Barefoot in the Park (1967)

WAKE UP! MAKE LOVE! FALL OVER LAUGHING!!!

Neil Simon is probably one of the most successful writers of the 20^th Century. The man behind numerous Broadway plays, films and some TV series, Simon built much of his career on own his life, creating a very particular style of writing comedy that has since been translated as the template for sitcoms as we know them. At one point in the 1960s, he actually had four successful plays running on Broadway simultaneously: Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity, and The Star Spangled Girl. He’s won Golden Globes, WGA awards and the Pulitzer, and been nominated for Emmys, Oscars and Tony awards. His third play, written in 1963 and based on his experiences of his first marriage, was Barefoot in the Park, which was then adapted by himself for the screen in 1967.

Paul Bratter (Robert Redford) is a stodgy young lawyer; Corrie Bratter (Jane Fonda) is a fun-seeking free spirit; and the pair of newlyweds are just starting their lives together in their new apartment. Their new home is small, cold, has a hole in the skylight, and is at the top of a five-storey building with no elevator, and all of their neighbours are eccentrics and oddballs. It’s here that they have to start their new lives.

I first saw Barefoot in the Park many years ago, and whilst I remember enjoying it, the only thing I could remember clearly was a brief back-and-forth between Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. He needs to get to work, but she wants him to stay and have fun (which is essentially the whole dynamic of their relationship). She says they should do something wild and crazy, but he says they’ll do it tomorrow night. “Like what?” she asks. He answers, “I’ll come home early, we’ll wallpaper each other.” I think that’s a funny line, classic Neil Simon and Redford delivers it just right. Now, it may just be due to my fondness for dry, absurd humour, but it made the whole film stick in my head. As such, it’s one of the many I’ve acquired over the years. Having given it a viewing today, there is one thing that is clear… it’s aged terribly.

When I said that Neil Simon helped to perfect the standard form of the sitcom, I’m not kidding. Many of his comedies are based on bringing together two personality types that are diametrically opposed, having them share the same space, and surrounding them with a succession of quirky characters and off-the-wall situations. There would also be no real story to drive them, instead having them simply react to each other and whatever happened to come through the door. The Odd Couple is often regarded as the standard to measure such projects against… well, Neil Simon wrote that. In fairness to him, this was just his style and he built a very successful career on it, and it was a method adopted years later by studios looking to create the most easily exploited situation for comedic purposes. Sit-com, get it? Anyway, this is exactly the format of Barefoot in the Park, however there is just no getting past the fact that this is too much a product of its time to be watchable today.

Like I said, there is no story to the film, since it’s meant to be character driven. Two newlyweds begin their new life in a new apartment, but they find out that living together may not be as easy as they think. This is indeed a situation, but there’s nothing that occurs externally to push things along. Oh, some of you out there may be thinking to yourself, “hang on, this all sounds very much like Dharma & Greg.” You’re not alone in that. Many people have since made that particular connection, and it’s no small wonder. I can only imagine that Chuck Lorre caught Barefoot in the Park on TV one night and decided to do his own version. Hell, the film even got its own brief sitcom spin-off, which lasted for 12 episodes in 1970. This is basically what you’ve got in Barefoot in the Park, a feature-length episode of a sitcom with any laughter, applause and funny material removed. So, sure, things happen to them, but nothing more serious than their furniture not being delivered until the next day. As such, it’s entirely down to the characters to create the conflict. So, what are the characters like?

Paul is a stodgy lawyer type, young and looking to make his way in his new firm. That’s pretty much it. He loves his new wife, but clearly finds her eccentricity to be a bit much every now and then. Well, when I say every now and then, I mean pretty much constantly. Every time they’re together, she clings onto him like a leech, and he tries to drag himself away because he has a job to go to. Frankly, given his reaction to her, and hers to him, it is virtually impossible to believe that they actually met before the film started. Physical attraction aside, they have nothing in common. This ultimately becomes the thing that comes between them and is conflict to be resolved - they are so unlike each other. Apparently he’s so straight-laced that Corrie has only ever seen him drunk once, and she didn’t find that out until the next day when he told her he was. He claims that he can have fun and be wild, that he once got so drunk he punched out an old woman and… wait a minute, what? He got drunk and punched out an old woman? This is the example he uses to prove that he can get drunk and have fun? Was that meant to be funny? That’s not funny, that’s horrible. He may act like the mature one in the relationship, but he apparently can get quite abusive when drunk… but it’s okay, that just means he’s having fun… Christ. As it is, Redford does a fairly good job in the role. He’s a likable guy, and makes Paul somewhat relatable, and he understands the rhythm of Simon’s writing very well. He’s no Jack Lemmon, but he works… when he’s not punching out old women.

Corrie’s mother, Ethel, is the most (read as: only) sympathetic character in the whole film. She’s patient and kind, if a bit melodramatic at times. She also seems to be a bit sickly, needing to sleep on a board for her back, and suffering from some mystery ailment that seems to be exacerbated by the incredibly long climb to her daughter and son-in-law’s new place. To some degree, she actually gets a bit abused by the film, having her endure discomfort, illness and a fall down the stairs (you see, it’s funny cause she could’ve been killed) in the interest of creating conflict. Mildred Natwick was the only person to receive an Oscar nomination for her work her, and whilst it wasn’t worth a win, it’s still a fine performance she gives.

Victor Velasco is the upstairs neighbour to Paul and Corrie, living in the attic of the building. He’s meant to be a kind of charming foreign guy, polite, gracious and possessed of the same lust for life as Corrie. However, he is also incredibly creepy, giving the first impression of a sex pest. Seriously, he first meets the couple when he tries to enter their apartment so he can climb through their window to get onto the roof to get to his place because the landlord changed the locks because he hasn’t paid rent in four months… wha-oh, never mind. Now, picture the scene – it’s 2am, the doorknob rattles as if someone is trying to enter. Corrie, dressed in a shirt and some socks, opens the door (I know, I know) and finds a well-dressed older man at her door. Now add the following dialogue:

Victor: Tell me... does your husband, uh, work during the day?

Corrie: Yes.

Victor: In an office?

Corrie: Yes.

Victor: Good. I work at home during the day. I predict interesting

complications. Am I making you nervous?

Corrie: Very nervous.

Victor: Ha! Wonderful. Once a month I try to make pretty young girls

nervous just to keep my ego from going out.

Now, question for the ladies out there, at what point would you have called the police on this thoroughly unsettling fellow? Honestly, this is all meant to be endearing or quirky or oddball or funny? No, this is the preamble to a sexual assault. Suffice to say, Victor does little to redress the balance in the rest of the film, only showing up to act crazy again. Charles Boyer portrays Victor Velasco and, although he certainly never intentionally projects any kind of disquieting predatory aspects, the facts of the character speak too loudly to be overcome. Boyer does what he can to make Victor worth liking, but it was a losing battle from the get-go.

Easily the most grating character of the film is Corrie, who is irritating as all hell. She’s whiny, clingy, immature, and kind of nuts. This is all meant to have her come off as kooky, fun-loving, and ultimately loveable for all her zest for life. However, it’s simply annoying and incredibly off-putting. One of the first things she wants to do in her new building is go to every one of her neighbours, pound on the door and scream for the police… what? What the hell kind of utter fruitcake actually does this? That’s not funny or charming or cute; that’s just a great way to instantly piss off everyone who lives in your building. She’s also got a habit of thinking that people that don’t constantly want to experience life and try new things are wrong and should be dragged into doing so. For example, when Corrie, Paul and Ethel have gone round to Victor’s for drinks and food, she chastises Paul for not wanting to eat some eel (“Paul, you have to try everything!”). In fairness, this is really down to Fonda’s weirdly intense delivery. When Victor suggests that they go somewhere “unusual” for dinner, a clearly unwell Ethel expresses some concern, which Corrie completely ignores: “That’s what we want… the unusual, right, Mother?” Oh, and if you’re wondering why the three accepted the invitation from Victor to visit, it’s because Corrie wants to set her mother up with him… that’s right, Corrie wants to set her mother up with the creepy guy that she met when he tried to enter her apartment at 2am, expressing delight at how nervous he was making the mostly undressed young woman. What in God’s name is wrong with this woman? Honestly, I could go on, but I’ll just move on. Jane Fonda’s performance is a bit awkward. Whilst she does commit to the peppy energy and excitement of her character, she doesn’t have the same feeling for Simon’s dialogue as the others do. As such, she often goes too far, turning what’s meant to be excitable and upbeat into crazy and strangely accusatory. Fonda has given some fine performances in her life, but this simply is not one of them.

Just to add one final blow to proceedings, Gene Saks’ direction is really very lacking. As is a typical problem when adapting a stage play to the screen, the director has treated it liked he’s filming the stage play, rather than making a film, so things just look blocky. Now, to be fair, this was Saks’ first directing gig, and it’s certainly not as bad as it could have been. However, the film still looks flat, stagey and lacking any decent form of composition. That Saks’ would go on to direct three more film adaptations of Neil Simon plays, with Simon doing the scripting duties, including The Odd Couple, is kind of weird since it is by no stretch a good job.

Barefoot in the Park is an incredibly infuriating film to watch. Though it was received much better at the time of its release, time has been very unkind. The characters are annoying, creepy or just insane; the direction is stagey and unpleasant; and it’s simply not funny. Some of the lines are okay, and the performances from Redford, Natwick and Boyer are varying degrees of good, but Fonda has no feel for the material, making an unpleasant character pretty much unbearable. Sadly, this will always be regarded as one of those "forgotten classics" or "overlooked gems" that never gets as much recognition as it deserves, but it just isn’t good enough to warrant that kind of reputation.

Animal Crackers (1930)

THE MADDEST COMICS OF THEM ALL!

The Marx Brothers. Some of the funniest and most enduring comedy stars ever. A thoroughly gifted family, particularly in music, they quickly found their way to the stage and became a very successful vaudeville act. Like others who had achieved great success on the stage, Hollywood came calling, with Paramount snatching them up for the new turn of “talkies” that was sweeping the industry. Their first two feature projects (a short called Humor Risk was filmed but never released and is believed to now be lost) were adaptations of plays that had been Broadway successes. The first was The Cocoanuts, released in 1929. The second came a year later - Animal Crackers.

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho Marx), the famous explorer, returns from Africa and is invited to attend a gala party held by Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont), during which a famous painting will be displayed. During the party, the painting is stolen, so Mrs. Rittenhouse turns to Spaulding for help to find it and save her reputation.

I love the Marx Brothers, I truly do. Growing up watching their movies, seeing Groucho deliver his rapid-fire one-liners to an utterly bewildered Margaret Dumont, ended up having something of an effect on the way I talk to some people. It’s like him, just nowhere near as funny. I say all this because it’s important to me that you understand that I’m a big fan of these guys. And it’s with that in mind that I say that Animal Crackers, despite the success at the time and the classic status it holds today, is actually not that good…

I know, I know. It’s a controversial position to take. I wish for it to be clear that I don’t consider this a fault of anyone on screen that much. They all give what they can. The real problem comes from two things: a weak script and lousy direction.

I can’t speak for the original Broadway play, but the script here is appallingly bad. The major conflict of the film rests on the disappearance of a very valuable painting. You see, Mrs. Rittenhouse’s daughter’s boyfriend is a talented artist, and he is convinced to swap the real painting for a copy he made to show off his skills as an artist and become famous… I’m not sure that’s the smartest of plans. On top of this, two of the party guests, one of whom is also an artists, but a bad one, decide to swap the real painting for their own copy, really just because they think it will be funny. They manage to convince Mrs. Rittenhouse’s head butler to do it, because… it would seem he used to be that guest’s old butler and they asked a favour… what? Never mind the ridiculously convoluted nature of this whole thing, what kind of weak motivations are these for all this? It doesn’t even have the good sense to devolve into a hilarious comedy of errors, with each party trying to figure out which painting is real or not before the police arrive. Honestly, by the end, you won’t care. Plus, is it just me or does whole bit about a famous explorer being invited to a swanky society party to regale the guests with hunter’s tales before having to save the reputation of the hostess from plans of two scheming guests sound a bit familiar? In fact, it sounds quite close to the rough premise of Harold Lloyd’s 1921 short Among Those Present, which I talked about last week. Weird.

The other real bad spot of the film is the direction from Victor Heerman. Heerman was more regarded as a writer in Hollywood. Either as part of a team or on his own, he is credited with writing Golden Boy in 1939, Magnificent Obsession in 1935 and Little Women in 1933, for which he won an Oscar. He was also a director, but going by Animal Crackers, this is not where his skills lay, at least not with comedy. He has absolutely no sense of any kind of visual style on show, so the camera is just aimed at the actors and left running in the hopes of catching something. The fact that the project was originally a play, with predominantly the same cast, has clearly factored into Heerman’s thinking, so it feels like someone has just filmed the stage show, rather than made a film out of it. This has a catastrophic effect on how the film unfolds. The play clearly got laughs in theatres, and so the actors would leave the occasional pause before they continue. These pauses are still there, as if their playing to an audience that isn’t there, so there are dozens of times when a joke is followed by a rather awkward silence before the action continues. As such, there is a dreadful lack of energy and pace to the whole project, so it also feels very slow. One of the most fondly remembered scenes is one where Chico and Harpo play Bridge with Dumont and Margaret Irving… good God, it’s slow, made worse by the fact that it’s mostly done in a single, long, unedited take. I’m sorry, but it’s just not funny.

There are numerous technical issues with the film, too, although many of these are a product of a studio still trying to come to terms with the new technology being used. Sound films had really only been around for four years at this point, and many still felt a little resistance to this new way of making films. Microphone positioning was clearly still an issue, with the sounds of footsteps clomping around occasionally competing with dialogue. Also, the editing is rather choppy. Honestly, these would actually be rather mild concerns, easily overlooked if other aspects of the filmmaking weren’t so poor.

However, this is still a Marx Brothers film, so there is still some enjoyment here. There are still some cracking lines from Groucho (“One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas, I don’t know” is still a classic); Harpo’s physical work is still great (a moment at the end when he’s discovered stealing silverware is absolute gold, no pun intended); and the musical interludes from Chico and Harpo are still very impressive. It also contains several instances of Groucho talking directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall before they even had a chance to build it. (A bit of me suspects that the reason he did this was because Groucho could feel the lack of energy because of the lack of audience, so decided to fill the gap in the only way he knew how, by playing to them even though they weren’t there.)

There is another thing that rather bothers me about Animal Crackers. It could be a sign of how times have changed, but the film is, probably unintentionally, kind of racist. It’s more likely that it’s just them trying to make jokes without thinking too much about it, but by modern standards, it cuts really close to the bone on a few occasions. When Groucho makes his big entrance, he’s being carried in a sedan by four African men. Okay, so he’s just making a joke that this is like an African taxi and no malice was intended, I guess. Then, there’s a later line, “I wish I was back in the jungle, where men are monkeys.” Again, he’s probably just making an unfortunately worded joke, but still… and then there’s another line, “Africa is God’s country, and he can have it.”… again, I honestly don’t think he’s being consciously mean-spirited with any of this, and maybe few people would have questioned any of this back then. Nevertheless, it’s a little bit uncomfortable nowadays.

Despite holding some of Groucho’s most famous jokes, Animal Crackers is not a particularly good film, largely because the central story is so weakly written and the direction is so painfully lacklustre. The Marx Brothers do give what they can, and they still wring some laughs in this, but it remains something to get through rather than something to really enjoy as intended.

American Gigolo (1980)

HIS BUSINESS IS PLEASURE

Writer-director Paul Schrader came up with the Hollywood ‘Movie Brat’ generation of the 1970s, his contemporaries being Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese, but his youth was nothing like theirs. Whilst Martin Scorsese spent all of his time watching movies, Schrader grew up in a very strict religious household. So strict that he wasn’t allowed to watch any films at all. In fact, it wasn’t until he was 18 years old and a college student that he saw his first movies. From then on, he was hooked and ended up becoming part of the generation that, for better or worse, changed the face of American cinema forever. Come the year 1980, Schrader had written seven films, and directed three of them. American Gigolo was the third he directed.

Julian (Richard Gere) makes his living as an escort to the wealthy older women of Los Angeles. Around the same time he begins a relationship with the wife of politician, Michelle (Lauren Hutton), one of his clients is murdered and the police start looking at Julian as the prime suspect. As the investigation goes further, Julian thinks that he’s being framed.

There’s a particular character type that Schrader returns to quite regularly throughout his career. It’s a character that was seen a little in his first script, the Japanese-set thriller The Yakuza, but was then given the full show in his next script, 1976’s Taxi Driver… the character is that of God’s Lonely Man. Schrader seems to be almost obsessed with the notion of the isolation of his main characters, which is often a state of self-imposed isolation. Men of means and actions wilfully cutting themselves off from the run of normal society, living as exiles amongst the civilised, walking ghosts in the land of the living. In American Gigolo, the Lonely Man on show is Julian, a good-looking male escort who makes his money off of the city’s wealthy older women, either widowed or just ignored by their husbands. There’s a lot to suggest that this life agrees with Julian. He makes good money, has a steady client base, drives a sweet convertible Mercedes, lives in a nice apartment, has some very stylish clothes, he speaks five or six languages and he keeps himself in great shape. Best of all, he gets to bring love and comfort to those who need it, as long as they can pay for it. Really, this guy is probably the envy of so many other guys. However, this is just the starting point for Schrader. The whole idea is to show a character study of what lies beneath someone like Julian, who seems to have so much going for him. He certainly doesn’t complain about his life. He likes what he does, so you won’t hear him bemoaning his situation. What’s important for us is that we can see what Julian does not, which is just how lonely he is. He claims that he prefers older women because younger women present no challenge for him, that older women appreciate his skills more. There is the constant suspicion that Julian goes for older women because they are just as lonely as he is, that the younger women wouldn’t appreciate him because he takes the notion of seduction so seriously, that he is trying to satisfy some sort of Oedipal complex and gain a motherly approval. He doesn’t see himself as a prostitute, even though that’s exactly what he is. He thinks of himself as a companion, a hired friend to have fun with, which includes getting laid.

Richard Gere serves the film very well as Julian. Gere is a good-looking guy in a boyish kind of way, and he captures a very particular and important thing… how Julian moves. When you watch him enter the bar where he meets Lauren Hutton for the first time, you see that his gait is very smooth and sleek and deliberate, somewhere between a catwalk model and a jungle predator… a sex panther, if you will. It’s all in the economy of his movement, the deliberate manner of his steps. Gere shows more than just Julian’s ability to walk effectively, too. For all of the veneer of confidence, he’s a little bit naïve, even rather dumb. He knows he’s lonely, does his best to convince himself otherwise and sometimes maybe even succeeds. However, you can always see it in him, it’s always there under the surface. It’s never enough to spoil Julian’s affect, but it is clear, to all but himself. Lauren Hutton’s Michelle is also a very capable performance, although there really is little in the way of surprise in her. She effectively acts as a mirror to Julian, attractive and lonely. She puts no pretence on how she feels, which serves to both attract and repel Julian. Her neediness troubles him, but his need to both comfort and be comforted trump his worries. The scene where Michelle wins over Julian is a delicate one and handled very well by Gere, Hutton and Schrader.

Given the world that the film exists in, what is important to note about the places we go and the people we see is that, for all of the hedonistic touches of the sex and drugs and money, there is a real dullness to everything. Schrader doesn’t show you these people, these places, in the hope that you’ll get caught up in them and want to go along for the ride. That distance is important. We see pre- and post-game, but not the acts themselves. We don’t get much in the way of vicarious thrills. We get the preening, the stalking, the journey to and from the job, the shop talk. Schrader doesn’t want to lose us in the fray -- he’s got a point to make. I do remain unsure on the handling on the one and only sex scene, between Julian and Michelle. It’s rather clumsy and awkward and really quite unerotic. I say I’m unsure because I don’t know if this was really Schrader’s intention, continuing the lack of vicarious thrills bit; or if he tried to make it erotic, but just failed. Maybe you can work it out.

As it is, it’s not a completely flawless show. It’s very much a period piece, and feels very 80s. The film’s musical theme is Blondie’s Call Me, which is a great song, but the whole underscore rests on various cheesy synth interpretations of it that nowadays somewhat undercuts attempts at drama. Also, the oft-parodied view of the gay club as a place full of half-naked, leather-clad moustachioed men ends up being more funny, or more offensive, by today’s standards than was probably intended. It also seems like it ends about four times, which feels more clumsy than anything. Sound is also an issue in the film, too, with dialogue occasionally being drowned out by the sounds of the city… of course, that last one could be the result of a lousy DVD transfer job by Paramount or whoever did it. Nevertheless, it’s a bit off here and there.

There is an interesting element regarding homosexuality in the film. Julian himself refuses to do what he calls “fag work”, and the previously mentioned short scene in the gay club is the kind of thing that a person who didn’t like gay people would imagine a gay club to be like. There’s even a scene where Julian pretends to be a very effeminate German decorator to play a joke on someone. The film at times is really quite homophobic. However, there is something of a double-play going on there, too. I also mentioned earlier about that many men would be very envious of Julian and somewhat attracted to his life. Even Schrader’s camera seems to be a little enamoured of him, with its lingering shots on his body and the care taken to show him as being physically appealing. The interesting part comes from when you consider that the point of the film is to show how very unattractive this life is. The film is almost asking whether or not it’s the lifestyle that you find attractive or Julian. It shows an attitude towards gay men that is quite ignorant, but at the same time questions whether or not the men watching may have some mildly gay feelings towards the main character. Of course, all of this is in 1980, before the huge AIDS epidemic that rose up in America later on in the decade.

American Gigolo is a little dated in some of its production detail (regular synth music and 80s styles) and the plot does seem to have more of a soap opera quality about it, but it does still maintain the poignancy in its illustration of Julian. There’s no beating you over the head with any attempt at moralism, it’s largely a rather bleak affair in a subdued kind of way. Schrader invites you to watch someone that beforehand you may have envied, but ultimately feel sorry for. That’s a hell of a trick.

Alfie (1966)

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT... ALFIE

The swingin’ sixties… a time when free living and free loving were the marks of a new kind of society, and London was its capital. London became the epicentre of everything that was cool and hip and the place to go for the fashionably young and the youngly fashionable. As such, there were numerous films that would go on to celebrate and typify the decade in all its fun, easy-going decadence, like Morgan!, Georgy Girl, Modesty Blaise and Darling. Another one was the film that gave Michael Caine one of his most enduring screen characters, Alfie.

Alfie Elkins (Michael Caine) is confident, charming, utterly selfish and very successful with women. He’s a user of women, concerned only with his own pleasure and ready to leave at the first hint of emotional attachment. However, his callous ways start to show themselves as certain events make him rethink his lifestyle.

Alfie was first written by Bill Naughton as a stage play before it became a film. It ran for 21 weeks and originally starred Terence Stamp in the title role. Stamp declined to star in the film version, instead leaving the way open for his friend Michael Caine to step into the part. Whilst its theatrical roots are clear, it’s a superb script. A character study of very polarising individual. Alfie is a young guy with confidence, charm and an eye for the ladies. He’s also a self-centred narcissist and possessed of a moral flexibility that allows him to think that he’s doing the women he sees a favour by leaving them. Indeed, Naughton’s script is at times unsure as to what to make of him, hopping between contempt and a weird kind of admiration. He’s an attractive character with humour and candour, but he is so tough to like at times. He treats women as disposable, throwaway, something he can get a little use out of before discarding and moving on. His frequency of referring to women as “it” is appalling, more so for the casual nature of its use. So deep-rooted is his lack of concern for his female conquests that he tries to convince one of them to abort her pregnancy, not for himself, but for the sake of the child. The baby will just become attached to the mother, and she couldn’t possibly handle that, and the child would feel abandoned and lost.  It’s through such conversations that Naughton gives us subtle glimpses into his life growing up, letting us know why he is the way he is. It’s never done as an excuse, just an explanation. As an example of someone utterly self-centred, Alfie Elkins is hard to beat. He may be simple in his desires, but he’s no less damaging.

Lewis Gilbert’s direction is very understated, and the times when Caine addresses the camera, and therefore us, echo both Alfie’s egotism and his attitude to women. Scenes don’t freeze when turns to us, but they don’t move forward without him either. He knows he’s the star and that everything stops until he’s ready to continue, everyone else just has to wait. That he effectively ignores the girl he’s with to talk to us about them underlines his callous lack of consideration for them. Gilbert’s restraint comes through most in dealing with the abortion scene as it has all the dramatic weight needed, but without being exploitative or manipulative. Also, it never really feels like it’s been a play that’s been filmed. It feels like a film. Recurring use of reflective surfaces suit the piece well, if perhaps being a tad thematically obvious. There are moments of rather clipped editing, where shots could have been served better by being just a second longer. There’s also a point in a bar fight where the same shot is used a couple of times. It’s meant to be a recurring joke (a huge guy repeatedly having a chair broken on his head without him noticing), but it’s too obviously the same shot, so it almost feels like a mistake. These minor points aside, it’s fine work, and the tonal shifts are handled very well. Moments of light and dark don’t crash into each other, but flow easily.

Michael Caine is superb as Alfie Elkins. There’s always been a lack of pretence to the characters that Caine plays, or rather a lack of judgement. Caine always accepted the good and bad aspects of whomever he played, and Alfie is no exception. He carries Alfie’s frank nature and rather blunt way of speaking without hint of holding back for the sake of vanity. When Jude Law played the role nearly 40 years later, he smothered him with cheeky charm, so you can’t ever hate him too much. Caine doesn’t care too much if you hate him, because Alfie doesn’t care too much if you hate him either. As far as he’s concerned, he isn’t really a bad guy, rather he just doesn’t care for complications. Caine also depicts the few fleeting moments where Alfie’s mask slips with a delicate subtlety. There’s the hint of a warm smile, or look of longing that passes across his face before being quickly caught and covered up again.

It would be easy to get lost behind Caine’s performance, being that it does dominate proceedings. However, there are some performances that are utterly heart-breaking. Julia Foster, Vivien Merchant and Jane Asher are the women that we see most of as, for lack of a better way of putting it, victims of Alfie’s vanity. Foster and Asher both find themselves taken in by Alfie’s charm, but try to find something beyond him. It’s Merchant that really works hard, though, since she is the one most devastated by his whims. One look at her and you just want to smack him in the mouth.

What lies at the heart of Alfie, both the character and the film, is the nature and direction of the permissiveness that was the calling card of London in the 1960s. To a degree, the film posits the idea that a man like Alfie could only exist in such a time and place. He’s a rather unsettling mirror to the times, which is why it’s drowned in such period detail. He’s a cautionary tale, a possible glimpse of things to come. He’s a creature driven by gratification and, with the rise of a new way of life in the 60s, he’s found his perfect hunting ground. Consider it this way: Alfie is diagnosed with a hereditary disease (one that he could pass on to his children), but one that can be cured by simply slowing down. Whilst resting in a convalescent home, he has a dream that he has been tainted by poison and can’t go near his son for fear of passing it on to him. For all of Alfie’s questions of why people aren’t more like him and “What’s it all about?” he’s given plenty of hints. This is part of the reason that the 2004 remake didn’t work. Aside from a pretty poor showing from Jude Law, it misses the point of the original. The original makes its case on a potential moral crisis, but the remake clearly didn’t get that lesson. 2004 Alfie is not quite the same kind of person, more of an arrogant prick than a callous bastard. When 2004 Alfie is diagnosed with a disease, it’s testicular cancer. This is all well and good for an ironic punishment, but it suggests that Alfie’s problem is that he just likes screwing around too much, ignoring the more deep-seated and disturbing aspects of the character’s original incarnation and the metaphorical implications for future generations therein.

Alfie is a damn fine film, though it’s not exactly the bawdy, wild sex comedy that some remember it being. It’s tragic more than comic, and can be very, very dark. As a character, Alfie is drawn very well, and Caine plays every facet wonderfully. The style may have aged somewhat, plot elements have become quite anachronistic and we may be more familiar now with the techniques on show, but it’s still got a great deal of power on show.

Airplane! (1980)

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People love comedies. They love to laugh, and there are just so many ways to do it. It can be the most sophisticated of witticisms or it can be the most basic of pratfalls. You can build a joke like a chemistry experiment, out of subtle individuals elements, each one harmless on their own, but mixed together and delivered right, it produces a cracker of a punch line. You can also use the simplest, most common of physical goofs, like slipping on a banana peel. They can be as understated as a quick throwaway gag about oral sex, or they can be as abrupt as a pie in the face. There are even jokes that are funny precisely because they’re not meant to be, they’re played so seriously. Little wonder then that one of the most commonly named nominees for Funniest Film Ever is the 1980 classic Airplane!, because it hits every single one of them.

When the flight crew of an airplane becomes ill with food poisoning, it’s up to one man to take control and save the day – former air force pilot, Ted Striker (Robert Hays). Problem is that Striker now has the world’s most literal drinking problem and has been afraid to fly since… the war.

It was back in the 1970s in Wisconsin that brothers Jerry and David Zucker first met Jim Abrahams and started the Kentucky Fried Theatre Company, a comedy sketch outfit that specialised in doing spoofs of adverts they saw on television. They simply watched all of the bad commercials and just spun material out by adding jokes in wherever they could. At some point, the three saw the 1957 disaster movie Zero Hour! and immediately recognised the near limitless potential for comedy in the story. They actually bought the rights to the script for two reasons: 1) They would be free to use whole scenes verbatim; and 2) No one would sue for copyright. From the simple story of a former pilot whose nerves were shot being forced to land a plane after its crew became ill, the three created a comedic monster with a cyclic rate of jokes to rival a Howitzer.

There is almost no point in the film where they are not being funny. Even the straight-faced moments are brimming with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach to the audience that renders them weirdly hysterical. It should be said that the cast themselves (almost) never play directly for laughs. They know it’s funny, and they know we know it’s funny, but they never give a hint of that recognition onscreen. It’s one of the great triumphs of the picture. The performances are so earnestly straight, the delivery so deadpan that you’d almost believe that they’re trying to make a serious picture, but the directors won’t let them. This notion is made even better by the fact that the cast was scattered with people who had never done comedy before… ever. Robert Stack was a TV tough guy, famous for playing Eliot Ness in the television series The Untouchables, but his macho bravado and stern manner of speaking ends up as a wry send-up of that kind of character. Lloyd Bridges was a well-respected dramatic actor in television and film, and was even unsure about taking the role until his sons Beau and Jeff convinced him to do it. Leslie Neilsen was a Hollywood leading man who had started to decline in his career due to his age and he was grateful for the chance to try something new. Both Bridges and Neilsen were without any known gift for comedy before this film, but now their names are synonymous with parody comedy. Think about that – without Airplane!, there would be no Police Squad or The Naked Gun or Hot Shots. That was the impact of this movie.

The lead romantic pair of Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty (this was her first film) also do so well together that amidst the rapid fire of jokes, you get totally sucked in by the sweetness of their relationship. It’s tough to make any kind of impact beyond what’s funny in a movie like this, particularly when that storyline is really just an excuse for more comedy, but they do it wonderfully.

Over and over again, Airplane! does the thing that lies at the heart of great comedy – it sets the audience up with one particular expectation, and then spins it completely around for a superb payoff. Everything about this film has such a manic, gleeful energy to it. Every tool of comedy is used, from physical gaffs to spit-takes to word play to sight gags, and with a dexterity that is frankly staggering, and there is nothing that isn’t attempted for the sake of comedy. No subject that isn’t touched upon, no taboo that isn’t skirted. In amongst the jokes about harmless stuff like smoking tickets and sandwiches, there are jokes that are about abortion, death, paedophilia, bestiality, substance abuse, race, religion, poop… hell, you see a guy get stabbed onscreen, and it’s never not funny. What other film has gotten away with it because everyone is too busy laughing at it? That alone is worth the viewing.

Airplane! really is one of the funniest films ever made. It’s got a joke count so high and of such variety that it’s truly something to behold. It’s clever, satirical, cruel, immature, deapan and fires so quickly that it’s possible to miss whole scenes because you were too busy laughing at the last one. This was the beginning of so much in the world of comedy that it’s difficult to imagine where we would be without it.