The Gull

With me already having written one post for today, my next post is going to be a bit briefer of a review than normal, although that's also in part because it's a movie based on a classic work of literature: a 1968 international production of The Sea Gull.

The movie is of course based on the play by Anton Chekhov, which probably should have been originally translated as just The Gull since the movie isn't set anywhere near the sea. Instead, it's set at a country estate somewhere not far south of Moscow where bureaucrat Sorin lives. His sister Arkadina (Simone Signoret) visits; she's a successful actress whose son Konstantin (David Warner) would like to be a writer but is writing more daring stuff that the public doesn't care for.

More successful with the public is Trigorin (James Mason), but he doesn't much care for the sort of stuff that sells commercially; he's also carrying on an affair with Arkadina. And then, living over on the next estate, is young Nina (Vanessa Redgrave). Konstantin has been pursuing her, but she meets someone successful like Trigorian and she's immediately smitten with that achievement. The various characters see each other and philosophize a lot, to the point that the whole proceedings get boring.

Eventually, it comes time for everyone not living in the area to go home, except that Nina goes off with Trigorin to become his mistress. Two years pass, and most of the same characters return to Sorin's estate because he's getting to the age where everybody expects him to die soon. There's more philosophizing, and then an ending that's a bit shocking.

Apparently the first performance of the play back in the 1890s was a critical failure and it wasn't until a few years later when a new production was an artistic breakthrough. I'd never seen any version of the play, nor read it, before seeing this version of the movie. All I can say is that having seen this movie, I can understand why the original stage play was a failure. The one thing that the movie has going for it is the settings; the movie was filmed in Sweden with lake areas just outside Stockholm substituting for country Russia, and doing so rather beautifully.

However, I think Signoret is miscast as a Russian actress, while director Sidney Lumet didn't do anything particularly imaginative in the direction. The actors mostly declaim their lines, as if they're not on screen together, and since the movie is slow and talky, none of this really helps the production.

TCM's Roger Corman tribute

Director Roger Corman died in May at he age of 98. Due to his work with American International and directing movies on a budget, followed by his work as a producer, Corman was involved with a lot of movies. So TCM's salute to Corman is a bit different from normal. Rather than a night in prime time or even a 24-hour salute, TCM is giving Corman three nights in prime time.

Those nights will be three consecutive Wednesdays starting tonight and followed on July 10 and July 17. I don't see any particular overriding theme for either of the first two nights, although July 10 starts off with three or four of the Corman films based on works by Edgar Allen Poe. July 17 is a bit different, in that it's movies produced, not directed, by Corman, with several of the films directed by people who would go on to become prominent directors. You can probably guess who those directors are and what the films are.

Suprisingly, I think I've only seen one of the movies airing tonight, The Wasp Woman at 10:45 PM, so I'm looking forward to some of the others. And on July 10, Bloody Mama (technically 2:30 AM on July 11) is definitely worth watching with Shelley Winters playing a character inspired by 30s gangster Ma Barker.

More on the final night of the tribute when it comes up on July 17.

Der Tod in Venedig

One more of the movies that TCM showed when Dirk Bogarde was TCM's Star of the month was Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice, a 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella. As the book is only a novella, it's a relatively shorter synopsis here. Also, it's been a good 30 years since I read it (in translation although I'd like to think my German is good enough to handle it), so I can't really comment on the differences between the novella and the movie.

The story deals with a writer Gustave von Aschenbach (that's Dirk Bogarde), a widower who needs to get away from the stress of his life in Germany. He plans to go to the Mediterranean for the climate, winding up in Venice. At the hotel, where he dines alone, he sees a family at a table: a mother, several daughters, and an adolescent son (Björn Andrésen) in a sailor suit. Aschenbach considers the boy the apotheosis of the classical Greek standard of beauty.

With that in mind, Aschenbach does what any rational person would do: he starts stalking the family just so he can get glimpses of the boy. He figures out that the family is Polish, and that the boy is probably named Tadeusz, since it sounds like they're referring to him as Tadzio. Aschnebach keeps following the family until the day he dies, which you might have guessed he's going to do considering the title. (I seem to recall the death being mentioned at the beginning of the novella, but again, as I've said, I read it ages ago.)

Another theme in the movie is that, as Aschenbach is following Tadzio around, he sees signs going up in the less touristy parts of Venice in Italian warning the locals and giving Gustav the distinct feeling that there's some sort of epidemic about that the government doesn't want to tell the tourists about lest it destroy that season's tourist trade. He's right, of course, and we can presume it's that disease (likely cholera) that's going to kill Gustave.

I didn't care for the novella, because the main character following Tadzio around is frankly creepy, and not because of the homoeroticism. After all, if it were about an author stalking a girl -- think Lolita -- there would also be a serious creep-out factor involved. As a result, I was hesitant to watch the movie. And I have to admit that I have many of the same problems with the movie that I did with the novella. That's not necessarily the fault of anyone in the movie; it's that the story is one that has natural challenges in making it more palatable. Visconti tries this by turning it into a two-hour affair, with lots of languorous scenes of Venice as it might have looked circa 1910 before it got zillions of tourists of a more modest economic class, and before authorities decided to turn the place into a museum, stopping the rebuilding that was one of the things preventing the city from sinking into the lagoon.

Many of the visuals in Death in Venice are pretty. But for me it wasn't enough to overcome that ugly story.

The Mountain Men

I've got a few more Charlton Heston movies to get through from when he was TCM's Star of the Month last October. One that I hadn't heard of before it showed up last year was The Mountain Men.

If you pay attention to the opening credits, you'll see that the screenplay is by one Fraser Clarke Heston, who is in fact the son of Charlton Heston, and that collaboration may have something to do with why the movie got produced at all. Charlton Heston plays Bill Tyler, a trapper in the days when the Oregon trail was only beginning to become a thing with a miniscule number of people going that far west to farm. It was a time when the white man was still badly outnumbered by the various Indian tribes in the region, and for Bill and his friend Henry (Brian Keith), the Indians in question are Blackfoot and Crow.

One day, Cross Otter, a Crow, and a couple of his companions from the tribe go out looking for Henry and Bill, because the Crow claim the white guys stole their horses. The white guys, for their part, say they're only taking back what had been theirs before the Crow took the horses. This somewhat tense meeting is interrupted by some Blackfoot showing up to start an attack on both groups. In the resulting melee, Bill incapacitates a woman, Running Moon.

Running Moon is the wife of the Blackfoot chief Heavy Eagle, although she's none too happy with the marriage, having been sold into marriage. In fact, that's why she was at the melee: she was trying to run away from Heavy Eagle. She wants Bill to help protect her, but he's only willing to take her to the point where he's supposed to meet the people to whom he's selling his pelts. He's had a squaw accompany him before, and he found her too much work. Never mind that in this case, Heavy Eagle is going to be coming after her. But at the same time, she gives the two trappers information about the legend of a valley that's incredibly rich with beaver pelts. Needless to say, Bill and Henry want to find the place.

Heavy Eagle does in fact find the group, but it is not the climax of the movie, as there's a lot more to go. Running Moon gets taken back by Heavy Eagle (or kidnapped, depending on your point of view), and she vows to escape again. Henry, not being the star, gets badly injured in the attack and may or may not die. Bill is going to have to go through a lot more. Who will survive, and who will end up with whom?

I think it's not hard to see why Charlton Heston would be interested in making this movie, and it's not just because the screenplay was written by his son. The potential is easy to see here. However, at the same time I can see why The Mountain Men isn't a very well-known movie. It doesn't feel all that original, and also feels a bit like a boy's fantasy of the thrilling adventures of life in that era must have been like, instead of the incredibly dangerous grind it most likely was. One big plus is the cinematography, having been filmed in part in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming and the surrounding national forests.

Fans of westerns will probably enjoy The Mountain Men; for people who aren't the biggest fans of westerns I'd introduce them to other parts of the genre first.