ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER 1970

“There is so much talk now about the art of film that we may be in danger of forgetting that most of the movies we enjoy are not works of art.”

Pauline Kael

One of the things I’ve always loved about the late Pauline Kael, film critic for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991, was that, as intellectual and committed to the arts as she was, she was not a movie snob. She was one of the few film critics to understand how trash films and pop entertainment can hold as much appeal and be every bit as satisfying and uplifting as great art. 

In her time, she continually repudiated the efforts of critics who sought to promote a narrow, solely academic, definition of cinema. A definition shrouded in high-mindedness, “good taste,” and a self-seriousness blind to film’s more accessible, subjectively emotional appeal.  Kael seemed to be on a crusade to stop moviegoers from feeling guilty for enjoying movies as pop culture pleasures, encouraging them to instead relate to film's immediacy, passion, and ability to get under our skin. In short, to learn to connect to cinema as the “lively art” it is.  

But this didn't mean that there was no room for discernment and or critical judgment. Kael drew the line at lazy, cynical, boxoffice-geared product which pandered to the lowest common denominator and insulted the intelligence of the audience. For a movie to be worthwhile, it had to have imagination, vitality, ideas, and something elemental in its plot capable of striking a chord with the soul’s need to find beauty, joy, heroism, or myth. If a film can convey to an individual even a shred of what that person holds to be beautiful about the world, it doesn't matter if it’s The Cool Ones or Fanny & Alexander.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, I bring this all up as a way of ushering in this essay about Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever; a grievously imperfect film that I nevertheless find to be perfectly...pun intended...hypnotic.

Barbra Streisand as Daisy Gamble / Melinda Winifred Wayne Moorpark Tentrees, nee Wainwhistle

Yves Montand as Dr. Marc Chabot

Warren Pratt

Jack Nicholson as Tad Pringle

Bob Newhart as Dr. Mason Hume

John Richardson as Robert Tentrees

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is based on the moderate success/probable flop 1965 musical by Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner which starred the incandescent Barbara Harris and ran for 280 performances on Broadway. It’s a breezy romantic comedy with a glorious score and a charmingly original, if problematic, plot centering on ESP and reincarnation. It’s also the film that contains my all-time favorite Barbra Streisand musical comedy performance.

Simplified, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever relates the story of Daisy Gamble (Streisand), a nervousy introvert who seeks the services of psychiatrist/hypnotherapist Dr. Chabot (Montand) to help her to quit smoking. Daisy is a shrinking violet (hee-hee), a colorless wallflower (ditto, hee-hee...flowers are a major motif in the film) so cowed by her button-down fiancé, Warren (Blyden) that she tries to suppress the fact, both to herself and others, that she is actually gifted with ESP and, among her many talents, can make flowers grow simply by talking to them. 

"Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here"
If any voice could coax flowers out of their beds in the morning, it's Streisand's 

Under hypnosis, Daisy reveals herself to be the reincarnation of a 19th-century British clairvoyant named Melinda Tentrees who was executed for treason. Melinda is everything that Daisy is not: alluring, self-assured, and unreservedly sensual. For Dr. Chabot, fascination with Daisy’s case soon turns into infatuation with the elusive Melinda, while Daisy, misreading the doctor’s attentions, starts falling for Chabot.

That's quite a lot going on, what with showy fantasy flashbacks to the sumptuous Regency period to sort out the whys and wherefores of Melinda's untimely death; at least two, possibly three, romantic triangles (a hexagon, I suppose: Chabot/Daisy/Melinda & Warren/Daisy/Tad); a college scandal; plus time out to squeeze in several musical numbers. In fact, there's so much going on, several aspects of the film feel as though they are shunted to the sidelines or neglected outright.
The obviously truncated Jack Nicholson subplot goes absolutely nowhere, Daisy's own relationship with Warren feels like a series of blackout skits,  and I would have loved to have seen more of Leon Aames, the father from Minnelli's flawless Meet Me in St. Louis. Meanwhile, too much screen time is allocated to a wholly expository character like Chabot's colleague, Dr. Fuller (Simon Oakland), who exists solely to provide Montand's character an opportunity to engage in a windy reincarnation debate.

It's not unusual for women to develop crushes on older men, but the nearly 20-year age difference between Streisand and Montage did nothing to help the pair's already staggering lack of chemistry 

The overall result is a charming musical that is nevertheless strangely choppy and uneven in tone. The film is, at turns, out and out funny, whimsical, stylish, lyrical, and sometimes breathtaking; but it frequently feels like we're watching the combined efforts of artists assigned to do their work in isolation - without an awareness of what others are doing. Structurally, the film is designed to contrast the past and present, but this duality transfers somewhat schizophrenically in the combined efforts of the set designers, costumers, and especially the actors. Instead of creating the impression that time is cyclical and that the past and present are spiritually interlinked; On a Clear Day You Can See Forever frequently just feels like two separate films vying for screen time. A result, no doubt, of the movie being the victim of a great deal of editing. (Not the kind of fine-tuning editing necessary to sharpen a film, but the kind of butchering needed to cut a proposed 3-hour roadshow musical down to a little over 2-hours.)

On the rare occasions Minnelli ventures out of the studio, good use is made of the film's New York locations. Here, Yves Montand stands atop the Pan Am Building imploring Daisy to "Come Back to Me"
(or, as transposed by critic Rex Reed per Montand's French accent, "Cum Buck Dooo Meee!")

As it turns out, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever did indeed undergo a prodigious amount of cutting before release. Conceived as a roadshow* attraction, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever bears the brunt of the many songs, scenes, and subplots excised in the interest of whittling the film down to a marketable running time. But this doesn't fully explain On a Clear Day You Can See Forever saddling itself with a leading man so thuddingly dull that the film loses all romantic longing. Nor does it account for production values which would have looked dated in 1965; the curious choice of not having Streisand (a great comedienne) interact with any of the comic supporting actors (that's left to Montand, who sucks the laughs out of every scene); or the head-scratchingly weird decision to remove all of the score's liveliest and peppiest numbers (and this movie could use all the pep it can get) leaving only the melodic ballads.

*Roadshow: A popular distribution method for “event” films in the 60s, roadshow films were higher priced, reserved-seat screenings with overtures, intermissions, and exit music. These films were habitually 2 ½ to 4 hours long. They gradually fell out of favor in the late 70s.

The rooftop set and cast assembled for the Wait Till We're Sixty-Five production number that was filmed (and showed up on promotional stills) but cut out of the completed film

The film's score (among my favorites) is lushly romantic, but the film itself (a protracted, metaphysical cockblock) has been cast and directed in such a fashion as to render all potential romantic couplings undesirable. Personally, I didn't want Daisy to end up with ANY of her suitors.

Dr.Chabot hypnotizes Daisy through telepathy

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was only the second Barbra Streisand film I’d ever seen (the first being What’s Up, Doc?), and one I somehow hadn’t even heard of until 1975 when it was booked as the bottom half of a double-bill at the San Francisco movie theater where I worked as an usher. Because of my job, I was initially only able to see bits and pieces of the film, but the first thing that struck me was how beautifully it was shot. The ultra-modern college campus scenes were an overlit bust, but the flashback sequences in England and stylized artificiality of Daisy's rooftop bore Minnelli’s trademark stamp of picturesque opulence. 

The Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England features in one of the film's many stunning flashback sequences.

The other thing that grabbed me was the music. Many of the songs from the original score had been excised and a few new ones written just for the film. But of those that remained, who knew that so many of my parents’ favorite standards - the virtual entirety of the Eydie Gorme, Robert Goulet,  Jack Jones songbook - came from this show? I was so taken with the brief bits I was able to glimpse of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever that I began to make up excuses to leave my lobby post: check for smokers, feet on the backs of chairs… anything, just so I could get another Streisand fix.

And what a fix it was. Lit to look like a goddess and costumed with decolletage for days, Streisand was a heady dose of '70s-style movie star glamour. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was the movie that made me fall in love with Streisand (alas, a short-lived romance that ended with 1979s The Main Event) and my personal siren song was her gangbusters delivery of the title tune. I made a point of always being the usher stationed near the doors at the end of each screening just so I could stand inside, flashlight in hand, mouth agape, and wait for her to rattle the crystal on the chandeliers with that final note. Wow! Talk about your goosebumps moment. 

Not sure if this was a wig or her real hair, but this is the look I always associate with Streisand

Although On a Clear Day You Can See Forever played at my theater (San Francisco's Alhambra Theater) for two weeks, I never got to see the film in its entirety until I saw it at a Los Angeles revival theater many years later. After finally getting the chance to see the entire film from start to finish, I was a little taken aback to discover that I actually enjoyed On a Clear Day You Can See Forever more when I was seeing it a la carte. Seeing it in sections, I was dazzled by the visual style and Streisand's star quality. Seen as a whole, I was taken aback, given that the story is kind of magical and sweet-natured, that it somehow sidestepped giving us any other character besides Daisy to root for or like.

It's professional, well-done, and definitely enjoyable, but for a musical about mysticism, it's sorely lacking in that intangible kind of charm Minnelli pulled off so beautifully in Meet Me in St. Louis. Perhaps it's impossible to find an actress charismatic enough to be a musical lead, while at the same time, believably bland enough to make a convincing Daisy Gamble; but as cast, Streisand's Daisy doesn't really make sense. She's supposed to be a drip, but she's the most stylish, funny, and interesting person in the entire film. She's the only one you want to spend any time with. When Dr. Chabot expresses exasperation with her quirks, HE'S the one who comes off as unappealing, not Daisy.
Given all that was going on at the time, it's hard to feel that the legendarily meticulous Vincente Minnelli had his heart in this one. He was 63, his third marriage was breaking up, and his first and most famous wife, Judy Garland, had recently died.

"What Did I Have That I Don't Have?"
Streisand's vocal performance and acting on this song is peerless. I've seen it dozens of times and it always gives me waterworks.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Sure, the two leads have zilch in the chemistry department, and Barbra Streisand pretty much single-handedly gives the film all it has in the way of humor and pep. Yes, the film vacillates between feeling like there is too much plot and then not enough (and exactly whose idea of a counter-culture dropout is clean-cut Jack Nicholson with his distractingly mature hairline?). Certainly, it's a romantic comedy that strenuously works to keep the lovers apart. It's a movie that banks almost entirely on the appeal of its star. A film that piles on plot complications and eye-popping visuals so we don't really notice that the gorgeous musical score is far more emotive than the story at hand.

And yet...On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is still a film I take endless delight in. The whimsical plot makes me smile (even though it's a tad cumbersome) and I really like Streisand's performance here. And so what if my enjoyment is necessitated by my needing to fast-forward through most of Montand's scenes and overlook the fact that whenever Streisand is off the screen, the film just kind of lies there, inert? It doesn't matter because every few minutes or so, there is the sublime distraction of costumes, sets, and the bliss of getting to hear Streisand sing.

The visual pleasures of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever are considerable

Lane & Lerner's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is generally considered to be a wonderful score in search of a better book. The musical is rarely revived. In 2000, Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth headlined a concert version of the show ("Look ma! No book!"), and in 2011, Harry Connick, Jr. starred in an expensively-mounted Broadway revival that used several of the songs from the film and provocatively reworked the plot so that the character of Daisy Gamble was now a gay male assistant-florist named David Gamble who discovers he's reincarnated from a brassy female big-band singer. (A cute idea, but when his character asks the musical question, "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?" it seems to me an audience would have to exercise considerable self-control not to want to call out to the stage, "A vagina!"). The show lasted for little more than a month.

At left: the film's original "pot head" theatrical release poster. At right: Things are getting desperate. In an effort to draw a younger audience, newspaper ads featured an out-of-character, hippie-fied Barbra. Pic used is a Richard Avedon portrait from a photo shoot for Streisand's 1969 album, "What About Today?"

PERFORMANCES

If in Funny Girl Barbra Streisand seemed raw, and in Hello Dolly, lost; then in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever she seems more in charge of her talents than ever. And she's remarkably good. When she's helped by the script (as in the crackling first hypnosis scene) she's at the top of her game. At last given a chance to play sexy, in the flashback sequences, she practically wills you to find her beautiful.

The Great Profile

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Vincente Minnelli was the most painterly of directors, and the visuals he brings to On a Clear Day You Can See Forever are no exception. A feast for the eyes, the vivid period production design and more stylized contemporary sets of John DeCuir elegantly complement the splendid costumes by Sir Cecil Beaton (period costumes) and Arnold Scaasi (contemporary costumes). 

"I'll have what she's having."

Daisy's Emancipation / Melinda's Emancipation
 Daisy's recognition and acceptance of her reincarnated self is dramatized in the echoing of her costuming

The ultra-modern Arnold Scaasi designs used in the contemporary scenes of  On a Clear Day You Can See Forever provide a striking contrast to Sir Cecil Beaton's lavish 19th-century wardrobe. This simple little crowd-pleaser was worn by Streisand in a scene deleted from the film. And for those too young to have been around in 1970- no one ever actually wore an outfit like this in public...no matter what drugs they were taking.

For fans of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever who want to get depressed, here are links to sites offering more info on all that was cut from the film.  Just click on the highlighted sentences.

Behind-the-scenes info on the making of "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever"

YouTube audio (with stills) of the deleted Barbra Streisand / Larry Blyden duet: "Wait 'till We're Sixty-Five"

YouTube audio (with stills) of Jack Nicholson singing "Who Is There Among Us Who Knows?"

If they can restore 1973s Lost Horizon, why not On a Clear Day You Can See Forever?

Fans (or obsessives) of  '60/'70's pop culture will note that Daisy Gamble's fabulously floral bedclothes and wallpaper first made their appearance on the 1966 TV sitcom, Family Affair, in the bedroom shared by Buffy and Cissy.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I absolutely love the title song and Streisand's performance of it is stellar. She sings it so beautifully... it still can give me chills. Just crazy about the way Streisand begins the song like it's an idea that gradually starts to take root, then grows, then bursts with an assurance and awareness. If it was Streisand's intention to magnify the "flower" theme of the film and convey a sense of the character of Daisy "growing" into herself, she does a tremendous job of it. It's a lesson on how to put over a song so it's more than just pretty vocalizing...it's a first-class acting performance. Barbra Streisand's rendition of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is for me what I can imagine Somewhere Over the Rainbow is for Garland fans.

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2012

TOMMY 1975

In 1975, a full six years before the existence of MTV and two years before Saturday Night Fever propelled disco to the forefront of pop culture, director Ken Russell (who had previously trained his by-then trademark grandiloquent eye almost exclusively on the lives of classical composers), created what was essentially a 2-hour music video. Part Scopitone cheese-fest, part surrealist fever-dream, part theater of the absurd, and part post-'60s drug-addled freak-out; Ken Russell's 100% assault on the senses is the self-proclaimed rock-opera, Tommy.

One of the most phenomenal cinema experiences of this or any other time. 

Ann-Margret as Nora Walker

Oliver Reed as Frank Hobbs

Roger Daltrey as Tommy Walker

Not since Roman Polanski, that atheist genius of contemporary nihilism, was assigned to the darkly cynical Rosemary's Baby, has there ever been a more perfect match of director and subject. Ken Russell's theatrically baroque, visuals-as-narrative style is ideally suited to a tale of such broad-strokes bombast as Tommy. Marketed as an experience as much as a movie, Tommy boasted rock-concert-decibel-level sound (the five-speaker Quintaphonic sound system that rattled movie theater rafters every bit as much as Earthquake's Sensurround), a story told entirely in song and music; and a mind-blowing, only-in-the-'70s cast of pop/rock musicians and movie stars. But best of all, Tommy had at its helm one of the UK's most artistically fearless directors. 

In his TV biographies of classical composers for the BBC, and in the films The Music Lovers (1971), The Boy Friend (1971), and Mahler (1974), Ken Russell proved himself to be an undisputed visionary when it came to unearthing daringly evocative ways of melding music and imagery. A director for whom too much was never enough, I can't think of a soul better suited to transfer a rock opera to the big screen with all the genre-requisite exaggeration and excess.

The release of Tommy was poised as a '70s happening...and it didn't disappoint.

Certainly not when it came to its eye-popping cast of pop-cuture icons.

Jack Nicholson as The Doctor

Tina Turner as The Acid Queen

Elton John as The Pinball Wizard

Significantly retooled from the 1969 double album by The Who, Tommy is a quasi-spiritual parable about a boy (Barry Winch) rendered hysterically deaf, blind, and non-verbal after witnessing the murder of his father (Robert Powell) at the hands of his mother's lover (Oliver Reed).

Witness to the Murder
Seriously, who wouldn't be traumatized by Oliver Reed screaming in your face?

While shared guilt tears at the fibers of the marriage of Nora (Ann-Margret) and Frank (Reed) --Nora, in particular, grapples with remorse over what she has done-- the now-grown Tommy (Daltrey) retreats further and further into himself, inhabiting a vivid inner world that serves to shield him from the paradoxical trauma of well-intentioned attempts to cure him backed up by thoughtless instances of parental neglect and familial abuse. As a result of his experiences, Tommy develops a near-supernatural talent for pinball and is hailed as a pop culture prodigy. 

For Nora, instant wealth and fame only superficially cushion the pain of the responsibility she feels for Tommy's afflictions. But when her hysterics bring about his "accidental" fall through a plate-glass mirror, the miraculous restoration of his senses changes the course of all of their lives. Tommy instantly becomes a worldwide spiritual messiah, but discovers that this mock religion, which offers spiritual redemption through material acquisition, is yet but another existential dead end. 

I Am The Light

For a treatise on fame addiction, pop-spirituality, drugs, child abuse, and family dysfunction, five seasons of "Oprah" couldn't accomplish what Ken Russell does in these crammed-to-overflowing two hours. In song, yet! Classical music devotee Russell seems creatively invigorated by his first foray into the world of Rock & Roll, and his inspired translation of the Who's opera to the screen is nothing short of dazzling. Always a director able to capture memorably vivid tableaux, Russell fills Tommy with striking and, in some instances, downright bizarre images and setpieces that 1975 audiences weren't quite prepared for.  

Nora & Captain Walker
Tommy is credited to three cinematographers. Their work is often breathtaking.

Tommy is chock full of spheres, globe motifs, religious iconography, inside jokes, and Freudian symbolism. All this heavy-handed pretension was like manna for a high school film geek like me.

Robert Powell as Captain Walker

Looking at the film now, it's hard for me to take it as seriously as I did way back when. But what does persist and becomes more apparent with each viewing is the obvious artistry on display and how much sheer outrageous fun it is to watch. So many movies today are all spectacle, with nary an idea in their heads. Ken Russell movies are so crammed full of ideas and subthemes that it frequently takes repeat viewings to even catch them all. Oh, and there's plenty of spectacle to spare, too.

Modern Family

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

If Tommy were a Western, it would be a Western with covered wagons, the cavalry, and stagecoaches; were it a war film, it would have air strikes, tanks, battalions, and explosions every fifteen minutes. In short, Tommy is so much fun because it has too much of everything. The music is exhilarating (and loud), and the visuals are, in turn, brash, vulgar, and ingenious. Most movies have at least one setpiece scene; Tommy is ALL setpiece scenes. Under any other circumstances, this would be a recipe for a somewhat overwhelming viewing experience. But Ken Russell's operatic ambition and vastness of scope are so gleefully grandiose and overreaching that I find Tommy to be just irresistible cinema.

Show Biz
The "Pinball Wizard" sequence, featuring The Who and Elton John is combat as rock concert

Satire
Organized religion and fame culture are skewered in a jaw-dropping sequence set in a church worshiping Marilyn Monroe 

Surrealism
Tommy in a landscape of giant pinballs and flaming pinball machines

PERFORMANCES

The title role may belong to Roger Daltrey, but the film belongs to Ann-Margret. As Tommy's troubled mother (understatement), Ann-Margret seems to sense that this is the role of a lifetime and attacks it with a commitment and ferocity that comes from a place very real. Her performance is so compelling that she pulls off the Herculean feat of anchoring the entire film (which could have easily slid into campiness) in a kind of emotional truth.

Tommy was Ann-Margret's first Best Actress Oscar nomination. In 1971 she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Carnal Knowledge, a film in which she played opposite Tommy's romantically smitten physician, Jack Nicholson

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The pairing of the director of The Devils with the actress who stole an entire film from under Elvis Presley's nose was bound to produce a few sparks, but no one was prepared for the cinematic conflagration that was the "Champagne" musical number; popularly known as "The beans sequence." A song written expressly for the film, it communicates Nora's profound guilt, compounded by the riches and comfort that has come to her through Tommy's pinball success. In an attempt to blot out Tommy's image from both her mind and the television screen, which alternates close-ups of Tommy's staring, blameless eyes, with insipid commercials for baked beans, soap suds, and chocolate, Nora gets plastered. Everything comes to an emotional and visual head when Nora hallucinates the television set vomiting its material goods into her pristine white bedroom.

If you really want to see an actor going all out, nerves exposed and raw, you need look no further than Ann-Margret's Technicolor nervous breakdown in Tommy. Audacious isn't even the word. Understandably, this scene was all critics could talk about when the film was released, and even today I think it can't help but astonish. A primo example of truly inspired, virtuoso looniness.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

It's fascinating to me that a film propelled by wall-to-wall rock music is also so visually stimulating; I can imagine someone could watch it without sound and still find it to be an exciting and compelling motion picture. Ken Russell has a silent filmmaker's grasp of the visual rhythms of dramatic storytelling. He's always been a director known for letting images do the talking, and with Tommy, he comes the closest he's ever been to achieving pure cinema.

Tommy's Primary Color Triad of Trauma
(The Acid Queen, Uncle Ernie, and Cousin Kevin)

As a teen, the only records I owned were movie soundtrack albums (the film-geek thing), so, rather remarkably, Tommy was my introduction to rock music. Purists, of course, would say that Tommy is to Rock what Dreamgirls is to R&B. But independent of questions on whether The Who's concept album conceit is the real thing or not, my love for this score eventually led to my expanding my record collection to include real-life, non-movie music of all stripes. How fitting then to be indoctrinated into the musical world of soaring theatrics, broad emotionalism, and specious spirituality by a film director whose entire career was built on those very things.

AUTOGRAPH FILES

Ann-Margret (or her publicist) sent this photo and this accompanying note in 1976 following a letter I wrote gushing about her performance in Tommy. I always assumed messages and pictures from celebrities were PR products until I worked for actor Walter Matthau in the 1990s and saw that he personally answered his fan mail and autographed photos. Do stars even do this now, or are fans immediately placed on a "stalker" list?

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2010