The Okay Gatsby

 

Robert Redford is not an actor one associates with words like “interesting”, or “necessary”, but once in awhile he’s actually surprising, which is one of the very best things an actor can be.

In Jack Clayton’s admittedly slightly flabby film of THE GREAT GATSBY (but note how, in this pre-air-conditioning tale of the ‘twenties all the fabulously rich people are covered with a sheen of sweat), Redford as the mysterious Jay Gatsby gives a brief precis of his history to date. The speech contains lies, and is delivered to someone who hasn’t asked for this information, which makes it all rather suspicious. There are various obvious ways it could have been handled:

1) The actor could try and be as convincing as possible, letting us discover the truth later.

2) He could show the audience, by some slight nervousness and evasion, that he may not be telling the whole truth.

3) He could be VERY unconvincing, using obvious hesitations and nervousness.

Redford reads the lines as if he’s reading lines, stuff he’s memorised by heart and is now TEACHING to the listener, so that he can repeat them to others. This is Gatsby’s actual hope, he wants to spread this information around. So he’s very slow and deliberate.

I think it’s quite a funny, weird effect, and brave, in the sense that it’s designed to look like bad acting. And it’s convincing as such. An audience could assume that Redford is just a lousy actor. I think we know he isn’t quite THAT, so we have to assume this is a deliberate choice. It’s also delivered like bad exposition, which makes it even funnier.

The speech is delivered in a car, with Redford concentrating VERY hard on the road, and he also appears to have been dubbed. Even better!

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The most impressive piece of Redfordiana is maybe in Michael Ritchie’s THE CANDIDATE where he repeatedly corpses while rehearsing a political speech he has to give. I think it’s the word “integrity” that trips him up every time. Convincingly acting spontaneous and involuntary laughter, again and again, strikes me as a NEAT TRICK.

Punchy

Jim Sheridan (pictured) gave an onstage interview at the Edinburgh Film Festival a few years back. MY GOD he was brilliant. He’s a very good filmmaker but a SENSATIONAL talker (Karl Francis was very good too — if his films were half as good as his storytelling he’d have been one of the greats). Huge long anecdotes that were hilarious and extreme, and then he’d draw remarkable life lessons out of them too.

One little story I remember concerns prep for THE BOXER. Sheridan and his wife watched a video of ON THE WATERFRONT with Daniel Day-Lewis. ‘He came at me with a left, I hit him with a right,’ says Brando at one point (or words to that effect), his fists making little jabs as he re-stages the scene in his memory.

‘What mistake did he make?’ asked Mrs Sheridan.

The menfolk admit to being baffled.

Jim’s wife explains: ‘He moved his right hand when he said “left” and his left when he said “right”.’

‘And then I realised,’ Jim said to us, ‘that women triangulate violence. They always have to know where the next punch is coming from.’

Euphoria #16

New York cartoonist Dean Haspiel nominates this passionate clinch from ON THE WATERFRONT as the latest in our highly scientific study of the scenes that set your pulses pounding:

“Native New Yorker, Dean Haspiel is the author of super-psychedelic romances and semi-autobiographical comics and is a founding member of Brooklyn’s DEEP6 Studios.“

His studio-mate Simon Fraser describes Dean’s scene thusly: “Dean’s suggestion is very Dean, it’s the Terry and Edie kiss from ‘On the Waterfront.’ It’s a “Kiss/Rape” but her performance makes it more complicated than that. She’s excited.”

Let’s all pray for Dean’s speedy apprehension.

But NO! For truly, one man’s meat is another’s poisson, judge not lest ye be judged, and remember the wise words of Professor Praetorius: “Science, like love, has her little surprises.”

We don’t judge other people’s euphoria here at Shadowplay, we merely celebrate the human capacity for ecstasy!

Just got my hands on Joseph McBride’s splendid Whatever Happened to Orson Welles, and upon reading the McCarthy-era political stuff, I was interested to read the account given of a 1982 discussion at the Cinematheque Francaise, where Welles was asked to comment on Elia Kazan.

“Chere mademoiselle, you have chosen the wrong metteur en scene, because Elia Kazan is a traitor. He is a man who sold to McCarthy all his companions at a time when he could continue to work in New York [on Broadway] at high salary, and having sold all his people to McCarthy, he then made a film called ON THE WATERFRONT which was a celebration of the informer.”

Then: “In other respects, he’s one of our great directors.”

In a strange sense, what makes ON THE WATERFRONT acceptable is the way in which Kazan and Schulberg stack the decks in favour of Terry Malloy: he’s dealing with dangerous criminals who kill people, they’re not his true friends, and he stands only to lose out personally by informing on them. If his brother had been true to him, there would be a real moral quandary in his betrayal, but Steiger’s character has made a living from exploiting his sibling. Conversely, Kazan was betraying people who had been loyal, who had committed no crime, who wished him nothing but good, and Kazan benefitted materially from snitching.

I love the story of the biographer who asked searching questions of Kazan about contradictions in his story, and Kazan fell unconscious at his desk rather than answer them. A moral microchip blew inside.

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Footnote: Eva Marie Saint is the whole show in this scene, top-notch work from an underrated actress. Her posture at the end is incredible.

Dean’s fellow cartoonist Simon Fraser informs me of the following:

“Dean was taught to swim by Shelly Winters. Who was his godmother. Dean was also babysat by a very young Bobby DeNiro. A family friend. There’s a lot more of that kind of thing from Deans family.”

Wow. And to think I was previously impressed by Simon having a cartoonist friend who’s descended from Johnny Weissmuller! Any connection to Shelley Winters is like a hotline to God.