Travels With My Aunt (1972)

          Based on a whimsical novel by the revered British author Graham Greene, this offbeat comedy was originally conceived as a Katharine Hepburn vehicle. Director George Cukor, a studio-era giant who helmed several of Hepburn’s classic films, enlisted the iconic actress’ participation, but MGM nixed Hepburn partly because she was too old to convincingly play her character in flashbacks. The star was replaced by Maggie Smith, who interprets the lead role so broadly that the character becomes surrealistic. This otherworldly flavor is exacerbated by Cukor’s use of over-the-top costuming and production design. Smith’s character comes across like a refugee from glamorous MGM productions of the ’30s, all flowing dresses and opulent headgear, making her an extreme anachronism within the otherwise realistic milieu of the movie. Obviously, Cukor envisioned an arch culture-clash comedy, and the effect probably works for some viewers. To these eyes, however, the movie is merely garish and shrill.

          The story begins at a funeral, when uptight British banker Henry Pulling (Alec McCowen) oversees his mother’s cremation. During the service, he’s distracted by the wailings of a strange-looking redhead in flamboyant clothing, Augusta Bertram (Smith). She introduces herself as Henry’s long-lost aunt, and then she pulls him into her eccentric world. Augusta lives with pot-smoking African psychic Wordsworth (Louis Gossett Jr.), but she’s romantically linked to a string of European men with whom she shared adventures in the past. One of her ex-lovers has been kidnapped, so Augusta agrees to transport stolen goods as a means of raising cash for ransom. This odyssey is intercut with flashbacks depicting Augusta in her glory days as the mistress for various wealthy men. Emboldened by Augusta’s freethinking ways, Henry enjoys a chaste tryst with American hippie chick Tooley (Cindy Williams), who travels on the famed Orient Express at the same time as Augusta and Henry.

          Travels With My Aunt goes on rather windily through myriad episodes, some of which are amusing but none of which is remotely believable. And since the movie never reaches laugh-out-loud levels of absurdity, it ends up feeling quite pointless. One problem is Smith’s over-the-top acting, and another is McCowen’s bloodlessly competent performance: The movie cries out for a brilliant comic foil, like Dudley Moore or Gene Wilder, but Smith’s energy is not returned in kind. However, Cukor’s stylization is the most distracting aspect of the picture, because all the directorial flourishes in the world can’t obscure the film’s lack of substance. Improbably, the picture received several major nominations, though its only significant win was an Oscar for Anthony Powell’s costumes. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Travels With My Aunt: FUNKY

The Hawaiians (1970)

          James Michener’s 1959 novel Hawaii was a major bestseller, but it was also a monster in terms of narrative scope: Sprawling over nearly 1,000 pages, the book traces centuries of history from the formation of the islands by geological forces to the present day at the time of the book’s publication. Therefore, even though Hollywood was eager to capitalize on the novel’s success, putting the entire story onscreen was impossible. Taking a creative approach to the challenge, producer Walter Mirisch decided to film the book as a pair of epic features, but the first picture to be filmed, Hawaii (1966), barely covered one chapter of Michener’s story. Hawaii did well enough that Mirisch pressed forward with the second film, which, given the nature of the source material, is less a continuation of the first picture’s story and more of a companion piece.

          Whereas Hawaii dramatizes early conflicts between European missionaries and Hawaiian natives, The Hawaiians takes place a generation later, when the son of the first movie’s protagonist has grown into a middle-aged bureaucrat named Micah Hale (Alec McCowen). Yet the real center of The Hawaiians is Hale’s cousin, sea captain Whip Hoxworth (Charlton Heston). When the story begins, Whip returns from the sea to accept an inheritance from his recently deceased grandfather. Unfortunately, the estate was left to Hale. Incensed, Whip starts a plantation on the meager stretch of uncultivated land he owns.

          His workers include a pair of impoverished Chinese immigrants, Mun Ki (Mako) and Wu Chow’s Auntie (Tina Chen). (The relationship between these characters is way too complicated to describe here.) To endow his plantation with a unique cash crop, Whip sails to French Guiana and steals pineapples, which are not yet being grown in Hawaii. Wu Chow’s Auntie proves adept at nurturing the plants, so Whip gives her some land to start a small farm of her own. Thus, the foundations of two parallel dynasties are formed. The movie tracks Whip’s ascension to supreme wealth as an agricultural tycoon, and the rise of Wu Chow’s Auntie as the matriarch of an expansive immigrant clan. The picture also features subplots about leprosy, mental illness, political unrest, and other intense subjects.

          The Hawaiians crams an enormous amount of narrative into 134 minutes, and much of what happens onscreen is interesting, like the arcane workings of the Chinese community in Hawaii. However, tackling so much material gives the picture a diffuse quality. Director Tom Gries handles individual scenes with workmanlike efficiency, but neither he nor screenwriter James R. Webb are able to forge a unified statement. One episode unfolds after another, time passes, and a resolution of sort arrives, but it’s all somewhat random.

          It doesn’t help that the film’s central performance is its least compelling, since Heston grimaces and growls in his usual blustery manner. Chen and Mako do much more nuanced work, although the age makeup applied to Chen in later scenes is unconvincing. (McCowen is too polite to make much of an impression.) The Hawaiian locations are, of course, quite beautiful, so the land itself becomes the most arresting character—it’s easy to see why generations of people battled for control over this vast paradise of adjoining islands. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Hawaiians: FUNKY

Frenzy (1972)

          After losing his way in the late ’60s, when drab source material and poor health dulled his edge, Hollywood’s “master of suspense,” director Alfred Hitchcock, forcefully entered the ’70s with Frenzy. In addition to returning to familiar territory in terms of location and subject matter, Hitchcock toughened up his perverse storytelling by adding the R-rated elements of nudity and profanity. Yet while many of his old-Hollywood peers seemed desperate when they jumped onto the anything-goes ’70s bandwagon, Hitchcock’s movies had always been so infused with nastiness that the rough stuff suited his style.

          Furthermore, Frenzy demonstrates the filmmaker’s unique ability to weave black humor into sordid material, so the picture has some very funny moments in addition to sequences of concentrated fright. The movie is too long, the performances are good but not great, and the storyline sometimes meanders, but given its many strengths, Frenzy would have been a wonderful swan song for Hitchcock’s epic career. Alas, the underwhelming Family Plot (1976) was his final film, a whimper following the roar of Frenzy.

          Jon Finch, the intense leading man of Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), stars in Frenzy as Richard Blaney, a London ne’er-do-well with a volcanic temper. Fired from his job as a bartender in the Covent Garden neighborhood, he accepts financial and moral support from his girlfriend (Anna Massey), his ex-wife (Barbara Leigh-Hunt), and his former military comrade (Barry Foster).

          Meanwhile, police officers including the meticulous Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McCowen) are chasing the “Necktie Murderer,” a serial killer who rapes women and then strangles them to death with neckties. Based on a novel by Arthur La Bern and written for the screen by Anthony Shaffer (best known for his clever play/film Sleuth), Frenzy fits perfectly into the Hitchcock tradition, because as the story progresses, circumstances convince Oxford that Blaney is the Necktie Murderer. Viewers, however, learn the real identity of the criminal, and it’s wicked sport to watch Hitchcock move the characters around each other while it seems more and more likely the wrong man will get arrested.

          Hitchcock and Shaffer enliven the picture by carefully fleshing out their characters. For instance, the running gag about Oxford’s home life—his wife’s experiments with gourmet cooking lead to a procession of elaborately repulsive meals—is wonderfully droll. Plus, in classic Hitchcock style, Frenzy features a handful of riveting suspense scenes, like a lengthy sequence in which the real Necktie Murderer nearly gets caught while trying to recover evidence from a truck that’s barreling down a highway. And, in an enjoyable grace note, Hitchcock uses his camera to explore the colorful streets of Covent Garden, the neighborhood in which his parents operated a shop when Hitchcock was a boy.

Frenzy: GROOVY

Stevie (1978)

          The formidable British actress Glenda Jackson was at the height of her dramatic powers in the ’70s, winning two Oscars for Best Actress before the first half of the decade was through. However, even a great performer has difficulty making overly intellectualized material compelling, and that’s the obstacle Jackson encounters in Stevie. Adapted from a stage play about the late poetess Stevie Smith, a troubled artist who led a spinster’s lifestyle but enjoyed a vivid creative dialogue with her small circle of friends and relatives, the picture is a string of monologues and two-character vignettes. Most of the picture depicts Stevie (Jackson) spending time at home with her widowed aunt (Mona Washbourne), though a brief flurry of activity occurs when Stevie rebuffs the marriage proposal of a lifelong friend, Freddy (Alec McCowen). Stevie and her aunt engage in quasi-clever verbal jousting, and Stevie recites a great many of her gloomy poems, the majority of which are preoccupied with death and loss.

          Despite the heavy subject matter, Stevie is suffocatingly polite, so even though the acting and writing are sharp, there’s a considerable tedium factor. Pretentiousness is a problem, as well—although director Robert Enders’ visual style is unassuming, the contrivance of Jackson periodically leaving scenes to address the audience feels like an artsy cheat, and the film’s least effective device is its most precious: Trevor Howard appears in transitional scenes playing a character known only as “The Man,” offering pithy remarks as he wanders through random locations. For instance, after Stevie attempts suicide, The Man comments thusly: “Death, that sweet and gentle friend, failed to respond to her summons. Life continued.” There’s no questioning the seriousness of this film’s intentions, nor is there any questioning the viability of Stevie as the subject for a biopic, but writer Hugh Whitemore’s failure to transform his play into a filmic narrative results in a flat presentation. One could defend this approach on a metaphorical level, since there’s an obvious parallel between Stevie’s monastic lifestyle and the film’s visual austerity, but that doesn’t make the experience of watching Stevie any more exciting.

Stevie: FUNKY