Chromophobia

Well, I figured Peter Sellers’ only film as director would be of SOME interest. The fact that, after the film flopped, he tried to destroy every copy, made it more intriguing. I’m not sure how he was able to do this — why would Twentieth Century Fox pass up the TV sales money, however little it might be? What about the royalties due the cast? Anyway, the BFI fortunately has preserved a print and made it available.

It’s a role, from Marcel Pagnol’s source play, that Louis Jouvet (in his debut), John Barrymore, Alexandre Arnaudy (don’t know who he is) and Fernandel had previously played on film. Only the geniuses seem to have succeeded in the part, and indeed Sellers, an undisputed genius, fails.

The performances are all good — the colour pallette is exceptional — Don Ashton (KWAI) designed it exquisitely and John Wilcox shot it — he was Freddie Francis’s operator and then shot a lot of FF’s films as director. Sellers’ camera direction is very plain — it befits a man who claimed to have no personality.

Sellers’ role is probably the problem — he has to play a nice, honest, innocent man, which worked for him in THE MILLIONAIRESS but there’s no Loren here to take up the slack. And, of course, THE MILLIONAIRESS was never really that exciting. Bosley Crowther for once in his life got it more or less right when he said that Sellers was boring in the role: he starts off OK, it’s intriguing to see him try this, he’s rather lovable, but as his problems mount, the film loses impetus, which is hard to understand. I may have to see the Jouvet again to find out what makes it so electrifying in the right hands.

The muted colour schemes probably don’t help, gorgeous though they are. Sellers had not yet, it seems, acquired his superstitious dread of green, which is allowed to creep in a couple of times, but mostly the film sticks with shades of brown, with a kind of strong tea hue being the richest shade on offer:

I like brown, when used with sensitivity. This is quite a lot of brown to consume at one sitting, admittedly. Sellers’ chromophobia may be his strongest stylistic quality as filmmaker.

A dialled-down central performance, a subdued colour scheme, a flat directorial style, a tricky play. And I wonder if Sellers’ cast and crew felt the transition from innocence to corruption take place in their director as the shoot went on?

It is nice to see Billie Whitelaw in a sex-bomb role, but Whitelaw is not Loren. She doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but she realizes she can go to town with the little she has: she makes an arresting cartoon character. Also revelatory: John Neville, in the best bit of work I’ve seen from him in his younger days, Michael Gough, having a huge amount of fun. Leo McKern is fun and Herbert Lom always a joy. Nadja Tiller is, I guess, the only surviving cast member and she’s excellent. She deserves more attention from film lovers.

At home with the Loms

The play had a checkered history, and you can see why — Raymond Massey did it and it died like a dog, progressively as it went on (a prog dog). The alternative title, I LIKE MONEY, makes it naked: it’s the story of an idealist who becomes an amoral, mercenary swine, and likes it. Sellers always had a strong sympathy for the theme of THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN — “people will do anything for money.” This movie affirms that, and suggests that dishonesty brings wealth and therefore happiness, but Sellers, exerting his mise-en-scene a bit for the last moments before fade-out, does show himself in extreme long shot, alone, stretching his arms in a show of satisfaction that rings a little hollow… the castle is placed at the side (outside the TV safe zone, though), reminding us of the hero’s material wealth, but this is definitely the last shot of a tragedy.

Hollowness, as well as chromophobia, may be a signature element of the Sellers style.

MR. TOPAZE stars Gustave Flournoy; Nadia Rokovsky, Number 8; Henry Fengriffen; Klang; Miss Havisham; Alfred Pennyworth; Sister Thornhill; Violet Kray; Lady Ruff-Diamond; Hieronymus Karl Frederick Baron von Munchausen; Religious Sandwich Man; and Nevil Shanks.

They Saved Hitler’s Sperm

Franklin J. Schaffner’s THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL is like MARATHON MAN’s brain-damaged clone or something. It’s hard to say which is the tackier take on Nazi war criminal conspiracies. I think at least MM has some kind of realistic point to make and exposes Operation Paperclip to daylight in a way that’s kind of commendable. I watched BOYS in dishonour of the late Bruno Ganz, who appears, and became periodically woken up by odd moments of Schaffnerian panache.

When Larry Olivier first sees a Baby Hitler, the kid is reflected in a double set of mirrors, CITIZEN KANE style, so there are like 95 of him. This is a fine idea — clever but stupid but clever — in a good movie it would be too obvious, i n this movie it is *PERFECT* and I wish Franklin J. Schaffner had come up with another dozen or so visual ideas like it.There’s a double sex murder scene staged to an Elaine Page song. As we wait for the body to be discovered, a Mr. Punch puppet pokes round a corner to irritate Prunella Scales. It’s unsettling, to say the least, but feels really peculiar. Normally, staging the normal scenes of domestic life in a normal way would make more sense than this baroque surrealist madness. It only occurred to me afterwards that Schaffner was keeping the little puppeteer offscreen for a good narrative purpose. At the time it registers as creepy eccentricity, like the whole film has gotten into the wrong hands and may at any moment be invaded by rampaging cowboys or gremlins.

There’s a brief iteration of Schaffner’s signature shot: the planimetric flat-on full stop, but it’s an undistinguished example. But Uta Hagen’s big scene has a nicely awkward moment where her hushed confab with her lawyer strains for attention against a blankly staring, static Olivier on the lower right of frame, creating an electric tension partly because you don’t know where to look.The very weird plot has Dr. Mengele producing 95 baby Hitlers, and then, since he’s undecided re nature v. nurture, planting them with foster families similar to the original Adolf’s. Since Hitler’s dad died aged 65 when the future Führer was still a lad, 95 future Führer foster fathers have to be assassinated, an almost biblical arrangement which serves to tip off aging Nazi hunter Larry Olivier, who starts to investigate. It’s one of those plots that starts bonkers and just gets crazier, has no choice in fact but to get crazier. Like one of those things that begins “Jack the Ripper steals HG Wells’ time machine… Do you believe me so far?”

Ira Levin’s narrative unfolds quasi-grippingly. Like his Rosemary’s  Baby, it somehow works despite everybody knowing the clever twist going in. We’re watching the gradual exposure of an absurd plot, and the pleasure seems to derive from how kinda-credibly it can be packaged, and the suspense of seeing a character we like stumbling closer to the awful truth.Gregory Peckory, of course, is the worst casting for Dr. Mengele you could get, outside of maybe Chuck Connors or Alfonso Bedoya, and he has the task of playing most of his scenes with James Mason and Laurence Olivier, either of whom you can imagine doing it brilliantly — and Olivier had just done so, of course, in all but name. I can see why they might not want Larry to repeat himself exactly, and his increasing frailty works better with him in the hero role. But why Peck? I guess THE OMEN had given him a slight boost, and this is the same kind of vulgar high-concept all-star malarkey, so I’m sure he was good B.O.

But Jesus.

Granted the dyed black hair is an interesting touch — makes him hard to look at, one thing you’d never normally say about the guy. He becomes a waxy mannequin — even more than normal.

Then there’s the claustrophobic effect produced by nearly everyone in it having to do a phony German accent: Lilli Palmer’s real one is a blessed relief. Bruno Ganz is Swiss but he was celebrated for his German-speaking, and rightly so as far as I can tell. His English here is rather lovely and he wisely kicks back and lets Olivier act for two.
The cat they’ve got to play Baby Hitler doesn’t look like Hitler, and is stretched (painfully: think Procrustes) by the demands of having to play him as German, Brit and American. A tall (new) order for any small boy. There must have been a big casting search, and they must’ve convinced themselves they had the answer — “THAT’S OUR HITLER!” — but Dick Shawn would not have been a markedly inferior choice. It’s not that the kid’s a bad actor, though I think he’s been encouraged to lay it on too thick. His dialogue as the English brat is so awkwardly written (“My mother is not receiving today. Don’t you understand English, you arse? We are not at home.” that he might as well have been dubbed, preferably by Paul Frees.Speaking of dialogue, to hear Olivier say, in a mounting falsetto, “He operated, mainly on tvins, VISS-out anaesthetic but VISS ze strains of Wagner providing an obbli-GAT-o to ze screams of the MU-tants he was cre-AT-ink!” is to hear a great deal, and to be unable to un-hear any of it.

John Rubinstein gets to share Olivier’s best scene (his final one in the film), but best perf is John Dehner, a former Disney animator, as the main American baby Hitler’s future Führer foster father — it’s like a real person walked into this bloodthirsty comic opera by mistake. You inhale deeply at the sudden infusion of oxygen.THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL stars Atticus Finch; Richard III; Erwin Rommel; Zarah Valeska; Carey Mahoney; Marcus Brody; Dr. Brodsky; Dr. Mabuse; Adolf Hitler; Henry Luce; General Gogol; Colonel Dankopf; Colonel Kurt von Strohm; Emeric Belasco; Sandor Szavost; Angel Blake; Sybill Fawlty; Mr. Slugworth; Prince of Tübingen; and the voice of VALIS. (It’s a Lew Grade production so it’s ridiculously stuffed with stars. I put it about even with the very enjoyable MEDUSA TOUCH and way ahead of RAISE THE TITANIC! which nevertheless I’m starting to feel I ought to see again even though I remember it being really boring. The plot in that one is that they’ve found out how to make an anti-nuke force field, but they need a rare mineral and the entire supply of it went down with the Titanic. Really! I’m not making this up.)

Own Ghoul

Starring Hengist Pod, the Rumpo Kid, Jill Masterson, Louis D’Ascoygne, Dr. Crippen, Emeric Belasco (pictured) and Budgie.

More Pat Jackson (if you’re nasty). I was impressed by the camera direction in WHAT A CARVE UP!, which is not, otherwise, a distinguished work. Let me explain.

The movie is kind of a remake of THE GHOUL, supposedly, later re-remade by Amicus, I believe. But the three films have little in common. In this one, cowardly proofreader Kenneth Connor is summoned to an Old Dark House in Yorkshire for the reading of an eccentric uncle’s will. Being a coward, he brings his flatmate Sid James along. Some brief intrigue is managed by bringing two Carry On film regulars into a spookshow populated by horror icons Michael Gough, Michael Gwynn (REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, very funny here) and an unblinking Donald Pleasence. His character name is Everett Sloane, but this is not an in-joke, so far as I can see, just laziness. Murders ensue.

There are very few good jokes, but here is one. It’s so gloriously stupid it achieves a kind of glory.

The script is a pile of old tosh by Ray Cooney & Tony Hilton, who also wrote one or two serious thrillers like THE HAND around this time. Cooney, of course, is an unbelievably persistent and diabolical scourge on the British cinema: everything he touches would turn to shit except it already IS shit. He has some kind of reverse Midas touch, though, which allows him to turn shit into much, much worse shit. This is a unique gift to have, though not in any way a useful one… except in Britain, it seems, where it can get you a 58-year-and-counting screenwriting career. You also get to direct, because hey, how much worse can shit get? See NOT NOW, DARLING and find out.

I do honestly like the moose joke though. It’s the only good Cooney joke I know.

The early scenes showing Connor and James’ home life have a very Hancock feel, and I wonder if the movie were actually intended for the great Tony H.

Cooney & Hilton are, God knows, no Galton & Simpson (RIP), so I can easily imagine Hancock turning his nose up at this sub-CAT AND THE CANARY tosh. Sid James, of course, would say yes to anything, which is why we have BLESS THIS HOUSE: THE MOTION PICTURE. His eternal, dogged professionalism and scrotumnal fizzog carry us through the dross.

 

Connor is a perfectly OK supporting player but becomes irritating over the long haul of a leading role, and his vulnerability is undercut by the script, which makes everyone an asshole. The best perfs come from the straight actors — Pleasence plays it eerily still, Gough lopes crookedly, and Michael Gwynn is a delight, all pixilated stare and rigid arms, a man unable to awaken from a dream. Really eccentric, something you haven’t seen before in the world of acting. It is worth sitting through this muck for him, Esma Cannon, and the previously mentioned.

Then there’s Jackson’s choice of angles, which show an imagination and cheek not so evident in his other works. I get the feeling he’s taking the mickey, trying to liven up tired material, and he probably thought this kind of showmanship beneath him, normally. A shame, because if he’d gone all out on his other dramas, he might have built up a rep as a minor Hitchcockian.