Film Pantheon

1962
D: Arthur Penn
C: Anne Bancroft, Victor Jory, Inga Swenson, Andrew Prine, Kathleen Comegys, Patty Duke, Jack Hollander
W: William Gibson (play); William Gibson (screenwriter)
Original Music: Laurence Rosenthal
Cinematography: Ernesto Caparrós
Film Editing: Aram Avakian
Runtime: 106 min
Country: USA
Language: English | American Sign Language
Color: Black and White
Aspect Ratio: 1.66 : 1
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: Unrated

Annie Sullivan developed the eye disease trachoma at age 5 and spent a good portion of her childhood in an almshouse. In 1880 she was sent to the Perkins School for the Blind, from which she graduated class valedictorian six years later. Upon graduating, at the suggestion of a mentor at the Perkin’s School, the 19-year-old Sullivan traveled to the Keller plantation in Alabama to see if she could find success with a deaf and blind child so many other specialists had failed to make any headway with. Thinking their daughter a lost cause, the Keller’s had given up any hope of Helen ever being able to communicate with her environment beyond crude home signs. The Keller’s simply wanted someone to train their unruly daughter in good manners so they wouldn’t be forced to send her away to an asylum. Being a relative amateur, and having only a rudimentary knowledge of sign language (odd considering that she graduated from a school for the blind), Sullivan accomplished in just 4 weeks what all the other specialists had failed to achieve.

The genesis of this film stretches back to the early Fifties when writer William Gibson (not of cyberpunk fame) “stumbled upon” Sullivan’s autobiography in a library in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and thought the story of her work with Keller would make for a successful teledrama. Gibson pitched the idea to his friend Arthur Penn, who was producing and directing television dramas for CBS at the time. Penn was enamored enough to propose it to CBS, who in turn bought it even before a script had been written. Gibson rolled up his sleeves and churned out the teleplay in three weeks, using Sullivan’s autobiography and Keller’s The Story of My Life as source material. The title comes from Mark Twain, who referred to Annie Sullivan as “the miracle worker.” Penn directed, with Teresa Wright cast as Sullivan and Patty McCormack (of Bad Seed fame) cast as Keller. It aired in 1957 and became a hit for CBS’s Playhouse 90 series. Gibson then adapted his teleplay for a Broadway run with, again, Penn at the helm. This time Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke were cast as Sullivan and Keller, respectively. (By the way, Patty Duke’s real first name is Anna Marie. Her agents had it changed to “Patty” due to the popularity at that time of Patty McCormack.) It opened on October 19, 1959 and ran for 719 performances. A huge success, it won four Tony’s including best play and best director, with Bancroft taking home a prize for best dramatic performance by an actress. The play was then optioned by United Artists, and Gibson was hired to adapt it to the screen, with Penn hired to direct. UA wanted a bigger name than Bancroft, and they also felt 16-year-old Duke was too old to play a 7-year-old. But Penn held out for both of them, and what was originally slated to be a big budget star vehicle turned out to be a low budget affair made for only $500,000.

It’s a refreshingly brisk-paced, fuss free film with not an ounce of fat, a fringe benefit resulting from a hungry director given tight purse strings. I sat down intending to watch the first few minutes just to refresh my memory, not having seen it for years, and ended up watching the whole thing after being drawn in by the fantastic montage sequence of Sullivan on the train. The very physical scenes in which Sullivan and Helen engage in a battle of wills have such a queer quality to them — in their stylized relentlessness, they suggest the dramatic edge those highly choreographed fight scenes in martial arts films would have, if only they were emotionally charged with some sort of significance. Duke and Bancroft are spectacular. I can’t tell if the other members of the Keller family have been poorly conceived or poorly performed, but they’re certainly interesting and add up to more than just background noise.

1964
D: Jack Clayton
C: Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Janine Gray, Cedric Hardwicke, Rosalind Atkinson, Alan Webb, Richard Johnson, Maggie Smith, Eric Porter, Cyril Luckham, Anthony Nicholls, John Franklyn-Robbins, John Junkin, Yootha Joyce, Leslie Nunnerley, Gerald Sim, Frank Singuineau, Faith Kent
W: Penelope Mortimer (novel); Harold Pinter
Original Music: Georges Delerue
Cinematography: Oswald Morris
Editing: James Clark
Runtime: 118 min
Country: UK
Language: English
Color: Black and White
Sound Mix: Mono
Certification: Unrated

Jack Clayton is not someone whose name often comes up when talking about great directors, but he was responsible for some of the greatest films ever made, most notably that masterpiece of Gothic horror The Innocents, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, and this neglected black comedy/drama.

The Pumpkin Eater, adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter, tells the story of a perpetually pregnant, deeply unhappy woman in her third marriage who experiences feelings of dramatic isolation and depression. It sounds like one of those insufferable Lifetime flicks, but it’s a great character study of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It’s also a great study in faces, with Oswald Morris’s careful cinematography and lingering camera catching every nuance of emotion from the characters.

A great cast (Finch and Bancroft have never been better–even though I think Bancroft’s role would probably have been better served with an English actress), marvelous jazz-tinged score by Delerue, and — if Clayton has any clear signature at all — flawlessly crafted from beginning to end. James Mason gives a wickedly hammy supporting performance as a fuming cuckold.

2002
D: D.J. Caruso
C: Val Kilmer, Vincent D’Onofrio, Adam Goldberg, Luis Guzmán, Doug Hutchison, Anthony LaPaglia, Glenn Plummer, Peter Sarsgaard, Deborah Kara Unger, Chandra West, B.D. Wong, R. Lee Ermey, Shalom Harlow, Shirley Knight, Meat Loaf, Azura Skye, Josh Todd, Danny Trejo, Ricky Trammell
W: Tony Gayton
Original Music: Thomas Newman
Cinematography: Amir M. Mokri
Editing: Jim Page
Runtime: 103 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Sound Mix: DTS / Dolby Digital / SDDS
Certification: R

A mediocre film that tries too hard to impress. Ridiculous story with even more ridiculous plot twists. But sometimes subpar films are somewhat redeemed by standout performances, of which this film has a few. Vincent D’Onofrio gives a positively eye-opening performance as the grotesque, pig-like sleaze ball Pooh-Bear. And Peter Sarsgaard is very touching as the loyal misfit Jimmy the Finn. Doug Hutchison also does wonders with his cookie cutter character Gus Morgan.

1985
D: Stuart Cooper
C: Don Johnson, Jason Robards, Judith Ivey, Cybill Shepherd, Ava Gardner, William Russ, Wings Hauser, Alexandra Johnson, Stephen Davies, Charlotte Stanton, Albert Hall, William Forsythe, James Gammon, Rance Howard, Bill Thurman, Robert Wentz, Irma P. Hall, Joe Berryman, Patricia Rendleman, Norman Bennett, Jerry Haynes
W: William Faulkner (stories Barn Burning, The Spotted Horses; novel “The Hamlet”); Rita Mae Brown & Dennis Turner (teleplay)
Original Music: Charles Bernstein
Cinematography: Reed Smoot & Steve Yaconelli
Editing: Daniel Cahn
Runtime: 200 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Aspect Ratio: 1.33 : 1
Sound Mix: Mono

Adapted from three different Faulkner short stories, I found this remake more enjoyable than the original 1958 film. It’s of another time and place, but set in the 80’s which gives it an unusual anachronistic flavor that really works well. Super evocative and slow moving (in a good way), featuring a great cast of actors who seem to have lived the material in a past life.