A Doll’s House (1973, UK) & A Doll’s House (1973, USA)

          In an odd coincidence, two films of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House arrived in 1973, one in theaters and one on television. Both take place in 19th-century Norway, where housewife Nora revels upon hearing that her husband, uptight banker Torvald, has earned a major promotion, because the change marks an end to the family’s monetary woes. When Torvald fires a subordinate named Krogstad, the disgruntled man blackmails Nora with evidence that she once forged documents for a bank loan. The ensuing melodrama reveals what little respect Torvald has for his wife—hence the title, which refers to men treating women as playthings. Given the story’s ultimate theme of a woman’s self-realization, it’s obvious why the material seemed timely during the early feminist era.

          The British version, ironically enough, has American roots. It’s a filmed record of a Broadway production that was adapted from Ibsen by the celebrated UK playwright Christopher Hampton. The Broadway show featured revered British actress Claire Bloom in a tour-de-force performance, and Bloom re-creates her meticulous work in the movie. Director Patrick Garland largely ignores any cinematic possibilities in the play, opting for intimate scenes taking place on fully dressed approximations of the stage production’s sets. At his worst, Garland slips into bland cuts back and forth between flat close-ups, particularly during the final, lengthy showdown between Nora and Torvald. What Garland’s A Doll House lacks in visual imagination, however, it makes up for in dramatic firepower.

          Bloom runs the gamut from frivolous to manic to regal, and her costar—the sublime Anthony Hopkins—imbues Torvald with a mixture of inflated ego and repressed desperation. Playing key supporting roles are Denholm Elliot, bitter and cruel as the maligned Krogstand, and Ralph Richardson, elegantly sad as Nora’s aging friend, Dr. Rank. One can’t help but wonder what a filmmaker more adept at stage-to-screen adaptations, perhaps Sidney Lumet, could have done with the raw material of these finely tuned performances, but at least theater fans can savor great work forever. Plus, in any incarnation, Ibsen’s prescient notions about women liberating themselves pack a punch. Consider this passage from the British film: After Torvald exclaims, “No man would sacrifice his honor for love,” Nora replies, “Millions of women have.”

          Seeing as how Jane Fonda was a fierce combatant on the front lines of the ’70s culture wars, it’s not surprising she felt Ibsen’s statement merited a fresh adaptation. Alas, she proved unlucky twice. First, she clashed with director Joseph Losey, and second, she completed her project after the UK version had already reached theaters. That’s why the Fonda film landed on TV—producers rightly estimated the limits of the public’s appetite for this material. In nearly every way, Losey’s take on A Doll’s House is inferior to the Bloom/Hopkins version, even though Losey’s comparatively sophisticated camerawork creates more visual interest than Garland’s stodgy frames.

          The big problem is that the casting never clicks. Fonda gives an adequate performance, with intense moments of fervor and physicality weighted down by stilted readings of classical-style dialogue. Viewed in context, she’s an outlier. Fine European actors including Trevor Howard (as Dr. Rank) and David Warner (as Torvald) seem natural delivering reams of ornate dialogue while stuffed into period costumes, but none of them truly connects with Fonda—her performance exists in isolation from the rest of the picture. Plus, since the gangly Warner somewhat resembles a frequent Fonda costar, it’s impossible not to picture Donald Sutherland in the Torvald role and wonder what that dynamic might have been like. That said, Edward Fox is excellent in the Krogstand role, radiating predatory heat. Yet the thing that should have supercharged this spin on A Doll’s House, Fonda’s offscreen passion for gender equality, makes key moments feel more like stand-alone political speeches instead of organic elements of interpersonal confrontation.

A Doll’s House (UK): GROOVY

A Doll’s House (USA): FUNKY

Figures in a Landscape (1970)

          Any sketch of Figures in a Landscape is sure to intrigue adventurous cinefiles. Starring Robert Shaw, who also wrote the script, and the inimitable Malcolm McDowell, this cerebral action film was directed by the esteemed Joseph Losey, and it enigmatically depicts the travails of two men who run through rugged terrain while unnamed aggressors pursue them in a helicopter. All of this is photographed, with considerable artistry, in glorious widescreen. Alas, the gulf between the metaphorical masterpiece this description conjures in the imagination of the prospective viewer and the actual film is substantial. Figures in a Landscape is everything you might want it to be, and so much less.

          On the plus side, the film delivers one of Shaw’s most animalistic performances. (Rare is the project in which McDowell seems like the most restrained actor onscreen.) Additionally, some scenes have the intended quality of savage beauty, as when the two actors run from the helicopter while it buzzes them on a grassy hillside—the viewer can plainly see McDowell and Shaw in dangerous proximity to spinning rotor blades. On the minus side, Figures in a Landscape is excessively cryptic, because very few of the plot’s elements are explained. Yes, one can play all sorts of interpretive games with Figures in a Landscape, but there’s a fine line between creating mysterious art and simply befuddling viewers.

          Given the givens, a recitation of the plot is somewhat pointless, but at least the task can be completed quickly. When the movie opens, Ansell (McDowell) and MacConnachie (Shaw) are shown running through remote fields and hills with their clothes in tatters and their hands tied behind their backs. We learn very little about how they landed in this situation, though we do see the duo pursued by gun-toting mystery men in a helicopter. MacConnoachie, a rough-hewn war veteran, hopes to ditch the weak Ansell, but then—once circumstances allow the men to free themselves and secure weapons—Ansell gains possession of important resources. They press on together, surviving close calls with the helicopter and even encountering citizens and soldiers of the unnamed land through which they’re traveling, until forming a plan to storm their enemy’s stronghold.

          Even though Shaw delivers some lengthy monologues about his character’s wife, the lack of explanation for the characters’ predicament is maddening. As such, what Figures in a Landscape offers is atmosphere and intensity. The film is consistently eerie, thanks in part to the taut score by Richard Rodney Bennett, and the leading actors play moments quite well even if the sum is less than the parts. Obviously, viewers willing to fill in the blanks—or to let the blanks be—will derive more from the experience of Figures in a Landscape than those hoping for conventional pleasures. 

Figures in a Landscape: FUNKY

The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)

Muddled and pretentious, this British drama takes the strange tack of inventing a fictional character in order to tell a story pulled from real-life. In 1940 Mexico, a Russian agent named Ramón Mercarder killed Leon Trotsky, the exiled founder of the Red Army. After helping to lead the Russian Revolution, Trotsky became a political enemy of Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin and fled the USSR for Mexico. Stalin then ordered Mercader to assassinate Trotsky, thus silencing a powerful opposition voice. Since all of this historical material is fascinating, the narrative path followed by the makers of The Assassination of Trotsksy is befuddling. Nicholas Mosley’s script presents the fictional Frank Jackson (Alain Delon) as Trotsky’s killer-in-waiting, and then wastes inordinate amounts of screen time on confusing scenes depicting the codependent relationship between Frank and Gita Samuels (Romy Schneider), who works as a housekeeper in Trotsky’s villa. They scream at each other a lot. Director Joseph Losey, who seems utterly lost in terms of what sort of movie he’s trying to make, generates marginal Day of the Jackal-style interest by showing Frank’s meticulous preparations for killing Trotsky, though this material ultimately feels superfluous. Similarly, the film includes many scenes of the aging Trotsky (Richard Burton) wandering around his villa and giving speeches about how the true meaning of Marxism has been overwhelmed by Stalin’s brutal totalitarianism. Eventually, the picture brings its disparate elements together when Frank uses his relationship with Gita to insinuate his way into the villa and befriend Trotsky, whom he then kills with a hammer to the back of the head. This occasions more yelling, because Burton transitions from the prior somnambulistic mode of his performance and commences a Grand Guignol freakout replete with geysers of blood pouring down his face. Just as Delon’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses throughout most of the movie, whatever virtues The Assassination of Trotsky has are impossible to see through the fog of a lifeless and meandering storyline.

The Assassination of Trotsky: LAME

Galileo (1974)

          Arguably the least compelling of the many high-minded films produced and/or distributed under the American Film Theatre banner, this dull adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s 1943 play The Life of Galileo bombards the audience with eloquent scientific and theological debates without drawing viewers into the humanity of the story. It’s quite an accomplishment to make a bloodless film about a visionary who was persecuted as a heretic, but problems ranging from excessively arty cinematic flourishes to a overwrought leading performance consign Galileo to the realm of tedium almost from the first frames. Considering the damn thing runs 145 endless minutes, trying to find the redeeming values of Galileo is a chore, though such values do indeed exist. The film’s source material has an impressive history. After Brecht debuted his original German-language version, he collaborated with actor/director Charles Laughton on an English-language adaptation. The revered stage and film veteran Joseph Losey directed the first production of the English-language version, in 1947, and the play was revived in the 1950s before reaching the screen in 1974, again with Losey directing.

          Set in the time of the Inquisition, Galileo tells the real-life story of Galileo Galilei, a mathematician and astronomer who clashed with the Catholic Church by using telescopes to prove Copernicus’ theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around. Rome persecuted Galileo because of the Catholic Church’s contention that man, made in God’s image, was the center of the universe. As Galileo unfolds, the conflict between the lead character and his religious opponents gets mired with socioeconomic issues, because Galileo needs patronage from the moneyed class in order to continue his endeavors, so the pressure to recant is powerful—even before agents of the Inquisition use torture to impose their will.

          All of this should be fascinating stuff, representing the eternal war between doctrine and logic, but Losey makes one stylistic misstep after another. The casting of Israeli actor Topol is the worst of these errors, because as evidenced in Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Topol’s forte is portraying simple men with powerful emotions. Not only is his accent distracting, considering that nearly every other actor in the film is British, but Topol is too primal a creature to seem believable as one of history’s great intellectuals. The performance isn’t bad, per se, but it’s wrong for the context. Further distancing the viewer from the story is Losey’s use of a Greek Chorus comprising several high-voiced boys, who appear onscreen periodically to sing about the plot. Music becomes even more intrusive later, when the movie stops dead for an extended musical number during which a theatrical company within the story summarizes Galileo’s crisis in song. Several fine actors—including Tom Conti, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Michael Gough, and Michael Lonsdale—enliven supporting roles, and the production is generally quite polished and professional. Nonetheless, the lack of a beating heart at the center of the drama is a nearly fatal flaw.

Galileo: FUNKY

The Romantic Englishwoman (1975)

          A closely observed character drama with a few thriller elements thrown in for added tension, The Romantic Englishwoman has all the hallmarks of director Joseph Losey’s best work: evocative European locations, immaculate performances, subtle writing, and an undercurrent of menace. So, even though the story is nominally about Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson), the dissatisfied wife of successful novelist Lewis (Michael Caine), it’s also about Thomas (Helmut Berger), a German freeloader who claims to be a poet but really makes his living as a drug courier. These characters muddle through life, the Brits narcotized by their boring routine and the German energized by the dangerous unpredictability of his existence, until their collision produces an emotional explosion with lasting repercussions.

          Elizabeth, for instance, is so tired of Lewis’ withholding quality that she does things like walking across her lawn naked in full view of a neighbor—anything to rebel against the numbing status quo. When she meets Thomas while on holiday in Germany, Elizabeth inadvertently broadcasts so much need that Thomas senses an opportunity. Then, after Thomas loses a drug shipment and flees the continent to avoid reprisal, he arrives at Elizabeth’s doorstep pretending to be a fan of Lewis’ work. Handicapped by an artist’s ego, Thomas savors the younger man’s fawning attention (well, as fawning as this cold-blooded operator can be), even though Lewis senses the physical charge sparking between his houseguest and his wife.

          Working his signature slow-burn vibe, Caine meticulously illustrates the way Lewis drives himself crazy with visions of his wife’s possible infidelity; when Elizabeth and Thomas finally consummate their attraction, it’s as if Lewis has perversely willed the event into being. Jackson, flying high during the most vibrant stretch of her career, paints a complex portrait of a woman driven by guilt, insecurity, longing, and regret—she’s a loving mother to her young son, but also a short-tempered harridan who attacks her nanny when she believes the nanny has captured Thomas’ affections.

          The Romantic Englishwoman takes its time getting where it’s going, so the first hour of the movie often seems repetitive and unfocused. However, once all the pieces are in place, the second hour gains intensity because romantic intrigue is coupled with the threat of Thomas’ drug-business associates targeting him for revenge. One might argue that Thomas Wiseman, who wrote the novel upon which the film is based and cowrote the script with Tom Stoppard, should have cut a few subplots to make the story flow more smoothly, and it’s true that Losey indulges his penchant for slow pacing by exploring narrative discursions. Nonetheless, when The Romantic Englishwoman connects, it’s quite potent, particularly in the domestic scenes of Elizabeth and Lewis pouring salt in each other’s psychological wounds.

The Romantic Englishwoman: GROOVY