Curioser

Some of these insert shots have an Argentoesque intensity

TV director William Sterling’s one feature film, ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND (1972) assembles lots of great people and looks nice. It’s not my idea of wonderland, though.

As you can see, the copy I scraped up isn’t very good, so I may not be doing the film justice. It’s a lot better than most adaptations — fairly true to the text. It doesn’t become an incoherent mishmash of Wonderland and Looking Glass, as so many do. But being true to the story and characters isn’t the same as capturing the spirit. On the other hand, you can legitimately aim to capture a DIFFERENT spirit. I’m not sure if that’s what happens here.

I remember some piece that discussed the film, and spoke very critically of Michael Jayston’s visible panty line. He plays Charles Dodgson, and the film begins with a boat outing with the Liddell sisters, but does NOT have these characters reappear in Wonderland, disguised, as Lewis Carroll does: he, the stammering Do-do-dodgson, becomes the Dodo. But Jayston doesn’t stutter, he speaks beautifully. Seductively, in fact. He also neglects historical accuracy in his choice of Y-fronts, which show through his white trousers in a way sure to inspire disapproval in a Von Stroheim undie perfectionist.

Fiona Fullerton, a perky Alice, has been told to smile a lot, and does. Her perplexing adventures seem to amuse her greatly. This strikes me as wrong, but given what she’s been asked to do, she does it charmingly, though she’s too old. But if the film is about anything, which isn’t certain, it may be about coming of age — indeed, the soft-focus boat ride looks very much like what I imagine a David Hamilton adolescent smut film must be like (haven’t seen one).

Wonderland is all sets. Quite big ones, but things still get to seem a little airless. The transition occurs when the dream begins, rather than when Alice goes done the rabbit hole, which is a distortion, but an acceptable one. The budget allows for some very interesting visuals. A well decorated rabbithole, a Dali-meets-Geiger sky, an infinite corridor for the key business.

One blunder is carried over directly from the Paramount version: there’s a terrific cast, and most of them are rendered unrecognisable under Stuart Freeborn’s makeups. As usual, the humanoid characters come off best in such circumstances: this may be the only adaptation of the book where the most amusing character is the Duchess’s cook, played in a maelstrom of fury by Patsy Rowlands. Robert Helpmann is a perfect Mad Hatter (though I don’t understand why Kenneth Williams never did it). Peter Bull is a pretty unbeatable Duchess, Flora Robson slightly out of her element as the Queen of Hearts, Dennis Price very much IN his as the King (he does nothing but recite Lewis Carroll in the same year’s PULP). Tiny playing card parts are stuffed with familiar faces like Rodney Bewes, Dennis Waterman, Ray Brooks and Richard Warwick.

Smothered under prosthetics, Peter Sellers still does well as the March Hare, Dudley Moore copes as the Dormouse, Spike Milligan capers and goons as the Griffin, but it’s all schtick and no character. The only bit of Michael Hordern you can see in his Mock Turtle outfit is his lower face, but the rest of the makeup gives him some kind of jowl-lift, so even that part doesn’t look like it’s his. Michael Crawford’s stylish White Rabbit ears and whiskers allow him to do his thing relatively unimpeded (as with Sellers, it’s all in the eyes and voice) but Roy Kinnear has lost most of the Cheshire Cat’s lines AND business, and barely registers, an astonishing fate for such a great scene-stealer. Ralph Richardson has quite wisely refused to don a caterpillar’s head, and can be seen and enjoyed.

There are fewer laughs, I’d say, than in Jonathan Miller’s BBC version, which only had a few. Miller, however, had decided that this was a Victorian child’s dream, and his choices were mainly consistent with that. I’m just not sure what Sterling has decided on. A panto, perhaps. We have songs by John Barry with lyrics by Stanley Black, which edge out many of Carroll’s own superior words. Barry has gone fully into soupy strings mode, with a bit of the pizzicato guff he did in the early sixties. His main theme is almost identical to the one he foist onto ROBIN AND MARIAN.

Not as alienating as TALES OF BEATRIX POTTER, another children’s film from this period (it looks amazing but positively declines to deliver any tales, or any entertainment at all), it still feels like it would have baffled me as a kid. The Disney version made me feel stoned, as I recall, though I didn’t know what that was. I may have made some suggestions in the past for how the books should be treated, but if I did I’ve forgotten, so here goes —

Get good actors, and I don’t know that they have to be comedians. Give them some signifiers — the White Rabbit can have ears, for instance. Otherwise, dress them like the Tenniel illustrations and leave their faces on display and let them act. I hate hate hate the Tim Burton version but the idea of using CG to turn actors into live-action cartoons (giving Bonham-Carter a huge(r) head) was decent.

I would tend to favour locations over sets, even though Michael Stringer’s were very good here.

I think, controversially I know, that Alice should be a child. Get one who can act (which Miller inexplicably failed to do).

I think it should be a bit like Welles’ THE TRIAL, really, just slightly funnier, slightly less sinister. But A BIT sinister. (And the Welles is already pretty funny, funnier than this anyway).

When I read the book I was struck by how funny it was, which the films rarely seemed to be. I wonder if Richard Lester would have wanted to do this: it has eleven of his actors and numerous crew. And there’s the Goons connection. Carroll isn’t as rambunctious as The Goon Show, but he has his moments. It’s a funny thing: the book has almost never been filmed by a comedy specialist.

Tontine Spirit

Bryan Forbes’ THE WRONG BOX, scripted by Larry Gelbart & Burt Shevelove from (very, very loosely) Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osborne’s comic novel, comes close to being really good. Peter Cook & Dudley Moore are terrific. Ralph Richardson’s delivery and John Mills’ slapstick are excellent. The strange pairing of Michael Caine and Nanette Newman (Mrs. Forbes, de rigeur in his movies) kind of works. And the thronging cast also includes startling work from Wilfred Lawson — looking like a vulture’s foot, clenched into a long, knotty fist — Peter Sellers — pure Goon Show lunacy — and a late appearance by Tony Hancock, who’s barely holding himself together, alas.

I can’t quite work out why it doesn’t exactly hang together. Forbes doesn’t have nearly enough money for what he’s trying to do — so the skits at the start showing the untimely demises of a bunch of actor friends (Leonard Rossiter should learn not to take part in duels) are mostly performed against tiny, unconvincing sets (and the gags are weak as well as grisly). We see TV aerials on Victorian rooftops. Forbes’ ludic mode isn’t as natural to him as Richard Lester’s but the art nouveau titles are nice. Some of the editing has just the right rhythm, some is jagged or random. Either Forbes hasn’t thought out his scene transitions or he’s been forced to rethink them because something didn’t work, necessitating a reordering.

Then the final chase gets terrifically poor — money trouble, I think. John Barry has contributed a lovely music-box theme but doesn’t want to get out and push with the action sequence. Maybe the Bonds had him tired out. Then there’s a kerfuffle in a cemetery with some good dialogue again and then —

VERY abruptly we’re pulling out in a helicopter shot that’s blowing everything all over the place, and without much of anything being settled, it devolves into chaos. I know it was the sixties, so maybe Forbes felt nobody wanted to see order restored… it feels like Gelbart & Shevelove wrote him a resolution but he copped out of using it. Farces depend on neatness, it’s the basis of their form. You can write countercultural farce — Orton was the master of it — but you can’t write sloppy farce. It’s the same as bad farce.

But still, Peter Cook gets to say “You realise you made me drop my grebe.”

The Knack: Cut Scenes

When I was a young movie buff, I was very excited to learn that Channel 4 was showing THE KNACK. The night before it aired, I dreamt about it. But my dream did not notably resemble the film I was expecting to see — it all took place in a papier-mache labyrinth.

Reading through the various drafts of THE KNACK…. AND HOW TO GET IT (1965) in the Charles Wood Archive was like being in that labyrinth. It was also like playing one of those giant video games where every bit of a landscape has been rendered for you to explore, and every character you meet has their own dialogue and storyline. I think officially Wood wrote five radically different drafts, but there were also lots of incomplete bits. So it’s like the RED DEAD REDEMPTION of Swinging London.

I transcribed some bits. The first draft opens with a censorable scene that probably wouldn’t have suited Richard Lester’s taste — but something about this draft clearly convinced him that Wood was the man for the job.

1 DREAM SEQUENCE

An interesting and stimulating presentation of a breast in repose, spread and doubled to form a bosom, followed by a swinging succession of coarse grained famous CLOSE SHOTS of all time and every known source, cinematic, acrobatic, and Rubens.

Clutching fingers echo the passion of thrusting loins, moan, moan, brut, brut. Deep into at least two inches of coarse grained well fleshed lady they grummel and grab – such a high moaning and a tossing and a rolling ecstasy has seldom been seen on the English screen, moan moan, brut brut.

It gets really frantic, this rolling and tossing and might even get too frantic for the prurient but lethargic. It’s got to stop. Before the whirling sickness is induced, brut brut.

INT. COLIN’S BEDROOM  EARLY MORNING

COLIN falls out of bed. And brings an end to this highly romantic tossing. The brut brut noises we took for foreign film expressions of lust in the general ecstasy before COLIN fell out of his much too narrow for such cinematic antics, very narrow bed, don’t stop just because the bare backed lady has vanished and the ride is over.

COLIN hunts for the brut brut noises in his bedclothes. He is still half asleep.

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE COLIN’S HOUSE

TOLEN on his motor bike, makes the brut brut noises.

The early iterations of the script play almost as if the whole film is a dream sequence, and something of that does survive in the surrealism of the finished movie.

A nice line —

It would fall off, his head, if it wasn’t held by his hands and to a lesser extent his neck.

At what point did they start thinking of Michael Crawford for the role? Because this seems like it’s him.

A good bit of the dialogue in the film is from Ann Jellicoe’s play — the bulk of the exchanges between the four leads. But for a couple of drafts, Wood was writing everything himself — probably a useful exercise if you don’t mind the hard work, to get into their heads so that he could write in a voice that ultimately matches Jellicoe’s seamlessly.

Look at the size of his bloody bed. What a pit! That’s all it is, to what do you attribute your sexual prowess? The enormity of my dirty great bouncing pit. That’s all. The quilted musical enormity of it! It’s just hard neck to have a bigger bed than your landlord and a more successful bed than your landlord and more women than your landlord.

Early version of the sexy schoolgirls bit:

SCHOOL PLAYGROUND

Full of young girls bursting out of their gym slips with growing, and leaping about so that they bounce before our very eyes. They play netball but COLIN knows they are aware of their growing.

Does not yet have the scene’s creepy and amusing end note, where Colin looks at the dirty old men in raincoats watching the schoolgirls from behind the fence, and sees himself among their number. As Soderbergh put it, approximately: “The expression on his face! Hilarious!”The film introduces Colin’s class of boys learning by rote, droning repeated bits of maths after him, and then, brilliantly, uses them as a cutaway repeating other lines of dialogue later in the film. It only does this a couple of times, though. One draft of the script at least tries multiples:

TOLEN: Rory McBride was doing things at thirteen.

CHORUS OF BOYS: Rory McBride was doing things at thirteen.

TOLEN: That you haven’t ever done Col.

CHORUS OF BOYS: Sir.

TOLEN: Rory McBride was doing things at thirteen the likes of which you’ve never thought of.

COLIN: I’ve thought.

CHORUS OF BOYS: Thought.

COLIN: I’m not ambitious – really I’m not, what sort of things?

Bits of Jellicoe are creeping back there, but all chipped up in the Woodchipper.

The scripts, for some reason, keep changing format and are also printed on all sizes and thicknesses of paper, which does not quite keep the various incomplete drafts from getting mixed up.

THE BIG WIDE MAIN DRAG IS SUDDENLY AND BEAUTIFUL CLEAR LIKE EARLY MORNING WOULD BE AS THEY ARE TOGETHER ALMOST AND PERHAPS WOULD HOLD HANDS IF NANCY’S MAGAZINE HAD NOT GONE FLYING BLOWN BY A GUST OF WIND INTO THE EMPTY SPACE OF EARLY MORNING ROAD SEEN FROM WAY UP ON HIGH LIKE THEY ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE IN LONDON.

AND COLIN GOES TO GET IT AND IT BLOWS A BIT AND HE TURNS TO GRIN AND GOES SOME MORE AND WHOOPS AS HE GETS IT A DIRTY GREAT CAR COMES LIKE THE ARROGANT BASTARD CAR THAT IT IS DRIVEN BY A SLEEK AND HAIRY PRIME MINISTER.

After a few drafts, a Big Idea starts to form: writing VO dialogue for the citizenry of London, the film’s famous “Greek chorus” though as a narrative device they’re a lot weirder than that. They do comment on the action, but also divert off into their own private obsessions, and of course there’s a strain of nonsense to all of it. It’s meant to suggest vox pop interviews, and Wood captures and exaggerates the stream of consciousness way real people speak ~

Laugh the other side.

I mean there’s a time and a place for everything I always say and I always keep my place and that’s neither the time nor the place – mods and rockers.

I’m bound.

They play fast and loose with their own bodies and emotions – I’m not surprised when it lets them down.

Got the whole idea from television.

I’m very bound.

Giggling sex kudos.

Golliwogs.

That coverage of the Keeler case led them to look closely at their own possible and they experimented.

And there in my daughter’s own very own handbag I found this contracepticle I was hurt and amazed at the sight of this sordid piece of work and told him not to expect my daughter to come again – no.

A number of those lines do turn up in the movie, but cut and pasted into new positions (though cut and paste was not used — the digital kind didn’t exist and the physical kind was too messy, I guess. It was all done with typing.

Should all be tored down.

They’re tearing it all down. It used to be lovely when I was a lot younger than I’m young now, ‘cos of course I’m getting on now, you wouldn’t believe how old I am, how old do you think I am?

Filth.

That last word survived. Then there’s this scene, a sort of presentation by an entirely unknown character who doesn’t feature in the film at all. I can’t really swear that this ever was a scene from THe KNACK, except it appears in the KNACK box and is written in the same fragmented style ~

THROUGH THE OFFICE OF THE COMMANDING OFFICER OF HER MAJESTY’S CHRISTMAS CARDS

COMMANDING OFFICER

We’re glad to have you – no bull like an old bull which we won at Waterloo and we hope that more young people will follow your example and learn to do it the man’s way embracing the path of discipline – oh because it’s lovely.

The American’s haven’t got it – for all their jazz and ma tazz . . .

And we all wear lovely hats.

Which we were pleased to say all the best have worn from time imperial guard of dear old Napoleon who we trounced at Waterloo god rest his guard, old, young, and baby who ever they may be . . . do get your hairs cut.

Pretty great. I want a whole film about this guy and his Christmas cards. Then there’s ~

Handwritten: MORE AND MORE BED STUFF

I felt fulfilled – and yet just for a little while afterwards I felt sick the same way that I felt about all people I borrow from and throw away on things that can only bring ruin and frustration to myself – curiosity is the footnote.

I suppose he was just another of the glib talkers that seem ten a penny in London and I would like to give him a piece of my mind.

I was the silent wife who met horror and frustration in the beat palaces of the London King of the Beats.

He asked me the way to Wimbledon.

I am a writer and want to prove my philosophy of life and will never do it again if you can see your way clear to letting me go back to Bolton.

He said I had Chinese eyebrows – Please Toddy come back to your little Suzy.

Some of these are brilliant, but in a slightly different style to the vox pops in the film, because they’re all past tense. In the movie, only a couple are, e.g. “Workers’ playtime! She took off her wooden leg and put it on the mantelpiece next she took out her glass eye well I’ll never see the like again.”

The set-piece where Colin attempts to board up his front door to stop women getting in (see the parallel, distaff version in REPULSION, released the same year) exists in a very early form: Col’s two lines do make it into the final film.

DURING THIS TELLING SEQUENCE OF EVENTS AND OBSERVATIONS OF THE CROWD COLIN HAS ROUNDED OFF ALL THE ENDS OF THE BATTENS AND TAKEN UP HIS PLANE AND SMOOTHED DOWN THE ROUGH AND CHAMPERED WHERE HE CAN UNTIL IT IS INDEED A JOB.

COLIN: That is indeed a job.

PRIDEY HE STANDS AND TAKES A PAINTBRUSH. AN INSTANT LATER HE HAS PAINTED THE BATTENS AND IS PABBLING IT AND PRODDLING IT AND AT LAST HE MAKES A NON JERRY JOB OF IT WITH GREAT DELIGHT AND THEN HE CAN’T GET OUT:

COLIN: I can’t get out.

One last bit of early Greek vox chorus pop:

CANDID FACES OF THE AVERAGE GREENGROCER

They come here from the North and they expect the earth well they don’t get it do they and they deserve all they get.

I’ve no sympathy with them.

I blame their mums and dads – I mean I wouldn’t let my child across the street to London with all you read the way they have started this twilight world you read about.

Two years.

Flock in they do and of course what do you expect the inevitable takes place of course and then they scream of course and the usual happens and what happens then of course is proverbial and of course who gets the blame the poor bloody slop on the beat of course and how can he be held to ransom for the action of a minority – of course you can’t say that.

Did me a world of good.

I’d spank their – can I say it – rear parts.

The first draft, I think it is, climaxes on the Forth Bridge. I am thrilled to think that the whole unit would have had to come to Edinburgh for this. But thought better of it. As Colin and Tolen are clinging to the girders way up high ~

THE WIND IS TERRIBLE LOUD UP HERE ON THE FORTH FIFTH OF ANY BRIDGE THAT IS GIGANTIC AND IS BEING BUILT OR PAINTED BY TOLEN AND A FEW THOUSAND OTHERS.

~ we get a handwritten note ~ “Tolen as one of crowd.” So even as he was writing his epic bridge climax, Wood (or Lester?) was hatching the idea of making Tolen get absorbed by the Greek chorus and lose his star status, become another anonymous, embittered voice.

Lester told me he temp-tracked the end of the film with the late Michel Legrand’s “I Will Wait for You” from THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG… which made it a very tall order to ask John Barry to come up with something that could take its place. But he did.