Terry Teachout's Blog, page 176

TT: Charles Laughton, genius

In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I write about the second career of Charles Laughton, during which he directed for the stage (The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial) and screen ( The Night of the Hunter ) and appeared in a one-man show whose unexpected success put him on the cover of Time.

Here's an excerpt.

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In 1947 Charles Laughton's career, if not quite on the skids, was definitely in the doldrums. Long acclaimed as Hollywood's foremost character actor, he had made only one film of any artistic consequence, Jean Renoir's "This Land Is Mine," in the past seven years. The rest of the time he coasted, frequently indulging in self-parody--and nobody was easier to spoof than the man who played Captain Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty" and Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." He wouldn't have been the first actor to sell his soul for a swimming pool (or, in his case, an art collection). But with Laughton the waste would have been unforgivable, since he was, in Laurence Olivier's words, "the only actor I ever knew who was a genius."

Instead, Laughton fooled everyone by returning to the stage for the first time since 1936. Nor did he choose a safe star vehicle for his return: He played the title role in the U.S. premiere of Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo," and he translated the play himself.

If you've seen Classic Stage Company's current Off-Broadway revival of "Galileo," you know that Laughton's translation is nothing short of brilliant. But you may not be aware that it marked a turning point in his career. Yes, he kept on making second-rate movies and just-kidding TV guest shots to keep the cash flowing--but at the same time, he reinvented himself as an artist. His second life has been chronicled by Simon Callow, himself an outstanding actor and biographer, whose "Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor," published in 1987, is one of the finest theatrical biographies ever written. Every page is a joy to read, but to my mind the best thing about the book is the way in which Mr. Callow tells how Laughton turned his career around.

After "Galileo," Laughton put together an informal school of young Hollywood actors (including Robert Ryan and Shelley Winters) whom he introduced to the transforming discipline of classical acting. Then he met Paul Gregory, an agent-producer who had the ingenious notion of sending him out on the road with a one-man show in which he read his favorite poems and prose works aloud with colossal relish. The show, which took in everything from Shakespeare to Jack Kerouac, was a huge success...

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Read the whole thing here .

The original theatrical trailer for The Night of the Hunter:

TT: Almanac

"There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow."

Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

THE MAN THAT JAZZ FORGOT

" In 1973 , Ebony magazine ran a story titled 'Whatever Happened to Louis Jordan?' Two decades earlier, the genial singer-saxophonist was one of America's biggest pop stars. Not only did 18 of his 78s reach the top of the black pop charts between 1942 and 1950, but several of them, including 'Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens,' 'Caldonia,' and 'Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby,' 'crossed over' and became hits with white listeners as well. In addition, Jordan was widely admired by his colleagues. In his heyday, he made duet recordings with Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and Ella Fitzgerald. His later fans included James Brown, Ray Charles, and B.B. King--as well as Sonny Rollins..."

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren't actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 17, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 17, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Look Back in Anger (drama, PG-13, closes Apr. 8, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (monologue, PG-13, closes Mar. 18, reviewed here)

• Galileo (drama, G, too complicated for children, closes Mar. 18, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Blood Knot (drama, G/PG-13, possible for unusually mature children, closes Mar. 11, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• Seminar (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."

Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

TT: Snapshot

A 1974 TV interview with S.J. Perelman:



(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

"No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity."

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

TT: What goes around...

The last time I went to a film screening was when I saw Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco prior to its release in 1998. I was writing a profile of Whit for Civilization, part of which eventually made it into the Teachout Reader , and I interviewed him a few weeks later. It turned out to be the last time I saw him in person, for he went abroad to live not long after that, and he made no more films after The Last Days of Disco--until now.

Yesterday afternoon Whit sent me an e-mail from out of the blue asking if I'd like to see Damsels in Distress , his long-awaited fourth film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on April 6. I wrote back at once saying yes, and a few hours later I was sitting in the front row of a screening room in midtown Manhattan, remembering how it felt to see The Last Days of Disco for the first time fourteen years ago. I felt a brief pang of nostalgia as I thought about the myriad things that have happened to me since then, some wonderful and some terrible, and marveled at how so many years could pass so quickly. Then the lights went down, and within seconds I was caught up in Damsels.

This won't be a review--that'll have to wait--but I do want to say that if you've been wondering whatever happened to Whit Stillman, the answer is, quite simply, that he got better. Damsels is a poem of innocence, sweet, smart, whimsical, and singularly touching. Like his other films, it won't suit everybody, and I don't doubt that a few people will hate every second of it. Not me. I was carried away, and when it was over, I wanted to see it again on the spot.

Here's a line from Damsels that I scribbled down on the fly, I hope accurately:

I adore optimism, even when it's absurd--perhaps even especially then.

If that speaks to you, so will Damsels in Distress.

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The theatrical trailer for Damsels in Distress:

TT: ...comes around

Here's the piece about Whit Stillman that I wrote for Civilization in 1998. It breathes the air of another time, and of course the costume drama mentioned toward the end never got made...but I still like it anyway.

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Contrary to conventional highbrow wisdom, there are plenty of smart movies being made nowadays: they're just not being made in Hollywood. Most of the American films I've liked best in the past couple of years--Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, Doug Liman's Swingers, Greg Mottola's The Daytrippers, Daisy von Scherler Mayer's Party Girl--have been small-scale productions, often shot in and around New York, whose characters spend much of their on-screen time conversing about romance and its discontents. These chatty comedies, which are nothing if not smart, are the product of a youth-oriented urban subculture whose most gifted member, unlikely as it may sound, is 46-year-old Whit Stillman, who writes, directs and produces wonderfully funny movies about the awkward love lives of what one of his characters calls the "urban haute bourgeoisie."

Stillman has been dubbed the Woody Allen of WASPdom, a comparison which does him no justice (though it's increasingly a compliment to Allen). To be sure, his first two films, Metropolitan (1990) and Barcelona (1994), featured a cast of upper-class snobs who at first glance seemed in their own way as insular as the neurotic New Yorkers of Manhattan or Deconstructing Harry. But the problems of Stillman's well-heeled, angst-ridden twentysomethings, it turned out, had as much to do with age as class: fresh out of school, they found themselves swept up in a complicated, unforgiving world for which their sheltered lives had left them unprepared. This melancholic exchange between two Stillman preppies, one in his early twenties and the other in his late forties, says everything about the rarefied milieu in which his films are set: "Do you think it's true that, generally speaking, people from this sort of background are doomed to failure?" "'Doomed'? That would make it easier. We just fail, without being doomed, which is worse."

Metropolitan and Barcelona are both sparkling comedies, and not the kind you'd expect from a member in good standing of the urban haute bourgeoisie, either. For one thing, Stillman views his characters' angst with wry detachment. "These people have nothing to pity themselves about," he says firmly. "They should not be in a situation where they're feeling sorry for themselves." In any case, his real interest is not in old money but young love, and how it has fared in the wake of the sexual revolution. The debutantes of Metropolitan have barely discovered sex, while the leading men of Barcelona are obsessed with it; both are anxiously searching for the right thing to do in a culture without rules. That's what makes his movies every bit as much a part of the indie-flick subculture as, say, Kevin Smith's Clerks, an edgy, sexually blunt comedy set in a convenience store somewhere in deepest New Jersey: Stillman's long-winded preppies and yuppies, just like Smith's grubby Gen-X slackers, are lost in postmodern America, looking for an exit sign.

The Last Days of Disco, Stillman's third and latest film, brings the lost souls of Metropolitan and Barcelona still closer to the present: it is set in the early '80s, just before ordinary people stopped worrying about herpes and started worrying about AIDS. Alice Kinnon (Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte Pingress (Kate Beckinsale) work at menial jobs in publishing during the day, then party every night at a trendy club not unlike Studio 54. They pretend to be sexually experienced, though nothing could be further from the truth (Alice, in fact, turns out to be what used to be called a "technical" virgin), because they assume that such knowledge is expected of them. The consequences of their deception turn out to be no laughing matter--they disrupt their own lives and inadvertently hurt the equally inexperienced men whose paths they cross--but Stillman tells their tale with the lightest of touches, and what starts out as a witty sendup of the club scene soon turns unexpectedly poignant and involving.

The filmmaker lives in a Greenwich Village apartment surrounded by avant-garde art galleries, far from the tony Park Avenue addresses from which most of his characters originally hail (though few of them end up going back there). He was busy doing a last-minute cleanup job on the soundtrack when I visited him, but even though the film's release date was mere days away, he seemed perfectly happy to take an hour off from his frenzied search for the perfect set of church bells to dub into the climactic scene.

Stillman doesn't talk in the earnest, slightly stilted manner of a Whit Stillman character. Though he is soft-spoken to the point of occasional inaudibility, it doesn't take much to get him wound up, at which point the words start gushing forth like water from a fire hose, leaving the interviewer with nothing to do except keep one eye on the tape recorder and hope the batteries hold out. I asked him, for example, if he watched other people's movies, and got this airport-circling reply: "I like very much the New York school of independent film comedy. Nancy Savoca, Jim Jarmusch when he's funny, Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion--things like that. I loved Babe. And I like big Hollywood action films, if they're honest. I liked Air Force One and Apollo 13. I loved the films that John Ford and Hitchcock made, too, but I can't really relate them to anything I do. I'm from the TV generation, and for me the problem was, where can you go to tell stories within your limitations? I read F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was 16, and decided I wanted to be a novelist, but I wasn't cut out for it. I didn't think logically, and I couldn't do voices, or create an omniscient narrator--I had to write everything in the first person.

"Then I found an alternative in the sitcoms of the 60's and 70's. They really seemed to deal with life, but in a very funny way, and were unpretentious about it. When I started trying to write scripts instead of novels, it was completely liberating. The voice of each character is a first-person voice, but it's not me: an actor or actress is going to play it, which means that somehow I'm not really responsible for it. I didn't have to think logically, either. In fact, not going from A to B to C is much better in film comedy. If you think in terms of non sequitur, it's a little less boring."

Stillman is unapologetic about the fact that his movies consist primarily of people talking to one another. "Some visual purists still think film is pictures at an exhibition," he says. "They seem to forget that we've been making sound films ever since the '20s. Talk is incredibly important. If you want to make a movie about what people are like, you have to show how they talk and what they say. I make romantic comedies about fairly young people, and Erik Erikson says somewhere that young love is almost all conversation: people holding mirrors up to each other though conversation, trying to figure out who they are and who the other person is, and whether there's something that can link the two. If they couldn't talk, it would be just awful. Of course you have to be very careful with it, and I understand why all the screenwriting gurus warn against too much dialogue, but I think they're making a mistake. Even action films often have very good dialogue, though there isn't necessarily a lot of it. What's the charm of a buddy comedy? Just to see two guys shooting bullets? It's what the two guys say to each other that matters."

Stillman's Theory of the Buddy Movie is about to be put to the test, minus the bullets: his next movie will be an old-fashioned costume drama. "I plan to go back to the 18th century," he says, "and write a dramatic story that has adventure elements. I think I know how not to make it stilted and affected, but what I don't quite know how to get around yet is how to make it interesting if there's nothing funny in it. I think there can be funny stuff in it, but the engine has to be dramatic." It'll be quite a departure for the maker of The Last Days of Disco, but if anyone can put a new twist on swordplay and swashbuckling, it's Whit Stillman, the poet of urban haute-bourgeois anxiety.

TT: Almanac

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth