Category: 1966

The Plague of the Zombies (1966, John Gilling)

The Plague of the Zombies opens at its lowest point—the film involves Haitian-style voodoo (not really, the movie’s version of Haitian-style voodoo) being practiced in a Cornish village, and the high priest has a trio of Black men drumming. Throughout the film, we’ll learn about the voodoo setup (though not a lot, including what they wanted women for after a year of killing dudes), and various participants in the voodoo rituals will have day jobs. Not the drummers, though. They apparently just stay in the ritual cave, slicked up in oil, waiting for the high priest to need accompaniment.

Otherwise, with some exceptions, usually for budget, sometimes for colonialism, and then poor Brook Williams’s acting, Plague’s a great time. After the opening voodoo sequence, the action heads to André Morell’s house, where he’s getting ready for his holiday. We’ll find out he’s a professor at a medical school in London. It’s 1860 (the film’s got a solid drinking game in “spot the anachronisms”). Williams is Morrell’s former star pupil who has set up a practice in our unnamed Cornish village. His wife, Jacqueline Pearce, happens to be Morell’s daughter’s best friend. Diane Clare plays the daughter. She’s a trooper.

Morell gets a weird letter from Williams about all the people who have died. Now, we’ll later learn it’s twelve over twelve months, minus the film’s present action fatalities, so it never makes sense why Williams waited so long to ask someone for help. Especially when we learn he’s not so much having a medical knowledge crisis as a political one—village squire John Carson won’t back Williams in investigating any of the deaths. No autopsies.

Clare convinces Morell they should go visit—and Morell can fish while they’re there. The lack of a fishing subplot is one of the film’s only real disappointments. I desperately wanted to watch Morell fish. He acts the heck out of Plague, always active, always evaluating, always calculating. The character’s a smart cookie, and Morell wants everyone to know how hard he works at it.

When they get to the village, Morell and Clare immediately discover multiple red flags. Carson’s houseguests—led by Alexander Davion—intentionally disrupt a funeral procession and get away with it. Carson de facto directs the local constabulary (run by delightful Michael Ripper), so there are no consequences. Then Pearce is so out of it she barely recognizes them (the audience has the benefit of knowing the voodoo cult is after her). And Williams is….

So, Williams’s character is drowning in the stress and liquoring his way through it. Williams’s performance is drowning in inability, and director Gilling is just making him do it all anyway. Clare’s always a strong character, but when she eventually has to play damsel, and Williams gets to play prince; definitely should’ve been reversed. Williams is so incapable he very quickly becomes sympathetic just for sticking with it. He’s a trooper in a different way than Clare, however. She has to navigate spoken and unspoken societal horrors for the lady folk; Williams just has to keep attempting and failing, over and over.

Besides Williams, all Plague’s acting is (well, okay, low) fine or better. But the better ranges up to Morell, who’s awesome—it’s a shame he and Clare didn’t do a Victorian supernatural sleuthing franchise—and Carson, who’s almost as awesome. Clare’s pretty good. The damsel stuff doesn’t do her any favors, dramatically speaking, but she’s ahead of the curve. Pearce is fine. And then Ripper’s such low-key fun when he shows up. He and Morell play great off one another.

Despite whatever mistakes he makes with Williams, director Gilling does a decent job. Especially considering how much of it’s bad day for night–cinematographer Arthur Grant doesn’t even try compensating, though there’s usually at least one bit of nice photography in every scene. Grant does much better indoors. The special effects have a wide quality range, but they’re always effective. Peter Bryan’s script emphasizes the characters, not the zombies; it might be a budgetary decision, but it’s also a successful one.

Plague of the Zombies is far better than it ought to be, all things considered, with that outstanding Morell performance anchoring it and then its handful of other significant pluses.

I wish there’d been a sequel.

This post is part of the Hammer-Amicus Blogathon IV hosted by Barry of Cinematic Catharsis and Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews.

Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)

Persona begins with a series of unrelated, sometimes startling, sometimes disturbing images. It’s leader on the film reel, and it establishes the film’s narrative distance. We’re not just removed from the action; the action’s on display at multiple levels, including one involving a young boy, played by Jörgen Lindström, who provides bookends for the film.

He’s star Liv Ullmann’s son, but he’s never identified as such. Instead, he’s just the one with the most vested interest at the level.

Ullmann plays a famous theater and film actor who, all of a sudden, stops talking one night during a performance. It only lasts a minute, but the next day, she’s not talking at all, and she isn’t moving around either. She’s stopped expressing herself in any way, which lands her in the hospital, where she gets a full-time nurse to look after her. Bibi Andersson plays the nurse.

According to the doctor (a fantastic Margaretha Krook), Ullmann has nothing physically or mentally (though, sixties mentally) wrong. Andersson is patient and kind, trying to bond with Ullmann, who does react at times—like when Andersson starts reading her a letter from her husband—but there’s not much change.

The audience knows Ullmann is moving and reactive; we watch her watch Vietnam War news coverage in the middle of the night, recoiling in horror at the reality she finds herself in. The war footage calls back to the opening imagery; Ullmann’s experiencing and shutting herself away from the miserable world around her.

With no change as far as the medical staff can see, Krook decides it’d be best for Ullmann and Andersson to head out to her vacation house. Krook thinks she knows what’s going on with Ullmann; she’s just let the disconnect between apathy and empathy break her, and now she’s working through it, researching like an actor. The scene—Krook’s final one in the film and absolutely phenomenal—sets up two recurring themes. First, someone projecting their assumptions of Ullmann’s thoughts and feelings on a silent Ullmann. Second, the acting a part bit.

With the minor exceptions of the opening leader montage, the finale, and an act break—with the film “burning” to remind us we’re not on holiday with Ullmann and Andersson, we’re watching them far removed–Persona has a relatively standard epical arc with Andersson as the protagonist.

She gets this strange but not necessarily unpleasant assignment—Andersson goes into it assuming Ullmann wants to play a mind game with her companion, something Krook dissuades but informs Andersson later on—which turns into an extended holiday out at the beach. Andersson and Ullmann become pals, drinking wine, sunbathing, reading books, writing letters. It’s a holiday. Only Andersson does all the talking, though Ullmann does respond non-verbally to questions. So her condition’s changed a little, in relative line with Krook’s parting diagnosis.

Things change for the pair when Andersson gets super drunk and shares a very personal memory with Ullmann. Andersson becomes convinced Ullmann speaks to her briefly, then comes to visit her in the middle of the night. The next day, Ullmann’s again not talking and denies either event. Must’ve been drunk dreams.

When Andersson’s heading into town the next time for supplies, she takes the outgoing mail, including a letter from Ullmann to the doctor. Andersson can’t help but read the contents, which mainly concern her, with Ullmann making some very callous, mercenary observations. From then on, Andersson doesn’t think she can trust Ullmann but also finds herself becoming more and more wrapped in Ullmann’s “performance.” She just does it knowingly and often hatefully.

The film doesn’t show Ullmann speaking to Andersson when Andersson thinks she is speaking to her. It doesn’t expressively determine whether the middle-of-the-night visit is actual or dream. But it clearly shows Ullmann hurrying to finish the letter and leaving it unsealed for Andersson to take. Persona’s got all sorts of mysteries to it, but Ullmann’s never not an enigma. We get the two private moments with her, the Vietnam footage, then her looking at a photo from World War II showing the Nazis terrorizing civilians. The horror of the world is very much on Ullmann’s mind. But is it on her mind for actor’s fodder, or what’s underneath it?

Andersson becomes convinced Ullmann’s using her as an avatar: it’s not Andersson projecting on the unspeaking Ullmann; it’s Ullmann doing it the other way. Except, of course, it’d be a reflection of that projection, which leads to some fascinating scenes and performances. From the start—in no small part thanks to the opening sequence—Persona seems ready to submerge itself in the surreal, but Andersson and Ullmann’s performances are always firmly grounded. The confusion and hurt are always genuine.

Director Bergman’s got some phenomenal sequences, both directing and in the script. The script’s deliberate in presenting the pair’s evolving relationship, which scenes it shows, which it skips. The direction’s all about the performances, down to a sequence where we literally get to see it from each character’s perspective.

There are numerous second-half plot reveals—mostly about Ullmann’s husband, Gunnar Björnstrand, and son Lindström–and they’re perfect for deepening the existing character drama. At times, Persona is a character study; at times, it’s a psychological thriller; it’s always mesmerizing.

Whether Andersson or Ullmann’s better is probably a matter of personal preference and, of course, what a viewer’s projecting on the character and its actor. It’s a perpetually fascinating film.

Great black and white photography from Sven Nykvist, editing from Ulla Ryghe, music from Lars Johan Werle. Bibi Lindström’s production design is the third star after Ullmann and Andersson. Mago’s costumes are probably fourth.

Persona is an exhilarating, singular experience.

Girl on a Chain Gang (1966, Jerry Gross)

The actual chain gang sequence of Girl on a Chain Gang is in the third act. There are no actual chain gang sequences; all of that action happens off-screen, almost as though producer, screenwriter, and director Gross couldn’t afford enough chain to make it happen. But getting there is quite the ordeal for characters and audience alike.

Chain Gang tells the tale of three Northern college folks, one white man, one Black man, and one white woman, who’ve traveled to the South to help get people registered to vote. Unfortunately, they draw the attention of a couple drunken sheriff’s deputies who’re thrilled to harass some Yankees. The film doesn’t identify the location of the film’s action outside the fictional town (it was filmed on Long Island). Still, with the constant gator references and the sheriff being terrified of the state police finding out he’s running illegal work farms, regularly raping women, and murdering men… it seems like Florida.

Julie Ange plays the woman who the sheriff (William Watson) and his deputies accuse of being a prostitute so they can arrest her and her friends without much incident. Ron Charles and Peter Nevard play the deputies. The film introduces them getting drunk with a local sex worker, Arlene Farber, who’s all right because she helps sheriff Watson frame folks. Chain Gang’s never subtle, but the closest would be its characterization of Watson’s religiosity. He’s a Bible-thumping, drunken murderer and rapist; the film only ever quietly acknowledges the ostensible hypocrisy (but he is, actually, just reading his Bible), like Gross knows he can’t be too nasty about the Christianity.

In the first act of the film seems like Ange and her friends will be the leads. Ron Segal plays the white guy, the most accomplished in the group (he’s going to Yale); he’s also the one who talks back to Watson and his goons, though it’s never clear if he makes those initial situations worse. The actor who plays the Black guy is uncredited, and his name seems entirely lost to history. Considering he’s the third lead for most of the movie—despite Ange being the Girl in the title, she disappears for most of the second act—one might assume the actor didn’t want his name associated with the film.

The protagonist for most of the film is the sheriff, who’s cobbling together a way to frame the trio and contending with his drunken moron staff and yokels to get the job done. There’s no one sympathetic in the small town outside Phillip Vanyon’s doctor, and he’s only sympathetic to a certain point. Gross is relentless in showcasing Watson’s villainy, with Watson perfectly marrying the mundane and obscene. Chain Gang’s got mostly bad performances and paper-thin writing, but it’s also entirely realistic. Gross unintentionally makes his exploitation picture documentary-esque just because the bad guys are so human and so conventional.

Watson’s captivating. He’s always revolting, always horrifying, always transfixing. He disappears at the end of the second act, after the film following him for probably an hour. Chain Gang runs a very long ninety-six minutes. The first hour zooms along, but it conks out as it moves through the second act. It’s already been puttering when Watson vanishes.

Ange’s sympathetic but not good. She suffers misogyny not just from the bad guys, but even the not bad guys, even her friends. Well, Segal. Segal being a selfish asshole is another one of Chain Gang’s seemingly unintentional truths. He’s also bad, acting-wise. The uncredited Black actor doesn’t do well in his big scene, but it’s terrible, so it’s hard to hold it against him. He otherwise is fine. Or at least, in the better lot of the film’s performances.

The film’s reasonably good looking for its low budget. The photography declines in the third act, but so does the direction.

There’s also a strange, upbeat jazzy score by Steve Karmen, which works in the film’s favor most of the time.

Outside the terrifyingly good performance by Watson, Girl on a Chain Gang has the most to offer as a historical object. It could be worse, it probably couldn’t be better, but it definitely could be shorter. Shorter would help.

Blow-Up (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni)

Blow-Up is a day in the life picture. It opens with protagonist David Hemmings on his way out of a flophouse; he’s not a tramp; he’s a wonder kid fashion photographer who’s been undercover all night to snap pics. The film reveals all those details gradually. It takes until about halfway through the picture to find out the photos are for a book he’s putting together with editor Peter Bowles. The book doesn’t seem to include fashion photographs, however. Hemmings seemingly hates his success at photographing models. Unfortunately, he takes out that resentment on his models, who he despises for falling for his Svengali tactics. He’s a right bastard.

The film never shows Hemmings’s perspective. It never asks the audience to identify with him, empathize or sympathize with him. Instead, director Antonioni establishes a close third-person perspective and never strays. There’s usually a brief establishing shot from Hemmings’s point of view—visually—and then the rest of the sequence is looking at Hemmings from the setting. The film takes place over roughly twenty-four hours, with Hemmings moving through a series of time-appropriate vignettes. Most of the vignettes are about him being a jackass, some are about him being an artist, some are about the culture he’s in, both big-scale mid-sixties London and then small scale artist culture.

Hemmings lives in his studio, where he’s got various people working. One of the first scenes has him giving rolls of film to an assistant for developing. After a few more scenes, the assistant delivers the photos. Blow-Up never forgets the linear structure. As fantastic as Hemmings’s day will get, it’s just a day, and he’s just one person amongst a million. He’s a solitary egotist, with his painter friend John Castle living on the same property. The living situation is a little unclear. Though Hemmings’s real estate pursuits are an essential but unexplored bit of the ground situation. Similarly important but mostly unexplored is Hemmings’s relationship with Castle’s wife, Sarah Miles. They have an intense flirtation. Miles is only in a few scenes, but Antonioni gives her the close third-person treatment as well. If Blow-Up were a bigger story, she’d obviously be part of it.

But it’s not a big story. It’s a tiny one.

In the course of his day, Hemmings finds himself with time to kill in near a park and, being a photographer, wanders while taking pictures. He comes upon a couple in the park—Ronan O’Casey and Vanessa Redgrave—and follows them. At least a third of the way through the film, this sequence is the first time Antonioni lets Hemmings just be. Every other moment he’s either conning or controlling someone, but at the park, he’s childish. It starts with him running and jumping for fun, enjoying tiring himself, then when photographing O’Casey and Redgrave, he turns it into an espionage adventure. He hops fences, hides behind trees, clearly entertaining himself because O’Casey and Redgrave aren’t fooled, and she comes over to confront him.

Their first encounter provides insight into how Hemmings responds when challenged. He’s used to people either fawning over him or at least being obedient to his whims. Later, when Redgrave tracks him down at the studio, she’s going to be more susceptible to the Svengali techniques. That sequence is the most character development Hemmings does onscreen, with him either lying at length to Redgrave (who may be lying at length right back at him) or being startlingly honest with a stranger. It’ll be an outside the everyday experience for Hemmings, whose entire life seems to be—but isn’t—a series of abnormal experiences.

Redgrave’s at the studio trying to get the pictures he took, which presents him with a problem. He’s got to magnanimously acquiesce to a beautiful damsel in distress, but not really because he wants the pictures for his book. Adding to the dilemma is Redgrave appears willing to go to extreme lengths to get them back, giving some more rare insight into Hemmings’s actual character. He’ll sort of roll it back soon after once he’s gotten the high of being not just a great photographer but an unintentionally great detective.

The film only shows a handful of Hemmings’s photographs and quickly. We never get to see his fashion photography. We know they’re good because he’s successful, whereas the photographs of Redgrave and O’Casey are good, but also Antonioni has baked regard into them. We saw Hemmings take the photographs, we briefly saw what he was photographing, and then there’s the pay-off. Antonioni’s got a whole approach to Hemmings as photographer, where Hemmings is often developing a photograph in real-time, but the audience doesn’t see that process. Blow-Up is full of photographic gadgetry and process, just without any fetishization. It’s about seeing what Hemmings is doing, not what Hemmings is doing. There’s never any voyeuristic aspect to it either, thanks to Antonioni’s constantly close third-person narrative distance.

It’s exceptional work.

The third act has Hemmings trying to work through the consequences of his discoveries and finding himself unable to control much of anything. It’s a phenomenal character study, especially since he’s gradually revealed to be far less narcissistic than initially implied. The finish, with Hemmings haggard from another sleepless day, stirs in all the themes for a fascinating vignette. So good.

Excellent direction from Antonioni, photography from Carlo Di Palma, editing by Frank Clarke. Clark’s cutting is stunning. The script—from Antonioni, Torino Guerra, and Edward Bond—is sharp while subtle. There’s a superb meta-bit where Hemmings comments on the unimportance of names, something few of the characters have spoken onscreen.

Excellent score from Herbie Hancock.

Blow-Up’s a remarkable success.

7 Women (1966, John Ford)

First, it’s actually 8 Women; Jane Chang doesn’t count because she’s not white. Though I suppose it could just be counting good Christian women, then Anne Bancroft doesn’t count. Women is a Western, just one set nearer to modernity and not in the American West. Instead, it’s about a mission in China on the border with Mongolia. By 1966, apparently Hollywood had decided it was no longer okay to do yellowface of Chinese people, but you could still go whole hog on Mongolians. Including eye makeup. It’s a lot. It takes a while for the Mongolian raiders to show up, and the film definitely saves its big swings for them.

Bancroft is the new doctor at the mission. She had to take the job because she wanted to get out of the States, where being a female doctor in the thirties meant a mostly unhappy life helping out in the slums. The mission’s boss is Margaret Leighton, who’s definitely the most tragic figure of the film. Women has many hurdles with Leighton’s character; she’s a repressed, self-loathing lesbian, which the film sensationalizes for a moment then sort of drops. The film also swings hard against Leighton’s religiosity, especially after a harder working missionary from elsewhere in the province stops in. Flora Robson plays that other missionary; she’s actually British, while Leighton’s character (Leighton herself being British) is a stuck-up American from the Northeast. Nevertheless, Leighton’s definitely the most interesting character in the film, even if the last third has her descending into religious blather as Bancroft has to maneuver a way to save everyone’s life.

Well, everyone who’s left. Women’s a Western with the Mongolians standing in for the Native Americans, but the Mongolians have automatic weapons and can kill lots of people at once. It’ll eventually be a combination siege and hostage picture, with Leighton, Robson, Sue Lyon, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Anna Lee, and Chang hostages; Bancroft’s a hostage with privileges.

Bancroft gives an excellent performance. She lifts up every other performance in the film, which usually has religious constraints. The film calls bunk on Christian missionary philosophy, but it can’t actually call bunk on it, so it instead shows it playing out as bunk. Specifically American Christian missionary philosophy. Robson, Lee, and Chang, representing the British, come off a lot better. They’re at least aware of themselves. Leighton’s not happy unless everyone works themselves into severe depression thanks to cognitive dissonance, including protege and object of her affection Lyon. It breaks Leighton’s heart when Lyon takes to brass, worldly Bancroft; if it weren’t for Bancroft, no one but her would be getting Lyon’s attention. Dunnock is meek, Field is exceptionally annoying. Of course, Field’s also there with her husband, Eddie Albert. Albert always wanted to be a preacher, but the closest he could get was teaching badly at a mission school in China.

So there’s no one to impress Lyon except Leighton, who hates herself for wanting to do so, but at least it’s kind of sympathetic for a while. At least until she shows how much she’s willing to jeopardize others to maintain her control.

While Bancroft is top-billed, she’s more the catalyst than the protagonist. Especially in the last third, when Bancroft’s machinations off-camera with white guy in yellowface Mike Mazurki and Black guy in yellowface Woody Strode drive the plot. The film still can’t be too explicit about what’s going on–well, unless you’re a Bible freak like Leighton, who can’t stop spouting made-up scripture to damn everyone but her–so knowing looks and fade-outs do a lot of work.

The film’s got its technical high points—while director Ford goes for Western siege picture most of the time, he and composer Elmer Bernstein treat Bancroft’s arc like it’s more of a film noir. Okay photography from Joseph LaShelle. LaShelle should’ve gotten Ford to double-check the headroom, though. The framing’s always just a little off, with Ford sometimes struggling to fill the wide Panavision frame. There’s also some crappy “Oriental” music in Bernstein’s score. Not as much as there could be, but the rest of the music is good especially Bancroft’s themes.

Otho Lovering’s editing is fantastic.

7 Women (8) does pretty well with all its constraints, including Lyons, who’s likable but not very good, and is an outstanding showcase for Bancroft. It’s also classist, racist, misogynist, and homophobic.

But it does pass Bechdel with flying colors. And it’s got no time for hateful religious malarky.

This post is part of the Anne Bancroft: A 90th Birthday Celebration Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

The Appaloosa (1966, Sidney J. Furie)

The Appaloosa could be worse. Director Furie apes styles he doesn’t understand how to use—his Leone-esque angles, the Acid Western—with what’s a fairly traditional Western, albeit just with a Mexican supporting cast. Well, okay, so Marlon Brando is the only gringo playing a gringo. All the other White people are supposed to be Mexican. You can tell from their makeup. Even the actual Hispanic actors are wearing a pound of makeup. The scene where Brando tries to darken his skin—it’s not clear he’s trying to actually appear Mexican, it seems like it has more to do with his monologue about his adoptive (Mexican) father and wishing he looked like him or something. But it turns out it’s not. Anyway, in the scene Brando uses coffee grounds to do it and sister-in-law Miriam Colon tells him it doesn’t work; you wish he’d just asked her what she was using.

Colon is married to Rafael Campos, Brando’s adoptive little brother. Or whatever. Campos isn’t good. You feel like it’s not his fault. The whole thing with Campos and Colon’s family is really forced. Maybe because Campos is exaggerating everything—exaggerated Mexican accents are going to be a thing, Appaloosa establishes real early on—but also because Brando’s in this goofy wig, fake beard thing. With the Western hat version of a Robin Hood hat. Brando’s appearance itself is distracting. It takes him a while to clean up too, long enough it seems like he might be in the makeup the whole movie. It’s distracting. You can’t watch him without wondering if they really thought the beard looked real enough.

But he does clean up. Just in time to do a Speedy Gonzales impression. See, it’s not clear Brando’s trying to appear Mexican when he decides to go into Mexico to get his prized horse—the titular Appaloosa—back from bandit leader John Saxon. Not until he’s sitting in a bar and bad guy Alex Montoya forces Brando to drink pulque to show he’s tough enough to be in bar. Montoya comes over to chit chat after Brando shows he’s legit and Brando goes into full Speedy Gonzales. It’s kind of beyond cringe, quickly getting into the “Greatest American Actor” humiliates himself in studio Western territory. Like, Brando wasn’t doing too great to start—the fake beard gets in the way of his mouth and the wig’s goofy—but he wasn’t doing a hideously bad Mexican accent opposite a Hispanic actor also doing an amped up Mexican accent. It’s like exploitation in action.

And it’s also bad. Montoya’s a lousy villain. Though I guess it doesn’t matter because Brando’s a lousy hero, going towards that Acid Western turf; he wants to get his horse back because it’s the key to him finally repaying Campos for everything his father did for Brando and he acts like a badass—he starts the movie confessing to a priest about all the men he’s killed—but it turns out, it’s all talk. Brando’s best scene—maybe only good scene—is when he talks about his inability to accomplish his mission. There’s some halfway good scenes in other parts, but it’s hard because Saxon’s effective without being good and Brando’s good without being effective.

A lot of the problem is the script—by James Bridges and Roland Kibbee–which tries not to be exciting. But then you’ve got Furie trying to bring tension to everything; he and editor Ted J. Kent also don’t know how to time the action for tension. It might just be Brando’s too laidback. The whole thing’s hard to take seriously. Again, if Furie knew why he was using the techniques he was using… it’d be better. The film’s sound design is way too bland. And the inserts in the third act—cutting from medium shots to close-ups—never match. Brando and sidekick Anjanette Comer are in one position in the two shot, in obviously different ones in their close-ups.

Comer’s a whole other thing, playing Saxon’s “wife.” She’s in a pound of brown face, she’s not very good, and her backstory is a mess.

Half okay, half bad music from Frank Skinner.

Good photography from Russell Metty.

The first act has its cringe moments, the second act’s plodding, but the movie does seem like it’s at least going to do something interesting. Then the third act is rushed and the finish itself pointlessly cops out. Unless Brando refused to shoot an actual ending.

But, yeah, could be worse. Probably couldn’t be any better though.

A Man for All Seasons (1966, Fred Zinnemann)

What’s so incredible about A Man for All Seasons is how big director Zinnemann makes it while keeping it small while keeping it big. The settings are big—palaces, estates, and so on—but Zinnemann keeps the set pieces small. He and cinematographer Ted Moore will do big establishing shots, but only after they’ve gotten into the details of the places. They incorporate the technique into the opening titles, then keep going with it throughout the film. The film’s all about the small actions and pettiness of important men, those establishing montages bring them down to Earth. Or at least establish a grounded Earth in which to play.

Georges Delerue’s regal but also demure score perfectly accompanies.

The film’s about Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield in a singular performance); he refuses to publicly support King Henry VIII’s first divorce. Robert Shaw plays the King; he’s great too. Only in it for a couple scenes, but great. And a grandiose enough performance to cast a shadow on the film after he’s established. You’ve got to believe Shaw can be so petty about Scofield not supporting him, without ever establishing Shaw’s regard for Scofield. At least, not until after Scofield’s pissed him off. Man for All Seasons has a wonderful sense of how to elucidate history—writer Robert Bolt (adapting his play) does “pepper” the exposition with historical detail, but only ever for the characters’ edification, not the audience’s. And when doing historical exposition, Bolt’s default is for the common man—or at least the more common man, let’s say still identifiable if not sympathetic upper middle class—not the nationstate politics. Yes, Scofield toggles between kingmakers and kings like Orson Welles and Shaw, but he also deals with ambitious bureaucrats like Leo McKern (and unambitious de facto ones like Nigel Davenport). His would-be protege, John Hurt, is just a man trying to make something of himself out of university and Scofield tries hard to protect him for the realities of corruption. For Scofield’s More, the corruption tends to have a religious bent but the film never particularly gets into the religiosity. Bolt, Zinnemann, and Scofield examine More’s actions and how his beliefs chart those actions, not the content of the beliefs. They’re kind of lucky to have More as the subject, as him not voicing any opinion whatsoever is what gets him into trouble. A man keeps his thoughts his own when in Tudor England, something Scofield tries to impart on friend and foe alike, which leads to some wonderful moments.

Scofield’s family also plays a big part. There’s wife Wendy Hiller, who doesn’t get much to do but is good, daughter Susannah York, who’s awesome and gets lots to do—sometimes just reacting; the film sets her up as Scofield’s intellectual heir, if she weren’t a girl anyway, and so her perception of the events and behaviors she experiences are another storytelling slate for Zinnemann and Bolt. Man for All Seasons is very quiet, very simple, very complicated. The film deliberates, even when it doesn’t have enough information (usually because Scofield’s keeping his mouth shut about it).

Scofield’s the protagonist; his actions and reactions drive the plot. A constant undercurrent is the story of ambitious, not entirely dim-witted, but morally corruptible Hurt, who ends up finding a mentor in McKern. Only McKern’s a jackass, power hungry bureaucrat jealous of Scofield’s intellectual powers (no matter what McKern accomplishes, Shaw’s never going to love him for his mind whereas Scofield manages to disrespect the King and maintain the intellectual regard). And Hurt’s aware he’s going to the Dark Side, providing yet another storytelling slate. Man for All Seasons never feels stagy, never feels like its a series of vignettes whether the most character development happens off screen, yet it is that series of vignettes. Zinnemann, Moore, Delerue, and editor Ralph Kemplen just make sure it never feels like one. Zinnemann maintains the importance of the film’s visual style even when the dramatics are center stage (Moore’s beautiful “natural” lighting helps), which allows for nimble style changes. It’s magnificently executed. Zinnemann’s direction is assured but never showy, confident but ambitious; the chances the film takes are almost exclusively on the actors—at least into the second act—and Zinnemann facilitates the performances, but the actors are the ones who have to nail the moment, which seems like it should lead to at least the acknowledgement of the stage adaptation but it never does. Because the film’s limited world is so big.

All of the acting is great. Some of the cast get to have more fun—Welles gets to have a lot of fun, McKern’s a delightful weasel—but the ones who have major constraints (Hurt’s weasel-in-training, Corin Redgrave’s obnoxiously Lutheran Lutheran who’s courting York) are still excellent. York, Davenport, and Hiller all deliver in some hard scenes; York and Davenport get the bigger ones, but Hiller’s got to do a lot in short amounts of time. The film often uses Hiller to establish character stuff for Scofield. She’s part of his ground situation, revealing more as the film progresses, without ever doing exposition dumps. Far from it. Hiller’s concise.

As for Scofield… the story’s about people wanting to hear what Scofield’s going to say next and the film’s about staring at Scofield and waiting to see what it’ll be. He’s in the spotlight the entire film. Great direction, great script, great supporting cast, but Man for All Seasons is Scofield’s performance. And it’s an exceptional one.

Mister Buddwing (1966, Delbert Mann)

Mister Buddwing is kind of amazing. And exceptional. But only if both those descriptors are used as pejoratives. Like. Wow. What a mess it is.

What’s funny is how director Mann maybe sees what he’s trying to do with the film but doesn’t see how he’s not achieving it. The film wants to be edgy mainstream and is instead occasionally rather painfully square. Most of the problem is leading man James Garner. He hasn’t got a handle on the performance—getting no help from Dale Wasserman’s screenplay and then somehow even less from Mann. Worse, Mann uses a lot of close-ups on Garner during the movie, usually for reaction shots, and he’s never good enough. He’s rarely ever giving a passing performance. Like, he just doesn’t get the part. No one does, apparently.

Garner wakes up in the first scene in Central Park, with Mann shooting in first person point of the view. The titles roll as Garner (we’ll soon find out) goes into the Plaza Hotel and looks at himself in a mirror. Pretty soon we figure out he’s an amnesiac who remembers absolutely no details of his life. Not even his name. He gets his first name from Angela Lansbury, who he calls when he finds her number in his pocket. Lansbury’s not great, but she’s a lot of fun. And the film will go awhile without any fun. So she should be in it more.

The last name he makes up coincidentally, narrating about it. Though it makes no sense why he so desperately needs a last name other than the script is trying to make the title’s relevance painfully clear. Garner’s narration is terrible. Poorly written, poorly delivered. And then it’s gone, which is weird because regardless of it being good or not, it makes sense. Garner spends a lot of the movie wandering around Manhattan by himself. It might help to know what’s going on since his expression has three varieties of blank. Blank ought to work for the character. Wooden even. But it doesn’t, because Buddwing is so amazing in how it never works.

There’s this amazing scene where Garner has been followed by an old man—the first half of the movie is lousy with over-interested supporting players talking to Garner so there can be exposition. Garner will eventually yell about how he can’t remember his identity; almost every scene has him yelling about not remembering. So the old man (George Voskovec) wants to blackmail Garner into being his manservant. It’s a weird, dumb scene and does absolutely nothing. Doing nothing would be fine if the film wanted to do nothing and, until that point, it seems like it might not want to do much. Garner has just had the first flashback scene, with Katharine Ross appearing as Garner’s years ago love interest. He thinks he knows her—in the present—then we get this long flashback sequence of obnoxiously cut together scenes—Fredric Steinkamp’s editing is really bad, both conceptually and practically (though a lot of both have got to be Mann’s fault)—where Ross plays the woman she’s not. Just in Garner’s imagination. Only it’s unclear how much of the flashback he remembers and how much of it is just for the audience’s edification. Narration might help clear it up. Even bad narration.

Only there isn’t any. There’s Voskovec harassing Garner instead.

It’s such a bad, deliberate move. Especially since the return to the present sequence opens up the film’s periphery as far as people go; Buddwing’s New York is really empty. Except cars. Mann’s inconsistent if there are people around Garner—who never interact because the film’s just the story of one ant among millions—sometimes there are montages with people in the background, sometimes the city’s empty. But there are always cars in the distance. It’s like they couldn’t get the shot they needed so they took the one they got and it didn’t work, which is pretty much the movie overall.

Eventually Suzanne Pleshette comes into the movie and then there’s a flashback where she plays the girl Ross had previously played. Later it’s Jean Simmons. Now, the flashback sequences are written even worse than the present, because they’re hurried along stylistically, but basically they’re all about Garner becoming more and more of an abusive shitheel. Now, the film would never characterize it as abuse, but it’s scary intense. Mann and Wasserman need to keep Garner sympathetic in the present so they have to demonize the “girls” in the past. They even do it in the present when Lansbury makes a too minor but very welcome near third act return.

Only then in comes Simmons and her present tense mystery woman—infinitely wealthy and drunk and with a past sounding just like the flashbacks and Garner’s memories. At least it seems like he remembers the flashbacks by the time the movie gets to Simmons. He never really shows it, not in performance or dialogue, but Wasserman’s script definitely implies it by the third act. We just missing it, even though the movie is supposed to be about Garner finding out his identity, not the audience finding it. Instead, the film informs the audience first, Garner offscreen. Dumb. And weird.

The third act actually has potential. It’s the strangest thing. If they’d pulled off the third act, Buddwing would probably work, even with Garner’s flat performance and Mann’s jarred direction. Because Simmons is fantastic. In the present. In the past she gets into the problem Ross and Pleshette had; Wasserman writes the part something awful. But in the present, just having fun, Simmons is fantastic. Makes up for Garner even.

Pleshette is affected in the present, but still sort of sympathetic. She’s nothing but sympathetic in the past because she gets the brunt of Garner’s abuse. It’s not really interesting—her affected present day performance—but at least it’s distinctive. Ross is background in her section, which seems weird since Lansbury at least gets her scenes. Ross just gets to be stalked. But in that genial sixties way because Wasserman’s shallow.

Strange small part for Jack Gilford—who wants to convince Garner he’s Jewish because Wasserman’s script is weird in addition to shallow. Joe Mantell’s terrible as a cabbie who seemingly tells Garner an important story. Raymond St. Jacques comes off best, even if he’s poorly written. He’s in the Simmons section and gets to enjoy in its heightened quality. Nichelle Nichols has a tiny part and is phenomenal. More than anything else in the film—even Simmons, who’s stuck with Garner—Nichols seems like she’s visiting from the alternate reality’s Mister Buddwing where it’s great. She definitely gets cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks’s best work in the film.

Fredericks shoots a really flat New York city, seemingly unintentionally. Or is it supposed to be so dull even when it’s obviously not.

Kenyon Hopkins’s score is similarly disjointed. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s wrong. The one thing the music needs to be right about, it’s never right about, even when it’s good. But it gets bad and wrong at some point near the third act and never gets any better. Even when Simmons shows up. She succeeds in the harshest of conditions.

Mister Buddwing would need to be seen to be believed. But it doesn’t need to be believed.

THIS POST IS PART OF THE ADORING ANGELA LANSBURY BLOGATHON HOSTED BY GILL OF REALWEEGIEMIDGET REVIEWS.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens with this gentle, lovely music from Alex North. It’s night, it’s a university campus, a couple is walking silently as the credits roll; the music’s beautiful. Then the couple–Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton–get home. And pretty soon they start yelling at each other. And they don’t stop until the end of the movie, some two hours away–unless they aren’t in a scene together.

Burton is a history professor and Taylor’s suffering husband. Taylor is the university president’s daughter and Burton’s suffering wife. The film starts with them getting home from a faculty party at two in the morning. They’re both drunk and so they start drinking some more. But Taylor has invited over a new professor and his wife so they’re going to have a middle-of-the-night party, much to Burton’s chagrin.

The guests are George Segal and Sandy Dennis. Dennis is a little tipsy when they arrive, but Segal’s basically sober. Burton–correctly–guesses Taylor agreed to host the welcoming party (at her never seen father’s request) because Segal is something of a young blond stud and up-and-comer, not a middle-aged fuddy-duddy career burnout like Burton.

As the film progresses, the group–there are only the four characters in the film (with two uncredited actors at a roadside bar later on)–breaks up and reforms. Taylor gives Dennis a tour of the house, offscreen, while Segal and Burton bond. More Segal realizes his hosts are majorly dysfunctional and wants to get out of there, but ends up sticking around, getting drunker, with Taylor getting bolder and bolder about hitting on him. Dennis is oblivious, Burton is quietly raging.

Eventually–once they’re drunker–Segal and Burton have another bonding moment, while–again–Dennis and Taylor are offscreen. Segal and Taylor get scenes together, Dennis and Burton get scenes together. And little by little, it becomes clear there’s a lot more going on than Taylor’s a drunk unfaithful wife to Burton’s sad sack, drunken academic failure.

Woolf is exceptional on every level. The way Nichols directs the actors. Ernest Lehman’s script–adapting Edward Albee’s play. The performances. That Alex North music. The Haskell Wexler black and white photography, which gives the viewer insight into these uncomfortable moments–like when Taylor starts flirting with Segal and Dennis is in the background and the scene’s not about Taylor’s flirtatious rambling but whether or not Dennis is catching up with what’s going on. And then what her awareness or lack thereof means given Burton’s in the room too.

Dennis has a bunch of surprises in store, narratively and performance-wise, for later in the film. Virginia Woolf gets disquieting before Segal and Dennis even show up at the house, because Taylor’s obviously unstable. Possibly dangerously unstable. The film’s revelations about Taylor and Burton to their guests (and the viewer) drives their character development. This revelation or that revelation calls back to a previous one and where there’s an–intentional or drunken–disconnect fuels the development. Dennis and Segal are different. There’s definitely some development through revelation, but they’re not the film’s subjects. They’re both messed up a little with secrets of their own, but it’s nothing compared to Taylor and Burton.

Taylor gets top-billing and the best monologue. Burton’s second-billed but the protagonist. His monologues are different. He’s not self-reflective drunk or sober. Taylor’s self-reflective sober. Well, sober for her. Burton’s always trying to stay one step ahead of Taylor while she’s just naturally devious and manipulative. They’re both exhausted–the story itself is a marathon, with the two couples getting drunker and drunker as the night goes on. Movie starts at two in the morning, ends four or so hours later. So not real-time, but fairly continuous action. All of the characters (and actors) exhibit the exhaustion in different ways. While Dennis and Segal are the guests and their exhaustion is tied to them being in someone else’s home, Taylor and Burton are sort of in their normal. Their terrifying normal. Exhaustion included.

The script has the dialogue level, with Burton trying to torment his guests with wordplay and maybe embarrass Taylor a little with it, and then the narrative. This development, that revelation, all perfectly plotted out. Nichols hits every one just right. He gets the intensity of the scenes, the dialogue, the performances, all beautifully shot by Wexler, then Sam O’Steen’s editing packages them all together into these astounding, draining scenes. There’s a lot of dread in Virginia Woolf, even if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be dreading. From the first moment after the peaceful opening titles, the film’s primed for an explosion.

Singular acting. Segal’s the least great and he’s still great. Taylor and Burton kind of duke it out for best performance. They’re very different parts with very different requirements. It’s incredible how well Nichols directs the film, given his two leads are operating at different speeds and different narrative distances. And then you throw in Segal and, especially, Dennis. She’s phenomenal in the film’s toughest part. Because she’s got to be quiet. Burton, Taylor, and even Segal all get to be loud but Dennis does this startling, quiet performance.

And even when it seems like you finally get Virginia Woolf as the film goes into the third act, it turns out there are still some big twists. The film’s biggest twist isn’t even its loudest. And the loudest one is head-blowing big.

Richard Sylbert’s production design–the house and its yard where the action mostly takes place (though the roadside bar is also great)–is stellar.

As I said before, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is exceptional. On every level. It’s “run out of positive adjectives” exceptional.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Mike Nichols; screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the play by Edward Albee; director of photography, Haskell Wexler; edited by Sam O’Steen; production designer, Richard Sylbert; music by Alex North; produced by Lehman; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Elizabeth Taylor (Martha), Richard Burton (George), George Segal (Nick), and Sandy Dennis (Honey).


THIS POST IS PART OF THE REGALING ABOUT RICHARD BURTON BLOGATHON HOSTED BY GILL OF REALWEEGIEMIDGET REVIEWS.

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Peanuts (1965) s01e02 – Charlie Brown’s All Stars!

Despite being all about baseball–specifically baseball games–“Charlie Brown’s All Stars!” barely has any logic to how its baseball works. It’s summertime and Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins) loses the kids’ first game of baseball for them. Although, really, no one else on the team is any good, but he’s the only one who wants to play so it’s all his fault.

He’s able to convince them to come back and play again because the hardware shop owner is willing to get them uniforms and back the team in the Little League. Only it turns out Little League teams can’t have dogs or girls on them, in that order, so Charlie Brown decides to lie about the uniforms and just inspire everyone to play well.

And they do. Probably. There’s not just no adults in “All Stars,” none of the other team appears either. Even during the baseball games. Even during the baseball game where it’d be real important for them to show up so there was some logic about how the kids are playing (and losing) the games. But they get enough hits to stay competitive in the game, though the other team only has two runs at the bottom of the ninth.

For as much as “All Stars” goes on about baseball, it never seems like writer Charles M. Schulz particularly cares about it, which is fine for comic strips, but not really for a narrative. Especially not one about baseball.

The baseball story line–which has Charlie Brown making a tough, but moral decision (though it’s not really a tough decision and the cartoon barely pretends it to be)–kind of finishes before the end, when Schulz goes for a different laugh and fumbles it. Lots of fumbles in the script. You can see the scene as a four panel comic strip and it just does not translate.

There are a handful of decent jokes–always involving Christopher Shea (as Linus) though he’s in the last one and it bombs–and there’s some cute animation. All the kids nonsensically have skateboards, if only so they can skateboard away from Charlie Brown and his promise of baseball. The Pigpen jokes all fall particularly flat and Sally’s one scene trying to tempt Linus in her bikini is… really awkward and sort of concerning. It’s a short scene though (even if the failing joke gets drug out), which is probably for the best.

Most of the performances are uneven. Shea’s best. Robbins’s rocky. Sally Dryer has more bad line readings than good as Lucy. Glenn Mendelson’s flat as Schroeder, who’s not in it enough for it to matter. But Karen Mendelson (as Violet) and Gabrielle DeFaria Ritter (as Shermy) are probably the most consistently good. All of Ann Altieri’s Freida moments–usually about her curly hair–flop except one.

“All Stars” just don’t have any narrative flow. It’s not rushed, but it’s kind of aimless. Melendez’s direction doesn’t have any personality–except avoiding the particulars of the baseball game. Sadly Vince Guaraldi’s score is minimal. More music might’ve helped.

Nothing really works right in “All Stars.” It’s too bad, but nothing really works from the start so it’s not particularly surprising.