a by-contrast harsh light on the frivolous affections of Christie’s Diana.
Diana (Christie) allows her vulnerabilities to show with her friend Malcolm (Roland Curram) 

Of course, the terrific Laurence Harvey (a delight in 1959s Expresso Bongo) makes for a rakishly reptilian—and surprisingly sexy—competitor for Diana’s affections, but Roland Curram in the role of Diana’s photographer friend, Malcolm, really made me sit up and take notice when I first saw Darling. For not only is the character of Malcolm funny, handsome, and a good friend, but Malcolm is that rare of rarities: a likable, non-tragic, non-campy, unapologetically sexual, gay character. In a film made in 1965, no less! As the only genuinely decent character in the film, his scenes with Christie are refreshingly convivial and the only times her character ever appears to relax into herself.
Diana and her Gays
Darling was one of the earliest films to depict gay characters in a sympathetic light

Strangely, for a film with such a progressive attitude towards homosexuality, it seems the closets were full-to-bursting behind the scenes. Matinee idol Dirk Bogarde was deeply closeted yet engaged in a brief fling with openly gay director John Schlesinger during the making of Darling (according to authorized Schlesinger biographer William J. Mann). Bogarde enjoyed a 40-year relationship with his agent, Tony Forwood, but invested considerable energy (throughout several autobiographies) in portraying himself publicly as a heterosexual. John Schlesinger harbored hopes that his friend, Roland Curram, might be inspired enough by his role in Darling to come out of the closet. Amused by his friend's presumption, Curram always insisted on his heterosexuality and went on to marry and later sire two children. In 1985, on the occasion of his divorce and ultimate coming out to his family and himself, Curram stated, “Of course, I told John later that he was right.”


Unfaithfully Yours - Diana's twin deceptions
Robert: "Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at the same time"
  
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I first saw Darling in 1980, by which time you’d think the film’s satirical slant would have lost its edge. That at least would be expected. The scary (and sad) thing is that while the jabs have lost their bite due to over-saturation, the chosen targets are nevertheless every bit as wanting of lampooning today as they were in 1965. I find it uncanny that the social absurdities Darling poked fun at 52- years ago (TV commercials, fame whores, liberal hypocrites, self-righteous homophobes, promiscuity for profit, the myth of “having it all”, etc.) are still a prominent part of our pop-culture landscape.
Darling is the film that made stars of both Julie Christie and John Schlesinger. Schlesinger's next film would be his last with Christie; the big-budget adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel, Far From the Madding Crowd (1967). After which he would go on to make the classics: Midnight Cowboy, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and The Day of the Locust. Schlesinger passed away in 2003.

Julie Christie is a legend, of course, and the promise of Darling has been realized in film after film throughout her career. Few actresses get to become iconic stars; fewer still owe it all to introducing to the cinema a new image of womanhood. There are many remarkable actresses around, but there is only one Julie Christie...she is in a class by herself.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

Friday, April 6, 2012

THE SHINING 1980

In 1980, if you were of R-rated moviegoing age and among those who first got a glimpse of that unforgettably chilling, minimalist classic of a theatrical teaser trailer for The Shining; there was no way in hell you weren't going to see the movie. (1980 Teaser Trailer for The Shining on YouTube)
If I remember correctly, I first saw the trailer at Hollywood’s Mann’s Chinese Theater as early as December of 1979 or January of 1980 (The Shining was released in May 1980 to kick off the Memorial Day weekend). Then, as now, the average movie trailer hewed to the familiar pattern of sensory bombardment combined with the suspense-killing, full disclosure of each and every plot point that might have rendered the film even remotely intriguing (the term, “spoilers” didn't exist). The trailer for The Shining deviated so significantly from the prevailing standard that when first appeared that famous static shot of the twin elevator doors, accompanied by that eerily intensifying discordant music, the theater became so still you could practically feel the collective pupils of the eyes in the audience dilate all at once.

In 1980 Stephen King was not the household name he is today so the floating title, “The Shining” drew little response. It was only when Stanley Kubrick’s name was revealed that the crowd joined together in what can best be described as an aggregate, apex-of-the-rollercoaster, intake of air. At the same time—as nothing had yet happened onscreen beyond the music growing increasingly agitated and ominous— a pervasive air of, WTF? mushroomed throughout the theater like a vapor.
And then, the slow-motion torrent of blood began to spew forth from the elevator shaft. Oh…My…God. All at once the thudding soundtrack was drowned out by a consolidated, rising-tide of “Whoooooa!” from the audience that lasted until the now-bloodstained screen once again displayed the film's title. A second or two of stunned silence was followed by applause, animated chatter, and delighted giggles of the sort usually associated with a children's birthday party after a magician has pulled off a particularly startling bit of trickery. On the strength of this one remarkably classy, 90-second trailer, coupled with the anomaly of an Oscar-nominated director of Kubrick’s stature venturing into the realm of horror, over the course of the next few months The Shining became the movie to see. 

When the Saul Bass-designed poster for The Shining began appearing all over Los Angeles, the film immediately jumped several points on my personal "Cool-o-meter" (I took this pic in April of 1980 on The Sunset Strip in front of the famous Whisky a Go Go during its short-lived punk phase)
I was especially hopeful about The Shining, inasmuch as I have always loved a good scare at the movies but had grown increasingly dismayed by 70s horror films’ over-reliance on gore and their tendency to think of shock cuts as viable substitutes for suspense and atmosphere. Considering both Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975) to be, if not exactly masterpieces, then certainly masterful, I sincerely believed that Kubrick’s The Shining had the potential to be the Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist of the '80s.

Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance
Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance
Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance
Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann
Barry Nelson as Stuart Ullman

If ever you want to get both the best experience of a movie, yet at the same time the least reliable impression of how that film will actually perform at the boxoffice, go see it on opening day. I attended an evening show of The Shining when it opened on May 23, 1980 at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.  The turnout was amazing. The crowds stretched around the block, past the parking lot, and into the nearby residential neighborhood. All of us waiting in line (some as long as three hours) were geared up for the scare of our lives, positive we were going to be among the first to see the big blockbuster hit of the summer. Fanning the flames was an enormous blow-up of Newsweek magazine’s rave review of The Shining (“The Ultimate Horror Movie!”) displayed in the theater’s forecourt. When the ushers came to release the velvet rope, I’m sure our faces had about them the look of vague genuflection, as though we were being granted a supreme privilege rather than just being allowed to see a movie we’d just paid for.

Original Ending
I was lucky enough to have seen The Shining before Kubrick mandated the excising of the scene that takes place after Jack freezes to death in the maze, but before the final shot of the photograph in the Overlook Hotel lobby. The deleted scene, which adds another layer of "What??!!?" onto an already maddeningly enigmatic conclusion, had a suspiciously solicitous Stuart Ullman (the hotel manager) visiting Wendy and Danny in a hospital where Wendy is recovering from shock. Wendy is interested in hearing if any evidence had been found at the hotel of all that she had recounted to the authorities. Ullman informs her that while the bodies of her husband and Hallorann had been recovered, there was no evidence in the hotel of any of what she had reported as having seen or occurred there. 
He insists that she must have suffered some kind of breakdown and that it was all in her mind. After this, I seem to recall his making an offer for Wendy and Danny to move in with him, and (this was the kicker) before he leaves and out of Wendy's view, he hands Danny the yellow tennis ball that had earlier materialized out of that mysterious room 237.
Personally, I LOVED this ending and preferred it to the one which now stands, but I seem to be alone on that score. I went to see The Shining again the weekend after its opening and the scene had already been deleted.

There’s a point at which one’s expectations for a movie can be so high that, on first viewing, you’re not responding to the film so much as reacting to whether or not the film has met or dashed your hopes. Such was the case for me on first seeing The Shining. So keen was I on The Shining being the epic horror film the pedigree of its cast and director augured, that when it proved itself (only) to be an intelligent, superbly well-made, largely effective horror thriller, I was disappointed. 
And from the feel of things, so was the opening night audience. The electric tension that greeted the film’s early scenes over time gave way to a funny kind of mistrustful hesitancy in not knowing how to respond to the minimum horror and maximum attention to visual style. Let down by the film’s lack of cover-your-eyes scares, the eager-to-be-entertained audience instead zeroed in on the burlesque of Jack Nicholson’s performance. As Nicholson trotted out the entirety of his even-then overfamiliar arsenal of arched eyebrows, Cheshire cat grins, and baroque overplaying, the audience assuaged its sense of letdown by losing itself in the film's mood-killing, dubiously intentional black comedy.
It's very difficult for an actor to convincingly portray drunkenness or insanity without resorting to overacting and cliche. In The Shining, Jack Nicholson has the dual challenge of playing an alcoholic driven to madness (as Nicholson plays it, it's a pretty short trip). 

Taking their cue from an actor who didn’t appear to be taking things seriously himself, the audience started to find everything Nicholson did funny. Even when he wasn’t trying to be. The Shining began to pick up and find its rhythm by the latter third, but by then the audience had already been lost. The crowd leaving the theater that night was a considerably more subdued and bewildered one than had entered. By the end of the 3-day Memorial Day Weekend, word of mouth had more or less undermined all the good the trailer and the film’s sizable advertising budget had done, and The Shining limped along for the rest of the summer, a modest success, eclipsed at the boxoffice—proportionately by budget—by that other summer horror film release of 1980 (God help us), Friday the 13th.
Ultimately, time, cable TV, home video, and the overall decline in the quality of horror films over the years, has allowed for a more clear-eyed, fair-handed assessment of The Shining’s virtues. Today it is widely regarded as a minor classic and one of Kubrick's most highly regarded films. Me, I like it a little more every time I see it, finding it easier to appreciate what Kubrick was trying to do when I no longer filter it through what I wanted him to do.


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Stanley Kubrick is perhaps a little too removed a director to engage me emotionally in the way necessary for me to be made to feel real fear (the way Roman Polanski can), but there is something ideally chilling in the setup of a vaguely dysfunctional family holed up for an entire winter in an isolated hotel that may or may not be haunted. Where Kubrick really excels is in creating indelible images (the elevator scene alone qualifies the film for classic status), developing tension, and establishing a world wherein events proceed on a collision course of horror that feels devilishly preordained, yet the particulars of what is real and why it’s all happening are open to any number of interpretations. Letting his meticulously evoked intermingling of the paranormal and the supernatural propel the plot, The Shining is almost willful in its ambiguity. (And don’t let anyone convince you that there is a single “right” way to interpret The Shining. Part of the film's brilliance - and no small part of its frustration to many - is how well it supports many different, perfectly valid interpretations.)

The Torrances: One big, happy family.

PERFORMANCES
Jack Nicholson has been a star for so long that it’s easy to forget that in the years following his 1975 Oscar win for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, many thought that Nicholson had fallen victim to the dreaded “Oscar Curse” (later dubbed The F. Murray Abraham Syndrome)— a downward-trajectory jinx that befalls the careers of many Academy Award winners. Jack Nicholson’s hammy and/or ineffectual turns in the late 70s flops The Missouri Breaks, The Last Tycoon & Goin' South, played like dry-runs for his over-the-top performance in The Shining, and critics were less than kind. Until just recently, I’ve always felt that Nicholson single-handedly ruined The Shining and that Kubrick afforded him far too much leeway (as he did Peter Sellers in Lolita). Even today I can’t say that I’m fully persuaded by Nicholson in the role, but I’ve since warmed up to his particular acting “choices” for his portrayal of Jack Torrance. The common complaint that Nicholson's Jack Torrance looks plenty crazy before he's even driven insane in The Shining echo a similar grievance leveled at the choice of actor John Cassavetes for the husband in Rosemary's Baby. To critics in 1968, Cassavetes looked guilty of something before his character even did anything.
On the flip side of my feelings about Jack Nicholson is my affection for the popularly-unpopular choice of actress Shelley Duvall. I think she is terrific in The Shining and any emotional engagement I have in the film at all is attributable to her pitch-perfect performance. Perhaps I’m prejudiced, but I’ve liked Duvall in everything I’ve seen her in…especially her Oscar-worthy work in Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977).  
The casting of actress Shelley Duvall in the role of Wendy Torrance rates high on the list of controversial Kubrick choices. Even her co-star weighed in on the decision: 
“I said, ‘Shelley Duvall?! What’s the idea, Stanley?’ And he says, ‘Well, you gotta have somebody in that part that maybe the audience would also like to kill a little bit!’”
Interview with Jack Nicholson by Nev Pierce for Empire Magazine 
If critics didn't appreciate Duvall in The Shining, they more than made up for it with the raves she garnered later that year playing the part she was born to play: Olive Oyl in Robert Altman's Popeye (1980)  

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
  The Overlook Hotel as envisioned by Kubrick and his team is one creepily spectacular location for a horror film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
As opposed to what I enjoy most about good horror films, The Shining never hits me where I live in terms of tapping into some deep-seated fear and giving it a face. The single scene that accomplishes this is the brilliant "All work and no play" reveal of Jack Torrance's insanity (which hit me with the same jolt that the Scrabble anagram sequence in Rosemary's Baby did). What I think The Shining has that keeps me returning to it and what has caused it to consistently rise in my estimation, is that it's terribly smart and thoughtful in its construction. There are worse things you can say about a horror movie than that it is one of ideas. 
The Shining has perhaps more head than heart, but its predetermination has an intrigue and attraction all its own. Whether it feels like a treatise on the eternal nature of evil, a dramatization of domestic violence, or just a vision of a family going mad together, it makes me want to watch every corner of the frame, listen to every detail of dialog, literally scour the film from start to finish in hopes of uncovering the "key" to what it all signifies. In the end, The Shining may not have much to say about the many questions it proposes, but a movie that provokes thought, any kind of thought, is always a step in the right direction.
Promotional postcard for the truly atrocious 1997 TV miniseries -The Shining.
 The Stanley Kubrick film began to look a lot better in people's eyes after author Stephen King tried his hand at adapting his own novel. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012