Off the Beaten Yuletide Path, Part 2 (originally published 12/91)

Where were we? Programming a little living room film festival of Christmas movies, as I recall. Here’s the second half of my list.

“Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol” (1962). Wait, come back. I’m not kidding. You can’t do a Christmas film festival without including Scrooge but, if you recall, I began with the premise that I wanted to pick titles that were not the most obvious ones. If you’ve seen the Alastair Sim version of “A Christmas Carol” so often that you can anticipate every scowl, give old Magoo a try. The first-rate songs by Bob Merrill and Julie Styne would absolutely play on Broadway. The gags based on nearsightedness that formed the basis for the Mr. Magoo cartoon series are here put aside (apart from one or two sly references) and what we are given is an amusing and touching twist on the old Christmas chestnut. The order of the visits of the three spirits is inexplicably changed, but in most respects the original Dickens text is treated with appropriate deference. If you don’t know this version, give it a try. You won’t be mad at me.

“The Lion in Winter” (1968). This one is for those who like thorns in their mistletoe. If you get impatient with impossibly sweet Christmas stories featuring impossibly happy and well-adjusted families, try spending Christmas with one of history’s great dysfunctional families. Peter O’Toole is Henry II and Katharine Hepburn is Eleanor of Aquitaine. It’s Christmas, and King Henry has temporarily sprung Eleanor from captivity for the occasion. Her three sons, Richard, John, and Geoffrey, are also in attendance, each one keenly aware that Henry is pondering who his successor should be. When the sparks start to fly, stand back.

“Three Godfathers” (1948). What’s this? A John Ford Western? On a Christmas films list? You bet your boots, buckaroo. John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, and Harry Carey, Jr. portray three outlaws who happen across an apparently abandoned covered wagon in the desert. Inside they find a pregnant woman in labor, her husband having perished in the desert while searching for water. Knowing that she too is dying, the mother asks the three men to care for her baby. Reading in the mother’s Bible about Joseph and Mary taking baby Jesus to Jerusalem, they decide to take their young charge to a town called New Jerusalem. As they progress on their journey, the three outlaws become, if not wise men, at least wiser than they were. Each in turn sacrifices himself for the child. It is a Christmas movie if ever there was one, and will leave you with that warm Christmas glow just as surely as any film that drips with sleigh bells and mistletoe.

“The Lemon Drop Kid” (1951). This Bob Hope classic is not primarily a Christmas movie, but is fun to watch at Christmas time because of one priceless sequence. In this adaptation of a Damon Runyan story, Hope is a racetrack tout who is into a gangster for a pile of money. Taking advantage of the season, he and his associates dress up as street corner Santas trying to collect the needed funds from holiday-spirited passersby.

“Twilight Zone: Night of the Meek” (1960). In this classic episode from the original “Twilight Zone” TV series, Art Carney plays a department store Santa who is fired on Christmas Eve for showing up for work drunk. While wandering the streets with his Santa suit still on, he happens upon a sack that does something wonderful. No matter what a person asks him for, Carney finds that he can reach into his magical sack and produce it.

And, although I’ve avoided discussing them here for fear of belaboring the obvious, don’t forget the old Christmas favorites like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” They didn’t get to be so familiar by accident. Happy viewing to all, and to all a good night.

Off the Beaten Yuletide Path, Part 1 (originally published 12/91)

There’s no better time than Christmas for raiding the corner video store to put together a living room film festival. We all have old favorites, of course, that we return to year after year. There’s nothing wrong with that, to be sure. Christmas is, after all, a time for tradition. Still, you may find yourself from time to time looking to broaden just a bit your Christmas movie palette.

Allow me, then, to suggest some Christmas titles that you may have forgotten about, or that you may never have thought of as Christmas films. That means that I will be deliberately ignoring some of the very best such movies on the grounds that they are too familiar. You certainly don’t need me to help you discover the wonderfulness of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” right? Okay then, you bring the eggnog, and I’ll bring these films.

“The Bishop’s Wife” (1947). Cary Grant stars as an angel sent in answer to the prayers of a bishop played by David Niven. Sounds a bit like that Frank Capra film we agreed not to mention, but this angel is no Clarence Oddbody. This angel is, well, Cary Grant. The plot thickens as the angel realizes that he is falling in love with the title character (Loretta Young). This charming film includes one of the most memorable performances of the great character actor James Gleason in the role of a cab driver.

“Beyond Tomorrow” (1940). Three well-to-do but lonely old gentlemen befriend a couple of poor but honest youngsters on Christmas. It ends up as a ghost story, but the heartwarming sort, not the scary sort. (In other words, think Dickens, not M.R. James.) If you don’t know the names C. Aubrey Smith, Harry Carey, and Charles Winninger, run, don’t walk, to the video store and meet them in this sweet little film. They were three of the finest old pros in the business.

“Holiday Inn” (1942). Bing Crosby opens an inn that caters specifically to holiday themes. The score is by Irving Berlin and features the premiere performance of “White Christmas.” Der Bingle made the most of having first crack at the song, putting his stamp on it so indelibly that he practically owned it from then on. The later Crosby film titled “White Christmas,” by the way, is a partial and very loose remake of this film. One word of caution: be prepared for some uncomfortable racial stereotyping in the “Abraham” number.

“Christmas in Connecticut” (1943). Barbara Stanwyck writes magazine articles about how to be the perfect homemaker; the Martha Stewart of her day. Her boss (Sydney Greenstreet) decides that she should play hostess to him and to a war hero (Dennis Morgan) in her perfect home over the holidays as a publicity gimmick. The problem? She only knows how to write about homemaking. In her own home she can’t boil water. Her attempts to carry off the charade make for a delicious screwball comedy.

“The Homecoming” (1971). This is not the Harold Pinter play, but rather the made-for-TV movie that inspired the “Waltons” TV series. It’s a Christmas Eve during the Great Depression and Pa Walton is supposed to come home from the job he was lucky enough to find many miles away from home. Spirits are high in anticipation of his return, but as it gets later and later worry sets in. A news bulletin on the radio tells of a bus wreck on snowy roads. Was it his? The main character is the family’s oldest son, who has to do a lot of growing up in a short time when he is charged with going out to search for his father. The cast is slightly, but significantly, different from that of the series. Radio comedian Edgar Bergen (Candice’s dad), in a rare dramatic role, plays the grandfather and Patricia Neal plays the mother. The series was fine, but this introduction of the family that couldn’t get through a holiday without a crisis is something extra special.

What’s that? You’re tired already? After a mere 8 hours and 34 minutes of film viewing? Okay then. Switch off the Christmas tree lights and get some rest. When you come back, I’ll have another batch of Christmas movies ready for you.

Nonwicked Wiccans (originally published 5/05)

Has any group of people ever had worse PR than witches? Talk about lousy spin control. Brew up a few herbs for what ails you, mutter a curse under your breath when the local vicar gets fresh, and the next thing you know it's off to the dunking pool. And to top it off, movie portrayals of them are almost always negative. Even when played for laughs, witches are typically presented as thoroughly nasty. This is not always the case, however, as this year's release of "Bewitched" reminds us.

This domestic fantasy is, of course, based on the television sitcom of the same name, but the series was in turn influenced by a pair of earlier films. These two witchy comedies are well worth seeking out on home video.

"I Married a Witch" (1942). French director Rene Clair had firmly established himself as a master of fantasy filmmaking by the time he left France to escape the Nazi occupation. His earliest films had been exercises in surrealist imagery, long on striking visuals but short on plot. But his work was by no means exclusively avant garde in nature. He is probably best known for "The Italian Straw Hat" (1927), an adaptation of a French stage farce. The combination of his knack for fantasy images and his flair for comedy made him perfectly suited to direct an American comedy about a mortal who marries a witch.

Veronica Lake stars as Jennifer, a 17th century witch who is burned at the stake along with her father, Daniel (played by Cecil Kellaway). The two have been accused by Jonathan Wooley (Fredric March). After they have been dispatched, a tree is planted over their ashes so that their spirits will be held captive by its roots. But Jennifer has already gotten even: she has pronounced a curse on Jonathan and all his male descendents, that they will be unhappy in love. Clair then marches us quickly down through the years, occasionally pausing just long enough to show us that the curse is working. Each male Wooley is played by March. At last we settle on Wallace Wooley (March again), a politician who is just about to be married to a complete shrew (Susan Hayward, in an early role). The plot thickens when a lightning bolt splits the tree that had imprisoned Jennifer and Daniel, releasing their spirits. When they happen across Wooley, Jennifer notes with satisfaction that he is engaged to the wrong woman. Not content with this, she contrives to enhance his suffering by making him fall in love with her, knowing that he can't have her. But the plan goes awry when she mistakenly drinks the love potion that was intended for him. Suddenly in love with the man she has cursed, she must now find a way to protect him from her vindictive father. The resulting mayhem is great fun, packed by Clair into a crisp 76 minutes.

"Bell, Book, and Candle" (1958). Kim Novak and James Stewart star in this adaptation of John Van Druten's play about witchcraft in Greenwich Village. Although normal in appearance and in most other ways, Novak's character (Gillian Holroyd) is a practicing witch. Stewart plays Shepard Henderson, a book editor who lives in the apartment above her. Partly out of boredom and partly out of spite for the woman Shepard has been dating, Gillian decides to cast a spell on him to win his affection. This, however, entails spending lots of time with him. Gradually, the unthinkable happens - she begins to feel genuine affection for a mortal. This is strictly forbidden territory for a witch. Soon, she knows, she will have to make a choice.

Elements of each of these films found their way into "Bewitched," which was a nice enough TV show, but a complete waste of the talents of Agnes Moorehead, one of the finest actresses of the 20th century. Using her to play a supporting role in a sitcom is like using a Stradivarius violin as a flyswatter.

These few characters, along with a sparse handful of others (including Glinda from "The Wizard of Oz," lest we forget), represent the sum total of non-hag witches in the movies. Say, this image problem wouldn't have anything to do with the association of witchcraft with women, would it? Just asking.

Funny Futures (originally published 5/05)

Science fiction has traditionally been the literature of wonder and imagination, designed to appeal to our sense of awe at the marvels the future might hold. Motion pictures and television play into this sense of the fantastic exceptionally well, using special effects technology to show us what it might be like to float in the rings of Saturn or to navigate a spacecraft deftly through an asteroid belt.

Occasionally, however, science fiction cinema lets its hair down, choosing to appeal more to our sense of humor than to our sense of wonder. That's the idea behind "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a newly-released big-screen adaptation of the popular BBC radio series by Douglas Adams. The idea of turning a science fiction premise on its ear for a laugh is fun, but by no means new. To see how earlier films have played such material for comedy, look for these titles on home video.

"Sleeper" (1973). Woody Allen's science fiction variation on the Rip Van Winkle theme finds health food store owner Miles Munroe (Allen) being roused from two centuries of cryogenically frozen slumber into a brave new world. Allen uses this premise to satirize everything from fast food to Howard Cosell. This practice of using an alternate world to ridicule the real world is one of the traditional hallmarks of good science fiction and fantasy, going all the way back to "Gulliver's Travels." Reproduced below is the original promotional trailer for "Sleeper," courtesy of Turner Classic Movies.



"Dark Star" (1974). Before he hit it big with "Halloween" (1978), John Carpenter was just another aspiring filmmaker looking for a way to catch the eye of studio executives. He did it with this student film, a parody of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). With some modest funding from a small distributor he was able to expand his original short subject into a low budget feature. The production values are minimal, to be sure, but the story of a bored crew of astronauts on an extended mission is funny and imaginative.

"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension" (1984). This astonishing picture landed with a thud at the box office when it was originally released, due in part to the fact that the studio simply had no idea how to promote it. It's a one of a kind original that defies attempts at synopsis or pigeonholing. Peter Weller stars as Buckaroo Banzai, a kind of latter day Doc Savage who is, among other things, a skilled neurosurgeon, particle physicist, and rock musician, and who represents the best hope of Earth in the face of an alien invasion from the eighth dimension. Earl MacRauch's script crackles with wit while playfully challenging the viewer to keep up. Since its initial box office failure, this quirky comedy has become a revered cult classic, with a following every bit as devoted as the famously rabid fans of "Star Trek."

"Repo Man" (1984). The Orwellian year of 1984 produced one other enduring science fiction comedy cult classic, this one from the delightfully demented mind of writer-director Alex Cox. The setup is straightforward enough: a Los Angeles slacker named Otto (Emilio Estevez) falls in with an automobile repossession man (Harry Dean Stanton) and becomes his protégé. The story takes a bizarre left turn into the realm of science fiction when the two repo men join the hunt for a very special 1964 Chevy Malibu, for which a $20,000 reward is being offered. What makes the Malibu special is that it is being driven by a mad scientist who has the bodies of three aliens stashed in the trunk. Unfortunately, the bodies are highly radioactive, causing anyone who is foolish enough to open the trunk to be vaporized on the spot by the intense radiation. As Allen did in "Sleeper," Cox uses the lens of science fiction to satirize human folly, from religious cults to UFO cults.

Ironically, each of these futuristic films can now be obtained on a small silver disc, playable through a TV or, with the appropriate hardware, through a computer monitor. A couple of them are available in "special edition" formats, including alternate versions and/or commentary by the filmmakers. History, it seems, has overtaken science fiction. In many ways, we're living in the future that science fiction warned us about. And that in itself is pretty funny.

The Bard of Asia (originally published 3/05)

We were talking last week about movie adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, and I mentioned that there were three great film interpreters of the Bard. I talked about Olivier's magnificent "Henry V" (1945) and Orson Welles's audacious "Chimes at Midnight" (1967). The third great translator of Shakespeare to the screen has given us memorable adaptations of "Macbeth" and "King Lear," but his approach to the plays is very different from that of Olivier or Welles because the dialogue in his films is in Japanese.

Akira Kurosawa, by common consent Japan's greatest filmmaker, has long been acknowledged as a major influence on world cinema. The American Western classic "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), for example, was based on Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" (1954) and the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), directed by Sergio Leone, was based on Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (1961).

But Kurosawa's influence wasn't limited to Westerns. He also led the way in showing how story lines can be translated across cultural contexts with "Throne of Blood" (1957), his version of "Macbeth." Consider the problem he faced: how would you make an effective version of a Shakespeare play if the original lines were unavailable to you? You could simply translate the lines into Japanese, of course, but your translator would need to have as great a command of Japanese as Shakespeare did of English. The content might survive, but the poetry in those immortal lines must unavoidably fall by the wayside.

Instead of trying to do a Japanese version of an English play with a Scottish setting using Japanese dialogue, Kurosawa shifted the setting to feudal Japan and adapted the story to a samurai context. Then, at home in his own cultural sphere, he could draw on his own considerable cinematic talents to replace the missing verbal poetry with visual poetry.

Kurosawa's "Macbeth" character in "Throne of Blood" is a samurai general named Washizu, played by Toshiro Mifune. While lost in the forest, Washizu encounters not three witches as in "Macbeth," but rather a single witch. She predicts that he will be a ruler who will be invincible until the forest itself moves against him. Washizu, egged on by his wife, takes this as a license to murder his lord.

It's Shakespeare's story, all right, but in place of the Bard's powerful words Kurosawa gives us powerful imagery. Trying to describe the images here is as futile as translating Shakespeare's text into Japanese, but let me just mention a couple of scenes.

Toward the end, as Washizu holds a war council in his castle, the large room is suddenly filled with panicked birds. The men can't agree on whether this is a good omen or a bad one, but we know that the birds are there because Washizu's enemies have driven them out of the forest by chopping down trees to use as cover. The forest is about to advance on the castle. It is a potent and affecting scene. Washizu's death is equally unforgettable. He is caught in a terrifyingly dense hail of arrows, shot, as it turns out, by his own men. The image of this lone figure, impaled by dozens of arrows but still walking, lives on in my mind just as firmly as any of Shakespeare's soliloquys.

"Ran" (1985) is Kurosawa's adaptation of "King Lear." It tells the story of an aging Japanese overlord who decides to divide his kingdom, not among three daughters, which would have been unthinkable in feudal Japan, but rather among his three sons. As in the Shakespeare text, one of the siblings falls out of favor by refusing to flatter the monarch. Kurosawa balances the gender reversal of sons for daughters by replacing Shakespeare's scheming Edmund with a scheming woman. She works her wiles for vengeance rather than for ambition, but she is every bit as cold-bloodedly calculating as Edmund.

Kurosawa's amazing eye for the dramatic use of color cinematography was never put to better use than in "Ran." I won't even try to describe the visuals here; go and watch it for yourself. It is a mature masterwork by an elder statesman of the cinema, marshaling the full force of his visual eloquence to comment on human folly. That this eminent Eastern artist should have chosen to cross-pollinate his vision with that of the West's greatest playwright is the icing on the cake.

Cinematic Shakespeare (originally published 3/05)

Although I have never cared much for the writings of film critic Pauline Kael, I am fond of one remark attributed to her. "If you think movies can't be killed," she once said, "you underestimate the power of education." But it's not only true of movies. More than one creator of living art has discovered that the attention of the academy is both a blessing and a curse. Too often, the price of admission to the required reading list is the squelching of the fire and passion in your works.

Down through the years, no one has suffered more in this way than poor old William Shakespeare. After nearly four centuries of the ministrations of university graybeards, not to mention critics, it's amazing that the old boy's plays are still around at all. Their survival can only be attributed to the actors and directors who regularly revive them on the stage and on the screen. Their work keeps us reminded, if only just barely, that those dusty old tomes contain not only fodder for scholars, but also great theater.

The latest filmmaker to take on this noble task is Michael Radford, whose recent production of "The Merchant of Venice" will soon be released on DVD. If you happened to catch the film and found that Al Pacino's spirited incarnation of Shylock whetted your appetite for more, there are plenty of excellent earlier film versions of Shakespeare's plays available on home video. Lots of talented filmmakers have adapted the Bard for the screen, but there are three who tower above the rest.

Laurence Olivier is perhaps the most obvious one. Renowned as a stage actor, his film work is sometimes unjustly overlooked. Once he realized that film acting is different from stage acting, Olivier got the hang of performing for the camera very quickly. But even more impressively, he became an accomplished film director as well. In particular, his eye for pictorial composition was sharp and inventive.

His "Hamlet" (1948) and "Richard III" (1956) are both excellent, but my own favorite Olivier Shakespeare film is his first one, "Henry V" (1945). He was encouraged to make it because its story of an embattled England steeling itself to fight a formidable enemy resonated with the then-current threat from Nazi Germany. Olivier used a wonderfully imaginative device to frame the play. The film begins in London in the time of Shakespeare. The camera takes us into the Globe Theater for a performance of "Henry V." We even get a peek at the backstage bustle and fussing with props just prior to curtain time. The play begins, still on the Globe stage. Then, as we are drawn into the story, the confines of the Globe are gradually left behind. By the time we reach the Battle of Agincourt, the film has long since moved entirely to naturalistic locations. By the end of the film, Olivier has reversed the process, bringing us back to the Globe for the final scene.

Orson Welles is the second great film interpreter of Shakespeare. His moody, quirky "Macbeth" (1948) is fascinating and his recently restored "Othello" (1952) is sublime, but my favorite is an audacious masterwork called "Chimes at Midnight" (1967). Because of the length of the plays, you can't very well do Shakespeare on film without cutting some of the lines, but no one had ever had the nerve to perform the kind of radical surgery attempted here. Welles decided to make a film about the relationship between Prince Hal (who would grow up to be Henry V) and the two men who most influenced his life. One of these was his royal father, Henry IV, and the other was Sir John Falstaff, the rotund blowhard who was Hal's drinking buddy throughout his misspent youth. But because these relationships are played out over the course of several individual plays, Welles found it necessary to collapse material from "Henry IV, Part One" and "Henry IV, Part Two" into a single sequence of events, while mixing in bits from "Richard II" and "Henry V." The exemplary result is a finer commentary on the meaning of Shakespeare's histories than any grind of a scholar will ever produce.

The third great film interpreter of Shakespeare took a somewhat different tack than either Welles or Olivier, but with equally impressive results. Next week we'll take a look at his unique adaptations of the Bard's plays.

You Ought To Be In Pictures (originally published 2/05)

Making a biographical movie can be a tricky proposition, especially if the subject of the biography is still living. Anyone whose life becomes the subject of a film during their lifetime is likely to be a celebrity. That means that their face, voice, and mannerisms will be well known to audiences, all of which complicates the job of the actor who portrays them.

There is, however, another option. Once in a while an intrepid producer will sidestep the whole problem by hiring the actual person to play the part, carrying typecasting to its logical conclusion, you might say. That's what Showtime has done in their original series, "Fat Actress," which stars Kirstie Alley as Kirstie Alley. For an overview of earlier films that used the same ploy, look for these titles on video.

"The Fabulous Dorseys" (1947). Swing era bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey play themselves in a musical dual biography. We see them as feuding siblings who are ultimately reconciled by the common tragedy of their father's death. Fellow bandleader Paul Whiteman also appears as himself. The real star of the show, however, is the music.

"The Jackie Robinson Story" (1950). The man who broke the color barrier in major league baseball portrays himself in this sincere recreation of his struggle against racial prejudice. The script was wisely crafted to demand little from Robinson in the way of acting. His thespian limitations are more than made up for by the excellent performances of Ruby Dee as his wife and Louise Beavers as his mother. They are able to carry much of the story's emotional content, while the film's thematic thrust is largely carried by Minor Watson as Branch Rickey, the man who hired Robinson to play for the Dodgers.

"To Hell and Back" (1955). Among the celebrities who have portrayed themselves on film, Audie Murphy is unusual in that he had already established himself as a movie star before being asked to re-enact for the camera the events outside of show business that made him famous. Renowned as the most decorated veteran of World War II, Murphy parlayed his notoriety into a movie career, beginning with a 1948 Alan Ladd picture called "Beyond Glory." Three years later he won his spurs as a real live actor (as opposed to just a movie star) with his critically acclaimed performance in John Huston's film adaptation of "The Red Badge of Courage." In chronicling his own war exploits in "To Hell and Back," then, he was able to combine the authority of having lived the events with the camera confidence of an experienced film actor.

"The Greatest" (1977). When the time came to make a movie out of Muhammad Ali's modestly titled memoir, there could be little doubt as to who would play the lead. Ali was no actor, to be sure, but he was a seasoned performer just the same. His successful self-promotion had been built around the creation of an outrageous public persona, and no one knew better than he how to put on that persona for the cameras.

"Sophia Loren: Her Own Story" (1980). Here we have the fascinating spectacle of a movie star starring in a movie about her own movie career, but without the sense of irony that informs Alley's turn in "Fat Actress." It's either the most natural thing in the world or the most perverse, depending on your point of view. Actually, it reminds me of Marlon Brando's comment when he was asked some years ago to discuss his movie roles in detail for publication. He declined, saying that it would be "like picking lint out of your navel and smoking it." In any case, if you can't get enough of Sophia, this is the movie for you. In fact, she ups the ante by portraying not only herself but also her own mother.

As you watch these autobiographical performances, keep in mind that this ultimate form of typecasting is not generally conducive to great cinema. It is, bottom line, a parlor trick. As Samuel Johnson said of the dog that dances on its hind legs, it is not that the thing is done well but that it is done at all that is remarkable. Viewed in that light, these are all fascinating and remarkable movies.