HAIR 1979

Not having been a huge fan of the original stage production of Hair (Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt MacDermot’s legendary “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical”), I think I’m one of the few to find Milos Forman’s screen adaptation—which deviates significantly from the source material in that it actually has a plot—to be a flawed but vastly superior improvement upon the original. The music was always great, but only the movie version got me to care about who was doing the singing.

Evolved from the free-form, counterculture, guerrilla theater experience taking place on college campuses across the country in the late '60s, Hair debuted on Broadway to great acclaim and much brouhaha in 1968 (nudity, swearing, hippies…on Broadway?) almost a year after the 1967 so-called "Summer of Love" signaled both the pinnacle and simultaneous pop-cultural co-opting of the hippie/flower-child movement. Yet, much like A Chorus Line, Hair, when viewed today, is one of those Broadway shows whose reputation as a groundbreaking cultural phenomenon may be a little hard to fully comprehend.

As a 10-year-old living in San Francisco’s Haight Street district in 1968, I was too young to have been a participant in the whole Flower Power scene, but when it came to bearing witness to all the social and political changes afoot, I have to say I had the best seat in the house. Even then it was odd to think of one's neighborhood as the hub of a "movement" the entire nation was talking about. Mostly, I remember the poster stores, the head shops, the buttons with slogans, the streets full of panhandling hippies, and vibrant color everywhere... especially in the clothing. (Sartorially speaking, the hippie movement hit my older sister pretty hard. Once recognizable by her Catholic School uniform, she virtually overnight adopted sandals, love-beads, headbands, tie-dyed tops, and tinted granny-glasses as her standard mode of dress. It was like a Timothy Leary reversal of The Stepford Wives.)

Ren Woods (Sparkle, Xanadu) sings the hell out of "Aquarius"
in the film's visually explosive opening sequence.

Never fully the blissed-out, flowers & freedom era depicted by the nostalgia-prone, I recall the late '60s as a time undeniably colorful and charged with a kind of “winds of change” electricity (each day brought something new in fashion, language, ideologies, music), yet also a time seriously untethered and terrifying. I’ll always remember how confounding it was to be surrounded by so much talk of peace and love while the TV and issues of Life magazine on the family coffee table filled my head with nightmare images of Vietnam, the Zodiac Killer, assassinations, riots, and Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. I suspect the hopeful message in Hair's anti-war themes struck a chord with a disheartened America, favoring the promise of a Utopian “Age of Aquarius” over the prevailing dark specter of Barry McGuire's “Eve of Destruction.”  

Treat Williams as George Berger

John Savage as Claude Hooper Bukowski

Beverly D'Angelo as Shelia Franklin

Annie Golden as Jeannie Ryan

Dorsey Wright as Layfayette (Hud) Johnson

Don Dacus as Woof Daschund

Had Hair been granted a film adaptation back in the late '60s or early '70s - when Hollywood awkwardly courted the youth market by green-lighting any and every druggy, nonsensical, counter-culture script that came along (Skidoo; Head; Alex in Wonderland; Angel, Angel, Down We Go)- there’s a good chance the show’s somewhat meandering free-form structure would have reached the screen intact. Mercifully for me, the passage of ten years and one flop 1977 revival contributed to the perception of Hair as a timepiece too dated for unaltered big-screen transitioning. 

This precipitated the enlistment of playwright Michael Weller (Moonchildren) to fashion an honest-to-god storyline around Hair’s marvelous score of songs, and, in lieu of the then-requisite bearded twenty-something fresh out of film school to helm the project, we have Oscar-winning director Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), a man who was actually making films about '60s youths in the 60s (his 1971 comedy Taking Off is a favorite). Certainly, in the late '70s the climate for Hair was right, what with the proliferation of films being released dealing with the '60s and the Vietnam War: Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Apocalypse Now (1979).

If one goes into Miloš Forman’s Hair with any expectation of the film being a faithful adaptation of the Broadway show, watching the movie is likely to be a disappointing experience. The order of the songs has been rearranged, their intent altered, and many are sung by entirely different characters. I think the best and most rewarding way to view the film is to look at it as a completely different animal; an artistic expression unique unto itself. Where the play invited us “outsiders” into the world of the hippie tribe onstage, getting to know them through vignettes and pantomimes draped over a thin schematic structure. Foreman’s film maintains the perspective of the outsider and tells the story of Claude Hooper Bukowski (Savage), a naïve Oklahoma farm boy let loose in Manhattan for two days prior to his induction into the army. Depicted as an innocent adrift in a strange land, Claude is taken under the wing of a small band of hippies (their unofficial leader, Berger [Williams] first seen burning his draft card) and introduced to drugs, the girl of his dreams, and, most likely, the most fun he’s ever had.

Forman and Weller fashion a very entertaining and ultimately very moving film out of what could have been just a timepiece jukebox musical. The film maintains the play's irreverent tone and captures, rather well, the generation-gap conflicts and authority-figure clashes that exemplified the era, but (and this is a big plus for me) never resorts to the kind of ageist oversimplification of that whole "don't trust anyone over 30" sensibility. Forman's Hair has an originality that far surpasses most adapted screen musicals, and a powerful and sensitively rendered final act that gets to me each and every time.

I Got Life
Berger (Williams) disrupts a dinner party to the consternation of all 
but an admiring Charlotte Rae (seated, dressed in pink).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The experience of seeing a film based on a musical you’re very familiar with can be like going over a checklist. You find yourself subconsciously keeping tally of how the film measures up to what you already know. Hair destroys all of that from the first frame. It’s one of the most ceaselessly surprising musical adaptations I’ve ever seen. Whether structurally, musically, or visually, Hair consistently goes in directions different from where your expectations lead you to think it’s headed. Just as things seem set to remain rooted in realism (the film makes great use of Manhattan locations), up pops a surreal or stylized sequence that totally blows you away. And the effect is exhilarating. All of a sudden the old feels brand new, and before you know it, you’re actually listening and watching and have stopped comparing.

In one of Hair's more charming examples of an unexpected twist, an anticipated violent confrontation between loitering hippies and mounted police turns into a challenge dance routine.

PERFORMANCES

In populating his cast with relative newcomers (Savage, Williams, D’Angelo) and those making their screen debuts (Dacus, Golden, Cheryl Barnes), Miloš Forman succeeds in bringing a kind of ragged freshness to the film that’s perfect for the material. The more experienced do most of the heavy lifting, although newcomer Annie Golden is surprisingly good and a standout in her scenes. John Savage, fresh from The Deer Hunter, sidesteps the obvious clichés and makes his reactive character into someone a great deal more dimensional than I would have expected possible. Treat Williams, saddled with an unfortunate wig, does the impossible by making an otherwise insufferably smug character into someone sympathetic and likable. I think perhaps I’m fondest though of Beverly D’Angelo, who is always such an offbeat and fascinating actress and light comedienne. I always wondered how Robert Altman ever passed her up. She seemed tailor-made for his ensemble pieces.

Making her film debut, Cheryl Barnes walked away with unanimous
 raves for her searing rendition of "Easy to Be Hard." 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Of all the numerous delights and surprises in Hair, the film’s one true inspired stroke of genius was getting Twyla Tharp to choreograph. An unassailable talent and legend in the world of dance, I’ve never cared for her work either before or since; but here, with her loose-limbed, eccentric, wholly stylized flailings evocatively capturing the look (and, more importantly, the feel) of the era…her work is beyond perfect. Nothing else would have worked. Not jazz, not literal recreations of dances of the era. Tharp's choreography (and whoever was responsible for the clever staging and some of the witty visual concepts) is ideally suited.

Ellen Foley (above center with Laure Beecham and Debi Dye) sings the virtues of "Black Boys" while below, Charlayne Woodard, Nell Carter (center), and Trudy Perkins give equal time to "White Boys." The surprise staging twist given this number is hilariously ingenious and thoroughly audacious.

Melba Moore and Ronnie Dyson (members of the original Broadway cast of Hair) perform "3-5-0-0" at an anti-war demonstration staged in front of the Washington Monument.

Frequently, musicals have trouble sustaining their momentum through the third act, but Hair is one of the few movie musicals that come to mind that lack any downtime. It's extremely well paced and never lags for me. Even after multiple viewings. For every notable sequence I've mentioned, there are about three others that I love but don't have the space to go into. Suffice it to say that the "Hare Krishna" number is one of those "worth the price of admission" sequences, and that it's more fun to discover the myriad actor cameos and conceptual surprises on your own.  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The highest compliment I can pay Miloš Forman's adaptation of Hair is that he has succeeded in excising virtually everything I never cared for in the play (chiefly its morally superior proselytizing and idealization of the young) and created a film of considerable heart and maturity. More culturally even-handed than the theatrical production, I find Forman's version of Hair to be a film that sees the past with a clarity born of distance. Sentimental, yes. Idealistic, yes. But the one thing it isn't is nostalgic. I like how it looks at the '60s: it holds both hippies and the Establishment to task, yet still finds it to be an era of optimism and hope.

BONUS MATERIAL

Hair co-stars Treat Williams and Beverly D'Angelo were reunited for a 1984

 made-for-TV production of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning

 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Ann-Margret  

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Nell Carter - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012

STARTING OVER 1979

Before Drew Barrymore, Matthew McConaughey, Katherine Heigl, and the entire Judd Apatow oeuvre conspired to sour me on the whole genre for good, I really used to love romantic comedies. To me, the absurdist roundelay that is two human souls striving to connect is marvelous fodder for films both touching and hilarious. In that vein, Two for the Road, Ball of Fire, and Sweet November (the 1968 version) are among the funniest, most engagingly romantic films I've ever seen. But I don't think they make those kinds of romantic comedies anymore.
There seems to be a post-feminist hostility embedded in romantic comedies today: a passive-aggressive assignment of all things emotional to “chick flick” dismissiveness, combined with a self-serving aggrandizement of all things boorish and sophomoric to the realm of masculinity. Maybe it’s time for me to explore what’s out there in gay-themed romantic comedies, because the heterosexual battle of the sexes seems to have grown increasingly reductive and mean-spirited. 

One particular favorite of mine from the past is Starting Over, an almost forgotten romantic comedy smash from 1979 (one of the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year) directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Sophie’s Choice) and written by James L. Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Terms of Endearment). 

Jill Clayburgh as Marilyn Holmberg

Burt Reynolds as Phil Potter

Candice Bergen as Jessica Potter

Starting Over is the story of freelance journalist Phil Potter (Reynolds), struggling to adapt to single life after the dissolution of his marriage to singer/songwriter/self-realization enthusiast Jessica (Bergen). Through the touchy-feely intervention of his psychiatrist brother and sister-in-law (the always-reliable Charles Durning and Frances Sterhagen), Phil meets emotionally wounded, self-effacing grade-school teacher Marilyn Holmberg (Clayburgh), and the two embark on a tentative relationship wherein each is afraid of, yet longing for, emotional commitment and a chance to start over.

Charles Durning and Frances Sternhagen oozing well-intentioned sincerity

I don’t have a whole lot of objectivity where Starting Over is concerned. Not to the degree that I’m blind to the film’s faults, but in as such that my abiding fondness for the film seems inextricably tied to my feelings about the time in which it was made (the late '70s) and my initial response to it when I first saw it (it rivaled What's Up, Doc? as one of the funniest comedies of the time). In other words, this might be one of those films about which I rave from the housetops, yet could very likely leave those seeing it for the first time feeling a little underwhelmed.
I guess it's good for me to remember that the proper response to some films (like jokes that don't translate) can only be, “You had to have been there.” Starting Over was released at the very tail-end of the 1970s, and a great deal of its humor is derived from its so perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of that particular point in time. Pop history (and especially historical motion pictures) would have us believe that eras begin and end neatly and succinctly, but in truth, time has a tendency to overlap, and trends and cultural preoccupations sort of bleed into one another.

The underutilized Mary Kay Place (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) is extremely funny as a particularly awkward blind date  

In 1979, the narcissism of the “Me” decade began to be co-opted by yuppies and started to transmogrify into a new kind of unashamed era of self-interest and self-realization. It was an era of encounter groups, self-help books, and a whole lot of psychoanalytical navel-gazing. Of course, all this preoccupation with self would eventually lead to the “Decade of Greed” that became the '80s, but in 1979, all this meant was that everyone was caring, sharing, and feeling feels all over the place. The drug-fueled hedonism of the swinging-singles disco era led to a post-sexual revolution ennui mixed with singles-bar aimlessness (captured the previous year in the morbidly moralizing 1978 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar) that, in turn, boosted divorce rates and threw male/female relationships into a tailspin.

At the urging of his brother, Phil (Reynolds) attends a divorced men's workshop. That's What's Up, Doc?'s Austin Pendleton to the right.

By the late '70s, women who had had their consciousness raised by the feminist movement had to contend with a dating landscape in which there appeared to be no rules. Men, heretofore relegated to the culture-mandated roles of provider/protector, grew commitment-phobic, sought therapy, or clung to macho traditionalism. Women were in a quandary, wondering whether there was really such a thing as "having it all," or if the by-product of emancipation was merely learning to live alone and liking it. What exactly was romance in the world of the zipless fuck, no-fault divorce, Plato’s Retreat, and men’s sensitivity workshops? It was a crazy time to look for love, and Starting Over seemed to capture it all in a humorous lens both sharp and fuzzily sentimental.

Marilyn -  "Before I met you I'd finally gotten to the point in my life where I no longer thought some man was gonna come along and make this huge change. I'd finally gotten to the point where I liked being unattached."

After her Oscar-nominated emergence in 1978's An Unmarried Woman, Jill Clayburgh became the unofficial screen spokesperson for modern womanhood. She was a real favorite of mine and is sensational here. The progressive feminine image she presented—of a woman who wanted, not needed a man—would become fairly obsolete by 2012 thanks to the regeneration of the Disney Princess Myth and TV reality show humiliations like The Bachelor and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As stated, the thing I most enjoy about Starting Over (and something I’m not at all sure carries over to those discovering the film today) is how wittily the film captures the tenuous, walking-on-eggshells state of male/female relationships in the '70s. The 1970s were culturally the decade where all the dust was settling from the upheavals of the 60s, and people were these vibrating bundles of anxiety putting herculean effort behind maintaining a front of laid-back serenity. (The sale of Valium skyrocketed in the '70s; a fact inspiring one of Starting Over’s biggest and then most talked-about gags).

Phil suffers a panic attack at Bloomingdale's

Traditional gender roles, those typified by the  Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies of the '60s, were dismantled in the '70s, necessitating a new kind of sex comedy. Ads for Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977)—the real game-changer in romantic comedies—labeled it “A Nervous Romance.” That classification goes double for Starting Over; only, instead of urban singles, we're invited to enjoy the amorous fumblings of the newly divorced. Individuals who perhaps married when one set of rules was in place, forced to re-enter single life, ill-prepared for the cultural change-up in the game plan.

Love, American Style
(I've always loved that print that hangs above them: "Woman Reading" by Will Barnet)

PERFORMANCES

Few who weren’t around to bear witness to the painful spectacle of Burt Reynolds’ willful self-exploitation and wasting of his talents in the '70s can't appreciate what a delightful departure (and surprise) Starting Over was. The promising performer of Deliverance (1972) spent the better part of the decade ignoring his gifts as an actor, instead choosing to court dubious celebrity and fashioning himself into the male Jayne Mansfield (or the Matthew McConaughey) of the '70s. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) box-office stars of the time, Reynolds, with his myriad talk-show appearances, gleeful self-objectification, and seemingly endless stream of unwatchable, good ol’ boy redneck comedies, enthusiastically participated in turning himself into a Hollywood punchline.

Divested of his trademark pornstache and dropping his tired Dean Martin-esque "I'm so cool I don't care" indifference act; Reynolds gives perhaps his best pre-Boogie Nights performance in Starting Over. I don’t know that I've ever found Reynolds to be particularly likable before, but here he is quite appealing and quite wonderful. Underplaying marvelously, he’s one of the few male characters on screen able to convey a sweetly insecure vulnerability without slipping into wimpdom.

Alas, much in the way Eddie Murphy’s noteworthy performance in Dreamgirls failed to prevent Hollywood from remembering the hot mess that was Norbert; the career turn-around Starting Over may have signaled for Burt Reynolds was sabotaged by the two-strikes-you're-out disaster followup that was the craptacular Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and The Cannonball Run (1981).

The ultimate sign of commitment: giving your sweetheart the key to your apartment 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Without a doubt, the biggest buzz attending Starting Over on its release was the breakout comedy performance of Candice Bergen. Never highly-regarded for her acting, but a popular screen presence due to roles capitalizing on her ice-princess beauty, Bergen had heretofore only shown her comedic side on television (she was the first female host of Saturday Night Live and appeared to great effect on The Muppet Show). As Starting Over’s self-confident, atonal singer of atrocious “empowerment” pop songs, Bergen garnered the best notices of her career and, at age 32, launched a second career of sorts as a skilled comedienne.

Candice Bergen's highlight scene, in which she attempts to seduce her ex-husband by singing her disco composition "Better Than Ever," received the loudest and longest laugh from an audience I have ever heard in a movie theater.

The songs attributed to Bergen’s character were written by then-collaborative-couple Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamlisch, whose own relationship they immortalized in the Neil Simon-penned Broadway musical They’re Playing Our Song (1978). I'd always thought Bergen’s songs in Starting Over were intended to be awful, both musically and lyrically (although I can’t help liking the song “Better Than Ever.” Oddly enough, Bergen’s version more than the Stephanie Mills version heard at the end), but in truth, they sound identical to the songs from their hit Broadway show, so maybe they aren't as satiric as I once assumed.

Future Murphy Brown co-star, Charles Kimbrough, has a bit part as a salesman

 Home Alone's Daniel Stern (who would also appear in the Jill Clayburgh films I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can and It's My Turn) plays a student in Burt Reynolds' journalism class in Starting Over

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Starting Over is a terrifically funny and touching romantic comedy, but I can understand if time has diluted some of its punch. For one, the image of Burt Reynolds as a wiseguy sex machine is so dim now that no one is likely to derive much pleasure from seeing him cast against type. Seeing Burt Reynolds without his mustache in 1979 would be today akin to seeing Lady Gaga wearing Crocs.

Similarly, most people's memory of Candice Bergen today only extends back as far as Murphy Brown, so her atypically relaxed and risk-taking performance here lacks the shock value it had in 1979. The same can be said for the humor derived from her terrible singing. The idea of a no-talent pop star was riotous in 1979; folks looking at the film today might well think she sounds no worse than Katy Perry.

The Academy snubbed Reynolds, but both Clayburgh and Bergen received Oscar nods for Starting Over. Clayburgh had previously appeared with Reynolds in Semi-Tough (1977) while Bergen would re-team with the actor in the 1985 crime film Stick

I have no idea why some comedy is enduring (I Love Lucy) while other kinds of humor seem to grow less funny over time (I love the film Shampoo, but I look at it now and can't even remember why I once found it to be so hilarious). Starting Over, for better or worse, bears the stamp of its time, but in a way that I don't think dates it so much as lends its humor an authenticity and its characters a sense of existing in a real-time and place. (Starting Over, which takes place in Boston, has a great look of winter and autumn about it. The huge coats the characters wear look, for once, like they're actually for function, not fashion, plus, I love that people in this movie use the bus!)

Starting Over is full of '70s-era jokes about finding oneself, Accutron watches, and telephone answering machines, but its sweetly comic look at the need to take chances to find love is something I don't think can ever be labeled dated.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Autograph of Candice Bergen from 1991, at the height of her Murphy Brown fame

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 -2012

EVIL UNDER THE SUN 1982

Of the many films adapted from the Hercule Poirot mystery novels of Agatha Christie, I definitely consider 1974s Murder on the Orient Express to be the most elegant, effective, and classiest of the lot (that cast!). But when it comes to which Poirot film distinguishes itself in my memory as the wittiest and the most consistently entertaining, none can hold a magnifying glass to 1982s Evil Under the Sun. Striking the perfect balance between deliberate camp and the appropriate-for-the-period sophisticated light touch of a 1930s Thin Man movie, Evil Under the Sun is an unflaggingly charming little murder mystery whose many gifts (visually, narratively, and dramatically) become even more pronounced with repeat viewings.

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot

Maggie Smith as Daphne Castle

Diana Rigg as Arlena Marshall

Roddy McDowall as Rex Brewster

James Mason as Odell Gardener

Sylvia Miles as Myra Gardener

 A suitably chi-chi tone is set from the start thanks to a credits sequence comprised of Hugh Casson’s stylishly character-based watercolor sketches accompanied by sweepingly lush orchestrated arrangements of Cole Porter standards. It should be noted here that the outstanding musical score (arranged and conducted by John Lanchbery) is very nearly my favorite thing about Evil Under the Sun and practically functions as another character in the proceedings. Happily, the soundtrack album is available on iTunes.

Evil Under the Sun doesn’t deviate from the usual tried-and-true Agatha Christie setup: An assemblage of well-heeled characters with hidden agendas and interwoven alliances finding themselves circumstantially confined to a picturesque locale where a murder has taken place. The cast, budget, locale, and designated sleuth may change (either Hercule Poirot, or Jane Marple), but everything else about the Christie formula is as reliable and religiously adhered-to as the plot of a Beach Party move.

Bathing Beauty
Monsieur Poirot prepares for une baignade dans la mer

And beach parties are an apt reference, for you see, Evil Under the Sun gives us a Hercule Poirot on holiday. A working holiday in any case, as the eccentrically fastidious detective is dispatched to a tony island resort owned by former courtesan Daphne Castle (Maggie Smith) to investigate a simple insurance fraud that (of course) turns into a puzzling case of whodunit. Gathered this season for fun in the sun is a gaggle of guests, all of whom share an unpleasant past association.
There’s fey columnist Rex Brewster (McDowall); bickering and boorish theatrical producers, Myra and Odell Gardener (Sylvia Miles &James Mason); ill-matched newlyweds Christine and Patrick Redfern (Jane Birkin & Nicholas Clay); disgruntled industrialist Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely); and, most ostentatiously, abrasive Broadway star Arlena Marshall (Diana Rigg) with her new husband (Denis Quilley) and reluctant stepdaughter (Emily Hone) in tow.

Hotel proprietress Daphne Caste (Smith) and guest Sir Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely) react to yet another Poirot eccentricity

While the mystery at hand is puzzling enough, with red herrings more plentiful than pebbles on the beach; the particulars of what follows in Evil Under the Sun are of less consequence than the flair with which they are presented. Screenwriter Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, The Wicker Man) has fashioned a delightfully witty script of clever wordplay, colorful characters, and ceaseless bitchiness.
Director Guy Hamilton, who I felt seriously botched the 1980 Miss Marple film The Mirror Crack’d, redeems himself rather stupendously with Evil Under the Sun, seizing on every opportunity for highlighting the character-based humor and conflict. His direction displays exactly the sort of zest and deftness of pacing missing from that earlier film. Granted, Hamilton is greatly assisted this time out by a cast of accomplished, largely British actors surrendering themselves to creating distinctly vivid characters while sticking to the genre's demand to remain a tightly blended ensemble piece.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There's something I find very funny in this collection of testy and ill-tempered society folks trying in vain to relax on their vacation. In a way, each is out of their element (none more so than the seasick prone, non-athletic Poirot), and the strain shows in the All About Eve exchanges and edgy interactions.

Rex Brewster attempts to get the Gardeners to talk about their recent flop:
Rex: "Would either of you care to comment on that?"
Odell- "Why don't you go and play with yourself?"
Myra- "Excessively."
Rex - "Is coarseness a substitute for wit? I ask myself."

And if you're going to have a script crammed with catty dialog, you couldn't ask for it to be delivered by better actors than those twin masters of the articulate put-down; Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith.

Arlena- "Linda, do stop standing there like a cough-drop and say hello to Monsieur Poirot!"

Daphne- "I hope you haven't come here to practice your sleuthing games on my guests. They've all got far too many skeletons in their cupboards to join in with enthusiasm."

PERFORMANCES

The cast assembled for Evil Under the Sun is not only one of the strongest of the Agatha Christie series (it's Ustinov's second go-round as Poirot and he pretty much makes the role his own in this outing), but, stylistically speaking, it's wonderful how they all manage to be on the same page and hit the same notes throughout. The cast plays it serious enough to make the drama work, yet succeed in sustaining an air of caricature and cocktail party flippancy that is so deliciously amusing and makes Evil Under the Sun a delight from start to finish. 
Years before I became a Downton Abbey addict, I've worshiped at the altar of Maggie Smith; an actress who has always had a singular way of getting words to do her personal bidding. That she is so good is no surprise; that she upstages even the well-cured hamminess of Ustinov is miraculous. Bad girls are always good fun, and the ever-classy Diana Rigg sinks her teeth into her über-bitch role with assurance.

Nicholas Clay and Jane Birkin are excellent as a mismatched couple

I was taken by surprise by how much Sylvia Miles made me laugh. Giving an unsubtle performance to say the least, Miles is nevertheless perfectly cast as the Ugly American in a film loaded with Brits (Lauren Bacall served the same function in Murder on the Orient Express). And the pairing of this vulgarian with the genteel and distinguished James Mason is really inspired. Their scenes together smack of an urbane George an Martha, or perhaps they give a glimpse of what Lolita's Humbert Humbert's life might have been had Charlott Haze not had that nasty accident.

The happiest, biggest surprise for me is Roddy McDowall. An actor who has literally given the same one-note, non-performance in film after film for years, at last decides to create a distinguishable character, and he's marvelous. His Rex Brewster has the attitude of Rex Reed, the body language of Noel Coward, and the voice of Tallulah Bankhead. It's as if after all those years in the closet, McDowall could only let loose by playing an openly gay character in a film. He's the best I've ever seen him.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As a movie fan who's also a fan of the male physique, I can't tell you how weary I've grown of the decades-long tradition of mainstream films always representing the heterosexual male gaze. It's a given that if a camera is going to focus on a comely face, appealing chest, desirable derriere, or long leg; those body parts will belong to a woman, and the surrogate eye of the camera, that of the male. Let's go back to the Beach Party reference made earlier. Here's an entire genre of film that never missed an opportunity to train a camera lens on a wiggling female butt or heaving bikini top, yet never considered that there were those in the audience (women, gays, guys OK with their masculinity) who might want a close-up of Frankie Avalon's behind for a change. No such luck. The heterosexual male gaze was all that counted.
When one happens to come across that rare film that keeps its female stars clothed and trades the cheesecake for beefcake, attention must be paid. My hat is off to Evil Under the Sun for providing so much memorable footage of the handsome physique of actor Nicholas Clay (a fave since Excalibur) in nothing but a barely-there swimsuit. I've seen Evil Under the Sun at least 10 times over the years. Five of those times I'm afraid were strictly so as to take another look at Nicolas Clay's ample derriere. Vive la différence!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There's no way to talk about Evil Under the Sun without making mention of the wryly outrageous costumes by Anthony Powell (101 Dalmatians), the only man who can design clothes with a punch line. Seemingly taking his inspiration from a Wonder Bread wrapper, Powell's whimsical creations are the physical embodiment of the arch wit and self-aware humor of the film.

Sylvia Miles sports a black & white ensemble (check the gloves!) worthy of
Cruella De Vil

I first saw Evil Under the Sun at a theater when it opened in 1982. During certain scenes the audience laughed so loud and long that you couldn't hear the dialog for long stretches. I thought the film was going to be a big hit, but it's seldom spoken of today and only rarely shows up on cable TV. As I said, it remains my favorite of the Agatha Christie films and is definitely worth discovering if you've never had the pleasure. Certainly if only to see a pre-Downton Abbey Maggie Smith continuing to lay waste to the unwary. 


THE AUTOGRAPH FILES:

I got this autograph of Maggie Smith  when she was in L.A. making "Hook"

The late actor Nicholas Clay is not very well-known, but apparently very well-liked:
 Random Ramblings,Thoughts & Fiction has a great Nicholas Clay post HERE
Another good post on Nicholas Clay can be found at Poseidon's Underworld HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson