Movie Monday: The Magnificent Ambersons

From the man that brought you a little film called Citizen Kane...

Usually for Movie Monday, I talk about a film I have not seen before. I like "discovering" it almost as I'm writing these reviews, to gauge what my first, gut reactions are to a particular movie.

I decided to break that rule this week, since not only have I seen this film before, I've seen it many times: as a huge fan of the work of Orson Welles, there's simply no way to ignore this compromised masterpiece.

As the opening title card says, The Magnificent Ambersons is based on the book by Booth Tarkington, about a prominent Midwestern family and the changes they and society undergo at the dawn of the Industrial Age.

A man named Eugene Morgan (Welles' pal and co-conspirator Joseph Cotten) tries to woo Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello), but she rejects him and marries Wilbur Minafer, who is from a prominent family, but does not love.

Isabel and Wilbur have a son, George, who is basically a rotten little shit from birth. As a child, he's a terror, and the whole town roots for him to get his "comeuppance." The film flashes forward twenty years, and George is now grown up (played by Tim Holt), and meets his mother's former paramour, whom he dislikes instantly. In the intervening decades, Eugene has become a car magnate, and is fabulously wealthy. He has a daughter, Lucy (Anne Baxter), whom George does like, quite a bit.

George's father dies, and Eugene, a widower, tries to rekindle his relationship with Isabel. George will have none of it, and does everything he can to stand in his way. Isabel senses this, and goes along with her son's wishes, even though it makes her unhappy.

Complicating things even further is Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead), who also had feelings for Eugene, and is descending into psychosis. Events conspire to bring the Ambersons low financially, and George is forced to take up a dangerous line of work to keep their lifestyle going, while Eugene just gets more and more successful.

George has difficulty accepting how much the world has changed around him in such a short time: cars are now everywhere, billowing black smoke. During a dinner party, George is rude to Eugene's face telling him that cars are going to ruin society, and Eugene concedes that he may be right.

The film ends on a curious note, with Eugene and Aunt Fanny visiting George after an accident, with the former declaring that he and the young man have made peace at last.

 

I understand that not much in my description of the plot makes The Magnificent Ambersons sound very interesting: it's a family drama based on a (then) renowned novel, the kind of stuffy, high-brow stuff that you'd see on PBS or at your nearest "art house" theater. The stuff about the car industry completely changing society is interesting, but nothing that makes you think "I have to see this movie."

What makes The Magnificent Ambersons so compelling is the style director Orson Welles brings to it. This was his first film after Kane, and he was eager to show the world that he could make something more mature, less flashy, but just as powerful. And he completely pulls it off, instead focusing on the characters, and allowing his camera to float smoothly around the sumptuous sets, as if it just another member of the family.

It's not that there aren't great shots/sequences in this film, there are: a long scene during a party was done entirely in one shot, with people moving in and out of the frame, and then back in. The shadows cast in the Ambersons' home loom long and deep, and there's a constant sense of foreboding, as history closes in on this once-prominent family.

One of the other things that makes this film so remarkable is that it is, as I mentioned above, compromised. The original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons ran almost two hours, and just as editing began Welles was asked to fly to Latin America to make another film as part of the war effort. He had planned to edit Ambersons from there, but wartime flying restrictions kept his editor (the soon-to-be-legendary Robert Wise) from joining him. A disastrous preview caused RKO to panic, and they took the job of editing the film on themselves. They lopped an entire half hour out, and reshot a "happier" ending, removing Welles' original (this being right after Pearl Harbor, the preview audience simply wasn't interested in anything challenging or even a little bit downbeat), as well as cutting other shots and the music, a move that so infuriated composer Bernard Herrmann he had his name removed from the final film.

Normally, a movie having its ending removed and replaced with a Smile Button would be fatal, tilting the film's axis to the point where it effectively makes it a bad movie. But the stuff that Welles did up until that last five minutes is so good, the acting so top-notch, the visuals so arresting, that it's strangely easy to just shrug off the tacked-on ending, and luxuriate in the rest.

The Magnificent Ambersons is loaded with Kane veterans: Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorehead, Erskine Sanford. And even though the subject matter of both films couldn't be more different, this feels like the second installment of what could have been an amazing series of films by Welles' Mercury Theatre repertoire company (Welles even throws in a gag, when we see a newspaper has a review column by someone named Jed Leland, who was a character in Citizen Kane played by...Joseph Cotten). New to Welles' stock company was Tim Holt, an actor who spent most of his career in B or C westerns, seemingly dabbling in "A" pictures only if they were masterpieces: he did this, My Darling Clementine, and Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the 1940s, and then went right back to the westerns.

The missing half hour of Ambersons is apparently lost forever, the footage has never surfaced (supposedly RKO burned it to ensure Welles could not get his hands on it, a move so retroactively infuriating it defies belief) despite rumors at least one copy was sent to Welles overseas. The destruction of the original version hurt Welles so deeply that he couldn't bear to watch the film on TV, even decades later.

So while all of this backstage stuff is quite interesting, it shouldn't take away from what we do have: a marvelous film, a worthy follow-up to Citizen Kane (if such a thing is even possible), and an unmistakable statement that, as a director, Orson Welles' genius did not stop at the burning of that sled.

Movie Monday: Looking For Love

We're all Looking For Love!

I came across this trailer ay work last week, never having heard of the film before. Check out the poster, and you'll see the sole reason I was interested: it features an appearance by Johnny Carson, as himself, on The Tonight Show! What the what?

Looking for Love stars singing star Connie Francis (whom Hollywood assumed was a movie star) and romantic copy staple Jim Hutton. Francis plays Libby Caruso (heh), who dreams of being a singer, but can't get any traction. She decides to give up her dreams and get a regular job and land a husband. She meets Paul (Hutton) in a supermarket, and is interested in him, but he's not interested back.

Later, Libby creates a clothing line for women. It starts to take off, and Paul somehow manages to get Libby booked on The Tonight Show(!) to promote it. Libby mentions to Johnny that she can sing, so he has her perform on the show, which finally launches her singing career.

I'll be honest, I didn't care one whit about the main thrust of the film--it's just romantic piffle. I was interested solely for the presence of Johnny, who had just started The Tonight Show two years earlier. You can count on one hand the number of times Carson let him or Tonight be used in any way outside the show itself, so I can only imagine he figured it was a good way to promote Tonight in a big way during its early years. Later on, when talking about this movie, Carson would say "Looking For Love was so bad it was transferred to flammable nitrate stock."

So, how are the Carson scenes? Well, Johnny was no actor (by his own admission), and he does seem a little uncomfortable during the very contrived moment where he invites Libby to sing on the show. But he's still a charming presence, and (IMO) it's a treat seeing this era of The Tonight Show in color!

Unfortunately, this is the only scene Johnny is in. The trailer made it seem like he was practically a co-star (a movie trailer, misrepresenting what the film is actually about? Stop the presses!), but he's gone from the movie after this.

Libby's career starts going places, but she's met with a lot of set backs, both on stage and in her love life. During a live performance on The Danny Thomas Show (whose audience looks suspiciously like the one that attended The Tonight Show) everything goes wrong, leaving Libby a sobbing mess which forces Danny to ad-lib, live on air.

Paul starts to change his mind about Libby, right at the time she starts to fall for another guy from the supermarket, played by Joby Baker (who?). The one surprising thing about the movie is that Libby and Paul don't end up together: rather, Paul then moves on to Libby's roommate (played by Susan Oliver, who in real life later went on to become a director and aviator--where's that movie?), and by the end we have two happy couples, plus great character actor Jesse White playing some bells. There are worse ways to end a movie.

 

Of course, Looking For Love is completely forgettable: it's basically a big sitcom episode, stretched out to feature length. The sets are nice to look at, and there's a lot of famous faces (in addition to Johnny and Danny Thomas, there's also George Hamilton, Paula Prentiss, and Yvette Mimieux!) that come and go. But I think the only reason anyone remembers it all is because of that all-too-brief glimpse of the ascendent Johnny Carson, live and in color.

 

Movie Monday: Spider-Man

It's The Amazing--well, just Spider-Man!

A few weeks ago, my friends Chris and Cindy Franklin reviewed this movie-length 1977 Spider-Man TV pilot/movie on their Super Mates Podcast, and for the most part raked it over the coals. I hadn't seen it in years, decades maybe, and I didn't remember it being all that bad. So I felt is was time for a refresher.

For those who have never seen it (and that's most of you, because Marvel refuses to release this or any of the subsequent episodes on DVD), Spider-Man was commissioned as a TV movie which would serve as a "backdoor pilot" to an ongoing series. The TV movie was a ratings success, and after some post-pilot tinkering (cast changes, mostly) the series launched. For some reason, instead of giving it a regular time slot, CBS used it as a heat-seeking missile, airing episodes in clumps to run against other networks' hit shows, hopefully draining some of their audience away. In an age where you had to actually sit in front of your TV and watch a program lest you miss it forever, this is an insane, maddening strategy, and it couldn't have done Spider-Man any favors.

Anyway, this TV movie tells the story you're all familiar with, but with some major changes: Peter Parker (Nicholas Hammond) works as a photographer for The Daily Bugle, where he is on the receiving end of blustery abuse from Publisher J. Jonah Jameson (David White). He is also a grad student, and one way while working on some experiments involving radiation, he sees an unwanted visitor:

Peter gets bit, you know the rest. Except here, there is no Uncle Ben, so our hero's decision to become Spider-Man is mostly done on a whim. Not too long after being bit, he notices he can climb walls, crawling all over the outside of the townhouse he shares with his Aunt May (Jeff--yes, Jeff--Donnell). After stopping a mugging by scaring the bejeezus out of the mugger by scampering up an alleyway wall, he attracts the attention of random passersby and then the Daily Bugle! Jameson wants pictures of this "Spider-Man" of course, so Peter goes home and makes himself a snazzy suit:

For the most part, Hammond is fine in the part, if bland. He's not given a lot of character stuff to work with, so the blame can't really fall too heavily on him. My favorite moment of the whole show comes during this "trying the costume on" scene when, after seeing himself in the mirror, he becomes giddy with the sheer weirdness of the path he's setting himself on:

The other plot going on involves a bad guy named Byron who in public is a famous self-help guru, but is actually a crook using his abilities to compel his patients--some of them prominent doctors and lawyers--to commit crimes! Eventually, Byron decides to extort all of New York City, threatening to have a number of its citizens kill themselves unless a huge ransom is paid.

As Spider-Man, Peter meets up with some of Bryon's goons, including three samurai types(!), and the effects are...well, okay, they're pretty dodgy. There's some really bad matte shots where Spider-Man isn't even touching anything (thanks to mismatched footage), and lots of the guy in the suit (often as not the stuntman, not Hammond) walking on what's clearly the floor with the camera turned, ala the Batman TV show. Once in a while though they pull off something cool, like when Spidey kicks a bad guy from his position on the wall--hardly anything anyone would even notice today, but in 1977 this was still pretty sophisticated for TV.

Later, Peter visits Byron and gets slapped with one of his mind control bugs. In a great scene--the most tense of the show--Peter walks like a zombie to the top of the Empire State Building, preparing to kill himself by jumping. This scene is shot in an almost hand-held, POV-style, and it's quite effective. Peter here reminds me of some sort of mass murderer who looks totally calm, but is about to go off in some horrific way. Luckily for us, and himself, Peter accidentally crushes Byron's pin on the pointed guard railing, waking him up just in time:

He dons the Spidey costume, pulls down Byron's equipment that is sending the nefarious signals, which causes the computer to blow up, turning Byron into a partially immobile zombie. Spider-Man cheerfully suggests Byron turn himself into the police, which he does. And with that, Spider-Man is ready for another adventure!


The main flaw that Spider-Man suffers from--and it's the same flaw we saw in 1978's Dr. Strange, and even in 1997's Justice League of America--it's that there's not enough of the stuff you came for: namely, superheroics! The Spider-Man TV movie gives a lot of screen time to Peter, which makes sense since you're trying to establish the character. But then there's Michael Pataki as a police captain, and he's straight out of a thousand other cop shows airing at the time. All the stuff at The Daily Bugle is okay, but after only a minute or two of Spidey action, did there need to be what felt like a dozen scenes there? If I want newspaper drama, I'll watch Lou Grant!

TV networks were still very unsure people would watch a "serious" superhero show, so they tended to lard them up with familiar TV tropes--The Incredible Hulk was just The Fugitive after all, but the talent behind that show made that work for them. With Spider-Man, I half expected to see Starsky & Hutch's red Grand Torino vrooom by at some point.

Still, there is some fun stuff here. There's a point where an under-the-weather Spidey tries to get a lift via an off-duty cab, but can't, so he bums a ride inside a garbage truck. If that's not a scene from a Ditko Spider-Man comic, it sure feels like it. But those moments are few and very far between.

Maybe it's my childhood nostalgia talking--I distinctly remember watching Spider-Man as it aired, and being thrilled that I was just getting to see a live-action Spidey--and I'm just viewing this more warmly than it deserves. But, for all its flaws, I'd say this series definitely deserves a DVD release. I mean, they put out Spider-Man 3, after all...

Movie Monday: City of the Living Dead

From the bowels of the earth they came...to collect the living!

City of the Living Dead is the first of director and madman Lucio Fulci's unofficial "Gates of Hell" trilogy, which later went on to include The Beyond and The House By The Cemetery. It features dead priests, zombies, ancient curses, plus one guy getting a drill to the head.

The plot could not be more basic: after a priest (Fabrizio Jovine) hangs himself, the gates of hell are opened. Zombies start to show up (seriously, Fulci shows us our first zombie at the 4:09 mark), and then all Hell literally starts breaking loose.

All of this fooferaw is sensed by psychic Mary Woodhouse (Fulci favorite Catriona MacColl), who dies of fright during a seance. She is buried, only to come back live while being buried. In a bravura sequence, absent of gore but full of menace, a newspaper reporter investigating the case hears a weird sound and digs her up:

The Reporter and and the Psychic (which would have made a great TV series) team-up, and discover that all of this is part of a prophecy spelled out in the Book of Enoch. The only way to stop the dead from taking over the Earth is to head to Dunwich, New England and close the gates of Hell before All Saint's Day, after which it will be too late.

Great premise, right? For some reason, Fulci then deals with several sub-plots featuring other characters, and our main characters take a very relaxed approach to their mission: at one point they even talk about getting a bite to eat and taking in some of the local scenery! Um, excuse, me, aren't you guys on a deadline to, you know, prevent the end of the world?

That aside, some of the fun's most fun (read: gory) moments come from the side characters, like when another member of the undead puts a Lugosi-esque whammy on a young girl, causing her to regurgitate tons of organs right out of her mouth. Her boyfriend watches in horror, only to be rewarded by having his brain ripped out. There's also a sub-plot about a town pervert who gets murdered by an angry father of a young victimized girl. I mean, a really angry father:

The film ends in a giant crypt where zombies come out of the woodwork and attack our heroes, and it is quite scary and nightmare-inducing, with its claustrophobic framing and feeling of utter dread.

City of the Living Dead ends on a happy note, as happy as anything ever is in a Fulci film. Then there's a final shot that is fairly baffling and unexplained, I've looked it up on the web and no one seems sure exactly what it means.


Overall, COTLD is a fun, gory time, if that's your sort of thing. I'm not expert on the man's work, but there are other films of his that I've enjoyed more, and didn't have such long drawn out dull parts. The gore is right there on the screen and imaginatively conceived, as it usually is when Fulci's involved. The way other directors liked to scare audiences, or take them to other, far off worlds, Lucio Fulci liked reducing the human body to so much pulp.