Best Adapted Screenplay: 1973

“As he reached for his hat, Chris was nodding her head, and then suddenly she was looking into eyes that overwhelmed her, that shone with intelligence and kindly understanding, with serenity that poured from them into her being like the waters of a warm and healing river whose source was both in him yet somehow beyond him; whose flow was contained and yet headlong and endless.” (p 291)

My Top 10

1. The Exorcist
2. Serpico
3. The Day of the Jackal
4. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
5. Don’t Look Now
6. Paper Moon
7. The Last Detail
8. A Doll’s House

Note:  This is my full list for the year.  It used to have one more film but as I was writing the review of Bang the Drum Slowly (comparing it to Brian’s Song, both of which are early 70’s films, though Brian’s Song was originally a tv film, that star major actors in their pre-Godfather roles as athletes forming an important friendship while dying of cancer, though of course Brian’s Song was a true story and this was based on an overrated novel), I realized that it really didn’t belong on the list.  The film succeeds, not on its writing, but on the performances of Robert De Niro and Vincent Gardenia and the moving scene with the song “Streets of Laredo”.  So I cut it from the list and since it wasn’t nominated for anything, I didn’t bother to include it.

Consensus Nominees:

1. The Exorcist  (184 pts)
2. The Last Detail  (160 pts)
3. Serpico  (120 pts)
4. Paper Moon  (120 pts)
5. The Paper Chase  (80 pts)

Oscar Nominees  (Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium):

• The Exorcist
• The Last Detail
• The Paper Chase
• Paper Moon
• Serpico

WGA Awards:

Adapted Drama:

• Serpico
• Cinderella Liberty
• The Exorcist
• The Last Detail
• The Paper Chase

Adapted Comedy:

• Paper Moon
• 40 Carats
• Godspell

Golden Globe:

• The Exorcist
• Cinderella Liberty
• The Day of the Jackal

Nominees that are Original:  The Sting, A Touch of Class

BAFTA:

• The Last Detail  (1974)
• The Day of the Jackal

note:  The Last Detail co-won the award with Chinatown (both were written by Robert Towne).

My Top 10

 

The Exorcist

image from the MFA exhibition of Kirk Hammet’s Horror Poster collection

The Film:

I have already reviewed this film.  It is a brilliant and terrifying film (unless you are Beetlejuice, in which case it is hilarious).  I don’t personally rank it as the greatest Horror film ever made but I would not argue with anyone who does rank it as such.  What’s more, it has acting the likes of which have rarely ever been seen in a Horror film.  It may very well have the single performances in the Horror genre in Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress.  If you are a serious film fan, you can’t avoid seeing this film, which leaves my wife out of being considered a serious film fan because she absolutely refuses to ever see it.

The Source:

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty  (1971)

I remember when I finally decided to read this book, sometime around the time when I wrote my original review of the film, I was considerably disappointed.  I just didn’t feel the same kind of horror and terror when reading the book to even approach what I had felt in watching the film.  Yes, Blatty has some interesting ideas, but he also got pulled in too many directions.  Witness the character of the movie-obsessed detective.  He’s such a strain of a character, one with an obvious affectation that keeps coming in for almost no reason and distracting the book away from its real strengths, which is what is going on with Regan.  Later, I would read more Blatty which would actually be much worse (it’s coming in the 1980 post), so I just don’t thing Blatty is that good a writer.

The Adaptation:

“We threw out [the original script] which was full of a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards, and started from scratch. I just wanted to tell a straight-ahead story from beginning to end with no craperoo. I literally just marked up the book, gave it to [William Peter Blatty] and said, ‘This is the script.’ He rewrote it from that. From day to day we would get new ideas and bring new stuff in.”(William Friedkin interviewed in Conversations at the American Film Institute with The Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation, ed. George Stevens, Jr, p 190)  That original script is also mentioned in the worthwhile but now out-of-print book The Story Behind the Exorcist co-written by Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers with this description of it: “In this script, the first third of the novel was condensed into twenty-two pages of screenplay.  Blatty related that his opening sequence was a montage of all of the possessed girls’ symptoms while the screen credits were being flashed.”  (p 24)

There are definitely changes from the book to the film, but as Friedkin explains above, he tried to stay more true to the book.  The whole back and forth is actually reminiscent of what Peter Bogdanovich went through with Larry McMurtry with The Last Picture Show.  Friedkin does make some changes, of course (Karras’ mother is actually found dead early in the book and thus all of the back and forth with her just adds pathos to the film but is a significant change).

“In hindsight, I think that if the film has relevance, it’s due to the tension between Blatty’s tightly structured script and absolute faith and my improvisational, agnostic approach to it. Blatty’s stated goal in the novel and the film was apostolic. I simply wanted to tell a good story. Its conclusion to me was inherent: the girl was possessed, and the exorcism was successful. Blatty wanted that underscored; I did my best to eliminate underscoring.” (The Freidkin Connection: A Memoir by William Freidkin, p 271)

As flawed as Friedkin is as a director (has any director other than perhaps Michael Cimino so failed to live up to the reputation he set for himself early on?), he is a fascinating person and I definitely recommend reading his book.

The Credits:

Directed by William Friedkin.  Written for the Screen and Produced by William Peter Blatty.  Based on his novel.
note:  These are from the end titles.  Only the title is in the opening titles, one of the first films to do that.

Serpico

The Film:

This is the start of something special and it doesn’t seem to get mentioned very often.  Books about Hollywood in the 70’s tend to focus on the Film School Kids, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg, Scorsese, the ones who did something new and made themselves very rich and changed the way we look at films.  When it stretches a little bit, there will be something about someone like Friedkin.  But let’s take a moment and talk about Sidney Lumet.  Lumet had been dismissed by Andrew Sarriss as “strained seriousness”.  By 1973, it had been almost a decade since Lumet had made an Oscar nominated film and 16 years since he was nominated for Best Director for his feature debut 12 Angry Men.  But this is the start of five amazing films in five years, films that combine for 27 Oscar nominations and four Oscars.  How we can talk about the risky film-makers of this decade and not discuss the man, who, in a stretch of five years, directed Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and Equus.  No director had ever had three consecutive years with a Best Actor nomination from his films and only a handful had done it twice in a row.  These five films combined for six Best Actor nominations (two for Network).

It all starts with Serpico, a film that has the bad luck to be released in 1973.  It’s one the 40 best films of the decade but it has the misfortune to be sitting behind Cries and Whispers, Mean Streets, The Exorcist, American Graffiti and The Sting.  Serpico is a timely film, the story of Frank Serpico, a man who all his life just wanted to be a cop.  But, more importantly, he wanted to be a cop.  This meant he wanted nothing to do with graft, no matter if it was big (scamming money from drug dealers) to quite small (getting a free meal at a deli in return for not ticketing the deli for double parking on delivery days).  To Serpico, being a cop is about doing something good for the community.  So he decided he was going to be a different kind of cop.  He doesn’t tell people what he is.  He grows a mustache and grows his hair long and wears clothes more befitting a hippie so that when he is eventually posted as a plainclothes man he won’t look like a cop and he can blend in and actually do his job properly.  But important cops don’t like beat cops telling them how they should do things and the people on the take don’t like people who aren’t taking anything because it makes them look and feel bad.  So, Serpico found himself hated by everyone.  He was the one person who wanted to do things right and to fix the problems and no one would listen to him.  This gets to a point that the film opens after Serpico has been shot in the face and is being rushed to the hospital and the first question on everyone’s mind is whether it was actually a cop who shot him.

Of course all of this was a true story and it was so vibrant and alive because it hadn’t been very long.  Serpico had been shot in the winter of 1972, the book was published in early 1973 and the film would be released in December.  For people living in New York, this was their police force being exposed on screen for all its problems.  The Production Code had kept things like this under wraps for years but thing had loosened up now and a New York director (Lumet) and a New York actor were willing to tell this story.  The actor, of course, is Al Pacino, who was in the midst of his own Oscar streak.  He had been nominated the year before in Supporting Actor for The Godfather and this would be the first of three straight nominations for Best Actor (all against Jack Nicholson).  If his performance in The Godfather showed that Pacino was a discovery this was the film that proved it wasn’t a fluke, that Pacino was one of the greats in screen history and could hold his own against anyone else.  If, somehow, in your own journey through the great films of the 1970’s and the daring filmmakers who brought them to the screen and you have somehow missed Serpico, then you need to rectify that.

The Source:

Serpico by Peter Maas  (1973)

This is mostly a straight-forward non-fiction book about Frank Serpico and the job that he did trying to get rid of corruption and graft in the NYPD.  It begins with his shooting in February of 1971 and then jumps back to the beginning of his career in the NYPD (with a bit on his early life) and goes in a linear fashion from there.  One odd thing is that throughout the first several chapters, Maas moves back to Serpico in the hospital and his reactions to other people’s reactions but then after about half the book, it simply drops that line of narrative.  I suspect that Maas, a journalist, managed to get the book because he had already written The Valachi Papers (Valachi himself gets a one line mention in the book) and it is told in a journalistic fashion but there is nothing special about the book itself.  All the real fuss is about the man himself and what he managed to do with everyone working against him.

The Adaptation:

Much like the book, the film begins with shooting, deals with the fallout from that (including the question of whether cops actually did it or at least lead to it and the nasty cards that were sent to Serpico in the hospital from other cops who hated him and wished him dead) and then backtracks to the beginning of his police career and moves forward to the shooting.  Some of the names are changed and some of the incidents and details are compressed but the film actually does a very good job of keeping to the book, including little details like the superior officer who thought Serpico was gay because of an incident in a bathroom (fully explained in both the book and the film) or the superior officer who told him to get a haircut with Serpico replying how was he supposed to be a plainclothes man if he looked like a cop.  A very good adaptation of the book that really keeps all the core material and stays faithful to what really happened.  It does cut some of Serpico’s family down a bit, but that’s natural to focus on his career and his interactions with his fellow cops.

The Credits:

Directed by Sidney Lumet.  Based on the Book by Peter Maas.  Screenplay by Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler.

The Day of the Jackal

The Film:

Unlike Sidney Lumet, Fred Zinnemann had enjoyed a strong measure of success in Hollywood.  By 1973, he had been nominated for an Oscar a remarkable six times and had won twice, giving him 360 Oscar points, tied for 5th all-time (even today he is tied for 3rd all-time with six other directors with 405 points).  But, because he spent three years trying to make Man’s Fate and then four years after that fighting in a lawsuit with MGM over the collapse of the film, it had been seven years since his last film, even if that film, A Man for All Seasons, had won Picture and Director.  Could Zinnemann, now 66 years old and an emblem of years past and dismissed in 1968 by Andrew Sarris as “His inclusion in any objective history of the American cinema is mandatory, but his true vocation remains the making of antimovies for antimoviegoers . . . Perhaps there is not in Zinnemann enough of the redeeming outrageousness of the compulsive entertainer,” still be an important filmmaker?  Could he still be a great filmmaker?  The answer, it turned out, was yes.

Did Zinnemann take Sarris’ words to heart?  Did he even know them?  Well, it had been almost 20 years since he had made anything other than a straight Drama and here he was venturing right into Suspense territory, something more like a Hitchcock film.  But he had good ideas about how to do it.  The first was his decision that the Jackal, who could slide into ordinary situations, who could disappear into different characters and even nationalities, shouldn’t be a star (Michael Caine was considered) but should be someone much more unknown.  In the end, he went with Edward Fox.  Fox, though he has been in many important films, is still primarily known for his role as the Jackal and it was certainly one of the few times that he got to play the starring role on screen.  He slides effortlessly into the part and you never know what he might do next.  After a forger tries to blackmail him, he kills him with ease and quickness and you wonder if he will do the same for his gunsmith (that was a plan in the script but was changed, ironically making it fit the book more).  The Jackal has been hired by the OAS, the dissident group in France that tried several times to kill President Charles de Gaulle after they felt he betrayed the country by allowing Algeria to slip away from the French.  The Jackal acts with meticulous care and does what he needs, whether it’s seducing the wealthy Baronness (and he even gives he a casual smile when he reunites with her, something we’ve barely seen from him) or making a move on a homosexual so that he can find a place to stay outside of a hotel so he can’t be reported.  He can strangle someone, kill with the snap of his wrist or kill from afar.  We know his plan for de Gaulle could well work because one of the most memorable scenes in the film is when he practices on a melon to get the sights right and then, once he has determined he’s got the aim down, using an explosive bullet and “the target it had once contained was unrecognisable as anything but pulp.”

But the Jackal is not our only character.  The film would still probably be good even if we just followed the Jackal through to his goal, watching his methods and the way he moves ever closer to Paris with a set plan that he barely deviates from (where he is forced to deviate, he has planned for and his contingencies).  But we also have Lebel, the brilliant police detective who is called upon by the government when they learn of the plot.  Lebel is played by Michel Lonsdale, the brilliant French actor.  Lonsdale, a few years later would make a ridiculously bland James Bond villain but he was made for this kind of role.  It’s not an action role, but something that plays upon his intelligence and he conveys that intelligence in an impeccable way.  He controls the situation in every instance.  When he is able to discover why the Jackal has been able to stay one step ahead (the mistress of one of the ministers is an informant) and he finds it out he is asked how he knew which phone to tap and just like in the book, he replies, with casual ease “I didn’t, so last night I tapped all your telephones.  Good day, gentlemen.”  He is also helped by a very able assistant played by a young Derek Jacobi before he was well known to anyone other than the patrons of the English theater.

It’s always tricky to make a film that you know can only have one result.  If you make a prequel about characters that are in the first film, you know they have to survive (and the ones who weren’t in it usually won’t) and it robs the film of suspense.  In a film that deals with real characters, there are only so many ways things can go.  But there are still ways to ratchet up the suspense (Argo is another great example).  Zinnemann had grown up in the studio system, learning how to direct by seeing all of Hollywood working together and he knew how to put together a film.  This wouldn’t be the film that would earn him a seventh Oscar nomination (that would be Julia, which isn’t nearly as good a film) but it made it clear that even with seven years off between films and working in a genre he hadn’t touched since the 40’s he had lost none of his ability.

The Source:

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth  (1971)

This is among the myriad of books I used to own, especially genre books, which I used to have a lot more of.  I read it once and found it enjoyable but I didn’t think I was likely to read it again and over the years, space considerations has prompted me to sell thousands of books (not an exaggeration).  So, this time I had to get a copy from the library and instead of an pulp paperback (which I liked), I got a new trade edition which has a little introduction from Forsyth about how he never really wanted to be a writer.  Given that I have always wanted to be a writer, that made me less inclined towards the book.  So, it’s to the book’s credit that I still found myself rather enthralled by it, especially since not only had I read it before but I had seen the film at least four or five times.  It does mean I’m much less likely to read any of Forsyth’s other books (I also used to own The Fourth Protocol because I had liked the film) but this book still stands up well.

This is the story of a fictional assassination plot against Charles de Gaulle in 1963, not long after a real assassination attempt against him the year before (which is detailed in the first chapter of the book).  Since de Gaulle obviously wasn’t assassinated so we know the plot must fail (something which prompted several publishers to turn down the book), it’s to Forsyth’s credit that we keep reading because he does such a good job detailing the plot, the intricate machinations of the Jackal, the mysterious killer (even more mysterious than we realize when we get to the end) and then the attempts of Lebel, the brilliant French police detective to stop the plot in time.  The book is broken down into three parts, the first focusing almost entirely on the Jackal (Anatomy of a Plot), the second focusing more on Lebel without leaving the Jackal behind (Anatomy of a Manhunt) and the third the final race against time to either kill or save de Gaulle (Anatomy of a Kill).

The Adaptation:

Ironically I watched and read this immediately after doing the same for Silence of the Lambs, another thriller that rises above its genre (even more so than this one as a book and a film) and another thriller that is remarkably faithful to the source novel.  The film and the novel aren’t identical – the film brings in Lebel much earlier and has him on the case while we’re almost halfway done with the book before we meet him and the scenes involving the Baronness have some real differences (including her being interviewed by the police beforehand and him having a car crash instead of deliberately leaving his car behind) and there are some minor changes (like the gay man he is staying with being in the flat when he sees the Jackal on television as opposed to seeing him and returning back to the flat to tell him) – but this is a remarkably faithful adaptation.  A great majority of the dialogue comes straight from the book including those last few lines that really make you wonder how much you have actually known about the Jackal.

The Credits:

directed by Fred Zinnemann.  from the book by Frederick Forsyth.  screenplay by Kenneth Ross.
note:  Credits from the end credits.  The only credits from the opening titles are Fred Zinnemann’s film of The Day of the Jackal and the Forsyth credit.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The Film:

I have already reviewed this film as my under-appreciated film of 1973.  I already countered your arguments that the film is not under-appreciated, devoting an entire paragraph to it in my review of the film.  The first time I saw it, of course, I was living in Boston.  This time I am no longer living in Boston and it’s a nice reminder of the violence and ugliness that really mar a city I love quite a lot.  I would also like to say that, aside from a great performance from Robert Mitchum, this film has a solid performance from one of my favorite under-appreciated actors, Richard Jordan.  If you have never seen this film, it’s definitely one you need to see.

The Source:

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins  (1971)

“Let’s start with the title, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.  Eddie Coyle has no friends.  Eddie barely has acquaintances.  Eddie Coyle is our hopeless, helpless, hapless Everyman in the Boston criminal underworld of 1970.”  That’s Dennis Lehane writing in the introduction to the 40th Anniversary Edition of the novel.  He’s well suited to write the introduction, of course, and I would not be surprised if this book was a massive influence on his own writing (which I actually mentioned in my review of the film).  Lehane’s books are much thicker, filled with much more overflowing detail and characters than this sparse book that runs only 173 pages and doesn’t give us much in the way of characters outside of Eddie himself.  Oh, there are other people involved, but we really only see glimpses of them, the same kind of glimpses that Eddie sees as he tries to negotiate through a life that involves him illegally procuring guns while trying to sell people out to the Feds and trying to get the Feds to help get him out of the jail sentence he has to go up to New Hampshire to find about soon.  If this novel won’t eventually appear on the endlist of Novels That Were a Joy to Discover, that’s because I actually read the book back when I originally saw the film.

The Adaptation:

Going back to the novel after watching the film again, I realized that the description of the characters is fairly minimal.  It never describes much about Jackie Brown, the gun seller but for some reason my mind was thinking he would be black which I think is only because of the character of Jackie Brown in the Tarantino film.  But Brown is written in the film exactly how he is on the page.  The biggest change from the book to the film in my mind is that when Jackie is arrested after trying to sell machine guns to the young terrorists, in the book, Foley just taps on the window and arrests him but in the film they gave it some action (which makes sense given that, for a Crime film, the film is actually surprisingly absent of action) by having Jackie try to flee.  Other than that, it’s really quite a faithful adaptation of the original novel.

The Credits:

Directed by Peter Yates.  Based on the Novel by George V. Higgins.  Screenplay: Paul Monash.

Don’t Look Now

The Film:

“Red, for me, represents the interior of the soul.”  Ingmar Bergman said that, talking specifically about Cries and Whispers, which is my #1 film of 1973.  It could have also been talking about this film, because when we see red on the screen, horrible events are about to happen that will reduce people to the bare basics of their souls.

Horrible events sadly abound in this film.  It begins with children playing out in the garden of a British country house, but then the young girl somehow ends up drowning in the pond and the father, played by Donald Sutherland in one of his best performances, comes rushing out and pulls her out.  Set against that are scenes of the mother, played by Julie Christie (I don’t say it’s one of her best performances only because of her amazing work in Darling and Away from Her), who doesn’t yet know what is going on outside.  These counterpoints will be returned to later in the film when the couple, attempting to come to terms with their grief, are in Venice for him to do work.  This is the stage for what might be the greatest sex scene ever put on film.  It is tender and intimate (a rare moment in mainstream film, especially this early, for oral sex on a female).  Yet, intercut with shots of their lovemaking are shots of them afterwards, dressing for dinner.  Time becomes one, and what was done partially to evade the censors (they were told there could be no thrusting, and because of the intercutting, we never do so any thrusting) makes it clear how love and pain and duty all come together in the end.

Soon after the sex comes a red coat.  It is a child’s coat, the same type of coat that their daughter was wearing when she drowned in the pond.  Christie’s character doesn’t see it, but she has been told by a pair of psychic sisters that their daughter is trying to send them a message.  Sutherland, who pulled his daughter from the pond, does see it, and unbeknownst to himself (but the sisters know) is that he himself has psychic abilities.  This will come into play soon afterwards when their son is hurt in an accident and his wife returns to England.  Just after she is gone, he sees his wife and the sisters.  He doesn’t know how he could possibly be seeing this, and really, he’s not.  But, sadly, that vision will set in motion the tragic events that engulf the end of the film.

What is this film?  Is it a suspense thriller?  Is it a family drama of pain and grief and love that survives it (most love does not survive such an event).  Is it a supernatural horror film?  Perhaps it is all of these, and with exquisite cinematography and editing that is among the most carefully crafted in film history, Nicolas Roeg creates one of the most unforgettable films ever made, certainly one far better than any other he would ever make.

The Source:

“Don’t Look Now” by Daphne Du Maurier (1971)

This is an effective and creepy story.  It’s the story of a man and woman vacationing in Venice after having lost a child.  In the midst of this, two women take an interest in them, one of them supposedly psychic.  Suddenly, strange events start happening – their son falls sick, they are warned that they are in danger if they stay in Venice, the man sees a vision of his wife on a funeral boat after she has gone back to London to be with their son.  All of this would just be a strange little story if not for the horrifying ending, when the man follows a child, only to have her suddenly turn around: “He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear. It was a not a child at all, but a thick-set woman dwarf, about three feet high, with a great square adult head too big for her body, grey locks hanging shoulder-length, and she wasn’t sobbing any more, she was grinning at him, nodding her head up and down.”  That’s the end for him, a knife suddenly thrown through the air, piercing his throat and it concludes with him thinking to himself “What a bloody silly way to die.”  Du Maurier manages to crank up the tension and the horror, though I can’t imagine she would have a notion of how Roeg would crank it up even more.

The Adaptation:

The first, and probably most important difference is in the death of the child.  In the film she drowns, the kind of accident where, even though the parents weren’t around, you know they feel the weight of responsibility.  In the book she dies of meningitis.  They also change the reason to go back home (instead of appendicitis, it is now an accident).  The couple are in Venice because he is actually working.  But, aside from the manner of death, the most important detail that changed is the red coat.  In the story, it is the wife who is wearing the red coat (it’s an important detail when he spots her on the funeral boat) rather than the daughter (the story begins in Venice with her already dead) and the dwarf, that rather ethereal connection between the two of them.

The Credits:

Directed by Nicolas Roeg.  from a story by Daphne Du Maurier.  Screenplay by Alan Scott and Chris Bryant.

Paper Moon

The Film:

My family is not particularly inclined towards the O’Neals.  My father hasn’t particularly liked Ryan since he was in the seventh grade and Ryan was in the ninth and he beat up my dad to impress a girl.  I have never been a fan because that incident proved he was a bully and because he starred in Love Story.  My sister used to have a grudge against Tatum because she was married to one of her big childhood crushes (John McEnroe).  Given all of this, which was well established long before I ever saw the film Paper Moon, it’s a measure of how good and entertaining it is that not only have I always really liked it but can sit back and enjoy how good both O’Neals are playing a con man and daughter team moving across the Midwest, conning old women out of their meager savings in the middle of the Depression.

This film has an interesting dichotomy at its core.  First of all, there is death and mourning and loss.  The first shot of the film after the credits is of a grave with dirt being poured into it.  Standing by the grave is young Addie, whose mother is in that grave.  Soon after, she will be placed in the hands of Moses Pray, who might be her father, but might not and certainly doesn’t want to admit to the possibility either way.  Moses takes in some money meant for her ($200) and is intending to send her off to some distant relatives.  But she’s not having any of it.  She’s either going to stay with him or she’s going to get her $200.  Her insistence is so persistent and voiced in such a way that I thought that Savage Steve Holland must have gotten the idea for the psychotic paperboy who wants his two dollars in Better Off Dead from watching this film but it turns out that was based on a real paperboy.  Still, you see the determination in her eyes and it’s no wonder she would go on to win the Oscar.  Would you look at her and not vote for her?

So Moses is stuck with her.  That can be awkward when your main job is going to recently widowed women (he finds them by looking in the obituaries), embossing their names on Bibles and convincing them that their late husbands ordered it for them before they died.  It doesn’t take long for Addie to figure out what he’s doing.  What’s surprising is how good she turns out to be at it when she decides she’s going to get into the game.  That’s most of the first half of the film, Moses and Addie working as a team, annoying each other but also realizing how well they work together (there’s a great long shot in a car when Moses is talking about putting her on a train and sending her off again and it becomes a conversation about where there is a train and then which towns are before then and then how they could get some good business going in those towns and before the shot is over, they’re just heading towards lunch before continuing on with their business and any talk of sending Addie off is forgotten).

The second half of the film settles down more, focusing on two specific parts.  The first part is when they get off the road for a bit because Moses has been taken in by Miss Trixie Delight (played wonderfully in an Oscar nominated performance from Madeline Kahn) and how Addie must scheme to try and get rid of Trixie and the second part involves a scheme where they rob a bootlegger only to discover that this bootlegger is also the sheriff’s brother and it will have larger repercussions for both of them.

As I said, there’s an interesting dichotomy at the heart of the film.  It’s a black and white film, it’s taking place in the heart of the Depression, it starts off with a funeral and there are all the hard working people that they are ripping off from their few available dollars.  But, on the other hand, it’s a rather dark Comedy and we can’t help but be sucked in by the slickness of Moses, the supposed (but actually nonexistent) innocence of Addie and the magnificent performances from both of them.  It’s a sure bet that neither one of them had ever or would ever give another performance anywhere near this good.  In a year where Comedies rose to the top of the pile, where The Sting won Best Picture, it’s a surprise that this film, from a director who had just been Oscar nominated two years before, wouldn’t rise with it, especially given its Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (not my choice but a good one) and nomination for Adapted Screenplay, instead getting pushed out in favor of the vastly inferior A Touch of Class.

The Source:

Addie Pray: a novel by Joe David Brown  (1971)

This is a charming, entertaining novel about a young teen (Addie) whose mother dies and ends up on the road with a man who might be her father (there were two other possibilities as well).  It turns out the man is a con man and his speciality is conning widows that their recently deceased husbands ordered them a special high-priced Bible, an interesting ploy in the middle of the Depression.  It’s a charming book and well-written with a convincing first person voice from young Addie herself.  Like so many books that received a new title when adapted to film, it was later reissued under the film’s title, so you may say it advertised like that and to be frank, Paper Moon is a better title (supposedly Orson Welles told Bogdanovich it was such a good title that he didn’t even need to make the film but just release the title).

The Adaptation:

There are a few differences between the book and the film, such as Addie’s age (reduced so that Tatum O’Neal could play the role) and the location (the book takes place mostly in Alabama and Georgia while the film moves the action to Kansas and Missouri).

There is one considerable difference, though.  The book is 313 pages long.  The actions of the film cover, fairly faithfully (with the exceptions listed above) until page 145 and then the film ends (with a natural and satisfying conclusion).  You could easily release a version of the book that only runs eight chapters instead of sixteen and you would think that the film covered the book without knowing that there is a whole second half of the book that involves learning to run bigger, longer cons and getting Addie set up with a family that takes her in (also more long cons).  I wonder if Brown had read The Grifters, which was published eight years before, and thought more about getting the characters into the long cons because it’s similar to the progression that Roy Dillon makes in that novel.

The Credits:

Directed and Produced by Peter Bogdanovich.  Based on the novel, “Addie Pray,” by Joe David Brown.  Screenplay by Alvin Sargent.

The Last Detail

The Film:

After the Oscars, when he had lost to Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson was upset, feeling that The Last Detail had been his best role so far, wondering how often a role like that comes along.  Well, Jack had nothing to worry about.  He had already done a couple of roles for which he would be more remembered than for this one (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces) and the next couple of years would bring two more that he would be more remembered for (Chinatown, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and would finally bring him that Oscar in his fifth nomination.  Today, when we think of Jack Nicholson as one of the most honored actors in history with his three Oscars, do we think about how it took him five nominations before he actually won the Oscar?  And does anyone think of The Last Detail as his best role?

I actually ranked Nicholson 4th in this year for Best Actor with all three of the people above him having been nominated as well (Brando, Pacino, Lemmon).  Of course, this is a really strong year for Best Actor and the Academy noticed that for once, getting it mostly right.  And this is a strong role for Jack as a sailor who is tasked with taking a young kleptomaniac from Washington to Portsmouth so he can begin eight long years in the brig because he tried to steal $40 from a Polio fund that was the base commander’s wife pet charity.  The film itself is also quite good as is thought of as one of those films that got made in the 70’s because the studios were willing to take more chances.  After all, it involves three big names that were part of that explosion of talent and independence in the decade: Nicholson, writer Robert Towne and director Hal Ashby.

While there are two other main roles in the film, Otis Young as the other sailor given the task and Randy Quaid, young and dumb and goofy as the stupid kid who can’t help but steal and has thrown away his youth because of it (Quaid was Oscar nominated and is strong but got bumped all the way down to 11th on my list in this very strong year) but the film is rightfully Nicholson’s.  In fact, without Nicholson’s star power championing the script the film never even would have been made which brings me to Towne.  Towne had read the book and turned it into a script full to the brim with profanity (supposedly more uses of the word “fuck” than had ever been put on screen before) and when asked to tone it down refused because he said that this was how people who had no power spoke.  That the script was made at all was something that never would have happened before this point, of course, but that the script also earned Towne an Oscar nomination (it is true that it’s down here in 7th but there is very little difference on this list between 4th and 7th) says something about the Academy in this time period.  Then there is also Ashby.  Hal Ashby is a director who is almost perfectly emblematic of the decade, making a serious of very independent (in the stylistic sense, not the studio sense) films that managed to find both critical and commercial acclaim.  Ashby was actually going to be turned down by the studio but Towne and Nicholson stood by him (and again after he was arrested for marijuana possession in Canada while scouting locations).

What is perhaps most interesting about this film is deciding precisely what it is.  On the surface it might be appear to be a Drama with the serious aspect of two sailors having to drag another one to jail and it deals with some serious moments, such as the three of them fighting some army men in a bathroom, getting denied service in a bar and Nicholson applying a severe beating to Quaid when he tries to run at the end of the film.  But there are a lot of comedic moments as well, such as their drunken ramblings in a hotel room or getting Quaid laid at a brothel before he is thrown in the brig.  It is an interesting mixture of comedy and drama.  It is very much a film of its time and there is everything right with that.

The Source:

The Last Detail by Daryl Ponicsan  (1970)

This is the second Ponicsan novel I have read (the first is actually down below) and I was a bit more impressed with this, which was his first novel, than I was by Cinderella Liberty which was his fourth (if it makes him appear quite prolific that he would publish two books in three years between the two, I should point out that these books are very short).  Ponicsan had been in the Navy, which is no surprise to anyone who reads either book and I suspect he deems himself of an intellectual bent who ended up there kind of by accident because that’s how he writes the main character in both books (Buddusky in the book reads quite a lot and is reading The Stranger when we first meet him, though you have to learn that by clues as the title is never flat out said).  There’s not that much to the book and it ends kind of awkwardly in an altercation that I don’t think is really borne out by the actions that came before.  Given a choice, I would say watch the film and forget the book.

The Adaptation:

“‘I didn’t want Buddusky and Mulhall to feel overly guilty about transporting Meadows to jail,’ [Robert Towne] explained. ‘I wanted to imply that we’re all lifers in the Navy, and everybody hides behind a job, whether it’s massacring in My Lai, or taking a kid to jail.'” (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind, p 174)  Towne does do that a bit, less in the journey itself than in the way it ends.  In the book, the two of them are so disgusted by what they have done that they actually go AWOL, throwing their guns in a mailbox (after trying to pawn them) and then getting into a fight with the M.P.’s that come to get them and Buddusky is actually killed in the fight which is one hell of a down note to go out on.  It is a reminder that the book really has a lot less humor than the film does and that’s all thanks to Towne’s script.

Along the way there are a number of other changes.  In the book, the mother of the imprisoned sailor is actually home and they have a visit with her.  Later, in New York City they run in to Buddusky’s ex-wife.  Towne cut those and created his own other scenes in place.  But, of course, the main difference is the ending.  Towne essentially chops off the book on page 144 and drops the remaining thirty pages and the film is better off for it.

The Credits:

directed by hal ashby.  screenplay by Robert Towne.  based on the novel The Last Detail by Darryl Ponicsan.
note:  The source credit is only in the end titles.

A Doll’s House

The Film:

First of all, you have to know which A Doll’s House.  Even though it has long been acclaimed one of the stage’s great plays, there had not been an English language film of Ibsen’s play since the Silent Era.  Then, suddenly, in 1973, came two different film versions.  The British version was directed by Joseph Losey and starred Jane Fonda and David Warner.  Since it was a film version, I list it on the list at the bottom even though in the U.S. it only ended up on television instead of in theaters (except for the New York Film Festival).  Then there is the Patrick Garland version.  Certainly Garland, who spent most of his career doing stage work is much less known than Losey.  Also, star Claire Bloom isn’t nearly as well known or as highly regarded as Jane Fonda.  But this version was written by a young Christopher Hampton (it’s unclear if Hampton actually translated it though he did translate many French plays later in his career) and Bloom would become so identified with the role that when she later write a memoir she would title it Leaving a Doll’s House.

Ironically, even though this version has Anthony Hopkins in a key role, he doesn’t actually add much to the film.  The real strengths in this film lie in Bloom’s performance (deeper, more nuanced than Fonda’s, which is odd since Fonda is so much better an actress) and in the supporting performance from Denholm Elliot, who, of course, is the consummate supporting actor as I wrote about here.  Or perhaps it’s not so surprising that Hopkins isn’t as strong because he plays such a weak character.  It’s really the interplay between Bloom and Elliot and then Bloom and Ralph Richardson that makes the film because it is those scenes that make the play.

For anyone who has never managed to read A Doll’s House, well I’ll save the admonitions for the next part, and suffice to give you a summary.  Nora and Torvald Helmer seem to be a happy couple.  They have three children, they clearly seem to adore each other and they are planning a trip away, partially for Torvald’s health, which has suffered recently.  They then get some visitors and what happens with each of the visitors will tear their happiness to shreds.  It is a story very much of its time, as it will turn out that Nora borrowed money when Torvald was sick and she did by forging a signature.  It will not be the act itself that causes the downfall of the marriage but the way that Torvald responds to it.  Throughout the play, Nora is trying to keep this information hidden, dealing with Elliot (who knows about the forgery and is trying to use it to blackmail her into keeping Torvald from firing him), Dr. Rank (a good Richardson trying to balance his own emotions for Nora with the knowledge that he is dying) and Christine (a good Anna Massey), the woman who once loved Elliot and is an old friend of Nora’s.

What the film does, just like the play, is get at the heart of how people feel for each other.  What matters more, your appearances or your love?  Your family or your duty?  What you did or why you did it?  All of these are questions that different people in the film have firm beliefs on and they aren’t always the same answer.

Patrick Garland wasn’t really a film director.  He directs the film much more like it’s a play.  But, getting a career best performance out of Bloom as well as being able to rely on the first-rate play itself as well as having a timely theme (there is a strong theme of feminist empowerment that comes through at the conclusion of the play at the same time that ERA was still being voted upon) he does provide a satisfactory film version of one of the stage’s great plays.

The Source:

Et dukkehjem by Henrik Ibsen  (1879)

I first read this play in high school.  It was easy to see how brilliant it was, how the characters were all fully formed but all had their own views on right and wrong and doing what they would or could do to survive and to thrive.  It was also easy to see how daring the play was.  Hell, when I first read it in 1991 it still seemed like a daring statement to make, the strong ending where Nora finds the will to do what she must, knowing what she now does about her marriage and her husband.  There was another ending that was forced upon Ibsen for the German production of the play which he loathed and which has almost never been used in which Torvald forces Nora to look at their children asleep in their beds and she relents.  It’s a terrible ending that doesn’t fit at all the woman that we have come to know over her time on stage.

I have never really done a list of the great plays of all-time in the way that I have for novels and films, perhaps because, while I see everything and read everything, I have never lived close enough to New York or London to really see enough new plays to get an idea of what the truly great stage works are.  Sure, there are some easy ones, like the best of Shakespeare, the major plays of O’Neill, Williams and Miller as well as certain plays that have risen above like Angels in America.  Suffice it to say that every time I have culled down the Drama section on my bookshelf (which is a lot), I have always made certain to keep a copy of Ibsen’s Plays.  Ibsen is one of the all-time great playwrights and while there is probably a considerable argument over whether A Doll’s House or Hedda Gabler is his best work, I am inclined more towards the former, perhaps because I find the ending to be stronger (and so much less depressing of course).

The Adaptation:

This is a fairly straight forward adaptation of the play and doesn’t even bother to really open it out, keeping the action pretty much confined to the Helmer household, just like in the original.

The Credits:

Directed by Patrick Garland.  Screenplay by Christopher Hampton.  Based on the Broadway Play, Produced by Hillard Elkins, Written by Christopher Hampton, Directed by Patrick Garland.
note:  The title Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is the only non-acting credit in the opening titles.

Consensus Nominee

 

The Paper Chase

The Film:

A young man is not prepared on his first day of law school.  There was advance reading which he did not do and when he is called on by the rather imperious professor, he doesn’t know what to do.  After the class, he runs to the bathroom and throws up.

This sounds like it should be the start of a good film, an interesting one.  But the sad thing is that, with the exception of the performance from John Houseman, who had long been known as a producer (he was a friend of Orson Welles and you should definitely watch Cary Elwes do a hilarious performance as him in The Cradle Will Rock) and was finally breaking into acting gives a first-rate performance, the film is mostly a drag.  He is the kind of man who just wants to pass his knowledge down and do it in such a way that it makes you feel as if you didn’t know anything, let alone anything that he wants to teach you.

But his is a supporting performance.  Yes, the film keeps coming back to that class, as if this poor student had no other classes during his first year in law school.  So we get a good enough amount of Houseman.  But we get far too much of other things, like the students panicking, like the pedantic romance between the student and a woman, who of course, turns out to be the daughter of the imperious professor in the first place.

Houseman won the Oscar, and while he doesn’t win the Nighthawk, he does easily earn a nomination.  It’s a great performance and it deserved its accolades.  But the film also somehow managed to earn a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination while films like The Day of the Jackal, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Don’t Look Now were overlooked (in the case of the last two, overlooked by the Academy completely).  The writing is just standard classroom drama mixed with standard romance drama.  It’s the performance that you want to watch the film for.

The Source:

The Paper Chase by John Jay Osborn, Jr. (1971)

As the author points out in a new 2003 introduction to the novel, this was wildly successful.  The novel spawned the film (which won an Oscar) and then a television series that was created for CBS and then revived by Showtime several years later (one of the first shows that Showtime ever did).  Yet, for all of its success, the book is neither very good nor all that substantial.  With sizable print and margins, the novel runs only 223 pages.  It covers the first year in law school for a student who’s kind of a pain, kind of a jerk and isn’t all that good at dealing with the other people around him.  Osborn wrote it after his first year at Harvard Law, the seminal year of 1969 when a lot of things were happening at Harvard (as he writes in the introduction).  The main interest is the contentious relationship that sort of develops between Hart (the main character) and Professor Kingsfield.  But the best moment in the book isn’t even part of the action of the book, it’s a little side bit about some rumor about something someone once said about the professor.  I suspect the book might have just been completely forgotten had not the film been made, and more specifically, had not John Houseman been so remarkable in the film.

The Adaptation:

“The movie, which follows the book almost line by line, won an Academy Award and is viewed every year in almost every law school in the United States.”  I suppose that might be true, but it doesn’t seem all that plausible.  The film just isn’t that good.  But that line, written by Osborn in the anniversary introduction to the novel, sums up the adaptation.  Basically, they put the novel up on screen.

Remarkably, the two most memorable moments in the film are both changes.  The moment of Hart going to puke in response to his first class isn’t in the book at all.  The part where he calls Kingsfield a son of a bitch is in the book, but it’s the moment I mentioned above, as a rumor about some student who supposedly said it to Kingsfield, not as something actually done by Hart in the book.

In the book, while Hart also throws his grades out the window, we never know what the grade was, while in the film, we at least know he got an A.

The Credits:

Directed by James Bridges.  Based upon the novel by John Jay Osborn, Jr.  Screenplay by James Bridges.

Multiple Nominations

 

Cinderella Liberty

The Film:

In 1973, Marsha Mason was nominated for an Oscar and actually won the Globe for her performance in this film in the same year that Liv Ullmann, giving one of the great all-time film performances in Cries and Whispers failed to even earn a nomination from either group.  Mason shouldn’t be blamed for it but that the voters were suckered in by this sentimental claptrap of a sailor and a prostitute and decided to reward it with anything is proof that just because a film earns awards doesn’t mean it’s really all that good.

Let’s look at what we have here.  First, we have James Caan.  He’s a sailor who is stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare.  His paperwork has been lost and as far as the Navy cares, he doesn’t really exist.  So he can leave the base until midnight but has to be back each night.  While away one night, he falls for a prostitute.  Well, really, he likes her, but he kind of falls for her poor kid, a half-black boy who is in desperate need of some dental work.  Caan is tired of the naval life and is looking for something more and so he embarks upon a romance that doesn’t really go anywhere.  Part of that is because of the script and part of is it that we don’t really care about the characters.  Mason is good and Caan is okay but that’s the only thing that draws us in because, honestly, they’re both just really annoying.  To add to all of this, there’s an old sailor played by Eli Wallach that Caan runs into who has been drummed out of the service and Caan thinks he can maybe solve a couple of problems in one go.

The film is described as a Drama (and was nominated as such at the Globes) but I always thought it was trying to be a romantic comedy and so I have always classified it as such.  Mason’s Globe win would have been much more acceptable if it had been in Comedy (and she actually win the Nighthawk for Comedy), not only because of Ullmann but also because of Ellen Burstyn’s magnificent performance in The Exorcist (which lost to Mason, which I can not for the life of me understand, especially since The Exorcist won Picture, Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actress at the Globes).

The Source:

Cinderella Liberty by Daryl Ponicsan (1973)

At the moment that I write this review (for the second time, mostly from memory), I have not yet read The Last Detail (whose review will be up above).  So I don’t know if just don’t think much of Ponicsan as a writer or if it’s just this book.  This is the story of a Naval sailor who, after some medical issues, finds his files lost and ends up in a red tape nightmare.  He will meet a prostitute and then fall for her and become a father figure to her kids (who he actually seems to like more).  He wants to leave the Navy and is able to do so partially because of the red tape and partially because he finds the old C.O. he’s been wanting to beat to a pulp for years and lets him rejoin the Navy in his place.  That’s just one of the ridiculous things about the novel (like the way the sailor was supposedly a divinity school drop-out but doesn’t speak or act in any way like an educated man, let alone a formerly religious educated man).  None of the characters are very interesting and the plot just goes over the top and there’s no question I never would have finished the book if not for the project.

The Adaptation:

If you’ve read the two bits above, the main thing you will notice is that in the book there are two kids while in the film they reduced it to one (probably a wise move).  The other major changes are that in the film we are introduced to him after he’s in Seattle and dealing with his issues while in the book we meet him long before that and get a full description of how he ends up in this trouble as well as the former C.O. he’s been looking for.  It’s actually kind of amazing how they managed to film an almost two hour movie from a book that wasn’t that long to begin with and which they chopped the first 50 pages out of.

The Credits:

Produced and Directed by Mark Rydell.  Screenplay by Darryl Ponicsan.  Based on his novel Cinderella Liberty.

WGA Nominees

40 Carats

The Film:

Liv Ullmann is one of the greatest actresses to ever appear on film.  She was never better than she was in the 70’s, dominating the decade with six Nighthawk nominations and earning the Nighthawk itself in 1973.  Whether you want to count the film that qualifies for the Nighthawk in 1973 (Cries and Whispers) or the one that was actually released in Sweden in 1973 (Scenes from a Marriage), she was phenomenal.  Unfortunately, because of some truly terrible casting, she was also the star of two of the worst films of the year.  It’s not that Ullmann can’t act in English (she can), it’s not that she can’t be in a Comedy (though it’s not her forte), but casting her in this stupid film was almost as dumb as casting her as the lead in the musical Lost Horizon (and she can’t sing, so there are limits to her abilities).

You can have film stars be in all sorts of roles but sometimes you have to find the right ones and in those cases, looks can matter (at least somewhat).  My Fair Lady was never as effective a film as it could have been with Julie Andrews because Audrey Hepburn just isn’t a guttersnipe.  Andrews, who could also be beautiful and sexy, could also be a guttersnipe.  Ullmann, a gorgeous actress, can play an average woman.  But it’s ridiculous to ask her to play a 40 year old woman who is so insecure that she will lie about her age on multiple occasions and will become completely flustered when a 22 year old man falls for her.  Of course a 22 year old man would fall for her.  She’s Liv Ullmann!  Roger Ebert nails this one right: “It is simply not possible to accept her as a conservative 40 year-old woman, uncertain of her attractiveness and shy about accepting love.”  It’s not that Liv Ullmann can’t play the part, but we can’t accept her in the part.

It might have been easier to take the film as a whole even with Ullmann miscast if not for the other terrible casting job in the film and that’s choosing Edward Albert as the young man who is so infatuated with her (he claims he’s in love with her but he doesn’t seem to put enough thought into anything to be able to really make that claim).  In my review of Butterflies are Free for the previous post in this series I described Albert as “Stephen Collins if he were more bland”.  After his bland, boring performance in Butterflies, what made anyone think he could be an interest for Ullman?  Well, re-reading that review, I noticed that the film (and original play) of Butterflies was written by Leonard Gershe, a name that sounded familiar because he wrote this terrible film.

There is an odd little bit of tragedy when it comes to this film.  There is a charming performance by Deborah Raffin as Liv’s daughter (who initially thinks Albert is after her but he’s just using her to get to her mother – classy guy), a pretty, young actress who didn’t make a lot of films and there is a ridiculous subplot about a man Liv’s age who it turns out is after the daughter.  The tragic part is that Liv, the 40 year old in the film (35 when it was filmed), is still going strong at 79 while Albert and Raffin have both been dead for years, neither making it out of their 50’s.  I should also mention a decent performance from Gene Kelly, namely because it was his first film performance in six years and he only took the job because he wanted to act opposite Ullman (he plays her fading television star ex-husband).  The sad thing there is that he only made two more films after this one and both of those were actually worse than this one (Viva Knievel and Xanadu).

The Source:

Forty Carats: A Comedy in Two Acts, Adapted by Jay Allen from a play by Barillet and Gredy (1969)

This play, which was a hit on stage, was based on an original French play from the team of Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy, the same play-writing team that had written the original French play that became Cactus Flower (and was directed on Broadway by Abe Burrows who had directed and adapted Cactus Flower).  The play itself is not terrible and when it was originally produced on stage it starred Julie Harris who is much more believable as a woman who would lie about her age and might not believe that a young man would fall in love with her.  That’s not a knock on Julie Harris any more than it’s a knock on Julie Andrews to say that she can realistically play a guttersnipe.  It’s just that Harris isn’t Liv Ullman.  There’s still not a lot of realism in the play.

The Adaptation:

Most of the film follows closely to the play except two things which Roger Ebert notes, though if you just read his description you might be confused about what was changed.  In the original play, when Ullman’s character meets the parents of her young lover, the father is exceedingly nasty while in the film he is a bit more manipulative and not as awful (Ebert’s description here is confusing).  As for the ending, well, she is still planning to go after and marry her young man but in the film, since they had a budget and locations to use, they are actually back in Greece where they met so that they can give you a beautiful visual to counteract the stupidity of the whole film.

The Credits:

Directed by Milton Katselas.  Stage Play Adapted by Jay Allen from a Play by Barillet & Gredy.  Screenplay by Leonard Gershe.

Godspell: A musical based on the Gospel according to St. Matthew

The Film:

Roger Ebert and I don’t always agree.  In fact, when I first started watching Siskel and Ebert I almost always sided with Siskel over Ebert though I would learn later that Ebert was the much more serious writer.  For instance, he gave four stars to Bang the Drum Slowly, a film I mentioned at the top of the post as being knocked off the list when I watched it again and decided that the writing wasn’t up to the level I thought necessary to be on the list.  Now here is Godspell, another film which Ebert rated it at four stars.  But, if I thought Bang the Drum Slowly was a bit trite with subpar writing, I find Godspell to be a smarmy obnoxious slice of hippie ridiculousness.  In his review, Ebert mentions “Remember “West Side Story,” where all the allegedly teenage dancers looked like hardened theatrical professionals in greaser wigs? “Godspell’s” cast is not only young but is allowed to look like a collection of individuals. These could conceivably be real people, and their freshness helps put the material over even when it seems pretty obvious.”  I prefer to think of it that West Side Story cast actual actors in its film that were taught to sing and dance (or taught to dance and had their singing dubbed).  Their acting was phenomenal.  This is is a bunch of rank amateurs parading around New York City patronizingly teaching the Gospel through hippie parables without an ounce of acting talent among them except for Victor Garber and Garber survives much more on his singing talent than his acting here.

This film reminds me of my uncle and I see by clicking on his own review of the film through the IMDb that he gave it a 7 both for Education and for Entertainment, because, yes, he’s the type of person who rates things for those values.  My uncle has long been interested in Jesus, not as a messiah, but as a teacher of peace and love.  I would think Godspell would be absolutely up his alley but maybe even he could see that the songs aren’t actually all that good and the acting, direction, editing, almost everything about the film leaves a lot to be desired.

Now, here is where we get into the religion aspect.  Do I have no use for this musical because of its content?  Well, no, and that’s where I want to bring up another musical that made the leap to the screen in 1973 that also had Jesus as a leading character.  Other than those two things, there is almost nothing in common between Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar.  The latter story tells the actual story of Christ and does deal with the issue of whether he is the messiah.  Godspell couldn’t care less – it just wants to spread his message of peace and love.  But that’s actually exactly what I can’t stand about Godspell; it’s just a preacher’s lesson put into different form and not even a particularly entertaining one.  Now, Jesus Christ Superstar is a vastly flawed film as I mention below because Norman Jewison made some disastrous directing decisions.  But as a musical, I absolutely love it (we’ll see if this post goes up before the Emmys and we see whether John Legend earns his EGOT and the only issue I would have with that is that Judas is clearly the leading role and they nominated Brandon Victor Dixon, who was amazing as Burr when I saw him on stage in Hamilton in supporting and that version was fantastic, everything Jewison’s wasn’t – note on that – it didn’t make it up before the Emmys and Legend did win an Emmy and get his EGOT but not for acting) and that’s the one that deals much more with religion.  So I refuse to accept that I hate Godspell because it’s about Christ.  I hate it because it’s not about Christ, but is just a pandering, annoying way to beat us over his head with his message by using subpar songs and a total lack of acting.

The Source:

Godspell: A Musical Based Upon the Gospel According to St. Matthew, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by John-Michael Tebelak  (1971)

Would I hate the play on stage as much as I hate the film?  I would think so.  I don’t much care for the songs and it’s the way they are trying to get the message across, which might work really well for some people, that turns me off.  I know there are people who love this but I couldn’t remember a single song as soon as the film was over.  Some may say the same about Andrew Lloyd Webber, so it’s all a matter of personal preference.

The Adaptation:

This is one of the ones I am going to punt a bit to the Wikipedia page.  There are people who are crazy about Broadway musicals (technically this was an Off-Broadway musical, but for the purposes of this comment, that’s not relevant) and they like to write on the various Wikipedia pages for the film versions all the various changes between the stage and screen.  So, here you go.

The Credits:

Directed by David Greene.  Screenplay by David Greene and John-Michael Tebelak.  Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.
note:  There are no opening credits other than the title.

Other Adaptations

(in descending order of how good the film is)

• Battles Without Honour and Humanity  –  A very good Japanese gangster film, the first of a series by Kinju Fukasaku.  Based on a series of newspaper articles about a Yakuza conflict in post-war Hiroshima.
• Charley Varrick  –  Solid Crime film, a top-level *** film with a solid performance from Walter Matthau for which he co-won the BAFTA (with his performance in Pete ‘n Tillie).  Based on the novel The Looters.
• The Iceman Cometh  –  The short-lived American Film Theatre made 13 films over the course of three years out of significant plays.  This was the first and possibly the best, starring a fantastic cast (Lee Marvin as well as the last film performances of both Fredric March and Robert Ryan) in an adaptation of the great O’Neill play.
• The Adversary  –  Good Satyajit Ray Drama from the novel by Sunil Gangopadhyay.  A 1970 film.
• The Hourglass Sanatorium  –  Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes with a smuggled print because Polish authorities wouldn’t let director Wojciech Has submit it.  An adaptation of the classic Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schultz which I read as part of the Writers from the Other Europe series published by Penguin thanks to Philip Roth as well as other Schultz stories.
• Papillon  –  I always want this to be slightly better and be a contender for Best Picture at least because it stars Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman but it’s just a high *** with good performances from both and a fantastic Oscar-nominated score from Jerry Goldsmith.  Based on the memoir by the real Papillon, Henri Charrière and remade in 2017 which I doubt I will bother to see since this time it stars Charlie Hunnam.
• Bang the Drum Slowly  –  As mentioned at the top of the post, originally on my list but cut after I re-watched it and decided the writing wasn’t good enough.  Based on the novel by Mark Harris, which is okay, but certainly not a baseball classic like it’s purported to be.  The other film aside from Mean Streets that helped make Robert De Niro a breakout star in 1973.
• Charlotte’s Web  –  A solid Hanna-Barbera adaptation of the classic kids book (which I didn’t read until I was a senior in high school).
• The New Land  –  The sequel to The Emigrants, which was reviewed in 1972 and using the last two books in the series (see that review).
• Le Samourai  –  One of those films that I want to think more highly of than I do.  Widely considered a classic but just high *** on my list.  Jean-Pierre Melville Crime film with Alain Delon based on the novel The Ronin by Joan McLeod though the film doesn’t credit it.
• The Dawns Here are Quiet  –  A 1972 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, a Soviet War film based on the novel by Boris Vasilyev.
• Two English Girls  –  A 1971 Truffaut Drama based on the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, whose only other novel Jules and Jim, had already been filmed by Truffaut.
• A River Called Titas  –  An Indian Drama, mid-***, based on the novel by Titash Ekti Nadir Naam.
• Late Autumn  –  One of multiple Ozu films that made it to the States in the 70’s and the rare one that is actually adapted, in this case from a story by Ton Satomi.
• Days and Nights in the Forest  –  A second adaptation of a Sunil Gangopadhyay novel directed by Satyajit Ray.
• Robin Hood –  I ranked this at #33 of the first 50 Disney Animated Films.  I always hope it will be better, the Robin Hood legend told with anthropomorphic animals but other than the song “Oo-Ded-Lally” it’s not really that great.
• A Delicate Balance  –  The third of the American Theatre series (the second is below), this one is based on the Edward Albee Pulitzer winning play.
• A Doll’s House  –  This is the Jane Fonda version mentioned in the review of the Claire Booth version above.  A better director and actress but because it was British and because of the other film version, it played on ABC instead, though it was made for theaters and did play the New York Film Festival which is why I include it.
• The Offence  –  Sidney Lumet Drama with Sean Connery that is based on the play This Story of Yours.
• The Hireling  –  After the success of The Go-Between, another L.P. Hartley novel is adapted.
• The Spider’s Stratagem  –  A 1970 Bertolucci film getting a U.S. release.  Based on the Borges story “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero”.
• Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me  –  Another Truffaut Drama, this one based on the novel by Henry Farrell.
• The Priest and the Girl  –  A prominent 1965 Brazilian film that is adapted from the poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
• Love  –  A Hungarian Drama submitted for Best Foreign Film in 1971.  Based on two short stories by Tibor Déry.
• Family Life  –  A rare adaptation from Ken Loach but only in that it’s based on a BBC production that Loach had done four years earlier.
• Four Nights of a Dreamer  –  Robert Bresson gives his version of Dostoevsky’s “White Nights”.  As with most Bresson, it doesn’t really work for me.
• The Last American Hero  –  The best thing about this film is the song “I Got a Name” that Jim Croce wrote for it which the Oscars long-listed but didn’t nominate because they’re a bunch of idiots.  This story of race car driver Junior Johnson, played by Jeff Bridges, was based on an Esquire article by Tom Wolfe.
• Her Third  –  One of the rare Oscar submissions from East Germany, this was based on a short story by Eberhard Panitz.
• Hunting Scenes from Bavaria  –  The West German Oscar submission from 1969, this Drama is based on the play by Martin Sperr.  We’re into low *** now.
• Live and Let Die  –  Roger Moore takes over as Bond with mixed results.  I ranked it at #18 among the Bond films and you can read the full review here.
• Soylent Green  –  Well known to even those who haven’t seen it (except my sister) for the famous line “Soylent Green is people!”, this Sci-Fi dystopia was adapted from the novel Make Room! Make Room!, though there is no cannibalism in the original.
• Lady Snowblood  –  A Japanese Action film based on the Manga series.
• The First Circle  –  Not a Soviet film, of course, since there’s no way they would have been allowed to adapt a Solzhenitsyn novel but a West German-Danish adaptation.
• Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades  –  The third of the film series which was based on the famous Manga series.
• Saudagar  –  This Bollywood Musical, based on a story by Narendranath Mithra, was the Indian Oscar submission for Best Foreign Film in 1973.
• England Made Me  –  An adaptation of an early novel by Graham Greene (when he was still more of a thriller writer than a real literary force).  It was nominated for Art Direction at the BAFTAs.
• The Homecoming  –  This adaptation of the Pinter play was the second American Film Theatre production.  Gloomy, as you would imagine from Pinter.
• The Long Goodbye  –  I may no consider Le Samourai to be a classic but at least I think it’s good.  I can’t grasp the love for this film.  Maybe I’m just too locked in to Bogie as Marlowe.  Altman directed Elliot Gould (who I hated as Marlowe) in this sub-par (**.5) adaptation of the Chandler novel.
• Jesus Christ Superstar  –  More disappointment as noted in the review of Godspell above.  I actually love this musical and have seen it on stage with the stars from this film in 1993.  They were fantastic.  But Norman Jewison’s decision to have it randomly set in the present with weird hippie trappings to it just killed the film version.  If you want to see it, watch the 2018 television version instead.  For a long time the best thing about this film was “Can We Start Again Please” which I thought was written for the film but it was actually written for the stage, left off the original recording (which is the one I own) and included later on stage before the film was produced.  Not even close to the biggest film screw-up of a stage musical that I love (just wait until 1977).
• Medea  –  Passolini tackles the classics yet again.  The film is from 1969 but was released in L.A. in 1973.
• Wedding in White  –  One of the weakest films (that I’ve seen) to win the Canadian Film Award, a bland Drama based on the play by William Fruet.
• Tom Sawyer  –  Even having Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher can’t save this Musical film version of Twain’s novel.  I’d say just read the novel but I’m actually not a big fan of the novel.
• The Day of the Dolphin  –  The downward trend continues for Mike Nichols but thankfully will be reversed a little with his next film.  A boring film based on the novel A Sentient Animal.
• Siddhartha  –  Someone named Conrad Rooks adapts the Herman Hesse novel.
• A Day in the Death of Joe Egg  –  Depressing melodrama based on the play by Peter Nichols.  We’re well into mid **.5.
• The New One-Armed Swordsman  –  Now we hit low **.5.  A 1971 Hong Kong Action film that was the third in the series.
• Magnum Force  –  The second Dirty Harry film and a big drop off from the first one.
• Scalawag  –  Kirk Douglas directs himself in a Western version of Treasure Island.
• The Castle of Fu Manchu  –  The fifth (and final) outing with Christopher Lee as the famous criminal mastermind.  This film has horrible ratings on the IMDb (2.7) but I found it to be just a low **.5.
• The MacKintosh Man  –  A John Huston dud, a Cold War thriller based on The Freedom Trap by Desmond Bagley.
• The Spook Who Sat By the Door  –  The original novel by Sam Greenlee is apparently a satire but the film is just a dud of a Drama.
• Kazablan  –  An Israeli Musical based on the play.  Wikipedia says it got a 1974 U.S. release but the old oscars.org listed it in 1973.
• Charley and the Angel  –  Dumb Fred MacMurray Disney film based on the novel The Golden Evenings of Summer by Will Stanton.
• Battle for the Planet of the Apes  –  The last of the original Apes series which is good because the film is not.  Mid **.
• Godzilla vs the Smog Monster  –  This is the U.S name for Godzilla vs. Hedorah.  Not one of the better Godzilla films.  Fnord may have stopped his Marvel Chronology but you can still read his Godzilla reviews including his one for this one here.
• The Legend of Hell House  –  Richard Matheson adapts his own novel (Hell House) for the screen and it’s terrible.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull  –  A smarmy New Age book (that was insanely popular) becomes a smarmy New Age film that was not.
• Scream Blacula Scream  –  A sequel to Blacula.  Low **.  You either love it for what it is or you don’t love it at all.
• Hitler: The Last Ten Days  –  A film I avoided for a long time because I didn’t want to watch my favorite actor (Alec Guinness) playing Hitler.  He does.  It’s terrible.  Everything about the film is just a mess.  Based on the book by Gerhard Bolt, who actually survived the Bunker.
• Lost Horizon  –  The worst film of the year, a terrible Musical version of the classic Hilton novel with Liv Ullmann in the lead.  My full review is available at the Nighthawk Awards.  It’s still available to watch on YouTube if you feel like torturing yourself.

Adaptations of Notable Works I Haven’t Seen

• Samurai Saga  –  I wish I could find it to see it because it’s Mifune in an Inagaki adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac, but set among samurai.
• Topele  –  A 1968 Israeli production of the Sholom Aleichem story that is so little seen it doesn’t yet have the five votes necessary on the IMDb to show the number of votes.

Adult Films That Are Also Adaptations

• Behind the Green Door