ALIEN 1979

When I think of the films that have given me the most memorably fun scares of my movie life, my mind goes to Wait Until Dark (1967), The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), The Omen (1976), and Alien. In another category entirely are the films I consider to be scary because they are disturbing and unsettling (like Rosemary's Baby which I saw in 1968 when I was still an impressionable Catholic School kid). Those movies are memorable cinema experiences, but too shattering to be labeled "fun."
But Alien was another matter. Ridley Scott's science fiction monster movie masterpiece was structured like the classic monster movies of my youth, a movie manufactured to deliver solid, old-fashioned thrills, suspense, and excitement. Seeing it for the first time on opening day in 1979 was a fun, thrill-ride movie experience I've never forgotten. 

Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley

Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas

John Hurt as Executive Officer Gilbert Kane

Veronica Cartwright as Navigator Joan Lambert

Yaphet Kotto as Chief Engineer Denis Parker

Harry Dean Stanton as Engineering Technician Samuel Brent

Ian Holm as Science Officer Ash

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

In my earlier essay covering Alien’s opening day at Los Angeles’ Egyptian Theater in 1979, I mentioned how I wasn’t initially all that keen on seeing the film because sci-fi flicks—like westerns, sports films, and war movies—are not generally my cup of tea. This wasn’t always the case.

When I was young, television (all three channels of it) was virtually non-stop westerns, sporting events, military combat shows, and sci-fi programmers. And broadcast movies were only more of the same. I remember liking them a great deal when I was small, but after years of exposure to these formulaic, male-centric entertainments, I grew weary of their elemental sameness. What they all seemed to share was a strict adherence to the fundamental format of your average western: evil force terrorizes a township or isolated group, only to be confronted and eventually vanquished by a solitary, lantern-jawed hero (always white, always male) while the women shriek helplessly on the sidelines and the weaker men resist taking action.

Having this macho myth recycled endlessly in films and TV shows over the years may have done wonders for bolstering the egos and fueling the fantasies of adolescent boys of all ages, but the combination of predictability and patriarchal pandering only led to my developing a strong, broad-strokes antipathy toward films that fit into any of the above-named genres.

I never stopped enjoying being pleasurably scared by a good sci-fi thriller or monster movie, but how I longed for some kind (ANY  kind) of deviation from type. Then I saw the advance trailer for Alien. Its biggest appeal being that it didn't tip its hat and give away its surprises. Indeed, what initially attracted me to Alien was its having the confidence and self-assurance (conveyed by its subtle ad campaign) to simply tease. It didn't give away any of its surprises, and by withholding so much, it seemed to promise even more. 

I was immediately drawn to Alien via the comfy familiarity of its setting and premise. It reminded me of Creature Features sci-fi programmers like The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Green Slime (1968). Just two years earlier George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) had spectacularly updated those Saturday matinee adventure serials of the ’30s and ‘40s, so the idea of Alien being a throwback to the tradition of those space invader films of the ‘50s I used to watch on TV as a kid struck me as both welcome and promising. 

And Alien did, indeed, live up to its promise…exceeded it, in fact, by emerging as both a throwback and a work of canny originality. For all its harkening back to the sci-fi monster movies of my youth, Alien, by merely tweaking some of the more careworn clichés of the overly-familiar genre, proved that innovation doesn’t always require redesigning the wheel; sometimes it’s simply a matter of getting that wheel out of a rut. 

Described aptly (if a tad dismissively) by many critics at the time as “Jaws in space,” Alien, at least on a superficial level, does appear to be a film with but one objective: scare the bejesus out of the audience. But the means by which the film goes about achieving this not-so-simple goal is why memories of the original Alien remain indelibly etched in my mind, while the numerous sequels and prequels in the franchise all seem to converge and coalesce into one derivative, pedantic blur.

One of the smartest things Alien does is immediately establish a sense of realism via its Used Future look. Alien envisions a recognizably grungy 2122 devoid of 2001: A Space Odyssey sterility and (mercifully) lacking in self-consciously futuristic attire like bodysuits, spandex, or metallics. There’s none of the shiny optimism of Mid-Century Jetsons streamline that flatters our illusions of progressiveness. Instead, the future looks very much like industrial now.

Which leads to the next great thing about Alien’s setup.

In lieu of adventurers, space explorers, Colonial Marines, or other interstellar travelers who knew the job was dangerous when they took it, Alien gives us a motley crew of laborers ill-equipped and ill-suited for the events that await them. The seven-member crew of The Nostromo, a commercial towing vehicle, are essentially space truck drivers who…like your average working stiffs…spend their time getting on each other’s nerves, quibbling about their salaries, and griping about the quality of the food. They have zero interest in anything but finishing their jobs and going home.

The characters are well-delineated in an ensemble-cast sort of way, fleshed out in minimalist detail by the talented actors in a way that sidesteps the kind of war movie shorthand of Whitman Sampler archetypes that marred Aliens (1986) for me. The flinty crew of The Nostromo come across as comfortable with each other, relaxed and natural in their behavior (crucial to rooting a fantasy film in a recognizable reality), and, at first glimpse, refreshingly non-heroic.

The latter goes a long way toward infusing Alien’s disarmingly uneventful early scenes with a great deal of suspense. I like that when ordered by MU-TH-UR, the mainframe computer responsible for running The Nostromo, to investigate a possible SOS signal on a nearby planetoid, everyone is of a different mind about it. No one, not even the captain, leaps to hero mode; they do so more out of professional duty (fear of forfeiting their pay shares) than moral obligation. And since we’ve ready had a foretaste of their workplace fellowship (Parker and Brett are in a clique, Ripley and Lambert have an unexplained friction between them, and nobody seems to care for Ash) throughout the expedition—from exploration to alien infestation—there’s absolutely no certainty of what to expect from any of them.

H. R. Giger’s designs for the rapidly-growing alien and that creepy derelict spaceship are as iconic as they are nightmarish, but it’s chiefly through the film’s ability to get me to identify with and relate to the human characters…to get me to see them as real and care about their fates…is where Alien triumphed and succeeded in becoming a genuinely scary movie experience. 

PERFORMANCES

I know others feel differently, but when I’m watching a science-fiction or fantasy film, the details of set design, accuracy of the science, or the sophistication of special effects aren’t nearly as significant in creating a sense of verisimilitude as the characters. If the characters are written with complexity and dimension, cast with actors capable of inhabiting a role and bringing it to life with minimal dialogue and screen time, if they behave and relate in ways consistent both to the character and recognizable human psychology; most any situation or setting, no matter how fantastic, can be made believable and convincingly real. (1978’s Superman: The Movie comes to mind.)

Alien is blessed with an uncommonly talented cast providing a level of ensemble acting I think is uncommon in many genre films. The way each creates a full-fledged character whose life I can envision beyond The Nostromo reminds me of some of the personal, small-scale performances in the films of Robert Altman or Alan Rudolph that have remained etched in my memory.

Perhaps due to the fact that at one time or another I've had co-workers similar to The Nostromo crew, and I always gravitate to the Lambert type (a little high strung and prone to bellyaching), I have a particular fondness for Veronica Cartwright in this film. It’s not just that I’d behave EXACTLY like her character in this situation, but as Tom Skerritt once stated, Cartwright gives the best performance in the film. And I absolutely agree.

With Sigourney Weaver commanding the screen with assurance and staking her claim for movie immortality in this, her star-making feature film debut (not counting a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it bit part in Annie Hall), the strength of the performances of the women in Alien play no small part in it being my favorite sci-fi thriller of all time.

Jonesy the cat is cute and all, but he's a bit of a jerk
and is responsible for far too many deaths and close calls 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Not being one of those mainstream film critics of the ‘70s conditioned to ignore the contributions of Black Cinema, I was aware of both Pam Grier (Foxy Brown – 1974) and Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones – 1973) as trailblazing female action movie heroines long before Sigourney Weaver blasted that alien “The fuck out into space.”  Yet, factoring in the widespread success and influence of the whole Alien franchise, it’s hard to over-emphasize the impact the character of Ellen Ripley has had on the depiction of women in action and sci-fi films.

By now, most everyone knows that Warrant Officer Ripley was originally conceived as a man; a gender switch regarded at the time as just another unexpected thriller twist for the audience. As it turns out, having a woman be the sole self-rescuing survivor in a traditionally male-dominated genre came to rank right up there with the hiring of H.R. Giger to design the creature as among the sharpest of Alien’s pre-production decisions. 

Having Ripley be a woman (the role allegedly not altered in any significant way in the transition) adds all manner of intentional and unintentional layers to Alien. For example, the otherwise typical workplace resistance to authority exhibited by engineers Parker and Brett (Kotto & Stanton) has a double meaning when the figure of authority they're resisting is a woman. And although we later learn why Ash behaves as he does, Ripley’s interactions with Ash likely resonate with any woman who’s ever had to deal with men making no secret of their resentment at having to answer to a female superior.

As this pertains to the scene where Ripley orders the infected crew members to be quarantined, it begs the question as to whether or not there would have been such swift resistance to the command had it come from Dallas or Kane. 

A pet peeve of mine is when screenwriters assume they have created a strong, feminist female character when they have really just created a woman who behaves in a macho manner (say, like the hot-rodding women in Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!). Sure, it's important when a woman has agency in a film and her actions propel the plot, but simply ascribing aggressive male characteristics to a woman and declaring "feminist!" only signals to me the writer has little understanding of either.

Ellen Ripley may have evolved into an action-hero type over the course of all those sequels, but in Alien she’s just a no-nonsense type, good at her job and not prone to panic. For all her resiliency, she’s an incredibly empathetic, good-hearted, and sensitive character. Just check out Weaver's reactions during the chest-bursting scene…Lambert is horrified and in hysterics (again, me) but Ripley’s face (and it’s the most amazingly subtle thing) conveys both alarm and compassionate anguish for what Kane is going through.

While I fully understand the well-taken criticism, but I'm one of those "nudity is not always sexual" guys. I'm in the camp that doesn't find Ripley's controversial strip to her underwear sexualizes her. It feels like a connecting link to the opening scene where John Hurt awakens from hypersleep and the camera lens lingers on him in his underwear. Both scenes emphasize the vulnerability and humanity of the characters against all that space technology. The contrast of human flesh and the part-machine/bio-organism design of Giger's creature is a visceral underscoring that is chilling.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Much in the way Twyla Tharp's loose-structured dance designs made her the ideal choreographer for Miloš Forman’s adaptation of Hair, Alien (and, indeed, the entire science fiction movie genre) owes an unpayable debt to the biomechanical nightmare designs or Swiss artist H. R. Giger. 

It’s not often that one encounters the unimaginable (thank God), but Giger’s exceptionally strange, sexualized, body-horror designs for the film are what set Alien apart from any other film I’ve ever seen. The unsettling blend of the mechanical with the organic—in which both structures and organisms share the same solid/soft, vulnerable/impenetrable contrasts—transport the primal shocks of the average monster movie to places so dark (male rape, impregnation, and violent birth) you feel slightly queasy. Thank goodness Ridley Scott chose to keep shots of the fully-formed alien to a minimum. I was plenty unsettled by the facehugger, the chest-buster, and the ribcage/vertebrae interior of that creepy ship they explore.

Giger's magnificent, ugly-beautiful design work--triggering subliminal impressions of sex, flesh, metal, and machine--heighten Alien's ick factor by making the unimaginable not only possible, but credible. And once a horror film succeeds in making the impossible credible, you're a goner, for then you know you're in a place of the unstable and unpredictable where anything can happen.

In space no one can hear you scream.

I've intentionally left out behind-the-scenes trivia and information pertaining to the making of Alien because the internet overflows with a veritable treasure trove of information, scripts, production notes, and all manner of details relating to the production. Here are links to a couple of my favorites.

Alien Explorations

Alien Images

"This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off."

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2019

YOU ARE MY LUCKY STAR: ALIEN 40th ANNIVERSARY 1979

The sci-fi horror thriller Alien turned 40 this year. And in that time—progressing from sleeper hit to franchise to authentic classic—Ridley Scott’s 2nd feature film has enjoyed a growth cycle arguably as swift and expansive as that of the titular xenomorph itself. As a rule, science fiction tends to rank somewhere beneath westerns, sports films, espionage thrillers, and war movies in my roster of least-favorite movie genres, but Alien is a different animal entirely. An ingenious and genuinely scary update of those '50s sci-fi Creature Feature programmers I recall from my youth; Alien is a solid suspense thriller that just happens to take place in outer space. I fell in love with it when I saw it on opening day in 1979, and after all these years, after seeing it countless times, Alien still rates a special place in my heart. Just as long as it's not in my chest.

On the occasion of Alien's 40th Anniversary, 

my electronic film diary memories of Alien's opening day, May 25, 1979. 

A Cruel Summer

Alien and a then-unknown Sigourney Weaver make the June 18, 1979 cover of Newsweek

Because movies aren't created in a vacuum, because successes can't be predicted, and because I'm forever fascinated by the almost alchemical selection process by which the public responds to one particular motion picture over another; allow me to take a moment to put the release of Alien in a bit of context by taking a look at what was hitting the theaters in the summer of 1979.

The year began with new releases from favorites Robert Altman (Quintet, A Perfect Couple), Woody Allen (Manhattan), & Milos Forman (Hair). And the fall promised an original musical from Bob Fosse (All That Jazz), a romantic comedy from Alan J. Pakula (Starting Over), and the film debut of Bette Midler (The Rose). But when I looked ahead to what the summer months promised in the way of film releases, the Summer of ’79 didn't appear to be shaping up to be much of a banner season at the movies.

For those who like their big-name stars served up with as few surprises as possible, there was Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz and Barbra Streisand reteaming with her What’s Up Doc? co-star Ryan O’Neal in The Main Event (getting a significant publicity boost from La Streisand’s late-to-the-party stab at disco with the film’s theme song). That summer also saw my beloved Audrey Hepburn and Ali MacGraw testing the limits of the adage ‘Everybody loves a comeback story’ by appearing in the high-profile miscalculations Bloodline and Players, respectively.

Photo: Gary McVey

On the topic of adages (or proverbs), no summer would be complete without echoing homage paid to: ‘If they liked it once, they’ll love it twice.’ On that score, the Airport and James Bond franchises persisted with The Concorde… Airport ’79 and Roger Moore’s 4^th go-round as 007 in the 11^th Bond film Moonraker. Meanwhile, major industry money was riding on the sequels Rocky II and More American Graffiti (the former delivered, the latter, not so much) while somewhere in the distance Irwin Allen was squeezing the life out of the once vital disaster film genre with his unasked for Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.

For those inclined to play it safe, there were limited-engagement 70mm rereleases of both Grease and The Exorcist. For the gamblers, the summer presented a roster of television personalities making a play for big-screen gold: Charlie’s Angels’ Farrah Fawcett appearing in Sunburn, Three Company’s John Ritter in Americathon, and SNL’s Bill Murray in Meatballs. And if those prospects weren’t scary enough, The Amityville Horror, Prophecy, and Dracula hoped to add a few chills to the summer heat.

DigitalBits

After enduring nearly four years of hype and controversy, the film I was most stoked to see was Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. No one believed it was going to make its exclusive August 15th opening date.  

Which brings us to Alien. I wish I could say that the film that turned out to be my number one, absolute favorite movie of the summer was a film whose release I'd eagerly anticipated. That it was a film I'd read about, heard advance word about, and knew would be a hit. I wish I could. But the truth is, Alien was a movie woefully off my advance radar. Maybe it was due to other, more high-profile films hogging the publicity landscape at the time, but I have ZERO recollection of even being aware of the existence of Alien before teaser ads began to appear in the trade papers at the start of the year, and when intriguingly cryptic ads began airing on TV.
What really brought Alien to my attention was when posters for the film began to appear around town. They really grabbed me. I mean, after the PG-rated, retro earnestness of Star Wars and all that benevolent optimism in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, here was an R-rated sci-fi monster movie that held the promise of a creature that wasn't so nice.

Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley

Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas

John Hurt as Executive Officer Gilbert Kane

Veronica Cartwright as Navigator Joan Lambert

Yaphet Kotto as Chief Engineer Denis Parker

Harry Dean Stanton as Engineering Technician Samuel Brett

Ian Holm as Science Officer Ash the Android

An Alien Encounter

I saw Alien on the Friday evening of May 25, 1979. The date was the kickoff of a long Memorial Day weekend which also happened to be the 2^nd Anniversary of the blockbuster release of Star Wars. The studio 20^th Century-Fox (no doubt hoping that lightning would strike twice) marked the occasion by premiering Alien, its new sci-fi release, in 70mm and Dolby Stereo at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Not an official, invitation-only movie premiere, but an exclusive engagement that had Alien was screened for 48 continuous hours over that holiday weekend, its debut feted with searchlights, towering signs, giveaways, lobby displays of props and models, and a massive scale replica of the film’s “Space Jockey” in the theater’s courtyard (Space Jockey is a name that came to stick sometime later. Then, still in the flush of Star Wars mania, many referred to it as the “Star Pilot”).  

The line I stood in was an incredibly long one that stretched west from the theater’s massive curved marquee (George Hamilton’s Dracula spoof Love at First Bite—a holdover from April—was playing in the smaller Egyptian Theaters II and III) past the London Britches blue jeans store next door (in 1927 it was the Pig 'n' Whistle restaurant), beyond Jambi’s sandwich shop, down to the Pioneer Chicken take-out on the corner, winding around McCadden Place across from the Scientology building, all the way down to Selma Avenue.
Certainly, public interest was high for any all science fiction films released while awaiting the December premiere of Star Trek: The Movie, but a contributing factor to Alien's huge turnout had to be that it had the weekend virtually all to itself. Friday the 25th also saw Mann's Chinese Theater regretting booking Peter Sellers' The Prisoner of Zenda (a film I'd wager even his fans have forgotten), and further up the boulevard headed east, minimal competition was offered by the release of David Cronenberg's The Brood.

By 1986, the sequel to Alien would open in dozens of theaters throughout the Los Angeles area, but in 1979, I only recall Alien premiering at 2 locations: the Egyptian in Hollywood and the Avco Center Cinemas in Westwood (above). As you can see, the triplex also hosted Harrison Ford's WW II bomber bomb Hanover Street and The China Syndrome.

The buzz standing in line was tremendous because, like Star Wars, Alien was an “event” movie with nary a star in its cast and a film that no one knew anything about. It was a high-concept scary movie whose marketing seized the imagination by playing up the ambiguity. With a campaign and poster designed by the same team responsible for the groundbreaking marketing campaign for Rosemary’s Baby, everything from Alien’s trailer to TV ads were all about what you didn’t know and what you couldn’t see. Similarities to the iconic 1968 Rosemary’s Baby poster could be seen in Alien’s eerie green/black color scheme, its arrestingly simple typeface, the bold graphic of a scabrous egg emitting a green vapor from a glowing crack in its surface, and that irresistible, unforgettable (now classic) tagline: In space no one can hear you scream.

Philip Gips, Barbara Gips, Stephen Frankfurt, Paula Silver, Gina Stone, Belott-Wolfson photography

A significant part of my excitement that night was anticipation born of simply not knowing what I was in for. I didn't know anything about Ridley Scott or designer H.R. Giger, and I’d never heard of a Sigourney Weaver, much less knew how to pronounce it. Everyone else in the cast was familiar in a vague kind of way from TV episodics or small roles in films. Tom Skerritt I remembered from playing Shirley MacLaine’s husband in The Turning Point (1977), Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy in Live and Let Die (1973), John Hurt from when PBS aired The Naked Civil Servant back in 1976, and Harry Dean Stanton from appearing in practically every TV show on the air in the ‘60s. Curiously enough, Alien’s biggest star and primary draw for me was Veronica Cartwright, the versatile and underappreciated actress I’d fallen in love with after seeing her in Inserts (1975), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976), and nearly walking away with the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). 

Before Alien, sci-fi movies were a boys club genre where women were either ornamental or sat worrying on the sidelines. My initial disinterest in Alien was sparked by this teaser ad that appeared in the trade papers. It made the film look like another one of those snoozy sci-fi melodramas like Marooned or Capricorn One.

While I’ve since matured (calcified?) into the kind of person who runs in the opposite direction at the mere sight of a line forming, back in May of 1979 when I was a 21-year-old with a far more gregarious nature, the idea of waiting in a line for two hours to see a film merely added to the overall excitement of the moviegoing experience. The evening the general atmosphere on the line was genial and full of anticipation, and with no cell phones to bury our heads in while waiting, many of us joined in conversation with the folks standing near us in line, each of us comparing notes about how much or how little we knew. And what with the aforementioned Jambi’s sandwich shop and Pioneer Chicken take-out doing land-office business with patrons sitting along the boulevard eating and drinking, waiting to see Alien also felt like an automobile-free tailgate party.

A funny thing about standing in line for a new film, especially on a street as heavily traveled by tourists as Hollywood Blvd, you can find yourself seized by this foolish, decidedly silly notion that you have suddenly become part of the city's attractions to gawking out-of-towners. Just standing there amongst the Walk of Fame stars on the sidewalk and the beaming Klieg lights at the curb, you are no longer yourself, you are now "a huge line outside the Hollywood premiere of Alien" in somebody's vacation anecdote.

Photo: William Malone

Prop of the Alien Egg Chamber

Ever the eager-beaver when it came to movie opening nights, I was able to snag a primo bit of movie line real estate. A location very near the entrance to the theater’s courtyard which afforded a prolonged look at Alien’s posters and lobby cards, along with a sizable, unsettling 3-D promotional display/movie prop that at the time looked to me like rows of oozing, two-feet-tall Cadbury Crème Easter Eggs that had seen better days.

As the line progressed further into the theater’s then-roofed courtyard, things began to take on the feel of an amusement park. Following a barricaded path to the theater entrance, patrons were led through the dark, padded hallway of a spaceship when then opened out into a rather dazzling geometric room of tiny yellow lights and computer screens. This, of course, was the mainframe computer room of The Nostromo, but at the time I only had Disneyland’s Space Mountain ride as a point of reference, and that’s what it all reminded me of.

Photo: Lisa Morton

Photo: Alien Explorations

By this time I’d already begun to feel somewhat giddy with anticipation, but when the enclosed computer room opened out into the larger rear courtyard (near the Wishing Well of the Stars) I came face-to-face with a mind-bendingly bizarre structure that looked like the skeleton of an elephant fused into a chair and looking through a futuristic Planetarium projector…well, I was a goner. Neither I nor anyone else in line had any idea of what we were looking at (a ¾ scale prop of the Alien Space Jockey) but it struck me as being surreally grotesque, phallic, and utterly disturbing…in other words, absolutely gorgeous.

Photo: William Malone

At last, we were at the entrance to the theater. Regrettably, my awareness of the throngs of people waiting to get in, combined with my obsession with grabbing the ideal seat smack dab in the middle of the auditorium, prevented me from even noticing that there were more props and models from Alien on display in the lobby. I simply dashed to my seat, ignoring the snack bar and the very likely prospect of a souvenir program for sale (you can get a look at all the lobby props I personally missed at this blogger's account of the Alien premiere Here).

Upon entering the auditorium, early arrivals were given a free promotional pinback button. An item that triggered an ungrateful, inner “WTF?” response from me.

The reason is that the free souvenir button didn’t feature the film’s tagline, a picture of one of those alien eggs, or even the film’s title. Any of which I’d have been happy to have. No, it was a black button approximately 2 ½ inches in diameter that simply had the words “You Are My Lucky Star” printed on a starry background. Hindsight plainly reveals this to be a very clever giveaway that patrons wouldn't appreciate until after they'd seen the film (Ripley sings the song to herself in the climactic scene as a means of calming her nerves) but at the time all I could think was what the hell did a tune from Broadway Melody of 1936 have to do with Alien? 

I still have my souvenir Alien button. 

These days, especially here in L.A., it’s not uncommon for movie theaters to display the props and costumes of films on exhibit in their lobbies. But back in 1979 such pomp and circumstance were largely the stuff of star-studded premieres and rarely available to the public. That novelty factor is perhaps why the Egyptian put faith in the honor system and left the safety of its display items in the hands of just a few strategically placed “Please Do Not Touch the Display” signs. When I returned to the theater the following weekend to see Alien a second time, the props had all been removed due to someone having set the Space Jockey sculpture on fire. Imagine, an extraterrestrial fossil surviving all that time on a planetoid, only to be demolished in a matter of days when confronted with the boundless stupidity of what passes for "intelligent life" on this rock called earth. 

Strange Shapes

So, what was it like seeing Alien for the very first time with absolutely no foreknowledge of what I was getting myself into? Abso-fucking-lutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

What did I ultimately think of the film and what were my overall impressions?

That's for my next post. 

Happy Birthday, Alien!

Read my review ALIEN the film, not the opening day experience, HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2019

THE SERVANT 1963

It was at an early age when I became to be aware of the fact that a significant part of motion pictures' allure for me was their “magic mirror” quality. The ability to illuminate and interpret the shadow aspects of human behavior and psychology. Particularly those darker sides of our natures we’re conditioned to suppress or deny. To a shy, somewhat sheltered, gay Black teen intent on forging for himself  an independent self-image away and apart from familial and social preconceptions, movies afforded a safe, vicarious means by which I could explore complex matters of ego and identity. To be able to watch people grapple with the shifting, fluid nature of image and personality (with the added bonus of not actually having to interact with said people) felt marvelously intimate, wonderfully personal, and too good to be true.

Truth Through Distortion

Inspired by my own desire to better accept and reconcile the ofttimes conflicting sides of my own nature, it took some time, but I ultimately came to understand that, like it or not, duality and contradictions are a fundamental part of what makes us human. This personal insight led to my gravitating to (and developing an acute fondness for) movies whose themes explicitly relate to the topics of identity, personality, and duality. Decidedly dark movies, to be sure, but all of a similar breed of exploring the faceted nature of personality.

Whether those films take the form of allegorical ruminations on the dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual (Steppenwolf, Dorian Gray); hallucinatory musings on personality-theft (3 Women, Secret Ceremony); splintered-persona melodramas (Images, Black Swan); tales of psychological co-dependency (Dead Ringers, Single White Female); or psychosocial conflicts (The Maids, The Ceremony)...no matter how they’re structured, they all fascinate the hell out of me.

One movie that manages to masterfully incorporate all of the above and which rates as a genuine, five-star classic in the annals of Identity-Crisis Cinema is Joseph Losey’s mind-bending, multilayered meditation on manservants, mutuality, and malevolence: The Servant.

Dirk Bogarde as Hugo Barrett

Sarah Miles as Vera

James Fox as Tony

Wendy Craig as Susan Stewart

In The Servant, adapted by Harold Pinter from the 1949 novel by Robin Maugham, Dirk Bogarde is Hugo Barrett, the devoted and dutiful gentleman’s gentleman recently hired by aristocratic layabout Tony (James Fox). Assigned to look after the daily creature comforts of his high-born, high-maintenance master—"I’ll need, well…everything! General looking-after, you know”—Barret is live-in cook, housekeeper, dresser, barman, decorator, and nursemaid. Which is a good thing, since Tony does little but drift about imperiously giving orders in a bubble of lazy entitlement that appears to have come built-in with his inherited Georgian townhouse in London’s affluent Chelsea district maintained on an independent income he lives on while awaiting the materialization of an indistinct development job in Brazil.

Barrett brings eager-to-please efficiency and order to Tony’s world of self-absorbed disarray, both men appearing to thrive under a mutually advantageous arrangement that sees each contentedly assuming their clearly defined, socially-assigned roles respective of status and station. Considerably less pleased with this alliance is Susan (Wendy Craig), Tony’s upper-crust, frostily snobbish fiancée. She and Barrett take an immediate dislike to one another, she mocking his genteel pretensions (white serving gloves) and lowbrow contributions to the décor (“Tomorrow I’ll organize a proper spice shelf for the kitchen”), Barrett resenting her intrusion into what he has clearly come to regard as his territory.

As per the presumptive tradition of the class system, Tony and Barrett’s master/servant relationship bears the surface characteristics of polite decorum, but Losey’s sly camera—always lingering on faces a second or two after you’re sure a scene has concluded—captures the reductive (if not downright contemptuous) looks Barrett shoots Tony’s way whenever his master's eyes are averted or back is turned.

To be sure, there’s nothing unusual in an employee harboring resentment toward an employer, for Barrett has to endure the daily micro-humiliations of being condescended to and ordered about with nary a please or thank you. But there’s a faint trace of maliciousness behind Barrett’s gaze. Something hinting at a duplicitous nature which has viewers of the film asking of him “What do you want from this house?” long before Susan combatively confronts him with the same question.

Confirmation that Barrett is indeed plotting some type of intrigue comes in the form of Vera (Sarah Miles), his teenage "sister" he has persuaded Tony to take on as housekeeper. A witty tip-off that Vera is not Barrett's sister but is, in fact, his lover, appears during their cab ride from the train station. Vera places her hand a little too high on Barrett's thigh, resulting in a most perceptible rise in Barrett's suggestively fondled umbrella handle. 

As deliberate deception gives way to coerced seduction, The Servant plays it cozy as to a motive for the couple’s charade. But what’s brought into far clearer focus is the way the unfolding of these events has the effect of intensifying the repressed antagonisms and attractions already evident in the ambiguous, contradictory interrelationships of the characters. Ultimately, as the anarchy of power-plays, class conflict, and sexual tension come to overthrow the structured formality of the film’s early scenes, the lives of Tony and Barrett become inextricably intertwined, their personalities undergoing a transformation (or unmasking) that finds roles reversed and the initial power dynamic upended.

Inequity of Power

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

When the arts are controlled by the mainstream, marginalized artists are inevitably compelled to resort to coding when expressing the truth of their reality. Queer coding permeates the plays of Tennessee Williams and remain an inextricable characteristic of the works of D.H. Lawrence. In a similar vein, the dualism dramatized in The Servant reflects the insider/outsider existence of its gay author (when homosexuality was illegal), Robin Maugham.

Tony and Barrett sexually commune with one another through Vera

Prolific novelist Robin Maugham (the openly gay nephew of the deeply-closeted writer Somerset Maugham), was a war hero, political diplomat, and lawyer who scandalized his aristocratic family with the homoerotic themes of his work. Keenly aware (some biographers would say tortured) of the social duplicity that would have him afforded unfettered access to privileges due to his class, yet simultaneously denied basic freedoms due to his sexuality; the themes of Maugham’s work often dealt with characters struggling with opposing natures and splintered identities.

One of the most commented-upon details about The Servant—rumored to be a heterosexualized telling of an autobiographically inspired, near-blackmail experience Maugham had with one of his own servants—is the assertively ambiguous nature of Barrett and Tony’s relationship. 

I've not read the source novel upon which Losey's film is based (Maugham has been quoted as not being very fond of Pinter's adaptation), but it does a marvelous job of dramatizing the unique two-sided existence Maugham must have lived as a member of England’s aristocracy encouraged by family and propriety to keep an essential part of his personal life hidden.

In this way, The Servant shares the twinning quality found in the works of Albee, Inge, and the aforementioned Williams. On the surface, their works are about one thing (in this instance, a class conflict drama about an ordered life thrown into chaos by the intrusion of a wily servant), yet at the same time, they are transmitting an entirely different message on a wavelength intended for those in the know. The Servant's second, subliminal theme plays as a metaphor for the world of pretense, image, desire, and detection that defined homosexual existence at the time. It's a fear familiar to any individual feeling as though they must conceal their true nature from others: the fear that the potential intimacy and bonding with another holds with it the possibility for exposure and exploitation, resulting in that person having power over you.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Three-time Oscar-nominated Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Julia, and Travels with My Aunt) won UK’s BAFTA award for creating what is a truly striking visual style for The Servant. Brazenly contemporary, the look is part British neorealism, borderline expressionistic, and hovering somewhere around gothic surrealism. Slocomb’s painterly compositions and expressive B&W cinematography create an atmosphere of menace and conflict with every frame.

Underscoring themes of claustrophobia and entrapment, Tony's townhouse is used as an active character in the film. Frequently, individuals are framed in ways emphasizing their emotional imprisonment. In this shot, a distraught Tony appears hemmed in by both the bars of the staircase and the frame of Vera's bed. That he is surrounded by her muscleman pinups hint that perhaps it's not Vera he's really pining for.

As Tony and Barrett grow more interdependent, the house itself
seems to get smaller...the walls and ceiling closing in on them. 

Convex mirrors (something of a staple in Pinter films)... do they reflect, distort, or reveal?

Throughout The Servant, Barrett...figuratively or literally...
always comes between Susan and Tony

PERFORMANCES

I’m not particularly familiar with the films of Dirk Bogarde’s matinee idol period (although I did catch one of his “Doctor" series films, about which the only thing I remember is thinking how much he resembled a young Desi Arnaz), so I was never able to fully appreciate the impact of his transformation from heartthrob to serious actor via films like The Servant and Victim (1961). Knowing Bogarde only as the intensely compelling dramatic actor giving memorable performances in such superb films as Despair (1978), The Damned (1969), Our Mother’s House (1967), Darling (1965), and Death in Venice (1971), it’s really saying something that I consider his performance in The Servant to be his best. 

Sarah Miles' Vera exudes a brand of sexy that can best be summed up as of guileless guile 

Playing a difficult-to-read character who calculatingly exploits his all-things-to-all people charm, I think Bogarde registers so persuasively in The Servant because at all times it feels as if the actor is navigating familiar territory. Indeed, in the 2008 book “Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters” a note from Bogarde expresses the sentiment that while he would like very much to be, in real-life, more like the character he played in I Could Go On Singing (1963), he laments that he’s “Actually nearer Barret in ‘The Servant,’ which is why it was so easy to do him…people don’t realize.”

Never an actor renowned for his accessibility, Bogarde is the master of the side-eye, knows his way around a double-entendre, and is uncommonly skilled in exposing the art of concealment. The same could be said of Bogarde both onscreen and off. The King of Denial, Bogarde remained closeted his entire life in spite of the fact many were aware that the husband of actress Glynnis Johns left her for Bogarde and went on to live with him as his "manager" for 40 years.
One of the delights of The Servant is marveling in Bogarde’s depiction of Barrett’s effortless slides in and out of his Manchester accent, and contrasting his “on the job” fussiness with his louche demeanor when “off the clock.”

Tony: (Interview question) Do you drink beer?
Barrett: (Primly) No, sir.

Like Anthony Perkins, that other '50s closeted screen star/onetime teen pin-up whose guarded image was changed (arguably, not always for the better) on the strength of a single role, Dirk Bogarde turned equivocality into an acting style. The Servant was the second of five films Bogarde would make with Joseph Losey.

"I can still think of things that will please you, can't I?"

As embodied by the performance of James Fox (granted an "introducing" credit in the film) the morally-ambivalent Tony also carries about him a provocative air of sexual ambiguity. A characteristic of the slight, blond, actor which would be mined to similar effect in David Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's brilliant identity-switch head trip Performance (1970). Fox is absolutely splendid as the self-indulgent idler who falls under the corruptive sway of his Machiavellian servant, displaying a considerable range of emotional vulnerability as he morphs from patrician parvenu to pitiable prisoner. Both Fox and Bogarde deservedly won BAFTA awards for their performances (Most Promising Newcomer and Best Actor, respectively).

Although I think I’m not meant to, I like the character of Susan a great deal. At least the side of her that reminds me of Leroy in The Bad Seed. She's the one character not taken in by Barrett's obsequious fakery (precisely why he sees her as a threat) and doesn’t mince words about it. In a film populated with weak males, Susan may be an insufferable snob with questionable aesthetics, but her questioning candor is the closest thing to principle in Pinter's world. Wendy Craig's performance has such intelligence and depth, she makes Susan an unexpectedly affecting player in this power-play drama.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I loved The Servant the first time I ever saw it, an opinion only reinforced by repeat viewings. To me, it stands as the masterpiece achievement of Losey and Pinter’s three collaborations: Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1971) complete the set. 

The Servant explores the dysfunction, hypocrisy, and false values behind master-servant, upper-class/working-class roles, and power inequities. Late in the film, this exchange occurs:

“Don’t forget your place, Barrett. You’re nothing but a servant in this house.”

“Servant? I’m nobody’s servant! Who furnished the whole place for you? Who painted it for you? Who does the cooking? Who washes your pants? Who cleans the bath out after you? I do! I run the whole bloody place and what do I get out of it? Nothing!”

And there you have the crucial nugget of truth that festers within the core of social class hostility; Barrett’s ruinous subversion is possible because Tony and his kind don’t really know how to “do” anything (a fact made embarrassingly explicit a while back when the world looked on as a certain reviled 72-year-old public figure demonstrated a lack of familiarity with how umbrellas work).

"A  weekend in the county. So inactive, that one has to lie down." - Stephen Sondheim
Tony and Susan pay a visit to Lord and Lady Mounset ( Richard Vernon and Catherine Lacey)

The morally-soft, easily-corrupted classes like to see themselves as the builders, but their desultory existences prepare them for nothing. Least of all survival. We encounter it in daily headlines—the wealthy, even in a system rigged in their favor, find it necessary to resort to fraud and swindles to win elections or get their children into universities. Forced, out of necessity to learn to look after themselves, it is the working classes, the servants, who are the builders, the survivors, and the only ones possessing actual skills.

The saying goes, "If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu." The Servant suggests that come the day the dismissed and disregarded claim their place at the table, the bill of fare is likely to be all those who have erroneously assumed that to be waited on by another human being is their birthright.

BONUS MATERIAL:

Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize-winning author, playwright, and screenwriter of The Servant makes a brief appearance in a terrific scene that takes place in a posh restaurant where various couples engage in enigmatic games of one-upmanship and subtle power plays. (That's him in the center with actress Ann Firbank of One of Those Things.)  Pinter also wrote the lyrics to composer John Dankworth's (Darling) song "All Gone," sung by Cleo Laine on the soundtrack to The Servant.  

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2019