The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1966)

 

In retrospect, it’s tough to imagine more unlikely director for The Gospel According to St. Matthew (originally known as Il vangelo secondo Matteo and originally released in 1964), a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the Book of Matthew, than Pier Paolo Pasolini. It’s not that he isn’t a great director – he is – but he was also a self-identified atheist. And, yet, he and his crew have created a beautiful film that hews closely to the original words of the Bible. Well, to be fair, the subtitles are almost verbatim from the King James Version of the Bible, and I can’t vouch for the Italian that the performers speak. The film follows the story of Christ from his birth to his resurrection. He’s played here by a beautiful young Spaniard, Enrique Irazoqui, who portrays Jesus as a sort of angry young man with an unfortunate unibrow. By the way, is it a requirement that actors who play Jesus be beautiful? I’ve tried to think of a single cinematic Jesus who was homely or even just average-looking, but to no avail. Give that Pasolini was also public about his being gay, the many close-ups of Irazoqui highlight the young man’s features as he addresses the disciples and speaks what will later be known as the Gospels. Jesus gets confronted and questioned a lot in this movie, and he’s always ready with an answer even if not everyone else, including his disciples, fully understands the meanings and implications of what he says. All of the performers in the movie are non-professionals, and they have some great faces, some lovely, some less so, some with lots of what used to be called “character.” They get close-ups too, so that we can see their reactions to Jesus’s words. The film has a very pared-down style; it doesn’t go for the hyperbole of many (Hollywood) Biblical dramas. Even Jesus’s walk on water is presented very matter-of-factly. The exceptions are the so-called Massacre of the Innocents on the orders of King Herod, who tried to ensure the death of Jesus as a baby, and the crucifixion of Christ. Both of those sequences are difficult to watch. The Gospel According to St. Matthew is gorgeously shot in black-and-white among ruins that evoke the period. It also features some very eclectic and not period-appropriate music, ranging from expected classical pieces to songs by Odetta and Blind Willie Johnson. One of the things that most impressed me about the film was its use of silence. Many times, we are treated to visuals without any dialogue, and they are stunning in their impact. As unexpected a choice for director as Pasolini might have been, he certainly understood the power of cinema to create the right mood for a film like this one.

Oscar Nominations: Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Black-and-White Costume Design, and Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment

The Oscar (1966)

 

The Oscar features one of the most ruthless and arrogant and nasty leading characters ever put on film (and this was in the same year as Alfie!). Some claim that this intensely bad movie is camp, but honestly the main character is so despicable, it’s hard to enjoy the rest of the movie or find any humor in the awful situations in which the characters find themselves. Stephen Boyd plays Frankie Fane, an actor who is one of the five nominees for Best Actor. Boyd, as I have mentioned elsewhere in talking about Fantastic Voyage (also released in 1966) was certainly a handsome fellow, but in this film, he’s a hothead, prone to violence, rude to women, always ready with his fists and a sharp tongue. It's supposed to be a sort of rags-to-riches tale about how Fane makes his way from essentially nothing to being a star. It would be easier to sympathize with Frankie’s rise to fame, though, if the character wasn’t such an ass to everyone he meets (and discards) along the way. The singer Tony Bennett plays Frankie’s best friend Hymie Kelly; they used to work in seedy joints with a stripper played by Jill St. John. Bennett provides the voiceover for the film, but he was reportedly so displeased with his performance that he never acted again, returning to the career at which he was one of the best, singing. The cast is full of former Oscar winners and nominees in small parts. Broderick Crawford plays a small town sheriff, Ed Begley is the owner of one of the strip joints the three worked together, Ernest Borgnine plays a private detective Frankie inexplicably hires to help him get the sympathy vote from Academy members. Edith Head, who was Oscar-nominated for her costume design for the film, also makes a cameo appearance; it’s tough to believe there were no other films with costume design more worthy than this stinker. The film eventually becomes a who’s-who of Hollywood stars. It becomes a guess game of “who is that?” Milton Berle does a fine job in a dramatic role as Frankie’s agent, Joseph Cotton is the head of a movie studio who’s initially reluctant to hire Fane, and Elke Sommer plays his love interest, a designer named Kay Bergdahl who he cheats on almost immediately after they finally marry.  Even Hedda Hopper, sans one of her famed hats but with piles of hair instead, shows up just in time to watch Frank be rude to his “date,” Jean Hale’s Cheryl Barker, an actress chosen by the studio to make Frankie get some publicity. Of course, Frankie is mean to every single person in the film, including his friend Hymie and his wife Kay, the last two people who seem to care about him. His acting career fades quickly because no one wants to work with him. When Fane reaches what he considers his lowest point, working to get a part in a TV western, he’s nominated for the title award and thinks he’s about to see a career rebound. It’s all rather silly stuff, particularly since the role for which Fane is nominated is basically just his awful self. By the time Cotton’s studio chief makes an impassioned speech about how important the Academy Awards “really” are, you’re rooting for any of the other Best Actor nominees to win (and for this film to be over). It’s quite a list of talented nominees, really, including Burt Lancaster, Richard Burton, and Frank Sinatra. It’s up to Merle Oberon, of all people, to announce Sinatra as the eventual winner, and then everyone else in the movie, all of whom strangely seem to be in the audience for the awards ceremony, takes great joy in Frankie’s defeat. If his character weren’t so unlikeable, the audience might wonder what happened to him after his loss, but at this point, the less we see of Frankie Fane, the better. How something as silly as The Oscar, with its cast of former stars and B-list performers and its reliance on the language of beatniks, got any awards attention is a mystery to me.

Oscar Nominations: Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Color Costume Design

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

 

Fantastic Voyage tracks the attempts of a crew in a miniaturized submarine to repair a blood clot in the brain of an internationally renowned scientist who has been injured in an assassination attempt on his life. That premise already sounds somewhat ridiculous, perhaps, but genuine tension gets created by the crew having a limited time to complete the medical procedure and by the possibility that one of the members might be working to ensure the death of the scientist, who has figured out how to maintain miniaturized status for longer than the current 60 minute restriction. This film is a product of the Cold War era, and the fears of Russian dominance serve as a backdrop for the action. As you might expect, the journey through the comatose scientist’s body to the brain doesn’t occur without incident. Fantastic Voyage is a sort of predecessor to films like Speed, where one event after another keeps complicating the plot. The crew includes Stephen Boyd, an intelligence agent who is hired as security to ensure that the procedure goes as planned; Arthur Kennedy as Dr. Peter Duval, repeatedly described as the world’s best brain surgeon; Raquel Welch as Cora Peterson, the doctor’s assistant; Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels, who is overseeing the entire procedure; and William Redfield as the submarine pilot. Edmund O’ Brien and Arthur O’Connell play a couple of military types who have to sweat it out while the tiny sub makes its way through the patient’s body; they’re the closest thing to comic relief that the film has a times. Fantastic Voyage doesn’t really represent good science (or even particularly plausible science fiction at times), and I’m not even sure it truly represents good anatomy. The journey takes the crew through the blood vessels, the heart, the lungs, the lymph nodes, the inner ear canal, the tear ducts, a variety of body parts that are not obviously all connected to each other. Still, the film is quite stunning visually and was rewarded appropriately for its visual style. At times, the backgrounds through which the sub travels look like the inside of lava lamps of different colors. At other times, they look remarkably like an undersea fantasy world of algae and spiderwebs. (Fantastic Voyage also predates the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you can see the possible influence the earlier film had on that science fiction masterpiece.) Boyd and Welch were, no doubt, hired to up the attractiveness quotient of the cast. However, the way they are treated differently reveals the typical Hollywood double standard of the time. For the most part, Boyd stays fully clothed even though the suits are, to be blunt, quite snug. Welch, however, has to suffer the indignity of having three of the four men in the sub pawing over her breasts after Cora is attacked by antibodies. It’s shameful, really, and it detracts from the film’s overall appeal.

Oscar Wins: Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Special Visual Effects

Other Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Effects

The Sand Pebbles (1966)

The Sand Pebbles, a nominee for Best Picture of 1966, is an earnest film that attempts to depict a little-known episode in the relationship between the United States and China. The film is set in 1926 and depicts a series of incidents involving a U.S. gunboat named the San Pablo (with the nickname of the Sand Pebble). At the time, China was being overtaken with nationalist fervor by those who wanted all foreign influences removed from the country. And perhaps you'll remember from your World History class that this was also the time period that saw the Communist movement begin take hold in China. That's a lot of background information for one movie to hold, but The Sand Pebbles does an admirable job of providing enough details to give a viewer a sense of the history being rendered.

The movie begins with the arrival of Steve McQueen's Jake Holman on board the San Pablo. He's been transferred to this run-down ship because he's amassed quite a track record of fighting with his superiors. Holman is one of those men who knows how things are supposed to be done--he, of course, has a strong moral compass to tell him--and when others don't see things his way, he tends to respond with his fist rather than with logic. McQueen is very good here, but this role is different from those cool-guy types he was more accustomed to playing (see The Thomas Crown Affair for the most obvious and maybe the best example). He earned his only Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the role, and I think it has something to do with the subdued nature of his performance. He doesn't appear to be "acting" the part. It seems he's just "being" Jake instead. He's an observer more than a participant at times, but eventually, Holman can only stand by for so long without taking action.

The film follows the travels of the San Pablo as it patrols the Yangtze River and its tributaries. A substantial portion of the film takes place on board, of course, especially in the rooms where the men must come into contact with each other. Needless to say, perhaps, Holman quickly sets himself apart from the other men. He doesn't like having the Chinese workers on board deciding how to run "his" engine. However, after an accident involving the replacement of some bearings results in the gruesome death of the previous Chinese engine room leader, Holman is forced to choose another one to help him run the engine room. There are numerous clashes between Holman and the other members of the crew, though, not just over the tension between the Americans and the Chinese. It is Steve McQueen after all, and a bit of his rebelliousness needs to be evident in the film.

The great Japanese actor Mako plays Holman's new go-to guy, and it's a treat to watch the interaction between the two of them. You'd expect Holman to be resistant to working with Mako's Po-han, but it isn't long before Holman begrudgingly accepts Po-han's help and his friendship. He even stops using the derogatory terms for the Chinese thanks to his relationship with Po-han. Mako deservedly received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work here. It must have been a demanding role for him, especially since his character gets involved in a brutal bar fight with one of the white crew members over some false accusations and then he gets caught by the Chinese and tortured in front of the men on the San Pablo, but Mako always lets you empathize with him and his good-natured ways. He was a fine actor who always managed to attract your attention no matter what role he played.

This isn't really an action movie in the traditional sense, to be honest, but there are some good action sequences. The most effective one involves an attempt by the San Pablo crew to penetrate a row of Chinese boats that are linked together. You see, the crew wants to rescue some missionaries at the Chinese Light (hey, I didn't name it), and the boat has to get through this obstacle the Chinese have created. That sequence is soon followed by a shoot-out at the mission between the Americans and the Chinese. These moments of action are rather thrillingly depicted, and they certainly stand out in what is really a rather slow-paced film overall.

I've neglected to mention that there's a bit of a romantic subplot involving Holman and one of the missionaries, Miss Eckert, played by Candice Bergen. To me, it's silly to put a love story in the middle of a movie about conflicts between the U.S. and China in 1926, but I suppose Hollywood must live up to its cliches. Bergen, despite having a reputation for being one of the worst actresses in the movies when she began her career, acquits herself here in what was only her second film role. There's no real physical contact between Holman and Miss Eckert. She is a missionary, after all, but there's an obvious attraction between them.

I've tried to avoid discussing the other romantic subplot involving Richard Attenborough's Frenchy and a Chinese woman named Maily (Marayat Andriane, later known as Emmanuelle Arsan). I know the film is attempting to make a point about the possibility of better relations between the East and the West through this romance, but it's pretty hackneyed stuff. Consider this: Maily is first shown as a novice bar girl over whom the crew members fight. Given that she's a virgin, there's a premium for the privilege of her...um..."attention." However, she's really the bar girl with a heart of gold since what she really wants is a good man like Frenchy to love. If that sounds silly, it's because it is. The filmmakers could have cut all of the sequences involving these two characters, and the movie wouldn't have suffered.

The Sand Pebbles attempts to show how the Americans reacted to Chinese opposition to their presence, but it does a poor job of showing the Chinese perspective. I suppose that's understandable given that the book on which the film was based is written from an American perspective as well, but the relentless stereotyping of the Chinese people and the name-calling tired me out after a while. Everyone who shoots at the boat, for example, is a "bandit." Not someone trying to preserve his country's Independence or cultural identity--no, he's a bandit. I suspect the Chinese members of the audience for this film in 1966 must have cheered when Mako's Po-han beats up the white crew member, but then soon afterward they must have wept to see him so brutally treated by his own people. And I won't even mention the fact that the film has a Japanese man and a Thai woman playing Chinese characters. That trend has stayed consistent to today; witness the discussions that took place over Memoirs of a Geisha if you want evidence.

There's still much to admire about this film. The performances are uniformly good, and I haven't even mentioned the consistently reliable Richard Crenna as the ship's captain. The score is lush and beautiful, as is the cinematography. The shots of the river, in particular, are quite breath-taking at times. I think my favorite of those images starts the film, when a so-called Chinese junket dwarfs the American gun boat; perhaps, the film-makers were trying to tell us something with that opening shot. I earlier used the word "earnest" to describe this film, and I think I'd have to stick with that. Earnestness is a trait too often missing from today's movies, so I won't (and can't) fault The Sand Pebbles for having it.

Alfie (1966)

The title character of Alfie, nominated for Best Picture of 1966, is a misogynistic, womanizing cad. That he's played with some degree of charm by Michael Caine is perhaps his only redeeming feature. Otherwise, I cannot imagine why anyone would make a film about such a reprehensible man and expect us to feel sympathetic towards him. Perhaps many people of the time were amazed at just how realistic Caine's portrayal of a chauvinist was, but watching his Alfie Elkins for almost two hours was quite depressing at times and anger-inducing at others.

The film begins with Alfie making out with a married woman, Siddie (Millicent Martin) in his car. She's on her way to the train to meet her husband, but she first has to have her regular rendezvous with Alfie. It's during this scene that perhaps the most tiresome aspect of the film comes into play: Caine's direct address to the audience. This might have been a novel idea for a movie in 1966, breaking the fourth wall and all that, but most of the time, Alfie just tries to rationalize his bad behavior to the viewers. For me, it's not a successful device. It seems as if he wants us to see what goes on in his mind when he mistreats these women, thinking that we might start to empathize with him, but it just makes me feel even more disgusted with his behavior that he thinks he is justified in his actions.

We quickly learn that Alfie already has a girl at home, Gilda (Julia Foster), who starts to realize that she might be pregnant. Alfie tells her that she needs to consider seriously the merits of having an abortion versus giving the baby up for adoption after it is born. He, naturally, wants her to have an abortion because he doesn't want to take on the responsibilities of fatherhood. However, for a brief moment, the amount of time it takes to play a montage of the boy (named Malcolm) playing with his father while growing up, we might feel that Alfie has a bit of a heart. Yet he never marries Gilda. In fact, he lets another man marry her. It's a particularly cruel series of events that he sets into motion with that conversation with Gilda.

Meanwhile, Alfie continues to have encounters with a series of women: the manager of a dry cleaner (although he calls her a "manageress"), a chiropodist, a bodybuilder's girlfriend, or "any bird that came my way by chance." Notice the derogatory language that he uses to refer to women. One of them is a hitchhiker, Annie (Jane Asher), that he "steals" from a truck driver in an encounter in a coffee shop. It's as if he wants to see just how much he can get away with. Alfie is particularly cruel to Annie, who just seems to want to keep things nice for the man she thinks she loves. He finally drives her away with his persistent verbal abuse.

During the middle of the film, Alfie suffers a health scare when two spots are found on his lungs by an x-ray, and he spends about six months at a sanitarium in the country. While he is recuperating, he has a fling with one of the nurses, and then after he recovers and comes back to visit his old roommate, he takes up with his roommate's wife, Lily (Vivien Merchant), and even gets her pregnant. He won't even pay, at least initially, for the abortionist who comes to his place to perform the procedure. I will give credit to Caine, though, for the look on his face when he sees the fetus after the abortion. He does appear to be thoroughly shocked at the consequences of his actions, and he seems to be headed toward becoming a better man as a result.

After he sees his son Malcolm at a christening for Gilda's new baby and how happy the family seems to be, he decides that he needs to settle down with just one woman and try to forge a true relationship. Unfortunately, the woman he wants to have as his mate is Ruby, played by Shelley Winters, and she has already moved on to a much younger man by the time Alfie comes to his senses. The movie ends with Alfie encountering Siddie, the married woman with whom he was having an affair at the film's beginning. They talk about meeting again, and even though she repeatedly says, "maybe," it's clear the two of them will likely take up where they left off. The ending is too parallel to the beginning of the film to suggest otherwise. Even the same dog--perhaps a metaphorical representation of Alfie himself?--appears in both the opening and closing sequences. It's a depressing frame device; at least, it left me feeling depressed for someone like Siddie.

By the way, in case you think I'm overstating the misogyny of the main character, consider this: when addressing the audience, Alfie never says "she" or "her." He always uses "it" to refer to any of the women with whom he has slept. How much more dehumanizing could this character be? He uses the pronoun for objects rather than the ones for women, yet we are supposed to be somehow sympathetic towards him. I would attempt to psychoanalyze a womanizer who tries to bed almost every woman he encounters but seems to hate all women, but I don't know if the film's makers have tried to give us a sense of the origins of the title character's attitudes towards women.

In case you're wondering, I've not seen the remake from a couple of years ago with Jude Law in the title role. After watching the original Alfie, I don't think I'd be interested in seeing another version. I doubt men like Alfie have gotten any better in the forty years since Michael Caine first played the part. While I can admire the talents of a performer like Caine, I can't really say that I like the role he portrays here or the movie that surrounds his character.

As an aside, I'll admit to being shocked to hear Cher singing the title song. That song has become so associated in my mind with Dionne Warwick that it caught me off guard to discover that she wasn't the original singer.

Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Caine), Supporting Actress (Merchant), Adapted Screenplay, and Song ("Alfie")

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1966, A Man for All Seasons is the story of Sir Thomas More, the chancellor who resigned his post rather than support Henry VIII's attempts to divorce his first wife in order to marry Anne Boleyn. The first half of the film relates the tensions within the court over Henry's desires to circumvent the Catholic Church's ban on divorce, particularly for his marriage, which had resulted from a special dispensation from the Pope so that Henry could marry his brother's widow. The second half of the film follows More as the court and much of the country becomes more and more obsessed with issues of loyalty, particularly as they might be displayed by public statements or signatures.

This is an admirable film in many ways. It's beautifully photographed, and the acting is all strong. Paul Scofield as More won the Oscar for Best Actor that year, and he is ably supported by Wendy Hiller as his wife, Susannah York as his daughter, and dozens of other performers, including an incredibly young John Hurt. Almost the equal of Scofield is Robert Shaw, more famous now for his role in Jaws, but playing Henry VIII here as a petulant, infuriating monarch. Shaw only gets a few moments of screen time, but he certainly makes the most of them. The film also pays very close attention to period detail, with the sets and costumes all as lavish as you would expect among the royal court during the 16th Century.

However, despite all of these traits and despite the noble message of the film (to stand by one's principles even in the face of certain punishment, even death), I have to say that I think this is a pretty dull film overall. I can admire all of the work that went into the making of A Man for All Seasons, but as entertainment, I feel it falls a bit flat. This film is another in that tradition of costume dramas that were prevalent in the 1960s. I've already discussed a later film, Anne of the Thousand Days, which mines much of the same territory but with more of a sense of excitement. Perhaps it's the central hero that is the problem here. More is a solid man, a stable one, but he isn't a very passionate figure to deserve two hours of film for his story. I realize that Henry VIII cannot always be the center of a movie about this issue that England confronted, but he does seem to be a more compelling force than More does here.