The success of Shogun in 1980 beget two further James Clavell miniseries, "Tai-Pan" in 1986 and "Noble House" in 1988, diminishing returns certainly, but"Noble House" borders on incomprehensible at times because it tries to squeeze an enormous book with oodles of plots into six hours of screen time, mostly taken up by talk of finance. Plots start and stop at the whim of the director, so it lacks cohesion. Perhaps James Clavell was too busy working on the musical version of "Shogun" he was preparing at the time (with the composer who did the keyboard-drenched music for "Noble House") to give this one his full attention.
"Noble House" begins with a very ominous prologue. It's a terribly rainy June night and Pierce Brosnan as Ian Dunross, nostrils flaring but so handsome it's almost unbelievable, arrives as Noble House, a family-held company for over a century. He's there to take over the reigns of this august Hong Kong-based company from Denholm Elliott in an ages-old ceremony that involves a will, a Bible, two witnesses and a whole heap of responsibility...oh, and a curse regarding coins split in two. Pierce is now Tai-Pan of the company and his word is law.
Three years later, at the company's 150th birthday, Pierce is in a far better mood, but no less savvy an operator. He's gotten the company into bed with a Los Angeles-based company that he thinks will make millions, but everyone else at the party seems unsure since it's owner, Linc Bartlett, as played by Ben Masters, is a corporate raider.
Ben arrives in Hong Kong with Deborah Raffin (the go-to girl of 80s TV movies when you wanted the rest of the cast to shine instead of the leading lady) in tow, met at the airport by Pierce's inherited second-in-command/flunky Burt Kwouk and Superintendent Armstrong (Gordon Jackson). Deborah goes to Ben's hotel room in a flimsy one-piece and white stockings to tell Ben all they know about Pierce. They fully intend to swoop in, take Noble House and swoop out just as quickly. Ben is so sure and cocky that we know he'll meet a bad end, no matter how long it takes to get there.
Deborah, in another pair of white stockings, meets Pierce the next day right at the elevator bank. Pierce tells her about feng-shui as her introduction to everything Asian. Ben delays his meeting at Noble House by going to John Rhys-Davies' company where the latter offers what seems a better deal and then goes on to trash the whole history of Noble House. John (a hold-over from "Shogun" and playing basically the same character) is hell-bent on destroying Pierce and his company. John gives us our big lesson for the twentieth time (nearly every character has so far said it in almost the same words): "We do things differently in Hong Kong." Ben would seem to be out of his comfort zone, but he's not really impressed by John's machinations. He is, however, impressed by Julia Nickson, a local TV reporter, arriving just as he's leaving. Julia is instructed to make Ben fall in love with her as a distraction.
Ben heads across the street to meet Pierce, who has already been told of his first meeting by his super-efficient secretary Nancy Kwan. Ben's American cowboy routine is going to get old very quickly. Obviously the smarter of the two on the team is Deborah, whose desire to make it in a man's world is apparently her overarching desire.
The business propositions are put on hold when Pierce finds out Burt's son has been kidnapped. There are two things very upsetting about it: first, the son had arrived on the plane with Ben and Deborah as a leverage chip and second, and this is unknown to everyone, the son (Steven Leigh) has the other half of the coin that has been missing since the first scene (or probably longer, but that's the first we saw of it). Burt finds out that Steven has been selling out the company secrets to Ben and that he has taken the half a coin. He curses his son to hell in the best Medea-like fashion. Pierce's way of dealing with the situation is to call on Khigh Dhiegh, who knows everything that goes on in Hong Kong (and who is worth $50 million, we find out a few scenes later).
Can you guess what Deborah wears to Pierce's party that night? Yes, white stockings. She learns all about the company history and the reasons John Rhys-Davies and Pierce are at odds (she could have just watched "Tai-Pan"). Ben roams the party and meets all of Hong Kong's power players, meeting Julia again in her role as seductress. Every mouth drops when John shows up. Eyebrows can't be raised higher than they are now among Hong Kong's fey elite. Ben tries to shove his deal down Pierce's throat, but Pierce doesn't agree to the terms, and Ben relents. The only sticking point seems to be that Ben demands Pierce sign the deal with Deborah, not with him. "A tai-pan only deals with a tai-pan," Pierce says, but it's not up for argument as far as Ben is concerned.
By the very fact that he's singing in the car, on a twisty small road means John Rhys-Davies is going to be in an accident (do you remember a 70s or 80s TV show where it doesn't happen?). The brakes are cut, but John survives. John is more interested in bringing Ben into his fold and destroying Pierce, though business propositions that are not at all exciting.
The kidnappers are a rather dimwitted gang and right before the credits roll to end the first episode, they have killed Steven and found the half coin around his neck, thinking it worthless.
The second part opens with Pierce taking Ben and White Stockings (yes, again) to dinner. Ben wants "Chinese food...you know, egg roll, chop suey..." and Pierce takes them for a stop first to see his gold bullion. Ben is worried that Deborah is falling for Pierce, and warns her against it. "Pick another guy...another time, another place," and Deborah chirps, "you're the boss." "You bet I am." It's dialogue this dimwitted that makes me long for "Shogun," where no one spoke English. There are a few dozen characters already, and not one of them has strung two intelligent sentences together yet (there isn't a hint of humor in "Noble House," so everyone has to be as serious as the bankers they are playing).
Our two villains cut a deal. Ben fronts all the money for a corporate raid on the Noble House and John will spread rumors to get the stock to fall (as he's done with a small bank to prove to Ben how important an operator he is). For $4 million ($31 Hong Kong dollars) in a Swiss bank account #181819 (it was the most interesting moment of a dull conversation, that's the only reason I remembered it), John and Ben will ruin Noble House. Bed finally lets White Stockings (yes, another day, another pair) in on his nefarious scheme and she likes the fact of playing both sides against the other, but I think we're all pretty sure when the chips are falling, Deborah will side with Pierce, no?
Here comes the hail storm. Pierce, Ben and Deborah stand watching the Hong Kong stock exchange while John dumps his Noble House stock and as the entire economy reels, Pierce buys up all the dumped stock, actually yelling above the huge din in the stock exchange and everyone stops chattering. Pierce and John argue with everyone listening. Now really!
Pierce goes to Khieg to borrow the money he needs to cover the losses, but Khieg wants Noble House ships to carry drugs in return. White Stockings shows up for a drink with Pierce wearing black stockings (and a black dress, who the hell designed this?). Ben chases Julia, asking her to be his date at a charity benefit that night where all of the players will regroup. These people do nothing but sip champagne and gossip.
The kidnappers get the ransom money, despite the fact that their captive is dead, but they have only about six seconds to enjoy it before Khieg's goons burst in and find out the truth. More bad news for Noble House.
At the party that night, Khieg shows up with everybody's favorite mistress (literally, she has a few sugar daddies among the banking community), Tia Carrere, as Venus Poon. Yup, Venus Poon. Thank goodness the world wasn't fully PC by 1988. She even has a tea-cup puppy. Frankly, her few seconds of screen time are more interesting than the conversations at the party, more about runs of banks, dirty deals and everyone pretending to be friendly. The eye game is playing with fervor. John looking at Ben arriving with Julia, Deborah noticing then eyeing Pierce. "This is Hong Kong, everybody..." Yeah, yeah, you can finish that sentence.
Just when you want to duck out of yet another series of ring 'round the room advances, a fire starts in the kitchen. Oh, I forgot to mention this party is on a floating boat. Pierce tries to stop everyone from panicking (it's not even his party), but no one wants a Chinese Poseidon Adventure. It's not a good time to be an extra. Some jump into the river on fire, some have hefty women fall on them and some get to jump four stories into the water in sequins. Our principals are trapped on the top floor and Deborah jumps first...but not before removing her dress to reveal the black stockings are patterned! Why did she remove her dress and no one else did? Next jumps Julia, who can't swim and then Ben jumps off with a pregnant woman we've never met. That leaves Pierce and John, the latter deciding to tell Pierce he still intends to sell more stock the next day. You know Pierce Brosnan, "unflappable" is his career middle name.
Khieg's henchmen find the half coin on Noble House Chen Number One Son (that's their dialogue, not mine) and the police find his body. The Chinese Superintendent, the one who isn't a moron, brings the news to Pierce, who reacts by asking him out for drinks later that night.
Ben goes over to Julia's, and she's looking sexy in shoulder pads and satin. Ben sees a picture of her with John Rhys-Davies and Julia explains that they were a couple together, her first love. She also reveals she's 25, which seems rather unlikely. As she tells the story, guess what she says? "This is Hong Kong. I'd rather you hear it from me." WE KNOW!!!!!!! Hong Kong is small and people talk. After flirting with Ben, she stops him when he starts to kiss her. You see, she has to be in love, and she's not in love with him. With anyone, she says. If ever there were a stupid soap opera scene, this is it.
The White Stockings are back. She brings up Julia and Ben gets a lot defensive. For someone so smart, he's gone all dumb for Julia. A true villain.
The second episode draws to an end as the police get some baffling information and the leads have yet another financial "it's all a game" chat.
The third portion starts with Julia apologizing to Ben. "I'm sorry I was such a twit." He's fine with that, the lovestruck fool! She then prattles on about the financial goings-on, only to say not to listen to anything she says. Is this dame bipolar?
Khieg is a very bad man. Not only does he kill the one remaining kidnapper, making sure if it's discovered, his son will take the fall and then turns his attentions to his drug business.
You know something? Everyone in the movie calls him Tai-Pan, so I will try to call him Pierce-Pan from now on, for consistency with the movie. That drink planned with the Chinese Superintendent? Go figure, the guy isn't there. He's being held in prison, subjected to every torture but waterboarding as they think he is a Chinese spy (do Chinese spies break under the use of LSD-trip music and visuals? If so, why not just show him "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" over and over, or perhaps drone out "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" like they did with the Branch Davidians).
I'll spare everyone the scene where Ben and Julia visit a whorehouse and Julia offers to buy any girl Ben wants and skip right to Pierce-Pan and White Stockings having a private dinner, where White Stockings (in all black since dinner is on a boat--she's learned her lesson from the night before) spills her dull life story and continues to chatter even after Pierce-Pan has started to kiss her. No one in this film ever gets laid!
From that romantic near-escapade, Pierce-Pan heads off to Khieg and son (pretending to be nephew). Khieg produces half a coin and demands a favor, even though Pierce-Pan knows it's a stolen coin as Khieg's half coin is already accounted for (this is the coin from Noble House Chen First Son).
Pierce-Pan is without many friends. He lowers himself to playing golf with representative from the man from Bank of China, a man who definitely seems the face of Communism, and ever has since the first scene. He won't put up the money, but he knows of a Chinese conglomerate who might. Another option is one of the dud financial friends Pierce-Pan who has, but he has to go to Macao to meet him.
Another friend list is trusty second-in-command Phillip. He admits to Pierce-Pan that his son had been working for Ben and had all their secrets. That is one Pissed Pierce-Pan.
White Stockings (in her first pair of pants) is swept off to Macao by Pierce-Pan. See, he can be ruthless and romantic at the same time. Of course, they spend the trip discussing plans to outwit Ben, so romance is hard to manage when White Stockings spends the boat ride sounding like a useless middle page of The Wall Street Journal.
Proving once again that "Noble House" has no sense of place, Ben and Julia waste an entire good beach walk by hearing Julia's history (which he's heard from John already).
After a 20-second tour of Macao, Pierce-Pan and his ally there sit down for a (zzzzzzz) financial discussion. Pierce-Pan and White Stockings go gambling where, of course, White Stockings, who professes to always lose, wins big. Then we get the standard 1980s bed scene: woman wrapped tight in a sheet, rests head on hairy hunk's chest during muted-tone discussion.
In an otherwise useless scene, Kheig does come up with a good line speaking of Pierce-Pan and White Stockings in bed: "I am pleased that one American is doing what the other is trying to do to him."
A lot is riding on the races, a miniature version of the financial dealings, so John tells his jockey he either beats Pierce-Pan's horse or he never works again. Someone has tampered with Pierce-Pan's horse to make it even touchier. Our whole cast goes off to the races, which enchants White Stockings, mainly because she thrills to the pricey sky box Pierce-Pan owns. John makes a very strange offer to White Stockings to take her on a boat ride the next day, despite a meteorological chance of rain. Everyone is at the races. Both of Virgin Poon's elderly suitors included. When one sees her with the other, he levels this classic oath: "May the gods curse you both. Even with all the techniques I've taught her, you can't make a wet noodle dance." Of course, that's immediately followed by another financial scheme I'm too dumb to understand and the third portion ends. Not a moment too soon, frankly, but so far, Part 3 is the dullest. Where is the Clavell action?
In Part 4 is the answer. Back at the races, Pierce-Pan invites a "strange group" of people to his box for some news later and the Victoria Bank acquires the Ho Pak Bank, the one John made to under to prove to Ben how unscrupulous he could be. Pierce-Pan let's a man who has to be the world's biggest jokey win. Price-Pan tells the gang that he's has made some fancy deal, proving that Noble House may be down, but not out yet!
Then the big race comes. John and Pierce-Pan's horses are the only ones that matter and everyone is tense watching them. John's jockey, no better than his boss, smacks Pierce-Pan's jokey with his crop, not only throwing him from his horse, but killing him. John fully approves.
The Bank of China won't help Pierce-Pan, but a conglomerate from The Middle King will on his recommendation. He has to go to Beijing in secret. That causes much consternation from White Stockings, who makes it a reason for a fight. Sex the night before must have been that good and if she can't get it again tonight, she might as well get all pissy.
The head of the conglomerate is an old friend of Pierce-Pan's. They haven't seen each other in 25 years. His friend puts a bunch of business terms on it, and also an extra one: get the Superintendent out of jail.
Every time Julia has appeared on screen, she gets porn music played behind her, but now that she and Ben are in love, it's arch romance. She wants to be with him in one sentence and in the next, she says she can't. Again, the dialogue is so vapid even daytime soaps wouldn't use it. In their next scene, they have sex and the porn music is back.
John takes White Stockings (in pants again, and all dressed up) on a boat ride. She goes along hoping to learn something about his intentions for Noble House, but he's far too smart to let anything important slip. And then it gets ugly. John puts the moves on White Stockings, and it's obvious she wouldn't stand a chance if he really wanted to do it because he's about 200 pounds larger. The script gives White Stockings an opportunity to prove how truly lacking she is upstairs. Indignant, she begs to be let out of the locked room. "Turn the handle the other way," John says. She didn't even think to try that? And this is a woman managing a multi-billion dollar company? When he lets her off the boat, he's still laughing nefariously.
Pierce-Pan races to the Governor (John Houseman, looking about 176 years old) to ask his help in the release of the arrested Superintendent. The Commissioner is also there, arguing the case on the opposite. Pierce-Pan argues that without Chinese support, Hong Kong business will die. "It is not blackmail...it is survival," he roars, surprising the Governor and Commissioner.
Finally, 45 minutes before the end, we get a patented bit of Clavell-ex-machina (he likes storms, earthquakes and the like) when a landslide destroys a gigantic building. It happens to be the building in which Khieg is playing with Venus Poon and Ben is resting after Julia went out to buy some food. As she and White Stockings watch in horror, Pierce-Pan jumps in to help and even John agrees to help since Ben is in there. The script makes John so utterly reprehensible that he accuses Pierce-Pan of going in to find him simply for the upcoming deal. Ben is trapped, but alive, and able to discuss business. Not so lucky is Khieg. Hi son finds his body and takes the half coin from it.
"How tough is it to get married in Hong Kong?" Ben asks, just seconds before another landslide drowns him. Awwwwwww.
John had heard Pierce-Pan telling Ben that Noble House was going to be saved by the Chinese conglomerate and that news ruins all plans John had.
For absolutely no reason at all but to prove herself, White Stockings (wearing none this time) fires her next-in-line when he pisses her off (this is the first time we've even met him). She's an 80s-style bitch now.
Kiegh's son comes to Pierce-Pan, showing him the coin and demanding his favor. Actually, he makes a bunch of demands, and the only one Pierce-Pan is hesitant about is to help him get in on the Macao gambling. Just as that meeting ends, Pearl Cream Queen Nancy Kwan tells him the release of his friend the Superintendent is happening. Pierce-Pan is there to watch him cross the boarder. He does so and Noble House is saved.
White Stockings, who has been suspicious of Julia all along, pays her a visit. Julia goes full Camille portraying a grief-stricken "widow." White Stockings invites Julia to return to America with her and they both hope they can be friends. At least that's wrapped up too! That was a far more important plo...oh, hell, no one ever cared about it.
Pierce-Pan wants White Stockings-Pan (she's the head of Ben's company now) to stay in Hong Kong, but she has to go back to the US. "I bet you've never kissed a Tai-Pan before," she says. "Not in the lobby of this hotel," Pierce-Pan coos back.
Now it only remains to finish off John, but with a twist. John would be ruined if Pierce-Pan opens the stock market with a planned high price for Noble House stock, but he allows John to buy in cheaper because the two know they can't play the game without each other.
Pierce-Pan and White Stockings-Pan have a kiss-off at the end, but she says she'll be back. I'm sure all of Hong Kong is hoping otherwise. The Tai-Pan can do better, even if Venus Poon is dead.
The energy and adventure of of "Shogun" is long gone by the time "Noble House" even starts. Perhaps because this is technically a piece about the undramatic topic of finance, or because massive chunks of Clavell's book have disappeared to keep this to a viable length or perhaps because the acting, save the deadpan honesty of Pierce Brosnan and the gleefully nastiness of John Rhys-Davies, is plain bad, this piece speaks of a dying art form, the miniseries in decline, going for glitz with nothing much to back it up.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Jesus of Nazareth (1977)
I'm cheating a little here, since this miniseries actually premiered on British TV before American TV, but only by a week. This is clearly meant to be more than just a typical miniseries (direction by Franco Zeffirelli and written by Zeffirelli, Suso Cecci D'Amico and Anthony Burgess, it already seems international), but it's largely American cast and yearly repeats on American TV let it suffice.
And up front, I hope no one takes offense at any of my potshots in a religious sense. I'm looking at this film purely as a television miniseries, not as a religious artifact. Broadcast originally on NBC, it's automatically part of the secular world too.
Joseph (Yorgo Voyagis) is betrothed Mary (Zeffirelli's Juliet, Olivia Hussey), whose mother seems bent on unloading her, but to the rest of the village, it's an ideal match. Woken from sleep, Mary sees light coming through the window and begs to know "who are you?" though her mother, in the same room, sees no one. Mary has a dialogue without a partner and has her instructions, much to her mother's concern.
King Herod (Peter Ustinov, going at it hard and heavy) lives in a sumptuous palace, happily entertaining lavishly and pontificating on the term of Messiah and all of the Jewish prophets running around the area. He and his Roman friends treat it all as a joke. "There will be no Messiah, true or false, in Palestine, while I am alive." He certainly wasn't the smartest ruler, but of course he had no idea of what was to come. For the purposes of this telling, he's simply a buffoon out to please the Romans.
Joseph of Mary's mother are understandably shocked when Mary, returning from the birth of John the Baptist to her barren cousin, tells them she will soon be the mother of the savior. Olivia Hussey plays it so ethereal that she might be able to convince people thousands of years later, but no one then understood ethereal, so Joseph has to have many a consult to convince him to stick with Mary, especially since both should technically be stoned...and they are only betrothed, not married! A dream of Mary being stoned and a haunting British voice over finally convinces him to accept fate, marry Mary and play dad to the boy he will call Jesus.
Throughout this miniseries, it's easy to distinguish the heroes from the villains, even if you don't know the story. The good speak like the Bible with strong music behind them, while the baddies, like Herod, sound like the 1970s, or at least the 1870s. Case in point: slithery Herod manages to arrange a Roman census to benefit his needs, while Joseph accepts he has to take Mary back to Bethlehem (from whence he came), arguing with rabble in the street who are upset at the census in the most flowery and beautiful of language.
The trek is rough on pregnant Mary, turned away everywhere Joseph tries to find a comfortable spot for her. Helpful Cockney lass Abigail tries to help, by sending them over to some stables outside of the city walls.
Meanwhile, three kings travel in luxury, following the star (Donald Pleasance talks like he's in a trance, Fernando Rey has something of a superiority complex and James Earl Jones drones on like the world's first astrologist), following a star for reasons they don't understand.
Mary has a relatively easy time giving birth, understandable, I suppose since he's no ordinary child. "Put him there in the manger," a woman tells Joseph. Okay, that's a bit much. The concept of "manger" is far younger than this story, but if it isn't uttered, I suppose we would be disappointed. Visitors show up immediately, posing lovingly around the infant's shining light as Mary rests through it all. This is the first of Zeffirelli's tableaux, giving the visuals here the heft of two thousand years of paintings.
Ralph Richardson is Simeon, an old man present at Jesus' circumcision, also hopping on the emotive train the British co-stars of this movie seem to enjoy. No one has topped Peter Ustinov's Herod yet, especially as he listens to the rumors of Messiah and the three kings in his realm who have not even bothered to come pay him homage!
The kings give Mary and Joseph their gifts and warn them to go to Egypt to avoid Herod's clutches. Peter Ustinov orders all male children a year...no, two years old, killed, in a wackadoo speech that echoes throughout his palace and probably gave him laryngitis if he had to do too many takes. It's left to Sir Ralph, on his knees and looking an awful lot like King Lear, to describe the horror in Bethehem after this slaughter.
Back in Nazareth, blue-eyed blond Jesus grows up listening to Papa Joseph's loooooooong dissertations (less talk and more work and his customers wouldn't be quite so upset at him), proving here and there that he's clearly special. An obviously European child (with an accent to match, played by Lorenzo Monet) with intense blue eyes plays Jesus at Bar Mitzvah age. That celebration is interrupted by nasty Roman soldiers and much lamentation by the townspeople as Jesus watches (with the same look as the kid in "The Omen"). If Mary had been any other Jewish mother in history, she would have been unshakably angry that her son's big day did not go according to her very exactly and exhaustive plans.
Cousin John has grown up to become Michael York, much to the annoyance of Herod Antipas (Christopher Plummer) and Herodias (Valentina Cortese, doing a fetching Ann-Margaret imitation). History's most exciting eccentric, John the Baptist is a dream role for anyone not lucky enough to play Jesus himself, and Michael York milks every moment. It's Michael's bad luck that Herodias is such an angry person, not only at the peasants who attack her, but at Herod, who is lusting after Salome, that she insists John be arrested. Christopher Plummer works overtime to keep up with Valentina, but one of moviedom's finest hams, he's a worthy successor to Sir Peter. With Jesus out of the story as a main character, leaving the supporting cast to tear up the place, this segment of the film definitely feels like a typical miniseries, feverish and emotive.
Nearly two hours into "Jesus of Nazareth," Robert Powell finally arrives to play out the rest of the piece of the King of Kings. Eyes gleaming, he and John the Baptist are obviously cousins, as they speak in the same British accent. John baptizes Jesus, knowing he's finally gotten a look at the savior. John tells his followers to leave him and go after Jesus, just in time to be arrested.
In his first attempt to convince the masses at his home synagogue that the time has come, Jesus is not a success. Mary and a few others seem to gleam some meaning, but the muttering rabble want him run out of town. By speaking quietly but passionately, Jesus gathers up his apostles, though the extras typically don't get it. A majestic scene, pure Zeffirelli, shows just the shadow of Jesus' hand pulling the demon from a foaming lunatic, and that one wins a bunch of admirers.
As the miracles pile up, the rabble sees the light. After helping the fishermen to haul in record numbers of fish, the whole town lines up just to see Jesus and hear his wisdom. The curing of the cripple is certainly impressive and goes a long way to impart the gospel of forgiveness. However, the movie does lose a bit of credibility when we hear of raging angsty Peter, "come on, you can't talk to him when he's like this." The beauty of Jesus' words do seem blunted by the rest of the world, which is of course the point of filming the passion play again, but this is just a bit too colloquial for believability.
Dinner at Matthew's is certainly a jolt to the townsfolk, but it's also the best meal poor Jesus has eaten in close to 30 years. Forgiveness is mighty, and it is allowed to go hand-in-hand with luxury. He also tells the gripping tale of the Prodigal Son, further helping his cause among the confused. Powell is not exactly the most infectious presence, directed in that same ethereal way Olivia Hussey had previously used, but when he goes on at length in telling a story, he does open up with some more excitement and the movie kicks back into gear with a lead character worth following. Unfortunately, this is not done uniformly, leading to some sagging. Although, Zeffirelli knows how to cut this movie so that when religion gets a bit too much, he brings on the Family Herod and lets them wildly overact to punch things up again (Herod's birthday celebration and the whole Salome bit are priceless hokum, with Michael York and Christopher Plummer, not to mention Valentina Cortese, going for the emotive jugular).
The Miracle Tour continues, sweeping Thomas into its net when Jesus is able to bring a little girl back from death. Doubts abound, but these men are seriously beginning to believe. And note that the episodic nature of the story (conveniently short chapters come from the Bible itself) is ideal for a miniseries because scenes can be short and effective.
At the burial of John the Baptist's body, we finally meet Judas (Ian McShane). He enters during a political discussion about Rome, so he's already a bit suspect, but at least he's not demonized yet, merely a political opportunist.
And then she arrives. In one of the most classic examples of inept casting, Anne Bancroft plays Mary Magdalene, a tough old pro who can take on a whole crowd of boys playing jokes on her. It's obvious from the onset that even Anne knows she has the power here, and decides to play it like a good old-fashioned broad, shrieking and howling, but having a grand time of it.
The combined efforts of Christopher, Michael and Anne are fun fluff, but they can't help the leaden Sermon on the Mount or the discussions with Joseph of Arimathea (James Mason). They are simply too talky for TV. Even the fishes and the loaves are anemic. If anything cried out for a touch of special effects, it's this story, but it definitely converts a lot of people, Annie Magdalene first among them. Her foot-kissing episode, wordless but with a pool full of tears, enlivens the proceedings after James Mason has threatened them into perpetual slumber.
Christopher Plummer makes the best out of his assassination attempt, turning the name of Jesus into a three syllable sibilant word as he endeavors to show his power, helping to move along the series of events that have lately slowed to a crawl. He kills a bunch of zealots, which Judas knows will bring Jesus to Jerusalem. At the same time, cranky Simon reveals himself to be the most understanding of the apostles and is renamed Peter and Jesus starts to talk about building his church for the first time, actually a notable moment as it's the first time Jesus has mentioned organizing his teachings into an actual religion. The music underscoring this moment is appropriately moving and the scene is set in the dark, with only a fire to light the men. It's also when Jesus ruins the rest of the plot by telling us what is going to happen. I mean, sure, we know, but this is a flaw that goes back to the Bible--it's not much in the way of dramatic tension to know the end 2 1/2 hours before it happen, is it?
Passover approaches and Jerusalem swells with pilgrims but Jesus is not ready to enter yet. First, he has to pay a visit to Lazarus. Frankly, the movie is no clearer on this episode than anything else, pretty much sticking to the facts that Jesus decides to raise Lazarus from the dead simply because the women say they believe Jesus' teachings (anyone else a little suspicious of that?) and it's a good foreshadow to his own demise and the after effects of it. Again, and I'm sorry to say it, it's cinematic time filler here. Since we've never met Lazarus, seeing him show up alive after death doesn't exactly wow.
Judas goes to bureaucrat Ian Holm as his way to get Jesus seen by the high priests of Jerusalem. The script hedges its bets, with Judas honestly believing what he's saying, but saying it for the benefit of Jesus and his followers. Ian is more canny, knowing how to play each faction against the other. When Judas sees the mob scene of believers (or wanna-be believers) there to greet Jesus at the gates of Jerusalem, he knows he's on the right track. Jesus doesn't look like he minds the attention either, but he's not thrilled to see what's going on around the temple, where extras do their bargaining as the most stereotypical of Jewish businessmen. Jesus causes a (poorly filmed) riot in the bazaar before finally entering the temple.
Politically, Jesus is way out of his element in Jerusalem, where he fails to impress Ian Holm with his creeds, but that only upsets Judas, not Jesus, who has already told us what is going to happen. However, Jesus draws a huge crowd when preaching at the temple, but though the set and amount of extras look like something out of DeMille, again, sermons aren't dramatically inspiring television. Beautifully delivered by Powell, I admit, and it does pique the curiosity of Nicodemus (the inevitable Laurence Olivier).
Looking like he wandered in from a Western, Stacy Keach is as good a choice as anyone to play Barabbas, who wants to use Jesus' teachings to overcome the Romans. Barabbas claims might will settle the question, but Jesus gives the "lion will lie down with the lamb" and "those who live by the sword die by the sword" speech, as moving a speech as the Bible has, but completely lost on Barabbas.
By this point, the movie starts to move like molasses again, but there's not much Zeffirelli or anyone else can do about it but make it look as pretty as possible. Jesus preaches and preaches, gathering more and more converts, as the temple elders look on with mounting ire, not bothering to listen to what he's saying. It's just a stretch of the story that slows down all the action to make sure the message is not lost among plotting. It's the proverbial watched pot waiting to boil.
Oh, my stars! Just when I thought the casting couldn't get any more strange, Claudia Cardinale arrives as The Adulteress, around long enough not to get pummeled after Jesus tells those "without sin to cast the first stone." The whole episode lasts barely enough time to justify her billing.
If we believe Claudia, Anne and the rest, why not invite Ernest Borgnine to play as the Centurion, trying his best to adopt a crisp accent that is completely at odds with the rest of his career, who worries about his sick servant. This brief episode serves only to further anger Stacy Barabbas who, like everyone else, doesn't understand Jesus' teachings apply to everyone, not just his converts (blink and you'll miss Simon MacCorkindale delivering the news to Ernie that his servant is indeed well).
The curing of the blind beggar is the last straw for the temple priests, who are starting to take this awfully personally, so Jesus plays along and roars against them with his most blasphemous (to them) speech yet. The crowd is upset too, so Stacy Barabbas kills a Roman soldier as a way to incite them further. Judas realizes all hope is lost. Well, temporally at least.
As the Passover of 100 Stars stumbles along, Sir Larry gets his first actual dialogue scene, going to Jesus to say that there are many believers among the priests, but also many enemies. The old scholar wants to see the truth and the two try to out-whisper each other in an antiquated acting style as Sir Larry learns a bit more.
Want to guess who plays Caiaphas as the temple priests argue the case? Come on, take a guess. It's 1977 and we need aging Oscar winners to pitch in. We've seen many British greats, but how about a real Hollywood legend? Ponder this as the scene, with James Mason back, goes on and on and on and on and on and on as this mystery legend seems to actually sleep through the case, waking up only when Sir Larry proposes that Jesus may actually be the Son of God.
Have you guessed yet?
Oh, fine! It's Anthony Quinn. Yes, Zorba has returned to the Mediterranean to try to snatch away a few moments from the other eager beaver has-beens, none of whom would ever miss a chance to star in THE story. Tony throws himself head first into the proceedings playing Caiaphas as a judge with the world's worst headache. This court case in costume seems longer than an entire "Perry Mason" episode as the hams duke it out. Ian Holm FINALLY brings the scene to a close when he figures out a way to end it all.
So, he trots off to Judas to urge him to get Jesus to speak to the council, knowing full well that Jesus will never do it.
Wisely, Zeffirelli chooses not to depict The Last Supper as a Renaissance painting, but rather a dinner in a small crowded airless home, more true to reality. Of all scenes, this one actually passes perhaps too quickly. I guess the apostles are not famous enough actors to deserve an over-written scene and this one is played just as the gospels suggest, well-acted to boot. It does end with a beautiful tableau image too.
Since Ian Holm has seen Jesus preach at the temple, the whole Judas kiss ado isn't really needed, but it's part of the legend, so Judas pecks Jesus and Gethsemane awakens as the soldiers take Jesus away and the apostles scatter in fear and confusion. Nefarious Ian Holm reveals himself to be a far better politician than Judas ever realized, but the movie is fairly sympathetic to Judas, who here honestly believes Jesus would get a fair trial.
Poor Robert Powell doesn't stand a chance at the trial, not just because he's playing Jesus, but because Tony and Sir Larry and Jimmy Mason are all present, not to mention a few other dozen elders fighting for screen time. Anthony Quinn brings the proceedings to a (none too swift) end by asking Jesus directly if he is the Son of God. Upon hearing the answer, Anthony rips off his prayer shawl and Ian sends Jesus off to the Romans.
A nasty crowd outside the temple turns on Peter, who of course denies Jesus. The Romans are stupid enough to fall for it and the cock crows. As for Judas, we last see him swinging from a tree, his blood money on the ground below him.
The story has room enough for only one more guest star, and Rod Steiger fully intends to make the most out of Pontius Pilate. He gallops breathlessly into Jerusalem, tired and thirsty, eager to kill Barabbas as planned. He knows nothing of Jesus until perky aide Tony LoBianco fills him in. Rod's Pilate is completely uninterested in the case, but the priests, eager to shift the blame, insist on being heard. Once they tell Pilate that Jesus has called himself a King of anything, it's officially tyranny and he has to deal with it.
So, this sets up one final showdown, Steiger's bug-eyed Pilate actually being fair in trying to get to the truth, and Powell's serene Jesus fully resigned to his fate and answering questions honestly. Ian makes sure Pilate has to condemn Jesus. This leads to all of those lashes, though the bloodshed is left to a minimum (we'll save that for Mel Gibson's version). The Roman soldiers give him a crown of thorns (here comes Simon MacCorkindale for a few extra moments of screen time). That crown looks utterly painful and even Pilate seems to have some sympathy for the corporeal Jesus, a wreck of a body but still obviously fully functioning in spirit.
The buck is passed again as Rod decides to evoke the custom that he can commute a death sentence for Passover, but instead of simply doing it, he puts the decision in the hands of the rabble. They must decide for Barabbas or Jesus. A swarm of agents are sent out to convince the rabble to vote for Barabbas' release, with Annie Magdalene suspiciously winding her way around the crowd (Mother Mary has been there for days, but has declined to see her son, I suppose for dramatic effect, seeing him only at the very end). The rabble picks Barabbas to be saved and Pilate condemns him to death.
Strapped to the cross, Jesus begins the Via Dolorosa, with the rabble shouting the whole way. The women seem more convinced of the truth, but it's too late. Jesus is crucified, begging God for the forgiveness of those who have done this to him while the two thieves next to him wonder why he doesn't save himself. "Today you will be with me in paradise," he tells the more understanding of the two as the life starts to go out of his body. Annie Magdalene witnesses it all and then Mother Mary arrives, helped over to Jesus' lifeless body by Ernie Borgnine. The two Marys (three, if you count Lazarus' sister) weep below with Ernie sad for what has happened and some of the apostles finally returning. By this point, the crowd is wondering why he doesn't save himself and feel awfully guilty. Sir Larry gets to deliver the big speech in his greatest Shakespearean tones.
The moment Jesus finally breathes his last, a furious rain storm opens up. Mary Magdalene howls ferociously, clutching the dead body. She then goes with Mary to anoint the body, but there is soldier Simon MacCorkindale again to throw a wrench into the action. It's been three days since the burial, why should they anoint him now? It was the Sabbath, she says and this is the first opportunity to do the task. "Jesus is not here," Lazarus' sister says, which scares the hell out of the Romans.
The apostles meet in secret, where Annie Magdalene reports the Resurrection. None of the apostles believe her, especially Doubting Thomas. But, then Peter changes his mind in his full moment in clarity, finally understanding the teachings.
Ian goes to the empty burial chamber and pronounces, "it has begun" as he finally understands. Jesus appears to his disciples, tells them to spread his teachings and it has all begun.
"Jesus of Nazareth" follows the Bible gospels very faithfully, but also makes sure to throw in some fancy Hollywood touches. A cadre of bad acting often destroys many of the more subtle moments, but then again, this is a story about wild passion and fervent beliefs, so perhaps the growls and lamentations are necessary to make the piece seem larger than life. "Jesus of Nazareth" is exponentially better than the snoozy "Greatest Story Ever Told," but at over six hours, there is a lot of lag time here. It's unavoidable that many of the Bible's most beautiful passages will have to be inserted, and that can often lead to some mighty slow scenes. As entertainment, "Jesus of Nazareth" is in a category all of its own because it's main point is not to really entertain, merely to make one of religion's best narratives come to life for the faithful one more time. Television is not the ideal medium for this, but it would have cost far more money to do this as a big-budget Hollywood epic and in the late 70s, no one could afford that.
And up front, I hope no one takes offense at any of my potshots in a religious sense. I'm looking at this film purely as a television miniseries, not as a religious artifact. Broadcast originally on NBC, it's automatically part of the secular world too.
Joseph (Yorgo Voyagis) is betrothed Mary (Zeffirelli's Juliet, Olivia Hussey), whose mother seems bent on unloading her, but to the rest of the village, it's an ideal match. Woken from sleep, Mary sees light coming through the window and begs to know "who are you?" though her mother, in the same room, sees no one. Mary has a dialogue without a partner and has her instructions, much to her mother's concern.
King Herod (Peter Ustinov, going at it hard and heavy) lives in a sumptuous palace, happily entertaining lavishly and pontificating on the term of Messiah and all of the Jewish prophets running around the area. He and his Roman friends treat it all as a joke. "There will be no Messiah, true or false, in Palestine, while I am alive." He certainly wasn't the smartest ruler, but of course he had no idea of what was to come. For the purposes of this telling, he's simply a buffoon out to please the Romans.
Joseph of Mary's mother are understandably shocked when Mary, returning from the birth of John the Baptist to her barren cousin, tells them she will soon be the mother of the savior. Olivia Hussey plays it so ethereal that she might be able to convince people thousands of years later, but no one then understood ethereal, so Joseph has to have many a consult to convince him to stick with Mary, especially since both should technically be stoned...and they are only betrothed, not married! A dream of Mary being stoned and a haunting British voice over finally convinces him to accept fate, marry Mary and play dad to the boy he will call Jesus.
Throughout this miniseries, it's easy to distinguish the heroes from the villains, even if you don't know the story. The good speak like the Bible with strong music behind them, while the baddies, like Herod, sound like the 1970s, or at least the 1870s. Case in point: slithery Herod manages to arrange a Roman census to benefit his needs, while Joseph accepts he has to take Mary back to Bethlehem (from whence he came), arguing with rabble in the street who are upset at the census in the most flowery and beautiful of language.
The trek is rough on pregnant Mary, turned away everywhere Joseph tries to find a comfortable spot for her. Helpful Cockney lass Abigail tries to help, by sending them over to some stables outside of the city walls.
Meanwhile, three kings travel in luxury, following the star (Donald Pleasance talks like he's in a trance, Fernando Rey has something of a superiority complex and James Earl Jones drones on like the world's first astrologist), following a star for reasons they don't understand.
Mary has a relatively easy time giving birth, understandable, I suppose since he's no ordinary child. "Put him there in the manger," a woman tells Joseph. Okay, that's a bit much. The concept of "manger" is far younger than this story, but if it isn't uttered, I suppose we would be disappointed. Visitors show up immediately, posing lovingly around the infant's shining light as Mary rests through it all. This is the first of Zeffirelli's tableaux, giving the visuals here the heft of two thousand years of paintings.
Ralph Richardson is Simeon, an old man present at Jesus' circumcision, also hopping on the emotive train the British co-stars of this movie seem to enjoy. No one has topped Peter Ustinov's Herod yet, especially as he listens to the rumors of Messiah and the three kings in his realm who have not even bothered to come pay him homage!
The kings give Mary and Joseph their gifts and warn them to go to Egypt to avoid Herod's clutches. Peter Ustinov orders all male children a year...no, two years old, killed, in a wackadoo speech that echoes throughout his palace and probably gave him laryngitis if he had to do too many takes. It's left to Sir Ralph, on his knees and looking an awful lot like King Lear, to describe the horror in Bethehem after this slaughter.
Back in Nazareth, blue-eyed blond Jesus grows up listening to Papa Joseph's loooooooong dissertations (less talk and more work and his customers wouldn't be quite so upset at him), proving here and there that he's clearly special. An obviously European child (with an accent to match, played by Lorenzo Monet) with intense blue eyes plays Jesus at Bar Mitzvah age. That celebration is interrupted by nasty Roman soldiers and much lamentation by the townspeople as Jesus watches (with the same look as the kid in "The Omen"). If Mary had been any other Jewish mother in history, she would have been unshakably angry that her son's big day did not go according to her very exactly and exhaustive plans.
Cousin John has grown up to become Michael York, much to the annoyance of Herod Antipas (Christopher Plummer) and Herodias (Valentina Cortese, doing a fetching Ann-Margaret imitation). History's most exciting eccentric, John the Baptist is a dream role for anyone not lucky enough to play Jesus himself, and Michael York milks every moment. It's Michael's bad luck that Herodias is such an angry person, not only at the peasants who attack her, but at Herod, who is lusting after Salome, that she insists John be arrested. Christopher Plummer works overtime to keep up with Valentina, but one of moviedom's finest hams, he's a worthy successor to Sir Peter. With Jesus out of the story as a main character, leaving the supporting cast to tear up the place, this segment of the film definitely feels like a typical miniseries, feverish and emotive.
Nearly two hours into "Jesus of Nazareth," Robert Powell finally arrives to play out the rest of the piece of the King of Kings. Eyes gleaming, he and John the Baptist are obviously cousins, as they speak in the same British accent. John baptizes Jesus, knowing he's finally gotten a look at the savior. John tells his followers to leave him and go after Jesus, just in time to be arrested.
In his first attempt to convince the masses at his home synagogue that the time has come, Jesus is not a success. Mary and a few others seem to gleam some meaning, but the muttering rabble want him run out of town. By speaking quietly but passionately, Jesus gathers up his apostles, though the extras typically don't get it. A majestic scene, pure Zeffirelli, shows just the shadow of Jesus' hand pulling the demon from a foaming lunatic, and that one wins a bunch of admirers.
As the miracles pile up, the rabble sees the light. After helping the fishermen to haul in record numbers of fish, the whole town lines up just to see Jesus and hear his wisdom. The curing of the cripple is certainly impressive and goes a long way to impart the gospel of forgiveness. However, the movie does lose a bit of credibility when we hear of raging angsty Peter, "come on, you can't talk to him when he's like this." The beauty of Jesus' words do seem blunted by the rest of the world, which is of course the point of filming the passion play again, but this is just a bit too colloquial for believability.
Dinner at Matthew's is certainly a jolt to the townsfolk, but it's also the best meal poor Jesus has eaten in close to 30 years. Forgiveness is mighty, and it is allowed to go hand-in-hand with luxury. He also tells the gripping tale of the Prodigal Son, further helping his cause among the confused. Powell is not exactly the most infectious presence, directed in that same ethereal way Olivia Hussey had previously used, but when he goes on at length in telling a story, he does open up with some more excitement and the movie kicks back into gear with a lead character worth following. Unfortunately, this is not done uniformly, leading to some sagging. Although, Zeffirelli knows how to cut this movie so that when religion gets a bit too much, he brings on the Family Herod and lets them wildly overact to punch things up again (Herod's birthday celebration and the whole Salome bit are priceless hokum, with Michael York and Christopher Plummer, not to mention Valentina Cortese, going for the emotive jugular).
The Miracle Tour continues, sweeping Thomas into its net when Jesus is able to bring a little girl back from death. Doubts abound, but these men are seriously beginning to believe. And note that the episodic nature of the story (conveniently short chapters come from the Bible itself) is ideal for a miniseries because scenes can be short and effective.
At the burial of John the Baptist's body, we finally meet Judas (Ian McShane). He enters during a political discussion about Rome, so he's already a bit suspect, but at least he's not demonized yet, merely a political opportunist.
And then she arrives. In one of the most classic examples of inept casting, Anne Bancroft plays Mary Magdalene, a tough old pro who can take on a whole crowd of boys playing jokes on her. It's obvious from the onset that even Anne knows she has the power here, and decides to play it like a good old-fashioned broad, shrieking and howling, but having a grand time of it.
The combined efforts of Christopher, Michael and Anne are fun fluff, but they can't help the leaden Sermon on the Mount or the discussions with Joseph of Arimathea (James Mason). They are simply too talky for TV. Even the fishes and the loaves are anemic. If anything cried out for a touch of special effects, it's this story, but it definitely converts a lot of people, Annie Magdalene first among them. Her foot-kissing episode, wordless but with a pool full of tears, enlivens the proceedings after James Mason has threatened them into perpetual slumber.
Christopher Plummer makes the best out of his assassination attempt, turning the name of Jesus into a three syllable sibilant word as he endeavors to show his power, helping to move along the series of events that have lately slowed to a crawl. He kills a bunch of zealots, which Judas knows will bring Jesus to Jerusalem. At the same time, cranky Simon reveals himself to be the most understanding of the apostles and is renamed Peter and Jesus starts to talk about building his church for the first time, actually a notable moment as it's the first time Jesus has mentioned organizing his teachings into an actual religion. The music underscoring this moment is appropriately moving and the scene is set in the dark, with only a fire to light the men. It's also when Jesus ruins the rest of the plot by telling us what is going to happen. I mean, sure, we know, but this is a flaw that goes back to the Bible--it's not much in the way of dramatic tension to know the end 2 1/2 hours before it happen, is it?
Passover approaches and Jerusalem swells with pilgrims but Jesus is not ready to enter yet. First, he has to pay a visit to Lazarus. Frankly, the movie is no clearer on this episode than anything else, pretty much sticking to the facts that Jesus decides to raise Lazarus from the dead simply because the women say they believe Jesus' teachings (anyone else a little suspicious of that?) and it's a good foreshadow to his own demise and the after effects of it. Again, and I'm sorry to say it, it's cinematic time filler here. Since we've never met Lazarus, seeing him show up alive after death doesn't exactly wow.
Judas goes to bureaucrat Ian Holm as his way to get Jesus seen by the high priests of Jerusalem. The script hedges its bets, with Judas honestly believing what he's saying, but saying it for the benefit of Jesus and his followers. Ian is more canny, knowing how to play each faction against the other. When Judas sees the mob scene of believers (or wanna-be believers) there to greet Jesus at the gates of Jerusalem, he knows he's on the right track. Jesus doesn't look like he minds the attention either, but he's not thrilled to see what's going on around the temple, where extras do their bargaining as the most stereotypical of Jewish businessmen. Jesus causes a (poorly filmed) riot in the bazaar before finally entering the temple.
Politically, Jesus is way out of his element in Jerusalem, where he fails to impress Ian Holm with his creeds, but that only upsets Judas, not Jesus, who has already told us what is going to happen. However, Jesus draws a huge crowd when preaching at the temple, but though the set and amount of extras look like something out of DeMille, again, sermons aren't dramatically inspiring television. Beautifully delivered by Powell, I admit, and it does pique the curiosity of Nicodemus (the inevitable Laurence Olivier).
Looking like he wandered in from a Western, Stacy Keach is as good a choice as anyone to play Barabbas, who wants to use Jesus' teachings to overcome the Romans. Barabbas claims might will settle the question, but Jesus gives the "lion will lie down with the lamb" and "those who live by the sword die by the sword" speech, as moving a speech as the Bible has, but completely lost on Barabbas.
By this point, the movie starts to move like molasses again, but there's not much Zeffirelli or anyone else can do about it but make it look as pretty as possible. Jesus preaches and preaches, gathering more and more converts, as the temple elders look on with mounting ire, not bothering to listen to what he's saying. It's just a stretch of the story that slows down all the action to make sure the message is not lost among plotting. It's the proverbial watched pot waiting to boil.
Oh, my stars! Just when I thought the casting couldn't get any more strange, Claudia Cardinale arrives as The Adulteress, around long enough not to get pummeled after Jesus tells those "without sin to cast the first stone." The whole episode lasts barely enough time to justify her billing.
If we believe Claudia, Anne and the rest, why not invite Ernest Borgnine to play as the Centurion, trying his best to adopt a crisp accent that is completely at odds with the rest of his career, who worries about his sick servant. This brief episode serves only to further anger Stacy Barabbas who, like everyone else, doesn't understand Jesus' teachings apply to everyone, not just his converts (blink and you'll miss Simon MacCorkindale delivering the news to Ernie that his servant is indeed well).
The curing of the blind beggar is the last straw for the temple priests, who are starting to take this awfully personally, so Jesus plays along and roars against them with his most blasphemous (to them) speech yet. The crowd is upset too, so Stacy Barabbas kills a Roman soldier as a way to incite them further. Judas realizes all hope is lost. Well, temporally at least.
As the Passover of 100 Stars stumbles along, Sir Larry gets his first actual dialogue scene, going to Jesus to say that there are many believers among the priests, but also many enemies. The old scholar wants to see the truth and the two try to out-whisper each other in an antiquated acting style as Sir Larry learns a bit more.
Want to guess who plays Caiaphas as the temple priests argue the case? Come on, take a guess. It's 1977 and we need aging Oscar winners to pitch in. We've seen many British greats, but how about a real Hollywood legend? Ponder this as the scene, with James Mason back, goes on and on and on and on and on and on as this mystery legend seems to actually sleep through the case, waking up only when Sir Larry proposes that Jesus may actually be the Son of God.
Have you guessed yet?
Oh, fine! It's Anthony Quinn. Yes, Zorba has returned to the Mediterranean to try to snatch away a few moments from the other eager beaver has-beens, none of whom would ever miss a chance to star in THE story. Tony throws himself head first into the proceedings playing Caiaphas as a judge with the world's worst headache. This court case in costume seems longer than an entire "Perry Mason" episode as the hams duke it out. Ian Holm FINALLY brings the scene to a close when he figures out a way to end it all.
So, he trots off to Judas to urge him to get Jesus to speak to the council, knowing full well that Jesus will never do it.
Wisely, Zeffirelli chooses not to depict The Last Supper as a Renaissance painting, but rather a dinner in a small crowded airless home, more true to reality. Of all scenes, this one actually passes perhaps too quickly. I guess the apostles are not famous enough actors to deserve an over-written scene and this one is played just as the gospels suggest, well-acted to boot. It does end with a beautiful tableau image too.
Since Ian Holm has seen Jesus preach at the temple, the whole Judas kiss ado isn't really needed, but it's part of the legend, so Judas pecks Jesus and Gethsemane awakens as the soldiers take Jesus away and the apostles scatter in fear and confusion. Nefarious Ian Holm reveals himself to be a far better politician than Judas ever realized, but the movie is fairly sympathetic to Judas, who here honestly believes Jesus would get a fair trial.
Poor Robert Powell doesn't stand a chance at the trial, not just because he's playing Jesus, but because Tony and Sir Larry and Jimmy Mason are all present, not to mention a few other dozen elders fighting for screen time. Anthony Quinn brings the proceedings to a (none too swift) end by asking Jesus directly if he is the Son of God. Upon hearing the answer, Anthony rips off his prayer shawl and Ian sends Jesus off to the Romans.
A nasty crowd outside the temple turns on Peter, who of course denies Jesus. The Romans are stupid enough to fall for it and the cock crows. As for Judas, we last see him swinging from a tree, his blood money on the ground below him.
The story has room enough for only one more guest star, and Rod Steiger fully intends to make the most out of Pontius Pilate. He gallops breathlessly into Jerusalem, tired and thirsty, eager to kill Barabbas as planned. He knows nothing of Jesus until perky aide Tony LoBianco fills him in. Rod's Pilate is completely uninterested in the case, but the priests, eager to shift the blame, insist on being heard. Once they tell Pilate that Jesus has called himself a King of anything, it's officially tyranny and he has to deal with it.
So, this sets up one final showdown, Steiger's bug-eyed Pilate actually being fair in trying to get to the truth, and Powell's serene Jesus fully resigned to his fate and answering questions honestly. Ian makes sure Pilate has to condemn Jesus. This leads to all of those lashes, though the bloodshed is left to a minimum (we'll save that for Mel Gibson's version). The Roman soldiers give him a crown of thorns (here comes Simon MacCorkindale for a few extra moments of screen time). That crown looks utterly painful and even Pilate seems to have some sympathy for the corporeal Jesus, a wreck of a body but still obviously fully functioning in spirit.
The buck is passed again as Rod decides to evoke the custom that he can commute a death sentence for Passover, but instead of simply doing it, he puts the decision in the hands of the rabble. They must decide for Barabbas or Jesus. A swarm of agents are sent out to convince the rabble to vote for Barabbas' release, with Annie Magdalene suspiciously winding her way around the crowd (Mother Mary has been there for days, but has declined to see her son, I suppose for dramatic effect, seeing him only at the very end). The rabble picks Barabbas to be saved and Pilate condemns him to death.
Strapped to the cross, Jesus begins the Via Dolorosa, with the rabble shouting the whole way. The women seem more convinced of the truth, but it's too late. Jesus is crucified, begging God for the forgiveness of those who have done this to him while the two thieves next to him wonder why he doesn't save himself. "Today you will be with me in paradise," he tells the more understanding of the two as the life starts to go out of his body. Annie Magdalene witnesses it all and then Mother Mary arrives, helped over to Jesus' lifeless body by Ernie Borgnine. The two Marys (three, if you count Lazarus' sister) weep below with Ernie sad for what has happened and some of the apostles finally returning. By this point, the crowd is wondering why he doesn't save himself and feel awfully guilty. Sir Larry gets to deliver the big speech in his greatest Shakespearean tones.
The moment Jesus finally breathes his last, a furious rain storm opens up. Mary Magdalene howls ferociously, clutching the dead body. She then goes with Mary to anoint the body, but there is soldier Simon MacCorkindale again to throw a wrench into the action. It's been three days since the burial, why should they anoint him now? It was the Sabbath, she says and this is the first opportunity to do the task. "Jesus is not here," Lazarus' sister says, which scares the hell out of the Romans.
The apostles meet in secret, where Annie Magdalene reports the Resurrection. None of the apostles believe her, especially Doubting Thomas. But, then Peter changes his mind in his full moment in clarity, finally understanding the teachings.
Ian goes to the empty burial chamber and pronounces, "it has begun" as he finally understands. Jesus appears to his disciples, tells them to spread his teachings and it has all begun.
"Jesus of Nazareth" follows the Bible gospels very faithfully, but also makes sure to throw in some fancy Hollywood touches. A cadre of bad acting often destroys many of the more subtle moments, but then again, this is a story about wild passion and fervent beliefs, so perhaps the growls and lamentations are necessary to make the piece seem larger than life. "Jesus of Nazareth" is exponentially better than the snoozy "Greatest Story Ever Told," but at over six hours, there is a lot of lag time here. It's unavoidable that many of the Bible's most beautiful passages will have to be inserted, and that can often lead to some mighty slow scenes. As entertainment, "Jesus of Nazareth" is in a category all of its own because it's main point is not to really entertain, merely to make one of religion's best narratives come to life for the faithful one more time. Television is not the ideal medium for this, but it would have cost far more money to do this as a big-budget Hollywood epic and in the late 70s, no one could afford that.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
From Here to Eternity (1979)
Remaking James Jones' "From Here to Eternity" had to be a big risk back in 1979. The seaside kiss between Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster alone is part of movie history and the film is widely regarded as a classic. But, since the great American Miniseries thrives on war, especially World War II, here is a readily-accessible property that was bound to spark interest.
In fact, this version is much closer to Jones' novel than the movie, which had to tame things down for 1950s audiences. Donna Reed's prostitute is certainly not as obvious as Kim Basinger's.
Steve Railsback is Prewitt, who wants to be part of the force amassing in Hawaii in the run-up to World War II (you know, that top-secret run-up that no one was supposed to know about, the one that lasted from 1939 until 1941 when it could finally be made official). He's a great bugler, but he's an even better fighter, and that's what his superiors want of him. They want to win the intra-military bouts, but Prewitt has turned his back on fighting. You can take the performance of Steve two ways: incredibly lazy, or inspiringly lazy. Though he's the lead character, he surrounded by some wild over actors. That's not necessarily a bad thing in this context, which is essentially a war-time potboiler and hardly the great piece of literature some have made it out to be.
Va-va-va-voom Natalie Wood, in one of her spiciest roles, is Karen Holmes, the neglected wife of Roy Thinnes, a big cheese at the naval base. Her very entrance into the movie is racier than the entire 1950s (the decade not the movie). Karen shows up in a barely-there shirt that has William Devane and everyone else slobbering. Everyone except Roy, that is. William follows his Superior's moves carefully (especially when he's off boozing it up with Andy Griffith and a couple of Hawaiian hookers, which is downright strange) so he knows just when to launch his own secret attack on Natalie. Fortunately for him, Natalie succumbs without a second thought. Hell if she's going to be a nun during a war that has nothing to do with her! She nags at Roy an awful lot, but she's trapped in Hawaii with lecherous soldiers and a wardrobe that runs the gamut between slips and slips-off.
The main plot comes down to whether Prewitt will fight or not. He's hazed mercilessly and still refuses. In fact, the only friend he makes is Maggio, played by Joe Pantoliano (and, with Frank Sinatra safely dead, I can openly avow that Joey Pants is far better than Frank in one of Oscar's most questionable wins). Maggio gets Prewitt drunk and takes him to Madame Salome Jens' abode where he meets Kim Basinger, fresh off the boat from the mainland to actually be a hooker. Good for her, she has career goals. Salome runs a classy joint for the sailors, not tolerating drunks very well. Prewitt is a sweet drunk, but completely smitten when he meets Kim's Lorene. But, she's a businesswoman, and she knows paying clients are better than the nice guys.
Meanwhile, William Devane and Natalie Wood's affair goes from passionate to torrid to volcanic. Every time he goes to leave the room, Nat goes into a wailing fit, but at least she does it wearing not much more than a towel. Three years from her untimely death, she is still one of Hollywood's greatest lookers ever and her fiendish performance is fitting. "From Here to Eternity" seems to have a budget only for beloved Natalie. She and William Devane are forced to meet outside in the night, and the outfits, make-up and lighting lavished on Natalie make for a ravishing sight. And considering the only other dames in the movie are sloppy Kim Basinger, Salome Jens and a bunch of un-named Hawaiians (of course they are, this is Hollywood in 1979, if they were named, they would have names like Clip Clop or Ho Chi Sin), why shouldn't Natalie get the star treatment?
Clueless Roy Thinnes is too preoccupied with getting Steve Railsback to fight for his unit to notice what's going on, especially since William Devane, as his second-in-command, make sure Roy is always in the wrong place at the right time for his affair with Mrs. Roy Thinnes. For nearly an hour, not much happens other than Steve being put through arduous paces by Roy and his goons, hoping to break him. He has to bike up every mountain on the island (multiple times) and still he doesn't crack. If you are getting the idea that he's going to make a "damn fine soldier" because his will is so iron-clad, you know your movie cliches!
As much as I prefer this version of "From Here to Eternity" over the snoozy original, it must be said that the middle few hours are awfully repetitive. Natalie and Billy Devane run from tree to tree and bed to bed making love and then throwing all but the coconuts at each other (they can't throw the sheets, because Natalie is usually wearing them). Maggio gets the stuffing beaten out of him (and eventually dies) as Steve continues to get hazed while falling in love with Kim. Oh, we know Kim is in love with him too, because she does her hair if he's around. Even if they are just in bed. When she's in hooker mode, it always hangs down seductively.
Natalie and William go off for a mini vacation together, where William gets on stage and dances a hula with the locals, leading to a gigantic argument between the two. Natalie is just hating on him because she's fallen passionately in love with him and he hasn't asked her to marry him. She is married already and William has made no secret of the fact that he just wanted a casual, if passionate, fling with the local hottie. But, of course he loves her too.
Around the four hour mark, after Natalie and William have argued and made love in 60 different positions, all without anyone remembering she has a young son, and after Steve has defied every attempt at breaking his spirt, IT happens. Yes, IT. Did you think this would be done without the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor? Actually, this movie handles it very well. Rather than having everyone turn into John Wayne suddenly, we see mass confusion and a lot of quick death. William Devane, who has basically been running the outfit because Roy Thinnes is too much of a dunce, is quick to take charge and damn good at it. Steve, has missed it, caged up with Kim, but he feels terrible about it.
Our leads all survive the attack, but not for long. The twists of the plot eventually find poor Steve killed by his own men, but bravely and with a lovely death speech by William Devane. Now that the US is in the war, the wives and hookers are packed off to the mainland (all but Sharon Stone...oh, wait, that's Pearl Harbor in "War and Remembrance," sorry), meaning, natch, that Natalie and Kim happen to sit next to each other on the boat. Kim is dressed in her finery, so Natalie has no idea what she really is, and just as the movie ends, we wonder if perhaps this friendship might not just be the equivalent of the male bonding going on in the war.
The four hours and change of "From Here to Eternity" are infinitely preferrable to just the hour or so it takes in "The Winds of War" to achieve the same goal. This movie can be repetitive and overacted at times, but in context, none of that really seems to be objectionable. It may be the best performance William Devane ever gave, but then again, his career is filled with "I'm just here for the paycheck" acting, so maybe we just caught him early enough in his game.
The main point of contention and argument has to be Steve Railsback. And it's a debate I encourage. At times I find his performance vapid to the point of fading out, but at other times, I think he's mining some sort of genius, the only person in the whole of Pearl Harbor who has conditioned himself not to feel any emotion so that when war comes, he's numb enough to fight it without any internal clouds. Of course, since he gets shot before having a chance to fight, perhaps that interpretation is a bit overzealous, but I'm sticking to it.
Oh, and how do Bill and Nat do with the famous beach kiss? It's hard to tell because it happens at night and it's dark. They are actually in the water and not on the sand, so the striking visual of the water sweeping past their bodies is left out, wisely. That belongs to Deborah and Burt. The love affair in this version is not at all pretty, just lusty and needy, so a picturesque romp would be inappropriate.
In fact, this version is much closer to Jones' novel than the movie, which had to tame things down for 1950s audiences. Donna Reed's prostitute is certainly not as obvious as Kim Basinger's.
Steve Railsback is Prewitt, who wants to be part of the force amassing in Hawaii in the run-up to World War II (you know, that top-secret run-up that no one was supposed to know about, the one that lasted from 1939 until 1941 when it could finally be made official). He's a great bugler, but he's an even better fighter, and that's what his superiors want of him. They want to win the intra-military bouts, but Prewitt has turned his back on fighting. You can take the performance of Steve two ways: incredibly lazy, or inspiringly lazy. Though he's the lead character, he surrounded by some wild over actors. That's not necessarily a bad thing in this context, which is essentially a war-time potboiler and hardly the great piece of literature some have made it out to be.
Va-va-va-voom Natalie Wood, in one of her spiciest roles, is Karen Holmes, the neglected wife of Roy Thinnes, a big cheese at the naval base. Her very entrance into the movie is racier than the entire 1950s (the decade not the movie). Karen shows up in a barely-there shirt that has William Devane and everyone else slobbering. Everyone except Roy, that is. William follows his Superior's moves carefully (especially when he's off boozing it up with Andy Griffith and a couple of Hawaiian hookers, which is downright strange) so he knows just when to launch his own secret attack on Natalie. Fortunately for him, Natalie succumbs without a second thought. Hell if she's going to be a nun during a war that has nothing to do with her! She nags at Roy an awful lot, but she's trapped in Hawaii with lecherous soldiers and a wardrobe that runs the gamut between slips and slips-off.
The main plot comes down to whether Prewitt will fight or not. He's hazed mercilessly and still refuses. In fact, the only friend he makes is Maggio, played by Joe Pantoliano (and, with Frank Sinatra safely dead, I can openly avow that Joey Pants is far better than Frank in one of Oscar's most questionable wins). Maggio gets Prewitt drunk and takes him to Madame Salome Jens' abode where he meets Kim Basinger, fresh off the boat from the mainland to actually be a hooker. Good for her, she has career goals. Salome runs a classy joint for the sailors, not tolerating drunks very well. Prewitt is a sweet drunk, but completely smitten when he meets Kim's Lorene. But, she's a businesswoman, and she knows paying clients are better than the nice guys.
Meanwhile, William Devane and Natalie Wood's affair goes from passionate to torrid to volcanic. Every time he goes to leave the room, Nat goes into a wailing fit, but at least she does it wearing not much more than a towel. Three years from her untimely death, she is still one of Hollywood's greatest lookers ever and her fiendish performance is fitting. "From Here to Eternity" seems to have a budget only for beloved Natalie. She and William Devane are forced to meet outside in the night, and the outfits, make-up and lighting lavished on Natalie make for a ravishing sight. And considering the only other dames in the movie are sloppy Kim Basinger, Salome Jens and a bunch of un-named Hawaiians (of course they are, this is Hollywood in 1979, if they were named, they would have names like Clip Clop or Ho Chi Sin), why shouldn't Natalie get the star treatment?
Clueless Roy Thinnes is too preoccupied with getting Steve Railsback to fight for his unit to notice what's going on, especially since William Devane, as his second-in-command, make sure Roy is always in the wrong place at the right time for his affair with Mrs. Roy Thinnes. For nearly an hour, not much happens other than Steve being put through arduous paces by Roy and his goons, hoping to break him. He has to bike up every mountain on the island (multiple times) and still he doesn't crack. If you are getting the idea that he's going to make a "damn fine soldier" because his will is so iron-clad, you know your movie cliches!
As much as I prefer this version of "From Here to Eternity" over the snoozy original, it must be said that the middle few hours are awfully repetitive. Natalie and Billy Devane run from tree to tree and bed to bed making love and then throwing all but the coconuts at each other (they can't throw the sheets, because Natalie is usually wearing them). Maggio gets the stuffing beaten out of him (and eventually dies) as Steve continues to get hazed while falling in love with Kim. Oh, we know Kim is in love with him too, because she does her hair if he's around. Even if they are just in bed. When she's in hooker mode, it always hangs down seductively.
Natalie and William go off for a mini vacation together, where William gets on stage and dances a hula with the locals, leading to a gigantic argument between the two. Natalie is just hating on him because she's fallen passionately in love with him and he hasn't asked her to marry him. She is married already and William has made no secret of the fact that he just wanted a casual, if passionate, fling with the local hottie. But, of course he loves her too.
Around the four hour mark, after Natalie and William have argued and made love in 60 different positions, all without anyone remembering she has a young son, and after Steve has defied every attempt at breaking his spirt, IT happens. Yes, IT. Did you think this would be done without the actual bombing of Pearl Harbor? Actually, this movie handles it very well. Rather than having everyone turn into John Wayne suddenly, we see mass confusion and a lot of quick death. William Devane, who has basically been running the outfit because Roy Thinnes is too much of a dunce, is quick to take charge and damn good at it. Steve, has missed it, caged up with Kim, but he feels terrible about it.
Our leads all survive the attack, but not for long. The twists of the plot eventually find poor Steve killed by his own men, but bravely and with a lovely death speech by William Devane. Now that the US is in the war, the wives and hookers are packed off to the mainland (all but Sharon Stone...oh, wait, that's Pearl Harbor in "War and Remembrance," sorry), meaning, natch, that Natalie and Kim happen to sit next to each other on the boat. Kim is dressed in her finery, so Natalie has no idea what she really is, and just as the movie ends, we wonder if perhaps this friendship might not just be the equivalent of the male bonding going on in the war.
The four hours and change of "From Here to Eternity" are infinitely preferrable to just the hour or so it takes in "The Winds of War" to achieve the same goal. This movie can be repetitive and overacted at times, but in context, none of that really seems to be objectionable. It may be the best performance William Devane ever gave, but then again, his career is filled with "I'm just here for the paycheck" acting, so maybe we just caught him early enough in his game.
The main point of contention and argument has to be Steve Railsback. And it's a debate I encourage. At times I find his performance vapid to the point of fading out, but at other times, I think he's mining some sort of genius, the only person in the whole of Pearl Harbor who has conditioned himself not to feel any emotion so that when war comes, he's numb enough to fight it without any internal clouds. Of course, since he gets shot before having a chance to fight, perhaps that interpretation is a bit overzealous, but I'm sticking to it.
Oh, and how do Bill and Nat do with the famous beach kiss? It's hard to tell because it happens at night and it's dark. They are actually in the water and not on the sand, so the striking visual of the water sweeping past their bodies is left out, wisely. That belongs to Deborah and Burt. The love affair in this version is not at all pretty, just lusty and needy, so a picturesque romp would be inappropriate.
Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story (1995)
Those who open the American Miniseries time machine way in the future will see a lot of our great heroes. George Washington, the entire Adams clan, certain Abraham Lincoln over and over and, of course, The Kennedys. The Kennedys require a totally separate time machine. There are other expected denizens: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Thomas Jefferson.
But, the one in there who doesn't quite deserve her place is Mia Farrow. Yet that did not stop anyone from wasting time on her. Actually, "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story" is not really her life story, just the story of her scandalous break-up from Woody Allen when he dumped her for her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. It's not exactly the stuff of legend.
If the idea for this miniseries (or approximately three-hour movie) is trite, the casting of Patsy Kensit damns it to unwatchable oblivion. No real attempt is made to look gorgeous Ms. Kensit look like (come on, let's be truthful) not gorgeous Miss Farrow, other than the curly mane she sported during the Woody years. Kensit goes no deeper than the portrayals of various loopy characters Mia played in Woody's movies. There is very little sense of what Mia might really have been like during this ordeal, other than an understandably shrieking harpy.
Mia and Woody (played by Dennis Boutsikaris in a very unflattering portrait of Woody, but then again, this isn't his story) meet at a party by accident, though Mia does not seem to know any of the other Hollywood regulars in the room. Woody quickly gets rid of her, because a gaggle of younger starlets are beckoning. However, he eventually goes on a date with Mia and they are so enchanted by each other, they stay so long the waiters set up for the next day and keep giving them snooty looks.
In no time, Woody and Mia are a couple, but Woody has his reservations because of Mia's brood of children. To be honest, one can understand, as Mia is a well-known collector of orphans and special needs children. Woody, portrayed here as not only exceedingly selfish, but also completely helpless, is not father material. But, for some reason, he agrees to be a part of it all (or a part of some of it as the movie lops off a few of Mia's children to make it more manageable to remember their names).
Lurking in the shadows is Soon-Yi, played by Grace Una, though not very well. Her Soon-Yi is initially spoiled and indulged, though shy and afraid due to her violent and scary upbringing.
Oh, before we go on with the future, let's visit the past. Spliced into the action are scenes from Mia's past (including the short hairdo and Sinatra's famous line about it). These serve to, supposedly, give us some insight into how Mia became Mia, but since Mia in this movie is barely a character, they simply serve to take up time. Richard Muenz is Frank Sinatra and Robert LuPone is Andre Previn, though it's Christine Andreas in a two-second role as Ava Gardner who steals the whole movie.
Woody and Soon-Yi start their affair innocently enough, if you look at it from Soon-Yi's point of view, though Woody sure as hell seems like a dirty old man even taking a Polaroid. It becomes sexual and Soon-Yi blossoms into not only a major slut, but also an insatiable one. We will never know if that is the truth (how does anyone go that gaga over Woody Allen?), but since this is Mia's story, it serves to further martyr the mother. Mia discovers naked pictures and then everyone goes a-sluggin' it out in court when further accusations arise that Woody was perhaps inappropriate with his own child by Mia.
The facts of the case are a matter of public record. Mia won in court, but disappeared from the public eye for a while, returning in a series of movie roles even more lunatic than those before this episode (let's not forget her as Jackie in "Death on the Nile," spewing poetry sitting on a pyramid just to piss off her former lover, though that role might serve as a good indication of what the real Mia may have been like). Woody continued to make a movie every year, replacing Mia in the planned "Manhattan Murder Mystery" with his old flame Diane Keaton. Woody and Soon-Yi, as of 2011, are still together.
What never needed to be a matter of public record is "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story" because not only is it just plain bad, but it's an awfully thin story. It does have hints of Greek tragedy, but Soon-Yi was not Woody's actual daughter, and no matter how creepy their love affair was/is/will be, he's no Oedipus and she's not his mother. And though Patsy Kensit may flail around at times (saving the worst outbursts for mom Maureen O'Sullivan, never seen without a drink in hand here), Mia is no Medea. She is just Mia Farrow, mildly talented actress who happened to land herself a few damn good roles.
Truly, the only reason I bothered to sit through this movie was to give myself some sort of baseline at the bottom. It's not cheesy like "Lace" or "Master of the Game" and it's certainly not epic, but merely something aired. By 1995, the genre had long gone into decline and this was an attempt to revive it, I suppose, but a cheap one. Cheap and tawdry might have been fun, but cheap and boring serves no purpose.
But, the one in there who doesn't quite deserve her place is Mia Farrow. Yet that did not stop anyone from wasting time on her. Actually, "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story" is not really her life story, just the story of her scandalous break-up from Woody Allen when he dumped her for her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn. It's not exactly the stuff of legend.
If the idea for this miniseries (or approximately three-hour movie) is trite, the casting of Patsy Kensit damns it to unwatchable oblivion. No real attempt is made to look gorgeous Ms. Kensit look like (come on, let's be truthful) not gorgeous Miss Farrow, other than the curly mane she sported during the Woody years. Kensit goes no deeper than the portrayals of various loopy characters Mia played in Woody's movies. There is very little sense of what Mia might really have been like during this ordeal, other than an understandably shrieking harpy.
Mia and Woody (played by Dennis Boutsikaris in a very unflattering portrait of Woody, but then again, this isn't his story) meet at a party by accident, though Mia does not seem to know any of the other Hollywood regulars in the room. Woody quickly gets rid of her, because a gaggle of younger starlets are beckoning. However, he eventually goes on a date with Mia and they are so enchanted by each other, they stay so long the waiters set up for the next day and keep giving them snooty looks.
In no time, Woody and Mia are a couple, but Woody has his reservations because of Mia's brood of children. To be honest, one can understand, as Mia is a well-known collector of orphans and special needs children. Woody, portrayed here as not only exceedingly selfish, but also completely helpless, is not father material. But, for some reason, he agrees to be a part of it all (or a part of some of it as the movie lops off a few of Mia's children to make it more manageable to remember their names).
Lurking in the shadows is Soon-Yi, played by Grace Una, though not very well. Her Soon-Yi is initially spoiled and indulged, though shy and afraid due to her violent and scary upbringing.
Oh, before we go on with the future, let's visit the past. Spliced into the action are scenes from Mia's past (including the short hairdo and Sinatra's famous line about it). These serve to, supposedly, give us some insight into how Mia became Mia, but since Mia in this movie is barely a character, they simply serve to take up time. Richard Muenz is Frank Sinatra and Robert LuPone is Andre Previn, though it's Christine Andreas in a two-second role as Ava Gardner who steals the whole movie.
Woody and Soon-Yi start their affair innocently enough, if you look at it from Soon-Yi's point of view, though Woody sure as hell seems like a dirty old man even taking a Polaroid. It becomes sexual and Soon-Yi blossoms into not only a major slut, but also an insatiable one. We will never know if that is the truth (how does anyone go that gaga over Woody Allen?), but since this is Mia's story, it serves to further martyr the mother. Mia discovers naked pictures and then everyone goes a-sluggin' it out in court when further accusations arise that Woody was perhaps inappropriate with his own child by Mia.
The facts of the case are a matter of public record. Mia won in court, but disappeared from the public eye for a while, returning in a series of movie roles even more lunatic than those before this episode (let's not forget her as Jackie in "Death on the Nile," spewing poetry sitting on a pyramid just to piss off her former lover, though that role might serve as a good indication of what the real Mia may have been like). Woody continued to make a movie every year, replacing Mia in the planned "Manhattan Murder Mystery" with his old flame Diane Keaton. Woody and Soon-Yi, as of 2011, are still together.
What never needed to be a matter of public record is "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story" because not only is it just plain bad, but it's an awfully thin story. It does have hints of Greek tragedy, but Soon-Yi was not Woody's actual daughter, and no matter how creepy their love affair was/is/will be, he's no Oedipus and she's not his mother. And though Patsy Kensit may flail around at times (saving the worst outbursts for mom Maureen O'Sullivan, never seen without a drink in hand here), Mia is no Medea. She is just Mia Farrow, mildly talented actress who happened to land herself a few damn good roles.
Truly, the only reason I bothered to sit through this movie was to give myself some sort of baseline at the bottom. It's not cheesy like "Lace" or "Master of the Game" and it's certainly not epic, but merely something aired. By 1995, the genre had long gone into decline and this was an attempt to revive it, I suppose, but a cheap one. Cheap and tawdry might have been fun, but cheap and boring serves no purpose.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Blue and The Gray (1982)
Virginia matriarch Colleen Dewhurst notes that her son John Hammond is different from the rest of the family because he has an artistic ability. It if weren't 1859, that would be code, but since it is 1859 and said in the very serious "The Blue and The Gray," Colleen is actually talking about her quiet son's ability to draw. John, who treats Paul Winfield with as much respect as his Pa, Lloyd Bridges, actually does draw well, and decides to leave the family farm, not a popular decision, to seek his fortune in Gettysburg, where he has an uncle who runs a newspaper. He rebuffs the scorn of his brothers and even Lloyd's attempt to give him a gun upon leaving, asking for six months away from the farm to make money.
Cute-as-a-button John (playing a character named John) has excellent timing. His shady uncle's newspaper needs an artist to cover the sentencing at the infamous trial of John Brown (Sterling Hayden, for once putting his inability to do anything but stand still to good use), already found guilty by the time John arrives and starts furiously drawing. Also at the sentencing is Stacy Keach, playing Jonas Steele, a mysterious man who asks John not to use his likeness in his drawing, as not everyone would understand what he was doing at the trial. John agrees and Jonas thanks him by hiring him a hooker, always awkward for a virgin.
"The Blue and The Gray" moves along at a clip pace, but is filled with wonderful details. For instance, when John Brown is sent to the scaffold, he arrives on a cart that is also carrying his coffin. It's an eerie way to spend one's last moments, and given only a second of screen time, but it shows diligence on the part of the creators.
John takes Jonas home to his Northern family, where Jonas has a chance to flirt immediately with sweet Mary (Julia Duffy), who needs the fire to dry her hair while Jonas needs it to dry his beefy body. "I hope you don't mind bold girls," she teases after fluffing the pillows on his bed and closing the door. John gets a raise to $5 a week and free rent. For about two sentences, his cousins wonder about the possibility of a war, but Uncle Jacob silences such talk. Again, it's only 1859.
The next wee see of John, it's Christmas 1860 and he's back home, bringing the news of South Carolina's secession. John's brothers are excited, but Ma realizes this could mean some of her sons might die, looking askance at John, knowing he might now have Northern sympathies, thus thinking further ahead than the rest of the family. John's sister quickly marries her fiance, a businessman worried that the war will interrupt his trade. Brother Mark (Michael Horton) uses the fact that he might die in battle to sneak a kiss from a dim bulb sweetie at the celebration.
Politics come crashing into the fete when a posse shows up looking for runaway slaves at freeman Paul Winfield's cabin. At first, John goes along with it, but when they threaten to hang Paul, John grabs a gun and tries to hold off the men, getting knocked out for his trouble by his own brother, already resplendent in his gray uniform. The twin images of Paul lynched and his house burning a few yards away is as powerful a symbol of what is to come for the viewer as it is for John.
John can't handle what's happening and leaves (he's his mother's son, for she comforts the slave woman who was in love with Paul), fully horrified that a friend of his was killed while his family watched. Civil War legends involve the literal splitting of families, "The Blue and The Gray" no exception. Cousin Mary asks if he'll enlist with the North, and John wonders, "now how could I carry a rifle for the North knowing that one day I might be asked to point it at one of my brothers?" He's in a delicate situation, having abandoned the South, but an accented-youth up North where everyone his age will be off to war.
This wouldn't be an epic without the unexpected guest stars, and "The Blue and The Gray" indulges in stunt casting of the highest degree, using Gregory Peck as Abraham Lincoln. He makes a grand entrance on a whistle stop in Leaman's Place, John sketching away, invited into Lincoln's train car because Stacy Keach is one of his guards and because Lincoln says he and Mrs. Lincoln have never been sketched together. Okay, that's stretching history to assume our fictional hero can get access to Lincoln that easily and on such a small turn, but that's to be expected in epic sweep for the sake of efficiency (just ask Robert Mitchum's Pug Henry, who manages to meet Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin and everyone but Madame Chiang-Kai Chek during "The Winds of War"). Peck's Lincoln is a savvy politician, telling John to pursue drawing and not take up arms, to show his family back in the South what the war really looks like.
Three of John's cousins enlist in patriotic fervor, two old enough to be kissed by welcoming ladies and one using the same "age on the shoe" trick used by the lying homesteaders in "Centennial" because he's not actually old enough. Mother Diane Baker is not happy to be losing her sons, but Mary tells her she should be proud. Diane and Colleen are sisters (separated by at least twenty years of wishful thinking) and have the same sense of looming disaster.
Stacy Keach confesses to Julia Duffy, the only pretty schoolmarm in all of miniseries history, that he is Lincoln's bodyguard because he is a Pinkerton detective and goes way back with Abe, who was once the company's lawyer. They share a romantic few moments by the lake where Stacy rambles on in one of those "I had this dream one time..." monologues that are hoping to be pulled out again at Emmy time. They seal their passion for each other with a kiss and then a very quick proposal.
There is a comic scene to follow the romance that again shows an attention to detail that makes "The Blue and The Gray" such a watchable history lesson. One has the tendency to forget that armies are made of individuals, instead treating them as hundreds of individuals. The wars of the 20th Century delighted in spewing numbers in the hundreds of thousands as a scare tactic. There is a training scene with a new recruit we know is not going to make it. This being the 1980s (in real life), of course our feckless private has buck teeth and looks like the product of in-breeding. Anyway, during a training on how to load and fire a gun (which was admittedly complicated), John's ravishingly handsome cousins get it no problem, but the goober new recruit does it incorrectly and accidentally fires a shot. No one is harmed and viewers can easily laugh, but the lesson is obvious: don't forget the Civil War armies were made of ho-hum BOYS who had never prepared for any sort of war and enlisted not necessarily to preserve or destroy slavery, but because it was a matter of honor to do so.
John is off to Washington to work for Harper's, nervous that he's never covered a war, but when Stacy Keach shows up (he's always popping up in the most unlikely of places), John begs to ride with him and they arrive at the camp where John's youngest cousin is about to die of galloping diarrhea.
Stacy has another dream to relay, but this time only John is around to listen. This dream is every bit as annoyingly cryptic as the last one, but it ends abruptly when Stacy realizes the army is very close (he's not a very good scout if it took him a dark night of seeing torches to figure that out).
John gets to observe the war up close, with the first cannons finally roaring about 100 minutes into the movie. If it seems odd that John is about twenty yards away from the cannons sketching violently, wait for Washington's finest ladies and gents to show up and watch with picnic lunches. Snicker all you want but that's actually historical accuracy.
In this very first battle we're shown, John's brothers and cousins happen to be fighting each other. The brothers have the advantage (as the Confederacy usually did early in the war) with heavy cannons, and cousin Malachi wets his pants being fired upon (suave brother Jake is too sexy to have done such a thing). This battle scene is very personal, not only because we know so many of the ordinary soldiers, but because the Civil War was really one of the last wars fought in the old hand-to-hand combat style that saw whole lines of soldiers downed by one round of gunfire, told to advance at all costs. The battle's winner is constantly in doubt. The Union advances, despite heavy casualties, but the fleeing Confederate soldiers are goaded by the example of General "Stonewall" Jackson refusing to move his position. The saddest victim of the battle is a bedridden old woman whose house is used by the Confederate army as a locale for snipers, but easily blown to smithereens by Union cannonballs. Northern soldiers flee the onslaught (as do the onlookers, now closer to the action than they expected), and Malachi proves once again he doesn't have the stomach for war. It's not he who helps fellow wounded soldiers, but his cousin John, who isn't even a soldier! Such goes the Battle of Bull Run.
The Union soldiers are chewed out by their superiors as a twinkly-eyed soldier with a "coward" sign around his neck is branded (oh, Private Lawrence Jones; great, the coward is the only gay kid in the whole army; a big "C" on his cheek ain't gonna disappear, even under the dark lights of a disco, but that's a lesson for another time). John and his cousin Jake are worried about Malachi, who knows he should have been branded for running from the battle, but John is able to comfort him with the lesson this episode has worked very hard to make us understand: heroes in this war are not just the men who show up (or don't show up, as this was still a war where one could buy a surrogate to fight for him), but the men who work hard and struggle to form a cohesive fighting army. Pride has no place in this horrid war.
It's destiny that John, as John, should meet Kathleen Beller, playing Kathy, on the battlefield. In a full hoop skirt and parasol, she's almost split apart by a bomb, but John rescues her and she in turn helps a wounded soldier by ripping off a piece of her petticoat. When John goes to find her, it turns out she's the daughter of one of television's baddest bad guys, a man who struck terror into the heart of every television detective for umpteen years, Robert Vaughn. He's a Senator here who is at first not too happy that John is a..."journalist," the term that comes to the mind instead of "Southerner." Kathy's fey friends, who of course ran from the battle, are horrified that Kathy was so moved by the experience that she wants to be a nurse. "No gentleman would say that," her German fiance snarls when John supports her decision to blossom into Florence Nightingale. The German wants to duel "on the field of (heaving heavily) honor" because John calls him out on running from the fighting instead of being unconscious as he claimed.
"I hate duels. They are stupid and they are dangerous...and going out of style," pop-up Stacy Keach says (they were also illegal by this time in American history), acting as John's second. To act as the same, the German has picked Otto Von Bismarck's grandfather, a man so old he probably showed up to help the British fight the American Revolution and has been wandering around Virginia ever since, but it's lucky he's there because he has an actual dueling handbook! Okay, so even "The Blue and The Gray" is allowed some silliness. Actually, it gets even funnier, because the German tries to kill John before the paces are called, meaning John is allowed to shoot him. Grandpa consults the rule book again as John blows off the German's hat and humiliates him.
A hallmark of the American miniseries, and of American TV at the time, was the cliffhanger. That's understandable, because these sagas were shown over multiple nights and they needed to bring back the viewers, but I question the logic of the finale of this first episode. John's duel and obvious win of the girl would have made a nice little ending, but instead we drag back Gregory Peck, the only filmed Lincoln I can remember who is a damn good shot, testing out a rifle for his troops, though Stacy Keach is better with it. Lincoln, a detail man apparently, is aware that Stacy is to be married and gives him the new rifle, a gun so dastardly and efficient we know it will be back as a plot point, as a wedding present. A stunned Stacy watches as THE Gregory Peck (or THE Lincoln) walks back to the White House. This damn war isn't going to get any prettier.
It's a rather confusing cliffhanger, but there we have it, the end of Part 1 of "The Blue and The Gray."
Part 2 begins in the middle of 1862 at the Peninsula Campaign. In the Union Army, John's two cousins (and the goober) are still going strong, and his Confederate brothers are also alive. The Union has a fancy toy, a hot air balloon used by an aviation expert that can fly over the Confederate position and telegraph information back to the army. Luckily, it flies higher than any artillery can reach.
As for John, he's still courtin' Kathy, much to Papa Robert Vaughn's dismay. The latter scrunches up his face to its most derisive and lays it out for John. His daughter cannot risk her social position to be "intimate with an impecunious journalist." He's happy (as happy as he gets) to hear Kathy is still unspoiled, though she sure as hell knows now to use her tongue when she plants a heavy kiss on John secretly. Unfortunately, Robert still refuses to let her attend the wedding of Stacy Keach and Julia Duffy with John.
It's a shame, because it's a lovely wedding, though the first night is almost spoiled when Mary cuts her finger on broken glass and Jonas mistakes it for a bullet wound, the one in his dream where he brings harm to his beloved after they are married. Foreshadowing, sure, but not yet!
I have some bad news. Everyone sitting down?
You sure?
The goober soldier dies. Not in battle, but murdered and pinned to a tree, so horribly that forensic and psychology expert Stacy Keach can tell this murder means something more than just war.
I'm sorry, I really am. I wanted him to live too, but we knew he was doomed.
Malachai runs from another battle, only to meet a Confederate soldier behind a tree. Both need to reload their guns, but both are inept at loading it, so the two decide to talk it out in a rather tender exchange that again proves the theory that these armies are made of inexperienced men who truly have no idea what they are fighting for. "Makes no sense shooting each other...there's plenty of folks willing to do it for us," the Reb soldier says, since both are chicken and have run from the battle. Malachi asks what it's like to have slaves, but the Reb says he has no slaves. He didn't even have shoes! The scene is badly acted, yes, but highly effective. And it ends with Malachai a hero, a Corporal no less, an unexpected touch (though almost ruined when Malachi kicks his heels up in the air walking away after getting it).
In case you have missed the point of the above scene, the theme is repeated when bathing Union soldiers find a little tiny boat loaded with tobacco from the Confederate soldiers across the river in return for coffee sent back. The boat also has a note for John and his cousins to meet his brothers at night. That makes me veeeeeery nervous.
Brother Luke has invited John and his cousins to a barn dance behind Confederate lines where booze and broads abound. In the third-in-a-row scene to hammer in the theme (it's a bit tiresome, but so innocent you can't get upset) as the Confederate soldiers warmly welcome their Union enemies with open arms. John meets a girl who "if'n"s him into kissing her and drinking moonshine. An uppity senior staffer is not happy to have the Blues there, but he lets them stay upon promise of Luke taking them home at dawn. And he does, in a triumph of character over reality. The uppity senior staffer offers Luke and his pal the choice of cleaning latrines or handling the new Confederate balloon. Cleverness in war goes both ways.
Unfortunately, luck doesn't and Luke and his pal Bear land in enemy territory, with Bear taking a bullet to his considerable gut, expiring once he gives Luke the old "go run and save yourself" speech. Luke is taken prisoner.
In a pause for history, Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. That minute over, after Lincoln and his cabinet pose like they were being painted, John trots off to visit Kathy. His idea of romance is to relay the horrors of the battlefield, but Kathy is a nurse now and she understands. Plus, John, three year older than when we met him, is still just as adorable and there's no denying him a smile and a squeeze of the hand.
Nurse Kathy sees John having a horrible nightmare and pats down his sweat with great love in her eyes. She then sneaks a peak at his sketches, in another of those ideal little touches, to show the horror of the war. It takes only three brief pages to show what 150 years of books have tried to bring to life.
Flash forward to Mississippi, 1863. Students? What does that mean is looming? You, in the second row. Put down the note and tell me what Mississippi 1863 signifies? No, not the Battle of Midway. We're not up to "War and Remembrance" yet. Vicksburg! Vicksburg!
John is trottin' around down there when he comes across some Union soldiers about to rape a black woman. Having saved her life, he finds out that his beloved men in blue haven't been treating the Southerners blacks so well, but with news of the Emancipation in hand, a bedraggled gaggle of slaves hiding in the forest are understandably thrilled. John captures the glee of these now ex-slaves in his notebook. John, sounding more and more like a textbook, tells them the truth, that the piece of paper only means something if the Union wins the war, but the leader of the gang tells him that they now have hope, something more powerful.
The South is further painted in an unflattering light when John's brother Matthew goes to visit his married sister in Vicksburg, the one with the merchant hubby, who apparently is profiting from the misfortune of others (and she ain't so nice either, considering John cut out of the family for not fighting with the South--um, you wouldn't have a plot without that fact, you twit!). Cue the door and Emma's bloody husband. With the spirit of Scarlett O'Hara in her, she races him to the hospital amidst cannon fire, good not only for him but because she's about to pop a baby! Hubby Lester recovers and gets to meet his son. Emma slips back into irrationality and insists Lester go back into business to take advantage of the fact that food and medicine are in short supply and they can make a fortune. He says no, he's realized it's not right.
It's the last thing he says as a bomb decimates his hospital room.
Though "The Blue and The Grey" soars beautifully, Part 2 is a bit of a let-down after Part 1. Part 2, clocking in at nearly 45 minutes less than Part 1 seems more a history class than a fully plotted movie. I forgive it because the history is not as leaden as we will see in other historical epics, but let's be frank, the fictional characters are a whole lot more fun when they are part of the plot rather than observing it.
Part 3 starts still in 1863, but back up North where Stacy Keach explains to his wife that battle could be headed their way, as Gettysburg isn't too far. He then goes off to meet General Meade (Rory Calhoun, of all people), who knows the upcoming battle is going to be tough because Union supply lines are "a shambles." It becomes Stacy's job to assure the railroad supplies get through, but it's immediately evident that he has an unenviable task. The Confederate soldiers set fire to a bridge they must cross and when they go to put it out, snipers attack. Quick thinking, good guns and a pair of very tight pants on Stacy seem to save the day.
A small, but very bloody, hand-to-hand sword-to-sword combat battle erupts right outside of Mary Steele's house (literally right outside). A Confederate soldier slinks in, bloodied and blind, slumped against the table where a picture of hubby Stacy watches over him, and Julia Duffy helps the soldier as the battle rages. Unfortunately for Julia, a stray bullet kills her. She's a victim of two stock issues in TV of this period. The first is never to have a tearful goodbye with someone as it's a sure sign that you will never see each other alive again. Rarely does anyone die after a quick peck and a "have a good day." But, blubber and rant, and someone is a goner. The second is that with only two hours to go before the end of the movie, we have to start picking off some lead characters. Remember, these people (for the most part) are fictional. They serve the story by lurking around historic events, but we haven't had a death since one of John's cousins way back in the first episode. Unfortunately, given the low rank of most of the character soldiers in this movie, that's surprisingly low. More than a few of our beloved characters would have been dead and now the movie is catching up with reality.
The irony is piled on thick as Stacy brings the train to the soldiers, having successfully made it through all of the Confederate-inspired problems, not knowing his wife is close-by, dead on the floor next to a dead Confederate soldier (and that omnipresent picture of himself). Perhaps it's those tight pants again, but Stacy feels something is wrong and rushes home to find his in-laws crying and Mary's body in a coffin. The above two definites of miniseries death were inevitable for someone to die, but Mary's death was even more inevitable because Stacy had predicted it almost the first time they met. She's been on borrowed time ever since. "May I join you soon," he says and kisses her for the last time.
Detail time again: Stacy leaves his wife's funeral, having buried her in a nice little plot, having to ride through a vast field of dead soldiers and mangled war supplies. It's a beautiful, if horrifying, spectacle.
Gregory Peck digs into his vast reservoir of Oscar-winning focus to deliver Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Back down in Mississippi, John is witness to the Siege of Vicksburg, a particularly grim spectacle that stops only three times a day so the soldiers can eat, separated by only yards of trenches (spooky foreshadowing of World War I). Luckily all of the soldiers are so friendly that John can yell across the trenches that he wants to speak to his brother as the firing starts up again. In a moment of sheer Americana-on-film, the soldiers halt the fight so John and his brother can talk for a few minutes. "We're holding up the war," his brother even says at one point. John's brother is still sore at John for not joining the Confederate army, but he admits he's matured, having seen the horrors of the battle, and he forgives John for simply taking a different path in life. It's a touching moment (if unlikely), once again making sure we get the central themes of the piece.
In the above conversation, John learned that his sister and her baby are trapped in Vicksburg and wants to get into the city. What he finds is frighteningly grim. The Union has utterly decimated the town. It's a hell hole of burn-out buildings. John tries to protect a lady from seeing a dead horse, but the woman pulls out a knife and rushes over to it to get her share along with others. That's how desperate the situation is in Vicksburg.
The creepy horseflesh grabber, Mrs. Lovelace, follows John and cackles her way through the streets of Vicksburg with him. I pause here to point out a rare misstep in this film. When John finds his sister's house, it's overgrown with weeds. I know weeds move quickly, but it's only been a few months since we last saw this house freshly tended. It wouldn't be overgrown that fast!
Anyway, Mrs. Lovelace leads John to "the caves," a shantytown where he does indeed find Emma, now a hag driven to insanity by the conditions. It's not a happy reunion, but things get worse when the Union army marches down Vicksburg's main street, the town having surrendered, and Mrs. Lovelace still chewing whatever ash-covered scenery still remains. I have not revealed until now that Mrs. Lovelace is played by the legendary Geraldine Page because Gerry sure as hell was slumming giving that performance. On stage, it would have reached the upper balcony. On film, it's just plain over-ripe.
With that, we leave 1863 and it's twin infamous turning points for 1864 and the Wilderness Campaign (the Wilderness being Virginia--we'll save anything further west for other miniseries). Stacy and John discover a soldier murdered and stuck to a tree, just like our beloved goober back a few years ago and Stacy vows right there, before a dramatic music roll fade out to commercial, that he'll kill the demon who has been doing these killings.
The major armies march toward each other in Virginia and it's here we see nearly all of our main fictional characters. John has a brother and two cousins still alive and the brothers have two very quiet and tender scenes where Malachi admits to be as scared now as he ever was as the two try to help some new recruits cope with the oncoming horrors. These unfortunately boys are still boys, five years into the story, still frightened boys fighting out of a sense of duty.
Malachi and Jake survive a harrowing trap and Malachi turns to lead the men when the company leader is killed. Now it's their turn to ambush the Confederate soldiers and they do a much better job, not realizing they have wounded their cousin in the melee.
John makes the first wildly out-of-character stupid decision of his entire life when he insists on going out into the battle "to save at least one life." Stacy warns him against it, but follows after him, picking off three soldiers in a matter of minutes, but then forced to separate from John. However, I suppose I have to go back on my assessment of John when he runs into a burning forest looking for survivors, only to come across...let's say it together...his brother, literally on fire as if the bullet in his chest isn't enough. John is begged by his kin to kill him, but John demurs, rushing off for his horse to drag his brother to safety, only to watch a burning tree fall and kill him. It's heart-wrenching, just the kind of character-driven moment that makes "The Blue and The Grey" so particularly special in its earnestly innocent way.
But, there is another reason John and Stacy have had to separate. Stacy hears the special humming of the man he knows to be the murderer of the goober and others, a character we briefly met and long forgot about, but Stacy kills him quickly, despite suffering a serious wound to his arm.
Remember Kathy? It's okay if you don't. Not only haven't we seen her in a few years, but she hasn't made much of an impression. John's beloved is a nurse at the hospital where they take Stacy to amputate his arm and treat him for pneumonia (and where he can hallucinate and talk to his dead wife who tells him it's not time to die yet). And since John is always just a few steps behind Stacy, he soon shows up at the hospital to be reunited with his gal. Unfortunately, he walks in when Kathy is kissing Stacy, just being kind to him since he thinks she's his dead wife. That's the kind of soap "The Blue and The Gray" has mercifully done without most of the time, so I'll forgive it a lapse.
John goes to the family farm, where he hasn't visited since he left in the first scene, to find one brother limping, one in jail and of course the one dead we knew about. Sister Emma is there too, not longer nuts, but just as angry as the last time John saw her. Pa Lloyd Bridges isn't any more forgiving, but don't he feel mighty bad when John gives him brother Mark's ashes.
As for Colleen Dewhurst, well, the news isn't good, TV fans. She's in bed with "influenza or something" and we know that's not good. She's always had a soft spot for John, and they have a loving conversation. "I live for the day when it (the war) is done...and we can all be together again," Ma says, not knowing one son is dead. A line like that also speaks of upcoming death, sadly. It's a miniseries role not to hope for the future, especially sick in bed!
The Confederate Army shows up at the homestead, telling the family to leave because the battle, get this, is going to happen right on their property! John refuses to take a gun and the family turns on him again. Lloyd threatens to shoot him if he doesn't leave.
We surge into high melodrama when Union soldiers invade the house and grab Colleen. John finally takes up a gun and shoots three soldiers to rescue his Ma. He then joins his father and brother at the barricade shooting at approaching Union soldiers. Half-lame brother Matthew dies carrying the Confederate flag and he's buried alongside Mark's ashes (having gone back on their pledge never to tell Ma what happened to him). The only thing this sequence missed was having Malachi and Jake be on the Union side of the battle. But, there are still 40 minutes to go!
The melodrama was okay for a battle scene, but the following scene, a reconciliation between Stacy and John, is pure cheese. But, the family needs Stacy to get brother Mark out of prison, though Emma refuses to trust him. So, Stacy goes off to DC to get the order of release while John and Sis go to Elmira to keep Mark alive in prison until the order arrives. Elmira in September 1864 is not a happy place to be!
The desk clerk at the prison, who looks a lot like John Lennon, hair and glasses included, foils wild Emma's plan to smuggle a gun into prison for Mark and ends up getting them both arrested. Luckily, Stacy arrives in time and sounds officious enough to get them all released. He and Sis Emma flirt on the way home as John apologizes to Kathy, whom Stacy brought for John. John proposes and Kathy accepts. She may indeed be the blandest of the lead characters, but John deserves a girl.
We zoom from there to April 1865. Jonas shows up at John and Kathy's to announce the war is about to end. He wants John by his side to witness the final moments, but Kathy insists he go. They arrive just as Lee has signed away the South at Appomattox, where General Lee sweeps out in a huff and General Grant (an unusually restrained Rip Torn) looks pleased. When Lee tells his soldiers he has surrendered, watch for another of those beautiful moments, very quickly. They are disappointed that it's over, but as Lee rides off, one soldier drops his gun and falls to his knees out of utter exhaustion. They would have all gone on fighting, proud to do so, but now that it's over, they can admit how tiring and scary it's all been.
On paper, the war is over (though there is one momentous event to come), and John and his cousins reminisce about those they've lost: brothers, cousins, wives, even the goober soldier. "Let's sing to their memory," John says and they trot off join the rest of the soldiers doing the same. It's wonderful that the soldiers themselves are so forgiving and itching for peace. Politicians would beat the South into further submission with a decade of Reconstruction full of rules that amused Northern politicians and hardened Southern politicians into solidifying the next hundred years of outrageous violations of civil rights, but that's material for another miniseries (or ten).
At a cabinet meeting, Lincoln's dialogue all but portents his night at the theater, and Stacy Keach awakes in his tent to have a vision at what must be the exact time the Lincolns were taking their seats at Ford's Theatre. (to see "Our American Cousin," if anyone wants to remember that detail, which is not included in this retelling, just one of those details that is stuck in my head). Stacy and John rush to the White House to warn Lincoln, arriving at the theater after the Booth has thrown the town into mayhem. True to form, Mary Lincoln wails like a banshee as his pulse stops and Andrew Johnson is suddenly the new President (there's no miniseries about him, and rightfully so). "Now he belongs to the ages," Secretary Seward says, as he did in real life.
Against all typical-of-the-time TV odds, Mama Colleen has not died. In fact, she's in fine form as her family celebrates a gaggle of weddings. Hell, even Robert Vaughn looks pleased to be there, and that I know of, he made it a promise since sometime back in the 50s never to look pleased on television. Stacy arranges a full family portrait, of the Geysers and the Hales, Blues and Grays, but this is not for one of John's sketches. It's for his brand-new camera.
Lincoln's words at Gettysburg play us out as we look at pictures of the family members.
"The Blue and The Grey" is ideal historical fiction because its lead character is an observer. None of the fictional characters in the piece actually affect history, they are here just foot soldiers or watchers. John Hammond's character does manage to be in the most important places of the entire Civil War, but that's easily explained by his job. If the second of three parts lacked for character development, and the third part soars into some oft-times laughable dramatics beyond the scope of most of the actors' abilities, overall, this is a miniseries to treasure. It tells a great story, pacing it well, not letting it go on too long. Perhaps that's why "The Blue and The Gray" has not entered the public memory the way the Herman Wouk miniseries or "The North and The South" have, but this is a sturdy gem that handles the Civil War in a fair and unique way, keeping politics at a minimum and story at a maximum.
Cute-as-a-button John (playing a character named John) has excellent timing. His shady uncle's newspaper needs an artist to cover the sentencing at the infamous trial of John Brown (Sterling Hayden, for once putting his inability to do anything but stand still to good use), already found guilty by the time John arrives and starts furiously drawing. Also at the sentencing is Stacy Keach, playing Jonas Steele, a mysterious man who asks John not to use his likeness in his drawing, as not everyone would understand what he was doing at the trial. John agrees and Jonas thanks him by hiring him a hooker, always awkward for a virgin.
"The Blue and The Gray" moves along at a clip pace, but is filled with wonderful details. For instance, when John Brown is sent to the scaffold, he arrives on a cart that is also carrying his coffin. It's an eerie way to spend one's last moments, and given only a second of screen time, but it shows diligence on the part of the creators.
John takes Jonas home to his Northern family, where Jonas has a chance to flirt immediately with sweet Mary (Julia Duffy), who needs the fire to dry her hair while Jonas needs it to dry his beefy body. "I hope you don't mind bold girls," she teases after fluffing the pillows on his bed and closing the door. John gets a raise to $5 a week and free rent. For about two sentences, his cousins wonder about the possibility of a war, but Uncle Jacob silences such talk. Again, it's only 1859.
The next wee see of John, it's Christmas 1860 and he's back home, bringing the news of South Carolina's secession. John's brothers are excited, but Ma realizes this could mean some of her sons might die, looking askance at John, knowing he might now have Northern sympathies, thus thinking further ahead than the rest of the family. John's sister quickly marries her fiance, a businessman worried that the war will interrupt his trade. Brother Mark (Michael Horton) uses the fact that he might die in battle to sneak a kiss from a dim bulb sweetie at the celebration.
Politics come crashing into the fete when a posse shows up looking for runaway slaves at freeman Paul Winfield's cabin. At first, John goes along with it, but when they threaten to hang Paul, John grabs a gun and tries to hold off the men, getting knocked out for his trouble by his own brother, already resplendent in his gray uniform. The twin images of Paul lynched and his house burning a few yards away is as powerful a symbol of what is to come for the viewer as it is for John.
John can't handle what's happening and leaves (he's his mother's son, for she comforts the slave woman who was in love with Paul), fully horrified that a friend of his was killed while his family watched. Civil War legends involve the literal splitting of families, "The Blue and The Gray" no exception. Cousin Mary asks if he'll enlist with the North, and John wonders, "now how could I carry a rifle for the North knowing that one day I might be asked to point it at one of my brothers?" He's in a delicate situation, having abandoned the South, but an accented-youth up North where everyone his age will be off to war.
This wouldn't be an epic without the unexpected guest stars, and "The Blue and The Gray" indulges in stunt casting of the highest degree, using Gregory Peck as Abraham Lincoln. He makes a grand entrance on a whistle stop in Leaman's Place, John sketching away, invited into Lincoln's train car because Stacy Keach is one of his guards and because Lincoln says he and Mrs. Lincoln have never been sketched together. Okay, that's stretching history to assume our fictional hero can get access to Lincoln that easily and on such a small turn, but that's to be expected in epic sweep for the sake of efficiency (just ask Robert Mitchum's Pug Henry, who manages to meet Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin and everyone but Madame Chiang-Kai Chek during "The Winds of War"). Peck's Lincoln is a savvy politician, telling John to pursue drawing and not take up arms, to show his family back in the South what the war really looks like.
Three of John's cousins enlist in patriotic fervor, two old enough to be kissed by welcoming ladies and one using the same "age on the shoe" trick used by the lying homesteaders in "Centennial" because he's not actually old enough. Mother Diane Baker is not happy to be losing her sons, but Mary tells her she should be proud. Diane and Colleen are sisters (separated by at least twenty years of wishful thinking) and have the same sense of looming disaster.
Stacy Keach confesses to Julia Duffy, the only pretty schoolmarm in all of miniseries history, that he is Lincoln's bodyguard because he is a Pinkerton detective and goes way back with Abe, who was once the company's lawyer. They share a romantic few moments by the lake where Stacy rambles on in one of those "I had this dream one time..." monologues that are hoping to be pulled out again at Emmy time. They seal their passion for each other with a kiss and then a very quick proposal.
There is a comic scene to follow the romance that again shows an attention to detail that makes "The Blue and The Gray" such a watchable history lesson. One has the tendency to forget that armies are made of individuals, instead treating them as hundreds of individuals. The wars of the 20th Century delighted in spewing numbers in the hundreds of thousands as a scare tactic. There is a training scene with a new recruit we know is not going to make it. This being the 1980s (in real life), of course our feckless private has buck teeth and looks like the product of in-breeding. Anyway, during a training on how to load and fire a gun (which was admittedly complicated), John's ravishingly handsome cousins get it no problem, but the goober new recruit does it incorrectly and accidentally fires a shot. No one is harmed and viewers can easily laugh, but the lesson is obvious: don't forget the Civil War armies were made of ho-hum BOYS who had never prepared for any sort of war and enlisted not necessarily to preserve or destroy slavery, but because it was a matter of honor to do so.
John is off to Washington to work for Harper's, nervous that he's never covered a war, but when Stacy Keach shows up (he's always popping up in the most unlikely of places), John begs to ride with him and they arrive at the camp where John's youngest cousin is about to die of galloping diarrhea.
Stacy has another dream to relay, but this time only John is around to listen. This dream is every bit as annoyingly cryptic as the last one, but it ends abruptly when Stacy realizes the army is very close (he's not a very good scout if it took him a dark night of seeing torches to figure that out).
John gets to observe the war up close, with the first cannons finally roaring about 100 minutes into the movie. If it seems odd that John is about twenty yards away from the cannons sketching violently, wait for Washington's finest ladies and gents to show up and watch with picnic lunches. Snicker all you want but that's actually historical accuracy.
In this very first battle we're shown, John's brothers and cousins happen to be fighting each other. The brothers have the advantage (as the Confederacy usually did early in the war) with heavy cannons, and cousin Malachi wets his pants being fired upon (suave brother Jake is too sexy to have done such a thing). This battle scene is very personal, not only because we know so many of the ordinary soldiers, but because the Civil War was really one of the last wars fought in the old hand-to-hand combat style that saw whole lines of soldiers downed by one round of gunfire, told to advance at all costs. The battle's winner is constantly in doubt. The Union advances, despite heavy casualties, but the fleeing Confederate soldiers are goaded by the example of General "Stonewall" Jackson refusing to move his position. The saddest victim of the battle is a bedridden old woman whose house is used by the Confederate army as a locale for snipers, but easily blown to smithereens by Union cannonballs. Northern soldiers flee the onslaught (as do the onlookers, now closer to the action than they expected), and Malachi proves once again he doesn't have the stomach for war. It's not he who helps fellow wounded soldiers, but his cousin John, who isn't even a soldier! Such goes the Battle of Bull Run.
The Union soldiers are chewed out by their superiors as a twinkly-eyed soldier with a "coward" sign around his neck is branded (oh, Private Lawrence Jones; great, the coward is the only gay kid in the whole army; a big "C" on his cheek ain't gonna disappear, even under the dark lights of a disco, but that's a lesson for another time). John and his cousin Jake are worried about Malachi, who knows he should have been branded for running from the battle, but John is able to comfort him with the lesson this episode has worked very hard to make us understand: heroes in this war are not just the men who show up (or don't show up, as this was still a war where one could buy a surrogate to fight for him), but the men who work hard and struggle to form a cohesive fighting army. Pride has no place in this horrid war.
It's destiny that John, as John, should meet Kathleen Beller, playing Kathy, on the battlefield. In a full hoop skirt and parasol, she's almost split apart by a bomb, but John rescues her and she in turn helps a wounded soldier by ripping off a piece of her petticoat. When John goes to find her, it turns out she's the daughter of one of television's baddest bad guys, a man who struck terror into the heart of every television detective for umpteen years, Robert Vaughn. He's a Senator here who is at first not too happy that John is a..."journalist," the term that comes to the mind instead of "Southerner." Kathy's fey friends, who of course ran from the battle, are horrified that Kathy was so moved by the experience that she wants to be a nurse. "No gentleman would say that," her German fiance snarls when John supports her decision to blossom into Florence Nightingale. The German wants to duel "on the field of (heaving heavily) honor" because John calls him out on running from the fighting instead of being unconscious as he claimed.
"I hate duels. They are stupid and they are dangerous...and going out of style," pop-up Stacy Keach says (they were also illegal by this time in American history), acting as John's second. To act as the same, the German has picked Otto Von Bismarck's grandfather, a man so old he probably showed up to help the British fight the American Revolution and has been wandering around Virginia ever since, but it's lucky he's there because he has an actual dueling handbook! Okay, so even "The Blue and The Gray" is allowed some silliness. Actually, it gets even funnier, because the German tries to kill John before the paces are called, meaning John is allowed to shoot him. Grandpa consults the rule book again as John blows off the German's hat and humiliates him.
A hallmark of the American miniseries, and of American TV at the time, was the cliffhanger. That's understandable, because these sagas were shown over multiple nights and they needed to bring back the viewers, but I question the logic of the finale of this first episode. John's duel and obvious win of the girl would have made a nice little ending, but instead we drag back Gregory Peck, the only filmed Lincoln I can remember who is a damn good shot, testing out a rifle for his troops, though Stacy Keach is better with it. Lincoln, a detail man apparently, is aware that Stacy is to be married and gives him the new rifle, a gun so dastardly and efficient we know it will be back as a plot point, as a wedding present. A stunned Stacy watches as THE Gregory Peck (or THE Lincoln) walks back to the White House. This damn war isn't going to get any prettier.
It's a rather confusing cliffhanger, but there we have it, the end of Part 1 of "The Blue and The Gray."
Part 2 begins in the middle of 1862 at the Peninsula Campaign. In the Union Army, John's two cousins (and the goober) are still going strong, and his Confederate brothers are also alive. The Union has a fancy toy, a hot air balloon used by an aviation expert that can fly over the Confederate position and telegraph information back to the army. Luckily, it flies higher than any artillery can reach.
As for John, he's still courtin' Kathy, much to Papa Robert Vaughn's dismay. The latter scrunches up his face to its most derisive and lays it out for John. His daughter cannot risk her social position to be "intimate with an impecunious journalist." He's happy (as happy as he gets) to hear Kathy is still unspoiled, though she sure as hell knows now to use her tongue when she plants a heavy kiss on John secretly. Unfortunately, Robert still refuses to let her attend the wedding of Stacy Keach and Julia Duffy with John.
It's a shame, because it's a lovely wedding, though the first night is almost spoiled when Mary cuts her finger on broken glass and Jonas mistakes it for a bullet wound, the one in his dream where he brings harm to his beloved after they are married. Foreshadowing, sure, but not yet!
I have some bad news. Everyone sitting down?
You sure?
The goober soldier dies. Not in battle, but murdered and pinned to a tree, so horribly that forensic and psychology expert Stacy Keach can tell this murder means something more than just war.
I'm sorry, I really am. I wanted him to live too, but we knew he was doomed.
Malachai runs from another battle, only to meet a Confederate soldier behind a tree. Both need to reload their guns, but both are inept at loading it, so the two decide to talk it out in a rather tender exchange that again proves the theory that these armies are made of inexperienced men who truly have no idea what they are fighting for. "Makes no sense shooting each other...there's plenty of folks willing to do it for us," the Reb soldier says, since both are chicken and have run from the battle. Malachi asks what it's like to have slaves, but the Reb says he has no slaves. He didn't even have shoes! The scene is badly acted, yes, but highly effective. And it ends with Malachai a hero, a Corporal no less, an unexpected touch (though almost ruined when Malachi kicks his heels up in the air walking away after getting it).
In case you have missed the point of the above scene, the theme is repeated when bathing Union soldiers find a little tiny boat loaded with tobacco from the Confederate soldiers across the river in return for coffee sent back. The boat also has a note for John and his cousins to meet his brothers at night. That makes me veeeeeery nervous.
Brother Luke has invited John and his cousins to a barn dance behind Confederate lines where booze and broads abound. In the third-in-a-row scene to hammer in the theme (it's a bit tiresome, but so innocent you can't get upset) as the Confederate soldiers warmly welcome their Union enemies with open arms. John meets a girl who "if'n"s him into kissing her and drinking moonshine. An uppity senior staffer is not happy to have the Blues there, but he lets them stay upon promise of Luke taking them home at dawn. And he does, in a triumph of character over reality. The uppity senior staffer offers Luke and his pal the choice of cleaning latrines or handling the new Confederate balloon. Cleverness in war goes both ways.
Unfortunately, luck doesn't and Luke and his pal Bear land in enemy territory, with Bear taking a bullet to his considerable gut, expiring once he gives Luke the old "go run and save yourself" speech. Luke is taken prisoner.
In a pause for history, Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. That minute over, after Lincoln and his cabinet pose like they were being painted, John trots off to visit Kathy. His idea of romance is to relay the horrors of the battlefield, but Kathy is a nurse now and she understands. Plus, John, three year older than when we met him, is still just as adorable and there's no denying him a smile and a squeeze of the hand.
Nurse Kathy sees John having a horrible nightmare and pats down his sweat with great love in her eyes. She then sneaks a peak at his sketches, in another of those ideal little touches, to show the horror of the war. It takes only three brief pages to show what 150 years of books have tried to bring to life.
Flash forward to Mississippi, 1863. Students? What does that mean is looming? You, in the second row. Put down the note and tell me what Mississippi 1863 signifies? No, not the Battle of Midway. We're not up to "War and Remembrance" yet. Vicksburg! Vicksburg!
John is trottin' around down there when he comes across some Union soldiers about to rape a black woman. Having saved her life, he finds out that his beloved men in blue haven't been treating the Southerners blacks so well, but with news of the Emancipation in hand, a bedraggled gaggle of slaves hiding in the forest are understandably thrilled. John captures the glee of these now ex-slaves in his notebook. John, sounding more and more like a textbook, tells them the truth, that the piece of paper only means something if the Union wins the war, but the leader of the gang tells him that they now have hope, something more powerful.
The South is further painted in an unflattering light when John's brother Matthew goes to visit his married sister in Vicksburg, the one with the merchant hubby, who apparently is profiting from the misfortune of others (and she ain't so nice either, considering John cut out of the family for not fighting with the South--um, you wouldn't have a plot without that fact, you twit!). Cue the door and Emma's bloody husband. With the spirit of Scarlett O'Hara in her, she races him to the hospital amidst cannon fire, good not only for him but because she's about to pop a baby! Hubby Lester recovers and gets to meet his son. Emma slips back into irrationality and insists Lester go back into business to take advantage of the fact that food and medicine are in short supply and they can make a fortune. He says no, he's realized it's not right.
It's the last thing he says as a bomb decimates his hospital room.
Though "The Blue and The Grey" soars beautifully, Part 2 is a bit of a let-down after Part 1. Part 2, clocking in at nearly 45 minutes less than Part 1 seems more a history class than a fully plotted movie. I forgive it because the history is not as leaden as we will see in other historical epics, but let's be frank, the fictional characters are a whole lot more fun when they are part of the plot rather than observing it.
Part 3 starts still in 1863, but back up North where Stacy Keach explains to his wife that battle could be headed their way, as Gettysburg isn't too far. He then goes off to meet General Meade (Rory Calhoun, of all people), who knows the upcoming battle is going to be tough because Union supply lines are "a shambles." It becomes Stacy's job to assure the railroad supplies get through, but it's immediately evident that he has an unenviable task. The Confederate soldiers set fire to a bridge they must cross and when they go to put it out, snipers attack. Quick thinking, good guns and a pair of very tight pants on Stacy seem to save the day.
A small, but very bloody, hand-to-hand sword-to-sword combat battle erupts right outside of Mary Steele's house (literally right outside). A Confederate soldier slinks in, bloodied and blind, slumped against the table where a picture of hubby Stacy watches over him, and Julia Duffy helps the soldier as the battle rages. Unfortunately for Julia, a stray bullet kills her. She's a victim of two stock issues in TV of this period. The first is never to have a tearful goodbye with someone as it's a sure sign that you will never see each other alive again. Rarely does anyone die after a quick peck and a "have a good day." But, blubber and rant, and someone is a goner. The second is that with only two hours to go before the end of the movie, we have to start picking off some lead characters. Remember, these people (for the most part) are fictional. They serve the story by lurking around historic events, but we haven't had a death since one of John's cousins way back in the first episode. Unfortunately, given the low rank of most of the character soldiers in this movie, that's surprisingly low. More than a few of our beloved characters would have been dead and now the movie is catching up with reality.
The irony is piled on thick as Stacy brings the train to the soldiers, having successfully made it through all of the Confederate-inspired problems, not knowing his wife is close-by, dead on the floor next to a dead Confederate soldier (and that omnipresent picture of himself). Perhaps it's those tight pants again, but Stacy feels something is wrong and rushes home to find his in-laws crying and Mary's body in a coffin. The above two definites of miniseries death were inevitable for someone to die, but Mary's death was even more inevitable because Stacy had predicted it almost the first time they met. She's been on borrowed time ever since. "May I join you soon," he says and kisses her for the last time.
Detail time again: Stacy leaves his wife's funeral, having buried her in a nice little plot, having to ride through a vast field of dead soldiers and mangled war supplies. It's a beautiful, if horrifying, spectacle.
Gregory Peck digs into his vast reservoir of Oscar-winning focus to deliver Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Back down in Mississippi, John is witness to the Siege of Vicksburg, a particularly grim spectacle that stops only three times a day so the soldiers can eat, separated by only yards of trenches (spooky foreshadowing of World War I). Luckily all of the soldiers are so friendly that John can yell across the trenches that he wants to speak to his brother as the firing starts up again. In a moment of sheer Americana-on-film, the soldiers halt the fight so John and his brother can talk for a few minutes. "We're holding up the war," his brother even says at one point. John's brother is still sore at John for not joining the Confederate army, but he admits he's matured, having seen the horrors of the battle, and he forgives John for simply taking a different path in life. It's a touching moment (if unlikely), once again making sure we get the central themes of the piece.
In the above conversation, John learned that his sister and her baby are trapped in Vicksburg and wants to get into the city. What he finds is frighteningly grim. The Union has utterly decimated the town. It's a hell hole of burn-out buildings. John tries to protect a lady from seeing a dead horse, but the woman pulls out a knife and rushes over to it to get her share along with others. That's how desperate the situation is in Vicksburg.
The creepy horseflesh grabber, Mrs. Lovelace, follows John and cackles her way through the streets of Vicksburg with him. I pause here to point out a rare misstep in this film. When John finds his sister's house, it's overgrown with weeds. I know weeds move quickly, but it's only been a few months since we last saw this house freshly tended. It wouldn't be overgrown that fast!
Anyway, Mrs. Lovelace leads John to "the caves," a shantytown where he does indeed find Emma, now a hag driven to insanity by the conditions. It's not a happy reunion, but things get worse when the Union army marches down Vicksburg's main street, the town having surrendered, and Mrs. Lovelace still chewing whatever ash-covered scenery still remains. I have not revealed until now that Mrs. Lovelace is played by the legendary Geraldine Page because Gerry sure as hell was slumming giving that performance. On stage, it would have reached the upper balcony. On film, it's just plain over-ripe.
With that, we leave 1863 and it's twin infamous turning points for 1864 and the Wilderness Campaign (the Wilderness being Virginia--we'll save anything further west for other miniseries). Stacy and John discover a soldier murdered and stuck to a tree, just like our beloved goober back a few years ago and Stacy vows right there, before a dramatic music roll fade out to commercial, that he'll kill the demon who has been doing these killings.
The major armies march toward each other in Virginia and it's here we see nearly all of our main fictional characters. John has a brother and two cousins still alive and the brothers have two very quiet and tender scenes where Malachi admits to be as scared now as he ever was as the two try to help some new recruits cope with the oncoming horrors. These unfortunately boys are still boys, five years into the story, still frightened boys fighting out of a sense of duty.
Malachi and Jake survive a harrowing trap and Malachi turns to lead the men when the company leader is killed. Now it's their turn to ambush the Confederate soldiers and they do a much better job, not realizing they have wounded their cousin in the melee.
John makes the first wildly out-of-character stupid decision of his entire life when he insists on going out into the battle "to save at least one life." Stacy warns him against it, but follows after him, picking off three soldiers in a matter of minutes, but then forced to separate from John. However, I suppose I have to go back on my assessment of John when he runs into a burning forest looking for survivors, only to come across...let's say it together...his brother, literally on fire as if the bullet in his chest isn't enough. John is begged by his kin to kill him, but John demurs, rushing off for his horse to drag his brother to safety, only to watch a burning tree fall and kill him. It's heart-wrenching, just the kind of character-driven moment that makes "The Blue and The Grey" so particularly special in its earnestly innocent way.
But, there is another reason John and Stacy have had to separate. Stacy hears the special humming of the man he knows to be the murderer of the goober and others, a character we briefly met and long forgot about, but Stacy kills him quickly, despite suffering a serious wound to his arm.
Remember Kathy? It's okay if you don't. Not only haven't we seen her in a few years, but she hasn't made much of an impression. John's beloved is a nurse at the hospital where they take Stacy to amputate his arm and treat him for pneumonia (and where he can hallucinate and talk to his dead wife who tells him it's not time to die yet). And since John is always just a few steps behind Stacy, he soon shows up at the hospital to be reunited with his gal. Unfortunately, he walks in when Kathy is kissing Stacy, just being kind to him since he thinks she's his dead wife. That's the kind of soap "The Blue and The Gray" has mercifully done without most of the time, so I'll forgive it a lapse.
John goes to the family farm, where he hasn't visited since he left in the first scene, to find one brother limping, one in jail and of course the one dead we knew about. Sister Emma is there too, not longer nuts, but just as angry as the last time John saw her. Pa Lloyd Bridges isn't any more forgiving, but don't he feel mighty bad when John gives him brother Mark's ashes.
As for Colleen Dewhurst, well, the news isn't good, TV fans. She's in bed with "influenza or something" and we know that's not good. She's always had a soft spot for John, and they have a loving conversation. "I live for the day when it (the war) is done...and we can all be together again," Ma says, not knowing one son is dead. A line like that also speaks of upcoming death, sadly. It's a miniseries role not to hope for the future, especially sick in bed!
The Confederate Army shows up at the homestead, telling the family to leave because the battle, get this, is going to happen right on their property! John refuses to take a gun and the family turns on him again. Lloyd threatens to shoot him if he doesn't leave.
We surge into high melodrama when Union soldiers invade the house and grab Colleen. John finally takes up a gun and shoots three soldiers to rescue his Ma. He then joins his father and brother at the barricade shooting at approaching Union soldiers. Half-lame brother Matthew dies carrying the Confederate flag and he's buried alongside Mark's ashes (having gone back on their pledge never to tell Ma what happened to him). The only thing this sequence missed was having Malachi and Jake be on the Union side of the battle. But, there are still 40 minutes to go!
The melodrama was okay for a battle scene, but the following scene, a reconciliation between Stacy and John, is pure cheese. But, the family needs Stacy to get brother Mark out of prison, though Emma refuses to trust him. So, Stacy goes off to DC to get the order of release while John and Sis go to Elmira to keep Mark alive in prison until the order arrives. Elmira in September 1864 is not a happy place to be!
The desk clerk at the prison, who looks a lot like John Lennon, hair and glasses included, foils wild Emma's plan to smuggle a gun into prison for Mark and ends up getting them both arrested. Luckily, Stacy arrives in time and sounds officious enough to get them all released. He and Sis Emma flirt on the way home as John apologizes to Kathy, whom Stacy brought for John. John proposes and Kathy accepts. She may indeed be the blandest of the lead characters, but John deserves a girl.
We zoom from there to April 1865. Jonas shows up at John and Kathy's to announce the war is about to end. He wants John by his side to witness the final moments, but Kathy insists he go. They arrive just as Lee has signed away the South at Appomattox, where General Lee sweeps out in a huff and General Grant (an unusually restrained Rip Torn) looks pleased. When Lee tells his soldiers he has surrendered, watch for another of those beautiful moments, very quickly. They are disappointed that it's over, but as Lee rides off, one soldier drops his gun and falls to his knees out of utter exhaustion. They would have all gone on fighting, proud to do so, but now that it's over, they can admit how tiring and scary it's all been.
On paper, the war is over (though there is one momentous event to come), and John and his cousins reminisce about those they've lost: brothers, cousins, wives, even the goober soldier. "Let's sing to their memory," John says and they trot off join the rest of the soldiers doing the same. It's wonderful that the soldiers themselves are so forgiving and itching for peace. Politicians would beat the South into further submission with a decade of Reconstruction full of rules that amused Northern politicians and hardened Southern politicians into solidifying the next hundred years of outrageous violations of civil rights, but that's material for another miniseries (or ten).
At a cabinet meeting, Lincoln's dialogue all but portents his night at the theater, and Stacy Keach awakes in his tent to have a vision at what must be the exact time the Lincolns were taking their seats at Ford's Theatre. (to see "Our American Cousin," if anyone wants to remember that detail, which is not included in this retelling, just one of those details that is stuck in my head). Stacy and John rush to the White House to warn Lincoln, arriving at the theater after the Booth has thrown the town into mayhem. True to form, Mary Lincoln wails like a banshee as his pulse stops and Andrew Johnson is suddenly the new President (there's no miniseries about him, and rightfully so). "Now he belongs to the ages," Secretary Seward says, as he did in real life.
Against all typical-of-the-time TV odds, Mama Colleen has not died. In fact, she's in fine form as her family celebrates a gaggle of weddings. Hell, even Robert Vaughn looks pleased to be there, and that I know of, he made it a promise since sometime back in the 50s never to look pleased on television. Stacy arranges a full family portrait, of the Geysers and the Hales, Blues and Grays, but this is not for one of John's sketches. It's for his brand-new camera.
Lincoln's words at Gettysburg play us out as we look at pictures of the family members.
"The Blue and The Grey" is ideal historical fiction because its lead character is an observer. None of the fictional characters in the piece actually affect history, they are here just foot soldiers or watchers. John Hammond's character does manage to be in the most important places of the entire Civil War, but that's easily explained by his job. If the second of three parts lacked for character development, and the third part soars into some oft-times laughable dramatics beyond the scope of most of the actors' abilities, overall, this is a miniseries to treasure. It tells a great story, pacing it well, not letting it go on too long. Perhaps that's why "The Blue and The Gray" has not entered the public memory the way the Herman Wouk miniseries or "The North and The South" have, but this is a sturdy gem that handles the Civil War in a fair and unique way, keeping politics at a minimum and story at a maximum.
Windmills of the Gods (1988)
In the first roughly ten minutes of "Windmills of the Gods," which we know will be a corker because it's based on a Sidney Sheldon novel, we learn two very important things:
First, deep in Finland, in a cabin about as rickety as that of Abraham Lincoln's, a super secret agent led by mouthpiece Ian McKellan, plans the assassinations of world leaders just for the heck of it. Okay, they aren't that evil, though it's hard to tell since we only see the backs of their heads, the budget blown in Sir Ian's hairpiece, but they are a combination of the ultra-left and the ultra-right who view any changes in the world order as a problem for them.
Second, Jaclyn Smith is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas whose parents came from Romania. I'll give you a moment to let that one sink in.
Unfortunately, Windmills of the Gods was politically neutered by the fall of Communism, but it does show up at the very last minute. Of all people in the entire country for President Michael Moriarty to pick as Ambassador to Romania, where he has a grand plan to restructure the way the US does business with the Communists, he picks our Jaclyn. Why? I couldn't tell you. She can't even get her bratty teenage daughter to eat boxed cereal, let alone run an embassy!
But, pick her he does. However, Jaclyn says no because her husband has a thriving medical practice and her children are of an age that necessitates staying in Kansas. Late one night, hubby is off to the hospital to help a sick patient and the problem of his thriving medical practice is rectified with a handy car crash.
Free to be Ambassador, Jaclyn trots off to Washington to learn to be an Ambassador, taking the standard five-minute course that seems to be the only one offered. She's assigned Robert Wagner as her Chief of Staff, but that is a problem because the two do not hit it off. He's abrasive and pushy and Jaclyn, who was awfully mousy back in Kansas, is suddenly the toughest of dames.
Ruling Romania is President Ionescu, Franco Nero. Imperious in a mustache always about to fall off, Nero is enchanted by the new lady Ambassador, despite having her spied on. A whole host of characters make appearances, but only two are important. There is sweet Ruby Dee as Jaclyn's secretary and Christopher Cazenove as an alluring French doctor who romances Jaclyn. Well of course he does, it's a Sidney Sheldon novel.
Meanwhile, the bad guys have decided that if they kill Jaclyn, the US President's plan to change the way the world works will be upended, world order will stay the way it is. Who knew one lone Ambassador was that important? To make sure we understand just how mean these guys are, they want to kill her kids too. No one since the Nazis have ever wanted to kill kids!
We meet our romantic lead, Mr. Cazenove as a doctor attached to the French embassy. Jaclyn attends the opera one night, alone, and her limo blows a tire, so she decides to walk home. Through Communist Bucharest, a city that has already proven very unfriendly to her. She gets mugged, but Christopher shows up just in time to scare the baddies off. The police come swooping in and when a surprisingly calm Jaclyn goes to point out her hero..he's gone...
...only to turn up at an embassy function later on. He teaches her to toast without holding a glass of champagne (details like that puff this up to three hours) and tells his sad tale of losing his wife and daughters to a bomber in Beirut. In fact, he tells that story so well, and so often, she's immediately smitten. Her widows weeds didn't follow her to Romania, and the kids don't go into the countryside as she's wined by her French hero.
Robert Wagner is tries telling her the doctor is not who he seems, that he never had a family, but one of her minions at the embassy finds a dossier backing up the story. She would chew out RJ in the secret chamber of the embassy (we're told they sweep the embassy for bugs every few hours, but there is one room that is safe from bugs and safe from tapped phones--how? If the Romanians are that clever, don't they know about this room too?), but she has another of her near fainting attacks that have lately been plaguing her.
One faint too many brings the doctor to her side (but not her maid, who leaves her in a crumpled heap on the floor to go for the doctor). All whispery and gallant, he helps her figure out that it must be Robert Wagner who is poisoning her because the only routine she has all day is the cup of coffee he personally makes in his office and delivers to her.
It's about time the aide and the doc speak, but the conversation in the park isn't a long one, for RJ whips out a silenced gun and kills the doc. Amazingly, everyone is able to keep this from Jaclyn except for Ruby, usually the smartest of the dimwit gang of blowhards who report to Jaclyn (she's fired a few by this time). Ruby expresses her sympathy and it crushes Jaclyn, because now she feels she's completely alone, at the mercy of RJ.
The assassination is planned for a July 4 celebration at the American embassy and the super secret organization hires an Argentinian assassin to handle it all. The details are a hoot: basically he fills red, white and blue balloons with a dangerous gas so that when an electrical spark goes off, the whole embassy will go KAPOW! With the entire US military at her service, including four very dull marines to watch her kids, Jaclyn nervously attends the party, so preoccupied the whole time that when RJ figures out the balloon thing and tells her to get the guests out, the best she can do is tell everyone there is a small fire in the kitchen and they need to move to the balcony. Suddenly a party of hundreds clusters on a balcony meant to fit about 25, while waiters pass around trays of drinks. There's a convenient trapdoor in the ceiling, the ballons are let out by RJ at his manliest and the exploding balloons look like fireworks. Everyone is saved.
So is Robert Wagner the bad guy? Oh, come on! He's Robert Wagner! Of course he's not the bad guy. Sure, he is seen sitting at the table with Ian McKellan, but he's a double agent. He's been protecting Jaclyn all along. Yes, he poisoned her, but only to get her safely back to the US since we're conveniently told that no Ambassador is allowed to be treated at any hospital outside of the United States (someone show me that page of protocol). He knew the doctor was in on the plot.
The bad guys are trumped and die a series of gruesome deaths and wimpy President Michael Moriarty wants to send Jaclyn Smith back to her post. It's full of danger, but she can handle it. After all, during her time there, she managed to comandeer a supersonic jet filled with the only antidote on the planet that could save President Franco Nero's son from death, thus blackmailing him into letting Romanian dissidents and priests leave the country. Our hick professor from Kansas is now a major world power player.
And she still can't dress to save her life!
First, deep in Finland, in a cabin about as rickety as that of Abraham Lincoln's, a super secret agent led by mouthpiece Ian McKellan, plans the assassinations of world leaders just for the heck of it. Okay, they aren't that evil, though it's hard to tell since we only see the backs of their heads, the budget blown in Sir Ian's hairpiece, but they are a combination of the ultra-left and the ultra-right who view any changes in the world order as a problem for them.
Second, Jaclyn Smith is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas whose parents came from Romania. I'll give you a moment to let that one sink in.
Unfortunately, Windmills of the Gods was politically neutered by the fall of Communism, but it does show up at the very last minute. Of all people in the entire country for President Michael Moriarty to pick as Ambassador to Romania, where he has a grand plan to restructure the way the US does business with the Communists, he picks our Jaclyn. Why? I couldn't tell you. She can't even get her bratty teenage daughter to eat boxed cereal, let alone run an embassy!
But, pick her he does. However, Jaclyn says no because her husband has a thriving medical practice and her children are of an age that necessitates staying in Kansas. Late one night, hubby is off to the hospital to help a sick patient and the problem of his thriving medical practice is rectified with a handy car crash.
Free to be Ambassador, Jaclyn trots off to Washington to learn to be an Ambassador, taking the standard five-minute course that seems to be the only one offered. She's assigned Robert Wagner as her Chief of Staff, but that is a problem because the two do not hit it off. He's abrasive and pushy and Jaclyn, who was awfully mousy back in Kansas, is suddenly the toughest of dames.
Ruling Romania is President Ionescu, Franco Nero. Imperious in a mustache always about to fall off, Nero is enchanted by the new lady Ambassador, despite having her spied on. A whole host of characters make appearances, but only two are important. There is sweet Ruby Dee as Jaclyn's secretary and Christopher Cazenove as an alluring French doctor who romances Jaclyn. Well of course he does, it's a Sidney Sheldon novel.
Meanwhile, the bad guys have decided that if they kill Jaclyn, the US President's plan to change the way the world works will be upended, world order will stay the way it is. Who knew one lone Ambassador was that important? To make sure we understand just how mean these guys are, they want to kill her kids too. No one since the Nazis have ever wanted to kill kids!
We meet our romantic lead, Mr. Cazenove as a doctor attached to the French embassy. Jaclyn attends the opera one night, alone, and her limo blows a tire, so she decides to walk home. Through Communist Bucharest, a city that has already proven very unfriendly to her. She gets mugged, but Christopher shows up just in time to scare the baddies off. The police come swooping in and when a surprisingly calm Jaclyn goes to point out her hero..he's gone...
...only to turn up at an embassy function later on. He teaches her to toast without holding a glass of champagne (details like that puff this up to three hours) and tells his sad tale of losing his wife and daughters to a bomber in Beirut. In fact, he tells that story so well, and so often, she's immediately smitten. Her widows weeds didn't follow her to Romania, and the kids don't go into the countryside as she's wined by her French hero.
Robert Wagner is tries telling her the doctor is not who he seems, that he never had a family, but one of her minions at the embassy finds a dossier backing up the story. She would chew out RJ in the secret chamber of the embassy (we're told they sweep the embassy for bugs every few hours, but there is one room that is safe from bugs and safe from tapped phones--how? If the Romanians are that clever, don't they know about this room too?), but she has another of her near fainting attacks that have lately been plaguing her.
One faint too many brings the doctor to her side (but not her maid, who leaves her in a crumpled heap on the floor to go for the doctor). All whispery and gallant, he helps her figure out that it must be Robert Wagner who is poisoning her because the only routine she has all day is the cup of coffee he personally makes in his office and delivers to her.
It's about time the aide and the doc speak, but the conversation in the park isn't a long one, for RJ whips out a silenced gun and kills the doc. Amazingly, everyone is able to keep this from Jaclyn except for Ruby, usually the smartest of the dimwit gang of blowhards who report to Jaclyn (she's fired a few by this time). Ruby expresses her sympathy and it crushes Jaclyn, because now she feels she's completely alone, at the mercy of RJ.
The assassination is planned for a July 4 celebration at the American embassy and the super secret organization hires an Argentinian assassin to handle it all. The details are a hoot: basically he fills red, white and blue balloons with a dangerous gas so that when an electrical spark goes off, the whole embassy will go KAPOW! With the entire US military at her service, including four very dull marines to watch her kids, Jaclyn nervously attends the party, so preoccupied the whole time that when RJ figures out the balloon thing and tells her to get the guests out, the best she can do is tell everyone there is a small fire in the kitchen and they need to move to the balcony. Suddenly a party of hundreds clusters on a balcony meant to fit about 25, while waiters pass around trays of drinks. There's a convenient trapdoor in the ceiling, the ballons are let out by RJ at his manliest and the exploding balloons look like fireworks. Everyone is saved.
So is Robert Wagner the bad guy? Oh, come on! He's Robert Wagner! Of course he's not the bad guy. Sure, he is seen sitting at the table with Ian McKellan, but he's a double agent. He's been protecting Jaclyn all along. Yes, he poisoned her, but only to get her safely back to the US since we're conveniently told that no Ambassador is allowed to be treated at any hospital outside of the United States (someone show me that page of protocol). He knew the doctor was in on the plot.
The bad guys are trumped and die a series of gruesome deaths and wimpy President Michael Moriarty wants to send Jaclyn Smith back to her post. It's full of danger, but she can handle it. After all, during her time there, she managed to comandeer a supersonic jet filled with the only antidote on the planet that could save President Franco Nero's son from death, thus blackmailing him into letting Romanian dissidents and priests leave the country. Our hick professor from Kansas is now a major world power player.
And she still can't dress to save her life!
Why a Miniseries Marathon?
The American miniseries between roughly the mid-70s and the mid-90s was a unique format of television, one that burned bright for a short time and then died. It was a perfect representation of the times: excess, glamour, extravagance. They started in the Carter years, but the heyday was the Reagan years, the years when nighttime soap operas ruled the airwaves with shoulder pads and villains, when the networks had little competition from cable and spent vast sums of money on these epic movies, far bigger and far longer than typical movies.
I am giving myself at least a year to watch as many of them as I can. It will be trying, it will be sad, it will be funny, it will be magnificent. I am setting the schedule myself so that for every "Winds of War," I can follow it with a "Lace," cry and laugh alternately.
And these are my opinions. I have to admit up front that my sense of humor is finely-toned to pick up even the slightest goofiness. Even the most serious of these pieces will come in for some heavy castration. As much as I love "Centennial," perhaps one of the greatest pieces of Americana ever devised, I cannot help but laugh when the solo lead character of Hispanic origin is given the nickname Nacho. Sure, that comes from James Michener's original novel, but it's also a sign of the times.
There are some ground rules:
1. Only American miniseries are being viewed. The British invented the miniseries in the 60s with Upstairs/Downstairs, The Forsyte Saga, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and others, and they still produce them, but for the sake of some limits, only American miniseries are being considered.
2. I'm using a definition of a miniseries as a made-for-television movie that ran longer than two hours. Most of these were done over multiple nights, but some were 3 or 4-hour movies all done in one night.
3. Cable miniseries (with small exceptions) are not included. HBO has revised the miniseries with stunning epics like John Adams, but they are subscription-based channels working in a vastly different economic and social time.
4. The time frame, as stated, is roughly the mid-70s to the mid-90s, roughly from "Rich Man, Poor Man" to the tapering off of the genre with less substantial pieces, though some stragglers on either end are being permitted.
Here's my take on it all: as much money as was spent on these pieces, as seriously as they took themselves, they are all inherently more than a bit loopy (with some rare exceptions, like "Holocaust" which couldn't afford any big mistakes or it would have been doomed). A lot are cast strangely, which is a problem, or written strangely, which is a problem, or adapt stories or events that are strange, which is a problem. If you look at these with a raised eyebrow, they are a whole lot more fun. Even the serious ones.
As I see it, the Great American Miniseries all fell into one of the following categories:
--History-these are the grand epics, based on true events, whether using fictional characters to help tell the story ("North and South") or using true history itself ("Wallenberg").
--Romance-these are centered on love above all else. Soap operas that go on for hours.
--Adventure-these may be historical in nature, but are infused with battles or fights or exotic locales that make them the equivalent of a Sir Walter Raleigh novel.
Within these three categories, I can place nearly every miniseries I will discuss. There are sub genres. For example, within history, there is war. The American Miniseries movement was obsessed with The Civil War and World War II because they were clear-cut wars of good versus bad. No one sides with the Nazis or slave owners.
What of camp productions like "Monte Carlo" or anything with Jaclyn Smith? Most of them are romances, though some are adventures. I could have a camp category, but it would overwhelm the others, at least with my worldview.
There will be miniseries that do not fit. What to make of "Fresno," the only intentional comedy of the entire genre (intentional, I said)? I'll make them fit somehow.
There is also a special tribute running through these to the person I consider the most important figure in the whole movement. By rights, it should be a network executive, or a writer or a director, but it's not. It's an actress: Jane Seymour. She had competition for churning these out from Jaclyn Smith and Lindsay Wagner, not to mention Richard Chamberlain and and a few other men, but Jane brought something special to the miniseries movement. She brought her natural regal charm as well as damn fine acting talent. Here is an actress who makes "East of Eden" watchable while everyone else around her is a snooze because she plays a villainess so convincingly you want her in every scene but then goes on to play the saddest most trod upon character in "War and Remembrance" both with such conviction that you marvel at her abilities. A lot of actors in this period thought that showing up on television was a step down from movies (that would change around the turn of the century), unless it was to be a guest star, but Jane Seymour ripped through miniseries history with a fervor and single mindedness that made her performances luminous. She worked in some clunkers, don't get me wrong, but they didn't fail because of her.
Each of the three categories has an ultimate production that is THE essence of just what defines the sub genre. They will be the last three miniseries I review here, though I know already what they are. You will just have to wait.
One note about these writings. Though I do hope to turn this into a book, for now, they are just notes and fun reads. You will see some where I describe the movies using characters' names instead of actors' names (usually when they involve real-life characters or stories so complex it's best to stick with them for simplicity's sake). For the fictional pieces, especially the funnier ones, I'll will usually stick with actors' names. It helps in the humor, trust me.
Bj
I am giving myself at least a year to watch as many of them as I can. It will be trying, it will be sad, it will be funny, it will be magnificent. I am setting the schedule myself so that for every "Winds of War," I can follow it with a "Lace," cry and laugh alternately.
And these are my opinions. I have to admit up front that my sense of humor is finely-toned to pick up even the slightest goofiness. Even the most serious of these pieces will come in for some heavy castration. As much as I love "Centennial," perhaps one of the greatest pieces of Americana ever devised, I cannot help but laugh when the solo lead character of Hispanic origin is given the nickname Nacho. Sure, that comes from James Michener's original novel, but it's also a sign of the times.
There are some ground rules:
1. Only American miniseries are being viewed. The British invented the miniseries in the 60s with Upstairs/Downstairs, The Forsyte Saga, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and others, and they still produce them, but for the sake of some limits, only American miniseries are being considered.
2. I'm using a definition of a miniseries as a made-for-television movie that ran longer than two hours. Most of these were done over multiple nights, but some were 3 or 4-hour movies all done in one night.
3. Cable miniseries (with small exceptions) are not included. HBO has revised the miniseries with stunning epics like John Adams, but they are subscription-based channels working in a vastly different economic and social time.
4. The time frame, as stated, is roughly the mid-70s to the mid-90s, roughly from "Rich Man, Poor Man" to the tapering off of the genre with less substantial pieces, though some stragglers on either end are being permitted.
Here's my take on it all: as much money as was spent on these pieces, as seriously as they took themselves, they are all inherently more than a bit loopy (with some rare exceptions, like "Holocaust" which couldn't afford any big mistakes or it would have been doomed). A lot are cast strangely, which is a problem, or written strangely, which is a problem, or adapt stories or events that are strange, which is a problem. If you look at these with a raised eyebrow, they are a whole lot more fun. Even the serious ones.
As I see it, the Great American Miniseries all fell into one of the following categories:
--History-these are the grand epics, based on true events, whether using fictional characters to help tell the story ("North and South") or using true history itself ("Wallenberg").
--Romance-these are centered on love above all else. Soap operas that go on for hours.
--Adventure-these may be historical in nature, but are infused with battles or fights or exotic locales that make them the equivalent of a Sir Walter Raleigh novel.
Within these three categories, I can place nearly every miniseries I will discuss. There are sub genres. For example, within history, there is war. The American Miniseries movement was obsessed with The Civil War and World War II because they were clear-cut wars of good versus bad. No one sides with the Nazis or slave owners.
What of camp productions like "Monte Carlo" or anything with Jaclyn Smith? Most of them are romances, though some are adventures. I could have a camp category, but it would overwhelm the others, at least with my worldview.
There will be miniseries that do not fit. What to make of "Fresno," the only intentional comedy of the entire genre (intentional, I said)? I'll make them fit somehow.
There is also a special tribute running through these to the person I consider the most important figure in the whole movement. By rights, it should be a network executive, or a writer or a director, but it's not. It's an actress: Jane Seymour. She had competition for churning these out from Jaclyn Smith and Lindsay Wagner, not to mention Richard Chamberlain and and a few other men, but Jane brought something special to the miniseries movement. She brought her natural regal charm as well as damn fine acting talent. Here is an actress who makes "East of Eden" watchable while everyone else around her is a snooze because she plays a villainess so convincingly you want her in every scene but then goes on to play the saddest most trod upon character in "War and Remembrance" both with such conviction that you marvel at her abilities. A lot of actors in this period thought that showing up on television was a step down from movies (that would change around the turn of the century), unless it was to be a guest star, but Jane Seymour ripped through miniseries history with a fervor and single mindedness that made her performances luminous. She worked in some clunkers, don't get me wrong, but they didn't fail because of her.
Each of the three categories has an ultimate production that is THE essence of just what defines the sub genre. They will be the last three miniseries I review here, though I know already what they are. You will just have to wait.
One note about these writings. Though I do hope to turn this into a book, for now, they are just notes and fun reads. You will see some where I describe the movies using characters' names instead of actors' names (usually when they involve real-life characters or stories so complex it's best to stick with them for simplicity's sake). For the fictional pieces, especially the funnier ones, I'll will usually stick with actors' names. It helps in the humor, trust me.
Bj
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