GHOST STORY by Peter Straub (1979). In the small town of Milburn, New York four elderly friends (Ricky, Sears, Lewis, and John) habitually get together to share stories (including ghost stories) with each other in a group they call The Chowder Society. But this group shares a very dark secret that has come back to Milburn to haunt them – it has to do with the death of a woman named Eva Galli some fifty years earlier. The four men begin to share the same nightmares and are also all haunted by the mysterious death of their friend Edward in the recent past. A viciously cold winter blizzard has blown in, a beautiful woman named Anna Mostyn has arrived in town, a freakish young man and barefoot child are spotted all over Milburn, and people and animals are dying in grizzly ways. When one of the members of the group commits suicide the remaining three confide their secret to Edward’s nephew Don (who is intimately linked to the group in a way he does not know) in the hopes of understanding what is happening to their group and to their town. But time, alas, is running out…
Straub’s book is one of the best horror stories I have ever read. The amount of detail and character development in the book’s 518 pages is astounding, yet the narrative never gets boring or superfluous. It moves back and forth between present and past as well as between different characters. It is perfectly balanced in this back and forth presentation, and the book’s main narrative clarifies and contextualizes the present day events of the prologue and epilogue. The supernatural material in the book (from the apparitions to the environments) is effectively creepy and disturbing; Straub’s writing is intense but he never overdoes it – his prose invites the reader to fully engage his or her own imagination while reading, to tangibly feel the suspense, the danger, and the horror of his tale. While the main characters are very imperfect and complex (everyone has his or her own personal dark secrets) they are all pretty easy to root for. Admittedly I was initially somewhat disappointed by the revelation of The Chowder Society’s deep dark secret – but after mulling it over I thought that Straub probably wrote it that way in order to make the five young men more sympathetic and perhaps a little less guilty…kind of. At any rate, this is a top notch book and one that any fan of Stephen King or these types of books should read.
The book was adapted and made into a movie in 1981 by John Irvin. It stars Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as the elderly members of The Chowder Society. I went in to the movie with very low expectations since it only runs 110 minutes (not even close to enough time to render a faithful filmic adaptation of the book). I was hoping that movie could effectively present the essence of the story, knowing I would be disappointed at what was not included in the film. I was also hoping the film would be effectively creepy despite its not being able to properly show some of the deaths/apparitions through special effects available to filmmakers in 1981. In some ways I feel that the film was successful, but overall I do not feel that the film did justice to the book’s narrative and depth (though, as I said above, how could it?). Had I seen the film without reading the book, I may have had different conclusions.
The film does have a creepy, ghostly atmosphere to it (though not as intense and relentless as the book). The greatest decision the filmmakers made was in casting Alice Krige in the lead role of Eva Galli/Anna Mostyn etc. Her dark eyes were very hypnotic and “ghostly,” and she used the natural timbre of her voice effectively at times to communicate an otherworldliness and malevolence that worked very well. Especially early on in the movie, the dark séance–like room dressings and shadows added to the creepiness of the film. I feel Phillippe Sarde’s music worked for the film as well. However, there is a lot I did not like about the film. For one, aside from Alice Krige, John Houseman (who got Sears’s elderly arrogance down pat), and Fred Astaire I was not very impressed with the acting (Craig Wasson, who played Don, was especially bad). The film was not very smooth in its transitions either – it comes across as very choppy. Finally, the brutal reality of it all is that the filmmakers gutted the majority of the book and changed an awful lot to get the movie made. I will provide a few examples:
-Lewis Benedikt, a character in the book, is not a character in the film. In the book Edward Wanderley (mayor of Milburn in the film but not in the book) dies at a party in honor of a beautiful young actress named Ann–Veronica Moore. In the movie he dies by falling off a bridge when he gets scared by Eva’s ghost (in the book Dr. Jaffrey commits suicide by stepping off the bridge while hallucinating). Also, instead of David and Don being Edward’s nephews (as they are in the book), David and Don become Edward’s sons. The father–son angle between Edward and Don did not work well in the film at all. Their strained relationship is made clear early on, but there is no pay–off at all after Edward’s death (especially since Don does not get to be the hero at the end of the film). It seems to me this change had more to do with convenience – by making Edward and Don father and son the filmmakers could jettison a large chunk of narrative and side stories.
-The movie retains the flashback stories of Don and Alma Mobley in addition to The Chowder Society boys and Eva Galli. However, both are heavily modified in order to shave off large narrative chunks. The Eva Galli story also has a significant change; in the book it is Lewis who tackles her in response to her aggressive and lascivious behavior toward the group (her “possession”) which leads to her death. In the film, after she lashes out from feeling hurt and betrayed, Edward tackles her to prevent her from telling the other boys in the group about his impotence (???) – that has to be one of the dumbest moments of the entire film and was not the screenplay writer’s finest moment.
-Peter Barnes, a significant character in the book, is completely absent from the film. Barnes plays a huge role in the story, especially in the climactic confrontation between The Chowder Society and Anna Mostyn. Eliminating his character allowed the filmmakers to jettison a huge chunk of the narrative and enabled Ricky to be the sole hero at the end of the film (the book’s climax is more complicated and all who remain have their moment in the spotlight, making the defeat of the enemy a group effort).
-Gregory and Fenny Bates play a very significant role in the book; they have ties to The Chowder Society and act as Anna Mostyn’s “lieutenants” as she seeks revenge against The Chowder Society and the town of Milburn. Unfortunately Gregory and Fenny are given little to do in the film; aside from a creepy scene in Edward’s house and Sears’s death, they are non–existent so the film’s narrative could focus on Eva/Alma/Anna and her relationships with The Chowder Society and Don. On top of that, instead of being supernatural they are said to have escaped from a mental institution in the film. They come across as being more Renfield-ish than ghostly.
-Ricky’s wife Stella (played by Patricia Neal in the film) is a much more complex and sensual woman in the book than she is in the film. She also has a moment of triumph over Anna Mostyn and her helpers in the book when she stabs one of them in a car; in the film her moment of triumph is given to Ricky.
As a book GHOST STORY is just crying out for a faithful adaptation. The 1981 movie was a good try and has its moments but ultimately falls very short of the mark for me despite my low expectations. Maybe in years to come I will be able to appreciate the film more, but for now I strongly and highly recommend the book over the film.
Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
-
AndyDursin
- Posts: 35758
- Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:45 pm
- Location: RI
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
Fantastic analysis Michael.
My long review of the movie is here -- you might find it of interest:
http://andyfilm.com/2015/11/24/aisle-se ... l-edition/
I'll post some more thoughts later!
My long review of the movie is here -- you might find it of interest:
http://andyfilm.com/2015/11/24/aisle-se ... l-edition/
I'll post some more thoughts later!
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
That is a great write-up Andy! I had no idea so much stuff hit the cutting room floor and so much had to be re-edited. That explains how choppy the movie was! And I agree with your perspective on Greg and Fenny Bate - why have them in the movie at all when they hardly did anything anyway? Thank you for listing that link!! 
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
So I am reading through Frank Herbert's DUNE for the next book/movie review...yikes! Just curious if anyone else has read this one book out of the series? I am kind of struggling to get through it.
-
Eric Paddon
- Posts: 9036
- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:49 pm
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians) by Agatha Christie
-This was the first Christie story I ever read, as it was in the 6th grade that we had to read it for a lengthy presentation. Christie's tale of a group of people lured to an isolated island off the Devon coast during the height of a storm who are murdered one by one has become a copied formula in so many other works down through the decades. The original though, still packs a punch. A mysterious "U.N. Owen" has invited eight guests (who combined with the servants, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers make ten people). Very Claythorne, a former governess hired to become secretary to "Mrs. Owen". Dr. Edward Armstrong, a surgeon/physician. Lawrence Wargrave, a retired Judge. Emily Brent, a spinster/religious fanatic. Philip Lombard, a former Army officer/explorer in Africa. General McArthur (yes, that was the name!) an elderly retired soldier. Tony Marston, a wild driving reckless young playboy and finally William Blore a former Scotland Yard policeman turned private detective.
-The guests arrive, surprised that no one seems to know who "Mr. Owen" is and then are startled by the playing of a gramophone record that accuses all ten of being guilty of murders at one point in the past. All of them are "crimes the law can not touch." The General is accused of sending his wife's lover, a fellow soldier to his death in a dangerous mission. Marston ran down a young couple due to his speeding. Armstrong operated on a woman while drunk and the patient died etc. Then suddenly, one by one everyone starts dying in accordance with the pattern of a "Ten Little Indians" nursery rhyme. As the death toll gradually mounts and the storm increases trapping everyone on the island, tensions mount and nerves fray until events reach a disturbing and dark conclusion.
Agatha Christie first adapted the property for a stage version in 1943, which I finally read for the first time last night and which I now realize was the basis of a 1959 live "Hallmark" broadcast that I have seen which starred Nina Foch (as Vera) and Barry Jones (as Judge Wargrave). Christie realized that her novel's ending didn't translate effectively to the live medium and was also too depressing so she gave it a twist by having two characters who are made to be innocent of their crime survive at the end (Vera and Lombard). This change by Christie for her stage version was then picked up on for the first filmed adaptation of the novel which appeared in 1945.
And Then There Were None (1945) is a very faithful adaptation of the tale in terms of setting and with most of the characters, but the tone is very different. Whereas Christie goes for dark tension and terror, the 1945 movie directed by Rene Clair goes instead for a wicked sense of dark comedy punctuated by occasional moments of suspense/tension. This is seen in the casting of more comically trained actors like Mischa Auer (in the Marston role, which has become an exiled Russian prince to accommodate his persona), Richard Haydn (as Rogers), Roland Young (as Blore), Walter Huston (as Armstrong) and Barry Fitzgerald (as Wargrave, here renamed Judge Quincannon). Ironically, the weakest links in the cast are the two "romantic" leads in Louis Hayward (Lombard) and June Duprez (Vera). Both of them are totally outclassed by the rest of the cast.
The comically dark tone of the script comes from Dudley Nichols, and it is Nichols who came up with a different variation on Christie's revised ending that more people are familar with. In the end, Lombard is not really Lombard, he's a friend of Lombard's (who committed suicide in response to the Owen invitation) doing some investigating on his own. This I have to confess is a MUCH superior way to make the Lombard character an "innocent" who can be alive at story's end because the way Christie did it was just an out-of-left field development that didn't play fair. Nichols deserves a good deal of credit for making this point more believable so that the changed ending can be accepted by audiences. As for who the real killer is behind all this? Well, it's always been the same character in each telling of the tale and I feel uncomfortable giving that away just in case there are a few who still haven't seen any version or read it.
There have since been several remakes of the property. The first three of them were done by British producer Harry Alan Towers who gave us different versions in 1965, 1974 and 1989. Only the first version is worthy of any attention. In each case, the location of the action is moved from "Indian Island" off the Devon coast to a more distant, foreign location. The 1965 version sets things in a mountaintop resort in Switzerland accessible only by cable car (which gets sabotaged). 1974 shifted things to a hotel in the Iranian desert and 1989 to Africa! More characters were changed to justify foreign actors in various parts. But in 65 and 74 at least, Towers ended up recycling most of the Dudley Nichols script from the 1945 version so consequently despite the changed locale, these versions are pretty much variants on the 1945 film. And only the 1965 film comes across as passable. Despite an inappropriate jazz score it comes off as a product of mid-1960s style and the presence of Shirley Eaton almost gives it a sense of being a Bondian knockoff (top-billed Hugh O'Brian as the romantic lead also gets some Bondian type moments and is allowed to get on with Eaton in something that wouldn't have been allowed before!). There are good performances by Wilfrid Hyde-White (as the Judge, now named Cannon) and Stanley Holloway (Blore). OTOH, to maintain the air of 60s "style" we get bombshell Daliah Lavi playing a glamorous actress in what had been the Emily Brent role (which had been nailed perfectly by Judith Anderson in the 1945 original) and that doesn't work, nor do other changes made to the characters which subverts Christie's formula in which the "less guilty" are done away with first and the "more guilty" made to suffer by living longer and experiencing the terror. The 1965 film is also notable for its "Whodunit?" moment break at a key point near the climax to let the audience step back and think about who is guilty. This scene is presented as a supplement on the Warner Archive DVD release. I have to say that the "confession" scene at the end is brilliant and superior to the 1945 version.
Do not under any circumstances, bother with the 1974 and 1989 versions. The 74 version is agonizing tedium. Despite the fact it's using the same script from 1965 (meaning it's still mostly the 1945 Nichols script), the actors in that production (which included Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Gert Frobe and Adolfo Celi) deliver their lines slowly and seem to pause every two or three words. The directing is static and awful. As for the 89 version it's only notable for restoring some of the original character names for the first time (Marston, Wargrave) but the fact that Frank Stallone is the star says it all as to its badness!
Of late, there have been new versions on BBC Radio and BBC that have decided to go full-dark and go back to the original novel ending where no one is left. I listened to the radio drama once but I don't want to see the BBC one. I know there are many fans of the novel who think any version that leaves Lombard and Vera alive at the end is a failure but I'm too used to it, and I don't like overly dark endings from a cinema standpoint, plus there's the fact that to do this one dramatically it requires a lot of implausible things that are okay on the printed page of a novel but not in a live action medium. Reading summaries of the BBC version, I notice also a lot of incorporation of other unnecessary things into the telling I can do without.
Bottom line. I highly recommend the 1945 version and also with qualifications, the 1965 version. I also should get in a plug for a 2005 computer game version that wisely, knowing how familiar people are with the story decided to give us a new twist where for the first and only time, the identity of the killer is someone else!
-This was the first Christie story I ever read, as it was in the 6th grade that we had to read it for a lengthy presentation. Christie's tale of a group of people lured to an isolated island off the Devon coast during the height of a storm who are murdered one by one has become a copied formula in so many other works down through the decades. The original though, still packs a punch. A mysterious "U.N. Owen" has invited eight guests (who combined with the servants, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers make ten people). Very Claythorne, a former governess hired to become secretary to "Mrs. Owen". Dr. Edward Armstrong, a surgeon/physician. Lawrence Wargrave, a retired Judge. Emily Brent, a spinster/religious fanatic. Philip Lombard, a former Army officer/explorer in Africa. General McArthur (yes, that was the name!) an elderly retired soldier. Tony Marston, a wild driving reckless young playboy and finally William Blore a former Scotland Yard policeman turned private detective.
-The guests arrive, surprised that no one seems to know who "Mr. Owen" is and then are startled by the playing of a gramophone record that accuses all ten of being guilty of murders at one point in the past. All of them are "crimes the law can not touch." The General is accused of sending his wife's lover, a fellow soldier to his death in a dangerous mission. Marston ran down a young couple due to his speeding. Armstrong operated on a woman while drunk and the patient died etc. Then suddenly, one by one everyone starts dying in accordance with the pattern of a "Ten Little Indians" nursery rhyme. As the death toll gradually mounts and the storm increases trapping everyone on the island, tensions mount and nerves fray until events reach a disturbing and dark conclusion.
Agatha Christie first adapted the property for a stage version in 1943, which I finally read for the first time last night and which I now realize was the basis of a 1959 live "Hallmark" broadcast that I have seen which starred Nina Foch (as Vera) and Barry Jones (as Judge Wargrave). Christie realized that her novel's ending didn't translate effectively to the live medium and was also too depressing so she gave it a twist by having two characters who are made to be innocent of their crime survive at the end (Vera and Lombard). This change by Christie for her stage version was then picked up on for the first filmed adaptation of the novel which appeared in 1945.
And Then There Were None (1945) is a very faithful adaptation of the tale in terms of setting and with most of the characters, but the tone is very different. Whereas Christie goes for dark tension and terror, the 1945 movie directed by Rene Clair goes instead for a wicked sense of dark comedy punctuated by occasional moments of suspense/tension. This is seen in the casting of more comically trained actors like Mischa Auer (in the Marston role, which has become an exiled Russian prince to accommodate his persona), Richard Haydn (as Rogers), Roland Young (as Blore), Walter Huston (as Armstrong) and Barry Fitzgerald (as Wargrave, here renamed Judge Quincannon). Ironically, the weakest links in the cast are the two "romantic" leads in Louis Hayward (Lombard) and June Duprez (Vera). Both of them are totally outclassed by the rest of the cast.
The comically dark tone of the script comes from Dudley Nichols, and it is Nichols who came up with a different variation on Christie's revised ending that more people are familar with. In the end, Lombard is not really Lombard, he's a friend of Lombard's (who committed suicide in response to the Owen invitation) doing some investigating on his own. This I have to confess is a MUCH superior way to make the Lombard character an "innocent" who can be alive at story's end because the way Christie did it was just an out-of-left field development that didn't play fair. Nichols deserves a good deal of credit for making this point more believable so that the changed ending can be accepted by audiences. As for who the real killer is behind all this? Well, it's always been the same character in each telling of the tale and I feel uncomfortable giving that away just in case there are a few who still haven't seen any version or read it.
There have since been several remakes of the property. The first three of them were done by British producer Harry Alan Towers who gave us different versions in 1965, 1974 and 1989. Only the first version is worthy of any attention. In each case, the location of the action is moved from "Indian Island" off the Devon coast to a more distant, foreign location. The 1965 version sets things in a mountaintop resort in Switzerland accessible only by cable car (which gets sabotaged). 1974 shifted things to a hotel in the Iranian desert and 1989 to Africa! More characters were changed to justify foreign actors in various parts. But in 65 and 74 at least, Towers ended up recycling most of the Dudley Nichols script from the 1945 version so consequently despite the changed locale, these versions are pretty much variants on the 1945 film. And only the 1965 film comes across as passable. Despite an inappropriate jazz score it comes off as a product of mid-1960s style and the presence of Shirley Eaton almost gives it a sense of being a Bondian knockoff (top-billed Hugh O'Brian as the romantic lead also gets some Bondian type moments and is allowed to get on with Eaton in something that wouldn't have been allowed before!). There are good performances by Wilfrid Hyde-White (as the Judge, now named Cannon) and Stanley Holloway (Blore). OTOH, to maintain the air of 60s "style" we get bombshell Daliah Lavi playing a glamorous actress in what had been the Emily Brent role (which had been nailed perfectly by Judith Anderson in the 1945 original) and that doesn't work, nor do other changes made to the characters which subverts Christie's formula in which the "less guilty" are done away with first and the "more guilty" made to suffer by living longer and experiencing the terror. The 1965 film is also notable for its "Whodunit?" moment break at a key point near the climax to let the audience step back and think about who is guilty. This scene is presented as a supplement on the Warner Archive DVD release. I have to say that the "confession" scene at the end is brilliant and superior to the 1945 version.
Do not under any circumstances, bother with the 1974 and 1989 versions. The 74 version is agonizing tedium. Despite the fact it's using the same script from 1965 (meaning it's still mostly the 1945 Nichols script), the actors in that production (which included Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Gert Frobe and Adolfo Celi) deliver their lines slowly and seem to pause every two or three words. The directing is static and awful. As for the 89 version it's only notable for restoring some of the original character names for the first time (Marston, Wargrave) but the fact that Frank Stallone is the star says it all as to its badness!
Of late, there have been new versions on BBC Radio and BBC that have decided to go full-dark and go back to the original novel ending where no one is left. I listened to the radio drama once but I don't want to see the BBC one. I know there are many fans of the novel who think any version that leaves Lombard and Vera alive at the end is a failure but I'm too used to it, and I don't like overly dark endings from a cinema standpoint, plus there's the fact that to do this one dramatically it requires a lot of implausible things that are okay on the printed page of a novel but not in a live action medium. Reading summaries of the BBC version, I notice also a lot of incorporation of other unnecessary things into the telling I can do without.
Bottom line. I highly recommend the 1945 version and also with qualifications, the 1965 version. I also should get in a plug for a 2005 computer game version that wisely, knowing how familiar people are with the story decided to give us a new twist where for the first and only time, the identity of the killer is someone else!
-
Eric Paddon
- Posts: 9036
- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:49 pm
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
As an addendum, I changed my mind and decided to catch up with the 2015 BBC version of the story since all three parts were downloadable on YT. It is, as I said the first filmed drama (in English) to stick to the book's ending which I know gave a lot of fans of the book palpitations. While I think it worked in the radio drama of 2010 that I also revisited, it still IMO falls flat in the filmed medium.
The worst things about this new one though is that they decide to change a couple of the crimes and one in particular is designed to intrude modern day PC thinking anachronistically into the past (in the same way the Branagh "Murder On The Orient Express" changed the Colonialist Colonel Arbuthnot into a black doctor!). In all versions of the tale, the crime of the William Henry Blore character is that he gave perjured testimony that sent an innocent man to jail and he died in prison. For this version they have decided to make Blore's crime that of beating to death a gay prisoner.
Another bad change is that the general character was accused of sending his wife's lover to his death on a dangerous mission, but in this case we see a flashback where the general shoots the man in the back in cold blood. Not only was this something he never could have gotten away with, but it would have changed a fundamental point of the story. The order of death of the victims is based on "degrees of guilt" in that those whose crime was lesser, was killed first and spared the later psychological horror. In this case, the balance is upended completely. This also happens in the 1965 version where the general's crime is changed to that of sending a regiment to a senseless death in battle, but since this adaptation is so concerned with returning to the roots of Christie's novel, the change IMO can not be forgiven.
And another stupid decision is to have four surviving characters (when it gets down to that many) decided to pass the time in the night by having a drunken bacchanal party complete with snorting cocaine. This is one of those reminders to me of how as time goes by it seems like this industry has no idea how to show how people of an earlier era *really* would behave. The ability to recreate period detail goes up, but the ability to sound authentic has vanished.
I'd recommend watching the BBC version once. But the 1945 version with its wonderful dark comedy interpretation and the 1965 remake are IMO the only two films to savor repeatedly.
The worst things about this new one though is that they decide to change a couple of the crimes and one in particular is designed to intrude modern day PC thinking anachronistically into the past (in the same way the Branagh "Murder On The Orient Express" changed the Colonialist Colonel Arbuthnot into a black doctor!). In all versions of the tale, the crime of the William Henry Blore character is that he gave perjured testimony that sent an innocent man to jail and he died in prison. For this version they have decided to make Blore's crime that of beating to death a gay prisoner.
Another bad change is that the general character was accused of sending his wife's lover to his death on a dangerous mission, but in this case we see a flashback where the general shoots the man in the back in cold blood. Not only was this something he never could have gotten away with, but it would have changed a fundamental point of the story. The order of death of the victims is based on "degrees of guilt" in that those whose crime was lesser, was killed first and spared the later psychological horror. In this case, the balance is upended completely. This also happens in the 1965 version where the general's crime is changed to that of sending a regiment to a senseless death in battle, but since this adaptation is so concerned with returning to the roots of Christie's novel, the change IMO can not be forgiven.
And another stupid decision is to have four surviving characters (when it gets down to that many) decided to pass the time in the night by having a drunken bacchanal party complete with snorting cocaine. This is one of those reminders to me of how as time goes by it seems like this industry has no idea how to show how people of an earlier era *really* would behave. The ability to recreate period detail goes up, but the ability to sound authentic has vanished.
I'd recommend watching the BBC version once. But the 1945 version with its wonderful dark comedy interpretation and the 1965 remake are IMO the only two films to savor repeatedly.
-
Eric Paddon
- Posts: 9036
- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:49 pm
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
On The Beach by Nevil Shute (1957)
-A lot of us were made to read this apocalyptic story in middle school in the early 80s I think because nuclear war hysteria was back in vogue. That was my first exposure to the book. Nevil Shute wrote it basically as a way of trying to make his fellow Australians realize that they wouldn't be safe in a nuclear holocaust waged entirely in the northern hemisphere .
-A nuclear war that started between Russia and China and soon spun out of control has destroyed life in the northern hemisphere. Life is continuing for now in the southern hemisphere (that means South America and Africa and Australia as well) and the USS Scorpion, one of two remaining American nuclear subs (the other is in South America) arrives in Melbourne. Her captain is the stoic Dwight Towers. But the book starts out with more attention on Australian Naval Lieutenant Peter Holmes, who has a young wife Mary and infant daughter Jennifer and who gets assigned as liaison officer to the Scorpion. The sub is to be sent first to investigate the northern Australian regions of Port Moresby and Darwin which are receiving the first indications of fallout. While the sub is being prepared and to show hospitality to Captain Towers, the Holmes' introduce him to their friend Moira Davidson, a beautiful but heavy drinking woman who has never had a true love relationship. Moira is clearly interested in Dwight but soon realizes that he has a defense mechanism in place where he still thinks of his wife Sharon and his children still alive in Connecticut and the time when the fallout reaches Australia will be the time he "goes home" to them.
-After the reconnaissance to Port Moresby and Darwin shows no one left alive, the Scorpion is then prepared for another mission to go across the Pacific to the West Coast to check on mysterious gibberish radio signals emanating from Seattle and to also test the atmosphere in the Arctic regions to see if any of the fallout is dissipating. The nuclear scientist John Osborne is also recruited for this. The trip to the West Coast reveals that the radio signal is just caused by an empty Coke bottle banging against a still active transmitter. The trip to the Arctic shows the fallout is still lethal. The Scorpion returns to Australia for the final months of humanity. Moira, though in love with Dwight knows he's set in his devotion to his wife and children and rather than try to pry him away from the memory (because she knows there isn't enough time), instead makes him happy by helping him get presents to bring to his children when the time comes (including a pogo stick for his daughter). A fishing trip to the mountains is meant to give Dwight a final happy moment of recreational activity he always did with his family. In the end, when Dwight takes the Scorpion out to scuttle her and "go home" (and when the fallout has now reached Melbourne and the population is now beginning to use suicide pills) Moira is left with his gratitude and still left with the emptiness of never having experienced true love in her life.
-Stanley Kramer, the biggest liberal activist director his time brought the book to the screen in late 1959. He got no cooperation from the US Navy and had to use an old Australian sub to stand in for the now renamed "USS Sawfish" (there was at this point an actual nuclear sub Scorpion which likely necessitated the change in name. The real Scorpion was lost with all hands in 1968). The film was shot entirely in Australia with second-unit work in San Francisco for scenes of a city left empty and dead by the atomic devastation (yet in a concession to the budget constraints, showing no outward damage!).
-The film follows much of the novel but with some streamlining and a couple critical changes. From a streamlining standpoint the sub voyage to Port Moresby and Darwin is dispensed with and we just see the journey to the West Coast and Alaska (Kramer reverses things so the Alaska test comes first). In the novel San Francisco is only glimpsed in the form of a devastated Golden Gate Bridge from several miles out blocking further access. Here, we get the sub sailing under an empty bridge (I think Kramer had to really work quickly to get that shot!) and viewing the undamaged but now empty of life city through the periscope. San Francisco instead of Seattle is where a crewman jumps ship so he can die at home. The gibberish radio signal is investigated in San Diego instead. Another cosmetic change is that John Osborne becomes Julian Osborne since John Osborne was the name of a famous British writer/critic. Osborne, who upon returning takes a race car he has bought and wins a crash filled race in the book kills himself by sitting in his winning car and taking the suicide pills. Kramer opts for a more visually dramatic moment of Osborne (played by Fred Astaire in his first non-musical role) starting the engine and dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, while the book reports of life still going on to the end in the other southern continents, Kramer never references this and implies only in Australia is there any life left.
-Kramer, for all his polemicism, refrains from retaining the novel's explanation of how the war began. He opts instead for Osborne making some generic denunciations of Mutual Assured Destruction and how the possession of nuclear weapons made war inevitable.
-But the biggest and most controversial change Kramer made, and which reportedly upset Nevil Shute so much that his widow blamed his fatal heart attack on it (just weeks after the film opened), is in the Dwight-Moira relationship. Initially, Dwight is still carrying on the fiction in his head of his family still being alive. But then the film takes a turn from the novel when Dwight, who is clearly attracted to Moira, confesses that he just hasn't been able to cope with it because he never contemplated a situation where war would happen and he'd still be alive and they'd be dead. This scene is critical for establishing the relationship falling into one of total romance and consummation when Dwight returns from the west coast sub trip. In the end, Dwight still takes the sub out and leaves Moira but not before he's told her emphatically he loves her but can't spend his final minutes with her because the rest of his crew wants to go "home" (whether that means the sub is actually going all the way back to America again isn't made clear).
-Shute hated this because to him, the character of Dwight should *always* have stayed faithful to his wife and children. And that this added more tragedy to Moira because her life had been empty without true love and even when she found someone to love he wasn't capable of treating her as more than a friend and she had to adjust herself to that. You still get a big debate over this point to this day. So who was right? I have to admit after going through the book again, I found Dwight Towers' denial of reality to be more disturbing than anything else. Especially when you add to that how in the book, Dwight is so determined to follow every last facet of naval regulations to an absurd degree (he even refuses at book's end to let Moira come out on the Scorpion for the scuttling simply because it would be against naval regulations!), but that ties into another problem with the book on this re-reading. Shute may have been trying to show us Australians trying to put off the unpleasant matter of the fallout arriving by having the characters act as "normal" as possible with routines (Moira even takes a secretarial course while Dwight is away!) but in the end I found myself wondering why no one was giving these people a boot in the rear end about looking for SOME way to build some kind of shelter to ride out the fallout. It's worth noting that Shute specifically says at one point that Australia can be livable again in twenty years. If you've got more than six months notice (in contrast to the film where there's just five months left) then what you need are the best and brightest trying to work to save some small enclave of the human race no matter what!
-But getting back to the Dwight-Moira relationship, I think from a literary standpoint Shute's vision works but cinematically I think it would have been a disaster. Not only would you have had people shouting at Gregory Peck to go ahead and kiss Ava Gardner I think the sight of Peck for two hours playing this mind game of denying reality would have had audiences shifting uncomfortably in their seats. It would have come off as more obsessive than even Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. The other way may have been more 'artistic' but from a commercial standpoint, I think Kramer was right. Especially since the audience could never get a true picture in their heads of who is Peck staying faithful to? Without a flashback with another actress the audience can't form that kind of impression.
-Plus, I think the new approach works well in the film as is thanks to what I regard as my favorite performance of Ava Gardner's. Gardner herself was a woman prone to drinking and who had a series of loser relationships in her life (with Frank Sinatra apparently her only real love) that watching her in this part of the sad, lonely Moira who cries over the fact she's had no time or chance for love has a poignant autobiographic note. It also helps that this is the latest point in time I've seen her still looking radiantly beautiful (when she isn't drinking or emotional). After this film, she always looked more puffed-up and it was embarrassing to see her still being treated as more beautiful than she was in 70s fare like "Earthquake" and "Cassandra Crossing".
-The rest of the cast is fine. Peck nails the part of Towers with dignity. Astaire acquits himself well as Osborne. Anthony Perkins as Peter Holmes is okay though he doesn't succeed in playing Aussie well. Playing Mary Holmes in her first role is a Kramer protege, Donna Anderson (who also appeared in "Inherit The Wind" and then after a stint in a short-lived TV series "The Travels Of Jamie MacPheeters" in the mid-60s basically disappeared) who is pretty but a bit untrained in a couple scenes where she gets emotional (though effective in the final scene before she and Perkins commit suicide).
-Debating the film's philosophy is for another thread. Overall, in comparing book to film I would give the edge to the film though the film does have some plot holes that come from duplicating some book scenes in an incomplete manner (Moira's parents live on a farm in a book; in the film this isn't established in the first half due to material left on the cutting room floor and then jarringly when Dwight returns we see her on a farm with her father). Shute's descriptions of a devastated San Francisco and empty Darwin and his version of the crewman going ashore to check on the radio signal are compelling reading but in the end I'll take the story of Dwight and Moira with the two of them having a last brief moment of love for each other.
-A lot of us were made to read this apocalyptic story in middle school in the early 80s I think because nuclear war hysteria was back in vogue. That was my first exposure to the book. Nevil Shute wrote it basically as a way of trying to make his fellow Australians realize that they wouldn't be safe in a nuclear holocaust waged entirely in the northern hemisphere .
-A nuclear war that started between Russia and China and soon spun out of control has destroyed life in the northern hemisphere. Life is continuing for now in the southern hemisphere (that means South America and Africa and Australia as well) and the USS Scorpion, one of two remaining American nuclear subs (the other is in South America) arrives in Melbourne. Her captain is the stoic Dwight Towers. But the book starts out with more attention on Australian Naval Lieutenant Peter Holmes, who has a young wife Mary and infant daughter Jennifer and who gets assigned as liaison officer to the Scorpion. The sub is to be sent first to investigate the northern Australian regions of Port Moresby and Darwin which are receiving the first indications of fallout. While the sub is being prepared and to show hospitality to Captain Towers, the Holmes' introduce him to their friend Moira Davidson, a beautiful but heavy drinking woman who has never had a true love relationship. Moira is clearly interested in Dwight but soon realizes that he has a defense mechanism in place where he still thinks of his wife Sharon and his children still alive in Connecticut and the time when the fallout reaches Australia will be the time he "goes home" to them.
-After the reconnaissance to Port Moresby and Darwin shows no one left alive, the Scorpion is then prepared for another mission to go across the Pacific to the West Coast to check on mysterious gibberish radio signals emanating from Seattle and to also test the atmosphere in the Arctic regions to see if any of the fallout is dissipating. The nuclear scientist John Osborne is also recruited for this. The trip to the West Coast reveals that the radio signal is just caused by an empty Coke bottle banging against a still active transmitter. The trip to the Arctic shows the fallout is still lethal. The Scorpion returns to Australia for the final months of humanity. Moira, though in love with Dwight knows he's set in his devotion to his wife and children and rather than try to pry him away from the memory (because she knows there isn't enough time), instead makes him happy by helping him get presents to bring to his children when the time comes (including a pogo stick for his daughter). A fishing trip to the mountains is meant to give Dwight a final happy moment of recreational activity he always did with his family. In the end, when Dwight takes the Scorpion out to scuttle her and "go home" (and when the fallout has now reached Melbourne and the population is now beginning to use suicide pills) Moira is left with his gratitude and still left with the emptiness of never having experienced true love in her life.
-Stanley Kramer, the biggest liberal activist director his time brought the book to the screen in late 1959. He got no cooperation from the US Navy and had to use an old Australian sub to stand in for the now renamed "USS Sawfish" (there was at this point an actual nuclear sub Scorpion which likely necessitated the change in name. The real Scorpion was lost with all hands in 1968). The film was shot entirely in Australia with second-unit work in San Francisco for scenes of a city left empty and dead by the atomic devastation (yet in a concession to the budget constraints, showing no outward damage!).
-The film follows much of the novel but with some streamlining and a couple critical changes. From a streamlining standpoint the sub voyage to Port Moresby and Darwin is dispensed with and we just see the journey to the West Coast and Alaska (Kramer reverses things so the Alaska test comes first). In the novel San Francisco is only glimpsed in the form of a devastated Golden Gate Bridge from several miles out blocking further access. Here, we get the sub sailing under an empty bridge (I think Kramer had to really work quickly to get that shot!) and viewing the undamaged but now empty of life city through the periscope. San Francisco instead of Seattle is where a crewman jumps ship so he can die at home. The gibberish radio signal is investigated in San Diego instead. Another cosmetic change is that John Osborne becomes Julian Osborne since John Osborne was the name of a famous British writer/critic. Osborne, who upon returning takes a race car he has bought and wins a crash filled race in the book kills himself by sitting in his winning car and taking the suicide pills. Kramer opts for a more visually dramatic moment of Osborne (played by Fred Astaire in his first non-musical role) starting the engine and dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, while the book reports of life still going on to the end in the other southern continents, Kramer never references this and implies only in Australia is there any life left.
-Kramer, for all his polemicism, refrains from retaining the novel's explanation of how the war began. He opts instead for Osborne making some generic denunciations of Mutual Assured Destruction and how the possession of nuclear weapons made war inevitable.
-But the biggest and most controversial change Kramer made, and which reportedly upset Nevil Shute so much that his widow blamed his fatal heart attack on it (just weeks after the film opened), is in the Dwight-Moira relationship. Initially, Dwight is still carrying on the fiction in his head of his family still being alive. But then the film takes a turn from the novel when Dwight, who is clearly attracted to Moira, confesses that he just hasn't been able to cope with it because he never contemplated a situation where war would happen and he'd still be alive and they'd be dead. This scene is critical for establishing the relationship falling into one of total romance and consummation when Dwight returns from the west coast sub trip. In the end, Dwight still takes the sub out and leaves Moira but not before he's told her emphatically he loves her but can't spend his final minutes with her because the rest of his crew wants to go "home" (whether that means the sub is actually going all the way back to America again isn't made clear).
-Shute hated this because to him, the character of Dwight should *always* have stayed faithful to his wife and children. And that this added more tragedy to Moira because her life had been empty without true love and even when she found someone to love he wasn't capable of treating her as more than a friend and she had to adjust herself to that. You still get a big debate over this point to this day. So who was right? I have to admit after going through the book again, I found Dwight Towers' denial of reality to be more disturbing than anything else. Especially when you add to that how in the book, Dwight is so determined to follow every last facet of naval regulations to an absurd degree (he even refuses at book's end to let Moira come out on the Scorpion for the scuttling simply because it would be against naval regulations!), but that ties into another problem with the book on this re-reading. Shute may have been trying to show us Australians trying to put off the unpleasant matter of the fallout arriving by having the characters act as "normal" as possible with routines (Moira even takes a secretarial course while Dwight is away!) but in the end I found myself wondering why no one was giving these people a boot in the rear end about looking for SOME way to build some kind of shelter to ride out the fallout. It's worth noting that Shute specifically says at one point that Australia can be livable again in twenty years. If you've got more than six months notice (in contrast to the film where there's just five months left) then what you need are the best and brightest trying to work to save some small enclave of the human race no matter what!
-But getting back to the Dwight-Moira relationship, I think from a literary standpoint Shute's vision works but cinematically I think it would have been a disaster. Not only would you have had people shouting at Gregory Peck to go ahead and kiss Ava Gardner I think the sight of Peck for two hours playing this mind game of denying reality would have had audiences shifting uncomfortably in their seats. It would have come off as more obsessive than even Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo. The other way may have been more 'artistic' but from a commercial standpoint, I think Kramer was right. Especially since the audience could never get a true picture in their heads of who is Peck staying faithful to? Without a flashback with another actress the audience can't form that kind of impression.
-Plus, I think the new approach works well in the film as is thanks to what I regard as my favorite performance of Ava Gardner's. Gardner herself was a woman prone to drinking and who had a series of loser relationships in her life (with Frank Sinatra apparently her only real love) that watching her in this part of the sad, lonely Moira who cries over the fact she's had no time or chance for love has a poignant autobiographic note. It also helps that this is the latest point in time I've seen her still looking radiantly beautiful (when she isn't drinking or emotional). After this film, she always looked more puffed-up and it was embarrassing to see her still being treated as more beautiful than she was in 70s fare like "Earthquake" and "Cassandra Crossing".
-The rest of the cast is fine. Peck nails the part of Towers with dignity. Astaire acquits himself well as Osborne. Anthony Perkins as Peter Holmes is okay though he doesn't succeed in playing Aussie well. Playing Mary Holmes in her first role is a Kramer protege, Donna Anderson (who also appeared in "Inherit The Wind" and then after a stint in a short-lived TV series "The Travels Of Jamie MacPheeters" in the mid-60s basically disappeared) who is pretty but a bit untrained in a couple scenes where she gets emotional (though effective in the final scene before she and Perkins commit suicide).
-Debating the film's philosophy is for another thread. Overall, in comparing book to film I would give the edge to the film though the film does have some plot holes that come from duplicating some book scenes in an incomplete manner (Moira's parents live on a farm in a book; in the film this isn't established in the first half due to material left on the cutting room floor and then jarringly when Dwight returns we see her on a farm with her father). Shute's descriptions of a devastated San Francisco and empty Darwin and his version of the crewman going ashore to check on the radio signal are compelling reading but in the end I'll take the story of Dwight and Moira with the two of them having a last brief moment of love for each other.
-
Paul MacLean
- Posts: 7533
- Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 10:26 pm
- Location: New York
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
They did this in my school too. They even had what they called "Ground Zero Week" whose purpose was to raise awareness about the threat of nuclear war.Eric Paddon wrote: ↑Wed Jan 22, 2020 8:17 pm On The Beach by Nevil Shute (1957)
-A lot of us were made to read this apocalyptic story in middle school in the early 80s I think because nuclear war hysteria was back in vogue.
Fortunately, instead of making us read On The Beach, they showed us Dr. Strangelove!
I'm not sure how that helped show us the horror of nuclear war...but it was entertaining!
-
Eric Paddon
- Posts: 9036
- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:49 pm
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
LOL. I wonder if sometime I should do the "serious" origin of Strangelove, the novel "Red Alert" for this thread. "Fail Safe" might end up as a project for this at some point too!
But yeah, the obsession was *really* high back in the early 80s and to this day critics aren't honest enough to call this an era of real paranoia.
But yeah, the obsession was *really* high back in the early 80s and to this day critics aren't honest enough to call this an era of real paranoia.
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
I was never required in school to read ON THE BEACH...which makes me feel like I missed out!
-
AndyDursin
- Posts: 35758
- Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:45 pm
- Location: RI
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
I was born in 1969 (turned 50 last year), so in the 80s I would have been in middle school and then high school. Surprised that I was never made to read the book. It might have been on a summer book reading list though...if it was, I guess I chose something else to read!AndyDursin wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:02 amI didn't either -- it was probably a little bit before my time. My guess is if you're in your 50s, chances were higher that you'd run into it.
-
AndyDursin
- Posts: 35758
- Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:45 pm
- Location: RI
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
Maybe I should have said "into your 50s" -- lol. I'm 45, 5 years younger than you, so my high school was 89-93 -- by then you wouldn't have run into ON THE BEACH a whole lot. In fact I had no idea what it was outside of the movie appearing on TV.
Maybe in the early 80s when THE DAY AFTER was running -- but more likely the 60s and 70s I'd imagine. It was a book from a different era that wasn't part of the "conversation" anymore, at least not by the time I was in school.
Maybe in the early 80s when THE DAY AFTER was running -- but more likely the 60s and 70s I'd imagine. It was a book from a different era that wasn't part of the "conversation" anymore, at least not by the time I was in school.
-
Paul MacLean
- Posts: 7533
- Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 10:26 pm
- Location: New York
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
According to Kubrick, he originally wanted to adapt "Red Alert" as a serious film, but found himself continually omitting aspects of the book because "I was afraid the audience might laugh". That was when he realized he should just make the film a comedy.Eric Paddon wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2020 1:49 am LOL. I wonder if sometime I should do the "serious" origin of Strangelove, the novel "Red Alert" for this thread.
I've never read the book. Does it come across as silly? Or is this just a case of Kubrick's eccentricity?
-
Eric Paddon
- Posts: 9036
- Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:49 pm
Re: Read a Book, then Watch Its Movie!
I haven't read it yet, but I just got the Kindle version so I'll probably later this year get a chance to compare (as well as Fail Safe).
I would incidentally recommend that anyone who hasn't yet gotten a Kindle reader of some type to get one because I have found it to be a godsend in terms of convenience and also allowing me to free up storage space in the house by disposing of physical copies of books I can now read conveniently.
These 60s films of anti-nuclear paranoia I'm finding it easier to be detached about. The 80s stuff tends to be another matter given the blatant shallowness of so much of it (I have still not watched "The Day After" since the night it first aired).
One other postscript about "On The Beach." The Blu-Ray of the film is not one of Kino's better efforts. Many have complained that the sound is slightly out of synch and that appears to be the case.
I would incidentally recommend that anyone who hasn't yet gotten a Kindle reader of some type to get one because I have found it to be a godsend in terms of convenience and also allowing me to free up storage space in the house by disposing of physical copies of books I can now read conveniently.
These 60s films of anti-nuclear paranoia I'm finding it easier to be detached about. The 80s stuff tends to be another matter given the blatant shallowness of so much of it (I have still not watched "The Day After" since the night it first aired).
One other postscript about "On The Beach." The Blu-Ray of the film is not one of Kino's better efforts. Many have complained that the sound is slightly out of synch and that appears to be the case.