“He understands machines.”

Losey’s GALILEO, closely adapted from Brecht’s play, is a piece of filmed theatre pure and simple, made for The American Film Theater, a rather high-minded body that sought to capture great plays and performances on film. In the few years they were running they did some good work. Although, as a lover of CINEMA, I sometimes suspect there’s a basic flaw in this idea. Much of the effect of theatre comes from the physical PRESENCE of the actors, the experience of being in the room with them. Even a skilfully filmed play can’t capture that.

I won’t bother protesting that filmed theatre excludes much of what cinema can do. All artists work within limitations, either imposed by circumstances or chosen for aesthetic reasons. So the limitations of the stage play need not preclude great cinema. They might make it harder…

It’s a terrific play! I had the usual alienation effect at school, where we we conned ourselves into believing Brecht was dull, but it’s a testament to the quality of the writing that the thing comes over so well in a two-hour plus film without any added “filmic” elements. Losey had a long history with Galileo, having directed, or refereed, a version for the stage starring Charles Laughton and involving the active collaboration of Brecht himself. THAT is a theatrical production I wouldn’t mind seeing captured on film. But this version has Topol, who’s tip-top, and an amazing supporting cast, including previous Loseyites Clive Revill, Patrick Magee, Edward Fox, Michael Gough…

The period and theatrical setting, and the inquisition side of things, make it at times reminiscent of THE DEVILS, also a somewhat Brechtian production. But this one is a little more sedate. Michael Lonsdale demonstrates that while a paunchy man stripped to the waist is not the most appealing sight, the effect can be enhances with a neatly trimmed beard. It’s obscene!

Topol says it was good to have a “coherent” director for once. Topol’s teeth are like exuberant gravestones. Topol also played Professor Zarkoff. Topol is Mr. Science.

But LOOK!

 

How on earth did they do THIS? You can’t get a BLACK shadow on a white wall, certainly not with other light sources around — the light bounces all over and partly fills in the shadowy bits. Yet here it is. You can see from the floor shadow and the modelling on the faces that they’re NOT being lit by one giant light at the front left, low down. Where are the shadows coming from?

We wondered if the wall was a translucent screen and actors behind it were mimicking the actors in front, creating shadows for them (I THINK that’s what’s happening in the opening shot of Borzage’s MOONRISE). But this quickly becomes absurd — every tiny shake of the head is duplicated. Those shadows belong to those actors. It gets weirder.

The messenger walks in with his proclamation, casting a whopping shadow on the white wall, but no shadow on the splendid Kenneth (THE DEVILS) Colley, standing right behind him. Colley seems to shimmer out of the shadow, as if emerging from a rippling black pool.

I *THINK* I know what’s going on. The white wall was really a blue screen. In the lab, a high-contrast matte was created that reduced the actors and scenery to silhouettes. This new image was shifted up and to the left and inserted in where the blue screen was. Now everything that protrudes beyond the back wall of the set has a very sharp black shadow…

Except, damnit, the shadows show the characters at a slightly different angle to the camera (in the second image, the kneeling actress on the right has a thinner neck in her shadow image, because the light is hitting her from below). The shadow IS being projected from a low angle. So maybe the shadow has been optically enhanced, maybe it was a blue screen and all they’ve done is take a real shadow on it and bump up the contrast to stark b&w? Or else it’s just a real shadow produced with a special magic light on a special magic wall?

It’s driving me NUTS, I tells ya!