When I was in high school back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the teen heartthrob pictures taped inside the lockers of my classmates at dear old St. Catharine Academy in the Bronx included John Travolta, Parker Stevenson, Shaun Cassidy, and other cute lads one might find on the cover of Tiger Beat and the like. But I was always drawn to the so-called offbeat types, like Dustin Hoffman and writer/director Woody Allen, as well as Danny Kaye and Bob Hope in their 1940s movie comedies on WPIX or WOR. If I recall correctly, my sister Cara graduated from Lehman High School in 1976 at a ceremony at Manhattan’s own Carnegie Hall. Afterward, our family went to The Russian Tea Room for a celebratory lunch, all of us dressed to the proverbial nines. I was stunned to see Woody Allen and Dick Cavett standing together in front of us, chatting and waiting for their table! My combination of shyness and politeness kept me from running up to them and blathering like a fangirl. Frankly, I was perfectly content to stand on line quietly with my family, peeking at Allen out of the corner of my eye while munching on jelly-filled mints. However, Mom noticed Allen, too, and although she was never one to go up to celebrities and gush, she knew I was a big Woody Allen fan. As I believe I’ve mentioned in previous TotED posts, my dear beloved Mom was kind and as lovely as the fashion model she used to be—and about as shy as a speeding Mack truck, bless her! (She claimed to have been shy as a youngster, but she obviously got over it by the time I was born!) So I was both embarrassed and excited when Mom strode up to Allen and said in her enthusiastic way, “Mr. Allen, my daughter just loves your movies, and I knew she’d be thrilled if you’d say hello to her.” Allen had a deer-in-the-headlights look (can’t blame him, really; for all he knew, we could’ve been stalkers, or at least pests), while Cavett smirked and said, “Oh, here we go.” Mom gave Cavett a sort of elegant version of The Hairy Eyeball as she said to him, “I wasn’t talking to you, sir.” Then she turned to Allen and said, “It wasn’t so long ago that you were a movie fan like my daughter. How would you feel if someone you admired was rude and dismissive to you?” Looking both chastened and somewhat bewildered, Allen shook my hand, and I thanked him, and then our respective parties went our separate ways in the restaurant for lunch. Ah, if only Mom had lived to see our much more upbeat encounter in 2010 with our favorite Oscar-winner, Adrien Brody! (For those who didn't read this over at our friend and fellow blogger Clara Fercovic's Via Margutta 51 blog, here's the link:http://via-51.blogspot.com/2011/09/if-i-had-to-keep-4-guest-dorian.html)
Woody Allen schlepped here. (So did our family!)
That brings us to this week’s blog post, Manhattan Murder Mystery(MMM—an appropriate acronym for such a delicious movie). For my money, it’s sheer delight, one of Allen’s funniest, most unabashedly entertaining movies. Even the locations are a joy to behold; in addition to the Russian Tea Room, there’s the Cafe Des Artistes, The Chelsea Hotel, and The '21' Club, accompanied by the great music of, among others, Dave Brubeck, Benny Goodman performing Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing),” and the opening number, the great Bobby Short’s rendition of Cole Porter’s “I Happen to Like New York.” The Oscar-winning team from Annie Hall—including Allen, frequent co-star/former inamorata Diane Keaton, and co-screenwriter Marshall Brickman—reunited for this film after Allen’s relationship with previous co-star/significant-other Mia Farrow ended (a long story in itself). That old magic and the marvelous quirky romantic chemistry Allen and Keaton had together in Annie Hall, Sleeper, Love and Death, and so many others was still there onscreen in full force, as if the two of them had never parted. As much as I liked Mia Farrow in Allen’s movies during the period when they were co-stars as well as lovers (they made 12 movies together, if I recall correctly), I feel Diane Keaton was the perfect choice to play Carol Lipton. While Allen certainly brought out Farrow’s funny side in their comedies, especially in Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose, it always seems to me that when Farrow plays funny everyday people—as opposed to over-the-top funny characters like the ones in Broadway Danny Rose or Radio Days—she often has a kind of a mewling, whiny quality that I feel just wouldn’t have worked for the brainy, bubbly Carol.
Is Ted hoping to make out on this stakeout?
When we meet Carol and Larry Lipton (Allen), their son Nick (Zach Braff, before TV’s Scrubs made him a star) is off to college. Carol is feeling a touch of Empty Nest Syndrome; how will she fill her days? Start a business, like maybe a restaurant, with their longtime friend Ted (Alan Alda at his most charmingly witty and rakish, kinda doing for MMM what David Wayne did for Adam’s Rib)? Ooh, wait, I know just the thing for those midlife blahs—solving a murder! You see, Carol and Larry have a chance encounter in their apartment building’s elevator with an elderly but bright and quick-witted couple, Paul and Lillian House, leading to a friendly chat-turned-impromptu-visit to the House hacienda. Carol and Lillian (Lynn Cohen, best known to Team Bartilucci as Golda Meir in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 thriller Munich) discuss dieting, health/fitness issues, and the Houses’ upcoming wedding anniversary. Paul, played by Broadway producer and character actor Jerry Adler (TV’s The Sopranos, Mad About You, Rescue Me, and the dark 1997 comedy film Six Ways to Sunday, with Adrien Brody in one of his earliest roles) cheerfully shows Larry his stamp collection while Larry quietly yearns to get home in time to watch the Bob Hope movie he’s been looking forward to on TV. (I wonder which one it was? If I’d written the MMM script, it would have been My Favorite Brunette! How charmingly low-tech life was before the invention of the DVR! But I digress….). Not long afterward, Carol and Larry come home from the opera to find ambulances, police, and a covered body; apparently Mrs. House died of a coronary! As time passes, Carol can’t help noticing that their “next-door widower” seems to be taking his beloved wife’s unexpected death rather well…perhaps too well? Carol’s curiosity and yearning for adventure in her own life kicks in, and she embraces her inner Nora Charles. But Carol had better watch her back; this is the kind of thing that gets Alfred Hitchcock’s characters in trouble, only (even) funnier!
At Cafe des Artistes, Marcia knows when to hold ‘em, but does Larry know when to fold ‘em?
At first, Larry is both too skeptical and too busy with his publishing job at HarperCollins to humor Carol’s amateur detective leanings. Where’s Jason Schwartzman as Bored to Death’s version of Jonathan Ames when you need him? At least Ted has both the time and, as a playwright, the imagination to help Carol solve The Case of the Merry Widower, especially since Ted is a divorcé, and not exactly shy about letting his understandable crush on Carol show. What I enjoyed most about MMM‘s amateur sleuthing was that for the most part, Carol, Ted, and eventually Larry pretty much go about searching for clues the way your average Joe or Jo would, with fairly accessible, approachable, down-to-earth DIY tactics. For instance, Carol and Ted stake out the street where Mr. House has been keeping company with a lovely young model, Helen Moss (Melanie Norris). During the stakeout, whenever a woman leaves Helen’s apartment building, Ted yells out, “Helen!” to see if she turns around. Dialing *69 comes in handy, too, when Carol surreptitiously borrows the super’s keys to investigate:
“I’ll pretend I’m a pair of comfortable old shoes until the coast is clear.”
The potential for illicit romance lurks not only with Carol and Ted’s stakeouts, but also with one of Larry’s authors, the alluring, accurately-named Marcia Fox (Anjelica Huston, another one of Team Bartilucci’s favorite Oscar-winners), who’s playfully making eyes at Larry. To Larry’s credit, he truly loves Carol and doesn’t want to lose her. To Marcia’s credit, she tells Larry point blank that if he wants to keep Carol, he’d better make more of an effort.(Fun Fact: As luck would have it, I happened to go to HarperCollins for a job interview the day Allen and Huston were filming that scene in Larry’s office! Although I didn’t get the Editorial Assistant gig I’d hoped for, it was nevertheless a thrill just to get fleeting glimpses of them. But I digress….)Larry finally joins Carol on a stakeout that leads to a rundown Gramercy Park hotel, a corpse, and a chase leading to New Jersey. It’s a zany, funny ride as the Liptons find themselves in all manner of suspenseful situations with just the kind of witty goofiness you’d expect from writers Allen and Brickman and that ingratiating cast. (I cracked up when Larry “takes care of” hotel employee Aida Turturro with one dollar!) See what happens when middle-aged people have too much time on their hands?
Will our heroes push up daisies in The Garden State?
As Nick and Nora, er, Larry and Carol dash around scenic parts of Manhattan and New Jersey trying to find clues without getting themselves murdered, the cowardly if practical Larry keeps kvetching and Carol keeps grumbling about how “Ted would know what to do…” It’s a delightful tip of the hat to Allen and Keaton’s 1973 classic Sleeper and its President’s Nose/“Emo would know what to do” gag! Just thinking about the comparison had me laughing even more than I already was! More affectionate salutes to classic movies abound, including the Vertigo ad on a crosstown bus, where Carol is sure she’s just seen the allegedly dead Mrs. House looking very much alive at the moment; and the big finale with our beleaguered couple and villain caught in a funny yet suspenseful send-up of Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai in Mr. House’s revival theater. Larry gasps, “I’ll never say life doesn’t imitate art again!”
As Larry Lipton, Allen gives himself most of the best lines as he quips and dithers his way through their adventures, and why not? After all, who can say Woody Allen’s dialogue better than the man himself? Play to your strengths, I always say! Some of his best MMM lines:
On the emotions Wagnerian opera brings out in Larry: “…I always feel like invading Poland.”
On how Carol’s been dwelling on sinister things since she decided to play amateur detective : “You should wear happy glasses.”
Stunned to discover that a key player in the mystery plot is dead, and after they’d brought her a gift and everything: “She’s dead? Try giving her the present!”
Begging Carol to get rid of her fixation on the case and her jealousy of Marcia: “There’s nothing wrong with you that couldn’t be cured with Prozac and a polo mallet.”
Looking for Maxwell House, Carol finds Mrs. House!
MMM boasts stellar work from the rest of the supporting cast, too, including smart, sexy Huston, who turns out to be a pretty slick dilettante detective in her own right, bringing out the green-eyed monster in our heroine. When Carol feels like Marcia Fox is stealing both her thunder and Ted’s crush on her, you half-expect her to shout in exasperation, “It’s always Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Marge Redmond of Hitchcock’s Family Plot and TV’s The Flying Nun plays Mr. House’s right-hand woman Mrs. Dalton. Redmond gets an especially nice scene in the big movie theater climax; the catch in her voice as she quotes Everett Sloane in The Lady from Shanghai always touches my heart. I also liked Joy Behar and Ron Rifkin’s scenes as two of the couple’s friends, who help out with their recording studio, resulting in a shakedown ruse that goes hilariously awry. By the way, is it me, or does Paul House’s pretty young model girlfriend Helen Moss (Melanie Norris) dress rather like Annie Hall?(Tangent Alert…For the most part, I’ve liked Alan Alda best on the TV version of M*A*S*H and in other people’s movies, rather than the films he wrote and directed himself. Whenever Alda has donned the director’s hat, it’s always seemed to me that he gets preachy, self-conscious, and sensitive in a trying-too-hard way. Heck, I even liked him better in the otherwise disappointing thriller Whispers in the Dark until writer/director Christopher Crowe suddenly turned Alda’s character into an overwrought, frothing-at-the-mouth psycho. No wonder Alda won the Razzie that year!…End Tangent Alert.)
That’s not the kind of helping hand our heroes need!
Is that pride skeptical Larry is swallowing there in the elevator?
Eye contact is crucial when you’re catching killers!
Uh-oh! This wasn't the kind of movie-date night our heroes had in mind!
Life imitates art with the Mrs. Dalton gang!
But overall, MMMis Woody Allen Light—Light-Hearted, that is! Don’t take my word for it, watch this charming last scene (or don’t, if you’d rather be surprised):
“…And the punchline is, ‘Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?’”
Special photo treat from our pal and fab fellow blogger Caftan Woman! Her sister Maureen got to meet Woody Allen in person!
Read all about it in C.W.'s true-life anecdote in TotED's Comments Section!
“…And the punchline is, ‘Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?’”
George Peppard has his hands full; good thing he apparently has six of them!
I haven’t seen House of Cards(HoC) in years, mostly because I haven’t been able to find it on DVD or any other format that I can afford that would work with my good old American DVD player. I can’t even find a trailer for it, although I've found plenty for the 1993 drama by the same name starring Kathleen Turner as a mother trying to help her apparently autistic child. However, thanks to the many times I saw HoC on TBS and other local channels in my youth, I remember it like I saw it yesterday!
Dig that far-out groovy Peter Max-style poster, man!
During the 1960s, Universal Pictures made a mini-genre out of the Lighthearted International Technicolor Romantic Suspense Thriller, with such rollicking adventures as Charade; Arabesque; Mirage; Blindfold, and A Man Could Get Killed. Before making HoC, director John Guillerman had directed leading man George Peppard in the 1966 World War 1 thriller The Blue Max and the 1968 private eye drama P.J. (Note to Vinnie, all George Peppard fans, and all fans of Disney’s animated school comedy series Recess: Yes, P.J.’s last name is in fact Detweiler! But I digress....) I’ve always felt that HoC was one of the loopiest of the lot from its opening sequence: tracking shots of Paris from a corpse's-eye-view! There it is, floating in the River Seine practically unnoticed by the populace. Having grown up in a big city (NYC, for those who came in late), I know city dwellers tend to be blasé about things no matter what city they live in, but come on!
The many faces of Barnaby Shaw & pals
Peppard plays Reno Davis, a sort of hip 1960s Hemingway type who drifts from one country to another, either writing his novel or getting into boxing matches. Indeed, when we first meet Reno, he’s getting the hell beaten out of him in a Paris boxing ring. One night, someone shoots at him—and discovers the triggerman is a frightened child, Paul de Villemont (played memorably by the haunted-eyed Barnaby Shaw). Reno drags the little sharpshooter home to his surprised widowed mom, Anne, played by the luminous Inger Stevens with a vulnerable sophistication reminiscent of Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest. To quote New York Times movie critic A.H. Weiler, “Miss Stevens is...pretty enough to turn any adventurer's head,” and Reno and Anne almost lose their own heads in more ways than one. You see, it turns out the glamorous but troubled Anne is the American widow of a French general; she and Paul are virtual prisoners of her sinister in-laws and their cohorts, including British actor Keith Michell (TV’s The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry VIII and His Six Wives, among others) as the secretive psychiatrist Dr. Morillon. Anne and Paul take a shine to Reno, and the feeling is more or less mutual. No surprise, really; at the very least, Reno’s iconoclastic loner routine is surely a welcome change of pace from the Daphne DuMaurier types slinking around the family chateau. Anne hires Reno as Paul’s tutor/companion. The DuMaurier types don’t exactly welcome Reno with open arms, which may also explain why men in Anne’s orbit don’t seem to live too long whenever they try to help her and Paul, including that poor slob we saw floating lifeless in the Seine earlier, one Sidney Scott (who doesn’t even get a credit in the film for his trouble, poor guy).
It takes more than guns and Orson Welles as El Exigente to make Reno lose his cool!
Soon we viewers are catapulted from DuMaurier Land to Robert Ludlum Lite as the chateau’s occupants turn out to be not just any old Eurotrash stuffed shirts, but actually part of a Fascist group led by the powerful Leschenhaut, played by Orson Welles at his haughty and sinister best. Seems that Papa wanted his little man to be brought up as a Hitler youth! Before you can say “Alfred Hitchcock sent me,” Paul is kidnapped, Reno is framed for murder, and he and Anne (who’s not overjoyed about bodyguard Reno dropping the ball with her child; as a mother myself, I’m on Anne’s side!) are chasing and being chased all over Paris and Rome trying to save Paul and the world from these dastardly so-and-so’s. House of Cards was adapted from renowned mystery author Stanley Ellin’s 1967 novel, and set in opulent locations including the Colosseum and all manner of manors all over France. True, some of the plot twists in James P. Bonner’s screenplay (actually a nom de plume for the screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., who brought us Hud, Hombre, The Cowboys, and Norma Rae, among others) stretch credibility to the breaking point (especially Dr. Morillon’s true identity). Also, some of the more attention-grabbing stuff is never explained, although I’m willing to blame some of that on TBS editing the version I saw on TV (besides, sponsors have to squeeze in commercials; they have to eat, too, I guess). Despite these quibbles, HoC still manages to be entertaining. When I first saw iton TV in my younger days, I found Francis Lai’s score to be a little syrupy for my taste, but it’s grown on me over the years. George Peppard, in his prime, was well-cast as a cynical rogue, with his all-American good looks, hard-boiled flippancy, and breezy charm. He cracked me up whenever he improvised outlandish excuses to authority figures, like in the Fountain of Trevi scene and this sexy sequence with leading lady Inger Stevens:
"Reno, thank goodness you're here! This is the stuffiest family reunion ever!"
Inger Stevens had been a favorite of mine since I first saw her on the TV series version of The Farmer’s Daughter. I always sensed something unconventional about her. Indeed, Stevens did have difficulties in life, and left us far too soon, but once you saw her, you couldn’t forget her. I thought Stevens was an excellent match for Peppard both physically and personality-wise, with screen presence aplenty. It wasn’t just Stevens’ striking blonde beauty and honeyed alto voice that made her stand out; she also had a warmth that belied her Nordic Ice Maiden looks, and a knack for being at once worldly and wholesome. This quality is reflected in Stevens’ fab Edith Head costumes, too.
This wildly complex thriller probably shouldn’t be watched by anyone with a migraine or a short attention span—but if you're in the mood for a well-cast conspiracy yarn that doesn't take itself too seriously, keep an eye out for HoC in your TV movie listings. Better yet, bug the folks at Universal and urge them to at least put out a House of Cards print-on-demand DVD!
A smorgasbord of George Peppard scenes (with and without Inger Stevens) for your viewing pleasure!
In any language, House of Cards is good fun if you can find it!
My husband Vinnie and I have our Team Bartilucci caps on for this week’s Halloween post about the original British Lion 1973 version of The Wicker Man(TWM)!If you’re expecting a high body count, slam-bang action, buckets of blood and gore, and fast-paced editing of the sort lampooned so brilliantly in Edgar Wright’s 2007 police procedural spoof Hot Fuzz (which also happens to co-starTWM’s protagonist Edward Woodward), you may feel impatient at first. But if you chill out and pay attention to this subtle masterpiece of suspense and the pitfalls of religious intolerance, you just might be glad you did. Granted, we personally have yet to actually meet anyone who wasn’t drawn into the story and stunned by the denouement, but I thought I’d give you a heads-up just in case!
Sgt. Howie investigates, but will these salty sea dogs bite?
Everyone's friendly on Summerisle!
After a puckish opening title screen thanking the people of Summerisle “for this privileged insight into their religious practices and for their generous co-operation in the making of this film,” the devilishly clever screenplay by Sir Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, Frenzy, Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun) tells the story of Police Sergeant Neil Howie (Woodward) investigating an anonymous tip begging him to find Rowan Morrison (Geraldine Cowper), a 12-year-old girl living—or is she?—on Summerisle, an island off Scotland that’s renowned for its apples and other produce. A staunch Catholic and by-the-book police officer, Sgt. Howie’s expectations are confounded from square one. When he arrives via seaplane for an overnight stay, expecting to be served fresh Summerisle apples and veggies, he’s surprised to be handed a plateful of turquoise-hued beans from a can. Indeed, all the islanders seem to be eating nothing but canned produce as Summerisle’s apple crates lie empty. But that’s nothing compared to Howie’s outrage as his investigation reveals that the islanders, led by Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee, in a performance brimming with urbane mischief and menace) are all free-thinking, free-singing, free-loving pagans. And don’t get Sgt. Howie started about the phallic symbols all over Summerisle, including the well-tended shrubbery! With all its bawdy and beautifully-performed songs and dance numbers, TWM would make a great musical (albeit kinda kinky and twisted).
Rowan Morrison: flower of young girlhood
The culture clash between Sgt. Howie and the Summerislers lends TWM as much wry humor as mystery and suspense. Things only get weirder, creepier, and often, more titillating as everyone he meets stymies his investigation into Rowan’s disappearance, which probably isn’t doing our courageous copper’s blood pressure any good. Everybody from Rowan’s family to her teacher, Miss Rose (Diane Cilento, whose many roles had included her Oscar-nominated performance in the 1964 costume comedy Tom Jones, as well as being author Shaffer’s wife of 16 years), to Lord Summerisle himself initially deny that Rowan even exists, then claim she’s dead, then…well, with the strange excuses and even stranger rituals on Summerisle, the determined Sgt. Howie has his work cut out for him as the film reaches its shocking, jaw-dropping climax.
On the good ship Lollipop, it’s a strange trip to the pagan shop…
Sgt. Howie has his own cross to bear
Nix muskrat love; sexy snails rule!
Is there no end to the carnal subtext?
Frog in your throat? Try Summerisle’s natural cure!
Over the years, fans and critics alike have tried to stuff TWM into the horror and fantasy categories, perhaps because the cast includes Lee and fellow genre movie veterans Ingrid Pitt and Britt Ekland. However, anyone anticipating traditional monsters, copious bloodletting, or F/X-oriented frights will be disappointed; that’s not what TWM is about. For all its suspense, we never see anything supernatural happen; even the weirdest things can be explained by real-world circumstances. There’s a bit of low-key gore, but by and large, the monstrousness is of a purely human variety, the evil and intolerance that lives and lurks quietly like a sleeper cell in people’s hearts, minds, and belief systems. To me, that’s scarier than any supernatural creature, because it hits closer to home. TWM creates an air of unworldly unease, of events beyond what we can see and hear, keeping us guessing to the end. Between the uniformly fine acting, Robin Hardy’s skillful direction, and Shaffer’s slyly sinister script, TWM is a great example of how you don’t need endless gore and sadism to chill an audience to the bone, just suspense crafted from atmospheric direction, a stellar cast, and foreboding arising from the enigmatic circumstances, character development, and a location whose beauty hides its treachery. Shaffer’s script plays fair, trusting the audience to keep up with its skillful combination of wit, mystery, and dread. The characterizations are fascinating throughout, particularly with Sgt. Howie and Lord Summerisle. Paul Giovanni’s haunting music, with traditional Celtic songs woven throughout, is practically another character in the film, by turns erotic and beautiful, bawdy and joyful, fitting the film’s tone perfectly. No wonder Eli Roth used “Willow’s Song” in a key scene in his 2005 horror film Hostel! As Willow, Ekland looks luscious and does a decent Scots accent, though her singing is dubbed by Annie Ross, and some shots of her backside were done by a body double, as Ekland was reportedly pregnant and entering her second trimester. But why quibble when there’s such a powerful erotic charge to watching Willow drive poor Sgt. Howie nearly mad by essentially making love to the wall separating her room from his? Say what you will about pagans, they know how to party!
Willow drives Sgt. Howie up the wall in her own bewitching way.
Will lovely town librarian Ingrid Pitt make the cut?
Meet the beetle!
Our Anchor Bay DVD’s extras include the restored version and a terrific commentary track on Disc 2, with moderator Mark Kermode interviewing Hardy, Lee, and Woodward, exchanging entertaining stories about the tricks involved in making a low-budget, tight-scheduled movie while studio British Lion was on the slippery slope to bankruptcy. Disc 1’s excellent documentary featurette, The Wicker Man Enigma, includes interviews with Woodward, Lee, Pitt, Hardy, Shaffer, and Roger Corman, as well as the jaw-dropping story of the idiots who thought they were putting the TWM negative in a vault but instead put it in a waste pile that was buried under England’s M3 highway! The 2-disc DVD edition of the 1973 British cult classic The Wicker Man includes both the 88-minute cut that played in theaters, and the restored 99-minute version.
“The children do love their divinity lessons.” I’ll say! They’re all fired up!
It's May Day! Cut some capers, people! Everybody conga!
Who can sleep with all that singing? Darn hippies!
The Wicker Man Spoiler!
Vinnie and I have often said that in the end, what really killed poor, stalwart, well-meaning Sgt. Howie was the stick up his butt. Even before he realized he’d been tricked, that he and not young Rowan Morrison was the intended blood sacrifice that the Summerislers hoped would appease their ancient gods and jump-start their crops, Sgt. Howie showed nothing but hostility and intolerance towards the placid islanders’ religious practices. If he’d only loosened up and let himself be seduced by the bewitching Willow McGregor, he’d have lost his virginity, rendered himself useless as a blood sacrifice, and saved his own life! God and Howie’s fiancée would’ve forgiven him, I’m sure. It’s certainly better than having big, burly men shove you into a highly flammable giant wicker figure and set you and a barnyard’s worth of animals on fire to slowly burn to death, praying all the way.
Yikes! Burning Man this ain’t!
Turning other people on to TWM and watching them react as the plot unfolds is almost as much fun as watching the movie itself. Our daughter Siobhan and I used to visit my dear mom at her home in Florida, and she always encouraged us to bring DVDs we liked so we could watch them together in the evening. When I found out Mom had never seen TWM, I made it a point to bring the DVD set with me to Florida because she was both a suspense fan and a devout Catholic in her own flexible way (long story). One night Mom and I hunkered down to watch it in her bedroom, while Siobhan preferred to watch the animated movies she’d brought in her guest bedroom (just as well; at that time Siobhan was a little young for TWM's mature themes). I correctly predicted that Mom would find TWM as spellbinding as Vinnie and I did. Mom had always been a pretty sophisticated gal, but even she was couldn’t predict how things would turn out. Throughout the film, Mom kept eagerly asking me what was going to happen, and I kept refusing to give away the ending. Sure enough, when the big twist happened, Mom was just as gobsmacked by Sgt. Howie’s fate as I had been— even more so, because she brought it up in conversation almost every day during the rest of our visit! Mom and I had always had great conversations covering all kinds of topics over the years, but our conversations after watching TWM together were especially thoughtful and compelling. We had some fascinating conversations not only about the cleverness of TWM’s plotting, but also about respecting other people’s religions and beliefs and their right to live.
Incidentally, when Mom first saw young Edward Woodward onscreen, she knew she’d seen him in other things, but she couldn’t remember what. I cited his 1980s TV stardom on The Equalizer, figuring that was where she’d have been most likely to have seen Woodward before. Soon, however, Mom remembered where she’d previously seen him: “He was ‘Breaker Morant!’” (You’d think I’d have remembered that, too, since Mom and I saw Breaker Morant together during its 1980 theatrical release. Silly us!) It’s always interesting and fun to discover the roots of other people’s pop culture references.
I’ll admit that as much as I love the film as is, there’s always a part of me that wishes they could have had one last shot set one year later, showing whether Summerisle got their hoped-for bumper crop—or perhaps showing Lord Summerisle himself being dragged into the Wicker Man and set aflame after another disastrous barren year. Yeah, I guess it’s better to keep the audience guessing in the name of suspense, but closure has its merits, too.
Vinnie says:The wife can giggle at her Mom for her open-mouthed reaction to the film, but let's just say the Summerisle Red doesn't fall far from the tree. The Wife watches movies with her whole body -- in addition to the uncontrollable mutterings and intakes of breath during the exciting bits, she'll lean to and fro, urging people to the right corridor, curving her hands about and pointing, hissing, "No, you boob, THAT way, they hid the diamonds there!" So as Sergeant Howie hunched his way through the caves, young Rowan in tow, she said to me, with all the charming innocence of a child in line for Santa, "Oh, I hope that little girl will be okay!"
I looked at her in frank amazement. "You're kidding."
"No. What?"
"Well, yeah, hon, it's called 'The Wicker Man', not 'The Wicker Little Girl'..."
(penny in the air...)
"Oh, my GOD..."
(penny drops)
I damn near fell off the couch laughing.
The Wicker Man is one of those films you want to see twice, before and after you know the ending. Like The Sixth Sense and A Beautiful Mind, the fun is in going back, seeing all the "clues" and finding a whole new level to enjoy. The people of Summerisle play Howie like a Pan-flute, as perfect and elaborate a con as The Sting's Henry Gondorf could ever pull off. And going back and watching the game unfold is literally like watching a new movie. The first time through you're watching Howie like a hawk, now you're watching the actions of the townspeople. There's also the fun of realizing that like any good con movie, there's the chance that it could have all gone pear-shaped at any moment. If Howie had an ounce less moral rectitude, he'd have burst into Willow's room, thrown her down on the bed, and the next scene would have been her, her Dad and Lord Summerisle around a table in the pub the next morning, face in hands, saying "Well, NOW what?"
There's not a duff performance in the film. Woodward shines as a man so devout he'd probably call Mel Gibson a Cafeteria Catholic, and probably spends his free time going through the Sears catalog drawing in more tasteful clothing on the models with a Flair pen. Christopher Lee has rarely had a chance to so visually enjoy a role; from the singing, the cross-dressing and the chance to wrap his lips around dialogue like "Do sit down; shocks are best absorbed with the knees bent", the smile plastered on his face for much of the film is not acting. And let's face it, any opportunity to watch Britt Ekland dry-hump her bedroom is enough entertainment for an evening on its own.
The narrative is carefully precise. Like Titanic, they tell you what's going to happen, then it happens. Howie researches the May Day practices, so when they occur, they make sense to the viewer, and there's less of a sense of having to understand what's happening, and get straight to the Why. You KNOW there's going to be a sacrifice, there's just one bit of information that's withheld. Much like in Sleuth (about which we have previously spoken), where you're CERTAIN it's this kind of story, until one bit of information is revealed, and you realize with whiplash-suddenness that it's the opposite.
Hot Fuzzdoes tip the cap to the quaint and slightly horrifying way that Northern English villages do things, but the Wicker Man analogues are much more prevalent in the brilliant Brit comedy series The League of Gentlemen. Not to be confused with the old caper flick or Alan Moore's "Extraordinary" version, this is the tale of the Northern town of Royston Vasey and its eccentric inhabitants, a group who give the Addams Family nightmares. Husband and Wife (and possibly brother and sister -- it's never confirmed) Edward and Tubbs Tattsyrup run the Local Shop "for Local people", and in direct homage to the film is their catch-phrase, when Tubbs would breathily ask "Did Tubbs do right?" to which Edward would answer "You did it BEAUtifully!"
The ending, as The Wife comments, is maddeningly ambiguous. You keep hoping for a shot of the next year's Harvest Queen, either surrounded by bushels of bounty or yet another barren year. But like all things open for interpretation, the debates over the success of the mad plan can be epic.
Observant individuals may notice an utter paucity of mention of the recent remake of this film, starring the once and future Ghost Rider, Nicolas Cage. For reasons we should not have to relate, this is deliberate. To compare the two would be like comparing a surgeon's scalpel and a nickel-electroplated sledgehammer. Let's just leave it there.
Can’t you just leave a mint on my pillow, like the other quaint inns?
Sorry, Charlie, only The Salmon of Knowledge gets to be in The Wicker Man!
And so ends another Summerisle wienie roast for another year....
To wrap up The Amnesia Trilogy, here’s the amnesia film that started it all, at least for me: Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning thriller Spellbound. I first saw it on WPIX-TV on a Sunday afternoon when I was a youngster in the Bronx. After the literally breezy opening credits, Spellbound sets the stage with a foreword by the film’s medical advisor, Dr. May Romm (more about her shortly):
“Our story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane. The analyst seeks only to induce the patient to talk about his hidden problems, to open the locked doors of his mind. Once the complexes that have been disturbing the patient are uncovered and interpreted, the illness and confusion disappear…..and the devils of unreason are driven from the human soul.”
Got all that? Yeah, it may sound quaint in today’s more sophisticated, complicated world, but somehow I find Dr. Romm’s foreword (which has also been attributed to screenwriter Ben Hecht) endearingly earnest. In fact, Spellbound’s more dated aspects, like its approach to psychotherapy, intrigues me when I think of how these things have changed over time.
The lovely, luminous, gentle-voiced Ingrid Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen, the youngest member of the crackpot, er, crack team of psychoanalysts at Green Manors, a posh psychiatric institution. Constance brims with book smarts, but her people smarts still need fine-tuning. Dr. Fleurot (John Emory), who’s a bit of a scholarly wolf in shrink’s clothing, is always trying to pitch woo at Constance, but she’s just not that into him. He says, “You approach all your problems with an ice pack on your head….I’m trying to convince you that your lack of human and emotional experience is bad for you as a doctor...and fatal for you as a woman.” Constance wryly replies, “I’ve heard that argument from a number of amorous psychiatrists who all wanted to make a better doctor of me.”
Doctor on Call-Me-Anytime!
If you could see Constance’s feet now, you’d see bobby sox on her feet! *swoon!*
Well, I can tell you from family therapy experience that sometimes it takes a few tries with a few different therapists to find one you really click with—and Constance soon discovers love can work that way, too, when Green Manors’ elderly head honcho Dr. Murchison (veteran Hitchcock player Leo G. Carroll) is about to retire, albeit reluctantly. Constance and the staff are sorry to see Dr. Murchison go, even though his imminent replacement, the renowned Dr. Anthony Edwardes, is supposed to be hot stuff. “Hot” is the word for the ruggedly handsome new doc on the block, especially considering Dr. Edwardes is played by young Gregory Peck, who became an Oscar nominee himself that year for The Keys of the Kingdom. (Little did Peck know he’d be playing another amnesiac in peril twenty years later in another New York-set suspense film, the 1965 thrillerMirage!) Cool Constance’s pleasant but prim demeanor thaws rapidly, Dr. Edwardes’ agitation at the sight of lines scratched into a tablecloth notwithstanding, and those crazy kids fall in love lickety-split. Heck, how could anyone not fall in love with Bergman and Peck in this movie, with both of them at the peak of their yumminess? I can’t help smiling every time I see the scene with Constance and Edwardes (I’ve never once heard our heroine call him “Anthony” in the film’s early scenes) on their impromptu get-to-know-you picnic in the sunshine, and the way she dreamily accepts a sandwich from him. She says, “Liverwurst” as it if were the loveliest word she’s ever heard, bless her heart!
Those who scratch the tablecloth do not get fruit cup!
When Dr. Edwardes doesn’t recognize a caller’s voice, he’s initially annoyed, then laughs it off as a practical joke. Moreover, Dr. Edwardes takes a personal interest in Mr. Garmes (Norman Lloyd, frequent Hitchcock player and later producer of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour), a patient with a guilt complex about his late father. Garmes also seems to be way too intrigued with knives and letter-openers. When Garmes tries to kill himself, Constance and Edwardes assist at the emergency surgery. But to everyone’s shock, Edwardes freaks out and faints. In fact, this is the first of four fainting spells Dr. Edwardes has over the course of the movie. If you happen to have a thing for watching handsome men being rendered unconscious, Spellbound is your cup of Sleepytime Tea!
With a few more jokes and scientific types, we’d have Ball of Fire!
Uh-oh! Someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do!
Love opens doors for Constance
Constance realizes what’s up when she compares the signature on Dr. Edwardes’ autographed book to a note he’d left for her. Turns out Dr. Dreamboat is an impostor with amnesia, and the lovebirds have to figure out why and how! They’d better hurry, because the initials “J.B.” on his cigarette case are their only clue to his real identity. But the jig’s up when Dr. Edwardes’ worried office assistant comes to Green Manors herself, confirming the ruse. Constance ends up playing footsie with a note J.B. had slipped under her door when the local police drop by. Apparently the real Dr. Edwardes is missing and presumed dead, with J.B. as a person of interest! Poor Constance—she lets her hair down for once, falls in love, and wouldn’t you know the guy might be a killer? No wonder more and more people meet through online dating services nowadays! Anyway, before he fled, J.B. left Constance a note saying he can be reached at the Empire State Hotel in NYC until the heat dies down. For the rest of the film, Constance is essentially a female detective, a comparatively rare bird in suspense stories. Cool! She can start by delving deeper into why J.B. resents smug women. Smugness is infuriating in both genders, but J.B. doesn’t seem to mind smug men!
Aww, J.B. sleeps so cute! (Faint #1)
When she hits NYC, Constance gets some unexpected but welcome help from the house detective (Bill Goodwin, who was also the announcer for The Burns and Allen Show on both CBS and NBC), who pegs Constance as a gal in trouble, “a schoolteacher or librarian.” I love the way the hotel dick comes so close and yet so far in his assessment of her as he helps her in his amateur “psychologist” capacity without revealing her mission! Oh, and what would a Hitchcock movie be without one of the director’s famous cameos? It’s in this very scene, about 37 minutes into the movie; you’ll see Hitch walking out of an elevator at the Empire State Hotel, wearing a fedora, carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette. If you can’t wait that long, go back to the beginning of this blog post and click here for the trailer.
Ground floor, Hitchcock cameo, everybody off!
Pesky tourist Wallace Ford puts the “Pitts” in “Pittsburgh”!
Danger between the lines!
Once Constance and J.B. are reunited (and it feels so good), they’re able to figure out that J.B. is a doctor (“The eminent Doctor X,” he says ruefully). They also deduce that J.B. must have been with the real—and still missing and presumed dead—Dr. Edwardes when foul play apparently befell him. J.B. feels this is only further proof that he must have knocked off Dr. Edwardes. Also, J.B. has burn scars on his left hand, with a skin graft, and he relives the pain and horror of his accident as if it was happening all over again, poor guy. Well, at least it’s a start—but when the bellboy brings up the afternoon papers, there’s an article about the manhunt, including a lovely photo of Constance! Oops, gotta run—to Pennsylvania Station for train tickets to wherever it was that J.B. went with Dr. Edwardes. Constance figures when J.B. left the mountains after Dr. Edwardes’ accident, he must have passed through New York, so asking for train tickets might jog his memory. Poor J.B. can only stammer “Rome,” then collapse. If J.B. is gonna have these dizzy/fainting spells on a regular basis, I think Constance should get a wheelchair for him! So all roads lead our fugitive sweethearts not to Rome, but to Grand Central and Rochester, NY to see Constance’s dear old professor and fellow psychoanalyst Dr. Alex Brulov (played by Michael Chekhov, famed acting teacher, former member of the Moscow Art Theater, and nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov. Alex was one of my favorite Spellbound characters, so I was happy to learn he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his delightful performance). On the way, Constance helps J.B. remember the fiery wartime plane crash in which he was burned, reliving the horror: “I hated killing. I can remember that much….”
One perk to J.B.’s fainting spells; he’s got the lovely and devoted Constance to catch him!
(Faint #2)
Yikes! Talk about unwanted publicity!
When our fugitive couple reaches Alex’s Rochester home, claiming they’re honeymooning newlyweds, there’s a nice little scene with two police detectives (Art Baker and Regis Toomey of Burke’s Law), with one of them complaining about his clingy mother and accusations of being a “mama’s boy.” Even John Law has neuroses! And once again, poor J.B. can’t catch a break: the line pattern on the coverlet upsets him so badly that he faints again. When he wakes up after everyone’s asleep, the poor guy gets freaked out again by the relentlessly white bathroom fixtures; with his white phobia, he can’t even wash up or shave, though he seems perfectly capable of wandering dazedly through Alex’s house with a straight razor. Could’ve been worse, though; Spellbound could’ve taken place in the 1970s, with all those harvest gold and avocado green fixtures! Luckily, Alex turns out to be wilier than Constance gave him credit for; he slips bromides into J.B.’s milk, and it’s beddy-bye time!
“You like close shaves, don’t you?”
From the folks who brought you the Fisticam: The Dairycam!
But Alex, this is a good boy...this is a nice boy...this is a mother's angel! (Faint #3)
Next time J.B. comes over, we’re giving him the plastic cups! (4th and Final Faint!)
It takes lots of convincing, but the next day, Constance and Alex are able to get J.B. on the fast track toward helping him find out who he is and what happened to Dr. Edwardes. One more fainting spell and a look out the window on this snowy day, and our intrepid heroes realize the lines that freaked out J.B. were skiing tracks in the snow! That’s where the dream sequence comes in:
Sled tracks on a snowy day gives our heroes the major clue they need: Dr. Edwardes had been into sports, saying it was a boon to the treatment of mental disorders. That’s why the dark lines in the white snow freaked out J.B. so severely. Using the notes from J.B.’s dream, they figure out that J.B. and Dr. E. went to Gabriel Valley for what turned out to be their ill-fated therapy vacation. Constance and J.B. go there to recreate the events leading to Dr. Edwardes’ death. The couple opts for downhill skiing, and the tension is almost unbearable as J.B. starts to remember the horrible thing he was trying to forget: the accidental death of his little brother as young J.B. tried to yell warnings to him. The point of impact where the poor kid is impaled lasts only seconds, but it still breaks my heart and chills me to the bone every time I see Spellbound. But the evil spell is broken as J.B. grabs Constance and saves her from flying off the cliff in the proverbial nick of time. Now they can forget the past and forge a future together as husband and wife, as well as Doctor and Doctor Ballantine (the “J” is for “John”). Nice day for a white wedding….
Or is it? When the police catch up with them, they confirm that Dr. Edwardes’ body is where our heroes deduced it would be, all right—but they didn’t figure on finding the cause of death was a bullet! After a montage of Constance desperately trying to convince the jury that John is innocent,to no avail, our heartbroken heroine returns to Green Manors. Ah, but the film and the surprises aren’t over just yet:
The screenplay by Ben Hecht and Angus MacPhail is loosely based on Francis Beeding’s 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes; indeed, the opening credits specifically say “Suggested by Francis Beeding’s novel The House of Dr. Edwardes.” I’ve read in various sources that the original novel was a lot more gimmicky and Gothic-y. Hitchcock had no qualms about retooling a novel to serve his movie’s needs, so he, Hecht, and MacPhail improved upon it. But there’s one writer few can improve upon: William Shakespeare, whose lines from Julius Caesar open Spellbound with a most appropriate quote: “The fault…is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
Spellbound was released in theaters in 1945, when World War 2 ended and soldiers were coming home suffering from shell shock, nightmares, and “battle fatigue” (or as we know it today, PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder), so it was inevitable that Spellbound would strike a chord with moviegoers at that time (and even now, really, since war is unfortunately still with us). It also struck a chord with its producer, David O. Selznick, since he was undergoing psychoanalysis on account of his own family tragedy: Selznick’s brother Myron, a top Hollywood agent, had died after many years of alcoholism. On top of that, Selznick’s marriage broke up, so he wound up in therapy with psychoanalyst/psychiatrist Dr. May Romm. Interestingly, in 1944, the year before Spellbound was released, life during wartime was the subject of another acclaimed Selznick drama, Since You Went Away (which I must confess is known here at Team Bartilucci H.Q. as one of the most depressing movies ever made! But I digress….)
Miklós Rózsa is one of my favorite composers, and it’s no wonder that he won an Oscar for his glorious Spellbound score! It sets the film’s tone in every way, its theremin weaving foreboding throughout the emotion-packed, lushly romantic orchestrations. Ironically, according to Wikipedia, Selznick originally wanted a musical score from future Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, another favorite of mine! But Herrmann wasn’t available, so Rózsa got the gig. Indeed, Spellbound also received five other Oscar nominations, not only for Chekhov’s supporting performance (James Dunn won for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), but also for George Barnes’ gorgeous black-and-white cinematography (The Picture of Dorian Gray won); Jack Cosgrove’s special photographic effects (the Oscar went to another of my favorite movies, the Danny Kaye comedy Wonder Man); Hitchcock’s direction; and a Best Picture nomination for Selznick International(though I can't complain about The Lost Weekend winning the prize). Also, Ingrid Bergman won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for her performance. It’s also worth noting that Rhonda Fleming, only 22 at the time, made quite an impressive debut in the small but memorable role of Green Manors patient Mary Carmichael, whose flirty manner and beauty disguises a vicious hatred of men. Team Bartilucci favorite Dave Willock of the animated Hanna-Barbera series Wacky Races and Robert Aldrich films such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte played the bellboy who recognized Constance in New York. Vinnie recognized Willock’s voice; he's got an ear for such things, bless him. Many folks reading this may also remember Willock from another Team B. fave, It's in the Bag.
Hello, Dali!
The scenes in Spellbound involving Salvador Dali’s surrealism were originally going to be even more surreal and elaborate than the classic dream sequence we movie fans know and love! However, as is explained in the Spellbound DVD’s special features, the rushes showed lighting problems, and worst of all for a romantic thriller, the footage just plain wasn’t packing the emotional and visual punch that Hitchcock had hoped for. So Selznick contacted production designer William Cameron Menzies, with whom he’d worked on Gone with the Wind. Menzies redesigned the shots, and the film certainly seems to have retained the impact and entertainment value that Hitchcock & Company wanted. Heck, I could go on and on about Menzies’ own extraordinary career alone, considering that in addition to being a brilliant production designer (a title Menzies created, by the way), he was also an Oscar-winning producer, director, and screenwriter in his brilliant 50-year career—but that deserves a blog post all its own, if someone hasn’t written one about him already!
If a honeymoon on a train was good enough for Mr. & Mrs. Thornhill, it's good enough for Dr. and Dr. Ballantine!
