Bequest to the Nation (1973)

          It’s not accurate to say that making historical dramas insulates filmmakers from bad reviews, but it’s obvious that critics sometimes tread gingerly when analyzing posh costume pieces laden with unquestionable thematic weight—one never wishes to find oneself in the position of denigrating a piece for mustiness only to later learn that the piece has earned high marks for illuminating some chapter of the past with which the critic was previously unfamiliar. Conversely, occasional overcompensation is a factor, hence the dismaying tendency of some reviewers to dismiss all historical dramas as cheap ploys for accolades. These realities help contextualize Bequest to the Nation, which was made in the UK and released in America as The Nelson Affair. Despite somewhat lurid subject matter, the picture ticks many familiar costume-drama boxes, from high-wattage casting to lofty dialogue, so it’s plainly catnip for the Masterpiece Theater crowd.

          That does not mean, however, that it’s entirely a stuffed-shirt sort of a picture. Thanks largely to Glenda Jackson’s gleefully overwrought performance, Bequest to the Nation is entertaining and even a bit crass. Moreover, it’s only peripherally a history lesson, since the focus of the narrative is an unusual love story. In sum, Bequest to the Nation neither wholly ratifies nor wholly undercuts presumptions associated with its genre, so giving this one a fair shake requires close inspection. Revisiting historical episodes previously depicted in the Vivien Leigh/Laurence Olivier picture That Hamilton Woman (1941), Bequest to the Nation explores the relationship between Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (Peter Finch), England’s greatest naval commander of the Napoleonic era, and his extramarital lover, Lady Hamilton (Jackson). Despite considerable scandal, Lord Nelson abandoned his wife and took up residence with Lady Hamilton, granting her a sort of title by default even though she was common.

          At the apex of England’s sea battles with Napoleon’s forces, according to the script by Terence Rattigan (who adapted his own play), Lord Nelson withdrew from military service for an extended idyll with Lady Hamilton because she had grown weary of waiting to hear whether Lord Nelson had died in battle. A duel over Lord Nelson’s soul ensues, with Lady Hamilton arguing for civilian life while a sense of duty to country gnaws at Lord Nelson’s conscience. Woven into the narrative is the question of what status Lord Nelson might be able to offer Lady Hamilton should he die in combat, since she doesn’t have the protection of marriage. As is the norm for most films adapted from plays, Bequest to the Nation is intimate and talky, but effectively so; Finch and costars including Michael Jayston and Anthony Quayle speak beautifully, lending the piece old-fashioned luster, while Jackson achieves something closer to alchemy, blending insouciance, wickedness, and vulnerability into a persuasive characterization.

          Although the dialogue tends toward the pretentious (“England has no need of a saint at this point in history, Master Matcham, but they have great need of a hero”), posh cinematography and scoring by, respectively, Gerry Fisher and Michel Legrand, helps the film unfold smoothly. Better still, the piece concludes on a suite of poignant notes rendered vividly by Jackson. Thus it’s wrong to reject Bequest to the Nation out of hand as some safe museum piece, because it’s made of tougher stuff than that, and yet the idiom of the film has the familiar rigidity of entertainment aspiring to literary heft. The ferociousness with which Jackson channels her character’s vulgarity ameliorates the picture’s most off-putting impulses.

Bequest to the Nation: GROOVY

Victory at Entebbe (1976) & Raid on Entebbe (1977)

          One of the Me Decade’s most startling real-life events occurred on July 4, 1976, when Israeli commandos raided an airport in Uganda to rescue more than a hundred hostages from Palestinians who hijacked a passenger plane. Filled with larger-than-life individuals, notably crazed Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, the story of “Operation Thunderbolt” helped define the era during which international terrorism first took root. Almost inevitably, Hollywood pounced on this material, with the first screen dramatization reaching American airwaves six months after the rescue, and a second version airing a month later. Both telefilms feature big-name casts.

          First to air was Victory at Entebbe, a rushed and schlocky melodrama that mostly focuses on dynamics among hostages during their tense incarceration in Uganda. Filmed by director Marvin J. Chomsky with garish lighting and unimpressive production values, Victory at Entebbe suffers badly for the choice to shove the biggest names possible into various roles, no matter the results. Good luck figuring out the genetic math by which parents Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Taylor produce daughter Linda Blair—and have fun scratching your head while Anthony Hopkins plays Israeli Prime Minister Ytzhak Rabin opposite Burt Lancaster as his Minister of Defense. Helmut Berger does forgettable work as lead terrorist Wilfried Böse, and those playing the other hijackers stop just short of twirling moustaches.

          Portraying key passengers, Theodore Bikel, Severn Darden, Helen Hayes, Allan Miller, Jessica Walter, and others do what they can with florid dialogue and overwrought dramaturgy. Way too much screen time is devoted to Blair’s alternately cutesy and whiny performance as a young hostage, the Douglas/Taylor scenes feel like clips from a bad soap opera, and Julius Harris looks cartoonish playing Amin thanks to an ill-advised fat suit. Scenes set in Israel are better, though it’s hard to buy doughy Richard Dreyfuss as fierce commando Yoni Netanyahu. Worse, the Israeli scenes focus on procedural matters, mostly sidelining political ramifications. A final strike against Victory at Entebbe is the use of stock footage for airplane scenes, which greatly diminishes verisimilitude.

          Although the star power of Raid on Entebbe is not quite as impressive as that of the preceding film, the performances are much better. Martin Balsam, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz, Peter Finch, John Saxon, Sylvia Sidney, Jack Warden, and others deliver restrained work, letting the story speak for itself. Only a few players—including Tige Andrews and Stephen Macht—succumb to melodramatic excess. More importantly, Raid on Entebbe has Yaphet Kotto. He’s  dazzling as Amin, conveying the madman’s grandiosity, moodiness, and narcissism. Directed by the versatile Irvin Kershner with docudrama simplicity and the occasional subtle flourish—a sleek camera move here, a dramatic lighting pattern there—Raid on Entebbe unfolds methodically. The opening scene depicts the hijacking without sensationalizing events, and thereafter the movie cuts back and forth between Israel, where officials plan their response, and scenes involving hostages and their captors.

          Eventually, the film resolves into three parallel narratives. The first involves Rabin (Finch) rallying support for military intervention, despite his government’s propensity for endless debate. The second involves the hostages, of whom Daniel Cooper (Balsam) is the unofficial spokesman, watching their fates transfer from the hands of religious zealots to those of an unpredictable tyrant. The third involves units of the Israeli military—under the command of Generals Gur (Warden), Peled (Saxon), and Shomron (Bronson)—figuring how to achieve the impossible. The level of detail in Barry Beckerman’s teleplay is extraordinary, so despite its lengthy running time (two and a half hours), Raid on Entebbe is interesting and thoughtful from start to finish. Better still, the presence of marquee-name actors never eclipses the solemnity of the narrative. (Special note should be made of Finch’s fine performance as Rabin, because this was his last project. He died a week after Raid on Entebbe aired.)

          Yet another dramatization of these historic events emerged soon after the dual telefilms, this time from Israel. Directed by Menaham Golan, Operation Thunderbolt features a mostly Israeli cast, although the intense German actor Klaus Kinski plays Böse and the voluptuous Austrian starlet Sybil Danning costars. Operation Thunderbolt received an Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Film.

Victory at Entebbe: FUNKY

Raid on Entebbe: GROOVY

Lost Horizon (1973)

          Despite the commercial failure of its 1937 adaptation, which was directed by Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures took another shot at bringing James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon to the screen. The bloated 1973 version, featuring twee songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, fared just as poorly at the box office as its predecessor. Key among the 1973 movie’s problems is the way the songs clash with everything else onscreen. For instance, the first properly sung-through number doesn’t appear until nearly an hour has elapsed, which has the effect of suddenly changing the picture from a straightforward drama to a ridiculous musical spectacle. The remaining 90 minutes of Lost Horizon boast such attributes as an inherently compelling storyline and some vivid performances, but it’s impossible to take the movie seriously.

          Lost Horizon begins with diplomat Richard Conway (Peter Finch) fleeing a war-torn country in the Far East, accompanied by several other refugees. The group’s getaway plane is hijacked by a mysterious stranger, who crashes the vessel in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. Soon afterward, Richard’s party is rescued by the enigmatic Chang (John Gielgud), and then escorted to the glorious realm of Shangri-La. Despite its storm-tossed surroundings, Shangri-La is a tropical utopia where people live in seemingly perfect harmony. Friction divides Richard’s party. Some, including Richard’s swaggering brother, George (Michael York), want to leave Shangri-La in order to resume their old lives. Others, including troubled reporter Sally (Sally Kellerman), embrace the chance to start anew. Meanwhile, Richard is introduced to Shangri-La’s spiritual leader, The High Lama (Charles Boyer), who explains that Richard has the opportunity to fulfill a special role in Shangri-La.

          Narratively and thematically, this is fascinating stuff, even though pundits have spent years parsing political (and even racist) messages from the source material. Ironically, the strength of the storyline is what makes the intrusion of songs so absurd. Had the songs added anything, the result would have been different. Alas, the tunes merely express infantile notions, as when Kellerman and costar Olivia Hussey warble the line “different people look at things from different points of view” during the spirited duet “The Things I Will Not Miss.” As for the movie’s performances, they’re all over the place, an issue compounded by the use of professional singers to lip-sync vocals for many of the actors. Finch is expressive and regal; leading lady Liv Ullmann is luminous, within the constraints of an underwritten role; York is impassioned; and dignified costar James Shigeta is as welcome a presence as ever. Boyer and Gielgud acquit themselves well despite outrageous miscasting. Hussey, Kellerman, and costar George Kennedy, however, play their roles so melodramatically that the actors come across as cartoonish.

          On a technical level, director Charles Jarriot and cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot the movie quite well, providing scope and splendor even if their presentation of singing-and-dancing nonsense feels indifferent. In the end, Lost Horizon is a bizarre mess, though patient viewers can conceivably power through the musical sequences and latch onto the dramatic scenes, which are vastly superior. FYI, the screenplay for Los Horizon is a minor credit for the important writer Larry Kramer, whose activism and creativity coalesced in his iconic play The Normal Heart (1985), which was endured through celebrated revivals and an Emmy-winning 2014 television adaptation.

Lost Horizon: FUNKY

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

          While I can easily recognize the film’s intelligence, relevance, and sensitivity, I’ve never been able to penetrate Sunday Bloody Sunday. The problem is not the story, which depicts the strained civility of three people participating in an unusual romantic triangle. What blocks me is the picture’s style, which I find to be cold, opaque, and pretentious. Mine is clearly a minority opinion, however, since the picture received accolades including four Oscar nominations and is now considered one of director John Schlesinger’s crowning achievements.

          In any event, the movie, which is set in England, opens by introducing viewers to Dr. Daniel Hirsh, a middle-aged man who puts on a good show of being contented but clearly hides layers of internal anguish. Next, the movie introduces freespirited couple Alexandra Greville (Glenda Jackson) and Bob Elkin (Murray Head). These two seem happy with each other, because Bob is a good surrogate dad to the kids Alex brought into the relationship from her failed marriage, and because the two share a robust physical relationship. Yet one day during an argument, Bob slips away from Alexandra for a tryst with his other lover—Daniel. Written by Penelope Gilliatt, who won numerous awards for her script, Sunday Bloody Sunday explores the odd dynamics of this three-way romance. Both Alexandra and Daniel are aware that they share a lover, but they tolerate Bob’s bed-hopping because they’re fragile people who consider themselves undeserving of love. Alexandra’s psychological burdens include self-esteem problems inflicted by strict parents, as well as lingering trauma from growing up during the horrors of World War II. Concurrently, Daniel wrestles with the interrelated issues of Jewish guilt and self-denial because he refuses to tell his family that he’s gay.

          Gilliatt, Schlesinger, and the actors go deep into characterization, so it’s not hard to understand why partisans of Sunday Bloody Sunday regard the film so highly. Among other things, Schlesinger strives for a delicate synthesis of naturalism and stylization—he probes scenes with his camera to find oblique angles, and yet he coaches his actors to deliver lines loosely and to occupy spaces comfortably. Speaking of the actors, the performances in Sunday Bloody Sunday occur on vastly different levels, probably by design. Finch is closed and tight, forcing viewers to peer through his façade for glimmers of truth. Head is a cipher, putting across the idea that his character is a handsome canvas onto which others project their desires. And Jackson is an open wound, crying and laughing and snapping as her already taut emotions are strained past their limits. In many ways, she steals the show, even though Finch took a considerable risk by playing a gay character at a time when onscreen homosexuality was treated with kid gloves.

          Nonetheless, it seems that every admirable element in Sunday Bloody Sunday is matched by a questionable flourish. The camerawork is intrusive, the dialogue is cryptic, the editing is distractingly arty, and the tone is so restrained as to create occasional pockets of tedium. Furthermore, the way that flashbacks and supporting characters are integrated into the story strikes me as contrived and mechanical. Even more egregiously, the picture ends with a direct address to camera that comes out of nowhere, stylistically speaking. I wish I could see the transcendent character study that others perceive when they watch Sunday Bloody Sunday, but perhaps my eyesight isn’t good enough.

Sunday Bloody Sunday: FUNKY

The Abdication (1974)

          As a piece of film art, The Abdication has moments of tremendous beauty. Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s imagery is simultaneously delicate and spectacular, because while he captures the story’s 17th-century settings with ornately lit panoramas that suggest classic paintings, he also conveys a sense of intimacy by accentuating the way people can be dwarfed by their surroundings. Similarly, composer Nino Rota’s stately music pulses with compassion, majesty, and warmth. And then there’s the story itself, which dramatizes a unique chapter from history—the period when Sweden’s tormented Queen Christina gave up her throne, and left her Protestant country, in order to become a Catholic. Written with great intelligence and sensitivity by Ruth Wolff, adapting her own play of the same name, The Abdication is ambitious, serious, and worthy. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly entertaining, and neither is it especially satisfying.
          Part of the problem is director Anthony Harvey’s leaden pacing, and part of the problem is that both leading players give insular performances. Playing Christina, the great Swedish actress Liv Ullmann captures moods ranging from caprice to combativeness, but, like her character, Ullmann holds too many cards close to her vest The true heart of the movie’s vision of Christina becomes visible only in glimpses, a problem exacerbated by the story’s intricate structure. Wolff organizes the narrative like a courtroom drama, so Cardinal Azzolino (Peter Finch) spends the whole movie interrogating Christina, under orders from the Vatican to determine the validity of her conversion.
          Accordingly, most of the key moments in Christina’s life are shown in fragmented flashbacks, culminating with a sequence during which Christina addresses widespread rumors that she was romantically involved with another woman. Concurrently, Wolff explores historical innuendo by implying that Azzolino and Christina became lovers, spiritually if not necessarily physically. The material is so interesting that it should work, and Finch is at least Ullmann’s equal. Yet it all feels chaste and flat and polite—so much so that The Abdication becomes boring after a while. Even the scenes of Vatican officials debating Christina’s political significance—which should be incendiary—feel overly mannered. Students of religious and/or royal history will undoubtedly find more to enjoy here than general viewers, and it’s inarguable that The Abdication is a sophisticated piece of work. Nonetheless, a sterile approach to storytelling prevents The Abdication from realizing its own tremendous potential.

The Abdication: FUNKY

Network (1976)

          There’s a reason why sophisticated contemporary screenwriters from Billy Ray to Aaron Sorkin bow at the feet of playwright-screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, and the script that best exemplifies that reason is Network, Chayefsky’s audacious satire about a TV personality who becomes a pop-culture phenomenon by going insane while America watches. By the mid-’70s, Chayefsky was a veteran dramatist with credits dating back to the ’50s heyday of live TV, and his reputation was such that his words reached the screen more or less untouched. For Network, Chayefsky let loose with all of his literary powers, constructing an outrageous plot, symbolic characters, and wordplay so dense and dexterous that each monologue is like a high-wire act.

          Network is filled with such esoteric verbiage as “multivariate” and “sedentarian,” and the ideas the script presents are as elevated as the language. In the story, network-news anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) gets sacked for low ratings, then responds by announcing on air that he plans to commit suicide. His stunt triggers a ratings spike, but concerns his deeply principled boss and best friend, news-division chief Max Schumacher (William Holden). An ambitious executive from the network’s entertainment division, Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), sees an opportunity to exploit Beale’s breakdown. Backed by Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), the omnivorous lieutenant of the corporation that just bought the network, Diana seizes control of the nightly news broadcast and turns it into a circus act featuring crazies like Howard and “Sybil the Soothsayer.”

          Concurrently, Diana makes a deal with a terrorist organization to film its insurrectionist crimes, so before long the network’s top two shows are the vulgar “news” show and the brazen “Mao Tse Tung Hour.” Firmly situated as the story’s drowned-out voice of reason, Max is briefly seduced by the lure of slick sensationalism—he ends up in Diana’s bed even though he’s married—but once he comes to his senses, all he can do is bear witness as primetime becomes a madhouse.

          Director Sidney Lumet, unobtrusively serving Chayefsky’s script, tells the story with methodical precision, orchestrating a handful of astonishing performances. Finch gets the showiest role, ranting through moments like the famous “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” speech; the actor died just before receiving an Oscar for the role. Holden, his once-gleaming features ravaged by years of drinking, is a vivid personification of an idealist-turned-cynic, and his runs through long speeches are as graceful as they are muscular. Dunaway, burdened with the most overtly symbolic characterization in the piece, is so chillingly soulless that she makes the contrivances of her role seem necessary and urgent. Duvall, adding an almost Biblical degree of rage to his previously muted screen persona, is layered and terrifying. And Ned Beatty, who pops in for a cameo as Duvall’s boss, blows away any memories of his usual bumbling characters by portraying a sociopathic corporate overlord.

          Network is filled with nervy scenes, like the vignette of network executives negotiating a contract with gun-toting terrorists, and the climax is thunderous. And although it comes awfully close, Network isn’t perfect; some scenes, like Max’s confrontation with his wronged wife (Beatrice Straight), are overwritten to mask their triteness, and Max’s final monologue to Diana summarizes the picture in a manner that’s contrived, obvious, and unnecessary. But even in that scene, arguably the most film’s laborious, Chayefsky’s language is intoxicating: In the course of excoriating the reductive nature of television, Max laments that “all of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.” Especially since most of Chayefsky’s bleak predictions about television have come true since Network was released, this profound film has lost none of its elemental power.

Network: OUTTA SIGHT