Nadine: “I don’t wanna take up a ton of your time, but I’m gonna kill myself.  I just thought an adult should know.”

Mr. Bruner: “Wow.  I actually was writing my own suicide note just now.  I have 32 fleeting minutes of happiness during lunch, which has been eaten up again and again by the same especially badly dressed student, and I finally thought I would rather have the dark nothingness.”

[ Hailee Steinfeld to Woody Harrelson, “The Edge of Seventeen” (2016]

In 1955 the film, “Marty” directed by Delbert Mann and starring Ernest Borgnine won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, and Actor along with winning Paddy Chayefsky an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  The movie was a romantic drama that told a simple story about a single, thirtyish butcher in the Bronx still living at home who was fat, unattractive and, like so many individuals living on the lower economic strata, generally lonely and frustrated about his lot in life.  This short 90-minute film was different for a number of reasons.  First, it was Director Mann’s first film and based on Chayefsky’s acclaimed 1953 television play also originally directed by Mann.  Second, for Borgnine, it was his first lead role, since the majority of his previous roles had him playing mostly bad guys with maybe his most memorable one being the terrifying and sadistic “Fatso” Judson in “From Here to Eternity” (1953).  Third, it only cost $340,000 to make and had no other name actors in any of the roles.  Fourth, and last, it was independently produced with United Artists having only distribution rights.  Despite all of these things supposedly against it, it was a huge box office and Academy Award-winning hit!  The success of “Marty” sent shock waves throughout the entire American motion picture industry.  It proved that independently produced and, at times, low-budget productions with lesser-known casts could compete and win acclaim, awards, and achieve box office success.  It also further enhanced United Artists reputation as a place for daring artists and independent productions to be made as well as providing the impetus for a number of the other major film studios to do the same.  In this month’s Blog Post I will discuss this film phenomenon highlighting a number of other little films that received acclaim along with highlighting others that should have, but unfortunately, did not!

After “Marty,” Mann would continue to work on similar types of films with original screenplays also provided by Chayefsky.  A couple, that I want to briefly mention, were “The Bachelor Party” (1957) and “Middle of the Night” (1959).  “Party” was about a young married bookkeeper (Don Murray) who goes out with a bunch of his fellow co-workers to a bachelor party for one of them, and as the evening progresses it showed all of their frustrations with their current lives and relationships.  “Night” was about a widowed and older clothing manufacturer (Frederic March) who takes his much younger receptionist (Kim Novak) to dinner and slowly, a May-December romance develops between the two of them along with the corresponding disapprovals from both individuals’ family members.  These films were intimate relationship dramas which also populated the TV airwaves back then.  My own feelings towards them were that even though these films were well made with fine screenplays, directing, and acting, they all sort of looked the same after a while, and none of them could transcend either their stage or TV play limitations and that included “Marty,” which I never really liked much at all.  Such angst driven fifties big city/suburban melodramas laced with despair were harbingers for other future films like “Interiors” (1978), “The Ice Storm” (1997), “Little Children” (2006), and “Manchester by the Sea” (2016).   However, television in the nineteen fifties was also a fertile proving ground for other fine writers like Rod Sterling, Horton Foote, Reginald Rose, etc., and directors like Robert Mulligan, John Frankenheimer, and Sydney Lumet.  These individuals, along with others back then, would make some different, and better, little films with big impact later on.

Two fine little ones were made in the early nineteen sixties. The first one was “David and Lisa” (1962) directed by Frank Perry.  This film was a drama with romantic overtones about two young adults with serious psychological issues in a high-end psychiatric facility.  David (Keir Dullea) is cold and distant while possibly suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder who reacts violently, whenever he is touched.  Lisa (Janet Margolin) suffers from a split personality with one personality only speaking in rhymes and the other personality not speaking at all while only communicating by either writing or drawing.  David, taken by Lisa’s sheer presence alone, slowly starts to interact with her by also communicating in rhyme and slowly, ever so slowly, they both start to change.  This was an unusual love story that was really quite touching and a big motion picture hit even though it was a fanciful and false representation of mental illness and corresponding psychiatric care.  Director Perry was never either a good or even much of a success as a director.  However, this was the one real time that he struck gold.  Helped by a fine screenplay by his then wife, Eleanor Perry (both of them were Academy Award nominated), he elicited a pair of fine performances from both Dullea and Margolin (it was her first film role) in believingly showing two mismatched souls slowly changing before your very eyes.  Despite the fact that “David and Lisa” was made with less money than what you could find in a piggy bank, the viewing audience loved it… and so did I. 

The other one that I want to praise was “Lilies of the Field” (1963) directed by Ralph Nelson.  This picture starred Sydney Poitier as Homer Smith, an African American itinerant laborer traveling from job to job through the American southwest in his station wagon which is also where he resides.  While stopping solely to get some water for his overheated radiator, he discovers that the nearby building is a convent occupied by five Catholic nuns mostly German and with only one, Mother Maria (Lilia Skala), speaking the most English.  Although the nuns exist on a bare subsistence level and have almost no money, Mother Maria believes that Homer was sent by God to, at first, fix their roof, and second, to build them a chapel.  Only problem is that (1) Homer, at first, doesn’t know that they have no money, and (2) once he finds out what they really want, he definitely doesn’t want to build their “frigging” chapel.  Now Dear Reader, unless you have also been living in monastic seclusion all your life so as to have never seen this movie, it is a light as a feather comedy drama.  And it’s wonderful!  

Director Nelson, who previously directed another great little film, “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (1962) is even better here.  Although this film only had a budget of around $247,000 or less, was filmed on location in Arizona in only fourteen days, had no art director, and was so cash strapped that Nelson had to even put up his own house as collateral, he actually did have some aces up his sleeve.  First, he had as his cinematographer former Oscar winner Ernest Haller who previously won his Oscar for a “little” movie called “Gone with the Wind” (1939).  Second, he had future Oscar winning composer Jerry Goldsmith’s delightfully folkish film score which matched the overall lightness of the picture.  Third, he had a great Academy Award nominated screenplay by James Poe which was both humorous and ultimately, touching.  And lastly, he had two fine performances: (1) Skala’s Academy Award nominated performance, and (2) Poitier’s Oscar winning performance for Best Actor. 

Poitier, who took a smaller salary and a percentage of the profits so that this film could be made, also made history by becoming the first African American actor to ever win an Oscar in a leading role.  Supposedly, Poitier felt that the reason the Academy gave him his Oscar was because they were treating him as a token African-American and not, as someone who actually deserved the Academy Award.  Whatever his feelings were, he shouldn’t have been concerned.  As far as I’m concerned, he definitely deserved it.  He showed a light comic touch that he had never previously revealed as an actor before.  Also, as Homer Smith (or “Schmidt” as Mother Maria calls him), Poitier created a character who, while exasperated at times by Mother Maria’s not so subtle manipulations, still demanded that she treat him, not as just an instrument of God in building her chapel, but as “the actual individual” who built his chapel.  This aspect of his character along with Homer’s initial stubborn refusal from anyone to physically help him build the chapel until he is finally overwhelmed by everyone helping him in various ways, make Poitier’s portrayal fascinating.  Great performance!  Great film!

Now there were other fine little films made, just in the nineteen sixties alone, that I could also talk about such as “Séance on a Wet Afternoon” (1964), “The Pawnbroker” (1964), and “A Patch of Blue” (1965) for example.  However, at the beginning of this Blog Post, I mentioned that I was going to discuss other fine little films that should have received more acclaim but mostly did not.  Since these pictures are more recent, I want to discuss a number of them.  The first two that I want to highlight are “Genius” (2016) and “Indignation” (2016).  Both pictures were directed by individuals who were not known for film directing and concern subjects that one might not necessarily consider as being film worthy.  For example, “Genius,” was the film directing debut of Michael Grandage, who was better known for his British theatre productions. “Genius” is a biographical drama about Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth), the famed literary editor of the publishing house, Scribner’s and his relationship with writer, Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law).  As a historical footnote, Perkins was probably the greatest literary editor that ever lived.  It was through his efforts in both discovering and helping writers to streamline and better develop their novels, while at the same time, act as an advocate for their works to be published, that they ultimately found success and lasting fame.  What authors you may ask?  How about Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Jones, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and others.  Although Law gave the showier performance, Firth as Perkins, gave a more subtle and thoughtful performance of someone who was cajoling, and persuasive, almost like a father confessor, while helping to guide the temperamental, self-serving, and self-destructive Wolfe into creating his great literary masterpieces.  Grandage’s fine direction portrayed, in painstaking detail, the slow process of what a great literary editor actually does, and how this unique person helped so many great authors to achieve the success they did.  Unfortunately, this film was not a success either critically or financially which was a shame.  By the end of this picture, maybe the actual “genius” in “Genius” was the lesser-known Maxwell Perkins, himself!       

“Indignation” was also the film directing debut of James Schamus who was better known as a top film screenplay writer and producer.  Based on a novel by Phillip Roth, it starred Logan Leman as Marcus, a young Jewish soldier currently fighting in the Korean War who reflects back to how he ultimately wound up there.  You quickly find out that he previously won a scholarship to a small elite private Christian College in Ohio where the studious and introverted Marcus meets and starts to date Olivia (Sarah Gadon), a beautiful, freethinking, and sexually adventuresome student who is emotionally and psychologically fragile, and as alienated from her immediate surroundings as Marcus.  Marcus soon draws the attention of Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts) when he requests a change to a single room because of his annoying roommates.  It is in this film’s one on one discussions between these two men that the reason for this film’s name is made crystal clear.  “Indignation” is about Marcus’s confrontations against the conformity prevalent in the nineteen fifties personified by the self-righteous, subtly antisemitic, and offensive bullying of Caudwell.  Caudwell’s slow show of interest in this student soon devolves into his questioning, on a personal level, everything about Marcus from things like how he originally filled out his school application, why he resents going to mandatory chapel attendance, why he flees disagreement rather than just working things out with others, and even more.  Much, much later, things will come to a head when, after Marcus arranges a meeting with the Dean after discovering that Olivia has mysteriously left the college and his wanting to find out why, he is outraged by Caudwell’s manner along with the Dean’s s not so subtle questioning of whether or not Marcus previously raped and impregnated Olivia.  Marcus’s open defiance to conformity, and the personal choices he makes because of it, will ultimately provide the answers as to why he was now a soldier in Korea.   

“Indignation” is a terrific picture thanks to Schamus who also wrote the screenplay as well as being the producer too.  He slowly lets the scenes build between the various individuals by letting the dialogue carry the action.  Yet the scenes do not feel stagey but are instead, engrossing thanks to fine restrained cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt.  The slow burning confrontations between Caudwell and Marcus (who more than holds his own against the Caudwell) are worth the price of admission.  Yet, the scenes between Marcus and Olivia are also both awkwardly touching, and ultimately, sad.  Letts, Leman, and Gadon shine in their roles, and this is one little picture, that did receive critical acclaim and even some box office success.  It still should have received a whole lot more.               

Subjects such as alcohol and drug addiction, or physical and sexual abuse have been found to be popular, and at times, controversial storylines for films.  Some good ones were “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962), “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989), and “The Woodsman” (2004) for example.  However, two little films about these subjects which deserved more acclaim along with the actress who starred in both of them were “Smashed” (2012) and “All About Nina” (2018) both starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead.  In “Smashed” Winstead plays Kate, an elementary school teacher who loves her job and also loves her husband, Charlie (Aaron Paul).  Unfortunately, they both also love alcohol, way too much.  They are alcoholics, and Kate’s addiction, like for so many addicts, is causing her life to spin out of control.  Fortunately, she decides to start getting clean and sober.  Unfortunately, Charlie does not!  Now her effort to attain sobriety is at risk.  “Smashed” was a true independently produced little 81-minute movie.  It only had a budget of $500,000 financed by independent investors and filmed in only 19 days.  As an addiction movie it was not, other than the fact that the main character was a young adult trying to get sober, anything original.  “Flight,” a big budget movie about addiction starring Denzel Washington released that same year got far more recognition than this movie.  The only thing is that “Smashed” is a far better picture due to the fine acting by Aaron Paul and an incredible standout performance by Winstead.  Her character of Kate is very natural and believable.  It’s an ordinary story about an ordinary person who is scared, awkward, funny, embarrassed, hesitantly brave, and, in a matter-of-fact way, slowly persevering whenever she has a setback.  It’s a very realistic and honest portrayal, and one where she should have been nominated for an Academy Award (but she wasn’t).  Unfortunately, her performance, while critically praised, didn’t help the film at the box office either.  It didn’t even make back its original production cost.

For the dark comedy drama, “All About Nina”, Winstead had an even more difficult role.  Here she starred as Nina Geld, an “in your face” standup comic whose raw unfiltered performances have given her a cult status following in cheap comedy clubs.  However, her performances act as a buffer in hiding hidden traumas from her past while also making her personal life a disaster, especially with regards to developing and maintaining stable relationships.  Escaping from an abusive relationship in New York City by heading to LA, she might have a change in her fortunes by (1) having an audition for a producer (Beau Bridges) to include her in his one-hour comedy special, and (2) possibly starting a new relationship with an actual “too good to be true” stable guy named Rafe (Common). That is, unless her self-destructive side doesn’t sabotage everything first.  In “Nina,” Winstead’s standup comedy scenes are hysterical combining explosive raunchiness with insightful humor.  Both on stage and off she combines laughter and sorrow together to make her portrayal unpredictable and original.  Late in the film with her life possibly becoming irreparably untethered, she does a serious confessional about her past to her comedy club audience that is emotionally and heartbreakingly, spellbinding.  Unfortunately, this little movie was neither promoted nor distributed very well despite praise, once again, for Winstead’s performance, and as a result, its box office returns were abysmal.  However, despite the scattershot directing debut by Eva Vives, an unconvincing performance by Common, and a weak and possibly rushed film ending, “All About Nina” could easily have been renamed, “All About Mary Elizabeth Winstead” because she just completely takes over the entire movie all by herself.  If you can find it, see it!

Lastly, in closing, since I just reviewed a little dark comedy film, I’ll highlight one other little comedy film.  However, for this one, it won’t be so dark this time.  That movie is the coming-of-age comedy drama, “The Edge of Seventeen” (2016).  Now I will admit that this one isn’t quite like the other “little” films that I previously mentioned.  First, it had a much larger budget ($9 million).  Second, it also did very well at the box office ($19.4 million).  However, it did have a couple of factors that could put it into the “little” film category.  One, it was Kelly Fremon Craig’s directing debut (and who also wrote the screenplay), and two, it had lower tier stars like Hailee Steinfeld and Woody Harrelson in the two main roles.  Steinfeld stars as Nadine, a seventeen-year-old high school junior who, as the film begins, walks into the empty classroom of her teacher Mr. Bruner (Harrelson) and tells him that she is going to kill herself and that she wants him to listen to her.  Thus begins her tale which goes all the way back to when she was age seven becoming best friends with her current girlfriend Krista all the way up to when her father died of a heart attack when she was age thirteen, and onward up to the present day and her continually butting heads with her mother and her popular older brother Darian.  Feeling alienated and totally frustrated after having a falling out with Krista and emotionally acting out with everyone, lucky (???) Mr. Bruner is her natural choice to hear her continual venting (AKA whining!). 

Usually, coming of age stories, whether big budget or small, are pretty stupid and inane.  Too often, these types of movies have bad acting, bad screenplays, bad storylines, and/or uninteresting characters with, when all else fails, copping out by just throwing in a dump truck load of either gross out humor or some teenage nudity/sex (“Porky’s” anyone!) to keep the viewer interested.  “Seventeen,” refreshingly, does none of that.  The characters are well developed and the storyline, while not original, still holds your interest.  Craig’s direction strikes a nice balance mixing dramatic elements in with the comedy.  And the screenplay is terrific.  It is laugh out loud funny while capturing the general quirkiness of all of the characters even if they are not always, complimentary.  Best of all are the performances of Harrelson and Steinfeld.  Harrelson is droll and deadpan funny as Bruner, and you never know if he is either disinterested or just feigning annoyance with Nadine.  Steinfeld, outstanding in the lead role, is great with her various exasperating outbursts, at times, so outrageous that you can see her face change halfway through one of them almost as if she is just starting to realize that what she just said, did, or is about to do is plain ridiculous and really embarrassing.  Both of them should have been Academy Award nominated (they weren’t).  However, whether you want to classify “The Edge of Seventeen” as either a “little film” or not, you should at least classify it as a great film comedy!

Well, this closes yet another Blog Post.  I hope that you will check out some of the little movies that I just mentioned here.  Happy or sad!  Mundane or interesting!  Little films, like their much larger counterparts, can provide something for everyone.

All you have to do is look for it!

See you next month!

N.L.P.   

Judah Ben-Hur:  Almost at the moment He died, I heard him say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Esther:  Even then.

Judah Ben-Hur:  Even then.  And I felt His voice take the sword out of my hand.

[Charlton Heston to Haya Harareet, “Ben-Hur” (1959)]

Well, everyone, once again it’s time for my yearly holiday blog post.  This particular one is something that is always germane for the holidays.  Now just what could that one ever possibly be Dear Reader?  Making holiday fruit cakes for fun and profit?  No, that one would probably fit in better under the category of Horror rather than Holiday.  No, this time we will have a holiday blog post specifically relating to religious movies.  Now that will not necessarily pertain to just movies or Network TV/cable/streaming stuff specifically for Christmas, Chanukah, etc.  It will pertain, mostly, to religious films connected to stories from the Bible.  Hence, I hope that you will not be offended.  However, if you might be, well, as Bette Davis in “All About Eve” once said, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

All of the way up into the nineteen forties, Hollywood movies about religion focused on uplifting stories of faith.  They were heavily and conservatively Catholic inspired, and quite popular with the general public at that time in America.  For example, you had two films made by Director Leo McCarey which were “Going My Way” (1944) and “The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) both starring Bing Crosby as father O’Malley.  If you like straight uplifting Catholic dogma for the faithfully devout, then these two movies are the mainline drug for you.  They were both big hits, and “Way” even won best picture that year along with both McCarey and Crosby also winning Oscars for Best Director and Actor.  Two other popular ones made then were “The Song of Bernadette” (1943) and “The Keys of the Kingdom” (1944).  “Song…” was a fact-based biographical drama of Bernadette Soubirous (Oscar winner Jennifer Jones), a simple girl in Lourdes who experienced seeing eighteen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1858 and who would later be made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.  This was actually a very fine film with excellent all around acting by everyone involved and anchored by an amazing performance by Jennifer Jones.  It also was helped by strong direction from the always underrated director Henry King (“Twelve O’Clock High”) along with fine Oscar winning cinematography by Arthur C. Miller, and an Oscar winning film score by Alfred Newman.

Moving right along with the solemn uplifting Catholic religious movie express train crushing anything in its path is “The Keys of the Kingdom” with Gregory Peck in an Oscar nominated star-making role as Father Francis Chisholm.  When the film begins, Chisholm is now an old man whose life is shown in flashback all the way through to the present day as a long serving Catholic priest in China who piously helps everyone whether they be Chinese, Protestant, Atheistic, or fans of “Honey Boo-Boo” reruns.  Our Father Chisholm is so noble and self-sacrificing that he probably never even took a bath because he was too busy perfecting his ability to walk on the top of the water in his own bathtub.  Now before you say, “What the H…” what I’m getting at here is that despite Peck’s earnest performance, half way through this film I was hoping that good old Father Chisholm would at least do something a little more daring like maybe have a nip or two of the Holy Communion wine, crack a smile more than once a decade, or do something really scandalous like dance a Scottish Jig (Sacrilege!) to stop this movie from being so Frigging Dull!  Hollywood religious films during this time were not going to have anything really controversial in them to offend either the Catholic Church or any other organized religious group back then for fear of the mega backlash from said religious organizations, the general public, and the Federal Government which would ultimately affect a Studio’s financial bottom line. 

During this time and moving on up to the present day, another type of religious film was popular and, hence, relatively safe for Hollywood to make.  These were stories taken directly from the Bible, and which I will now further discuss.  Maybe the one director who was regarded as the greatest practitioner of such film making was Director Cecil B. DeMille.  DeMille was one of the founding fathers of the motion picture industry in America making hugely successful films in both the silent and the sound era.  He was regarded as one of the most commercially successful producer/directors in film history.  DeMille was adept at making all types of epic pictures from Westerns to musicals to comedies to social dramas.  However, like I previously said, his religious films are what most people remember him for even though, out of the seventy films that he directed, only five were religious with three [“King of Kings” (1927), “Samson and Delilah” (1949), and two versions of “The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956)] specifically related to the Bible.  All of them were popular commercial hits.  Now it would be nice if I could also say that these movies were artistically well made, with great acting, emotionally powerful dramatic scenes, and written with great depth and meaning.  Well… Are you kidding! 

Other than the epic size of these films along with dozens of other films in other genres that he made throughout his career; they are some of the worst pieces of overblown trite garbage in motion picture history.  If you could take P.T. Barnum, porn movie kingpin Russ Meyer, and the excessively visual but artistically empty film maker Ken Russell, stuff the three of them into a blender, and hit the “ON” button, you’d have C.B. DeMille.  In his films, Roman orgies and female bathtub scenes were standard practice.  Bad acting with ponderous screenplays that could have been better written by kindergarten graduates or the inhabitants of a zoo’s Ape House were laugh-out-loud standard practice.  The promoting of stereotypes with bad actor casting was also widespread standard practice too.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, somewhere in all of these films you always had to hear good old C.B. himself doing some sort of over indulgent, pseudo, self-important God-like narration as if we were all too stupid to comprehend his films otherwise.  If C.B. was around today, he probably would have cast Clint Eastwood and Madonna as the leads for all of his films (although Clint, as Moses, probably would have just pulled out that old 44 Magnum, and blasted the Red Sea apart all by himself).  However, DeMille didn’t care and the public didn’t care either.  His huckster Hollywood biblical films made a mint, and to this day on every Passover and Easter we will all be eternally tormented by “Chucky” Heston belting out the words, “Let My People Go!”  If only we could, Chucky!  If only we could!

After the nineteen forties, more of these biblical extravaganzas were made by other directors and actually, two were made in the nineteen fifties that were really very good.  Maybe this was because the principal characters in these films were based, not on specific characters found in the bible, but from popular novels where Hollywood could craft characters with true dramatic depth and complexity.  Also, because these characters either did not represent a member of the clergy or a famous historical religious personality like Jennifer Jones’ Bernadette Soubirous, it was less likely that Hollywood censors or the general public would cause an uproar.  The first film that I want to praise is “The Robe” (1953) from the bestselling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas.  Fun Fact: “The Robe” was No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list for most of 1943, but when the film version of “The Robe” came out in 1953 the novel shot right back up to No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list for that year too.  The movie starred Richard Burton as Marcellus Gallio, a military tribune of Rome who, while assigned to Jerusalem in Palestine, is ordered by Pontius Pilate to take charge of the Roman soldiers assigned to crucify Jesus.  He does so and even wins’ Jesus’s “robe” in a dice game.  However, once he puts the robe on to cover himself from the rain, he undergoes intense pain and throws it off.  He later loses the robe, but has such intense and continuing nightmares of the crucifixion that he fears that he will lose his mind.  Ultimately, he will return to Palestine where he will find the robe again and become a disciple of Jesus. 

The Robe” was a big budget release by 20^th Century Fox with an all-star cast (Heck, they even had actor Cameron Mitchell as the unseen voice of Jesus).  It was well directed by journeyman Director Henry Koster, and it was the first film by 20^th Century Fox to be released in their CinemaScope widescreen process which made its visuals even more arresting on movie theater screens.  The acting by most of the principals, especially Burton, was fine (he was Oscar nominated for his breakout acting performance), and the screenplay (with an assist by blacklisted writer Albert Maltz) was excellent too.  About the only real negatives that I have had for this film over the years were:  (1) Richard Burton’s goofy shake, rattle, and roll looks of pain whenever he puts on or grabs that robe, (2) actor Jay Robinson’s over-rated ham fisted performance as Caligula where it looked like he could chew up the entire CinemaScope movie screen all by himself, and (3) the film score by the usually dependable Alfred Newman which, at times, was so overtly ponderous, and solemn that even the most fervent believer would want to pitch a brick through a stained glass window if they listened to it long enough.

The other fifties’ biblical film that was exceptional, and on my Top Ten greatest movie list of all time, was “Ben-Hur” (1959) originally based on the immensely popular novel written in 1880 by Lew Wallace.  Many films (both silent and sound versions) of “Ben-Hur” have been made (including an absolutely abysmal version made as recently as 2016), but this one is the best of them all.  Directed by the great William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the lead (and redeeming himself acting-wise after “The Ten Commandments”), it was the most expensive movie ever made at that time, the second highest grossing film in history (behind a little thing called “Gone with the Wind”), and also winning eleven Oscars (which was also a record at that time too).  Wyler, Heston, cinematographer Robert L. Surtees, film composer Miklos Rozsa, and the Picture itself all won well deserved Oscars.  A story of revenge and redemption, Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince and merchant is falsely condemned by his former Roman friend, Messala (Stephen Boyd) to a living death on a slave galley after an accident almost kills the new governor of Judea.  Chained and being led away to the galley, his life is later saved by Jesus giving him some water after he collapses from thirst (There’s the religious tie-in folks!), and then…Hey, wait a minute!  This is an over three-and-a-half-hour movie!  You think I’m going to spend the next three Blog Posts explaining the entire movie to ya!  No way!  All I will further say about Ben-Hur is that: (1) for the most expensive movie ever made back then, the sea battle between the Roman fleet of sea galleys vs. the fleet of Macedonian pirates where they used toy ships for distance shots of the battle looked about as realistic as something that I did as a 3-year-old in a bathtub with my little toy boats, and (2) after all of these years, the non-CGI chariot race in “Ben-Hur” is still one of the most exciting and greatest action sequences in motion picture history.  William Wyler once said (and maybe also subtly sticking the stiletto in) that, regarding “Ben-Hur”, he wished to outdo Cecil B. DeMille and make a thinking man’s Biblical epic.  Well, boy, did he ever!  C.B. DeMille, who died early in 1959, must have rolled over in his grave when Wyler said that one!

Unfortunately, maybe due to the colossal success of “Ben-Hur,” Hollywood went Biblically Batty in wanting to make the next epic “big hit” religious picture.  You had such winners as:

• “The Big Fisherman” (1959) with Howard (“They Call the Wind MARIAH”) Keel as the Apostle Peter (and probably wishing he could have sang his dialogue rather than speak it).
• “Francis of Assisi” (1961) with Bradford Dillman as Francis (the Saint, not the talking mule although it would have been more entertaining if it was the mule).
• A remake of “King of Kings” (1961) with Jeffrey Hunter looking like a Southern California surfer dude and giving a sock puppet quality performance as Jesus. 

All of these were either box office duds or just plain, mediocre at best.  However, did it stop there?  Of course not!  Hence, you also had:

• “Barabbas” (1961) with Anthony Quinn doing a biblical warm-up before doing “Zorba the Greek.” Also with Jack Palance as Torvald, the gladiator (AKA “The Bad Guy”) who flicks out his tongue like a snake so often that he probably used it to wipe his own forehead.
• “Sodom and Gomorrah” (1962) with maybe the only thing funnier than watching Stewart Granger trying to play religiously moral Lot might have been watching John Wayne trying to play Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror.”  However, health-wise, I’ll bet a lot of people went on a salt free diet after seeing this one.
• “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965) with (Sad) Max von Sydow who originally missed out on playing Jesus in “King of Kings” finally getting his big chance to play Jesus, aaannd he blew it! Oh well, at least he was better than Jeffrey Hunter’s Jesus (Of course, Danny DeVito would have been better playing Jesus than Jeffrey Hunter too!).
• “The Bible: In the Beginning…” (1966) even with Director John Huston doing both the voice of “GOD”, and playing a Doctor Dolittle version of Noah, he couldn’t keep either the Ark or the film from sinking from its own pretentiousness.  However, at least you did get the chance to see Sodom and Gomorrah celestially Nuked once again, so there was some solace in that.  

Most of these religious films also suffered from the “Ben Hur” hangover effect of being overly long.  While “Ben Hur” didn’t originate looonnng biblical films (good old C.B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith could both take some substantial credit for that), more biblical/religious themed films than ever before were released that way after “Ben-Hur.”  For example, “Fisherman” was 180 minutes long, “King of Kings” was 168 minutes long, “The Bible…” was 174 minutes long, and, the worst, “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was a mind numbing 260 minutes long (for that one, the movie theaters must have been handing out compression socks and mason jars to their patrons in case they had to take a leak).  Currently, if you want to personally test your own urinary tract endurance, try sitting through any of Director Zack (The Hack) Snyder’s long pseudo-artistic crap film efforts (“Watchmen”, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”, “Army of the Dead”, etc.).  However, if you choose to not do so, you still might want to shower the movie screen with your own unique personal review of Mr. Snyder’s directing efforts!

These biblical films also succumbed to another hangover effect resulting from the prior Best Picture Winner of 1956, “Around the World in 80 Days”: Cameo/Stunt Casting!  Unlike miscasting (Edward G. Robinson in “The Ten Commandments” for example), “Around the World…”  had all of these big-name stars/celebrities in bit roles (over 40 of them in all).  Although none of these biblical films were that bad, you still had a number of them (Ray Milland as the voice of Satan in “Kings”, Shelly Winters as a “woman that is healed” in “The Greatest Story…”, etc.) that didn’t enrich, but rather distracted from the storyline instead.  After a while, Hollywood finally stopped making so many of these biblical religious epics and moved on to making dramas about the clerical hierarchy itself like Tom Tryon in “The Cardinal” (1963) and Anthony Quinn in “The Shoes of the Fisherman” (1968) (AKA Zorba the Pope).  With regards to other films about Jesus, even though the previous film versions left much to be desired, one was finally made that was really excellent, and that one wasn’t even a movie but a British-Italian television six-hour mini-series.  That version was “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977), directed by Franco Zeffirelli (“Romeo and Juliet”) and with a screenplay by Zeffirelli and Anthony Burgress (“A Clockwork Orange”).  Although originally, either the producers or Zeffirelli himself considered doing some stunt miscasting for the role of Jesus like possibly considering either Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman (Benjamin on the Cross???), they dropped that dumb idea and picked British actor Robert Powell instead.  It was a brilliant casting decision, and Powell gave a mesmerizing performance. 

Zeffirelli conceived of portraying Jesus as more of an ordinary man who was gentle, fragile, and simple in his ways.  However, he also highlighted Powell’s blue eyes by having a thin line of dark blue eyeliner on his upper eye lids, and a thin line of white eyeliner on his lower eye lids which resulted in the piercing blue of his eyes generating a more penetrating stare.  He also had Powell and the other actors playing a younger version of Jesus hardly blink their eyes at all.  Zeffirelli brilliantly used this as a way to create a subconscious visual and surreal mystique about the character as well as having him stand out differently from any other person.  As a part of his portrayal, Powell also went on a near starvation diet for twelve days prior to shooting the crucifixion scenes in order to appear physically emaciated from Jesus’ prior imprisonment and torture.  When Powell, who looked very similar to pictures of Jesus, portrayed scenes of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, it was so powerful the both cast and crew complemented him afterwards on his performance.   However, he wasn’t the only one who was outstanding.  Zeffirelli’s direction, and the performances he elicited from his all-star group of actors like Laurence Olivier, Anne Bancroft, Anthony Quinn (no Zorba redone this time), James Farentino (Emmy nominated), and others were also highly praised.  Unfortunately, this series received few Emmy nominations, and neither Powell for his performance nor Zeffirelli for his direction were even nominated.  Worse, before its initial broadcast, and not even seeing the series’ first, some Protestant fundamentalists led by the religious fanatics’ Bob Jones III (Asshole No. 1), and Dr. Bill Bright (Asshole No. 2) denounced the mini-series as “blasphemy” because they felt Zeffirelli’s conception of Jesus would deny Jesus’ “divine nature”. Hmm?  I wonder if they wanted him instead to be flying through the air, shooting heat rays from his baby blue eyes, and wear a shirt with a big red J… Oh, that’s right!  That one has sort have been done before!  Never mind!  Anyhoo… once the producers added some additional dialogue mentioning Jesus’ future resurrection, and a simulated resurrection scene, the criticism finally started to die down!

To conclude, Hollywood has continued up to this present day to make new film versions/series of stories from the Bible both small and Epic.  Some of the more recent ones have been “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), “The Passion of Christ” (2004), and “Exodus:  Gods and Kings” (2014).  I have not seen any of these more recent interpretations so I do not have an opinion on them one way or the other.  All I’d like to add Dear Reader is that, whatever you choose to believe, and whatever you choose to watch, I sincerely hope that you enjoy it, whether it is by yourself or with your family, friends, and loved ones.  Stay safe, be well, and love one another!

And as for myself, I think I’ll just sing…

For life is quite absurd
And death’s the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin – give the audience a grin
Enjoy it, it’s your last chance anyhow…

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!

And then, I think I’ll just watch “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” again!  

Happy Holidays Everyone!

NLP

Howard Silk: [frustrated by his other] “You know, they say it’s so great to meet yourself.  Bullshit!  It’s kind’a like losing your virginity, ya know?  Wait your whole life for it, and then 20 seconds later you’re disappointed.”

[J.K. Simmons to…J.K. Simmons “Counterpart” (2017-19)]

Sometimes I find it surprising that a specific unique genre is constantly utilized for adaption for movies and Network TV/cable/streaming shows.  For example, for crime and mysteries you can have the femme fatale character (too often blond) who entraps someone into their plans which can result in one’s self-destruction or at least put them at great risk to themselves or to others.  Another one, usually found in romantic comedies, can be for an ex-couple (married or otherwise) reconnecting again maybe when one or both are about to get married to someone else, or when they have to interact in some other way (vacation, work, health, some setback, etc.) and find that they are really either still attracted to each other, or they develop a new attraction to each other after the passage of time.  There are literally dozens and dozens of different unique themes that are repeated over and over again (different clothes, same person/type of person wearing them) because they are consistently popular with the general public.  Actors and actresses also repeat these specific types of roles too because (1) they are good at playing them, (2) they are stereotyped into playing these types of roles either by the various studios/networks/media companies, (3) they are too lazy to try anything else, or (4) it’s the only Damn thing that they can play really well.  An example of #4 is John Travolta who is always terrific at playing dumb, stupid, punks but for anything else…Ahhhh, Never Mind!  This month’s Blog Post will discuss one specific type of genre which is not usually discussed at all for either movies or Network TV/cable/streaming/shows.  What is it you ask?  Why, it’s a genre involving Twins or more specifically, Identical Twins!

There are a number of famous works of literature that feature identical twins.  For example, there is Mark Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper.”  There is also Alexander Pope’s “The Prisoner of Zenda.”  Lastly, there are two by Alexandre Dumas which are “The Corsican Brothers” and “The Man in the Iron Mask.”  Not surprisingly, all of these can also be considered swashbuckling adventure novels/novellas (which is another unique type of genre too).  Every one of these examples have been adapted, while not exactly sticking to the exact storyline, many times for film, theater, and TV.  I have not seen all of the many adaptions (Shocking!  I know!), but I have seen enough of them to have some opinions on which ones are worthwhile.  Twain’s “The Prince and the Pauper”, which is the historical fiction story of two identical twins born separately in 1547 England (Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Tom Canty, a pauper) who, after switching places have to assume their new roles for real, had some really fine versions of the tale made.  One was a three-part Network TV adaption made in 1962 on “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” TV show with actor Sean Scully playing both twins and Guy Williams (who originally played the swashbuckling Zorro for Disney) playing the novel’s equally swashbuckling character of Miles Hendon, a former soldier who protects and helps the young Edward.  While it was made strictly with children in mind, it was still very good, and Williams made a dashing Hendon (before he started acting like a department store manikin as the father on the stupid “Lost in Space” TV show a few years later).

Another one (and maybe the best of them all) was the Warner Brothers Studio version made in 1937 starring actual identical twins Billy and Bobby Mauch in the twin roles and, with maybe the greatest swashbuckling actor of them all, Errol Flynn as Hendon.  Flynn, who was also an underrated actor, is terrific in the role, and the film had additional top-notch assistance provided by Director William Keighley (who would also co-direct Flynn one year later in the even better “Adventures of Robin Hood”), cinematographers’ George Barnes and Sol Polito, film score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and fine acting support by Alan Hale and the always great Claude Rains as the two principal villains.  If you have never seen this version, try to find and watch it sometime (preferably with children).  It’s a classic!

Speaking of another classic involving identical twins, as I’ve previously mentioned, there’s “The Prisoner of Zenda” with enough different versions made to rival “Pauper”.  There was even a whole bunch of comic versions of this story like one film starring Peter Sellers in 1979, a subplot in the 1965 comedy film, “The Great Race” (with Jack Lemon playing the twins), and even, of all things, comedian Don Adams for an episode of his espionage sitcom “Get Smart” playing the dual role.   I even saw a pretty good serious adaption in a 1961 TV version starring a young Christopher Plummer in the title role.  It was stagey with cheap sets, and had more characterization and drama than any action.  Of course, for a little kid like me what did I care.  It was “The Prisoner of Zenda” for Christ Sakes Already!  However, the all-time best one of them all was the 1937 version starring Ronald Colman in the title role and directed by John Cromwell.

For this big budget version, they pulled out all of the stops with great assistance provided by cinematographer James Wong Howe, an Oscar nominated film score by Alfred Newman, and a great supporting cast consisting of Madeleine Carroll, Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, David Niven, and a scene stealing Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as his nemesis, Rupert of Hentzau.  This tale of English gentleman Major Rassendyll (Colman) in 1897 Eastern Europe having to take the place of his double, Rudolph V at his country’s coronation as the new king, and then having to continue the charade when the real king is kidnapped is a slam bang romantic adventure classic highlighted by Colman’s fine portrayal.  Besides having one of the most beautiful speaking voices ever heard by an actor (and which has been endlessly mimicked ever since, even on an animated “George of the Jungle” cartoon show by a talking ape), Colman could actually act.  He was a great romantic lead.  His scenes with Carroll as Flavia, the real king’s intended bride, have real emotional pathos as you see him slowly falling in love with her while desperately trying to (1) maintain his facade, and (2) not to succumb to the temptation to let the real king die so he can have Flavia and the crown for himself.  He is equally good playing the real king, a wastrel who also changes while being held captive showing real courage and defiance even in the face of possible death.  About the only real issue I have ever had with this film is with the action scenes, especially the final sword fight between Colman and Fairbanks, Jr. which is a huge letdown.  Cromwell couldn’t direct any action scene worth a Damn, and they even tried to re-shoot some them with another director to little avail even though they had one of the best in the business in cinematographer Wong Howe.  For action scenes alone, check out another version of “Zenda” made in 1952 with Stewart Granger in the double role.  It’s not as good but, wow, what a sword fight. However, even with Cromwell’s limits as a director, this version of “Zenda” is still the best of them all thanks to Colman’s arresting performance.

Many actors have had the chance to play identical twins in films over the years. However, there has only been one actor who has ever played identical twins in two different films.  Do you have any idea who that might possibly be Dear Reader?  Would you believe…

Bette Davis!

Yep, she did two of them.  Now it would be nice to say that these two were classics too and, in a way, they actually are.  They are both Classic…ally Badddddd!  The first one was “A Stolen Life” (1946) which has the old cliche storyline of her playing the meek/wholesome sister, Kate (who is duller than a butter knife) vs, mean, manipulative/trollop sister, Pat who steals Kate’s new boyfriend Bill (Glenn Ford) and marries him.  Sometime later Kate and Pat go sailing, a sudden storm occurs, Pat drowns, and Kate now assumes Pat ‘s identity so she can win back Bill who now hates the real Pat because she had continually cheated on him (Oh, the horror!).  Will Kate tell him the truth?  Will Bill forgive her?  Will you admit you just wasted two hours of time on this piece of Shit?  Even though Bette Davis has been dead for over 30 years, the remains in her casket could still out act any actress ever trying to play a character like Pat.  However, for her performance as Kate (who probably should have been wearing a “Kick Me!” sticker on her back), that’s another story.  It almost looked like Davis was internally seething throughout the entire movie whenever she was trying to play such a boring and weak character like Kate.  Despite “Life” utilizing ground breaking special effects cinematography to enable Davis to play two different roles in the same scene, “A Stolen Life” was just a TV soap opera before they actually had TV soap operas.  Unfortunately, for her second effort playing identical twins for the 1964 film, “Dead Ringer,” it was even worse!

“Ringer” was an adaption of a fine 1946 Mexican film noir called “La Otra” (AKA “Dead Pigeon”) starring actress Dolores del Rio as identical twins which had been sitting on a Warner Brothers Studio shelf all the way back in 1946.  By the time the nineteen sixties rolled around, whoever thought that it was a good idea to make a movie from a script written back in the forties must have been smoking some serious peyote.  Worse, now Bette Davis must have been smoking some of that same peyote too, if she thought that she could successfully star in this one.  In the early to mid-sixties, a number of older former big nineteen thirties/forties female movie stars (Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia de Havilland, Davis, etc.) were making schlock films like this one because there were so few roles for older women (which is still too prevalent even today).  The archaic storyline of two long-time estranged identical twins: (1) rich, evil Margaret who stole her now recently deceased rich husband away from (2) dowdy, downbeat, and financially struggling Edith who ultimately plans to murder and assume Margaret’s identity was lamer than “Chester” from the TV western, Gunsmoke!”  Worse, Davis both in her appearance and in her acting style looked ridiculous because, even though she was 56 years old at the time, she looked more like someone 76 years old trying to act like someone 42 years old (which was del Rio’s age when she was in “La Otra”).  Even worse, Edith’s cop boyfriend was played by mash potato faced Karl Malden who must have been playing older roles since he was two years old. However, even here he still looked younger than Davis.  In keeping with the AARP acting lineup, they must have then emptied the entire Hollywood actor retirement home since the cast included fellow oldsters George Macready, George Chandler, Cyril Delevanti, and Estelle Winwood.  They even had old, former big-time star Paul Henreid directing this mess.  By the time I finished watching “Ringer” I felt like I needed to mainline some Geritol quick or else I’d fall asleep faster than an overstuffed hibernating bear.  Now, of course if any of you ever want to see a good version of “Ringer,” just skip this one and see del Rio in the Mexican “La Otra” instead.    

Network TV shows then also had episodes involving different types of identical twins, and often it was for genres such as S/F, horror, and even espionage.  For examples you had the following:

• “Star Trek”: “What Little Girls are Made Of” [Season One, Episode 7 (10/20/66)].  While on a distant barren planet Captain Kirk is captured and a duplicate android of himself is made to assume control of his ship.  This excellent episode was written by famed S/F and horror writer Robert Bloch (“Psycho”), and it definitely fits into the S/F and horror realm (and Ted Cassidy of “The Adams Family” plays one Hell of a scary android.)
• “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”: “The Double Affair” [Season One, Episode 8 (11/17/64)].  Napoleon Solo (never has there ever been a stupider name for a spy) is captured, and his plastic surgery duplicate takes his place to obtain some secret stuff.  Stupid S/F and espionage plot, but it has a good motorcycle chase and fist-fight at the end.  Also, any episode with a young Senta Berger in it can never be too bad!
•  “The Outer Limits”: “The Duplicate Man” [Season Two, Episode 13 (12/19/64)].  A scientist (Ron Randell) in the future has to create an illegal clone of himself programed to hunt and kill a dangerous, and also illegal, escaped telepathic creature that he had secretly smuggled in to study before it goes on a rampage.  Terrific noir-like adaption of a fine story by famed S/F and horror writer Clifford D. Simak (even though the creature looked more like a shabby Chewbacca with a bird beak!)
• “The Twilight Zone”: “In his Image” [Season Four, Episode 1 (01/03/63)].  Alan (George Grizzard), with fractured memories of his past and, at times, murderous urges, tries to find out who he really is while taking his recent fiancee to visit his home town.  One of the all-time best episodes of “The Twilight Zone” (an expanded hour version) with a tour de force performance by Grizzard (and no, I’m not going to tell you anything else, Dear Reader).  See it!

Network TV, cable, and other streaming services also had series which had storylines involving identical twins.  One of the earliest ones was the ABC sitcom, “The Patty Duke Show” (1963-66) with Duke having an identical paternal cousin (also played by Duke with a Scottish accent) due to the fact that their fathers (both played by veteran character actor William Schallert) were also, identical twins.  Sometimes, a visiting third paternal cousin (also Duke) would show up with a Southern accent to cause even more comic(?) mayhem.  Without going into the sheer biological improbability/impossibility of three paternal cousins being exactly identical, this show was typical of the type of crap sitcoms that polluted the television airwaves back then.  Basically, it was just ABC jumping on the Patty Duke bandwagon to pimp her for some cheap ratings since Duke just won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “The Miracle Worker” the year before.  Besides Duke demonstrating that she couldn’t do either a Scottish or a Southern accent very well, it mercifully, was cancelled after three years.

A far better series involving identical twins (actually, a whole container ship load of them) was for the espionage/science fiction Starz Network cable series, “Counterpart” (2017-19). “Counterpart” takes place in Berlin and involves an entryway opening between two parallel Earths with everyone having an identical twin (even with the same name), except their opposite is on the alternative Earth.  The entryway was created after an experiment in 1987 East Germany, but when a major pandemic occurred on the alternative Earth in 1996 resulting in the death of hundreds of millions there, and the virus causing the pandemic was thought to have originated on our Earth, a Cold War situation has existed ever since.  Now the Top-Secret entryway is a major checkpoint portal where both sides strictly enforce who is allowed through each way with associated spies, assassins, officials, and other various individuals passing through constantly.  Even though this might be the only series where we have more identical twins than you know what to do with, this series is focused on the main character of Howard Silk played by the terrific Oscar-winning actor, J.K. Simmons.  On our Earth he is a meek, unassuming, and minor married office worker.  However, on the alternative Earth he is a ruthless, intelligent, and highly dangerous operative estranged from his wife, and needing to reveal his presence to and enlist the aid of his twin on our Earth to stop a rogue faction on his alternative Earth from executing a plan to get revenge on our Earth for causing the pandemic on their world. 

Although “Counterpart” is science fiction, it is also espionage, and it is terrific in conveying this dark shadowy world where lies, subterfuge, double-dealing, and betrayal are as common as in any espionage novel.  The entire cast is excellent, the various storylines are complex and believable, and the series is both suspenseful and constantly surprising.  However, maybe the best thing in “Counterpart” is J.K. Simmons in the pivotal role of Howard Silk.  He is absolutely amazing!  He literally becomes two different and distinct personalities before your very eyes, especially when both twins are together.  Each one is unique, and they butt heads constantly, but it is subtle at times rather than overt.  What’s even more remarkable is when each twin is on the other’s world and has to pretend they are the other one.  You see the slight changes he makes to each character non-verbally, from facial expressions to even body movement to pretend they are the other one, but at the same time, still maintaining some of the same characteristics of their original character.  While watching Simmons performance, all I kept thinking was, “How in the frigging Hell is he doing that?”  This series is a standout in its own right, and it’s a shame that it only lasted two years.  However, for “Counterpart,” J.K. Simmons’ portrayal of Howard Silk is someone (or is it two?) who you’ll always remember.

Well, that’s about it for this post.  There are other fine performances by actors portraying identical twins whether it’s Kevin Kline in the political comedy, “Dave” (1993) or Lee Marvin in his Oscar winning performance for the Western comedy “Cat Ballou” (1965).  We’ll always have more of them.  Let’s just hope that they’ll be more “good” ones!

NLP

Dr. Alex Brulov: “Women make the best psychoanalysts until they fall in love.  After that they make the best patients.” [Michael Chekhov to Ingrid Bergman in “Spellbound” (1945)]

The psychiatric profession has been a fruitful area for film directors and Network TV to explore for a long time.  It really came into prominence for motion pictures starting in the nineteen forties and later for television in the nineteen sixties.  This was due to a lot of motion picture directors, executives, and actors seeing psychoanalysts themselves, so they were influenced into making films about the subject.  It also might have been due to the horrors of WW II which brought the increased use of psychoanalysis into the forefront of the public conscience.  This leads up to this month’s post where I will discuss the different ways, both good and bad, that the field of psychiatry and psychiatrists have been portrayed in films and on TV all the way up to the present day.

A number of film noirs in the nineteen forties had storylines where mentally unstable individuals committed murder.  This allowed the field of psychiatry to be incorporated into the story to try and explain these individuals’ motivations/actions.  Such films like “The High Wall” (1947) had war veteran Robert Taylor accused of murdering his wife treated by psychiatrist Audrey Totter to help him try to remember what actually happened, or “The Dark Mirror” (1946) with psychiatrist Lew Ayres trying to figure out which identical twin (both played by Olivia de Havilland) was a psychopathic killer, or “Spellbound” (1945) with psychiatrist Ingrid Bergman who, while trying to help amnesiac psychiatrist Gregory Peck, discovers that:  (1) she is in love with him, (2) he is not really a psychiatrist, (3) he might be an insane killer, and (4) he didn’t pay for their dinner (maybe she should have just tried Match.com instead!).  All of these films along with others made back then just had to always have the various shrinks falling in love with their patients.  It got so bad that maybe Faberge should have marketed a scent labeled “Psychopathic Aphrodisia” for the public.  You just always had to love those Nut Jobs!

At times you didn’t even need to have a psychiatrist explaining the motivations for a psychopath in these films.  Instead, you now had your lead detective(s) spouting off some psycho-babble mumbo-jumbo about what were the psychological motivations for the maniac they were trying to apprehend.  It was almost like they had a “Psychopath for Dummies” identification book in the lower drawer of their precinct desk right along with their cheap half pint of bourbon, a pack of Camels, and a comic book or two.  Some of these movies back then were “White Heat” (1949), “Follow Me Quietly” (1949), and “Phantom Lady” (1944).  Although “Follow Me Quietly” and “White Heat” (with James Cagney playing the greatest psycho with a Mom complex until Norman Bates came along) were both excellent, “Phantom Lady” was almost laugh out loud awful.  Despite the fine direction by Robert Siodmak (“The Killers”), and incredible cinematography by Woody Bredell (also, “The Killers”), this stupid redundant tale of a loyal secretary (Ella Raines) secretly in love with her unhappily married boss (pretty boy non-actor Allan Curtis), and her efforts to later prove him innocent of his wife’s murder, it was adapted from a story by the always overrated trite noir writer, Cornell Woolrich.  However, maybe the worst thing in the whole movie was the ridiculous performance by Franchot Tone as (Spoiler Alert) the real nut job killer.  Every time he wants to secretly reveal his craziness to the viewing audience, he puts the flat part of his hand over his mouth while spreading his fingers wide open so his Goo-Goo-Googly eyes can bulge out between his fingers.  That might have possibly been the worst ever attempt by someone to look nutty until it was finally topped 47 years later by Anthony Hopkins’ overrated semi-drooling/ham performance as Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs.” Even with Raines (while undercover at a late-night club) gyrating and erotically dancing while simulating in closeup that she was having an orgasm (how did that one get by the censors), you couldn’t keep “Phantom Lady” from inanity!

Too often for movies and Network TV you had psychiatrists portrayed as all-knowing/wise problem solvers of the mind who resolved their patients’ mental problems just in time for the ending credits to appear!  This also wouldn’t change until years later.  For this stereotype you had both good and bad ones with such good ones as:

1. “The Three Faces of Eve” (1957): True story with good shrink Lee J. Cobb helping to cure tour de force Oscar winner Joanne Woodward’s three-person multiple personality disorder.
2. “Sybil” (1976): NBC Network film, which was also a true story, with Joanne Woodward now as the good shrink helping to cure mesmerizing Emmy winner Sally Field of her fourteen-person multiple personality disorder.
3. “The Snake Pit” (1948): Good shrink Leo Genn helping to cure Oscar nominated Olivia de Havilland’s mental illness while also throwing light on how institutionalized patients were mistreated in mental institutions.  This movie is dated but it is still powerful!
4. “The Mark” (1961): Good shrink Rod Steiger helping former convicted child molester Stuart Whitman (Oscar nominated) to deal with his psychological demons upon his release.
5. “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” (1977): Semi-biographical story about good shrink Bibi Andersson helping Kathleen Quinlan (should have been Oscar nominated) in dealing with her mental illness.  Despite numerous questionable film changes for the original character’s story, this is still a good film with fine performances.

Of course, you also had some real stinkers with an all-knowing/wise(ass) psychiatrist such as:

1. “The Dark Past” (1949): Know it all shrink Lee J. Cobb while being held captive by murderous escapee Bill Holden and his gang takes less than an evening to cure of him of his psychological nightmares, his paralyzed hand, his murderous tendencies, and a bad case of dandruff making him into a new man (Of course there is still that little matter of him killing the prison warden earlier!).  No problem!  Cobb will take care of that one too before breakfast!
2. “Lizzie” (1957): Vaudeville “Three Faces of Eve” rip-off with Eleanor Parker overacting worse than a high school play reject trying to portray someone with a multiple personality disorder.  Also, with Richard (Palladin) Boone in a sleepwalking performance as her shrink!
3. “Dressed to Kill” (1980): Maybe the worst of them all.  Another Alfred Hitchcock rip-off film by Hack Director Brian De Palma.  This time it’s “Psycho” with cheating Angie Dickinson in the Janet Leigh role, and Michael Caine as her therapist who’s trying to analyze(!!!) her while also  getting in touch with his feminine side (You know, like Lizzie Borden!).

Later on, studios started to make film biographies of famous therapists, and surprisingly, a couple of them were actually quite good.  Two that I want to mention are “Freud” (1962), and “A Dangerous Method” (2011).  “Freud” was a straight biography of the therapist as a young doctor leading up to the development of his analytical concepts regarding dream interpretation, the subconscious, child sexuality, and the Oedipus complex.  It had top notch talent behind it with Montgomery Cliff starring as Freud, Susannah York playing a composite of a number of his patients, a number of other fine English character actors, an original screenplay by playwright Jean Paul-Sartre, fine black and white cinematography by Douglas Slocombe, an Oscar nominated film score by Jerry Goldsmith, and direction by John Huston.  However, despite all of that, it was a very troubled production.  Sartre’s screenplay was too long (it would have resulted in an eight-hour movie), and Mega-Jerk Sartre had his name removed from the film rather than having his “masterpiece” screenplay altered in any way.  Susannah York was also a royal pain in the ass to deal with too, so much so, that she was finally told to quit being a problem “or else”.  And then there was Montgomery Cliff.

Marilyn Monroe once said of Cliff, “He’s the only person I know who is in even worse shape than I am.” (And folks, that means something if someone as screwed up as Marilyn Monroe says something like that!).  This was Cliff’s next to last film, and besides his dealing with being gay, he was beset with numerous health problems accentuated by his long-time drug and alcohol dependency.  It also didn’t help that Huston, who had a long track record of having sadistic tendencies during prior film productions, was continually abusive to Cliff during filming.  The constant production delays due to both Cliff and Huston’s actions later resulted in Universal-International Studios trying to sue Cliff for the production delay costs.  However, despite all of that, the film was a hit, and not only did the Studio lose the suit, they also had to pay Cliff a serious chunk of money.  My own feelings on the matter are that Cliff, even early in his career, and Huston could both be arrogant royal Assholes, but together they still managed to make a fine film no matter what you think of Freud’s views and concepts.  Huston brilliantly directs “Freud” almost like a film noir mystery of the mind with Cliff as a detective trying to solve why York and others portraying disturbed patients either say or act the way they do. Incorporated into this film are incredible dark black and white dream sequences which are the most riveting ones seen on film since Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” was made seventeen years before.  Cliff’s performance is subtle, and both thoughtful and introspective.  For all of his troubles, he was still able to deliver a capable performance with strong assistance provided by John Huston.

“A Dangerous Method” is another film drama about Sigmund Freud.  However, it takes an entirely different approach to psychiatry.  Here it is instead a drama about three eminent therapists: (1) Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), (2) his patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) who suffers from hysteria and ultimately becomes both his mistress and an eminent therapist in her own right, and (3) Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and his interactions with both individuals.  The film was directed by David Cronenberg with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton who adapted it from his own play.  At first, I couldn’t see how Cronenberg could ever possibly be able to direct such a high brow film.  He was known for a film genre known as “body horror” which too often were films containing scenes of extreme gore, violence, nudity, and sex (“A History of Violence”, “Eastern Promises”, etc.).  However, in this case, I was wrong.  He elicits fine performances from the three main characters (except whenever Knightley overacts while going into a hysterical fit).  He also expertly incorporated the scenery, costumes, sets, and art direction into the film to beautifully convey the time that these individuals lived.  Cronenberg crafts a movie that really forces you to think about the various opposing views of Jung and Freud along with what originally drew them both together first as friends and colleagues, but later tore them apart as their professional differences, especially pertaining to psychoanalytical concepts, proved unreconcilable.  However, maybe the best part of the movie is his utilization of Hampton’s screenplay.  It is complex, and he does not dumb down the differing concepts found in psychoanalysis for the viewer.  That is what ultimately makes “A Dangerous Method” a great film.

As time went by, another change in film portrayals of the psychiatric profession was in their focus shifting from not just a therapist’s treatment of patients, but also how a therapist was personally affected for better or worse.  Unfortunately, too often this resulted in soap opera storylines that almost came across like Peyton Place on a couch.  For movies you had such winners as “The Cobweb” (1955) with Richard Widmark, Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall, Gloria Graham, Paul Stewart, Lillian Gish, and others consisting of shrinks and staff at a mental institution more busy drinking, cheating, back stabbing, etc. than actually treating patients.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the grating nail across a blackboard film score by bad film composer Leonard Rosenman was enough to drive anyone batty.  Next up you had the campy and overwrought “The Caretakers” (1963) with Robert Stack (right after he finished playing Elliott Ness) now reduced to cleaning up a psych ward rather than the crime infested Chicago of the nineteen thirties.  However, here he had a nemesis that was even worse than Al Capone…JOAN CRAWFORD!  As the head shrink, he believes in group therapy.  As the head nurse, she believes in strait-jackets, and padded cells (and also maybe the rack and branding irons which was probably how you maintained discipline in your own home!  Right, Joannie!).  By the end of this mess, I was hoping that Ness…I mean, Stack would have just whipped out that old Thompson submachine gun and blasted all of the Pepsi-Cola advertisements that Crawford had deliberately placed in this movie (she was on their board of directors at the time) along with Crawford, to smithereens. Lastly, you had “Captain Newman, M.D.” (1963) with Gregory Peck as the aforementioned “Newman” who is head of the neuro-psychiatric ward at the Colfax Army Air Field military hospital in the Arizona desert treating numerous airmen suffering from various emotional and psychological combat trauma in 1944.  This one, at least, mixed in some comedy with the hard drama (sort of like a much lesser “M*A*S*H”) with Tony Curtis and Larry Storch providing the comedy, and Angie Dickinson (way before she was fricasseed in “Dressed to Kill”) as his head nurse/love interest.  This one wasn’t so bad as much as just being pedestrian/soap opera bland.  It wasn’t till much, much later that something far better came along and that one wasn’t even a film.

Network TV tried a few times to specifically produce a few shows about the psychiatric profession.  However, all of these like “The Eleventh Hour” (1962-64), “Breaking Point” (1963), and “The Hothouse” (1988) were rating failures.  Basically, Network TV too often just incorporated stories relating to the psychiatric profession into their regular TV medical shows every once in a while, from Dr. Kildare/Ben Casey’s time all the way up to “ER” and “House”.  Maybe this was because the public preferred watching their doctors operating on people rather than analyzing them.  Who knows!  Anyway, finally one cable series came along which focused on a therapist not only psychoanalyzing patients, but also focusing on his all too fallible personal life.  That series was “In Treatment” (2008-10) starring Gabriel Byrne as Dr. Paul Weston.

“In Treatment” was an unusual series in that it was originally based on the Israeli series “Be Tipul” (“In Therapy”) which won a ton of awards there.  An American adaption was made using some of the same storylines and even some of the music from the original Israeli series.  HBO Europe reached a deal with other countries mostly in Europe along with a few others in the world to develop their own versions which have continued long after the American version ended in 2010, although a new version has returned this year with Uzo Aduba (“Orange Is the New Black”) as the new therapist.  The format of the original American series consisted of five, thirty-minute episodes shown weekly one per night where Weston, in a separate office at his home, conducted individual sessions with his patient(s).  However, that was only for the first four episodes out of the five.  The fifth episode every week consisted of Weston going to the home of his former friend and colleague Gina (Dianne Wiest) who psychoanalyzed him.

As Weston, Byrne is terrific as is Wiest along with all of the rest of the cast.  He is neither all knowing nor even wise at times.  He makes mistakes, sometimes “big” ones.  He gets too involved in his patients’ lives which causes a strain on his marriage with his wife Kate (Michelle Forbes), his children, and his own sense of self.  He can also be an arrogant and temperamental ass as well as acting curt, rude, and judgmental with everyone around him including Gina.  However, he is also a keenly insightful and skilled therapist, an extremely feeling individual, and too often most critical of himself.  In other words, he is a believably real “human being.”  “In Treatment” does have some major flaws.  Some of the angry, nasty, and inappropriate outbursts towards him during some of his sessions I cannot believe any analyst would possibly tolerate for long including his own nasty outbursts at times with Gina.  Also, two patient storylines of (1) Laura (Melissa George) being erotically attracted to him and he to her, and (2) Mia (Hope Davis), an old ex-girlfriend who he accepted as a patient even though it was obvious from the start that she still had major unresolved issues with him after all of these years misdirect the series into ludicrous soap opera territory at times.  However, even with these flaws, “In Treatment” is the only series that shows how therapy sessions actually somewhat work, and how hard it is for even gradual progress to be made if any progress is to be made at all.  For a series about people who mostly sit around talking to each other, “In Treatment” is both suspenseful and illuminating!

Well, that sums up another Blog Post.  I hope that it was interesting and informative for you!  However, if it was not, or if I provoked any anger or annoyance, well…

“MAYBE YOU HAVE SOME UNEXPLORED ISSUES THAT WE MIGHT NEED TO FURTHER DISCUSS…”

NLP