THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE 1972

Warning: Spoilers galore

Looking back, I still find it hard to believe that I came to know of the existence of The Poseidon Adventure only after it had already opened in theaters. It was in December of 1972, I was 15 years old, and my folks were treating my sisters and me to our first visit to Disneyland over the Christmas holidays. Disneyland and Universal Studios were, of course, a blast for a film fan like me (this was back when Universal was ONLY a tour, not an amusement park, and the main attractions were Lucille Ball's dressing room, the props from the Land of the Giants TV show, and that bridge Shirley MacLaine got pushed off of in Sweet Charity). But that was for the daytime.
My favorite part of our trip was in the evenings. When we were treated to a driving and walking tour of Los Angeles, Hollywood, to be specific. Of all the places we visited, I especially loved seeing Hollywood Boulevard. Hollywood Blvd. was always kind of tacky, but not to my utterly overwhelmed and enthralled eyes. In the early 1970s, it was still a place to go to see first-run movies, where premieres were held, and where they had their annual Christmas parade populated with actual movie stars you've heard of. Hollywood Blvd...all decked out in Christmas decorations, stars on the sidewalks, overflowing with one lit-up movie palace after another…to my eyes, it looked every bit as magical as Main Street in Disneyland.

Who Will Survive--In One Of The Greatest Escape Adventures Ever!

Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott

Ernest Borgnine as Mike Rogo 

Stella Stevens as Linda Rogo

All of the 1972 holiday movie releases were playing in the local theaters: Grauman's Chinese featured Streisand's Up The Sandbox, Diana Ross was at The Pantages in Lady Sings the Blues, the Cinerama Dome had the Patty Duke thriller You'll Like My Mother, the Pacific was showing The Getaway with Steve McQueen & Ali MacGraw, and Paul Newman was at the Hollywood (currently a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum) in The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean.

Back then, movie theaters still went all out in the way of marketing gimmicks and displays, so every theater was bathed in colorful neon, aglow with bright and flashing lights, and everywhere you looked were banners, streamers, oversized posters, and colossal cardboard promotional cutouts for movies now playing or coming soon. My eyes were popping out of my head.

As we strolled along Hollywood Boulevard that night, what really stopped me in my tracks was when we came upon the opulent and enormous Egyptian Theater. There, towering at least two stories high above the theater's massive, winding marquee, was the poster art for a film I'd somehow not heard a single thing about: The Poseidon Adventure. The Egyptian, then every bit as glamorous as Grauman's Chinese, was in the middle of an exclusive run of The Poseidon Adventure after hosting the film's premiere a week prior. The remaining evidence of the event was the massive cast portraits adorning the sprawling marquee, taller-then-me cutout posters, hanging banners, production stills, posters, and lobby cards filling every inch of available display space. Suddenly I was surrounded by images of what looked like the most exciting film I'd never heard of.

Shelley Winters as Belle Rosen 

Jack Albertson as Manny Rosen

Red Buttons as James Martin

Carol Lynley as Nonnie Parry

To understand how a dyed-in-the-wool film fan like myself managed not to hear a single advance word about a movie that became one of my all-time favorites but the second highest-grossing film of the year, it helps to know what kind of year for film 1972 was. In both fan magazines and the legitimate press, the lion's share of 1972 movie coverage/publicity centered around these high-profile titles: The Godfather (Brando's comeback!), Cabaret (Judy's daughter makes good!), Last Tango in Paris (Le Scandale!), Lady Sings the Blues (a Supreme film debut!), The Getaway (behind-the-scenes adultery!), and What's Up Doc? (Streisand meets New Hollywood wunderkind!).

With no nudity, sex, drug use, violent bloodshed, or profanity, The Poseidon Adventure, an old-fashioned throwback to the Grand Hotel-style "all-star cast" melodrama, couldn't really compete with the more daring, youth-oriented releases of the season, so it pitched itself more to the market largely ignored by the New Hollywood: families and the older demographic. 

Roddy McDowall as Acres

Pamela Sue Martin as Susan Shelby

Eric Shea as Robin Shelby

Leslie Nielsen as Captain Harrison

Arthur O'Connell as John, the ship's Chaplain 

The Poseidon Adventure opened on December 15^th in Los Angeles and opened a week later back home in San Francisco, where I saw it on Friday the 22^nd at the Alexandria Theater. I sat through The Poseidon Adventure twice that weekend and went back to see it two more times over the Christmas holiday. I absolutely loved the film, and it left its mark. For weeks afterward, I couldn't enter a classroom, library, store, or friend's home without imagining what it would look like upside down.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

It says a lot about the traditionalism of TV and studio-era films that by the time I was 15, I'd already grown pretty well-versed in recognizing movie clichés. While I'd not yet seen many of the films that established the familiar tropes from which so many '70s disaster movies would later draw (The High and the Mighty, Zero Hour!, The Last Voyage), I was familiar enough with combat movies (dangerous situation + dissimilar people from all walks of life + hero = everyone discovers what they're really made of); all-star ensemble flicks (the aforementioned Grand Hotel, Tales of Manhattan); and waterlogged melodramas (Lifeboat, A Night to Remember), for The Poseidon Adventure's high-concept upside-down ocean liner premise to seem intensely original yet reassuringly familiar.

Reverend Scott, not looking exactly pleased to have someone besides himself talking.
Far left is actress Frieda Rentie, sister of 227 actress Marla Gibbs

On New Year's Eve, the ocean liner S.S. Poseidon (significantly, at least in terms of ironic poignancy, making her final voyage before the scrap heap) is capsized by a tidal wave. While several passengers survive the breathtakingly entertaining catastrophe, only nine of the ship's most stock and photogenic passengers ultimately elect to follow the long-winded Reverend Scott (Hackman) on a perilous climb to safety by navigating their way up to the ship's bottom.

All involved—save for the resourceful reverend, who oozes so much self-reliance and leadership qualities he can't help but grow tiresome—are spectacularly ill-suited to the task. Still, any life-or-death struggle that begins with a ragtag group of "types" having to climb a big, tinselly Christmas tree to salvation is my kind of calamity. And so, armed with little more than pluck, guts, elderly body-shaming, and tight-fitting hot pants, our intrepid troupe begins their adventure.

Meet The Players / Character Shorthand

He's a Rebel 'Cause He Never, Ever Does What He Should
Rev. Scott--who's such a hip, throw-out-the-(Good) book type he wears a turtleneck instead of a clerical collar--assists in moving the plot along by actually listing his character aloud

The Bickersons
Common-but-decent police detective Mike Rogo and his foul-mouthed, former-prostitute wife Linda are a kind of Bronx George and Martha. Never afraid to say what's on their minds, Mike thinks Rev. Scott is a loudmouth, and Linda refers to Mrs. Rosen as "Ol' Fat ass." So, of course, they are my favorite characters in the film

Oh, My Papa and Yiddishe Grandmama
As though their borscht-belt accents weren't a dead giveaway, the film makes sure we know Belle & Manny are Jewish by introducing Manny with his nose in an Israel travel brochure while Belle knits their grandson a sweater with prayer shawl stripes.

Coded and Fabulous
James Martin--the real hero of the film due to his being the one who comes up with the idea to climb to the hull--is gay. No one can tell me otherwise. And the 50-something bachelor haberdasher might have actually said so, had Belle, the Hasidic Heteronormative Buttinsky ("It comes from caring"), not interjected that "What you need is a pretty wife" business. In any event, it's not likely anyone bought his "I'm too busy" line anyway. Mr. Martin's character was out and proud in the 2006 Poseidon remake, but the movie was so lousy no one cared.

Damsel in Distress
My real-life experience has been that in moments of crisis, most men & women act more like Nonnie than Rev. Scott, but that doesn't stop this fraidy-cat,  easy-listening songbird from being a bit of a pill. She's genuinely sweet, though, and as one of cinema's most high-profile fag hags (you didn't honestly think she and middle-aged Mr. Martin became a post-rescue romance, did you?), I like to imagine Nonnie and Mr. Martin became friends: she tagging along on his visits to The Mine Shaft or meeting up for Sunday brunches in the Village

Susan Being Polite To Mr. You're Not Reverend Scott (Ernie Orsatti)
Although I don't ever recall a brother actually calling his sister "Sis" instead of her given name in real life, I suppose it was important for the film to establish lovesick Susan and "all boy" Robin (so much the kid stereotype I expected him to say "Jeepers!") as siblings instead of some kind of Susan Anton/Dudley Moore couple.

Where Am I From?
Sure, his role is brief, but after three Planet of the Apes movies, I'm sure Roddy McDowall was happy just to have his actual face seen in a movie again. More a plot device than a character; what exactly is Acres' accent? I thought he was British (with a Liverpool lilt), but someone told me he's supposed to be Scots (maybe due to that bagpipes crack?)

In the 1972 shout-fest X, Y and Zee, Elizabeth Taylor has the line: "I may be the worst thing in the world, but I carry it in front where you can see it!" Well, if The Poseidon Adventure could speak, that would be its mantra. It's old-fashioned, schlocky, and loaded with what director Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) labeled "cardboardy" characters; but the film carries it all out in front where you can see. 

The Poseidon Adventure wears its corniness proudly on its sleeve. And as a 20^th Century Fox production, its asserted broad-market, family-friendly appeal feels like a purposeful shift in direction from Fox's rather desperate previous attempts to court the youth market: Myra Breckinridge -1970, The Panic in Needle Park -1971, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

Sure, The Poseidon Adventure is hokey, soapy, cliché ridden, and terribly contrived, but (miracles of miracles) it works. And rather magnificently, at that! I loved the premise, enjoyed the archetypal characters, and was thrilled as all get out by the upside-down sets and visual effects. But, most surprising of all was that the filmmakers somehow not only got me to care about these characters, but to respond emotionally to their fates. Who knew a cheesy movie could be so moving?

The terrible remake (which Carol Lynley called "The biggest piece of shit I've ever seen") cost 32 times more and had CGI wizardry up the ass, but I never gave a whit about what happened to anyone in it, and cannot clearly recall a single scene. The Poseidon Adventure was ripped apart by many critics in its day, but it has aged remarkably well. What seemed corny in 1972 looks rather sweet today. And creators of today's largely disposable and indistinguishable action films could use a lesson on how The Poseidon Adventure takes the time to get us to know/care about the characters before the mayhem starts. The Poseidon Adventure is now 45 years old. Despite its well-earned reputation as a campy favorite, I can't help but think that in the realm of disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure is some kind of a minor classic of the genre.

As both Beyond The Poseidon Adventure and The Swarm proved, the result is a guaranteed disaster film any time Irwin Allen chooses to direct. The Poseidon Adventure is directed by Ronald Neame, with Allen on hand only to handle the action sequences

PERFORMANCES

One of the peculiarities of the disaster film genre is that things don't actually improve when "good" actors are cast. Due to the unique demands of a film dominated by fast plotting and special effects, personality tends to win out over performance. Nothing bogs a disaster movie down more than a so-called serious actor trying too hard. For example: for all their innate talent, you'd have to look to an Ed Wood movie to find performances worse than Olivia de Havilland in The Swarm, or Rock Hudson in Avalanche.

Leslie Nielsen as Captain Harrison
Younger viewers tend to be surprised to see the star of Airplane and Naked Gun star in a serious role. However, those of us of a certain age know that for decades, THIS Leslie Nielsen was the only Leslie Nielsen there was.

No, with the genre's emphasis on action and expediency, it's often a matter of finding actors with distinct, identifiable, almost over-emphatic screen personas, capable of projecting a level of conviction appropriate to the arch dialogue and bigger-than-life exploits.
Much in the manner that Vincent Price became the master of schlock horror sincerity, disaster film actors who take their roles too seriously come off as ridiculous. Meanwhile, the most compelling performances are often given by those who seem to operate on a level of magic realism that hovers somewhere between authentic and artificial.

The distinction I'm trying to make is that while the cast of The Poseidon Adventure may be quite accomplished actors in their own right, what they're called upon to do in the film doesn't require "good" acting so much as "effective" acting. To make material like this believable, it matters more to strike the right tone; in which case performances ranging from hammy to hoary can prove to be 100% on the money.

My absolute favorite shot in the entire film, and also my favorite moment.
No matter how often I see The Poseidon Adventure, Linda Rogo's death remains the most shocking and heart-wrenching. Winters' Belle Rosen was set up from the beginning to be nobly tragic, but Mike and Linda Rogo were the couple I identified with. They weren't know-it-alls, they weren't noble, and they responded to the fantastic circumstances of their situation in a way that felt realistic. They were funny, sweet, and a life force in the film. Linda's death reverberated like no other. Ernest Borgnine just breaks my heart in this scene, and I always get waterworks from his reaction. To me, he was always the film's most valuable player.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
By no means all, but just a few of my favorite things:

I don't care how dated the special effects are; the capsizing of The Poseidon is epic moviemaking
(Gotta love Red Buttons during this part. That's not acting!)

No one on the Poseidon faced a bigger challenge than these two trying to find the beat of the music

I love Mrs. Rosen

Even in 1972, the Hot Pants Under The Gown Reveal drew gasps and laughs.
Loving Linda's reaction

That Dive!
The biggest shock of the film. It got laughs, applause, and cheers

I love Linda Rogo

The Poseidon Adventure is a favorite. You'll never hear me call it one of the best films ever made; I don't buy into revisionist assessments ranking it a genuine classic (it's great for what it is, but let's not forget what it is); nor do I harbor illusions about its depiction of women (save for Belle and her big moment, the men are all active while the women are reactive) and lack of people of color in the principal cast (Akers & Belle occupy the stereotypical roles of ethnics in action films: "first to die" and "noble sacrifice").

Yet there's no denying The Poseidon Adventure is one of those imperfect films that achieve a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of excellence. From script (dialogue, primarily) to characterizations, to outlandish (albeit exciting) premise; it shouldn't really work as beautifully as it does. But you'd have to look hard and long to find a disaster film that does it better. I've come to regard it with such fondness. I've noticed that over the years, my laughs of derision have turned into laughs of affection. Despite its flaws, I fully understand why it has endured and why so many people have taken it to their hearts.

BONUS MATERIAL
In 1973 MAD magazine once again did a movie satire that hit the nail on the head. In "The Poopsidedown Adventure," the characters are named: Reverend Shout, Hammy & Bellow Roseman, Snoozin & Rotten, Mr. Martyr, Ninny, Mr. Rougho, Limber, and Apers.

Though it's nothing compared to U.S. obesity norms today, but in 1972 Shelly Winters' weight gain was a major source of comedy and comment. Winters was Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Poseidon Adventure. When the list of nominees was read on Oscar night, Winters had the misfortune of having her name come up right after Cloris Leachman reads the title of co-nominee Susan Tyrell's film, Fat City. An associative coincidence that causes Robert Duvall to lose it. When questioned later about his laughter, Duvall professed that James Caan was making faces from the audience. Few believed him. See the Oscar sequence HERE.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017

I AM A CAMERA 1955

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."

Christopher Isherwood  - The Berlin Stories 1945

I've wanted to see I Am a Camera for 42 years. That's the length of time I've been aware of—yet unable to lay eyes upon—this little-known, rarely-televised, not-available-on DVD, all-but-forgotten adaptation of the successful Broadway play that inspired the Broadway & film musical Cabaret and gave the screen its very first Sally Bowles.

Julie Harris as Sally Bowles

Laurence Harvey as Christopher Isherwood

Shelley Winters as Natalia Landauer

Anton Diffring as Fritz Wendel

Forty-two years ago: It was 1972, I was a freshman in high school, and Cabaret had just opened nationally. I was eager to see the film on the strength of my fascination with Bob Fosse's choreography in Sweet Charity (1969) and my infatuation with Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), but in order to persuade my family to select it for a night out at the movies, I had to rely on the scores of critical raves quoted in the newspaper ads. Which was all for the good because I knew next to nothing about just what Cabaret was.

I had absolutely no foreknowledge of Christopher Isherwood's 1945 novelized twin-memoir: The Berlin Stories; I was in the dark about playwright John Van Druten (I Remember Mama) adapting one of those short novels—Goodbye to Berlin—into the 1951 play I Am a Camera (prompting theater critic Walter Kerr's terse, too-oft-quoted review, "Me no Leica"); and I was thoroughly unaware that said seriocomic play had served as the structural source for the 1966 musical Cabaret…the original Broadway production serving as merely the launchpad for Fosse's significantly reworked movie adaptation.

Well, as if to prove the adage "ignorance is bliss," a byproduct of my state of unenlightenment was that it afforded me the rare opportunity of enjoying Cabaret free of the usual burdens that come with seeing a beloved stage and/or literary work adapted into another medium. That feeling of never fully being "in the moment" born of anticipating the omission or mishandling of some favored line or bit of business. Sometimes it's a ceaseless, almost involuntary process of comparison and sizing up which goes on in your head as you watch, hoping expectation doesn't outpace execution.

Lea Seidl as Fraulein Schneider, the landlady

Ron Randell as Clive Mortimer, the rich American playboy

Like most everyone who saw it at the time, I was utterly blown away by Cabaret. Especially its stylish, darkly atmospheric depiction of the social and moral decay of pre-Nazi Germany in the '30s…so ideally suited to Bob Fosse's particular brand of razzle-dazzle cynicism. In an attempt to rectify my prior obliviousness, I subsequently took to reading everything I could about the film.

My first discovery was that it was the rare Cabaret review or feature article which didn't reference the film version of I am A Camera. Always unfavorably. Some remarked on the film's failure to do justice to Van Druten's play, others complained that it didn't successfully bring to life Isherwood's colorful characters, all cited it as the first on-screen incarnation of Sally Bowles. While it definitely came as a surprise to me to learn that Fräulein Bowles (who to this day is difficult to envision as anyone other than Liza Minnelli) appeared on film a whopping 17 years before Cabaret even existed, what really knocked me for a loop was that it was in the startlingly against-type personage of Julie Harris.

I couldn't imagine two actresses with less in common than Liza Minnelli and Julie Harris. Even in the most democratic of fantasies, I'm hard-pressed to envision any point at which the talents of these two very gifted ladies might intersect to make feasible the notion of their being cast in the same role. One's a jackhammer, the other a tap on the shoulder. It piqued my interest no end to discover that it was Harris (an actress I adored, but always associated with reserved, Plain Jane roles like in The Haunting, East of Eden, and You're a Big Boy Now) who originated the role of one of literature's most flamboyant extroverts...and won a Tony Award for it in the bargain!

Divine Decadence
Sally bares her emerald-green nails (and tigress snarl)

Suddenly, I am A Camera became a movie I absolutely had to see. In 1972, I hoped the popularity of Cabaret would occasion a resurfacing of it on late-night TV or at a local revival theater…but no such luck. My frustration knew no bounds. In those pre-cable/pre-DVD days, it certainly wasn't out of the ordinary to have to wait a long time for a favored old movie to make the rounds, but I am A Camera was a unique case in that absolutely no one I knew (not my parents nor my older sister, who was a Late Show maven if ever there was one) had ever heard of it, much less seen it.

Years passed (decades, actually), and I am A Camera eventually became one of those films (like Andy Warhol's L'Amour) I resigned myself to never seeing. Then, two weeks ago, just as I'd all but forgotten all about it, what do you know?... there it was, big as life on YouTube!!!!

So it's true, good things come to those who wait...for a VERY long time!

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Having read so little that was encouraging about I Am a Camera, I'm afraid that when the time came for me to finally see it, I did so more out of curiosity than conviction. After it was over, I wanted to give each of those early critics a solid trouncing over the head (myself included, for believing them), for to my great surprise, I found I Am a Camera to be a thorough and utter delight. Maybe I wouldn't have thought so back in 1972 when the air of solemnity Fosse brought to Cabaret rode the then-popular wave of pessimism of so many Nixon-era films (which flattered my adolescent self-seriousness); but today, I Am a Camera's unremittingly old-fashioned, studio-bound, almost farcical, light-comic approach distinguishes it so significantly from every other adaptation of Isherwood's memoirs I've seen, that it stands far and apart from comparison and represents to me, a work unique unto itself.

Presented in the form of an extended flashback told to fellow writing associates by "confirmed bachelor," now successful author Christopher Isherwood (Harvey), I Am a Camera recalls the years Isherwood spent as a struggling writer in Berlin in the 1930s. In vignette style, the film recounts his platonic, life-changing friendship with free-spirit Sally Bowles (Harris), a modestly talented cabaret singer and self-styled bohemian whose flighty manner and impulsive behavior propel him into adventures that ultimately serve as the basis and inspiration for his early writing successes. A subplot involving his only-slightly-worldlier friend, Fritz (Diffring), a would-be gigolo and closet Jew, wooing a department-store heiress (Winters), introduces a bit of drama and brings Germany's mounting Nazi threat to the forefront.

The Nazi Intrusion
Sally, Clive, and Christopher momentarily have their spirits dampened by a Jewish funeral procession  

I Am a Camera doesn't deviate significantly from the basic plot of Cabaret, its chief point of departure being merely one of approach. While Minnelli's Sally Bowles symbolized the kind of I'm-dancing-as-fast-as-I can, willful self-deception that allowed the Nazis to take over a Depression-era Germany by salving its sorrows with decadence. I Am a Camera presents Isherwood's adventures as a lighthearted coming-of-age story and depicts Bowles as something of an early incarnation of that genre staple: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (thank you, Nathan Rabin) – the quirky, childlike female character who brings chaos into the orderly life of a sensitive, button-down type, only to leave him a better, more-matured artist for it.

Katherine Hepburn played one in Bringing Up Baby (1938), and so did Sandy Dennis in Sweet November (1968). Certainly, Minnelli's Pookie Adams from The Sterile Cuckoo qualifies (although the word "nightmare" might be more appropriate than dream), and the characters of Dolly Levi and Mame Dennis from Hello, Dolly! and Auntie Mame, respectively, are nothing if not the Manic Pixie Dream Matron. Of course, the great Grande Diva of Manic Pixie Dream Girls is Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and ultimately it is this film, not Cabaret, which I Am a Camera most recalls.

One of the setpieces of I Am a Camera is a raucous, remarkably staged party scene that predates Blake Edwards' iconic cocktail party sequence in Breakfast at Tiffany's 

Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (published in 1958) and Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (published in 1939) are novelized memoirs by gay men recalling their transformative friendships with quirky, unconventional women of liberated sexuality. Whereas Tiffany's was converted into a romantic comedy (even Cabaret imposed a false romance), Camera leaves Isherwood's homosexuality as coded as the '50s would allow (his declaration, "I suppose I'm not the marrying kind," is tantamount to coming out). 

PERFORMANCES

Whether or not one cares for I Am a Camera's lighthearted touch and bittersweet Hollywood happy ending (which still feels more honest than making the Isherwood character bisexual [the movie musical] or straight [the stage musical]), I can't imagine any fan of classic cinema not being enchanted by the sight of so many brilliant dramatic actors displaying such a talent for comedy.

British actor Laurence Harvey, long a favorite of mine yet so unaccountably stiff and affectless in so many of his American roles, is appealingly naïf and boyish as Isherwood. I've always harbored a big crush on him, so perhaps I'm not exactly what you'd call an objective judge, but I'd easily rank his work in I Am a Camera alongside Room at the Top and Expresso Bongo as among Harvey's best film performances.

In a reversal of her role in 1951's A Place in the Sun, Shelley Winters
 plays an heiress wooed by a fortune-hunter 

As for the strikingly handsome Anton Diffring, so chilling as the villain in Fahrenheit 451 and an actor who literally made a career out of playing cold-hearted Nazis, I never would have guessed he'd be so charming a light comedy player. Honestly, I think this is the first film I've ever seen him smile! Several years away from the grating, undisciplined performances that would later brand her a camp film favorite, Shelley Winters has a surprisingly small role and displays a worrisome German accent, but she is endearing beyond belief. It's easy to forget what an accomplished comedienne she could be.

But hands-down, Julie Harris walks off with my highest praise. She's nothing short of sensational. I've seen Harris in many things over the years (even on Hollywood Squares, of all places), but I've never EVER seen her this perky and playful. I had no idea she could be such a flirtatious, funny, physical, and a vivacious personality. Her versatility is on full display here, capturing the many shades of Sally's mercurial personality, from her childlike vulnerability to her flashes of self-interested callousness. Speaking in that rapid-fire manner I associate with George Cukor movies, her Sally Bowles is less a bohemian iconoclast and reminds me more of Kathryn Hepburn's Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory (1933): all self-centered chatter and ostentatious show, but ultimately touching.

I found not a single moment of Harris' performance wanting, save for the poorly-matched dubbed singing voice she's given during her big cabaret number--the languid vocalist fails to capture the sprightliness of Harris' physical interpretation (I'm reminded of the too-calm dubbed voice attributed to Rita Moreno in West Side Story). Harris doesn't appear to be lip-syncing, leaving me to suspect the other voice was added post-production. i remember hearing Harris sing on the cast album of the 1965 Broadway musical Skyscraper ... she mostly went the Rex Harrison talk-sing route.

In the end, what pleased and surprised me most about Harris as Sally Bowles is the manner in which she tackles the role with such ease and command, inhabiting her character so winningly and completely that she resists comparisons to Liza Minnelli, making the part her own. No easy task, that.

"I remembered your eyes. It was as if they were asking me to look at you and yet not see you!"

It's believed that Julie Harris' outstanding performance was overlooked for an Oscar nomination because I Am a Camera--a British production that failed to punish its sexually promiscuous heroine or delete mention of abortion--was denied a Production Code Seal, resulting in many theaters refusing to screen it, and some newspapers refusing to carry ads. In the UK, it was given the "Certificate X" rating.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

While devoid of anything like Cabaret's "bumsen" scene, I Am a Camera is remarkably frank on the topics of sex, abortion, prostitution, and, depending on one's susceptibility to gay coding in old films, homosexuality. Considered risqué for its time, I was amused by just how much they were able to allude to in this 1955 film (a gay couple is briefly glimpsed in the nightclub scene) and enjoyed noting how many little details of style and content would later show up in Fosse's Cabaret.

This Sally sings at The Lady Windermere, but its clientele is pure Kit Kat Klub, 
as are its wall caricatures

Partaking of Sally's favorite pick-me-up: Prairie Oysters 

The Threesome...

...The Twosome

Laurence Harvey + rectal thermometer = sexiest scene in the film 

"I mean, I may not be absolutely exactly what some people call a virgin... ."

THE STUFF OF DREAMS 

For all the charismatic dominance of Sally Bowles and Julie Harris' standout performance, I Am a Camera ultimately manages to make good on its first-person title by being a story of one man's coming of age. The increased presence of the Nazis in Berlin challenges Isherwood's determination to just be a spectator in life, his ultimate inability to ignore its evil facilitates his growth as both a man and an artist.

For me, the poignancy of I Am a Camera is found in its final moments when it becomes clear (to us, if not the characters involved) that, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Christopher has possessed all along what he'd sought to find. As the only person to take pity on the abandoned Sally that first night in the club; to be the one individual who offered her shelter without the want of anything in return; to have remained by her side during a crisis, even going so far as to propose marriage and lose a promising job opportunity--Christopher was an "involved" participant in life from the very start. He was never for a moment the apathetic, unthinking "camera" he imagined himself to be.

Christopher ceases being the passive observer

Author Armistead Maupin in his 2008 introduction to Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories (and if you haven't read The Berlin Stories, I highly recommend it), makes the observation that Isherwood's narrative device of assuming the role of the "camera" in his memoirs--the impartial, uninvolved recorder of events--was the author's way of protecting himself. A method of intentionally keeping his homosexuality out of his autobiographical stories for fear that its mere inclusion would distract from everything else in the text. 

A necessity at the time, but one rectified by Isherwood himself in his 1976 memoir Christopher and His Kind, in which the very same pre-war Berlin years documented in this film are recounted with a proud acceptance of his sexuality and an acknowledgment of its profound influence on his life and his art. 

I Am a Camera; a film shrouded in period-mandated gay coding (the aforementioned "confirmed bachelor" line) and starring a closeted gay actor portraying an asexual/sexually ambiguous character; is a product of its time, yet nevertheless contains a timeless message. Especially for the LGBTQ community, which has been so much a part of Christopher Isherwood's enduring legacy. Society, when not actively seeking to eradicate, has always encouraged gay people to "hide in plain sight." To, in effect, protect ourselves through anonymity and the acceptance of a non-participatory role as a "camera" on the periphery of life.

I Am a Camera - (inadvertently perhaps, but I'd like to think by way of the innate humanity of Isherwood and his characters)--exposes inauthenticity as an obstruction to growth (Sally, a woman defined by artifice, never changes). It promotes the necessity of being true to oneself (Fritz finds love and is compelled to reveal his true self to Natalia), and it affirms the absolute necessity that we must all be active participants in life...no matter how complicated things become.

Since I consider Bob Fosse's Cabaret to be such a perfect film and wasn't really hoping to find a movie to compare it to or replace it with, I rejoiced in I Am a Camera turning out to be so comprehensively and refreshingly different. Making up for those 42 years of longing, I've already seen it three times and marvel at what a splendid lost gem it is. To quote Sally Bowles, I think I Am a Camera is "Most strange and extraordinary!"


BONUS MATERIAL
The tune Sally Bowles sings in her cabaret act is the 1951 German song, "Ich Hab Noch Einen Koffer in Berlin" (I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin), written by Ralph Maria Siegel. In this film, the song is given new English lyrics by Paul Dehn, the title changing to: "I Saw Him in a Café in Berlin."
You can Hear Marlene Dietrich sing the original song HERE.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014