TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[Padma]

2 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Robert Bolt managed an interesting tight-rope act with A Man for All Seasons: getting his audience on More's side and getting us worked up about the value of standing up for one's principles and establishing a line beyond which we will not compromise -- without our committing ourselves to the specific beliefs he was defending (the unique correctness of the Roman Catholic Church, including papal infallibility). Which some in the audience might share, but certainly far from all.

The historical record on More does seem to record his single-minded devotion to the Church's doctrine of his time, with all that that entails: disposing of heretics, reserving the right of biblical interpretation to the clergy rather than commoners, and so on. This also involved unswerving loyalty to his sovereign, as long as said ruler was loyal to the Church and thus an instrument of divine authority. (Hence More's contribution to the after-the-fact demonization of Richard III in order to justify the Tudor dynasty's right to the throne -- a demonization swallowed whole by Shakespeare, among others in subsequent times.)

I loved seeing this again, too.  For me, the scene where More is so opposed to his future son-in-law's ideological embrace of Luther and the Reformation reminded me that, yes, More was brilliant and principled in the context of this situation, but, no, I would not have agreed with him philosophically about anything to do with religion and its implementation.  That was my turning point in the film, where I thought Bolt wrote it so well and made viewers feel admiration for a man so committed to his principles even if he was far from the embodiment of our own personal belief system. It was that, not the specifics of his beliefs, that made him a "man for all seasons", whether or not the end result of what he opposed was positive (i.e. England becoming Protestant).  It's the kind of idea-oriented film that, once again, would never, ever be made today.

[Milburn Stone]

31 minutes ago, Padma said:

It was that, not the specifics of his beliefs, that made him a "man for all seasons"...

This puts me in mind to realize I've never actually understood the title. (Just sort of accepted it and glossed over it.) So, would you say "a man for all seasons" is a man who remains true to himself no matter which way the wind is blowing? No matter which way the political climate turns? Are those wind/climate metaphors I just came up with the key to understanding the meaning of "seasons" in the title? Or is it something else?

Edited June 24, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[Padma]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

This puts me in mind to realize I've never actually understood the title. (Just sort of accepted it and glossed over it.) So, would you say "a man for all seasons" is a man who remains true to himself no matter which way the wind is blowing? No matter which way the political climate turns? Are those wind/climate metaphors I just came up with the key to understanding the meaning of "seasons" in the title? Or is it something else?

That's how I took it. That a man who is committed to principles, uncorrupted by greed and ambition (in contrast with Rich and others) and even willing to give his life for them is admirable regardless of the time or place. Really a unique piece of history to base a play on and so great they turned it into such a wonderful film. 

ETA: Meaning, that I take this play/movie so much more as historically-inspired fiction--kind of like some of the Shakespeare dramas using famous characters as central to the stories--than as an actual look at history. More might have seemed an awful person to me in real life--both  in the context of his Church and his times as well as of today--but I don't think the truth of that aspect of it matters so much, if you take it this primarily as thought-provoking drama, using a historical premise and characters, looking at a kind of "truth" as drama (i.e. universal truth about one's conscience), rather than the truth we look for as history.).

Edited June 24, 2016 by Padma

[ratgirlagogo]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

This puts me in mind to realize I've never actually understood the title. (Just sort of accepted it and glossed over it.) So, would you say "a man for all seasons" is a man who remains true to himself no matter which way the wind is blowing? No matter which way the political climate turns? Are those wind/climate metaphors I just came up with the key to understanding the meaning of "seasons" in the title? Or is it something else?

I don't have the review near by  me but I do remember that when it came out Pauline Kael complained that More was more of a "man for no seasons" for all the reasons given above.  I was raised in a super-Catholic household and even my mother was not really an admirer of this film at the time because she was uncomfortable with More as a saint.  Papal infallibility wasn't made Church dogma until 1870 along with some other controversial things.   In More's time period I'd argue this position had more to do with the Pope not wanting his authority as an earthly king challenged more than his authority as a religious leader.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Rinaldo]

4 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

..by burning at the stake anyone who dared to be Christian in a different way. 

To a genuine believer in the single line of authority from Christ to Peter etc., there is no "different way." That's the problem.

Certainly Bolt had done enough research to know all this, and if he wanted to use More as a symbol of integrity at all cost, he had to leave out a ton of specifics. And what he did include (because the matter of the split from Rome can't be avoided if you're going to tell this story), he told very cleverly so that we think about More's dilemma in general terms, and not the specifics on which he's staking his life.

39 minutes ago, ratgirlagogo said:

I don't have the review near by  me but I do remember that when it came out Pauline Kael complained that More was more of a "man for no seasons" for all the reasons given above.  

In More's time period I'd argue this position had more to do with the Pope not wanting his authority as an earthly king challenged more than his authority as a religious leader.

On the latter point, the two were closely related, in a time when temporal power was seen to be intertwined with spiritual power. (The "double body of the king" sort of belief, with your ruler not to be questioned when he is part of the structure of God's plan on earth.)

I do have Kael's review at hand (let's face it, I have her complete works on my shelf); it's in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. She opens with a paragraph of praise for the dialogue, the acting, the direction. And then goes on with "But that's just about all I can say for it... As conceived by Bolt, More isn't particularly relevant to this season, I doubt if he's relevant to any season." And she goes on to point out that dying for one's principles doesn't guarantee the rightness of those principles (and that "the Afrikaners willing to die for apartheid -- and they find their justifications in divine law too -- could probably make as good a case"). She says that More is presented as the kind of uncomplicated great man found in biographies aimed at 12-year-olds, and maybe people like the movie because it encourages them to regress to that mental age.

There is, as I'm sure many of us know, a second film of the play, made for TV, starring and directed by Charlton Heston, who had played the role onstage. I haven't seen it, and I hear that it definitely has technical and other lacks as a movie, but that it has its moments too. Vanessa Redgrave moves up to Alice More in this version, and John Gielgud plays Wolsey. Perhaps most importantly, Bolt's omnipresent audience-confidante narrator figure, The Common Man, is retained in this version (played by Roy Kinnear), and that seems like a plus to me. Has anywhere here seen this one?

[Julia]

9 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

Re the political undercurrents: From my memory of seeing it, once only, back when it came out and I was a teenager, the movie depicted Thomas More as pretty much an unmitigated good-guy, the courageous, principled hero of the story, etc. However, in the novel Wolf Hall, he's pretty much a bad-guy, burning people at the stake for heresy willy-nilly, an ultra-reactionary who banned all bibles that were printed in English rather than Latin, etc. Since reading Wolf Hall, I've always wondered which vision of him is the truer one.

His activism on the subject of Richard III wasn't particularly admirable. Still, the extent he was willing to go to for the king he was sworn to was probably all of a piece with the extent he was willing to go to when his king tried to make him go against his God.

Although I've always wondered if his initial resistance wasn't at least partly political.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Julia

[Padma]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

"... As conceived by Bolt, More isn't particularly relevant to this season, I doubt if he's relevant to any season." And she goes on to point out that dying for one's principles doesn't guarantee the rightness of those principles (and that "the Afrikaners willing to die for apartheid -- and they find their justifications in divine law too -- could probably make as good a case"). She says that More is presented as the kind of uncomplicated great man found in biographies aimed at 12-year-olds, and maybe people like the movie because it encourages them to regress to that mental age.

Honestly, I think she really missed the point. Bolt intentionally chose a political power struggle--King v. Church--as the context for More's demonstration of conscience (and, against the theme of the corruptible Church, his incorruptibility). I'm sure someone could even have done a comparable drama about some internal Afrikaner power struggle where someone had shown conscience in a situation completely unrelated to apartheid.

After all, this wasn't about More defending the Inquisition or burning someone at the stake. It was a historical figure used to dramatize a particular theme, not a distorted history lesson meant to rationalize the evils done by the Catholic Church.  As for the character flaws that she misses in More, one could possibly see him as unreasonable and stubborn, but it's not necessary to have that. This isn't the glorification of More as much as it is a message about ones' conscience and principles. He's the embodiment of Bolt's theme...an archetype...an ideal...and the "complexity" she's missing in his character is made up for with the reactions of the people around him to the choices he makes.  If he doesn't struggle morally as much as she wants (we -do- see his pain at the suffering he's causing his family, but he won't change for them), is too admirable throughout for her taste, well, again, I think she misses the point.

She obviously wanted a different kind of movie from this premise, but I'm glad Bolt made the choices he did--there's plenty of good and bad of humanity in evidence throughout.  I guess making a principled choice and being sad about it, but committed to it none the less, just wasn't emotionally complex enough for her. Or that she's too caught up (imo) in the lack of historical truth about the Church he's supporting. In any case, I disagree completely that it's simplistic.                                                                               

Edited June 24, 2016 by Padma

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Padma said:

As for the character flaws that she misses in More, one could possibly see him as unreasonable and stubborn, but it's not necessary to have that. This isn't the glorification of More as much as it is a message about ones' conscience and principles. He's the embodiment of Bolt's theme...an archetype...an ideal...                                                                              

I was with you until this point. Remember, I was the one who started this discussion, mentioning how much and long I've loved this movie. Though I was a Kael devotee in that decade, and for decades thereafter (I've grown away from it to some extent by now), I parted company with her on this.

But there's no place in my concept of drama for a central character who's an embodiment, archetype, or ideal. I can't think of any examples of such a thing in Shakespeare, for instance; he insisted on creating fallible, complicated people, and that's what I need. And I do think that Bolt did his best to round out his writing of More (more so, perhaps, in the complete stage script), giving him flashes of humor and sarcasm, and showing him wiggling out of taking an irrevocable stand against the king for as long as he could. Certainly Bolt's More is a fiction, a character devised (within certain historical limits) to tell the story he wanted to tell. Which is pretty much what any maker of historical fiction does.

[Padma]

You're right. On second thought, I'd replace that. "As for the character flaws that she misses in More, one could possibly see him as unreasonable and stubborn, but it's not necessary to have that. This isn't the glorification of More as much as it is a message about ones' conscience and principles. He's the embodiment of Bolt's theme and for me both the drama and the character(s) work."  I agree with you about Bolt's writing--getting us on board for More without bringing in the elements of the Church we'd find unacceptable. Maybe Kael found that a scary talent in a writer, but all the more reason to appreciate that Bolt limited his drama to showing More's moral dilemma, and didn't use it to make a case for religious persecution, etc. Historical fiction, as you say, not history. Sometimes that genre can really disappoint, but this time for me its really didn't. .

[Rinaldo]

Fair enough, at this point we're essentially in accord. 

For those who like behind-the-scenes stories, the saga of Charlton Heston inaugurating a suburban Chicago theater with a production of A Man for All Seasons is one of the most entertaining. (There was no issue with his performance, or the production as such -- it's that the theater was being built while they were supposed to be rehearsing.) It's in one of the most entertaining books about a life in the theater, No Pickle, No Performance by Harold J. Kennedy (one of the most experienced directors of old-school summer stock, with stars like Gloria Swanson and Kitty Carlisle getting a chapter each). The chapter about that suburban theater is especially personal to me, because it was just two miles from our family home, and I remember reading about that production.

[Milburn Stone]

21 hours ago, Padma said:

I take this play/movie so much more as historically-inspired fiction--kind of like some of the Shakespeare dramas using famous characters as central to the stories--than as an actual look at history. More might have seemed an awful person to me in real life--both  in the context of his Church and his times as well as of today--but I don't think the truth of that aspect of it matters so much, if you take it this primarily as thought-provoking drama, using a historical premise and characters, looking at a kind of "truth" as drama (i.e. universal truth about one's conscience), rather than the truth we look for as history.

I'm finding the whole discussion of AMfAS fascinating, and I think your perspective makes sense, Padma.

I'm not a fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination, but it has often occurred to me that a belief in God and a more liberal religious outlook are fundamentally incompatible! (This, despite that I believe in God and belong to the liberal wing of my religion, so I somehow embrace the contradiction.) That is to say, if you really, truly believe in God, then you believe that God is God, and you have to do what he says! I "get" Abraham, in other words, when he began to kill his son Isaac because of God's instructions. Killing your son is bad and all, but God told him to, for God's sake. It seems to me that the alternative--not taking everything God says at "face value," interpreting for yourself the parts that make sense and the parts that don't--means you don't really believe in God. How could one believe in an Almighty who doesn't have to be listened to, and still claim he believes in an Almighty?

Looked at this way, AMfAS is the story of what happens when a man--any man--believes in God the way the rest of us only claim to.

Edited June 25, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[Rinaldo]

I thoroughly agree with your main paragraph, Milburn Stone, though it led me to an opposite decision (having been extremely religious till I was 18, I thought out the consequences of this point and quit cold turkey). Aaand that's about as far as it's appropriate to go with that in this topic.

Anyway, my feeling is that this is what Kael was getting at, albeit in an overextended disproportionate way: that standing up for (fighting for) one's principles and convictions is not in itself admirable. (Some convictions are mistaken, or do harm to others.) Which is true, but I can suspend that awareness while enjoying AMfAS; it's not like it's going to rouse anyone to religious persecution.

[Padma]

Interesting interpretation, Milburn Stone. As a person of no religious belief, I have to admit that point of view hadn't occurred to me, but I can see what you mean. Interestingly, I think your idea is a way of looking at the theme that Thomas More would have found more acceptable than as a generic statement about the importance of conscience and principle.

By the way, I looked up "No Pickle. No Performance" on Amazon and it sounds like a lot of fun. Reminded me that I saw Charleton Heston in LA in "The Crucible" and he was very good. It's hard to imagine him as the intellectual, self-contained, introspective, slightly depressed Thomas More that Scofield created though. I wonder what he did differently with it.

As for the book, there are only two Amazon reviews up, but one of them said "I gave it to Milburn Stone and he couldn't stop laughing." https://www.amazon.com/pickle-performance-irreverent-theatrical-excursion/dp/0385132417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466898643&sr=8-1&keywords=no+pickle+no+performance

[ratgirlagogo]

1 minute ago, Padma said:

As for the book, there are only two Amazon reviews up, but one of them said "I gave it to Milburn Stone and he couldn't stop laughing

Good god, I thought you were joking.  Now that is funny.

[Rinaldo]

7 minutes ago, Padma said:

By the way, I looked up "No Pickle. No Performance" on Amazon and it sounds like a lot of fun. Reminded me that I saw Charleton Heston in LA in "The Crucible" and he was very good. It's hard to imagine him as the intellectual, self-contained, introspective, slightly depressed Thomas More that Scofield created though. I wonder what he did differently with it.

No Pickle, No Performance really is a lot of fun; I take it off the shelf again for bedtime reading every few years. Memorable chapters about Renée Taylor delivering the title phrase, the set designer who threw up the moment you criticized him, and the star who was the all-time champ at charming small-city restaurants into staying open late so the cast could eat after a show (Kitty Carlisle, of course).

Heston was one of the handful of genuine movie stars (George C. Scott was another) who really was committed to the stage and returned to it often. As to interpretation of More, I think it was in his published diary (20 years' worth with lots of annotation after every entry) that he said that much though he admired Scofield in the role, in this case he saw other values that the role called for that he could bring to it: a worldly man with wit and perspective, someone who has no inkling of martyrdom as the story begins. (What actors refer to as "not playing the end at the beginning.")

[Milburn Stone]

1 hour ago, Padma said:

As for the book, there are only two Amazon reviews up, but one of them said "I gave it to Milburn Stone and he couldn't stop laughing." 

It's true. :)

[Crisopera]

Every time I see a Mickey & Judy movie, I'm reminded of how stunningly talented he was.  (I never need to remember her talent.)  In Strike Up the Band (not a good movie, the script is soggily sentimental), he leads his "high-school" (most of the players look to be solidly in their thirties) swing band in a version of "Drummer Boy" which is not far off in quality from the version by Gene Krupa that I know best.  Amazing.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Crisopera
missing words

[Rinaldo]

I've gotten halfway through my recorded Strike Up the Band. If nothing else, it's a reminder of how gloriously talented Mickey and Judy were (no mystery why they were a beloved team for audiences). And indeed, it's practically nothing else.

For a theater-history geek like me, it's a reminder of the way studios would buy the rights to a stage musical, do nothing with it for years, and then finally make a movie using nothing but the title (and the title song, to reinforce it) -- Lady Be Good is another example. On the stage, Strike Up the Band was a satirical operetta about the US declaring war against Switzerland about the purity of its cheese (or chocolate, depending on the revision), and the title song was sung with bitter irony ("We don't know what we're fighting for, but we didn't know the last time"). Not a shred of that in the movie, of course; and I know that in advance, but I was still surprised that none of the other Gershwin songs was kept, and we got new Freed ones instead.

[Rinaldo]

Another slip-up on the programming front is going on right now: the Dinner at Eight being shown is the 1933 version directed by Cukor, not the updated made-for-TV remake from 1989 with Marsha Mason and Harry Hamlin, which my onscreen guide still says is what we're getting. Granted, the former is an immortal classic and the latter... isn't. But for that very reason, now that I've belatedly seen the classic, I wanted to see the lesser version again for comparison's sake, so I'm disappointed.

[ratgirlagogo]

2 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

now that I've belatedly seen the classic, I wanted to see the lesser version

Ha! So you DO support me in my Turner Dreck Channel campaign!  Viva the lesser and thus lesser seen versions!

[Rinaldo]

I never said I didn't! There are lots of mediocre movies from my moviegoing life that I can't possibly defend as good, but I'd like to see them one more time. Back in the early 1980s, the movie channels like HBO and Cinemax (before they started original programming) were so in need of material to show that they did run through a lot of this, quality be damned. But no longer.

[Padma]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 6:01 PM, Milburn Stone said:

It's true. :)

lol!  

I see it's a big Shakespeare night on Stage to Screen this week.  Really looking forward to Welles' "MacBeth", but sorry Scofield's King Lear is on at 5:30 a.m.. Speaking of Mickey, is "Midsummer Night's Dream" a mess or worth watching?

Edited June 28, 2016 by Padma

[voiceover]

Took my nephew to see the TCM showing of Willy Wonka.  The "all-candy room" in the factory looked amazing on the big screen.  After all these years, I finally saw that there were gummi bear trees!  In the words of Veruca Salt: "I want one!!"

[Julia]

2 hours ago, Padma said:

Speaking of Mickey, is "Midsummer Night's Dream" a mess or worth watching?

Yes :)

Some of the actors were very impressive - Anita Louise's Titania was a standout for me, Cagney and Joe E Brown were lots of fun as players, and you can see how Hermia made Olivia de Havilland a star - but some... were not impressive. Dick Powell and Ross Alexander were just awful as the feuding suitors, JMO, and sadly Mickey Rooney's famous turn as Puck didn't end well. He broke his leg, and the director tried to cover for his immobility by having him frantically overact and randomly caw like a crow.

Still, it's definitely worth watching, at least for me. The faerie ballet was gorgeous.

[Rinaldo]

6 hours ago, Padma said:

Speaking of Mickey, is "Midsummer Night's Dream" a mess or worth watching?

Both, as Julia so eloquently described. It's frustrating as an embodiment of the play -- I found it so when they showed it to us in high school -- because so much is eliminated from the text (although you could say that if one is going to foreshorten it, this is a smart job of editing everything down), and yet we take endless time for cantatas of welcome for Theseus, for manic hamming by Puck, for self-contained fairy ballets.

BUT with adult eyes, and some awareness of history, I now find it fascinating. Max Reinhardt had been doing famous productions of the play for years, onstage and finally outdoors in California, always in collaboration with composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (adapting Mendelssohn's famous music), and this is a final version of all that, preserved on film, which we might so easily never have had. Some of the irrelevancies (like the fairy ballets) are marvelous in their own right, and the cast is certainly an interesting mix. Rooney, such a magnetic talent in his musical movies, is pretty bad here, and Cagney, who might have been a wonderful Bottom, is rather disappointing to me -- he dutifully executes all the business the directors gave him, but never finds the simplicity to bring the character alive. Brown comes through, though, and there's real magic at moments in the Oberon-Titania scenes. The four-lovers thread, unfortunately, is kind of a dead weight here (de Havilland is enchantingly pretty, at least). It's all kind of a last gasp of how Midsummer Night's Dream used to be done, by a legendary theatrical master, and is best watched in that fame of mind.

[ratgirlagogo]

Also worth mentioning that one of Kenneth Anger's most intriguing tall tales was his claim to have played the Changeling Prince in this film.

I love the whole look of this production, actually - I'm glad they made it in black and white - it has such a magical shimmering quality to it.

[Milburn Stone]

Watched the first half hour or so of last night's documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, about the decline and regeneration of the Disney animation department. Pretty darned revealing. I stopped after Menken-Ashman/Little Mermaid, to be continued. But that sequence pretty much made the case that the songs--which came first, before the animation--were responsible, because of their quality, for inspiring the animation department to get off its ass and make something good. I liked having confirmed the power of great character/plot-driven words and music. (Without which, Snow White, Pinocchio and Dumbo would have been--I don't know, Max Fleischer's Gulliver's Travels. Exaggerating, but only somewhat, to make a point.)

Edited June 29, 2016 by Milburn Stone

[stormy]

It was so much fun to see The Parent Trap! 

[mariah23]

6 minutes ago, stormy said:

It was so much fun to see The Parent Trap! 

I know, right!

[Rinaldo]

It's my first time seeing it since the local theater when it was new. Now it looks hokey and dated (I guess the world was more indulgent about accents then)... and I didn't care a bit. It's a pleasure to revisit.

[Rinaldo]

What did we think about Shakespeare Night? I've already said my piece on the Midsummer Night's Dream. I'd not seen the Olivier Hamlet since a long-ago TV viewing, at which time I was young and inexperienced enough to get worked up about the omission of half the play (R&G, but much else as well) and the oversimplification (misrepresentation, to my mind) of it all as "a man who could not make up his mind." Now, I'm more ready to appreciate its distinctive look, Olivier's stature as an actor, Jean Simmons's special qualities as Ophelia, William Walton's music, and much else.

That Romeo and Juliet has now been overshadowed by later film versions (nobody shows the one from the 1950s with Laurence Harvey any more)... and rightly so, in my opinion. It's way too proper and High Culture Is Good For You for this story of hot passions that lead to trouble and tragedy. Even the balcony scene is played as if they know they'll be dead soon and are sad about it. Exemptions for the visual design at times (it adds to the self-conscious atmosphere, but it's often appealing on its own), for Edna May Oliver's rightness as the Nurse, and for John Barrymore giving a glimpse of why he was a stage superstar as Mercurio. (It's like the opera recordings from the early 20th century, all about the soloist creating magic moments and persuading us to linger with them.) 

[Milburn Stone]

46 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

Now, I'm more ready to appreciate its distinctive look, Olivier's stature as an actor, Jean Simmons's special qualities as Ophelia, William Walton's music, and much else.

I confess (to my shame) that I've never seen this and didn't see it last night either. But I did see a promo involving Jean Simmons, in which she confessed that she'd always hated Shakespeare (found it boring), didn't know why she'd been cast as Ophelia, and basically just learned her lines and said them. And that apparently (to her own surprise) it "worked out." (In the sense of launching her career: "So I must have done something right" was the feeling.)

[Padma]

I was pretty excited by the selection, but bumped from a lot of it by the arrival of a new video game. :(   I thought some would be on On Demand, but so far, no such luck.

However, while I completely missed Macbeth, I did get to see MSND which after Julia and Rinaldo's comments, I think I had about the right level of expectations for and it didn't disappoint. I even liked Mickey's Puck in the first third just because he was so young, and so cute and brought a lot of charisma. But then the loud clips of him inserted in head shots later (because of the broken leg, I guess) weren't so charming.

I have to agree with what Julia and Rinaldo both wrote about Titania's scenes standing out--watching Anita Louise was like suddenly it became a different production. And I was surprised by the way it looked/was filmed at first so appreciated Rinaldo's comments on Reinhardt rather than dismissing it as dated. With that in mind, I enjoyed it more than expected, though Dick Powell was so, so, so miscast.

As for Hamlet, I remember Olivier's Freud-influenced interpretation which I disliked and see zero basis for in the play. I also disagree with the "can't make up his mind" explanation. But, I only got to see the very end so it was enough to appreciate Olivier's acting and remember how much I love "Hamlet". (I also thought that was a very young-looking Gertrude.  Looked it up and she was in her twenties while Olivier at the time was 41. I guess he cast her so that the "suggestive" scenes weren't as off-putting. Hamlet's such an incredible character creation though -- you can understand why Sarah Bernhardt said it was the role she'd always wished she could play. (I've always liked Jean Simmons, but she sounds like an idiot to say she found Shakespeare boring (!) and only learned her part.)    

Personally, I'd like to have another Shakespeare night--Much Ado About Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra (I'd like to see the Charlton Heston version),  Othello (NOT Olivier's, which is embarrassing), the histories, The Merchant of Venice*, Taming of the Shrew...so many. .    

*ETA:  I could have ignored a bunch of late night typos: Olivia (Olivier); Anthony (Antony) and Charleton (Charlton). But I had to draw the line at leaving uncorrected "The Merchant of Venus".                                                 

Edited July 1, 2016 by Padma

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Padma said:

As for Hamlet, I remember Olivia's Freud-influenced interpretation which I disliked and see zero basis for in the play.                                         

It was all the rage at one time, though, not just with Olivier. It turns up in the Zeffirelli film as well. One of the (many) things I liked about the Branagh film was that there was no hint of the Freudian business between him and Julie Christie -- most refreshing. 

Quote

(I also thought that was a very young-looking Gertrude.  Looked it up and she was in her twenties while Olivier at the time was 41. I guess he cast her so that the "suggestive" scenes weren't as off-putting.

She must have been 29 to his 40 when they were filming, so about a decade younger, which may be some kind of record in the mother-son filming sweepstakes (Landis-Grant, Lansbury-Harvey, and more to the point Close-Gibson, which seems positively sedate with her being a decade older than her Hamlet). I would have that thought that a young-looking mother would if anything emphasize the suggestiveness, rather than tone it down. In the 1960s she got to play Gertrude again, in Richard Burton's stage production (at least she was the older of the two, albeit by only 7 years).

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(I've always liked Jean Simmons, but she sounds like an idiot to say she found Shakespeare boring (!) and only learned her part.)    

 

I don't know this interview, but I would think she was being wry and telling the story at her own expense. Many a high-schooler would agree about Shakespeare being boring (it takes a special teacher to bring him alive for skeptical kids), and actors who start young, as she did, have no "higher education" to season them, just on-the-job training. Or lack of training. The way Shakespeare tended to be "done" in England in those pre-drama-academy days was to simply find some sort of job in some seedy touring or rep company and have a bash, and probably be bad in front of provincial audiences for a year or two, till experience gradually teaches you what works best. In that sort of world, having an Olivier to pick you for your personal qualities and persuade you not to do any overt "acting" but just keep it simple and say the lines as you would in real life... that may have been a better way than most.

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Personally, I'd like to have another Shakespeare night--Much Ado About Nothing, Anthony and Cleopatra (I'd like to see the Charlton Heston version),  Othello (NOT Olivier's, which is embarrassing), the histories, The Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew...so many.

I was just thinking the same thing. Those are all good choices, as are the Trevor Nunn Twelfth Night and the Olivier Richard III, which I haven't seen them program. The Heston Antony has barely been shown in the US, and it may well be as awful as legend has it, but I want to see for myself. Also his Julius Caesar (not the one from his student days, but the c. 1970 one directed by Stuart Burge, with Gielgud as Caesar and a notoriously out-of-his-comfort-zone Jason Robards as Brutus) should be shown once. The Olivier and Branagh Henry Vs would make a wonderful double feature sometime: both excellent, but utterly different production concepts. I 100% agree about Olivier's Othello, but we do have Fishburne's (not that I consider it masterful by any means, but it's watchable). And that Merchant of Venice with its oddly balanced cast... I just realized that I want to see it again, while typing this.

[Rick Kitchen]

3 hours ago, Padma said:

I also thought that was a very young-looking Gertrude.  Looked it up and she was in her twenties while Olivier at the time was 41. I guess he cast her so that the "suggestive" scenes weren't as off-putting.

The actress, Eileen Herlie, became a beloved actress for years on the US soap, "All My Children".  

[Sharpie66]

I have seen snippets of Heston's student film of Julius Caesar on a local history/architecture show on Chicago's PBS channel (it was filmed all over the city), and he is sooooo over-emoting, it is just ridiculous.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Sharpie66

[Rinaldo]

I remember when my high school English class had read Julius Caesar in 1962. We were taken to the auditorium one day to see the movie. I rather expected it to be the Hollywood production with Brando, Gielgud, et al, which was only a decade old. But it was Heston and his compatriots from Northwestern U (just a couple of miles away from us). The acting was amateur-night all the way (Heston was just one of the gang in that respect), and what my friends and I most noticed was: 1. The Forum seemed to be the steps of The Museum of Science and Industry. 2. When Heston walked away in his footrace attire, you could see his butt!!! As I said, we were high school freshmen, and it was 1962.

[Julia]

Um. WADR to all concerned, I wouldn't take the word of someone who bagged off her teenaged child because they were harshing Philip Roth's buzz more or less ever at all.

3 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

The actress, Eileen Herlie, became a beloved actress for years on the US soap, "All My Children".  

I loved her.

Edited July 1, 2016 by Julia

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Julia said:

 I wouldn't take the word of someone who bagged off her teenaged child because they were harshing Philip Roth's buzz more or less ever at all.

That would be Claire Bloom?

[ratgirlagogo]

7 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

She must have been 29 to his 40 when they were filming, so about a decade younger, which may be some kind of record in the mother-son filming sweepstakes (Landis-Grant, Lansbury-Harvey, and more to the point Close-Gibson, which seems positively sedate with her being a decade older than her Hamlet)

As Lillian Gish said:

Lionel Barrymore first played my grandfather, later my father, and finally, he played my husband. If he'd lived, I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.

[voiceover]

The title tune of Hair is in my Top 100 (but, uh, The Cowsills' cover), but I don't care much for the musical, the film, or the other 70s films of musicals like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar (though I worship the latter's original (soundstage) soundtrack -- IMO, outside the source material, the most emotional, eviscerating, exhilarating expression of His last days).

My guess? at least for me, they only work as live, as opposed to film, versions.

Edited July 1, 2016 by voiceover

[Julia]

8 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

That would be Claire Bloom?

That would. I caught a few of her interviews when she was shopping her book, and she appeared to believe she was the victim in that situation. I was somewhat perturbed by that.

[Wiendish Fitch]

Happy 100th Birthday to Olivia de Havilland, a great actress, true trailblazer, and a hell of a lady. She's July's Star of the Month, and TCM's own Robert Osbourne pays a very warm tribute to her. My favorite films of Livvie's are The Heiress, The Strawberry Blonde, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and that little indie film about the Civil War. :)

I also want to wish an equally Happy 85th to another actress I love, Leslie Caron! I appreciate her more and more the older I get. Though I find An American in Paris on the whole overrated, I have to give it up for Caron's introduction scene. You have to hand it to the folks at MGM: they sure knew how to craft star-making moments.

[Rinaldo]

56 minutes ago, Julia said:

 I caught a few of [Claire Bloom's] interviews when she was shopping her book, and she appeared to believe she was the victim in that situation. I was somewhat perturbed by that.

Me too, that whole thing with Roth was dismaying. I was just wondering how she linked up to a discussion of Jean Simmons.

[Rinaldo]

7 hours ago, voiceover said:

The title tune of Hair is in my Top 100 (but, uh, The Cowsills' cover), but I don't care much for the musical, the film, or the other 70s films of musicals like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar... My guess? at least for me, they only work as live, as opposed to film, versions.

I don't disagree in general (and personally I haven't seen them work even onstage -- but I haven't sought out productions). But for me the film of Hair is a rather special case, even among all films of stage musicals. A mere decade had made Hair a period piece (love-ins, flower children, all that), and then for a foreign-born director to take the material and tease a full story out of it (onstage, Claude being drafted is an intermittent thread) that questions its premises (we see the selfishness of our protagonists), and then to add Twyla Tharp and company into the mix... that's unique and unexpected. I don't know of another movie quite like it.

[Crisopera]

Does anyone still think Red Skelton is funny?  I was watching I Dood It because I wanted to see Eleanor Powell dance (and boy howdy, does she!) and had forgotten that it was directed by Vincente Minnelli (you'd never know it).  He was obviously a gifted physical comedian, but his persona is very grating.

One odd thing about the movie is that they just plunk down  a big chunk of a (spectacular) Hawaiian hula-tap from Honolulu    as one Powell number and another of "Swingin' the Jinx Away" from Born to Dance as Powell's closing number in her Broadway show.  This must have been a sign to her that MGM just wasn't interested in her any more - she only made 3 more movies.

[voiceover]

Nope.  Still think that Hair the Film = pretentious crap.  At least in person, it's possible to get caught up in the emotion of it all.  Especially that last stunning reveal of the coffin during "Let the Sun Shine".

Red Skelton had a TV show in the 60s. That's how he made me laugh when I was a kid; esp with his Heathcliff & Gertrude sketches.

[bmoore4026]

It's Olivia De Havilland night tonight (Happy 100th, Ms. De Havilland) and, watching Gone with the Wind, I can see why the Academy chose Hattie McDaniel over her.  Melanie's character is just so...so...I can't find the word.  Shallow?  I mean Mammy had dimensions to her (The Wise Woman, Scarlet's Jungian Shadow, The Greek Chorus, etc).  Melanie is just the Confederate version of Little Eva from Uncle Tom's Cabin.

(I was curious - what was with The Golden Age of Hollywood's glorification of the South?)

After GwtW, there The Adventures of Robin Hood.  Flynn's Robin could kick Crowe's and Costner's asses, but I don't think he could hold is own again Elwes', Disney's, or Duck's.  Olivia' portrayal of Maid Marion is archetypal, I think.  Fair, pure, all that good crap.  Plus, she's not killed off for no reason except shock value.

After that is The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, also with Errol Flynn and also starring Bette Davis.  I think I talked about this one a couple years back.  Again, Di Havilland did a good job Elizabeth the First's lady-in-waiting who was in love with The Earl of Essex. 

And after that is Captain Blood with, again, Errol Flynn.  Did they have a thing going at the time?

[jjj]

49 minutes ago, bmoore4026 said:

And after that is Captain Blood with, again, Errol Flynn.  Did they have a thing going at the time?

Yes, they did have a thing going at the time, called Warner Brothers and the studio system. 

http://cinemagumbo.squarespace.com/journal/2012/7/23/he-who-gets-slapped-errol-flynn-stars-with-a-striking-bette.html

[Sharpie66]

20 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

I don't disagree in general (and personally I haven't seen them work even onstage -- but I haven't sought out productions). But for me the film of Hair is a rather special case, even among all films of stage musicals. A mere decade had made Hair a period piece (love-ins, flower children, all that), and then for a foreign-born director to take the material and tease a full story out of it (onstage, Claude being drafted is an intermittent thread) that questions its premises (we see the selfishness of our protagonists), and then to add Twyla Tharp and company into the mix... that's unique and unexpected. I don't know of another movie quite like it.

I saw the film of Hair when I was 13 (Dad took older sis and me, and I am sure when "Sodomy" started, he was regretting that choice), and both of us girls played that soundtrack nonstop the rest of the year. Treat Williams was terrific, super charismatic on screen, and Cheryl Barnes, who according to IMDb was never in anything else, has one of the best renditions of "Easy to Be Hard" I have ever heard. "Three-Five-Zero-Zero" just took my breath away. And Tharp's choreo takes the film to another level.

Back in 1979, it was the rare musical from that decade that works rather well. 

As for Godspell and JCS, I can't be unbiased--I grew up watching them both on tv and listening to their soundtracks endlessly, so I love them both, even though I now consider myself an agnostic (I also still love studying early Christian history, so I guess belief doesn't impact on culture and scholarly interests). JCS was the first Broadway-level production I saw, when I asked for tickets to see the touring company in Chicago for my tenth b-day gift. Sis and I would put the JCS soundtrack on the turntable and argue over who got to sing Judas and who was stuck with singing Jesus. (There is a tribute album done by a bunch of SXSW artists in the mid 90s that fails big time with their Caiphas, but I love their version of Simon Zealot's song--slowed down to a funky groove instead of the frenetic activity of the film.)

Edited July 2, 2016 by Sharpie66