Lord Jim

Today we take a look at Richard L. Brooks’ 1965 adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. Brooks was a very talented journeyman director, whose diverse resume includes social problem films (The Blackboard Jungle), crime movies (In Cold Blood) and Westerns (The Professionals). As good as Brooks is with the above material, he doesn’t quite score with this large-scale adaptation of Conrad’s novel. Despite a fabulous all-star cast, gorgeous cinematography and some excellent sequences, Lord Jim never really gels, and Brooks doesn’t seem entirely in his element as the director of this 154-minute road-show extravaganza.

Jim (Peter O’Toole) is an English merchant sailor in Victorian East Asia who dreams of excitement and adventure. He signs aboard the crew of the Patna, which is transporting a group of Muslim pilgrims to the Middle East – only to join his crewmates in abandoning the passengers during a typhoon. When the passengers survive, Jim alone is brought to trial, and though acquitted, his reputation is tarnished. Desperate to redeem himself, Jim leaps at the offer of Dutch trader Stein (Paul Luckas) to help overthrow a sadistic warlord, the General (Eli Wallach), who has taken over the small kingdom of Patusan, terrorizing the local tribes and blocking off outside trade. With a shipment of rifles, Jim and the local villagers overthrow the General, establishing “Lord Jim” as their ruler – only to have the General’s treacherous subordinate Cornelius (Curt Jurgens) return with a gang of crooks, led by cut-throat Gentleman Brown (James Mason), to reclaim the General’s considerable treasure.

Lord Jim aspires to be an epic, grand-scale adventure film like Lawrence of Arabia and The Guns of Navarone, but never quite achieves take-off velocity. The film certainly has the look of the above films, with rousing battle scenes, exotic locales (filmed on location in Cambodia), and gorgeous 70mm cinematography (by Lawrence’s Freddie Young), but it lacks the sure and steady hand that a David Lean or Stanley Kubrick would have brought to it. As much talent as he lends to his smaller films, Brooks seems out of his depth directing such a large-scale film.

The early scenes of the movie unfold at a snail’s pace. With all of the early sequences narrated by Jim’s Captain, Heart of Darkness protagonist Captain Marlowe (Jack Hawkins), the film doesn’t exactly inspire excitement out of the gate. It seems an overly literal adaptation of the novel, which begins establishing Jim in depth as a romantic, ambitious dreamer; but surely in a film, establishing characters through dialogue and actions is preferable to lengthy, overly-explicit voice over? A movie should grab its audience’s attention right off the bat, but all Jim does early on is make the audience weary and perhaps a bit drowsy.

Fortunately, the movie picks up around the time of the Patina incident, and the first half is rousing, engrossing Boys’ Own adventure stuff, filled with dangerous journeys, exotic locations and large-scale battle scenes. But around the half-way point, the movie slowly reverts back to the beginning, dragging in endless scenes of talk and overly literal character development – stuff that may have worked on the printed page, but is tedious on film. It takes the film’s vicious villains to keep the movie afloat, with Jim becoming an inexplicably passive character who proves increasingly hard to root for. Again, this may be in keeping with the source novel, but it doesn’t inherently excuse it. The scene with Jim and Gentleman Brown negotiating on a raft provides plenty of dramatic fireworks, but Jim’s endless equivocation and self-immolation quickly becomes tiresome, and his passive ending is more indifferent than tragic. Quite frankly, the guilt of the Patina affair doesn’t seem an adequate explanation for his second half paralysis, and neither Brooks nor Peter O’Toole sells us on this point. The movie plods along towards a conclusion which finally seems empty and unconvincing, yet perversely appropriate for such a schizophrenic film.

Certainly, on a technical level the film has a lot going for it. Whatever problems he may have with pacing and character development, Brooks handles the action scenes and his distinguished cast with aplomb (he also penned the verbose and highly quotable script, which excels in dialogue if not in storytelling), and the beautiful Cambodian locations are wonderfully captured by Young. There aren’t any complaints on this score, and the film succeeds as spectacle if nothing else.

Peter O’Toole’s performance in the title role is curiously similar to his portrayal of T.E. Lawrence: the same brooding, ambitious loner figure, the same palpitating, silent intensity, the same inner turmoil and crippling sense of guilt and self-doubt. To be sure, O’Toole certainly could have done worse than to repeat his finest performance, but Jim lacks Lawrence’s sense of humor and joyful irreverence, and proves a surprisingly dull and largely unsympathetic character. The supporting cast is generally solid: Paul Luckas gives a strong and dignified performance as Jim’s benefactor; the gorgeous Daliah Lavi does nice work with a limited role as his native love interest. However, Jack Hawkins is completely wasted as Captain Marlowe, most of his brief screen time devoted to his tedious voice-over narration.

The real meat of the cast, however, is the excellent cadre of villains, some of the best in cinema history. Eli Wallach gives a ferocious yet unusually restrained (by his standards anyway) performance as the very Kurtz-like General, alternately psychotic and philosophical, fearsome and pathetic. James Mason shows up belatedly around the 100-minute mark, then completely steals the second half as the amoral, treacherous and gleefully wicked Gentleman Brown, the self-described “Expert in human depravity, weakness and avarice”. Also playing for the Dark Side are Curt Jurgens as the cowardly traitor Cornelius and Akim Tamaroff (For Whom the Bell Tolls) as a sleazy barkeeper who throws in with Brown and Company. This fearsome foursome provides endless entertainment, and it’s a shame they don’t have a better movie to work with.

Lord Jim is a decidedly mixed bag. It’s beautifully shot and well-acted, and rarely less than interesting, but ultimately it falters due to a sluggish pace, convoluted plotting and an excess of gab. There’s the potential for a great film there that Brooks and Company, for all their efforts, don’t quite achieve – but at least the end result is worth watching.

Rating: 7/10 – Recommended