Captain X

It was DER REST IST SCHWEIGEN that gave me the idea of re-watching THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. Kautner steals the image of the painting seen in a dark room which looks like a person — his swipe is a nicely done variation, though: the room is all dark, but the painting has its own illumination, which comes on a second before the rest of the lights.

But Mankiewicz did it first in this, perhaps his most visually beautiful and imaginative film.

JLM is sometimes criticised for prioritising words, and there are places in each film where this maybe becomes a slight issue. THE LATE GEORGE APLEY, an underrated film I think, makes a big thing of Peggy Cummins’ wedding dress — but then never lets you see it properly. And here, Natalie Wood is delighted as her name is carved in a marker at the beach, with the man telling her he’s made the lettering big so the ships can see it. But it’s facing the land! Yes, I’m a pendantic swine, but I always hold that kids are pedantic too.

It’s a very funny film too, but it always brings a tear to my eye. First time it happens is Gene Tierney saying “It’s hard to imagine you as an ordinary anything,” to Rex Harrison’s ghost and the LOOK he gives her — an indefinable mixture of pride, complacency, tenderness and adoration. And Bernard Herrmann’s score is part of it, and all the rest.

Tierney was supposed to be Katharine Hepburn, who would have brought more eccentricity — from the outside, it’s the story of a crazy lady — but Tierney makes it sexier, I think. She’s not the actress Hepburn was, but she really grows into it — her old-age acting is very understated and effective. Harrison is playing a character where he has to put on a voice for the whole film — and he can do it. He’s one of the two greatest light comedians the screen has known (Cary Grant’s the other) and so if you make things hard for him, he just gets better — or that’s the impression he gives here.

Also, BLITHE SPIRIT has given him invaluable experience of spiritism cross-talk.

“What we’ve missed… what we’ve both missed,” is the second teary moment. The climax of a Grand Speech (do we suppose Mank rewrote Philip Dunne’s script a fair bit?)

It’s also an interesting test case of Bernard Herrmann’s scoring — how he can do stuff that is, in theory and by any logic, too heavy and overpowering for the material, and make it absolutely right. So that I don’t know that I believe Elmer Bernstein’s thing about how Herrmann would have overwhelmed MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS by treating it as “a Train of Death” rather than as a cosy and nostalgic romance of steam. Herrmann seems to demonstrate consistently that he can make stuff work in better and less expected ways by taking it much, much too seriously. It would be awful if he wasn’t so brilliant.

“With Captain Gregg? With the ghost of Captain Gregg?” That one caught me off-guard. The ghost has been an imaginary friend to Mrs. Muir’s daughter, who still remembers him now she’s grown up. (Wipes away manly tear.)

The film does something really lovely with fantasy — the idea that we may have fantastical characters in our lives, only we’re not allowed to remember them, or entirely believe in them.

And then the ending.

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR stars Laura Hunt; Professor Henry Higgins; Addison DeWitt; Flying Officer Bob Trubshawe; and Daisy Clover.

Me, Claudius

I should explain. The prolific, restless and gifted Helmut Kautner’s DER REST IST SCHWEIGEN (THE REST IS SILENCE, 1957) is a modern-dress Hamlet in which Hardy Kruger plays the melancholy John H. Claudius, returned from the US to the Claudius Ironworks, now being run by his uncle who has married his mother and all that.

This might be my favourite movie Hamlet though I think the Olivier is smashing and that Russian one has some stunning effects. Some argue that Kurosawa’s THE BAD SLEEP WELL is based on Hamlet though if so it’s pretty loose in my opinion. (Haven’t seen HAMLET GOES BUSINESS or the big fat Branagh one.) This one departs in all sorts of ways, but only to sort of circle back. But it’s also up to various things that Shakespeare certainly never considered — the extraordinary thing is that it all works so well.

The movie looks at Nazi guilt — John H.’s father was pushed into supporting Hitler, while John himself spent the war in America. He’s been away for years and his father’s been dead for years and he’s never laid eyes on Fee (Ophelia — Ingrid Andree) since she was a baby, so that’s all quite different from the play.

Pohl (Polonius) is a smart old fellow, and quite likeable, which is also a change. It turns out to be quite an appealing one.

Laertes is called Herbert here, which seems only fair. (The only character in the play with no quotable lines.)

Claudius (well, technically they’re practically all called Claudius, but you know the one I mean) is Peter Van Eyck. Pairing him with Hardy Kruger is genius. Watched with a big grin. I love those guys.

Oh, and Rosenkrantz is now Mike Krantz, progressive ballet choreographer and coded gay (well, it’s not really code if you can make it out just by squinting), brought in to distract John Hamlet Claudius from his vengeful conniving. But this character is also compounded with the Player King so JHC can stage a ballet (entitled “The Mousetrap”) to catch the conscience of the managing director.

It doesn’t begin with a ghost. I was worried we wouldn’t have a ghost. It’s Christmas, we must have a ghost.

Another departure — JHC tells Horatio (he’s just called Horatio, why mess up a good thing?) that his father phoned him — after death. (Just like Ida Lupino’s deaddad — honest, I’m not making it up, I don’t think.) And we get a helpful silent flashback showing this. So, there’s a ghost! There’s a ghost on the phone!

Kautner, like his Hamlet, had just got back from the US, but unlike him, he had been directing Sandra Dee pictures. Really good ones! A bit of his Universal experience seems to have rubbed off when Kruger goes for a drunken drive in his tiny convertible and it’s all a bit WRITTEN ON THE WIND.

Kautner’s style is magnificently all over the shop. A mix of classical and jazz. Lap dissolves AND crash zooms. Expressionist-noir lighting and angles, plus an almost documentary look to the location work (it’s a GREAT film for reinforced concrete and bombed-out buildings and smoking factories, things I now feel should feature in every Hamlet adaptation).

Fee/Ophelia is set up as mentally ill or at least vulnerable from the start, which helps her character, and Ingrid Andree is very touching.

And of course Hardy Kruger — the perfect Hamlet! Boyish and smart, a bit dangerous and cruel and neurotic, handsome but offbeat (TOO boyish).

Snow!

Hamlet doesn’t ACT mad in this one — his behaviour is incongruous enough on its own to make sectioning him seem like sound strategy. So they plot to send him to the Highland Falls Nervensanatorium, Glasgow.

This is a terrific show, just when I needed one (you can have too much late Terence Young). OK, the climax is rushed and they have trouble getting the necessary number of deaths into a modern boardroom setting, but the fade-out — featuring two characters who are dead by this point in the play — is DEVASTATING — and I’ve never found Hamlet all that moving, I’m ashamed to say.

Yes, maybe Kautner’s ending is better than Shakespeare’s.

THE REST IS SILENCE stars Capt. Potsdorf; Hans-Dieter Mundt; Zouzou Kuckuck; Mackie Messer; Inspektor Richard “Dick” Martin; and Adolf Hitler as himself.

The Three “M”s