1980 Week: The Jazz Singer

          A mega-hyped remake of the famous 1927 Al Jolson movie, The Jazz Singer was doomed to derision before it even opened, in part because because reviewers love to diss singers who moonlight as actors. It didn’t help that the film’s producers cast the decidedly Gentile Laurence Olivier in the role of an Orthodox Jewish patriarch, despite mixed opinions about Olivier’s performance as a Jewish Nazi hunter in The Boys from Brazil (1978); the actor received an Oscar nomination for that picture but also received a nod from the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards. Viewed with fresh eyes, The Jazz Singer is a slickly produced mediocrity built around a nonperformance by a nonactor, but the pulpy story chugs along in a kitschy sort of way, and the tunes are memorable. In fact, three of Diamond’s biggest hits (“America,” “Hello Again,” “Love on the Rocks”) emerged from the film’s soundtrack, which enjoyed much more success than the film itself.

          Modernizing the original movie’s story while still remaining so deeply rooted in traditions that the narrative feels hokey, The Jazz Singer follows Yussel Rabinovitch (Diamond), a charismatic young cantor at a New York City synagogue. Although outwardly following in the footsteps of his father, Cantor Rabinovitch (Olivier), Yussel longs to explore the secular side of music. After one too many arguments with his rigid father, Yussel leaves New York—and his wife, Rivka (Catlin Adams)—to become a wandering troubadour. Lots of brooding ensues, as does a romance between Jess Robin (the new name that Yussel adopts) and Los Angeles shiksa Molly Bell (Lucie Arnaz). Wanderlust eventually drives a wedge between Jess and Molly, so he hits the road once more, leading to the odd spectacle of a bearded Diamond wearing a cowboy hat and singing “You Are My Sunshine” in a redneck bar. Can Jess reconcile his new life with his old identity as Yussel? Can he repair the damage to his relationship with his father? Can he reunite with Molly? The answers to these questions are never in doubt, since the point of the 1980 Jazz Singer is to transpose Diamond’s crowd-pleasing persona from the radio to the screen.

          In that regard, the movie is indeed the failure its grim initial reception might suggest; Diamond is false and stilted in nearly every scene, except when he’s onstage, and Olivier is hilariously miscast. The picture also has more than a few tonal catastrophes. Inexplicably, Diamond agreed to participate in a rock-era redux of the original movie’s blackface element. Yes, Diamond wearing an Afro and heavy makeup to pass as an African-American dude while croaking a rock song in a black nightclub is as horrific a spectacle as you can imagine. Similarly, when the filmmakers play “Hello Again” on the soundtrack during a reunion scene, the effect is so on-the-nose literal as to be comical. However, a sense of proportion is required when trying to assess The Jazz Singer. Compared to a pair of truly disastrous movie musicals released the same year—here’s looking at you, Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu—Diamond’s movie is positively respectable. By any other measure, of course, The Jazz Singer doesn’t fare quite as well.

The Jazz Singer: FUNKY

Love Among the Ruins (1975) & The Corn Is Green (1979)

          Among director George Cukor’s myriad accomplishments, he introduced Katharine Hepburn to the big screen, directing her first film, A Bill of Divorcement (1932), and featuring her in several more pictures—including The Philadelphia Story (1940)—before helming a pair of early-’60s comedies starring Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. More than a decade later, the longtime collaborators reunited to make two telefilms.

          First came the highly enjoyable romantic comedy Love Among the Ruins, which pairs Hepburn with another acting legend, Laurence Olivier. Set in England circa 1911, the playful film concerns Jessica Medlicott (Hepburn), a society lady mired in scandal. Widowed two years ago, she has become engaged to a younger man and now seeks to break the engagement because she realizes her fiancé is a gold digger. To plead her case, Jessica hires lawyer Sir Arthur Glanville Jones (Olivier). He’s thrilled because 40 years ago, he and Jessica had a three-day romantic idyll in Toronto, when he was a college student and she was a touring actress. The central joke of Love Among the Ruins is that while Arthur is as smitten with Jessica now as he was then, she doesn’t remember their time together—or does she? It’s a perfect role for Hepburn in the autumn of her years, because she gets to play haughty and narcissistic while winking at the audience to indicate the warmth hidden behind her character’s upper-crust façade.

          Constructed like a play and written with considerable verbal dexterity by James Costigan, Love Among the Ruins features Olivier in nearly every scene and Hepburn in almost as many, so viewers who love these actors can immerse themselves in the stars’ distinctive personas from start to finish. Olivier, whose ’70s work was often cartoonish, mostly restrains himself here, relying upon still-nimble physicality and the incredible musical instrument of his mellifluous diction. With Cukor orchestrating the action so there’s always motion and speed, Love Among the Ruins is often quite delightful even though it’s old-fashioned and talky. The opulent costumes and locations help create the desired effect, and so, too, does the characteristically romantic musical score by the great John Barry.

          For their second TV project, Cukor and Hepburn revived The Corn Is Green, a 1938 play that was previously filmed in 1945, with Bette Davis in the lead role of an English schoolteacher whose integrity and willpower changes provincial attitudes toward education in a 19th-century Welsh mining town. Miss Lilly Moffat is a quintessential Hepburn character. After a small-minded woman says, “Men do know best, I think,” Moffat shoots back, “Then don’t think!” As Hepburn did in real life, Moffat challenges social rules, whether she’s defying restrictive ideas of gender or pushing illiterate people to better themselves.

          In the well-constructed narrative, Moffat inherits a small estate near a coalmine and then opens a school, using her household staff as fellow teachers. Moffat takes a special interest in Morgan Evans (Ian Saynor), a young man who honors tradition by working in the mine but secretly nurtures his natural gift for writing. Moffat tutors Morgan and secures an entrance interview for Trinity College at Oxford, despite resistance from locals. Further complicating matters is Moffat’s nubile charge, Bessie (Toyah Wilcox), who seduces Morgan as a means of expressing her boredom with small-town life.

          There’s never much doubt that Moffat will conquer adversity, but Cukor puts across the material with his signature sophistication. In addition to filming many scenes with long takes and wide shots, a stylistic departure from the usual closeup-heavy mode of ’70s TV, Cukor sparingly employs original music, again by Barry. While Hepburn’s age shows (she shakes periodically and her voice isn’t the blaring trumpet it once was), she convey her unmistakable resolve. By story’s end, Hepburn conveys her character’s pride at a job well done—a fitting final image after nearly 50 years of Cukor/Hepburn collaborations.

Love Among the Ruins: GROOVY

The Corn Is Green: GROOVY

A Little Romance (1979)

          It’s not hard to understand why the whimsically titled A Little Romance has earned a devoted following over the years—depicting the adventures of two lovestruck teenagers cavorting across Europe, the picture treats young people with respect, whereas most Hollywood movies about teenagers tend to infantilize the experience of adolescence. Moreover, the film reflects wish fulfillment on many levels, from the concept of discovering one’s soulmate early in life to the notion that children can have international escapades without being preyed upon by strangers. Plus, of course, there’s the highly appealing vibe of the picture, which emanates from Pierre-William Glenn’s silky photography and Georges Delerue’s Oscar-winning score. When the movie clicks, it’s charming. Alas, A Little Romance suffers several fundamental flaws—among other things, the story is bloated, meandering, and unbelievable.

          The picture opens in Paris, where 13-year-old Daniel (Thelonious Bernard) lives a peculiar existence. His father is a sleazy cab driver who rarely provides traditional parental guidance, so Daniel finds solace at the movies. Therefore, when he stumbles across a Hollywood film shoot while on a class field trip, Daniel sneaks onto the set to watch the action. He’s beguiled by the presence of veteran actor Broderick Crawford (who plays himself in A Little Romance), but then his head is turned when he meets 13-year-old American Lauren (Diane Lane). She’s the daughter of a crew member, but she’d rather read books than watch a film being made. Impressing each other with precocious patter, Daniel and Lauren arrange to meet again, and before long the pair befriends Julius (Laurence Olivier), an aging man of mystery. As the contrived and convoluted plot unfolds, Daniel and Lauren run away from Paris with Julius as their escort, because Daniel and Lauren become infatuated with the idea of kissing under a famous bridge in Venice. According to Julius, a romantic myth says that lovers who perform this ritual will be together forever. A Little Romance also contains a sizable subplot about Lauren’s mother (Sally Kellerman), who is married, having an affair with the director of the film-within-the-film that’s shooting in Paris.

          Cowritten and directed by the great George Roy Hill (who makes wink-wink references to his past by including clips from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting), this picture has precious little to do with human reality. Daniel and Lauren debate philosophy with the sophistication of college professors, the Julius character is the sort of gentleman con artist who exists only in fanciful fiction, and the thematic heart of the movie—innocent children teach world-weary adults lessons about love—is optimistic but trite. Viewed simply as straightforward narrative, this movie is annoying, overlong, and twee. Viewed as a fable, however, A Little Romance is filled with lovely textures and warm sentiments. Delerue’s gentle guitar melodies create a comforting mood, and the young leading actors give appropriately guileless performances. (This was Lane’s first movie.) So, even if Crawford’s presence is inconsequential, even if Kellerman does her usual haughty number, and even if Olivier delivers one of his campier late-career performances, A Little Romance still manages to beguile—albeit only intermittently.

A Little Romance: FUNKY

Sleuth (1972)

          In some ways, criticizing the offbeat mystery film Sleuth is a pointless exercise—the picture asks viewers to accept so many contrivances that it’s as if Sleuth exists in its own alternate universe. Adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his Tony-winning play and featuring only two actors, both of whom were nominated for Oscars, Sleuth presents clever performances in the service of outlandish writing, making such considerations as believability and substance secondary. Viewers turned off by the prospect of watching two actors speaking almost nonstop for 138 minutes needn’t expose themselves to a single frame of Sleuth, whereas fans of the leading actors—Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier—will find so much to delight them that the movie’s weaker elements won’t impede enjoyment. In other words, anyone who willingly commits to watching Sleuth is likely to be rewarded in some way, even though the movie is pure fluff.

          The set-up is deceptively simple. Handsome young English-Italian hairdresser Milo Tindle (Caine) arrives at the sprawling country estate of rich mystery-novel writer Andrew Wyke (Olivier), per Andrew’s invitation. In short order, it’s revealed that Milo is the secret lover of Andrew’s estranged wife, and that Andrew has summoned Milo to make a bizarre proposition. Claiming he’s eager to be rid of his wife—because Andrew himself has a lover with whom he’d like to set up housekeeping—Andrew suggests that Milo stage a break-in at the estate’s mansion and steal valuable jewels. Then, Andrew says, Milo can fence the jewels while Andrew reclaims their cash value from his insurance company. In essence, Andrew will pay Milo to take the missus off his hands.

          If you find that premise hard to accept, then brace yourself for dozens of other equally far-fetched contrivances, because Sleuth comprises an elaborate game that the two characters play with each other. Andrew runs a scheme on Milo, who outwits his opponent, so Andrew conjures another scheme, and so on. Every element of Sleuth is overwrought, right down to production designer Ken Adam’s sets, which are stuffed to the brim with eccentric tchotchkes. And while the biggest lark in Sleuth won’t be spoiled here, suffice to say that the second half of the story is predicated on a “secret” that is not sufficiently withheld from the audience. By the end of the movie, Sleuth has become so silly that the whole enterprise borders on camp.

          Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz—no stranger to dialogue-heavy dramaturgy after making classics including All About Eve (1950)—presents Shaffer’s talky tale in as dynamic a fashion as possible, sending cameras probing and prowling through confined spaces in order to find unexpectedly dramatic compositions. (The less said of the way the movie periodically cuts to inanimate objects in order to wriggle free of editing traps, the better.) As for the film’s two performances, they’re royally entertaining. Olivier provides technically meticulous artifice—happily flying way over the top at regular intervals—while Caine grounds the movie with more realistic textures of amusement, fear, and greed. Both actors have done better work elsewhere, but Sleuth may contain the most acting either performer ever did in a single film. And since the whole movie’s a confection anyway, why not overindulge?

Sleuth: GROOVY

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

          Novelist Ira Levin came up with some of the kickiest thriller plots of his era, providing the source material for the films Rosemary’s Baby (1967) and The Stepford Wives (1972), as well as for this picture. Levin’s book The Boys from Brazil blended the sci-fi concept of human cloning with themes related to the World War II Holocaust into an entertainingly paranoid fantasy, and an impressive roster of actors and behind-the-camera talents translated the book into one of the great cinematic guilty pleasures of the late ’70s. The movie version of The Boys from Brazil is almost impossible to take seriously, especially because the leading performances are so over the top as to border on camp, but the picture unspools at a ferocious speed while stacking thrills atop thrills. It’s pure escapism. That is, so long as one sets aside the question of whether it was in good taste to predicate a popcorn movie on the murders of six million Jews. (Although, to be fair, The Boys from Brazil can be viewed as a revenge fantasy against one of the Third Reich’s worst real-life monsters.)

          Anyway, the story begins in Paraguay, where a resourceful young American Jew, Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg), tracks down several Nazi war criminals living in exile and stumbles across a conference during which infamous Nazi surgeon Joseph Mengele (Gregory Peck) outlines a plan to murder nearly 100 seemingly innocuous 65-year-old men living throughout the world. Barry transmits his initial findings to Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), an aging Nazi hunter based in Austria, who is initially skeptical. Meanwhile, Mengele discovers Barry’s spying and has the young man killed, initiating a cat-and-mouse game—can Mengele execute his evil scheme before Lieberman brings the notorious “Angel of Death” to justice? The Boys from Brazil is an old-fashioned potboiler with a modern-age twist, because it turns out Mengele’s scheme—stop if you don’t already know the details—involves “activating” dozens of clones made from Adolf Hitler’s DNA.

          As directed by Franklin J. Schaffner with his customary elegance, The Boys from Brazil is simultaneously goofier and smarter than the average thriller. The premise is outlandish and Levin’s plotting is mechanical, but individual scenes are sharp and the escalation of tension from start to finish is terrific. Regular Schaffner collaborator Jerry Goldmsith deserves ample credit for jacking up the excitement level with his vivacious music, and cinematographer Henri Decaé lends epic scope with evocative location photography from around the globe. Yet on many levels this one’s about the acting, because the star power in the leading roles is formidable.

          It’s a hoot to see Olivier play the inverse of his character in Marathon Man (1976), which featured the actor as an insane Nazi. Olivier’s acting is way too broad in The Boys from Brazil, from the thick accent to the comical eye rolls, but he’s inarguably fun to watch. Similarly, it’s wild to see beloved leading man Peck play an out-and-out monster. Peck succumbs to the same excesses as his co-star, employing an overdone accent and exaggerated facial expressions, but he too is highly entertaining. Supporting actors lend zest, from the exuberant Guttenberg to cameo players including Denholm Elliot, Bruno Ganz, Uta Hagen, and Rosemary Harris. Plus, the always-watchable James Mason has a tasty featured role as Mengele’s pissy colleague.

The Boys from Brazil: GROOVY

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)

          “I never guess,” the detective pronounces. “It is an appalling habit, destructive to the logical facility.” The detective is, of course, Sherlock Holmes (as personified, beautifully, by Nicol Williamson), and his unlikely conversational partner is the father of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud (as personified, with equal flair, by Alan Arkin). The meeting of these two great minds, one fictional and one historical, is the crux of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a lavish adaptation of the novel by Nicholas Meyer, who also wrote the screenplay. As directed by dancer-turned-filmmaker Herbert Ross, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution combines an ingenious premise with splendid production values and a remarkable cast. This is 19th-century adventure played across a glorious European canvas of opulent locations and sophisticated manners, a world of skullduggery committed and confounded by aristocrats and their fellows.

          The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is refined on every level, from its elevated language to its meticulous acting, and for viewers of a cerebral bent, it’s a great pleasure to watch because of how deftly it mixes escapist thrills with psychological themes. The movie is far from perfect, and in fact it’s very slow to start, with a first half-hour that meanders turgidly until Freud appears to enliven the story. But when The Seven-Per-Cent Solution cooks, it’s quite something. The story begins in London, where Holmes is caught in the mania of a cocaine binge. His loyal friend/sidekick, Dr. John Watson (Robert Duvall), recognizes that Holmes needs help because Holmes is preoccupied with a conspiracy theory involving his boyhood tutor, Dr. Moriarty (Laurence Olivier). Using clues related to Moriarty as bait, Watson tricks Holmes into traveling to Vienna, where Freud offers his services to cure Holmes of his drug addiction. In the course of Holmes’ treatment, the detective—as well as Freud and Watson—get pulled into a mystery involving a beautiful singer (Vanessa Redgrave) and a monstrous baron (Jeremy Kemp).

          The Seven-Per-Cent Solution tries to do too much, presenting several intrigues simultaneously—as well as building a love story between Holmes and the singer and, of course, dramatizing Holmes’ horrific withdrawal from cocaine. Yet buried in the narrative sprawl is a wondrous buddy movie: Arkin’s dryly funny Freud and Williamson’s caustically insightful Holmes are terrifically entertaining partners. (Duvall, stretching way beyond his comfort zone to play a stiff-upper-lip Englishman, is very good as well, forming the glue between the wildly different tonalities of Arkin’s and Williamson’s performances.) In the movie’s best scenes, Freud and Holmes don’t so much match wits as merge wits, because Meyer’s amusing contrivance is that Freud’s inquiries into the subconscious are cousins to Holmes’ deductive-reasoning techniques. Thanks to Meyer’s elegant wordplay and the across-the-board great acting, moments in this movie soar so high that it’s easy to overlook sequences of lesser power. Ross’ contributions should not be underestimated, however, because the painterly frames and nimble camera moves that he conjures with veteran cinematographer Oswald Morris give the picture a graceful flow and ground the gleefully preposterous narrative in Old World splendor. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: GROOVY

The Betsy (1978)

          Stupid and trashy, but inadvertently amusing exactly because of those qualities, The Betsy was adapted from one of Harold Robbins’ shamelessly eroticized potboiler novels. Like Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann, Robbins made a mint writing sleazy books about rich people screwing each other over (and just plain screwing), so anyone expecting narrative credibility and/or thematic heft is looking in the wrong place. That said, The Betsy delivers the type of guilty-pleasure nonsense that later dominated nighttime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, along with some R-rated ogling of celebrity skin. And the cast! Great actors slumming in this garbage include Jane Alexander, Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and the legendary Laurence Olivier. They’re joined by young beauties Kathleen Beller, Lesley-Anne Down, and Katharine Ross, all whom disrobe to some degree; Beller’s memorable skinny-dip scene helped make this flick a regular attraction on cable TV in the ’80s.

          The turgid story revolves around Loren Hardeman (Olivier), an auto-industry titan who rules a fractious extended family. Now semi-retired and confined to a wheelchair, Hardeman hires maverick racecar designer/driver Angelo Perino (Jones) to build a new car with terrific fuel efficiency, because Hardeman wants to leave as his legacy a “people’s car” like the Volkswagen Beetle. This plan ruffles the feathers of Hardeman’s grandson, Loren Hardeman III (Duvall), who wants to get the family’s corporation out of the money-losing car business. As these warring forces jockey for control over the company’s destiny, with Loren III’s college-aged daughter, Betsy (Beller), caught in the middle, old betrayals surface. It turns out Hardeman the First became lovers with the wife (Ross) of his son, Loren II, driving the younger man to suicide. This understandably left Loren III with a few granddaddy issues. There’s also a somewhat pointless romantic-triangle bit involving jet-setter Lady Bobby Ayres (Down), who competes with Betsy for Peroni’s affections. Suffice to say, the story is overheated in the extreme, with characters spewing florid lines like, “I love you, Loren, even if I have to be damned for it,” or, “I always knew it would be like this, from the first time I saw you.”

          John Barry’s characteristically lush musical score adds a touch of class, Duvall somehow manages to deliver a credible dramatic performance, and Alexander is sharp in her small role. However, Beller, Down, Jones, and Ross coast through the movie, trying (in vain) not to embarrass themselves. As for Olivier, he’s outrageously bad. Hissing and/or screaming lines in an inept Midwestern accent, Olivier has no sense of proportion, playing every scene with such intensity that his work reaches the level of camp. Especially since Olivier was still capable of good work at this late stage of his life (see 1976’s Marathon Man), it’s depressing to watch him flounder.

The Betsy: LAME

Marathon Man (1976)

          A year after Jaws gave a generation of moviegoers nightmares about great white sharks, the brilliant thriller Marathon Man made dentistry seem like the most terrifying thing in the world. Playing a Nazi war criminal obsessed with finding a cache of stolen diamonds, the venerable Sir Laurence Olivier scared the crap out of audiences by performing oral surgery without anesthetic on the movie’s hero (Dustin Hoffman), all the while muttering the unanswerable lunatic query, “Is it safe?”
          Hoffman plays Babe, a New York City graduate student and marathon runner unwittingly drawn into a race between the Nazi and U.S. government agents. In a deft touch, the movie’s narrative is intentionally convoluted—although screenwriter William Goldman, who adapted the story from his own novel, makes the basics of the story clear enough for viewers to follow along, he ensures that moviegoers as perplexed as Babe, which adds to the tension of watching the film. By showing people getting killed left and right, and by demonstrating that everyone in the movie is chasing everyone else, Goldman creates a dizzying vibe in which it’s impossible to tell who can be trusted. Yet Goldman also keeps viewers squarely in Babe’s camp, since he’s the one true innocent in the story.

          Director John Schlesinger, whose previous collaboration with Hoffman was the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969), gracefully balances pulpy material with sophisticated execution, so even though Marathon Man is primarily a very effective thrill machine, it’s also a credible dramatic film with subtle textures like the layered relationship between Babe and his secret-agent older brother, Doc (Roy Scheider). There’s even an edgy love story between Babe and Elsa (Marthe Keller), plus a complex dynamic between Babe and Doc’s fellow spy, Janeway (William Devane). However, what makes the biggest impact is Szell (Olivier), the unhinged German with a nasty habit of jabbing drills and needles into healthy teeth, causing victims unbearable pain. Olivier’s performance, which earned an Oscar nomination, sits on the border between genius and camp, but his choices were validated by how deeply he unsettled audiences; Szell is inarguably one of the creepiest screen villains of the ’70s.

          Hoffman’s great acting in the picture is sometimes overshadowed by Olivier’s star turn and also by oft-repeated lore about Hoffman’s overzealous work ethic. In the most notorious incident, Hoffman stayed up all night as preparation for a scene in which his character is exhausted, only to have Olivier ask, “Why don’t you just try acting, dear boy?” Yet while the thespians used different methods, both delivered peerless results that, when combined with Goldman’s rip-roaring narrative and Schlesinger’s masterful direction, created 129 minutes of vivid escapist entertainment.

Marathon Man: RIGHT ON

Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

          Writer James Goldman, the older brother of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid scribe William Goldman, made his name with the play and screenplay The Lion in Winter (released as a film in 1968), which dramatized the life of England’s King Henry II. He then spent much of his career exploring similarly lofty historical subjects, and Goldman’s ability to blend the personal and political is on full display in the downbeat epic Nicholas and Alexandra, which depicts the doomed reign of Russia’s last tsar. Nicholas Romanoff (Michael Jayston) is the product of a 300-year dynasty, an insulated royal so oblivious to his people’s suffering that he blithely extends military conflicts out of personal pride. He’s also preoccupied with his loving marriage to Alexandra (Janet Suzman), a foreign-born aristocrat who engenders only enmity from the Russian populace, so when the couple’s son, Alexis, is diagnosed with hemophilia, they lose virtually all connection with life outside the palace. Meanwhile, ambitious politicians including Vladimir Lenin (Michael Bryant) carefully transform public rage into the seeds of revolution.

          Even at a length well over three hours, Nicholas and Alexandra, based on the book of the same name by Robert K. Massie, tackles an enormous amount of history; some viewers will get lost amidst the huge cast of characters and the shifting backdrops of social change. Also problematic is director Franklin J. Schaffner’s regal style. Taking a step away from his usual robust camerawork, Schaffner shoots Nicholas and Alexandra somewhat like a play, with lengthy dialogue passages unfolding in an unhurried fashion, ornate costumes and sets allowed to overwhelm actors, and stiff blocking. The movie’s dramatic power is further muted by Jayston’s intense but quiet lead performance; although perfectly cast as an ineffectual monarch, Jayston displays a soft-spoken style that’s more soothing than invigorating.

          Nonetheless, Nicholas and Alexandra is such an ambitious and handsome production, offering so many insights into a tumultuous period, that it overcomes its weaknesses. The dialogue is consistently intelligent and probing, the intercutting between subplots is careful and logical, and the physical reality of the production is awesome—whether the setting is a barren Siberian encampment or a glorious St. Petersburg palace. Plus, the acting is uniformly good, even though most of the players are as understated as Jayston. Suzman is especially strong, playing a lioness of a mother, and future Doctor Who star Tom Baker is creepy as Alexandra’s notoriously debauched advisor, “mad monk” Rasputin. Familiar faces including Ian Holm, Laurence Olivier, and John Wood appear in the cast, though everyone takes a backseat to the leading players. While probably not exciting or lurid enough to entice viewers who are not predisposed toward historical subjects, Nicholas and Alexandra is an elegant treatment of an unusual subject: the reign of a man who didn’t understand the obligations that accompanied his crown until it was far too late.

Nicholas and Alexandra: GROOVY

Dracula (1979)

          Attractive but not subtle, this big-budget version of the deathless Bram Stoker novel boasts fabulous production values, a rousing score by John Williams, a sexy star turn by Frank Langella, and zesty direction by John Badham. These elements add up to a pulpy romantic thriller that borders on camp when Laurence Olivier shows up to give an overcooked performance as the vampire count’s nemesis, Abraham Van Helsing, so even though this Dracula is an enjoyable rendering of a classic story, it doesn’t exactly aspire to high art.

          Just as a successful Broadway show of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi led Universal Pictures to film the story in 1931, a hit revival of the play starring Langella prompted Universal to revisit the character after years in which England’s Hammer Films laid claim to the world-famous bloodsucker. Langella blends aristocratic carriage, mellifluous line readings, and seductive glares to make Dracula into a sort of supernatural swinger who causes women to fall at his feet; the characterization is broad nearly to the point of self-parody, but nonetheless entertaining.

          Given this strong take on the title character, it’s mildly disappointing that other story elements in this way-too-long flick didn’t receive equally imaginative treatment. Screenwriter W.D. Richter mucks about with the specifics of Stoker’s book in order to streamline the narrative and contrive a big action-movie climax, but he relies on overused shock tactics like comin’-at-ya corpses and the tendency of Dracula’s henchman, Renfield, to snack on cockroaches.

          Similarly, director Badham and his team create a beautiful look with elaborate sets and moody photography that’s almost completely drained of color (a clever metaphor given the subject matter), but visual devices like the giant bat sculpture decorating the foyer of Dracula’s castle are indicative of the film’s sledgehammer approach. A vaguely psychedelic sequence using smoke and lasers to illustrate the dream state following a vampire bite is the picture’s most successful venture into figurative imagery.

          Helping viewers overlook the stylistic hiccups is the fact that the picture doesn’t skimp on meat-and-potatoes vampire thrills. Furthermore, leading lady Kate Nelligan is lovely in a refreshingly grown-up sort of way, even if her character’s quasi-feminism ebbs and flows according to the dramatic needs of any particular scene, and eccentric character actor Donald Pleasence is a welcome presence as the asylum keeper who becomes Van Helsing’s partner in vampire hunting. So even with the dodgy storytelling—and, sad to say, Olivier’s awful hamming—this Dracula is a pleasant diversion, albeit one that comes close to wearing out its welcome as the lengthy running time grinds along.

Dracula: FUNKY