FILM STARS: Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Patricia Neal, Kay Lenz, Christopher Lee, Michael Lonsdale, Marcel Bozzuffi, Paul Clemens, Jim Broadbent (uncredited)
COUNTRY: England
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Bruce Nicolaysen
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Sphere
THIS EDITION
PUBLISHED: 1979
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1976
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: Perilous Passage
NOTES
GENRE: War
WORDS: I love Anthony Quinn and will watch any film he is in. I will watch any film with James Mason and Malcolm McDowell in it (in the latter case not always an easy task). I will watch any film directed by J. Lee Thompson.
Of course then I will watch The Passage.
Is it good? Yes and no. It has many flaws but there are a lot more respected films that aren’t as much fun.
During World War II a Basque shepherd (Anthony Quinn) is hired by the French Resistance to safely guide an important scientist (James Mason), his wife (Patricia Neal), daughter (Kay Lenz), and son (Paul Clemens) through a passage across the Pyrenees. In hot pursuit is a psychotic SS officer (Malcolm McDowell) who will torture anyone who helps the fugitives, including the leader (Christopher Lee) of a gypsy caravan.
This is a high adventure World War 2 story as opposed to a war drama film, or a men in war film, or a historical war film.
So, everything can be a little over the top.
Anthony Quinn plays his slightly befuddled ordinary peasant who rises to the challenge role as he has done many times, and, I never tire of watching him do it. For me, it’s a little like comfort food. Quinn can chew scenery but seems a little subdued here but that may be because co-star Malcolm McDowell isn’t just chewing scenery but devouring it with gluttonous joy (something he would also do in his next film Caligua (1979) playing the decadent Roman emperor of the title). He is unrepented evil as the SS officer, but he is hard to take seriously because of one liners and intended humour. It’s a moustache twirling performance though one with dollops of sexual and physical sadism. He even wears underpants with a swastika on them. I hate to call it fun because of who he portrays but it is. Of course, all this evil makes his comeuppance all that much more better.
In an interview with Starlog Magazine (September 198) McDowell said of this movie: “That movie contains some of the best work I’ve ever done. I managed to pack into a dozen scenes with the whole period of Nazi tyranny in a convincingly evil way.”
He also said this in Starlog Magazine (July 1995) “I played this real nasty Nazi who was chasing these people across the Pyrenees. We all knew real early on that the movie was not going to be any great work of art and so I was determined to have some fun with it. My attitude was that if I was going to play a Nazi, I was going to take it totally over the top and do it right. I ended up playing the character like a pantomime queen. What I was doing was so far out that James Mason turned to me one day and said, ‘That’s wonderful dear boy, but are you in our film? You seem to be doing something different from the rest of us’.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079700/reference/
That’s Malcolm.
James Mason is dialing it in which means he is still utterly convincing in his role. He was never bad even if the films around him were atrocious. All he has to do here is make it through the snow and pontificate every now and then about men and war. Patricia Neal has an almost nothing role culminating in self-sacrificing heroism. Christopher Lee is good as the noble gypsy though a little against type as he normally would have played the SS officer. Kay Lenz is there to provide the sex interest.
J. Lee Thompson is probably my favourite English director along with Hitchcock, Basil Dearden, Jack Cardiff and maybe Michael Winner. He could do high adventure (North West Frontier (1959), Taras Bulba (1962), Kings of the Sun (1963)), war (Ice Cold in Alex (1958), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Before Winter Comes (1969)) and crime drama, much of it laden with sexual sadomasochism that became more pronounced as time went on and the censors relaxed (Cape Fear (1962), the slasher Happy Birthday to Me (1981), 10 to Midnight (1983), Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989)). Specific films aside he seemed to squeeze in sexual assaults as if they were just another part of life’s everyday obstacles, into all sorts of films at a rate to rival Michael Winner. But, he never let anything get in the way of the storytelling. It may seem insensitive, but his films are here to entertain not counsel.
The SS in the 70s was always portrayed through a sexual sado masochistic lens … dating back to mainstream films like The Damned (1969), The Night Porter (1974) and the exploitive Love Camp 7(1969) but culminating in the 70s naziploitation films (Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975), SS Girls (1977), Fräuleins in Uniforms (1973), SS Experiment Camp (1976), Elsa Fräulein SS (1977) etc), So it is inevitable that here would be the same along with some gratuitous nudity.
The film is, not surprisingly, uneven in mood or perhaps it just doesn’t care. There is violence, adventure, humour, sadism, torture, rape all within close proximity of each other.
But yes, it is entertaining. The action has that pre-CGI excitement where everything is real, the military hardware lumbers along, the explosions are all colourful and the special effects guys are destroying things without destroying them (the budget was big but not that big).
The film was written by Bruce Nicolaysen based on his novel. It was his only screenplay. Apart from some name changed the film follows the book. It is Alistair MacLean type stuff without the set-up thrills. He went on to write a series of historical dramas about the fictional de Kuypers family in America.
There is a rousing (or loud depending on your point of view) score by Michael J. Lewis and excellent location photography of the Pyrenees in France.
FILM STARS: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, Jane Alexander, Stephen Collins, Ned Beatty, Meredith Baxter, Penny Fuller, Penny Peyser, Lindsay Crouse, F. Murray Abraham
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
TYPE: Non Fiction
PUBLISHER: Futura
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1977
COUNTRY: Australia
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1974
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Political Drama
WORDS: This is one of those “must see” films from the 1970s.
Must see, but only once.
It was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 4 – Best Supporting Actor, Screenplay (based on material from another source), art direction and sound.
It missed out on Best Picture and Best Director and the leads were not nominated but in a year of Rocky, Network, Bound for Glory, Taxi Driver, Marathon Man, Carrie, The Shootist, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Voyage of the Damned, Obsession, The Front, it had its work cut out for it (do we see lists of films like this at the Oscars anymore … rhetorical question)
But the film won heaps of other wards and did well at the box office (Budget $8.5 million, Box office $70.6 million (US)).
Topical and well made it was.
It’s a true story political thriller about Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) investigating the 1972 Watergate break-in, uncovering a massive political conspiracy and cover-up that leads directly to President Richard Nixon and ultimately (amongst other things) forces his resignation. The film, based on their book, portrays their dogged pursuit of leads, secret meetings with the anonymous source “Deep Throat”, and the process of piecing together clues that expose corruption reaching the highest levels of government, highlighting the power of investigative journalism.
The subject matter to non-Americans (and perhaps contemporary Americans given Presidents of all stripes who have followed) is a little ho hum. Sure, Nixon’s actions during Watergate may have caused a scandal in the US but compared to (many) other leaders around the world, democratic or not, his actions are sandbox stuff.
One thing the film did do was set the template for all investigative journalist films that followed: Spotlight (2015), Salvador (1986), The Paper (1994), Cry Freedom (1987), State of Play (2009), A Private War (2018), Veronica Guerin (2003), Philomena (2013), The Post (2017), Nothing But the Truth (2008), Bombshell (2019).
And, a more smug bunch of films you will not find.
And ones, I suspect, full of half truths.
Noble reporters doing noble things have (largely) been the norm since the coming of sound (Foreign Correspondent (1940), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Call Northside 777 (1948), Park Row (1952)) but films with journalists chasing a story, and perhaps manipulating the truth, so they can make a buck or feed their narcissism (The Front Page (1931), Ace in the Hole (1951), Scandal Sheet (1952), Citizen Kane (1941), Slander (1957), Sweet Smell of Success (1957)) largely (but not exclusively – Shattered Glass (2003), Truth (2015) (arguably)) disappeared after All the President’s Men, which is quite odd as that cynicism would seem to be a good default on the journalism profession today.
Interestingly, the successful film Network in the same year as All the President’s Men took a different view of “journalism” but that was television journalism not the reputable written kind (sarcasm in that last line) and television journalism was always, though perhaps justifiably, the sacrificial lamb when journalism was under attack.
The film is a straightforward account which is very well done but really only excels in the casting coup of Hoffman and Redford who are at the top of their game, aided by Jason Robards (who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar), and stalwart supporting actors Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, and Ned Beatty (… it’s a mans world) and the Oscar winning screenplay by William Goldman. The reason this film becomes a political thriller rather than just a political drama is because of Goldman. Though he won the best screenplay Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) his schtick was thriller-ish political or conspiratorial shenanigans: Masquerade (1965), Harper (1966), The Stepford Wives (1975), Marathon Man (1976), Absolute Power (1997), The General’s Daughter (1999). He can make a drama into a thriller without being outlandish and without losing track of the characters. I suspect that comes in part from his background as a novelist No Way to Treat a Lady (1964), Marathon Man (1974), Control (1982), Heat (1985).
To wrap it up you had a sympathetic director. Political thrillers, conspiracies, cover ups and liberal sentiments were second nature to Alan J. Pakula who directs this like a police procedural film and who also directed Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974), and later Rollover (1981), Presumed Innocent (1990), Consenting Adults (1991), and The Pelican Brief (1997).
The book reads like investigative journalism which is what it is. It provides a detailed, factual account naming sources (like Hugh Sloan) who were anonymous in initial articles, explaining the participation of fringe and many minor characters, while the film truncates, or merges two characters into one to save on time and make the thing easier to follow for audiences whilst using cinematic techniques (split-screen, suspense) to dramatize the reporting process as a detective story, making it more accessible and thrilling. The book also covers the entire story through Nixon’s resignation and the tapes’ revelation while the film covers only the first seven months (break-in to Nixon’s second inauguration) for dramatic focus and famously introduces the “follow the money” line not in the book.
Interestingly the film doesn’t go into great depth showing all sides of the relationship between Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Throughout most of the movie the duo is shown as a buddy team playing off of each others leads, working in near perfect harmony. Apparently though (according to the book) Woodward and Bernstein had a rocky relationship (especially at the start), often fighting and disagreeing on the details of their stories. In the film the “disagreements” are merged into one event.
The book was successful and still is something of an unofficial text on journalism. Bernstein once said: “The book itself is like a primer on basic reporting. You see what’s the most important decision we make as reporters? To go out at night and to visit people who work for Richard Nixon and his reelection in their homes, knock on their doors, have the doors you know, slammed in our faces, except for the few that didn’t.” https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/woodward-bernstein-reflect-watergate-reporting-50-years-after/story?id=111154531
Given the state of print journalism today, perhaps it’s a “best practice” wishful thinking manual rather than a text.
See the film (once), read the book if you are into US political history or you are a journalist wondering what journalists are supposed to do.
Notes:
The book’s events led to a sequel book by Bernstein and Woodward, The Final Days (1976), covering the end of Nixon’s presidency, which the first film didn’t cover.
FILM STARS: Gregory Peck, Tuesday Weld, Estelle Parsons, Ralph Meeker, Lonny Chapman, Charles Durning
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Madison Jones
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Penguin
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1970
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1967
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: An Exile
NOTES
GENRE: Drama
WORDS: The book is a Greek tragedy, or a cautionary tale or perhaps just a moral fable on temptation and obsession.
It’s the story of a fall from grace of one man because of his obsession. He becomes “an exile” (the book’s original title) amongst his community, or, perhaps he was already an exile. The title works but so does the film title “I Walk the Line”.
The film follows the book’s narrative, if not its emotional and philosophical tone, fairly closely until the end where the story changes drastically which immediately puts the book and film in different philosophical camps.
Spoilers ahead.
The story of a middle-aged man’s exile from his former values (or maybe from his communities’ values) and so from himself. Sheriff Tawes, a small-town sheriff in the deep south, is a model of virtue and strict observer of the protocols of his office but he is middle aged, getting fat and bored in his marriage. What to do? He has an affair with the much younger and very forward girl, Alma McCain, the daughter of a local illegal moonshiner. Her sexual favours continue, he comes to fall in love, errr becomes obsessed, with her but things are not what they seem. As his passion escalates so does his need to protect his secret, protect her, and by extension protect her family. He begins steering police attention away from her father, causing him to lie to misuse his police power and lie to his own family and his fellow officers. As you would expect, things rapidly go out of control, and his attempts to fix things just make it all worse.
Tawes descent is understandable. Alma came along at just the right time. His marriage had been dying before she arrived. He was an emotional “exile” and floundering. In one scene, in which the sheriff takes his wife and child on an outing in a vain attempt at revivification, the narrator says: “The really dismal part was that he again had tricked himself, had arranged this stunt in the idle belief that he really intended to mend what he had broken”. His wife constantly berates him for his lack of ambition, and he seems to have just fallen into the job of Sherriff without any real conviction. It’s not made clear what brought him here though, apart from his daughter, who he has real affection for he has no other family. He seems lost and the loss may be a result of his loss of relationship with the land. There is a new order threatening his identity. There is a new chemical plant, hydroelectricity, old buildings are being torn down, trees are being cut down, old people are being pushed aside, concrete and steel is replacing wood and grass. Many of the old landmarks in the county of his youth have been submerged by a lake. The valley of his youth has been destroyed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) who damned the creek which flooded his valley creating a lake. The Sheriff out with his wife, Hazel, and young daughter Sybil, shows his daughter the lake:
‘”You see all that water out there?”
Sybil glanced across the glittering lake.
“That wasn’t there when I was a boy – before they built the big dam. All that was just a big valley, with farms. And a creek, Big Sandy Creek. That’s where I used to fish. My home was just about a mile up the lake from here – that way.”
“Is it still there?” she said.
“The house? Oh, no. They tore it down before the water rose. I wish I had a picture of it to show you. It was a big old clapboard house with-“
“Don’t get your father started on that.” Hazel interrupted in a voice hard and dry with finality. It produced not only a hush but a feeling of severance, like a shoot cleanly snipped off by shears.’
There is a feeling of loss in the book which makes it, perhaps, easy to understand why Tawes Sheriff would throw everything away to take up with Alma, because there was nothing left to throw away.
Of course, being a novel of the south the relationship to the land and the agrarian tradition is only part of the story. Many of the characters seem to continually live in and act from the shadows (the moonshining McCains are particularly mysterious and unknowable up to the climax). Lies are put on top of lies and things unravel in unexpected ways. And even though God is not evoked here there is the feeling that there is a Southern Christian fire and brimstone God looking down over the Sheriff Tawes and alternatively shaking his head in disappointment and laughing at his mistakes.
Author Madison Percy Jones (1925–2012) was a novelist born in Nashville, Tennessee. He published almost a dozen novels. I haven’t read anything else though it seems a religious puritanism drives his novels as he tells tales of a changing south, and the loss of traditional social values, with all the darkness (and dark humour) you would expect. It is perhaps not surprising that Flannery O’Connor admired his writing, or at least his early writing as she died in 1964. She praised his novel A Buried Land (1963) as a “fine novel” in a letter to his publisher. She also reportedly said Jones was “better than the folks all the shoutin’s about”. She could have come up with this story. Jones’ book is short and packs an emotional punch.
It was bound to be made into a film.
The film has a lot going for it. Gregory Peck is good (though perhaps 10 years too old for the role) at showing the upstanding man on a slide he is perhaps a bit too upstanding, and he lacks the passion that make you think he would fall in love with a girl 25 or more years his junior. What happened to the Gregory Peck of Duel in the Sun (1946)? Tuesday Weld is magnificent and gorgeous and would make any man up and leave his wife. She could play southern Lolita’s and wayward types in her sleep and here, Alma is a cousin to her Noreen in Wild in the Country (1961). Weld is always good, and though a biggish star at the time she could have or should have been a lot bigger. Estelle Parsons as the wife and Charles Durning as the deputy (in a role that could have been written for Waren Oates) are good. Ralph Meeker as the moonshiner is perfect. When isn’t Meeker good, especially when playing villainous type roles? The only problem he doesn’t have much of a role (though in the book the character is also more of a catalyst).
The always watchable direction of John Frankenheimer here is, errr yes watchable, but he has substituted moody for the thoughtful suspense he was known for … The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), The Train (1964), Seconds (1966), and later French Connection II (1975), Black Sunday (1977), Ronin (1998). Perhaps he was in a mood (sic) as the earlier The Gypsy Moths (1969) was about middle-aged moodiness and starred Frankenheimer regular Burt Lancaster who could have slipped into this role here (though I think Peck is slightly more suited. Frankenheimer spend a bit of time establishing place and the footage (by cinematographer David M. Walsh) of locals is almost documentarian. Sombre tones abound and everyone is old and suspicious or curious as the camera passes them by. Filmed (in part) on location in Gainesboro, Tennessee and Center Hill Lake and Dam it’s quite striking.
Perhaps the movie is best known for its soundtrack written and sung by Johnny Cash. Much like Peck I’m not sure Johnny gets the passion at the heart of the story, but he does get the sound of the hills, valleys and “the south”. Cash re-recorded his famous 1956 song which gives the film its new title and wrote enough (actually more, as sone of the songs aren’t in the film) music for an album. One of the songs, “Flesh and Blood,” even became a number one country hit in 1971 (#54 pop). The album went to #9 US Country (#176 US pop).
The problem is the script. Peck subsequently said later something like “there was a good film left on the cutting room floor”. That may be the case but only that floor held scenes filmed from the book and including the original ending.
Screenwriter Alvis Sargent is no slacker (Paper Moon (1973), Julia (1977), Straight Time (1978), Ordinary People (1980)) but he isn’t the right person to write a noirish tale of the South ….and whoever thought to make the story family friendly really missed the point.
The novel may be quite contemporary, but it was quite out of step with whatever else was happening in the US in 1967 when the book was written. And I suspect, that’s the issue … a tale of adultery, middle age passion and moonshiners was not going to fly in the free love and drugs of 1970 when the film was made. The characters would have been to alien for mainstream audiences, especially in the cities. We need them relatable …..
The book is more a book of characters who are extreme whereas just about everyone in the film is relatable and perhaps sympathetic. In the book unlike the film, Tawes wife is nagging and unsympathetic (in the film she sticks by her man almost – she is almost apologetic even though he is cheating on her. She suggests that men his age sometimes seek out younger women, or they need something different. They respect him), the moonshiner is more evil (he prostitutes his daughter, kills people), Alma is more wanton and lacks morals, her husband is a grub (in the film he is named but doesn’t appear), and the federal policeman is more serious (he is almost comedy relief in the film). Only Tawes deputy is less sympathetic in the film (the filmmakers have him shooting dogs and attempting to rape Alma), but they must do that to justify what happens to him (even his wife is a nag in the film, where she isn’t in the book). It makes it easier to get rid of him and not care about what his wife goes through.
A nice touch in the film is the lake that flooded the valley of his youth, which almost becomes a character. Tawes disposes of a body in the lake (in the book he buries the body). the moonshiner has a cabin to make moonshine on its banks the lake is used to transport liquor to its destination.
But the big problem is the character of Tawes in the film. He is made much more sympathetic in the film. That’s t to say we don’t sympathize with him in the book, he is decent, understands the past (there is a wonderful passage about an old tree being knocked down for progress and an old man who resists) but he isn’t given an out. In the film he has deep and meaningful conversations with Alma, his wife (she doesn’t leave in the film) and his elderly and lonely father (quite poignant though the father character wasn’t in the book) and otherwise seems to be looking for people to understand him.
When the Sherriff’s world finally comes crashing down in the book it hits with a bang. And you know how it is going to end … in death, alone.
In the film he lives. He confronts Alma, who may or may not love him, and her moonshiner father who plays fair. He is wounded, left alone in the country but no one has seen this incident, , no one (other than the escaping moonshiner family) know of his bad deeds, his wife and daughter are still back at home.
He could return to town and pick up where he left off before he met Alma with only the lingering question of was it all worth it.
The book is great, the film despite its deviation from the book is good in its The Blue Angel (1930) meets Thunder Road (1958) story. Of course the music is great.
LINKS
TRAILER
The re-recorded title song: I Walk the Line (1970)
FILM STARS: John Wayne, Sophia Loren, Rossano Brazzi, Kurt Kasznar, Youseff Daoud, Sonia Moser, Angela Portaluri, Ibrahim El Hadish
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Bonnie Golightly
TYPE: Novelization
PUBLISHER: WDL THIS EDITION
PUBLISHED: 1959
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1957
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Adventure
WORDS: Legend of the Lost (1957) is not a well-known John Wayne film. I suspect because it is not a western and wasn’t a big big hit it tends to get overlooked. And, that is a pity. It’s a well-made, good looking adventure film which will keep you entertained during its running time, especially with a glass of wine, or beer.
John Wayne plays a down on his luck guide stranded in Timbuctoo (Timbuktu) in French Sudan (now Mali), Africa. There he is hired by a righteous, religious man to take him out to the desert to look for a legendary ruined city his father had died looking for years past. They are joined by a beautiful Tuareg native girl of no fixed abode (a prostitute) who is looking to get out of poverty and Timbuctoo by latching onto the rich foreigner. Two men, a beautiful girl, a desert … what could go wrong?
A lot … in film terms it is Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) meets Rain (1932) meets Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed (1924).
John Wayne as Joe January (how good is that name) is perhaps about ten years too old for his role but he has the conviction and humour to capture the adventurer who internally struggles between looking after number one and doing the right thing. Italian actor Rossano Brazzi as righteous Frenchman Paul Bonnard is suitably noble, then obsessed as the searcher caught between ideals and lust. Italian Sophia Loren, always stunning, is wonderful as the scrappy native girl who knows how to use her body to manipulate men. The whole story revolves around these three. The only other character of note is the French prefect (the prefect is the French State’s representative in a department or region) played by Austrian Kurt Kasznar.
This is prime casting. John Wayne was big box office at the time. He was in the movie star in the Top 10 for 25 consecutive years, from the 1949 until 1974 (based on Quigley’s Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll). Between 1949–1957 he had a consistent run in the Top 10 of box-office stars. He missed in 1958 and then returned to the Top 10 between 1959–1974. He was No 1 box office star in 1950, 1951, 1954, and 1971. The 50s were good for him. And, despite him always being attached in our minds as a western hero, in the 1950s audiences were willing to accept him in anything (yes even as Genghis Khan in much maligned The Conqueror (1956) and a German sea captain in The Sea Chase (1955) both which were hits). Of the 19 films he made in the 1950s only five were westerns. So, to have Wayne play an adventurer in the Sahara Desert was not unexpected casting at the time. Sophia Loren is simply stunning and with her Italian olive features she could pass (almost) for a Tuareg north African native. She is suitably feisty, sexual, seductive and both wayward (of the street) but clearly aspiring to something more, but is it respectability, money or love. Sophia is the greatest and most successful of the Italian stars to cross over into English language films. She is perhaps the greatest and most successful of any star from a non-English speaking country to cross over. She had already made 30 or so films in Italy before someone wisely cast her as a co-star and had her emerging from the water like a Goddess, in Boy on the Dolphin (1956) starring Alan Ladd. It was all up from there. She appeared with just about every major male film star of the time. From Dolphin she went on to The Pride and the Passion (1957) with Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant, and then on to Legend of the Lost. She subsequently appeared with Anthony Perkins , William Holden, Cary Grant (again), Anthony Quinn, Tab Hunter, Clark Gable, Peter Sellers, Maurice Chevalier, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, George Peppard, Trevor Howard, Peter Finch, Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, Martin Sheen, John Cassavetes, James Coburn, Peter Finch., Peter O’Toole, Jean Gabin, Omar Sharif, James Mason, Alec Guinness, Maximilian Schell, as well as with fellow Italian legends Vittorio de Sica and Marcello Mastroianni many times. Do not underestimate her fame and popularity. She appeared in the Top 10 four times 1964, 1965, 1969, 1977 and won a best actress Oscar for Two Women in 1960, but her fame went beyond that. She was a movie star. Here she just has to look good (which she does) and do a peasant girl Maureen O’Hara impersonation which she does successfully. RossanoBrazzi was established in America playing suave older continental romantic leads in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Summertime (1955), The Story of Esther Costello (1957), Interlude (1957) (and later South Pacific (1958), and The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965)). He is good though perhaps cannot reach the total villain stage that obsession leads his character Bonnard to. Director Hathaway said as much when he said the main things wrong with the film were the script and the casting of Brazzi where he said, “he can’t play evil… the more I worked with him the worse he got.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Lost
The script, as Hathaway alluded to, is a little flabby but it is still a cut above the usual action film. Ben Hecht and Robert Presnell Jr. were the writers. I wouldn’t think they wrote together and am tempted to think Robert Presnell Jr. wrote the first draft and Ben Hecht came in and did some doctoring (he did a lot of uncredited and credited script doctoring). Interestingly, given the times, Robert Presnell Jr. who wrote for film (Man in the Attic (1953), A Life in the Balance (1955), Screaming Eagles (1956)) and television was a Hollywood progressive at the time (he was a member of the Committee for the First Amendment and later in the anti-nuclear organization SANE (founded 1958) and active with Amnesty International) but John Wayne’s Batjac production company hired him or bought the script which is not unusual even if people tend to have a binary black and white view of the world. Ben Hecht, playwright, novelist and screenwriter, could write anything and seemed to specialize in genre films with some thought, and characters with some depth. And he was on a roll … in 1957 alone he had two (superior) literate scripts on Hemingway novels made into films, The Sun Also Rises (1957) and A Farewell to Arms (1957). Literate he was, but he wasn’t above snappy dialogue, drama and action to go along with the philosophical grace notes – Scarface (1932), Design for Living (1933), Nothing Sacred (1937), Gunga Din (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), Circus World (1964). The trouble is audiences were expecting a lot more action from an an adventure film but what they got was a love triangle with soul searching in a desert setting with a dollop of melodrama.
Henry Hathaway (on the second of six films he made with John Wayne), is considered an action director but he could make excellent dramatic films about people – Peter Ibbetson (1935) and John Wayne’s earlier Shepherd of the Hills (1940), Fourteen Hours (1951) – and he does that here, despite the script flaws.
Helping Hathaway loo good is the famed director of photography (and later director), Jack Cardiff, who could work in B&W and colour but was especially known for his wonderfully lush colour photography – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), Under Capricorn (1949), The Black Rose (1950) ( for Hathaway and also filmed in North Africa), The African Queen (1951), War and Peace (1956) , The Vikings (1958) – and that is what we have here.
Of course, it helps if you have something to film. Another star of this film is the desert. Filmed in Tecnhicolor and Technirama (akin to Cinemascope) the film was filmed on location in Libya. The desert is real, the ruins are real. The lost city of Timgad referred to in the film was the Leptis Magna ruins, a Roman city dating back to the 7th century B.C. near Tripoli, in northwest Libya, while Timbuktu was Zliten, Libya. The real locals and local colour helps a lot. Interiors were done in Cinecittà, Rome.
There are so many things going right for this film, but it falls short. It is immensely watchable but not greatly moving. Still, I could watch it again. Actually, I have. I love John Wayne, and I could watch Sophia Loren all day long.
The film made it a respectable amount, but it was no smash. Against an estimated budget of $1,750,000 it made $2,200,000 at the US box office (it was 33rd on the years US Top Grossers). It’s not known how much it made on the international market, but I suspect, given the content and stars, it would have been more successful internationally).
The novels author, Bonnie Golightly (1919-1998), was born in Illinois, grew up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and moved to New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950s, where she owned a used bookstore and lived among a group of artists and writers. Golightly published (some under pseudonyms ) twenty books, including the pulp novels The Wild One (1957), Beat Girl (1959), The Shades of Evil (1960), The Intimate Ones (1960), and The Integration of Maybelle Brown (1961), movie novelizations (A Breath of Scandal (1960) (co-incidentally another Sophie Loren film)), and books about the paranormal, drugs and sexuality. She best known as the possible inspiration for Capote’s main character, Holly Golightly, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and for suing Capote, his publisher Random House, and Esquire Magazine (which first published the story as a novella) in 1959. Capote denied the connection, saying that he had never even met Golightly, and she lost the suit. A Bohemian and a Beat of sorts she ran with a colorful circle of friends, ranging from writers like Norman Mailer, Harold Norse, and William Carlos Williams to painters like Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollack’s wife, Lee Krasner. She always loved cats, a trait she shared with her namesake, Holly. Bonnie died in 1998 of lung cancer; she was a lifelong smoker.
The novelization (the UK edition doesn’t indicate it but the US edition does) doesn’t greatly differ from the film though Bonnard’s obsession is more intense, the sexual tension is turned up a bit, the maneuvering between the three in the sexual triangle is more frequently regular and the struggle against the elements is more detailed. The other beauty of the book is in the character detail – even though everyone seems to be going around in circles there’s a lot more motivational detail on the characters of Loren’s Dita (whose breasts are always surging and heaving) and Brazzi’s Bonnard. They are as well detailed as Wayne’s Joe January character though, the film, of course, leans towards the star and draw card.
It’s a good read on a superior pulp level.
Notes:
Allegedly, Wayne, treated Loren with a quiet respect, protecting her during grueling desert shoots and jokingly calling her “Soph.” One day, as a sandstorm whipped up during filming, he stood beside her, shielding her from the wind, muttering with a grin: “This isn’t Rome, sweetheart.”. Could be true but Loren suffered through Italy and World War 2 so she knew where Rome was and wasn’t I would think.
During the filming Wayne injured his foot after slipping on rocky terrain in the Libyan desert, a mishap that reportedly led to a three-week delay in production. He used crutches to continue acting but never complained, embodying his reputation for tough perseverance (he was also a professional and valued that, and also had his production company involved so he needed to finish the film on budget).
US crooner Joe Valino sang the theme sung to the film. He was riding high in the charts in late 1956 with “The Garden of Eden” (#12US) but after a former girlfriend of Valino claimed that he had arranged for her to have an illegal abortion. He denied the charge, but was convicted, and received a 17-year probation. As a result, his music was removed from sale and banned from radio play. I assume it was for that reason his theme song was not sued in the film. The song “The theme to Legend of the Lost” was written by the film’s compose, Italian Angelo Francesco Lavagnino and American (I assume lyricist) Don Wolf. The film used an instrumental theme Lavagnino.
FILM STARS: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O’Malley, Anna Gunn, Jamey Sheridan, Michael Rapaport
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III with Jeffrey Zaslow
TYPE: Non Fiction
PUBLISHER: William Morrow
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2016
COUNTRY: Australia
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: as above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2009
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: Highest Duty
NOTES
GENRE: Drama
WORDS: An act of heroism or a tribute to exemplary ability I don’t know but Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River New York in 2009 and saved all 155 people on board, is historically memorable.
Apart from the landing, the film and the book, deal with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) who suspect pilot error in that the left engine was still running at idle power meaning, theoretically, he still had enough power to land the plane at either LaGuardia or Teterboro. If it is a case of pilot error, it would likely destroy Sully’s reputation and career. After listening to the cockpit voice recorder and analysis of the left engine, now recovered from the river the NTSB confirms Sully’s account that the engine had been damaged by the bird strike, and concludes that Sully had acted correctly in the event.
The book, “Highest Duty”, is a matter of fact analysis of the events in a autobiography that also serves as a personal philosophical statement (which explains why the book is subtitled “My Search for What Really Matters”). The film concentrates on the spectacle of the crash landing and the drama of the subsequent investigation and how it effects Sully. How Sully deals with the events is heroic or professional or a bit of both. In a world where the world “hero” is overused and given as a label for non-events and marginal altruistic acts, the heroics here, both external and internal, are obvious. Sully’s quick thinking to land the plane under pressure, and his almost stoic dealing with a bureaucracy and some other hostile individuals or groups after the event who want to lay blame at his feet, all go to the heart of who he is. The book hints at the philosophy of heroism whilst the film spells it out
This is the type of movie perfect for Clint Eastwood to direct. Many of his films deal with “heroism” and what it means to be a hero, especially an everyday one, both through outward acts and inward strengths. He likes his heroes clean, not overly flawed and when under pressure upright and moral, and when needed professional. His is a Howard Hawks view of heroes though his heroes tend to act alone rather than with groups. Do these heroes exist? Yes, they do exist, even in a post modern world. I said this in another post about Clint, when he direct the not dissimilar in mood American Sniper (2014) and it applies here …
And perhaps not surprising Clint Eastwood was chosen to direct. Clint has that old style of film making where he tells a story straight. No post modernism enters his style. His films are like films made in the 30s and 40s he watched as a kid or like ones from the 50s when he had started acting but unlike films that followed with experiments in technique and story which cast shades of grey over character and stories. Sure they have (some) violence and profanity but that is just window dressing.
Tom Hanks is good in a role that once would have gone to Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Robert Montgomery or Charlton Heston in years past. Aaron Eckhart as co-pilot Jeff Skiles is, as always, solid and Laura Linney, as wife Lorraine Sullenberger, does a June Allyson role (and there is nothing wrong with that). Screenwriter, Todd Komarnicki, has enough solemn light pensive moments that are persuasive enough to add to the drama, and he would utilize the same style later when he wrote The Professor and the Madman (2019) and Bonhoeffer (2024).
The main difference between film and book is emphasis and the need for a villain (in the film) to increase the drama. The film focuses on the harrowing investigation and psychological aftermath of the “Miracle on the Hudson” while the book is Sully’s personal autobiography offering a deeper, more personal account of his career, life, and philosophy, emphasizing themes of preparedness and humanity rather than the NTSB conflict. The film exaggerates the NTSB’s role into a “witch hunt” to create a “bad guy,” a fictionalized conflict not present in the book.
For me the film was more entertaining, but once it enough.
Sully grossed $240.8 million, against a production budget of $60 million. A hit, and proof that people like stories about heroes (even if it an old white man).
FILM STARS: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Nathaniel Philbrick
TYPE: Non Fiction
PUBLISHER: William Collins
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2015
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2000
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
NOTES
GENRE: Non Fiction
WORDS: A fascinating book and film.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book by American writer Nathaniel Philbrick. It depicts a real life incident abord a whaling ship in the 1820s …
Wikipedia: The Essex, an American whaleship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, sank after a sperm whale attacked it in the Pacific Ocean in November 1820. Having lost their ship, the crew of the Essex attempted to sail to South America in whaleboats. After suffering from starvation and dehydration, most of the crew died before the survivors were rescued in February 1821 … In retelling the story of the crew’s ordeal, Philbrick uses an account written by Thomas Nickerson, who was a teenage cabin boy on board the Essex and wrote about the experience in his old age; Nickerson’s account was found in 1960 but was not authenticated until 1980. In 1984, an abridged version of his account was finally published. The book also uses the better known account of Owen Chase, the ship’s first mate, which was published soon after the ordeal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heart_of_the_Sea#Film_adaptation
That may be fascinating enough but the event, in part, inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick.
Author Philbrick won the 2000 US National Book Award for Nonfiction for this book. His writing is almost novel like (he is an English professor) and is written as history as a novel (narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction), which I generally don’t like though this one keeps the “creative” to a minimum. The author knows his stuff as he often writes on issues of the sea, shipping as well as on American colonial history. This book is full of interesting information surrounding the narrative, like why whalers needed to go to the Pacific, how whaling was done, and the culture of a whaling town. The historical characters come to life more so because the background is so well described. You understand the entire lives of these people and where they came from. Their personalities come alive and you understand how and why they do things they do.
The film is solid though with flaws.
I recall I was looking forward to this film. Films about men (yes, sorry, largely men, with one love interest occasionally thrown in) on the sea in the days of sail where a favourite of mine as a kid – Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Captain Blood (1935), Captains Courageous (1937), The Sea Hawk (1940), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), The Black Swan (1942), Wake of the Red Witch (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951), Against All Flags (1952), Yankee Buccaneer (1952), Sea Devils (1953), The World in His Arms (1952), All the Brothers were Valiant (1953), Moby Dick (1956), Billy Budd (1962), H.M.S. Defiant (1962), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). But this is 2015 and in 2015 these films have to be (ever) more serious and politically correct because adventure for adventures sake in historical films is out of fashion (okay, apart from the Pirates of the Caribbean films). History is political and the swashbucklers and seafarers are looked through that lens. They become colonizers, exploiters, or in the case of whalers, environmental terrorists. And perhaps they were (and many of the older films hinted at the same) but that should not get in the way of telling a story. The other problem is these films are expensive to make and returns are not guaranteed (there is no appetite for historical films … even agenda driven struggle). Peter Weir’s wonderful Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) managed to tread the line between history and adventure and entertain, and when released was roundly praised but it only just broke even.
This film simplifies the narrative as you often find it from book to film. It doesn’t have Philbrick’s exploration of whaling mechanics and the existential themes. It does, however, take creative liberties with the story of the survivors to engage the film audience. The film also has Herman Melville being told the story by a survivor (the now grown up boy Nickerson) before Melville writes Moby Dick which is not in the book. Melville met with the captain, George Pollard Jr, and first mate Owen Chase’s son about the Essex. Owen Chase’s written account of the vent was Melville’s true inspiration
Ron Howard is a fine director. he has been around long enough, as an actor, to work (and watch) the greats – Vincente Minnelli, Richard Fleischer, Don Siegel, George Lucas, Bert I. Gordon and on TV, Franklin J. Schaffner, Lamont Johnson, Jerry Hopper, Joseph H. Lewis – to make entertaining films. He started in comedies (Night Shift (1982), Splash (1984), Cocoon (1985)) and moved to drama and action, nothing totally centered on action and nothing wallowing in drama, but an excellent mix of both, Backdraft (1991), Ransom (1996), The Missing (2003), Rush (2013). Great entertainments but there are no philosophical discussions that follow. Screenwriter, Charles Leavitt, is perhaps a good companion to him as he mixes drama and action well: The Sunchaser (1996) and Blood Diamond (2006). The acting is fine. Hemsworth (as the first mate) tends to raise his voice for dramatic lines (much like early Michael Caine did) but could have appeared in any number of adventure or swashbuckling roles in the 1940s and 1950s. He has the look and the presence. Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson all give good support, though it is funny how many Australian, English, and Irish actors are needed to portray American colonial sailors. Their speaking voices are, more or less, closer to Colonial American than the contemporary American voices.
The problem is the film is a little flat. It should have been more spectacular. Perhaps CGI (and real locations!) don’t convince as much as model boats and large sets used in the 30s, 40s, and 50s but those films had more awe and more of a feeling of being at sea which this film doesn’t have, despite the fact these films try to be (and usually are) more realistic. Likewise, there is no obsession in this film, the obsession that led to the characters created by Melville, and perhaps the obsession (or at least passion) that Philbrick’s book has.
The film grossed $93.9 million worldwide, against a production budget of $100 million. A flop. A pity. If it had done well it may have encouraged more of the same and it would have been good to have more historical adventure epics than superhero films (then and now).
FILM STARS: Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Paul Scofield, Joan Allen, Bruce Davison, Rob Campbell, Jeffrey Jones
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Arthur Miller
TYPE: Play
PUBLISHER: Methuen
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1996
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1953
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Historical Drama
WORDS: Arthur Miller’s great play about witch-hunting becomes a solid film.
I could end it there. I should. Everyone who has navigated to this blog I assume would know what “The Crucible” is about, or everyone should know what it’s about.
Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists.
A small group of teen girls in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts caught in an innocent conjuring of love potions to catch young men are forced to tell lies that Satan had invaded them and forced them to participate in the rites and are then forced to name those involved. The community is engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumours that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town’s most basic fears. People are accused, rounded up and put on trial in a frenzy of socially sanctioned violence. Thrown into the mix are greedy preachers and other major landowners trying to steal others’ land and one young woman infatuated with a married man and determined to get rid of his innocent wife. Arthur Miller wrote the events and the subsequent trials where those who demanded their innocence were executed, those who would not name names were incarcerated and tortured, and those who admitted their guilt were immediately freed as a parable of the Congressional Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joe McCarthy in 1950’s America.
In 1953, the year the play debuted, Miller wrote, “The Crucible is taken from history. No character is in the play who did not take a similar role in Salem, 1692.” This does not appear to be accurate as Miller made both deliberate changes and incidental mistakes. Abigail Williams’ age was increased from 11 or 12 to 17, probably to add credence to the backstory of Proctor’s affair with Abigail. John Proctor himself was 60 years old in 1692, but portrayed as much younger in the play, for the same reason” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible
Of course, there was one problem, and one Miller recognized (at least later if not at the time) …. “Inevitably, it was no sooner known that my new play was about Salem than I had to confront the charge that such an analogy was specious—that there never were any witches but there certainly are Communists”. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible
He gets around this by suggesting that people at the time believed there were witches so for all intents and purposes the situations are analogous.
He goes on to say, “The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties: the old friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being seen talking to him; the overnight conversions of former leftists into born-again patriots; and so on. Apparently, certain processes are universal. When Gentiles in Hitler’s Germany, for example, saw their Jewish neighbours being trucked off, or farmers in Soviet Ukraine saw the Kulaks vanishing before their eyes, the common reaction, even among those unsympathetic to Nazism or Communism, was quite naturally to turn away in fear of being identified with the condemned. As I learned from non-Jewish refugees, however, there was often a despairing pity mixed with “Well, they must have done something.” Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable And so the evidence has to be internally denied”. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible
It has become the ultimate literary epitome of the wrongness of groupthink, up there with 1984 by Orwell, and is respected and highly regarded.
Having said all that the Miller play has been called misogynist, which I’m certain was not on his radar in 1he early 1950s. Feminists suggest that Abigail (the accuser) and the other female characters are crazy and antagonizing. Yes, Abigail’s actions posed major problems – but Miller portrays John Proctor, the man who has illicit sex with her, as a martyr. Miller grants the men in this play complexity and autonomy; he relegates women to the role of one-dimensional witches. John Proctor can call Abigail Williams a whore all the live-long day, but she’s not the one who is cheating on anyone. I can see that but for the story wasn’t meant to be about male female relationships or Tennessee Williams like shenanigans, was it?. They also always point out she’s also half his age (not that would have been unusual in that day and age) .
Arthur Miller adapted his own play into the screenplay for the 1996 film, making some intentional cuts and additions for the cinematic medium. Miller restored some material, including the second scene from Act Two between John and Abigail in the woods, which had been cut from the play’s final draft. He pays attention to detail but, for all that, Miller was still a little loose with history. The real Abigail Williams was eleven years old during the time of the trials and John Proctor was 60 years old. I’m not sure why Miller felt the need to age up an twelve year old girl and insert a fictional affair as the reason for the start of the Salem witch trials. Sex sells?
He tries to make a more sympathetic Proctor (as does the film) by having more graphic violence done to him but a man who blames his wife for giving him the side eye after he cheated on her and, in the same breath, blames the teen girl he had an affair with for believing he felt something for her isn’t riding the moral high ground. There are also some bits and pieces like where Abigail visits John Proctor in prison, a new development, not present in the play, where she was previously shown to simply flee Salem.
The film is solid but never terrifying as it would have been for those accused or for the town in general. It is convincing but slightly manipulative. The witchcraft is accepted but the environment that creates a world where witchcraft is accepted isn’t really explored. And, ultimately maybe it is just because the issue wasn’t relevant anymore the whole naming names (or pointing fingers) isn’t a big societal influenced failing but rather just a personal failing. Often people wish that a book made into a film in the 40s or 50s was made today so they could get around the censorship of the times but with The Crucible I regret that it wasn’t made in Hollywood in the 1950s as I think some of the subsequent history and distance from the events of the 1950s has diluted the message. But I specify Hollywood … Jean-Paul Sartre, in his Marxist phase, wrote a screenplay of the play for a French version in 1957 that blamed the tragedy on the rich landowners conspiring to persecute the poor which had little to do with the play. (In truth, most of those who were hanged in Salem were people of substance, and two or three were very large landowners). So, perhaps a version with Kirk Douglas, or Burt Lancaster or maybe both … though their similar period piece film of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple (1959) did them no favours). Arthur Kennedy played Proctor in the 1953 Broadway version and he would have been good for the film even if lacked star power.
Here, everyone does their bit. Daniel Day-Lewis does what he does best which is immerse himself in the role. Apparently, he built the house he lived in as John Proctor, because of his habit of maintaining his character through the entire duration of the filming. To quote and re-apply Laurence Olivier “My dear boy, why don’t you try acting?”. Though in truth you can always see Lewis “acting”. Winona Ryder, Paul Scofield, Joan Allen, Bruce Davison are all good. Director Nicholas Hytner is a prolific English theatre director who had a hit with his first film The Madness of King George (1994).The Crucible was his second, and he has dabbled in films since without great success but has maintained a busy career directing A grade theatre and opera in Britain. He utilizes the wider wilderness surrounding Salem, creating a more immersive and visually dramatic experience than the play’s predominantly indoor scenes, but it all feels a little stagey like a planned community (maybe it was) rather than a living and breathing village.
The film is certainly relevant to the here and now and perhaps it should be remade again (and updated … are you allowed to update it to the 21st century?) it seems odd that this hasn’t been updated.
Period films without epic battles are always a hard sell …. as proven here. On a budget of $25 million the film only made $7.3 million.
The play has been staged and revived (but still as a period piece) and it has been held on high by the left (probably because Miller was a leftist for some time). You can have a twit theatre critic at The Guardian (why anyone well-read reads the Guardian I don’t know) calling it magnificent because “Miller’s account of the witch-hunts in Salem in 1692 was initially seen as a political parable about Senator McCarthy’s investigation of suspected communists in the America of the early 1950s. Given the fact that in President Trump’s America, freedom of assembly, of the press and of speech are no longer guaranteed, and that you can be threatened with deportation for taking part in a pro-Palestinian protest, it is no surprise that people turn to The Crucible”.
who goes on to double down and show his undergarments …
“My admiration for Miller’s play and my belief in its capacity to take on new meanings are, I hope, clear. But it is precisely because it is being revived at a time when President Trump is suppressing dissent and creating global chaos that I would raise another question: should we, as a form of intellectual protest, gradually wean ourselves off our dependence on American drama? I avoid the word “boycott” because I suspect it is both impractical and undesirable but I recall that I did once ask Harold Pinter, because of his disgust with US foreign policy, which he once equated with that of Nazi Germany, whether he had ever thought of withdrawing his plays from American performance. There was – naturally – a long pause, before Pinter replied that he hoped the production of his plays would give support to groups as opposed as himself to the destructive lies of American politicians“. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/may/06/abuse-witch-hunts-hangings-arthur-millers-the-crucible
Maybe Miller would be happy but The Crucible fits in equally nicely (perhaps better) as a statement on anyone being “called out” or “cancelled” or “outed” or forced to take sides and face criticism if they don’t or don’t forcefully enough. Does this Guardian critic own a mirror?
Ultimately people on the left look at the play and rely on the legal power the oppressors wield, whereas people on the right use the play to criticize the moral power the left wields.
The play has sex, courtroom drama, and people being nasty to each other and on that level it is a good read but not a great one for me because it’s liberal with the historical facts, to meet a dramatic narrative and a theme (political position) that is moveable. Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” is better.
The film is a solid watch but it is Peyton Place in period clothes. And, I have no problems with that.
FILM STARS: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Malcolm McDowell, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, William Shatner
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: J.M. Dillard
TYPE: Novelisation
PUBLISHER: Pocket Books
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1994
COUNTRY: Australia
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1994a
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Sci Fi
WORDS: Is there still a ‘war’ between Trekkies and Star Wars fans for top dog in the sci-fi franchise?
Both are shades of what they once were even if their universes keep expanding. Yes, the universe is expanding though the expansion is not an explosion into something, but rather a stretching of space itself. Just like some of the Star Trek and most of the Star Wars spin offs … a stretch.
I have always been a solid Trekkie, though with limits. Star Wars for me was the first two films and the slight but entertaining Solo (2018) film. I don’t think Return of the Jedi (1983) cut it and the other films, especially after Lucas left, were utter shite. The TV shows are dire.
In any event I preferred Star Trek because it seemed like science, and occupied a world which I could see as occurring where Star Wars seemed more like a space fantasy, and I lean to the former though I’m not adverse to sci fi monster movies.
Having said that, my Star Trek universe is the fist series (1966-1969), the films with William Shatner, and the first two (especially Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)) in the reboot. The third, (co) scripted by Star Trek “fan” (and excellent co-star) Simon Pegg was horrible. They were looking for drama to top the previous two but no Trekkie would ever destroy the Enterprise, would they?
And that’s it.
I never got into Next Generation (1987-1994), and, yes, I know there are many who love it and many who think it superior to the 60s show. But I tried to watch it at the time and maybe I will watch it again one day but, even though it was watchable and sometimes entertaining, it didn’t send me into orbit (sic). My problem with it was it wa gimmicky. The only gimmick on the crew in the first series was the legend with deadpan smart arse comments and pointy ears, the Vulcan Mr Spock. By Next Gen amongst the crew we have blind (but with special devices) Geordi La Forge, the Klingon (wtf a Klingon in the Federation!) Lieutenant Worf, the half-human, half-Betazoid, Deanna Troi, and the android Data. And of course, Commander Picard was no James T. Kirk. If this was a real world Picard is probably the better all round commander but Kirk is more human, more egalitarian and more fun. That’s not to say Picard can’t be mischievous but if the shows represent their eras then he is British PM Tony Blair (who postdated the series) to Shatner’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I also thought Next Gen was also a little solemn at time. It didn’t have the palpable joy of the new frontier, and adventures to be had, like the original series.
The 60s series was gold for me. It was compulsory television over here in Australia in the 1970s. I think it was on at 11am on Sunday on Channel 9 and followed by Australian World Championship Wrestling (or maybe it was on at 12 with the wrestling at 11). I know one of those shows clashed with Combat on Channel O (as it then was) which was a drama in days before the VCR as they were all favourites. I even recall being in Croatia (then Yugoslavia) on holidays as a 7 year old kid in the 70s and watching it on television over there an thinking I was pretty good because I could understand the English and didn’t need the subtitles. It travelled well.
Further, when Next Gen came out I noticed how many of my friends loved it … though they, oddly, didn’t really watch the 60s series and that, rightly or wrongly, made me did in deeper in my devotion to the original.
The 60s cast films that followed were an odd bunch but were all attended on, by me, at the cinemas and then watched on television. After six films the torch was passed on to the next generation (sic). Star Trek Generations was the calculated pass …. it comprised the Next Gen cast with original crew members Montgomery Scott, Pavel Chekov and a time bending James T. Kirk making cameos.
The plot centering on Captain Picard and the Enterprise-D crew’s encounter with Dr. Tolian Soran, a scientist obsessed with entering the Nexus, a timeless energy ribbon, by destroying a star to trigger its effects. Picard must team up with the long-dead Captain Kirk, who was also pulled into the Nexus, to stop Soran. This is very Star Trek and quite serviceable.
Director David Carson and screenwriters Ronald D. Moore, Brannon Braga who also came up with the story with Rick Berman, all who worked on the Next Gen series. And you can tell but, the strength is, as it is with most Star Trek films, their this is just another adventure form of storytelling. They are expanded episodes of the TV show they came from. Perhaps a touch more cinematic but never with a need to top the last film in action or ideas. The films come off as side gigs rather than events. And that is a good thing.
Generations has enough action to keep it moving, enough references to the TV show to keep the fans happy and a villain played by the (always wonderful) Malcolm McDowell to steal the show. And, of course, there are the Scotty, Chekov and Kirk to keep us “first” geners happy though, apart from Kirk, they have little to do. Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley declined to appear as their characters Spock and Leonard McCoy for that very reason.
The novelization J.M. Dillard expands on the film, offering more in-depth character development and plot details, particularly regarding the Nexus (its nature and its effects) and Dr. Soran. While the film focuses on the main plot of stopping Soran and the Nexus, the novel goes deeper into the characters’ motivations especially Picard’s struggle with loss and Kirk’s desire to return to action.
J.M. Dillard (Jeanne M. Dillard a pseudonym for Jeanne Kalogridis) wrote much historical, science and horror fiction but also did a lot of the Star Trek film and TV show novelizations in the 1990s an d 200s (she also did the novelizations for The Fugitive (1993) and Bulletproof Monk (2003)).
There is not mush more to say. You want more go on line and google the film. The Trekkie obsessives (God bless them) have written much and paid attention to the devil in the detail
The film was a big hit.
Watch it. It’s good but not great. The novelization …. well if you live in the Star Trek world ….
SCREENWRITER: W. Bruce Cameron, Cathryn Michon, Audrey Wells, Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky
FILM STARS: Josh Gad (the voice of the dog), Dennis Quaid, Peggy Lipton, Bryce Gheisar, KJ Apa, Juliet Rylance, Luke Kirby
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: W. Bruce Cameron
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Pan
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2018
COUNTRY: Australia
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2010
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Comedy, Drama
WORDS: This is the type of movie Hollywood does well … slick and emotional. It is designed to make you cry. People with problems, dogs, the passing of time, love and loss. Bring a hanky
The book is well written, but manipulative. The film is well directed and played, but manipulative. As long as you don’t mind being manipulated both are better than most. And I don’t.
Books can cram in ideas with the emotion but (non documentary) films do not have that luxury. Film is limited by time and the need to keep the audience entertained. It is largely passive and it’s easier to make people emote than think. They may stick to the story but the emphasis is usually on the narrative and the emotions that arise out of the story or ideas and concepts. You can have both and the best films (for me) are the genre type films which have ideas snuck into them … though to get the balance right isn’t easy.
So, just go along for the ride and be entertained. Manipulation it may be but films that are meant to make you think are no less manipulative, usually more agenda driven and harder to make entertaining.
Here, the book and the film tell the story of a dog its eyes as it is reincarnated multiple times over five decades. The dog discovers its “purpose” through its journey and through its kindred spirit, Ethan, a boy who grows into an older man over the decades. Lives are touched, stories are told, there is laughter and there are tears, and everything is uplifting. This is story telling and something that reaches back to thirties like a more obvious and less skilled William Saroyan.
The film is well made. Swede director Lasse Hallström (who started out in the mid-70s directing ABBA videos) is good at making literate, thoughtful (and perhaps ripe) schmaltz (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), The Cider House Rules (1999), and Chocolat (2000), The Shipping News (2001), An Unfinished Life (2005), Dear John (2010)). Interestingly, his earlier dog movie, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009) is similar in tone to A Dog’s Purpose (very similar – it makes you wonder if author W. Bruce Cameron had seen that film, or its Japanese original, Hachikō Monogatari (1987)). His even earlier My Life as a Dog (1985) which made his name is not about a dog at all.
The cast are good (especially Quaid) but ultimately, despite the more thoughtful story line, any Lassie movie from the 1940s is as entertaining, and some more so. This is not a criticism, I’m just saying.
The script by Cameron and four others (three females and a male) waters down the book a little and, as per usual, the movie adaptation simplifies and alters some aspects of the book’s narrative to keep the pace up. Stories are condensed, some key events are changed, and not surprisingly, the movie emphasizes the dog’s relationships with his humans, sometimes at the expense of his / her (the reincarnated dog comes back as both genders) own internal journey. The film sticks to the novel with love, loyalty, and the bond between humans and animals foremost (a Hollywood staple going back to the silent era) though the book is a little more melancholy, especially towards the end.
The novel was a New York Times bestseller for 49 weeks (some sources say 52) and was followed up by two sequels by Cameron, A Dog’s Journey (2012) (filmed in 2019) and A Dog’s Promise (2019). The film was a big hit with a budget of $22 million it returned $205 million at the box office.
The film is easily watchable though once may be enough and the book is easily readable. It’s a matter for you if you embark on either, but definitely watch the film or read the book on a beach if you want someone female to think you are sensitive.
FILM STARS: Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Ben O’Toole, Benedict Hardie, Milo Gibson, and Nathaniel Buzolic, Hugo Weaving
COUNTRY: USA – Australia
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Booton Herndon
TYPE: Biography
PUBLISHER: Remnant
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 2016
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 2016
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: “The Unlikeliest Hero: The Story of Desmond T. Doss, Conscientious Objector Who Won His Nation’s Highest Military Honor” (2004). Later Title: “Redemption at Hacksaw Ridge: The Gripping Story That Inspired the Movie” (2016). Then “Hero of Hacksaw Ridge”.
NOTES
GENRE: War
WORDS: Mel Gibson’s brutal war film based on (or rather inspired by) Booton Herndon’s biography of Desmond Doss, a Seventh-day Adventist and conscientious objector who served as a medic in the US Infantry during World War II.
The film depicts Doss’ bravery, his unwavering commitment to his beliefs, and his experiences during the Battle of Okinawa, particularly in saving 75 men without firing a gun, for which he won the Medal of Honour.
And it works. The battle between belief and “though shalt not kill” and the need to defend ones country, or in this case battle the enemy, has been one that has been looked at in many films. More often than not, at least in the movies (and I would think in real life …at least in the 20th century), the conscientious objectors were asking to be released on religious grounds rather than freedom of conscience grounds. And that makes for easier narratives when it comes to movies. Religious conviction is more easily accepted than the more (likely) secular freedom of conscience positions.
Sergeant York (1941) (well he did kill but he was a pacifist who had to overcome his religious pacifist beliefs), the French film Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) and a couple of Civil war films (Friendly Persuasion (1956), No Drums, No Bugles (1972)) all dealt with individuals grappling with the need to kill as demanded by their country and their belief it is wrong.
The real life stories have the most resonance because, well, they were real life (no matter how embellished they are for film) The individuals were all brave in various ways from Alvin York (in Sergeant York) and his personal bravery to confront his beliefs (well, not as staunch in his beliefs but he thought about it at length before picking up a gun), to Desmond Doss’ refusal to fire a gun but become a medic under fire, to Austrian Franz Jägerstätter (in A Hidden Life) who refuses to fight for the Nazis, or to serve in any form and is imprisoned and executed.
This film doesn’t pull punches. The combat scenes are brutal and are meant to be. The more in your face the combat scenes the more easily you will accept Doss’ bravery. We need Hollywood visuals because, perhaps only servicemen could understand, without visuals, what it is like in battle … and by active I mean those infantrymen in actual battle as opposed to those who served.
The screenplay by Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight is inspired by the book and also on The Conscientious Objector a 2004 documentary film directed by Terry Benedict about the life of Desmond Doss. Both give more detail on Doss and his beliefs, including his childhood, and character. The film condenses the story to maintain a dramatic arc. You would think Doss’ actions at Okinawa took place over a period of a few days, but they were over a period of about three weeks (according to his citation). The film also omits his prior combat service in the Battle of Guam and Battle of Leyte where Doss was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for extraordinary bravery in both battles.
Whether because of his religious convictions (or their lack of application in real life) or his (drunken) antisemitic comments (which are tame compared to what is passed around nowadays) or his roles in many action films Mel doesn’t get taken as seriously, as a director, as he should (yes I know he won a Best director Oscar for Braveheart and was nominated here) despite having had hit films with some critics and audiences. He isn’t a tricky director , doesn’t call attention to his style., and he tends to look at a story straight on without any interest in ambiguities. He wants to tell a story where action is big, hard, sharp and swift and characters are heroes or villains. And that is fine. Mel handles the big battle scenes well (really well) and he knows how to get the most out of a crowd of people on the screen whether they be soldiers (here), Scottish rebels (Braveheart (1995)), Mayan warriors (Apocalypto (2006)) or Roman soldiers (The Passion of the Christ (2004)) but he never loses touch with the hero at the center. He is perhaps the Michael Curtiz of modern makers, and that is not bad thing.
The cast is solid. Lead Andrew Garfield was popular at the time. He was a dweeby Spiderman but as Doss he works. Vince Vaughn again shows he could have been an Aldo Ray type movie star in another era. Sam Worthington is solid but doesn’t stand out and the amount of Australian actors in other supports indicate it the movie was filmed in Australia.
Hacksaw Ridge was a hit with the critics and audiences grossing $180.5 million, against a production budget of $40 million
The book is an okay read (if you want a lot of Seventh day Adventist religion) but not necessary unless you want the detail. The film is well worth watching
NOTES
Hacksaw Ridge refers to the Maeda Escarpment, a hilly area within the Urasoe Castle Ruins in Okinawa, Japan
Terry Benedict, director of the documentary on Doss The Conscientious Objector (2004) was one of the producers of Hacksaw Ridge, and it features several excerpts from The Conscientious Objector immediately before the end credits.
Actor Milo Gibson (born November 16, 1990) is the son of Mel Gibson and made his film debut in this film.
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