FILM STARS: Kirk Douglas, Tom Burlinson, Terence Donovan, Sigrid Thornton, Jack Thompson, Tony Bonner, Chris Haywood, Gus Mercurio, Tommy Dysart, Bruce Kerr, David Bradshaw, June Jago, Lorraine Bayly, Kristopher Steele, Howard Eynon
COUNTRY: Australia
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Elyne Mitchell
TYPE: Novelisation
PUBLISHER: Pinnacle
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1982
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK (Poem)
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1890
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Adventure
WORDS: I only saw this film because Kirk Douglas was in it.
Now, some would say that is un-Australian, but being the son of migrants from continental Europe I have no affinity with the stories of the Australian bush, Banjo Paterson (on whose poem this is based), colonial Australia, or the Anglo-Celt history of the same.
Of course, my ethnicity has something to do with my ambivalence but that’s not the whole story. I read novels set in the US of the same era and I’m not American. I just find the Australian stuff less than rewarding.
As admirable as Australian bush poetry was in the 19 century – with Australia trying to find its own identity as a response to British hegemony – the hole banging on about it, (especially) in the republican 1970s, probably turned me off it … off the bush poetry not the republicanism.
It was everywhere in the 70s when I was a kid.
And then in the 80s people started to look at Australia’s colonial past with nostalgia, and a nostalgia largely removed from reality.
I’m not saying the (actual) history isn’t interesting, it is to a point, but I was pretty much over it.
Bush poetry is too colloquial, and its themes are rarely universal (or so it seems to me).
But it is well known here and much like the Australian national anthem everyone of my generation knows the first couple of lines of the poem (and that’s about it):
There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away …,
For me, any “poetry” in the lines is overwhelmed by the “old Australia” bush jingoism which follow Paterson and his poem.
The poem tells the story of a horseback pursuit by Australian bushmen to recapture the colt of a prizewinning racehorse that escaped from its owner and is living wild with the brumbies (wild horses) of the Australian mountain ranges in New South Wales.
As if a film wasn’t going to be made, especially after the mammoth success of another “horse” movie … The Black Stallion (1979)
So when this film came out there was a groan from a kid in Paddington, Brisbane.
Though as a Kirk Douglas fan and anal completist I required a viewing, so I saw it.
I subsequently forgot about the film despite it having Kirk and a some of my favourite Australian actors: (the great) Jack Thompson, Chris Haywood and American ex pat Gus Mercurio.
Kirk Douglas plays two roles, two brothers: one a wealthy cattle farmer, and the other a grizzled prospector, Kirk could often go over the top (and why not) and this is certainly in his (almost hammy) chewing up the scenery career phase. Kirk wasn’t adverse to broad strokes when required and here they let him run with it. Tom Burlinson (who does a great Frank Sinatra impersonation elsewhere) is the lead and he does a good job though he is too clean cut to be a bushman in my mind.
Beautiful landscape photography of Australian highland and scrub (which is rarely spectacular) and images of horses running are also merits.
People were expecting an (Australian) western which it’s not really, it’s more of a rural drama with action-adventure scenes. And that’s fine. I’m not sure why people assume all westerns have to be “shoot em ups”, they don’t (though they often are). With that in mind it comes off a bit Disney-ish or like an Australian version of My Friend Flicka (1943).
Director George Miller (Australian but Scottish born) is not the same director as other (and much better) George Miller (Australian born) of Mad Max fame.
Screenwriter John Dixon was sufficiently anachronistic to create an Australia (almost) devoid of anything but the off spring of the Anglo-Celts, which indigenous Australians and gold fields aside aside, it largely was.
The film’s screenplay contains numerous references to Banjo Paterson’s poem and injects him into the story as a character and throws in a passable story about a young man alone in the world who falls in love with the ranchers daughter.
A bestselling soundtrack of the same name (by Bruce Rowland) followed in 1982, as did a sequel The Man from Snowy River II (1988) as did a soundtrack to the sequel (Return to Snowy River (1988)), as did a TV series The Man from Snowy River (1993-1996), as did a musical theatre production (with horses and all) The Man from Snowy River: Arena Spectacular (2002) (I note that apart from some musical contribution from Bruce Rowland the stage musical has no great relationship to the 1982 film, its sequel or the TV series), as did a soundtrack The Man from Snowy River: Arena Spectacular (2002) as did a film of the theatre production The Man from Snowy River: Arena Spectacular (2003). Also, for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia Rowland composed a special Olympics version of The Man from Snowy River “Main Title” for the Olympic Games.
Groan.
An interesting note : the silent era film of the poem The Man from Snowy River (1920) is not dissimilar to the 1982 version with its love interest and deviation away from the actual poem.
The Man from Snowy River was a box-office success and the highest-grossing Australian film until Crocodile Dundee was released four years later in 1986.
The novelisation is by Elyne Mitchell, a perfect choice to do the same. She was a keen horse rider, resident of the Snowy Mountains and the author of the Silver Brumby (about wild horses in the Snowy Mountains of Australia) series of books for children and young adults. I suspect Banjo Paterson, John Dixon and her all speak and write the same language, and I don’t mean English.
I don’t need to read this and I don’t need to see the film again unless I’m on a Kirk Douglas retrospective.
FILM STARS: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, Richard Bright, Kiel Martin, Michael McClanathan, Warren Finnerty, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Raúl Juliá, Angie Ortega, Larry Marshall, Joe Santos, Paul Sorvino.
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: James Mills
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Sphere
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1971
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1966
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Drama
WORDS: Its been a while since I saw this film and read the book (did I read it? … I think so, I recall so …).
I recall the film more and even that is a little hazy. As a late teen in the 80s I was watching a lot of “edgy” late 1960s and early 1970s films, and there were lots of them. It suited my youthful angry and committed attitude of the time. I was an avid “old” movie watcher and, though hiding in plain sight, these films were a revelation because for the first time in mainstream Hollywood, nothing was off limits.
(Hard) Drug addiction films in Hollywood weren’t new – The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), A Hatful of Rain (1957), Monkey on My Back (1957), The Connection (1961), Synanon (1965) all dealt with drug addiction. But those films as good as they are, and they are all good and some are excellent, still had to tip toe around the grim down and dirty “realities” of drug addiction. The 1970s films could look at the problem with a new realism, though, oddly, the 1970s had relatively few cautionary tales when it came to drugs. I assume people were enjoying their drugs too much to care.
What this film does do is weave a love story into the drug addiction so in a way it predates the more well knows Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989).
The film put (the great) Al Pacino on the map. In his first lead role, Pacino plays the role of Bobby whose life is forever about the next score. He hangs out in “Needle Park” (a nickname at that time for Sherman Square on Manhattan’s Upper West Side near 72nd Street and Broadway – New York before it was cleaned up). He hooks up with Helen (Kitty Winn – her first film), a restless woman who finds him charismatic. She becomes an addict, and life goes downhill for them both as their addictions worsen, desperation and darkness become the norm, and all roads lead to a series of betrayals.
Author James Mills was a reporter for Life magazine and he drew upon his firsthand experience of New York City’s junkie underworld (in the mid 60s) to write this fictionalized account of a love affair between two junkies (he wrote an article about them before the book). Apparently, Mills spent months with a small-time street hustler and his girlfriend, a middle-class Midwesterner reduced to prostitution. Mills’ observations of their desperate struggle to score heroin during a shortage and their addiction is the whole story arc of the book, and it’s harrowing, without taking sides and without being preachy or moralistic. It is very “matter of fact”. It’s all about the nuts and bolts of drug addiction.
This is where the film departs from Mills’ novel … the film has the same characters, the drugs, and the setting, but concentrates more on the love story of Bobby and Helen.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
The film still refuses to preach or take sides but knows an audience needs to be invested in the characters and their lives, and knows it can’t just dwell on the drugs. The film shows the dangers of codependency crossed with addiction, and how a once positive relationship gradually decays into something unsustainable. It does this while avoiding all the usual stereotypes (though, perhaps, creating a few) by treating the story as a romantic drama with drugs. The love story here (and it’s not saccharine) gives you that. It is, perhaps, a hard drug version of (the wonderful) The Days of Wine and Roses (1962).
The story is basically a two part-er and both actors are great with Pacino especially good before he created the Pacino film persona. Fellow New Yorkers Raul Julia (first film) and Paul Sorvino (second film) and Joe Santos (seventh film) have small roles. Jewish New Yorker Jerry Schatzberg wasn’t prolific but always made thoughtful dramas which weren’t stagnant – Scarecrow (1973) (also with Pacino), The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), Misunderstood (1984), Street Smart (1987), Reunion (1989).
The film adaptation, written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, who were married to each other and collaborated on a number of screenplays including – A Star Is Born (1976), and True Confessions (1981). And they worked well together. Dunne was a journalist who knew history and politics and Didion a novelist and essayist who was particularly perceptive and poetic (her collection “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968) is especially good).
Panic in Needle Park wouldn’t get much attention at the Academy Awards (though actress Winn won the Best Actress Award at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival and director, Jerry Schatzberg, was nominated for the Palme d’Or – the Oscars … always missing things), it’s too gritty for that and even now it is still quite confronting and realistic. I note here that Mills in his book treats (if I recall correctly) heroin addiction as more of a psychological dependency than a physical addiction. We know now it’s both.
Read the book, see the film.
I wonder what became of the young fictionalised real people Bobby and Helen – did they quite heroin, remain together, grow old?
TRIVIA
Director Schatzberg photographed for magazines such as Vogue, Esquire and McCalls. As a still photographer he also took the cover photo of the Bob Dylan album Blonde on Blonde, released in 1966 (A collection of his images of Dylan titled Thin Wild Mercury was released in 2006)
Author Mills also wrote Report to the Commissioner (1972) another journalist type novel about undercover cops and drugs in New York, which became a film of the same name in 1975.
SCREENWRITER: Lewis Gilbert, Vernon Harris (additional scenes)
FILM STARS: Kenneth More, Muriel Pavlow, Lyndon Brook, Lee Patterson, Alexander Knox, Dorothy Alison, Michael Warre, Nigel Green, Eric Pohlmann, Michael Gough, Anton Diffring
COUNTRY: Britain
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Paul Brickhill
TYPE: Biography
PUBLISHER: Fontana
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1957
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1954
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: War
WORDS: The British film industry seemed to be inundated with World War 2 films in the 1950s. There were dozens of them. They were mainly set in the European theatre of war with only a handful set in the Pacific theatre (I assume that is because there was nothing for them to crow about there).
Reach for the Sky (1956) is one of the most famous of the English WW2 films (it won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film of 1956 and was the most popular British film of the year). It is, also, I think, one of the most dreary of their WW2 films.
Apparently my lack of appreciation may be due to the fact I am Gen x
Filmink later argued the film “became acknowledged as a classic, unfairly mocked by Gen-X critics who were forced to watch it on television too many times, and who forget that the film was made by people and for audiences who had been through that conflict, many of whom had seen people die, and could view it in proper context.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reach_for_the_Sky
I dispute that. My Gen X antecedents don’t prevent me from enjoying many other British war films from the 50s as well as propaganda war films from the 40s.
So, no, it’s just dreary.
The story of Douglas Bader is inspirational though apparently, according to a war buff friend of mine, the Bader character in the film (and perhaps in the biography) has been made more likeable than he was in real life.
Bader joined the RAF in 1928 and was injured in an aircraft accident which resulted in both his legs being amputated. He received prosthetic legs and at the outset of the war returned to the RAF and flew fighters during the Battle of Britain. He became a fighter ace (he was credited with 22 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probable, one shared probable and 11 enemy aircraft damaged). He was shot down in 1941, and only survived when he jettisoned from his aircraft in dramatic circumstances. One of his prosthetic legs was caught in the plane and he couldn’t jump free, his parachute had opened, which eventually caused his leg’s retaining strap to snap under the strain and he was pulled free. He was captured and sent to a German POW camp, he escaped, and was recaptured. He was such a nuisance that he was repeatedly moved from one POW camp to another, finally ending up in Colditz Castle. He was liberated after four years of captivity in 1945 by the First United States Army.
No wonder a biography and a film were made of him.
It may all be true, or largely true, but the film plays as if it was made during World War 2. There are no shades to Bader and the film comes across as a series of scenes building up to a flag waving ending.
Kenneth More is fine, and is the whole show. He plays Bader in the non nonsense unflappable way he played most of his characters, dramatic or comedic. There is no mid-century doubt or flaws in his character, or relatively little, he portrays Bader as if the film were a war movie made in 1944. There is nothing wrong with that though the film is a biopic as well as a war movie. Director Lewis Gilbert could do action dramas in his sleep (The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954), Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), Carve Her Name With Pride (1956), Ferry to Hong Kong (1959), Sink the Bismark! (1960), H.M.S. Defiant (1962), The 7th dawn (1964)), as well as comedy dramas (Alfie (1966), Educating Rita (1983)) and straight comedies (The Admirable Crichton (1957) Light Up the Sky! (1960)), and big budget action ((Operation Daybreak (1975)), James Bond (You Only Live Twice (1967), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)) and even horror (Haunted (1995)). And with the exception of the horror and Bond all the other genres he tackled are here in Reach for the Sky. And this is the problem. There is too much crammed in making the film are series of “acts” rather than a film (a problem with many biopics). Each one of the pivotal events in Bader’s life could have been a film by itself. When all are incorporated, following each other, with their own trajectories and resolutions the film becomes a very bitty. Acts should have bled into each other and there should have been a (strong) story arc in the background. With the flag waiving it becomes so much “ho hum”.
This and and the equally popular The Cockleshell Heroes (1955) are probably the least satisfactory of the 1950s English war films set in the European theatre. You would do much better with Gift Horse (1952), The Key (1958), Sea of Sand (1958), Morning Departure (1950), Above Us the Waves (1955), Appointment in London (1953), The Cruel Sea (1953), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Malta Story (1953), The One That Got Away (1957 film), They Who Dare (1954) and then the stodgy but entertaining The Wooden Horse(1950), The Dam Busters (1955), and I Was Monty’s Double (1958).
I’m not inclined to read the book (which the film is faithful to in spirit if not in detail apparently) though no doubt it would be readable. Author Paul Brickhill (1916-1991) was an Australian fighter pilot, prisoner of war, and author who wrote Escape to Danger (with Conrad Norton) (1946), The Great Escape (1950), The Dam Busters (1951) and others, the last two being the basis of successful films. But Brickhill was a journalist, not a historian, who was writing a heart-warming and romanticised tale for commercial purposes. His Bader (and the one portrayed by More) was often far removed from the actual Douglas Bader, and unrecognisable by many (apparently) who served with him. Bader was stubborn, dogmatic, uncompromising, invariably knew best and only a team player when he was the leader of the team. He was also a product of his socio-educational background, he was patriotic, an imperialist and tended to see things in an us or them lens. I’m not sure if that’s what made his remarkable achievement in overcoming his disability, learning to walk on artificial limbs, and returning to operational flying, what it was, which is inspirational. Bader in the film overcomes every obstacle with relative ease and without (much) help (maybe he did in real life – I don’t know). But Bader, despite his comedic asides in the film, also remains one dimensional.
The not dissimilar film The Wings of Eagles (1957) by John Ford based on the life of World War 1 aviator Frank “Spig” Wead, who breaks his neck in a fall, is paralyzed, learns to walk again, before becoming a Hollywood screenwriter and then returns to active sea duty with the Navy in World War II is a more satisfying film. Wead’s achievements may be more modest than Bader’s but the film, which also covers many episodes in the man’s life and veers from slapstick comedy to drama, has a emotional (and central) arc running through the film – Wead’s relationship with his wife. It may be pure Hollywood but it makes the film feel like a film rather than a series of events. The colour, the great cast (John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara), the bigger budget and the usual high quality direction by John Ford don’t hurt either.
Bader’s story is, perhaps, ready for another film.
FILM STARS: Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene, Herbert Jefferson Jr., Maren Jensen, Tony Swartz, Noah Hathaway, Terry Carter, Lew Ayres, Wilfrid Hyde-White, John Colicos, Laurette Spang, Jane Seymour, Ray Milland, Ed Begley Jr., Rick Springfield, Randi Oakes, David Matthau.
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston
TYPE: Novelisation
PUBLISHER: Futura
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1978
COUNTRY: Australia
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1978
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Sci Fi
WORDS: In the wake of Star Wars (1977) all sorts of big(ger) budgeted sci fi films (The Black Hole (1979), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Superman (1978), Time After Time (1979), Alien (1979), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Battle Beyond the Stars (1981), Flash Gordon (1980), Saturn 3 (1980), Outland (1981)) and TV series (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981), Jason of Star Command (1978–1981)) appeared, and … of all that came immediately after, Battlestar Galactica (along with Star Trek) was perhaps the best suited to challenge the all encompassing behemoth that was Star Wars.
This film (now known as “Saga of a Star World”) started out as a pilot, an expensive one, for the television series of the same name It was re edited and released as a stand alone film on both television and in cinemas. It was a big hit.
The television show, Battlestar Galactica (1978–1979), that followed was cancelled after a season despite being popular at the time. It was, initially, a ratings success, but was cancelled in mid-April 1979 due to declining audiences, though the decline in audience may have something to do with changing its time slot to a less lucrative one. The shows cost was always a problem with the television network as well.
Its cancellation didn’t stop the fandom. It developed a cult and pop culture following spawning a media franchise which included comics, theme park attractions, games, and sequels.
“Battlestar Galactica … began with the original television series in 1978, and was followed by a short-run sequel series, Galactica 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games. A reimagined version aired as a two-part, three-hour miniseries developed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick in 2003, followed by a 2004 television series, which aired until 2009. A prequel series, Caprica, aired in 2010”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica
As an aside I note that those kids at the time who loved the original film and TV show grew up, and were the ones who rebooted the show. As with many of these 70s era reboots the frivolous joy of science fiction escapism one enjoyed as a teen had to be put to one side. People grow up, they can’t be frivolous, purely escapist in attitude, or light in outlook …. and this is something that affected (adversely). All the reboots – Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron, Terminator became increasingly darker and more serious and even the already serious sci fi – Alien, Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes became even more serious and darker, if that is possible. FFS it’s sci fi not theology.
This film, the pilot, is full of great 1970s special effects and like Star Wars (1977) it’s primarily an adventure with a serious backstory (something that flipped on the reboots on both films). It has its own universe, characters who represent values and types, and its own internal history. At the time it was considered the poor man’s version of Star Wars which is a pity as the story is compelling.
In a distant star system twelve colonies of humans, living on different worlds, have been fighting a one thousand year war against the robotic race, the Cylons, who seek to exterminate all of humanity. The Cylons have unexpectedly sued for peace. But the plan is a trap. Only Commander Adama, of the battlestar Galactica has doubts and survives with his ship the slaughter of humanity. With the Colonies in ruins, Adama collects as many survivors as possible, and orders every intact civilian ship to take survivors, follow the Galactica and flee to a better world of legend. They hope that the Galactica can protect this ragtag fleet long enough to find that legendary thirteenth human colony. A planet called Earth.
It is an adventure but the cylons genocidal hated of humans is aped in the terminator movies and perhaps, also, takes inspiration from the religious haltered the east had for the west and Jews in the 70s (and more recently). There is something more than a little religious in Adama’s leadership and search for a new world.
There are also similarities to both Star Wars and Star Trek. And in a case of make sure there are no skeletons in your wardrobe: “In June 1978, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (producers of Battlestar Galactica) for plagiarism, copyright infringement, unfair competition, and Lanham Act claims, claiming it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from their 1972 film Silent Running, notably the robot “drones”, and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s. 20th Century Fox’s copyright claims were initially dismissed by the trial court in 1980, then the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remanded the case for trial in 1983. It was later “resolved without trial”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of_a_Star_World
Glen A. Larson (creator of the television series Alias Smith and Jones, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, Quincy, M.E., The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, B. J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider) was the creator and executive producer of Battlestar Galactica. He claims he had conceived of the Battlestar Galactica premise, which he called Adam’s Ark, during the late 1960s (he had had been working on the concept since 1968 with former Star Trek producer Gene L. Coon mentoring him in its early development). The series incorporated many themes from Mormon theology, such as marriage for “time and eternity”, a “council of twelve”, a lost thirteenth tribe of humans, and a planet called Kobol (an anagram of Kolob – Kolob is a star or planet described in the Book of Abraham, a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement). A coincidence? Probably not as Larson was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Battlestar Galactica was finally produced in the wake of the success of Star Wars (1977) and underwent a name change from “Adam’s Ark”, allegedly, because Larson was convinced to include the word “star” in the title to capitalize on Star Wars, hence Battlestar Galactica. Well, there was probably other easons – it also sounds tougher than Adam’s Ark or even something like Adam’s Starark.
Oddly, the film, and the concept to the film, strikes me as owing more than a little to John Ford’s masterpiece Wagonmaster (1950) (whose television non official spinoff Wagon Train (1957–1965) was an inspiration to Star Trek) about a Mormon wagon train circa 1880, led by the Elder Wiggs, escaping persecution and heading west to the promised land of the San Juan River country. Along the way the wagon train is joined by a ragtag assortment of people, a stranded medicine show troupe, some cowboy drifters, a peaceful band of Navajo indians, and together they face bad weather, and a malevolent slightly psychotic outlaw family, the Clegg gang. Given larson was a Mormon and this was one of the few classic films to have Mormons as characters this can’t be a coincidence.
For what is then, ostensibly, a space western it is perfect casting to have Lorne Greene as Commander Adama. His father, patriarch, and landowner figure, Ben Cartwright, in the ultra successful western series Bonanza (1959-1973) was ingrained in the mind of people across the world. Adama was just Cartwright in space. The other two male leads (the show was heavy on male leads, much like Bonanza) are Richard Hatch as Captain Apollo and Dirk Benedict as Lieutenant Starbuck. Like Han Solo (especially in the case of Starbuck) they are essentially space cowboys and they provide the action and humour. The rest of the cast is peppered with familiar stars of years past Lew Ayres, Ray Milland, Wilfrid Hyde-White and up and coming youngsters Ed Begley Jr. Australian singer Rick Springfield and Jane Seymour. The film, being a TV pilot, has a TV feel at times but the budget hides some of the (then) TV limitations.
The film was a box office hit and rightly so ..it is entertaining and manages to capture the balance between adventure and drama.
The novelisation is a straight novelisation. Though there are differences between the film and the TV series that followed it the novelisation seems to follow the film. Many other books followed all written by Glen A. Larson with other co-authors. Co-author here, Robert Thurston (28 October 1936 – 20 October 2021), was a prolific science fiction author well known for his works in popular shared world settings The books were critically disparaged, but proved popular, with this, the first novel, selling over a million copies within its first year.
TRIVIA
Larson also was a member of the folk revival/satire group The Four Preps.
In the 1990s, Hatch attempted to revive Battlestar Galactica. He began writing novels based on the series (Hatch wrote a series of seven tie-in novels set in the original Battlestar Galactica universe)
FILM STARS: James Stewart, Audie Murphy, Dan Duryea, Dianne Foster, Elaine Stewart, Brandon deWilde, Jay C. Flippen, Herbert Anderson, Robert J. Wilke, Hugh Beaumont, Jack Elam, Tommy Cook, Paul Fix, Olive Carey, James Flavin, Donald Curtis, Ellen Corby, John Daheim, Kenny Williams, Henry Wills, Chuck Roberson, Tommy Cook
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Norman Fox
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Fontana
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1958
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1956
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Western
WORDS: I have had the rare benefit of both reading this novel and re-watching this film withing short compass of each other recently.
So, similarities and dissimilarities between novel and film are fresh in mind.
And there are a few and they, if nothing else, indicate how novels are adapted for the screen to suit the needs of screenwriters, but also more importantly, the needs of producers, actors with star power and directors.
This film is usually described as “picturesque” but “routine”.
Yes, it is picturesque but within its limitations it is a superior entertainment.
Most of the criticism arises from the fact that the film was meant to be another pairing of director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart who were on a roll making some of the best westerns of the 1950 (Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954), and The Man from Laramie (1955)) as well as the non-westerns Thunder Bay (1953), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955)).
Eight films in five years … and all hits. All, also, well regarded at the time and most highly regarded now.
Another Mann and Stewart western was considered a sure bet.
Mann signed on but pulled out before production began.
There are many reasons advanced but who knows what the true story is. Lazy assumptions are always made by armchair pop culture historians and even where there may be some evidence to support conclusions sometimes the reasons advanced are only one of many reasons … even if they come from the horse’s mouth. ie: What I say flippantly may be true or not, may be taken out of context, may be my response on a “bad hair” day, may be only part of a story, may be me looking for a reason, or may be someone’s interpretation of my words.
Worse still, sometimes, pop culture historians look for “exciting” reasons rather than humdrum ones.
Like any case a full interview with participants would settle it, failing that, several circumstantial facts all pointing to the same conclusion would have some weight.
Here, it’s suggested Anthony Mann pulled of the project because:
He had obligations on other projects;
He thought the script was weak;
He disagreed over the casting of Audie Murphy;
He fell out with Stewart who he felt was only making the film so he could play his accordion. Apparently, this enraged Stewart so much that the two didn’t speak again.
Where the truth is I don’t know, but,
Perhaps there is some truth to other obligations as Night Passage was filmed Oct 1956 – Dec 1956 and Mann’s superior The Tin Star (1958) with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins which filming on and around Oct 22, 1956. There is also a suggestion, in a February 1956 HR news item (some 6 months before filming?) that he withdrew from the film to finish editing Men in War (1957) which he was co-producing (so had money in it). It’s hard to say at he was still filming that film around July 9, 1956.
Yes, perhaps the script lacks the psychological intensity of Mann’s other westerns but only just. It was screen written by Borden Chase who also wrote Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Far Country (1954) for Mann so I doubt that would have caused him to pull out. Chase gave him the framework for him to work his magic.
Audie was a big star, and his role is relatively modest and against type (he clearly wanted to do the film and so accepted something smaller than normal) and Mann had worked with all sorts of personality actors in films so I doubt that disagreeing with Murphy’s casting would have been the main reason.
Mann made eight films with Stewart before this and knew him, and no doubt his fondness for the accordion. Why leave?
I’ll take scheduling as the main reason for him pulling out (one film drags out, effects the next one, which effects the one that follows) but that’s never going to be as interesting as the other reasons.
Despite Mann leaving the film still works .. it is spectacular looking (much of it filmed on location in Silverton, Animas Canyon and Durango, Colorado) on the big screen at home but would be even better on the real big screen. It was one of the first produced in the Technirama widescreen process. Like VistaVision, the 35mm camera negative ran through the camera horizontally rather than vertically, exposing eight perforations-width frames rather than four perforations high, which made the image twice as sharp as CinemaScope, and other widescreen movies. Though in some theatres the large-frame negative was reduced to regular 35mm ‘scope prints”.
It was photographed by William Daniels who had done many films and had worked with Stewart a lot going back to the 1930s. He had also done Winchester ’73 (1950), Thunder on the Hill (1950), Thunder Bay (1952), The Glenn Miller Story (1953), The Far Country (1953), Strategic Air Command (1954) for Mann.
The script by Borden Chase excelled in the familial conflict and good vs evil westerns, most notably Red River (1948).
Director James Neilson was mainly a theatre and TV director, and this was his first film. With the team around him it comes off well though not distinctive. Neilson only did about 14 films mainly for Disney and a lot of television. Apparently, Stewart chose the director having been impressed with him when he worked with him on two (western) episodes of the anthology series General Electric Theater (The Windmill (1955) and The Town with a Past (1957))
I think the problem with the film is the script which feels a little truncated Some of the characters are a little underwritten or seem to have had motivation scenes cut. Normally I would say it is unlikely to be Borden Chase (given his form), and likely to be the result of producer tampering. Here the producer was Aaron Rosenberg and he, also has a proven track record with both Stewart and Mann (he produced Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), Thunder Bay (1953), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), The Far Country (1954)) and Audie Murphy (producing Gunsmoke (1953), To Hell and Back (1955), World in My Corner (1956), Walk the Proud Land (1956), Joe Butterfly (1957)) as well as producing the good looking and thoughtful westerns The Man from the Alamo (1953), Saskatchewan (18954), Man Without a Star (1955), Backlash (1956), The Badlanders (1958).
Audie’s role (as the niftily named The Utica Kid) is quite small, and he isn’t nasty enough. He is more dark and edgy than in his normal roles which is great because knowing Audie’s history (personal, military and film) there is a darkness behind the boyish face which was rarely explored. It’s hinted here but that’s it. Worse still Stewart and Murphy are meant to be brothers …. they don’t seem to be born of the same mother in looks or in personality. Dan Duryea plays the villain here, a role he has played many times though here, he too seems to have a truncated role leaving only a lot of shouting. The female leads are marginal but rightly or wrongly they often were in these types of westerns (the more well-known Dorothy Malone had been cast but left the production after she was denied “preferred billing”). Brandon de Wilde as the kid is fine. Interestingly Paul Fix (John Wayne’s good friend and an occasional member of John Ford’s stock company) plays a railroader call Mr Feeney (director Ford’s real name) … a tribute perhaps? Ellen Corby (later of the Waltons) plays his wife. Robert J. Wilke and Jack Elam as henchmen are perfect.
The book is a solid western read. Author Norman Fox wrote around 30 westerns in 20 years. Coincidentally he wrote another novel Roughshod (1951) which became a western for Audie, Gunsmoke (1953).
He is well regarded if not highly regarded. The book here doesn’t have the psychological intensity I suspect the film was looking for, but it does have a lot of colour and detail. Fox’s stories were often set around actual events in Montana history and contained authentic detail for the period.
Whereas the film tries to concentrate on the story of two brothers on opposite sides of law (like Winchester ’73 (1950)) the novel fleshes out all the smaller characters around them that provide the backstory to their antagonism.
The story is tightened up for the film. There are subplots done away with, the female characters are reduced to posts the males can latch onto or launch off, so much so that in the film the character of Verna Kimball, who had a relationship with Stewart’s character, Grant McLaine (McLain in the book), is railroad camp head Ben Kimball’s wife in the book she is his daughter, with a fiancée from back east though that doesn’t stop her “using” Stewart. Likewise, the girl in love with Audie and Jimmy, “Charlie” Drew, spends much time in the book agonising over which brother to choose whereas in the film she flips pretty quickly. In the novel she had dated McLaine before the Utica kid took her away – no suggestion of that in the film. Otherwise, the action in the book (like the climactic gunfight in a saloon) is moved outdoors to make use of the location shooting.
The film also makes use of the actors’ personas … Stewart is a much more twitchy and neurotic (as he was in most Mann westerns) than the hero in the book, Dan Duryea’s Curly it more unhinged, Audie is more of a hero.
The film is not bad on its own terms and the book is a good late night read on a train, plane or bus.
FILM STARS: Richard Widmark, Sonja Ziemann, Charles Régnier, Walter Rilla, Senta Berger, Howard Vernon, Heinz Moog, Hubert von Meyerinck, Oskar Wegrostek, Stefan Schnabel, Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel, Helmut Janatsch.
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Alistair MacLean
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Fontana
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1961
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1959
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The Last Frontier
NOTES
GENRE: Action Thriller, Cold War
WORDS: I love cold war era skullduggery type films. I love their black and white outlook on the world. It is tempting to say that the world wasn’t black or white but I suspect now, with the passing of time, that one could say to look at the cold war as black or white is entirely appropriate.
The collapse of communism (replaced nowadays with fundamentalism and nationalism or a mix of both) in such a rapid fashion after the cracks appeared indicates everything. Dyed in the wool leftists (as I thought I was once) will have an excuse for everything … the West outmanoeuvred the Eastern Bloc, the USA used their economic might to compel the communists to gear money to arms rather than social welfare which caused the collapse of communism, the Communist states were not proper communist states). All this may be true but it is also clear the Eastern Bloc was a house of cards. From the first day only repression kept people in line. A buoyant economy may have kept them happy for a time (the buoyant economies were never buoyant for long) but they were only marginally happy as the buoyant economy came with repression, censorship and restrictions on religion and speech.
Once communism went, it went quickly. There were some who lived there and shed a tear, but not many. Only in the educated West did you get any support, sympathy or excuses made for the former communist regimes … regimes those people never lived under. In the former Eastern Bloc the stigma of communism remains, if it didn’t there would be no need for the parties of the far left to distance them from the old style communists and use “green”, or “socialist” or “liberal” in their names.
At the time though if it wasn’t so tragic it would be funny. The amount of people escaping (yes, “escaping” as there was no migration for 20 to 30 years after World War 2) from those countries by any means possible was akin to something out of a slapstick comedy.
All the Eastern Bloc nations were repressive, but they weren’t equally repressive. My parents, Croatians, escaped Yugoslavia which was relatively (perhaps) benign compared to Czechoslovakia (as it then was), East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and the puppet master that is the Soviet Union but that doesn’t mean you didn’t go to jail for looking sideways, it didn’t mean you could get ahead if you weren’t a member of “the party”, it didn’t mean there weren’t inequities and inequalities which were supported by law, it didn’t mean there wasn’t a new dominant class who preached brotherhood for all but failed to implement it. Everyone is equal but some are more equal than other … to paraphrase some author.
And that, perhaps, is yet another difference between the East and the West. The West was not without inequality, but they tried through law to address the same, and if that failed the people would point out why (though, perhaps, without much success). The East had similar laws though they were only tinsel. There was no desire to enforce them, and criticism and discussion was forbidden.
And there was no hiding it, internally or externally. No attempt even. There was no real attempt by communists to pretend that communist society was anything other than what it was.
It was easy then to paint the world in black and white, and Hollywood was very good at, and leant itself to such black and white storylines.
There were many interesting cold war films made, set in the US (The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Big Jim McLain (1952), The Fearmakers (1958), North By Northwest (1959), Pickup on South Street (1953)), or the Far East (Blood Alley (1955), Soldier of Fortune (1955), Hong Kong (1952)) as well as in Europe (The Third Man (1949), Torn Curtain (1966). Man on a Tightrope (1953), The Journey (1959), Diplomatic Courier (1952)).
MacLean’s book is black and white … there are good guys (from the West) and bad guys (the Communists). He isn’t into politics or history but gives enough background (perhaps a little more than normal in this book) to create an espionage thriller inspired by the events surrounding the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
James Bond may be the height and most well known of the cold war spy characters but he is, in book and especially in film, a superman.
Here the protagonist, Michael Reynolds, is a British secret agent who doesn’t have gadgets or superskills. He is more real though not as “real” as the spies that would populate John le Carre novels later. Reynolds is sent on a wintertime mission to Hungary at the height of the Cold War to rescue an elderly British scientist who is held by the communist government against his will.
MacLean writes exciting adventures with enough of a foot on the road to stop his stories from taking off on fanciful flights, and importantly, he writes stories that are filmable.
His novel The Guns of Navarone (1957) was in film production, a big budget production as The Secret Ways (based on his novel The Last Frontier (1959) ) on a smaller budget was being filmed in Zurich and Vienna. The Secret Ways would be released first, becoming the first of the many Alistair MacLean film adaptations.
It’s a great little film … all black and white and of course adapted for American audiences.
Michael Reynolds here becomes a (more cynical and in it for the money) American adventurer hired by an international espionage ring to smuggle a noted scholar and resistance leader, Professor Jansci, out of Communist-ruled Hungary.
Star Richard Widmark, whose production company produced the film, was a bit of a liberal but he had no problems with the story which he called “an anti-Communist thing” which “had nothing to do with my [personal] politics.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Ways
Widmark’s wife, Jean Hazlewood, adapted the novel, her only screen credit. I suspect Widmark may have had a hand in the script but took no credit (he married his wife in 1942 and they were together until her death in 1997) because he was producing the film through his company.
The script is heavy on realism, well, realism surrounding the action. I suspect Widmark was looking for something in mood like his earlier cold war actioners Pickup on South Street (1953) and Hell and High Water (1954).
(The great) Phil Karlson was the perfect director for this or rather would have been five years earlier. Karlson was a master of injecting realism via brutal violence and unsentimental characters into films. He was on a roll in the 50s with masterpieces like Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), The Phenix City Story (1955), The Brothers Rico (1957) as well as superior entertainments Scandal Street (1952), They Rode West (1954), Tight Spot (1955), 5 Against the House (1955), Gunman’s Walk (1958), Hell to Eternity (1960). But, apparently, Karlson wanted something lighter – whether he is recalling this later as a result of hindsight in a post Bond world or not I don’t know – “Widmark hired him on the basis of The Phenix City Story because “he wanted to try to get realism in it” and the director told him “I wanted to do it as a James Bond. But he hadn’t heard of James Bond. I said, “If we do this tongue in cheek, we’ll be the first ones.” He said, “No, I don’t want to do it that way”.” Karlson says he left for the last week of filming (Widmark directed the last week uncredited). Years later, after Karlson made The Silencers (and the Wrecking Crew), a Bond-style spoof, he says Widmark tried to get him to do three more pictures. The director said, “He realized we’d have had, maybe, the first picture that would have taken him out of the role of the guy who kicks the old lady down the steps (referring to Widmark’s famous nasty tour de force in Kiss of Death (1947)).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Ways
Interestingly, apparently, Karlson was Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s first choice to direct their first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), but they were forced to decline him after he asked for too high of a salary.
Certainly, in the early 60s Karlson was moving away from the tight crime dramas and westerns he had made his name on and tackling romantic drama The Young Doctors (1961), musical drama – the excellent Elvis film (though not without its violence) Kid Galahad (1962), and an adventure film set in Malaysia, Rampage (1963).
In any event the decision to concentrate on realism is not a bad one. There is a lot of cold war atmosphere in this film and that is much of its attraction (filming in Europe helps also), and there was an appetite for such films even as Bond rose … The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) was a success.
The cast is great. Widmark was never a conventional hero. He was always shifty, or rather, he was at his best when brutally pragmatic. The rest of the cast is populated by German and Austrian actors, which just adds to the cold war realism.
A much underrated film based on one of the best MacLean novels.
FILM STARS: Talulah Riley, Rupert Everett, Jodie Whittaker, Gemma Arterton, Kathryn Drysdale, Juno Temple, Antonia Bernath, Amara Karan, Tamsin Egerton, Lily Cole, Paloma Faith, Holli Mckee, Cloi Mckee, Russell Brand, Lena Headey, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, Mischa Barton, Stephen Fry
COUNTRY: Britain
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Pippa Le Quesne
TYPE: Novelisation
PUBLISHER: Penguin
THIS EDITION
PUBLISHED: 2008
COUNTRY: Australia
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: Ronald Searle
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1950s
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: St. Trinian’s School series of books (Hurrah for St Trinian’s (1948), The Female Approach (1950), Back to the Slaughterhouse (1952), The Terror of St Trinians or Angela’s Prince Charming (1952), Souls in Torment (1953))
NOTES
GENRE: Satire
WORDS: Sometimes you look at the books you have and think, how did that get there?
That is the case here
A pretty ordinary film which will not lead me to read the novelisation.
The Girls of St Trinian’s films are a British comedy institution much like, though not as good as, the “Carry On” or “Doctor” films.
St Trinian’s originated as a British gag cartoon comic strip series, created and drawn by Ronald Searle which ran from 1946 until 1952. Interestingly Searle’s first St Trinians cartoon was draw in 1941. He subsequently went to war and was captured and a prisoner of the Japanese. The cartoons that came out after the war were, perhaps understandably, darker.
The setting, the St Trinian’s school, is a madhouse. The teachers are sadists and the girls are juvenile delinquents. The humour is anti authorian and barbed. “Cartoons often showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or succumbed to violent team sports, sometimes with vultures circling; girls drank, gambled and smoked”.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Trinian%27s_School
The cartoon strip was popular.
Films followed starting with The Belles of St. Trinian’s in 1954, with sequels in Blue Murder at St Trinian’s (1957), The Pure Hell of St Trinian’s (1960), The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966), The Wildcats of St Trinian’s (1980).
The 50s films are fun if for no other reason than the casts are a who’s who of British supporting players and comedians of the time. The satirical extremities of the cartoon strip aren’t attempted (or have ever been on film from what I have seen) and are replaced with good natured cheekiness (especially sexual, which became cheekier as they went on).
St Trinian’s is depicted as an girls’ school where the younger girls wreak havoc, act like delinquents whilst the anti authorian older girls express their femininity and sexuality overtly, by turning their modest shapeless schoolgirl dresses into sexy and risqué outfits (by the standards of the times) and by smoking and carry on like boys etc. In the films the school became embroiled in various shady enterprises, thanks mainly to the headmistress trying to save the school from being shut down, and the activities of the girl students (who are the wayward offspring of gangsters, bookies etc).
The 2007 film I watched because I like Rupert Everett and Colin Firth … even since I saw Another Country (1984) in the cinema whilst I was at Uni (and it looked as if Rupert was going to be the bigger star). Both are great actors and clearly friends and are always watchable … and though they are both slumming it here and not stretching themselves this film is still hard work.
The film is called a “reboot” (why can’t they just say “remake”?) and not a sequel as the story about trying to save the school was the basis of the first film from 1954.
Rupert Everett plays the female headmistress (the reboot / remake continues the tradition, established by Alastair Sim in the original film, of casting a male actor to play the female headmistress) and Colin Firth plays (in a large supporting role) the education minister (who has a romantic history with the headmistress). There are many familiar faces (but names sometimes unknown) amongst the girls – Gemma Arterton, Tamsin Egerton, Talulah Riley, Juno Temple – as well as comic turns from more well known actors and celebrities – Jodie Whittaker, Lena Headey, Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, Toby Jones.
Despite this it is all loud, obvious and noisy with a “punky” (the girls are rebellious remember) rock soundtrack and a digital video feel. The earlier films (specifically the 50s ones) were the same in tone but their era wasn’t as loud, noisy or obvious, and to us, watching them now they are well (but cheaply) made sometimes charming time capsules of an era. The girls are tomboyish and run amok but are still female. Their antics clash or rather complement the school administration who drive the story. There are chuckles to be had. Contrary to that, this 2007 film concentrates more on the girls than the administration and teaching staff. Which is, perhaps, a mistake though, empowered youth movies were all the rage in the 2000s so it makes sense money wise. The film becomes just noise and random mayhem with kick arse all knowing women, err schoolgirls. It buys into the schoolgirl fetish (as did the earlier films) with only a minor nod to changing mainstream attitudes. The girls are both 21st century empowered and in your face and girls that inhabited teen T&A films of the 80s and earlier. The schoolgirl actors here were all (mainly) in their 20s or late teens and not of school age and act it. So, it is okay to look, or is it? Ultimately, though, that is the problem. The film wants to update the girls but also feed off what made them popular in the past. A cake and eat it too story.
The author of the novelisation, Pippa Le Quesne, writes books for young teen girls.
The film was successful enough to have a sequel, St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009), hich had much the same cast.
FILM STARS: Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris, Hugh Griffith, Richard Haydn, Tarita Teriipaia, Matahiarii Tama, Percy Herbert, Duncan Lamont, Gordon Jackson, Chips Rafferty, Noel Purcell, Ashley Cowan, Eddie Byrne, Tim Seely, Frank Silvera, Henry Daniell, Torin Thatcher.
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Pocket Books
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1962
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1934
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: Pitcairn’s Island
NOTES
GENRE: Historical
WORDS:
One of those movies I grew up with but didn’t really fully appreciate till much later because of technology.
Hear me out.
My mother loved this film. Partially because of the film and partially because my father took her to see it when they were dating. She loved my father, and said she fell in love with Marlon Brando after seeing this film. She married my father.
The film, not without fault, is an “experience” as only old Hollywood could do. Lots of money, name actors, real locations (not all the actual locations but close enough real ones (French Polynesian islands of Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Moorea)), hugh sets (the ship), no CGI.
It is hard not to be impressed by the film.
The first time I saw it back in the 80s on TV I liked it and then I saw it on a big screen TV in hi-definition DVD. It was twice as good.
Perhaps seeing it on the big screen would double my pleasure again.
Talking to normal people over the years the general malaise to old films you find I believe largely comes from the fact that contemporary films are either seen on the big screen whilst “old” films are seen on a TV. It will never be a fair race. I recall seeing a remastered Casablanca (1942) on the big screen as well as the remastered James Stewart – Alfred Hitchcock films some time in the 80s when they were re-released for mainstream (as opposed to art house) release. People were cheering and clapping like they were watching a Die Hard film. Okay those specific ol films are superior but even an average old film will look better on the big screen and will, I think, out shine newer films. There was more care in the craft.
Granted we have access to big screen TVs nowadays but unless you search out the remastered DVD you are watching an old film blown up to fit the screen. It doesn’t compare well in clean images to modern films. Sure, it shouldn’t matter, and matters ZERO to me, but to most people it puts the older films on a back foot.
And, though it matters zero to me, Mutiny on the Bounty looked better to me when I rewatched it on a bigger screen. Maybe I was older, maybe I was in a better mood, maybe I had a glass of wine with me, or maybe it’s just better on a bigger screen with a cleaner image.
The story of the Bounty mutiny may be well known within English naval history but I suspect it was Hollywood that made it into a well known story.
Putting aside the 1933 Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty (1933) with Errol Flynn in his first role which is largely unseen and almost unwatchable because of a small budget and a Flynn who hadn’t learnt to be Flynn yet, there are three major Hollywood versions (There was also an obscure (now lost) Australian silent version The Mutiny of the Bounty (1916) with Wilton Power (as Fletcher Christian) and George Cross (as Captain Bligh)).
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), directed by Frank Lloyd, starring Clark Gable (as Fletcher Christian) and Charles Laughton (as (Captain Bligh) and with Franchot Tone, Eddie Quillan and Donald Crisp in support (James Cagney (then on a hiatus from Warner Bros. during a contract dispute) and future stars David Niven and Dick Haymes were uncredited extras in the movie.) was a BIG box office hit (the highest grossing film of 1935) and won the Best Picture oscar for the year
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), directed by Lewis Milestone, starring Marlon Brando (as Fletcher Christian) and Trevor Howard(as (Captain Bligh) with Richard Harris, Hugh Griffith, Gordon Jackson and Richard Harris in support was a popular box office failure. The film was the fifth highest-grossing film of 1962 grossing $13,680,000 domestically,earning $7.4 million in US theatrical rentals. However, it needed to make $30 million to recoup its budget of $19 million. It didn’t, meaning the film was a box office flop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty_(1962_film)
The Bounty (1984), directed by Roger Donaldson, starring Mel Gibson (as Fletcher Christian) and Anthony Hopkins (as Captain Bligh) with Laurence Olivier, Edward Fox, Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson in support was also a box office flop.
When the films were made affects their outlook. The 1935 version ended with a positive patriotic scene for the British Royal Navy in the days of sail (Rule Britannia! was popular in Hollywood in the mid-late 30s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Lives of a Bengal lancer (1935), Gunga Din (1939), Clive of India (1935), Wee Willie Winkie (1937), The Sea Hawk (1940) etc). The 1962 version ended with the romantic death of Fletcher Christian and the 1984 version ended with the nuts and bolts trial and legal exoneration of Bligh.
The 1935 film may strike modern viewers as dated and unrealistic. Bligh is depicted, at least on the Bounty, as a raving sadist, although he was in fact far from that (apparently). It’s entertaining though it’s simplistic in its good vs. evil storyline and there are many historical inaccuracies.
The 1984 film is the most realistic and accurate but it doesn’t have any emotional highs or the leading man charisma of the other versions. Mel is good but a bit overwhelmed (it was his first big budget international film).
The 1962 film, is for my taste the best version. Not without its inaccuracies it is balanced by good storytelling and adventure that the first version succeeds in doing so well and the nods to realism and nuance that the third version does well.
It is also the most epic, captivating and compelling version. The photography (by Robert Surtee) is stunning, the period costumes great, the pageantry and colors of the pacific take your breath away. They built a replica of the Bounty from the keel up, a feat truly remarkable (it is an exact copy in scale 90% the size of the original HMS Bounty and can be toured every summer in Marina del Rey Harbor in Los Angeles, CA). The music by Bronislau Kaper is superb and can measure up to the epic scores of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), El Cid (1961), King of Kings (1961) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) any day, especially “The Love Theme” which is haunting and beautiful. The film is long (178 minutes, the other two versions are both 132 minutes long) but the pace of the film flows very well and it doesn’t drag much. Well, once they reach the island (Pitcairn) and the love story kicks in it slows a little. Brando and Howard play well off each other and Richard Harris gives a fine performance (for me this is a true bonus – these three actors I love and actively watch everything they are in … and that can be hard work).
History:
The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the South Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by acting-Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their Captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and eighteen loyalists adrift in the ship’s open launch. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island. Bligh navigated more than 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) in the launch to reach safety and began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice.
After Bligh reached England in April 1790, the Admiralty despatched HMS Pandora to apprehend the mutineers. Fourteen were captured in Tahiti and imprisoned on board Pandora, which then searched without success for Christian’s party that had hidden on Pitcairn Island. After turning back towards England, Pandora ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, with the loss of 31 crew and four prisoners from Bounty. The ten surviving detainees reached England in June 1792 and were court-martialled; four were acquitted, three were pardoned, and three were hanged.
Christian’s group remained undiscovered on Pitcairn until 1808, by which time only one mutineer, John Adams, remained alive. Almost all of his fellow mutineers, including Christian, had been killed, either by one another or by their Polynesian companions. No action was taken against Adams; descendants of the mutineers and their accompanying Tahitians live on Pitcairn into the 21st century.
The source material for the 1935 and 1962 film was the novel Mutiny on the Bounty (1932) by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall in which Christian is a major character and is generally portrayed positively (more positively than in the 1982 film). The authors of that novel also wrote two sequels, one of which, Pitcairn’s Island (1934), is the story of the tragic events after the mutiny that apparently resulted in Christian’s death along with other violent deaths on Pitcairn Island. (The other sequel, Men Against the Sea (1933), is the story of Bligh’s voyage after the mutiny) This series of novels uses fictionalised versions of minor crew members as narrators of the stories.
Charles Lederer (who mainly wrote comedies (I Was a Male War Bride (1949), Monkey Business (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), the much underrated Elvis Presley film Follow That Dream (1962)) also dabbled in hard crime dramas (Kiss of Death (1947), Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Tip on a Dead Jockey (1957)), sci fi (The Thing (1951)) and big budget entertainments (Ocean’s 11 (1960), Can-Can (1960)) wrote a balanced screenplay. Superior English spy and thriller novelist Eric Ambler had originally had a crack at writing the film based on all three novels. I assume he was chosen because he had written a number of good screenplays on all things military naval (The Cruel Sea (1953), Yangtse Incident: The Story of H.M.S. Amethyst (1957)), military men under stress (The Purple Plain (1954)), sea based (A Night to Remember (1958)) or sea based with trial (The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959)).
Ambler says his brief was to make Fletcher Christian’s part as interesting as Bligh’s. MGM executives were unhappy with Ambler’s script, although the writer estimated he did 14 drafts. John Gay was signed to write a version in July 1960. Eventually, William Driscoll, Borden Chase (writing in August 1960), Howard Clewes and Charles Lederer wrote all the scripts. According to one report, Ambler did the first third of the film, about the journey, Driscoll did the second, about life on Tahiti, and Chase did the third, about the mutiny and afterwards. Gay wrote the narration. Lederer was included before filming was to begin.
Only Lederer received on-screen credit. I doubt others would not have received a credit if the contributions were substantial
In any event producer Aaron Rosenberg said “the film would focus more on the fate of the crew after the mutiny, with Captain Bligh only in a minor role and the mutiny dealt with in flashback. “It was Brando’s idea”, said Rosenberg. “And he was right. It has always been fascinating to wonder what happened to the mutineers afterwards.” “The mood after the mutiny must be one of hope”, said Reed. “The men hope to live a different sort of life, a life without suffering, without brutality. They hope for a life without sick ambitions, without the pettiness of personal success. They dream of a new life where nobody is trying to outdo the next person.”
Marlon Brando eventually signed to play Christian (though he apparently considered playing Bligh) for a fee of $500,000 plus 10% of the profits. The stories of Brando being difficult on set, and not sure even, if he wanted to play Christian or Bligh, are famous but his Christian is the pinnacle of doomed romanticism. Brando plays him like some of his other film characters: a mid-century loner or rebel. The first half of the film he is Lt. Christian Diestl (The Young Lions (1958)) but English, before becoming Terry Malloy (On the Waterfront (1954)) but with good breeding, before becoming Napoleon (Desiree (1954)) with his lost love. He knows his duty but is not sure if the British navy the place for him, and he is conflicted between love and duty and honour. The films failure stalled Brando’s career but he is wonderful.
Trevor Howard (perhaps because he had worked so well and often with Carol Reed) was brought on as Bligh and his Bligh snarls and is vicious but perhaps no more than any Naval sea captain of the era. Interestingly though, after all this Bligh ended up as Governor of New South Wales in Australia and was involved in another mutiny, the Rum Rebellion, when in 1808, 400 soldiers of the New South Wales Corps marched on Government House and placed Bligh under arrest, as a result of him trying to regulate the rum trade in Australia that the military corps were involved in. He was imprisoned until 1810 before all but retiring to England and dying in 1817). Howard is, perhaps, one the most underrated of English actors and is, far better than his stage to screen contemporaries.
The rest of the cast was cast with, at least in the talking roles, with Irish (Richard Harris, Noel Purcell, Eddie Byrne), British (Richard Haydn, Tim Seely, Percy Herbert, Henry Daniell, Duncan Lamont, Torin Thatcher), Scottish (Gordon Jackson, Duncan Lamont), Welsh (Hugh Griffith) or Australians (Chips Rafferty, Duncan Lamont) … actors whose nationalities would have made up the ship’s crew at the time. Apart from American (Jamaican born) black actor, Frank Silvera, the natives are played by polynesians. The female romantic lead was played by a local Tahitian French Polynesian, Tarita Teriipaia. Allegedly Brando personally Tarita, to play his love interest. They married in 1962 and divorced in 1972. She never made another film. Marlon wanted her at home to raise the kids (allegedly).
British director Carol Reed (Odd Man Out (1947), The Third Man (1949), Outcast of the Islands (1952), Trapeze (1956). The Key (1958), Our Man in Havana (1959), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) ) was hired to direct.
After three months of filming on location Reed left because of gallstones and heat stroke apparently. It seems though that Reed was fired (or left) over shooting schedules, concerns about where the story was going, and on set tensions. (The great) Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front(1930), The Front Page (1931), Rain (1932), The General Died at Dawn (1936), Of Mice and Men (1939), The Purple Heart (1944), A Walk in the Sun (1945), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Red Pony (1949), They Who Dare (1954), Pork Chop Hill (1959), Ocean’s 11 (1960)) was brought on board. Milestone was towards the end of his career (this proved to be his final film) but he could handle spectacle, big casts and sets, deal with temperamental actors and could bring things in on budget or reign things in (ultimately the film went went over budget)
“Reed was used to making his own pictures” said Milestone. “He was not used to producer, studio and star interference. But those of us who have been around Hollywood are like alley cats. We know this style. We know how to survive.”
Milestone later said he took it on as he thought it would be an easy assignment because they’d been on it for months and there couldn’t be much left to do. He subsequently found that they had only shot, with actors, only one seven-minute scene, where Trevor Howard issues instructions about obtaining breadfruit.
Despite all this what emerges is a a large, epic and engrossing film a testament to the benefits Hollywood studio film making.
The film tie-in here is the second part of the trilogy after the mutineers arrive on Pitcairn Island. I assume the first part (about the actual mutiny) was also released in a movie edition. The third part which concerns Bligh’s voyage which isn’t (largely) in the film I assume wasn’t. I haven’t read Pitcairn’s Island but it is what it is a fictional narrative history of the event and I assume it would be reasonable as authors Nordhoff and Hall wrote many books, together and separately, on the sea and the military.
The only thing left is to watch the film again … especially now that I have an even bigger big screen TV.
FILM STARS: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Kristanna Loken, Claire Danes, David Andrews, Mark Famiglietti, Earl Boe, Jay Acovone
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: David Hagberg
TYPE: Novelisation
PUBLISHER: Tom Doherty Associates Book
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2003
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2003
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Sci Fi
WORDS: Which Terminator was this?
Like all franchises based around a very defined narrative premise the films start to look the same after a while and, usually, decrease in entertainment quality as familiarity sets in. Producers try to offset this but making things “bigger” (more action, more explosions, more elaborate set pieces) but, ultimately despite their efforts you get less bang (sic) for you buck.
The protagonists and antagonists are the same even if some of the characters are different. It’s same old same old with updated clothes.
The first Terminator (1984) was excellent. The second Terminator, Terminator 2 (1991), was perhaps (unusually for a sequel) even better. The story should have finished there, but there was more money to be made and so on it went.
Worse still what were essentially action films became more and more serious until the filmmakers (and their hardcore bolted on believer audience) were ultimately exploring philosophical concepts whilst pulling lint from their navels. It happens to many franchises, and usually sci-fi ones. I mean, most sci-fi is, rarely, based on anything remotely real. Even near future which I like but near future my ass – Just Imagine (1930) set in 1980, 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968) set in, errrr, 2001, and Blade Runner (1982) set in 2019 were way off base. And where is my hoverboard (Back to the Future II (1989)?) The world can’t figure out what’s going to happen tomorrow let alone what the “near” future will look like. The ball float toilet cistern is the best toilet system we have (OK, the most common) and they are forever leaking and, worse still, they are a farker to fix unless you have a plumbing degree so don’t talk to me about any dystopian future run by robots, cause I can hear the toilet leaking in the background. Until I have a replicant that can fix, and clean, my toilet I say fark off!
In any event, as audiences “grow up” they want to distance themselves from the youthful fun they had as young people watching these action movies (why, I don’t know ..people of all ages can enjoy well done but ultimately mindless action). So they add layers of meaning to the original premise which become so convoluted (probably because the original premise did not envisage philosophical layers and extra storylines being dumped on it) that one’s enjoyment is lost. If you want philosophy and meaning read a book written by a Greek scholar or a monk let the movies entertain
This strained seriousness has affected many franchises … Star Wars (1977) (a western crossed with a swashbuckler in space), Alien (1979) (a monster movie in space), Tron (1982) (OK more thoughtful than normal but how a guy transported into a video game led to the stupidities of Tron Legacy (2010) I don’t know), and any of the superhero franchises (for fark sake – they are just people in capes (the capes is a generalisation) doing good deeds). All these and more have been compromised or ruined by increasing seriousness or the need to be “dark” (because “dark” means “serious “and “grown-up”). No doubt some of the audience want this … because as they grow older they want people to think of them as serious adults. These are the same people who call comics “graphic novels” (which also have been largely compromised by increasing seriousness). I’ve read a few “graphic novels” and the meaning and darkness is only impressive because it’s being done as a comic .. you think “wow that was good … for a comic”. How can a comic ever say as much as a novel (or a film)? Books explain everything long hand, and films, entirely separate, work on a visual and emotive level by tapping into our memories of what we have seen and heard. I mean a tracking shot up a city street, a vista of mountains or a wide shot of a city are not easily described in a book and have their own (visual) language. Comics are both but not as much as either and neither here nor there.
I’ve strayed.
19 years had elapsed between the first Terminator film and Terminator 3 … yes, the original fans were 19 years older and many of them wanted more meaning. You have to keep them happy because the lovers of any franchise are the backbone to ticket sales … but you have to attract the kids.
Terminator 3 did that. It earnt $433.4 million worldwide and finished its theatrical run as the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2003 but there were diminished returns in quality (and legacy). Is anyone of any generation going today Terminator 3 was the best terminator film?
Terminator 3 was the terminator film which rehashed the first two but also set up the universe for the others that follow. What is particularly unsatisfying is it’s not a standalone film like the first two. You need to have seen the earlier films to be truly invested in what is going on.
What’s going on? Evil corporations, misguided individuals and smart robots lead to a worldwide catastrophe … and more sequels.
Pfffft.
It is what it is. Entertaining as long as you don’t think about it too much. You won’t be offended but you won’t be thrilled (despite some impressive set pieces) and you are unlikely to hold the film as high as the first two films.
James Cameron who directed the first two films is a better director than Jonathan Mostow who directed T3. Mostow’s films are slick and well made but Cameron, equally slick, has a little madness amongst his slickness.
Arnie is good but he isn’t giving us anything new … but then again should a cyborg give us anything new?
Screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris were a American screenwriting duo, whose notable works include Watchers II (1990), Bloodfist II (1990), Femme Fatale (1991), The Net (1995), The Game (1997), Catwoman (2004), Primeval (2007), Terminator Salvation (2009), Surrogates (2009) and others, none of which are a recommendations. You don’t need two people to paint by numbers.
The franchise got worse.
There is no need to read the novelization. That is for the hardcore …. assuming they read.
FILM STARS: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, James Gregory, Henry Silva, Leslie Parrish, John McGiver, James Edwards, Douglas Henderson. Whit Bissell
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Richard Condon
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Pan
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1960
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1959
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Action Thriller, Cold War
WORDS: Richard Condon wrote the novel in 1959. It is a cleverly plotted cold war thriller that doesn’t rely on surprise so much as it does on “what if”.
The book is permeated with cold war atmosphere but not the in your face militarism or covert spy shenanigans of Europe. Here the cold war has come to the US and invaded public institutions and appearances and words are no indication of anything.
Brainwashing, covert spies, ambition, greed, political corruption … no one is what they seem.
The story about US soldiers in Korean who were captured by the enemy (the enemy being the North Koreans, the Chinese and the Russians) and who have been brainwashed, and sent back the the US, with one of their group programmed to kill (assassinate) and then forget. It is quite chilling. Interestingly, the book was, perhaps, the first to introduce “sleeper agents” to the world, certainly the film was the first in in the film world). Brainwashing was a big thing in the 1950s. At the time the military of both sides (I believe) conducted experiments in brainwashing. As a pejorative expression it was also used often especially when applied to the left. It was assumed that anyone who accepted that the communist system was a better alternative to mid-century American capitalism was “brainwashed”. How many times have you heard that as a slander against the left? Depending on the person there may be some truth to that.
Here the brainwashing is conducted by the Chinese on American POWs. Sergeant Raymond Shaw (played by Laurence Harvey in the film), because of his background and personality type (and for other reasons I won’t give away) is more likely to respond to the brainwashing. Major Marco (played by Frank Sinatra) is also brainwashed but figures his way out of it and tries to get Shaw to do the same. Essentially it’s the two characters who drive the narrative.
The book is a great read though Condon loves (with a capital L) metaphors which make his sentences long and unwieldy sometimes. He throws in trivia and asides (and black humour as well) but nevertheless he keeps the pace up. This book (and all his books, apparently) ultimately has (political) corruption and (the abuse of) power at its heart and it is fun because he is so focussed and unrelenting.
George Axelrod (with John Frankenheimer) took the book and followed it relatively closely. He (screen) wrote the witty comedies Bus Stop (1956), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Paris When It Sizzles (1964), How To Murder Your Wife (1965). Lord Love a Duck (1966), The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968) … the last two he also directed. Yes, he mainly wrote lightly satirical comedies which placed him well to adapt the book which has some dark humour.
But the real genius is John Frankenheimer and his direction. He has made a 1970s film in 1962. The violence (including one of the first martial arts fights in a western film apparently), the bloodshed, and the cold calculation of the killings (well he is brainwashed) are all designed to jar the viewer rather than scare them. You wince rather than hold your breath. Frankenheimer’s direction is raggedy and jumpy as if he had watched some French new wave film though it is largely, I assume, a result of his background in television (including live television) and making the most of the camera.
He is probably one of the best modern American directors and made many many excellent or underappreciated films All Fall Down (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), The Train (1964), Seconds (1966), The Gypsy Moths (1969), I Walk the Line (1970), The Horsemen (1971), The Iceman Cometh (1973), Black Sunday (1977), Prophecy (1979), 52 Pick-Up (1986), Year of the Gun (1991), Ronin (1998).
Harvey and Sinatra are both magnificent in their roles. Laurence Harvey because of his personal life (and probably because he wasn’t authentically English) is often underrated though, for my money he is one of the best and most interesting of the post war English (by way of Lithuania) actors and he captures the stand offish, not likable and cold character of Shaw in the book perfectly (though naysayers will say Harvey playing a blank faced brainwashed automaton is not acting) . The beauty is that though his character is not sympathetic he shows a vulnerability that reveals something deeper.
Sinatra, had proven his non-musical acting chops in From here to Eternity (1953), Suddenly (1954), and “The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and does so here though he only has to react to Harvey and look comfortable next to Janet Leigh as his girlfriend Rosie. I would look comfortable (and very happy) next to Janet Leigh. What a babe. If I were Marco I would forget about Shaw, the Chinese and brainwashing and spend some quality time with Rosie.
James Gregory, always solid and always underrated, plays the weak blow hard senator and step father of Shaw wonderfully. He is both funny and a fool and based on, at his nastiest perhaps, Senator Joseph McCarthy (apparently Shaw’s mother is based on McCarthy’s counsel Roy Cohn). Gregory played military officers and politicians regularly as well as quite a few authoritarian fathers in the 1960s, both comical (as Elvis’ dad in Clambake (1967)) and dictatorial (as Dennis Hopper’s dad in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)).
Angela Lansbury gets all the kudos and perhaps rightly so. She is magnificent as Shaw’s mother. At first comic and then darker she is driven, manipulative and cruel and there is even a hint of incest (in the book the incestuous attraction was much more clear). It is hard to believe that she played this role here (she was three years older than Harvey) and Elvis Presley’s scatterbrained southern belle of a mother in Blue Hawaii the same year (she was 10 years older than Elvis). Utterly convincing in both.
Henry Silva, of Italian and Spanish descent was alay playing minorities including many “orientals”. he has the face of a villain and works it here. Familiar faces, Leslie Parrish, John McGiver, James Edwards, Douglas Henderson and others give support.
The book has a lot more back story to each of the characters.
In the novel, Eleanor Iselin’s father had sexually abused her as a child, she was more of a gold digger, and she actively used sex to get what she wants. The love affair between Shaw and Joelyn is explored in detail (Shaw is also more sexually active in the book (all the sex is quite frank, though not explicit), as is the relationship between Marco and Rosie, though a little less so. The book also spends more time (too much perhaps) describing the brainwashing at the facility in Manchuria where the Americans were held. The film however sticks to the plot and gives us only as much detail as is required for us to know who they are. Which it does. But that’s the job of a good writer (and director) – to condense the words that describe a characters personality down to lines of dialogue (and images).
The movie has only a few minor alterations that primarily seem to serve the interest of speeding the action along which is understandable, though it’s a pity because in the book Angela Lansbury’s Mrs. Eleanor Iselin is given lots of little nasty events … like breaking up her son’s relationship by telling the girl’s father he is “not normal” (a homosexual), taking advantage and manipulating him, especially whilst he is in a brainwashed state, and sleeping with other politicians to advance her husbands career
Interestingly the film ends with Shaw making things right through a violent act. In the film Marco deprograms Shaw who sees the evil that has been done and then consciously takes the action he did (though we don’t know whether the deprogramming is successful till the end). In the novel Marco reprograms the still brainwashed Shaw (though there is ambiguity as to whether he was brainwashed at the end) to commit the acts he does … at least that’s how I recall it.
The book is both an anti-communist tract and a satire which has something critical to say about American power institutions. The film seems to be a Red Scare movie, but it casts a critical eye on “extremism”. The extremism here as a result of brainwashing but it could equally apply to just generally extremist behavior as we seem to suffer from today.
A wonderful film and a great read
An updated blackwashed (changing the race of a character that was was otherwise a role originally written for a white person) version The Manchurian Candidate (2004) was directed by Jonathan Demme, and starred Liev Schreiber (who is excellent) as Shaw, Denzel Washington as Marco (maybe there was no backwashing … maybe Denzel was playing a white person … think about it … now I’m trying to be satirical) , and Meryl Streep as Eleanor. The fim does not suffer from the blackwashing but it does suffer from loss of the cold war hysteria and maybe it is a little one note.
TRIVIA
“Frank Sinatra broke the little finger of his right hand on the desk in the fight sequence with Henry Silva. Due to on-going filming commitments, he could not rest or bandage his hand properly, causing the injury to heal incorrectly. It caused him chronic discomfort for the rest of his life”. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056218/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv
THE FILM
I'm a fan of Kubrick and no, you're not being harsh. I think those enthralled by it back then are…