Tales from the Socialist Literary Collective*

The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006) Maugham's tough. A restrained writer of underlying passions and the complications of class and personality, he has had little luck in adaptations for the screen, which when separated from the civility of his tone, tend to look all the more melodramatic. Filmmakers have combated this in a number of ways when adapting works by Maugham. They either are as dry as dust, the juice sucked right out of them (The Razor's Edge, 1947), played to hysterics, overcompensating for the former (The Razor's Edge, 1987...with a "jokey" Bill Murray performance), or just the basic idea used and the rest transmuted to some other end (Hitchcock's "Secret Agent"). However, we're gradually catching up to him. With time, his themes have seen better, more fulfilling adaptations, but Maugham needs a director like Elia Kazan, who wasn't afraid to walk the fine line of good/bad taste. "The Painted Veil" has been lensed twice before--once with Garbo in 1937, and, as "The Seventh Sin" (more box-officey title) with Bill Travers and Elanor Parker in 1957. Both films emphasized the soap-ish, melodramatic aspects of the story, but this one is a huge improvement. It's obviously a labor of love, because it cost $17 million to produce and it looks like three times that much, at least. Filmed mostly in China, "The Painted Veil" tells the story of a spiteful marriage between a cold physician, and a spoiled society girl, who must adapt to a life of sacrifice and want in the Far East, and in the process find their priorities shift and their expectations shattered. It's one of Maugham's "too little, too late" stories, but I've rarely seen one better acted (the cast includes Naomi Watts, Edward Norton--sacrificing salaries as producers--Liev Schrieber, Toby Jones, and Dame Diana Rigg) or realized so well. This may be the best movie deal in years from a production and audience stand-point.

An Unfinished Life (Lasse Hallström, 2005) There may be no director more genteel than Lasse Hallström. Whether his subject is incest, abortion (The Cider House Rules), depression (The Shipping News), disassociation (What's Eating Gilbert Grape?), he manages to sap any dramatic life right out of it, even beating out the Merchant/Ivory films for taking drama and making it blandly digestible. Hallström is a director for the blue-haired old ladies who attend matinees who like to be titilated with racey subject matter, but not shocked. Never shocked. What's Hallström's social drama of the week? It's family abuse. Jennifer Lopez grabs her daughter and flees her abusive husband (the always reliable Damian Lewis, who seems stuck playing heavies now), to her verbally abusive father-in-law (from her previous, child-bearing marriage). He's an old coot (Robert Redford, mussed up) crusty with scabs of bitterness from the death of his only son/her first husband, blaming her for the drunken car accident that killed him. Heaped onto that guilt is his own for being too in his cups to keep friend Mitch (Morgan Freeman) from being mauled by a bear (no, really, that's the story). It's all about taking reponsibilty and letting go of recrimination. By the end, even the bear has a change of heart and is forgiven his trespassings. It's all very neat, and very tidy and well-played by all. All it seems to lack is "Hallmark" watermarked on it. Still, one could do worse watching it.


The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933) Professor Moriarty, Fu Manchu, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Hugo Strange, Hannibal Lecter--all master-minds of crime. But they don't hold a suddenly-snuffed-out candle to Dr. Mabuse, Fritz Lang's "man behind the curtain," so powerful he can control his vast drug, counterfeiting, terrorism, assassination and extortion rings from his near catatonic state inside a Berlin mental institution. Lang made three movies about Mabuse--one in 1922 "Mabuse, Der Spieler," and in 1960, "The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse," his last film. This one, the middle of the trilogy (or actually tetrology if you count "Inferno") , was made under the unapproving gaze of the Nazis, and subsequently banned by Goebbels, prompting Lang, one of the stellar visionaries of German cinema ("M," "Metropolis") to flee the country for Hollywood. And what a vision it is, reflecting the paranoia of National Socialist Germany. Men are sniped while trapped in traffic jams, or nearly blown to bits with barrels of gasoline. Lang even uses the limitations of film to keep you on edge, as lethal chunks of concrete fall from out of frame to threaten those trapped inside. No one is safe, and little is what it seems in the web that Mabuse spins, even unconsciously. One sees in this, the inspirations for Hitchcock and 007** (the film ends with an impressive series of chain-explosions), that not only evolved the thriller genre, but the action film as well. But leave it to Lang to take Mabuse's evil and take it to a supernatural level, as well. No one's safe, in reality or beyond. Now, that is genuine creepiness.


And Then There Were None (René Clair, 1945) Agatha Christie's classic (despite its racist name "Ten Little Indians" or its even more racist original name!) about a collection of disparate people gathered in a remote location and then picked off one by one is a staple of the mystery format. It's been directly adapted for the screen no less than nine times, and homaged endlessly on television (I can recall variations on "The Avengers" and "The Twilight Zone") as well as Neil Simon's encyclopedic send-up of the mystery genre "Murder By Death." This one precedes them all, and is probably the best of the bunch. With an all-star cast (for the 30's) and the nimble direction of René Clair (sadly unacknowldged these days, but he was a crafty film-maker--check out the sequence where some suspicious males start to eaves-drop on each other for clues that is as witty as it is intriguing) this adaptation of Christie's play (with an ending amended by Christie to make it more of a crowd-pleaser) is a fine study of upper class paranoia, with stand-out performances by Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Dame Judith Anderson and Mischa Auer.


The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle, 1941) I've known about this film for years, because it was the film that won Bernard Herrmann his only Oscar for Best Score, over his other score that year, "Citizen Kane." It's had a checkered history, though, after a less than blockbuster business it was cut by 20 minutes and released with a sexier, less folksy ad campaign (see right) under the name "All That Money Can Buy," which seems to celebrate the profilgate life-style, rather than the altruistic, socialist one espoused by the film. It seems that Jabez Stone only really finds redemption until he's joined the Grange. I may be revealing the ending here, but, really, the outcome is inevitable considering the extraordinarily heavy hand that is used to show the tyrannies of wealth, lust, and greed that are the by-products of selling your soul to the Devil. Fortunately, the great orator Daniel Webster is around to plead the case for the defense when a breach of contract occurs. Usually these scenes are the highlights, but in this film it's a disappointment. Even though played vigorously (by the least likely actor, Edward Arnold, well-known for playing power-brokers and fascists in many a movie) the Webster homilies that are spun are so much sentimental goo and would curl the lip of Aimee Semple McPherson, much less the hardened denizens of Hell that make up the jury in the matter. Even Frank Capra must have rolled his eyes. But Dieterle seems to have shurked those sections to go all-out for his scenes with The Devil. Mr. Scratch's entrances are extravaganzas with light and smoke, he has the best lines (of course), and a truly creepy performance by Walter Huston (John's dad) with maliciously twinkling eyes, and a smile that's so broad that it may turn feral at any moment. Huston is the thing to see in this film, although Jane Darwell (Ma Joad from "The Grapes of Wrath") and Simone Simon (just before she became big with "Cat-People") do wonders with their material as well.


Deliver Us from Evil (Amy Berg, 2006)
screed n. 1. a long monotonous harangue
The recent spate of scandals in the Catholic Church finally put the last nail in the crucifix of my faith. I've long considered that Organized Religion is just another way for a self-appointed select few to exercise (or exorcise) power over individuals all-too-willing to buy what they're selling. Combine it with a tax dodge (from a government that only talks separation of Church and State), and all sorts of scum will crawl out of the woodwork claiming the Ear of God, especially when they can hide behind the guise of sanctimony. "Deliver Us From Evil" puts faces on the headlines and the money settlements, of people of faith victimized not only by priest-predators, but by the hierarchy of the Church that condoned the actions by playing a shell-game relocating the offenders, rather than punishing them, making the Church no better than a pederasty ring. At the black heart of the documentary is Father Oliver O'Grady, the very epitome of the stereotypical Catholic Priest: folksy, black Irish with enough accent and blarney to charm his way into the hearts of his flock, and used them to charm his way into trusting households and molest the children inside, male or female--O'Grady didn't discriminate. One wonders why he would
consent to an interview. To clear the air? Penance of a twisted sort? Whatever the reasons the man is so clueless and mired in the cess-pool of his own rationalizations that he seems to have made a sort of peace with what he's done, a sociopathic self-satisfaction that one can only observe with disbelieving shock. Perhaps it has something to do with his faith. He's done his Penance, and so he must be forgiven, right? That's the very heart of the Church's Sacrament of confession. But it's a dogma that falls short for those victims still haunted by his actions, and are having a hard time forgiving themselves, though their only failing is to trust someone, who is supposed to be trustworthy. That trust has been shattered not only by a family friend and "God's disciple," but also by the Church hierarchy that hid the crimes, and allowed them to be repeated in other counties (The Pope, as the head of state of the Holy See has immunity from prosecution in this country).

One of the parents breaks down and says that the whole experience has made him no longer believe in God. I'm with him. If God existed, these bastards would have been turned into pillars of salt by now. Still, the film, though wrenching, carries with it some hope in the form of Fr. Thomas Doyle, an advocate for the victims who has run afoul of the Church for his stand. His compassion, and the strength of the faith of two of the victims featured are testaments (if you will) to the good of their belief system. And the ability to heal.

* Your Public Library

** For those of the comic set, one can look at Steve Englehart's collaborations with Marshall Rogers in "Detective Comics" and see that he drew the inspiration for the supernatural abilities of Dr. Hugo Strange from this very Mabuse film.