Do kids really like watching other kids in movies and on TV? I certainly know I didn't. At least not what passed for kids in the TV shows
and movies of my youth. My inability to relate to that hyperactive genus of freckle-faced
precocity known as the child actor contributed to my childhood aversion to
Disney, so-called "family entertainment," and basically any film or TV program which trained its spotlight on adorable, towheaded moppets. Hence, I was nearly in my 30s before I got
around to seeing Mary Poppins, Pollyanna, The Sound of Music, or The
Parent Trap; all movies I've come to adore as an adult (ultimately the demographic most
invested in the sentimentalized idealization of that trauma-filled age-span known
as childhood), but which held little interest for me as a kid because I
simply saw no connection between myself and those miniature adult-impersonators I saw onscreen.
Take, for example, the TV sitcoms I grew up watching: Even as a child, Beaver Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver came across to me as a pathological
liar with virtually no common sense and a wobbly moral compass that could be effectively redirected by the feeble taunt of "Chicken!" Those ginger twins, Buffy & Jody of
Family Affair, were like these too-good-to-be-true, animatronic wind-up
dolls; Dennis the Menace was a well-intentioned but nevertheless misogynist, passive-aggressive sociopath;
and don't even get me started on that mayonnaise-on-white-bread-with-Velveeta-slices
Brady Bunch clan.
Either absurdly goody-goody or possessed of an annoyingly
thickheaded inability to ascribe consequence to action, these characters may
have warmed the hearts of nostalgia-prone adults clinging to a revisionist reverie of childhood. A time of mischievous scamps getting into adorable "scrapes" and wide-eyed cherubs spreading sunshine and rainbows wherever they went. But for all their resemblance to the pint-sized Gila monsters I went to school with in real life, these sitcom kiddies might
as well have been creatures from The Twilight
Zone.
Of course, there were a few rare exceptions. Given my own dark disposition, I had no problem with the refreshingly odd Pugsly and Wednesday Addams on The Addams
Family. And I took considerable pleasure in Jane Withers as the hilariously bratty antithesis
to the sugary Shirley Temple in 1934's Bright
Eyes ("My psychoanalyst told me there
ain't any Santa Clause or fairies or giants or anything like that!"). On the other hand, I was most impressed by Patty McCormack's Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed, who was basically James Cagney in a pinafore. And, of course, one of my all-time favorites was the 1968 musical Oliver! with its ragtag cast of underage
pickpockets, thieves, and swindlers.
If anything is to be gleaned from this, it's that, as a child, I longed for an alternative to these antiseptic images of childhood just as my parents yearned for something beyond the Father Knows Best/The Donna Reed Show model of family. Sure, kids can be sugar and spice and all that, but kids are also self-centered, very sharp, and crueler than most adults would like to admit. And childhood, while certainly a (perceived) joyous and carefree time when viewed from the perspective of adult responsibility and stress, is nonetheless a very scary period of life, fraught with anxieties and insecurities.
If anything is to be gleaned from this, it's that, as a child, I longed for an alternative to these antiseptic images of childhood just as my parents yearned for something beyond the Father Knows Best/The Donna Reed Show model of family. Sure, kids can be sugar and spice and all that, but kids are also self-centered, very sharp, and crueler than most adults would like to admit. And childhood, while certainly a (perceived) joyous and carefree time when viewed from the perspective of adult responsibility and stress, is nonetheless a very scary period of life, fraught with anxieties and insecurities.
Redeemed by resilience, curiosity, and a limitless capacity for hope and dreams, I've long held that children, in essence, aren't really that different from adults. And if authentically rendered, they're infinitely more interesting than the fantasy concept of children fed to us in most entertainments intended for the young set. Author Roald Dahl understood this, and that is why the ofttimes frightening, marvelously witty and acerbic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (adapted from his 1964 book, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory) stands out as one of the few children's movies from my childhood I recall with a great deal of fondness. Finally, here was a terribly sweet children's movie that didn't need the artificial sugar-coating.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka |
Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket |
Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe |
Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory is a straightforward fairy tale - complete with a moral and a happy
ending - that takes place in a world where the fantastic and magical exist side
by side with the prosaic and practical; in other words, the world as kids
see it until we adults start to stick our noses in.
One day Willy Wonka, an eccentric, reclusive candy
manufacturer around whose identity swarms mysterious, Gatsby-like legends,
decides to open the doors of his wondrous candy factory to five lucky winners
of Golden Tickets he's hidden in Wonka Bars shipped all over the globe. The winners and one guest receive a tour of his factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. The winners:
Germany The gluttonous Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner) and his mother (Ursula Reit, who always reminds me of an off-diet Elke Sommer) |
England Spoiled Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole) and her salted peanut magnate father, Henry (the wonderful Roy Kinnear) |
America Ill-mannered Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson) and her pushy, used-car salesman dad, Sam (Leonard Stone) |
America Rambunctious TV addict Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen) and his schoolteacher mom (Nora Denney) |
...and most deserving, poor-as-a-church-mouse Charlie Bucket, who takes his beloved Grandpa Joe with him (and not his hardworking mom, but more about that later) |
The four initial winners of the Golden Ticket are all comfortably well-off children (save for Veruca, who's loaded) whose want for the prize stems mainly from a kind of entitled greed indigenous to comfortably well-off children. Only poverty-stricken Charlie (who has to attend school AND help his mother support four bedridden grandparents by delivering newspapers) harbors a dream of winning the ticket to improve his family's lot. Thus, with sweet-natured Charlie tagged as the parable's obvious hero; rival candy manufacturer Arthur Slugworth (Gunter Meisner) assigned the role of villain; and the four "naughty, nasty little children" standing as emissaries of the film's moral (our behavior and our hearts are the architects of our fate), only their unpredictable and mischievous host, Mr. Willy Wonka remains, as the fairy tale's element of surprise (and chaos).
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
I love
the setup and structure of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The film's first half is rooted in reality...well, a charming
kind of storybook reality. After all, we're asked to accept that Charlie's four
grandparents have not set foot out of the bed they all share for twenty years. The second half of the film is a pure flight of fantasy wherein a common childhood dream comes to life: a visit
to a magical Candyland that's part Disneyland, part amusement park funhouse, and
part house of horrors (adults tend to forget how much kids enjoy being frightened and gleefully grossed-out).
From the start, the film does a great job of piquing interest in Wonka by having him discussed, Citizen Kane fashion, at length before he even makes an appearance. It also gives us a likable and sympathetic hero to root for in Charlie, who's saved from being a totally pathetic character by being blessed with a loving, if oddball, family. Conflict rears its head in the form of the other four Golden Ticket winners, who may be amplified versions of archetypal bratty kids, but, with the possible exception of Veruca, are not malicious or mean-spirited, just self-centered. (Even the awful Mike Teevee precurses questions to his host with a polite, "Mr. Wonka….")
From the start, the film does a great job of piquing interest in Wonka by having him discussed, Citizen Kane fashion, at length before he even makes an appearance. It also gives us a likable and sympathetic hero to root for in Charlie, who's saved from being a totally pathetic character by being blessed with a loving, if oddball, family. Conflict rears its head in the form of the other four Golden Ticket winners, who may be amplified versions of archetypal bratty kids, but, with the possible exception of Veruca, are not malicious or mean-spirited, just self-centered. (Even the awful Mike Teevee precurses questions to his host with a polite, "Mr. Wonka….")
Touring the candy factory in the S.S. Wonkatania |
The two halves of the film complement
one another nicely. The first half is appropriately dingy and sentimental (bordering
on cloying), setting the stage for the second half, which, mirroring Wonka's unpredictable spirit, explodes into a colorful, colorful, anarchic phantasmagoria
that plays gleeful havoc with the genre expectations of the children's movie.
PERFORMANCES
Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974) would expose Wilder's comic genius to a broader audience, but even at this relatively early juncture in his career, his performance is nothing short of Oscar-worthy. Creating an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind character (his Wonka is loveable and scary, frequently simultaneously), Wilder is the main reason the film works at all and the primary factor in why it has endured for so long after its initial flop release. Thanks to Gene Wilder's ingenious brand of insanity, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a genuine children's classic. (Although Wilder was nominated for a Golden Globe, the film received only one Oscar nomination: Best Original Score.)
The songwriting team of Anthony Newly and Leslie Bricusse (Goodbye Mr. Chips, Scrooge!) reined in their usual tendency toward over-sophisticated melodies (although Cheer Up, Charlie, a real snoozer and always my cue to visit the snack bar, somehow made the cut) and came up with a score of tuneful, engaging songs possessing the simple, sing-song lilt of nursery rhymes and grade school. Best of all, each is staged in a clever, intimate scale that avoids bringing the proceedings to a halt and instead draws you deeper into the characters and storyline.
In fact, one of my favorite things
about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is that it is such a sublimely
nasty twist on the traditional tolerant celebration of childhood precocity that
fuels so many films intended for children. Wonka's factory‒ a place where anything
is possible…an environment wherein the laws of reason, logic, or physics don't
apply‒ recall those marvelously anarchic Warner Bros. cartoons. The at-odds, adversarial
byplay between Wonka and the kids evoked the comic clashes between Bugs
Bunny (unflappable, always one step ahead, just a little screwy) and
Daffy Duck (unchecked id combined with brazen
self-interest).
PERFORMANCES
People are fond of pointing out that Roald Dahl was not very
fond of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, no doubt due to the extensive rewrites his adapted
screenplay was subjected to by an unbilled David Seltzer (The Omen) and the shift of the story's focus from Charlie to
Wonka. This point would be persuasive save for two things: 1) Dahl's heirs stated
he would have liked the 2005 Tim Burton version (a film I found to be irredeemably
wretched, so, so much for taste), and 2) With rare exceptions, an author's ability to write a book
doesn't mean a hill of jellybeans when it comes to understanding what makes a film
work (see: Ayn Rand, Vladimir Nabokov, and Stephen King). As far as I'm concerned, to place the focus on anyone but Wonka would have been sheer folly, especially if you're lucky enough to land an actor as inspired as Gene Wilder to take on the role.
As personified by
Wilder, Willy Wonka lives up to the alliterative suggestion of his name by being quite
wonky indeed. Dressed in anachronistic high style, he sports a madman's mane of
wiry locks yet keeps his wits about him at all times; he is enthusiastic and
excitable as a child, yet remains unflappable and unflustered at even the most
life-threatening (to the children, anyway) occurrences; and has bright,
inquisitive eyes that can be warm and paternal one moment, wild and certifiably
insane the next. A genial host, he's witty, sharp, sarcastic, and not
particularly child-friendly. He seems singularly disinterested in being the
surrogate parent and disciplinarian for the transgressions of his misbehaving
guests.Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974) would expose Wilder's comic genius to a broader audience, but even at this relatively early juncture in his career, his performance is nothing short of Oscar-worthy. Creating an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind character (his Wonka is loveable and scary, frequently simultaneously), Wilder is the main reason the film works at all and the primary factor in why it has endured for so long after its initial flop release. Thanks to Gene Wilder's ingenious brand of insanity, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a genuine children's classic. (Although Wilder was nominated for a Golden Globe, the film received only one Oscar nomination: Best Original Score.)
Any fan of The Bad Seed should find Julie Dawn Cole's vitriolic Veruca Salt a sheer delight |
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
By the way, did I mention Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a musical? No, I didn't, but that's because I was saving it for this section. At a time when movie musicals were becoming as bloated as Violet Beauregarde at maximum blueberry transformation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory successfully bucked the trend toward entertainment elephantiasis (as much as a film deemed to be a boxoffice flop upon release can be called a success). They came up with an appealing, bite-size musical that, for once, didn't overwhelm its story and characters.The songwriting team of Anthony Newly and Leslie Bricusse (Goodbye Mr. Chips, Scrooge!) reined in their usual tendency toward over-sophisticated melodies (although Cheer Up, Charlie, a real snoozer and always my cue to visit the snack bar, somehow made the cut) and came up with a score of tuneful, engaging songs possessing the simple, sing-song lilt of nursery rhymes and grade school. Best of all, each is staged in a clever, intimate scale that avoids bringing the proceedings to a halt and instead draws you deeper into the characters and storyline.
Director Mel Stuart wisely rejected the suggestion to expand the rousing "I've Got a Golden Ticket" into a large-scale production number that spilled out into the streets, a la 1968s Oliver! |
Those around in 1971 can attest to the unavoidability of Sammy Davis Jr.'s grooved-up version of "The Candy Man" played 'round the clock on the radio at the time. And though it reached No.1 on the charts and became one of Davis' signature songs, its popularity, and omnipresence failed to garner the song an Oscar nomination (for that matter, neither did the splendid "Pure Imagination") or boost public interest in the poorly-promoted film. (Willy Wonka's visually unappealing initial-release poster and non-existent marketing campaign clearly reveal that Paramount didn't have a clue how to sell it).
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I saw Willy Wonka and
the Chocolate Factory in 1971 when it was released, largely at my older sister's
prodding. Then being unfamiliar with either Roald Dahl or the book (which I've
since read, and, as much as I love it, I find the film to be a vast improvement), the title Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory sounded far too much like Toby Tyler: or Ten
Weeks with a Circus, a cornball 1960 film serialized on The Wonderful World of
Disney that exemplified a great many of the things I hated about children's
movies. I was 13-years-old at the time, realism was all the rage, and the movies I most wanted to see in
1971 were Klute, Carnal Knowledge, Straw Dogs,
The Devils, and Play Misty for Me; certainly not a treacly kiddie musical set in a
candy factory.
Those catchy Oompa-Loompa songs are near impossible to dislodge from one's memory |
Lucky for me, my parents put their foot down; it was either Willy Wonka or stay home. And, as this post attests, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory became one of the happiest surprises of my youth. It's a children's movie made by people who, like me, had perhaps grown tired of the conventions of the genre. It's funny in a lot of sharp, adult-centric ways (the Wonka-mania vignettes are real gems), its dialogue is witty, and its characterizations frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious. And while the story has a great deal of sweetness and sentimentality, it never feels forced or phony. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory never ever made me cry when I was a kid. But now, as an adult, each and every time I watch it, I get an attack of waterworks when Wonka, Charlie, and Grandpa Joe are flying over the city in the Wonkavator.
Nowadays, when children indulging in bad behavior are rewarded with reality-TV contracts or celebrated by YouTube hits, I guess a movie like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory really pushes a few nostalgia buttons of my own. In today's culture-of-cruelty climate, where reality shows teach us that the-end-justifies-the-means if that end is fame or fortune, I can grow pretty sentimental about a story where a child is actually rewarded for doing the right thing.
BONUS MATERIAL
Fans of Joan Crawford's 1967 circus epic, Berserk, will recognize Bruno the clown (George Claydon) as one of Wonka's Oompa Loompas.
Fans of Lost Horizon (1973)....those with good ears, anyway...will recognize the dubbed singing voice of Charlie's mother to also be that of Liv Ullmann. The singer is Diana Lee.
Nowadays, when children indulging in bad behavior are rewarded with reality-TV contracts or celebrated by YouTube hits, I guess a movie like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory really pushes a few nostalgia buttons of my own. In today's culture-of-cruelty climate, where reality shows teach us that the-end-justifies-the-means if that end is fame or fortune, I can grow pretty sentimental about a story where a child is actually rewarded for doing the right thing.
Wonka: But Charlie... don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.
Charlie: What happened?
Clip from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" 1971
BONUS MATERIAL
Fans of Joan Crawford's 1967 circus epic, Berserk, will recognize Bruno the clown (George Claydon) as one of Wonka's Oompa Loompas.
Fans of Lost Horizon (1973)....those with good ears, anyway...will recognize the dubbed singing voice of Charlie's mother to also be that of Liv Ullmann. The singer is Diana Lee.
In 2013 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory became a West End musical. Although the title suggests little or no connection with the film, the show's original music score includes the Newley/Bricusse composition. "Pure Imagination."
Many sites are devoted to trivia, production info, and hidden-joke theories surrounding Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My favorite is the groundswell movement dedicated to proving that Charlie's beloved Grandpa Joe is basically a selfish, lazy slob without a conscience. Precipitated by the character-revealing remark he volunteers to Charlie being asked where he got the loaf of bread for dinner (suitable for a banquet, I'm sad to say): "What difference does it make where he got it? The point is, he got it!" Combined with his "magical" ability to get out of bed when there's something fun to do (aka, not work), a persuasive case is made against lovable Grandpa Joe throughout the web.
Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 20014