Far from the Madding Crowd

Among the last of the old-fashioned epics, Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) is a rare misfire from John Schlesinger. This soporific adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel simply lacks the depth and substance to justify its interminable run-time. What might have been a respectable two hour period piece becomes a plodding three-hour epic.

Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) takes over her father's farm in Dorset. Hoping to advance her social station, she turns down the romantic advances of shepherd Gabriel (Alan Bates). Unfortunately, a Valentine's Day prank backfires when stuffy Mr. Boldwood (Peter Finch) grows obsessed with her. Bathsheba rebuffs him as well, but falls for the dashing Sergeant Troy (Terence Stamp), a soldier with an amorous reputation.

Far from the Madding Crowd is clearly MGM's effort to top Doctor Zhivago, casting Julie Christie in a sumptuous period romance. Schlesinger and cameraman Nicolas Roeg provide endless reels of gorgeous photography, making the West Counties both beautiful and forbidding. The movie bristles with period detail and creative set pieces: a sheep stampede, Sergeant Troy's sword demonstration, a lively carnival burlesque. Richard Rodney Bennett helps with an appropriately sweeping score. But Madding's surface gloss isn't enough to distract from its hollow center.

Early scenes establish Bathsheba as an ambitious free spirit: she dodges suitors, declares herself "nobody's property" and tells off condescending landowners at market. Unfortunately, she thereafter becomes a painfully passive protagonist, spending the last two-thirds of the film mooning over her suitors. It's hard to sympathize much with Bathsheba, either, when her cruel prank drives Boldwood over the edge. Bathsheba makes the right choice only after other options have been violently eliminated. Crudely stated, she doesn't earn her happy ending.

Further, Julie Christie makes an underwhelming Bathsheba. For one, her very "mod" hairstyle and '60s mannerisms clash egregiously with Victorian decor. More importantly though, Christie badly mishandles the part. She's all surface sensuality and smoldering glances, without depth or real understanding. After all, Vivien Leigh invested Scarlett O'Hara with intelligence, wit and longing along with her selfish vanity. Christie's Bathsheba is just a haughty hussy.

Her costars fare little better. Bathsheba's suitors are easily codified archetypes: rakish Troy, hopeless romantic Birdwood, salt-of-the-earth Gabriel. The actors are game, with Terence Stamp (Billy Budd) standing out: he at least gets something of a character arc, with Troy's life upended by the reappearance of past lover Fanny (Prunella Ransome). Peter Finch (The Nun's Story) comes off merely pathetic, while Alan Bates (Royal Flash) isn't given much personality beyond veterinary skill. Rarely have such good actors been so ill-used.

More generally, Madding lacks the substance for an epic. By reducing Hardy's novel to overstuffed soap opera, Schlesinger and writer Frederic Raphael all but ignore its social commentary and squander its tragic angles. The flimsy characters and weak story can't compensate, defaulting into all-too-predictable love rectangle antics. All that's left is pretty pictures, which aren't alone enough to carry a 171 minute film.

John Schlesinger, of all directors, knew how to draw carefully observed characters. Billy Liar, Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday all evince uncommon skill at humanizing their protagonists and directing actors to their strengths. Trying to one-up David Lean, Schlesinger simply bites off more than he can chew, resulting in an ornamented bore.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Another hit from John Schlesinger, Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) is unfairly overlooked. Remarkably restrained, it handles a potentially cliched story with uncommon skill.

Free-spirited artist Bob Elkin (Murray Head) carries on two affairs at once. One paramour is Daniel Hirsch (Peter Finch), a middle-aged doctor; the other Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson), a career woman. The threesome go about their business, but grow tired of Bob's undependability and unfulfilled promises. Alex starts a fling with a client (Tony Britton) while Daniel reconnects with his Jewish faith. When Bob decides to visit New York, Alex and Daniel must both embrace life without him.

Sunday Bloody Sunday scores on multiple fronts. Schlesinger and writers Penelope Gilliatt and David Sherwin deftly avoid expected cliches: each lover knows about Bob's infidelity and their only confrontation is polite, even friendly. The movie avoids an explosive finale or a tragic ending, finishing on a downbeat but life-sized note. All parties are simply forced to move on when their arrangement dissolves, without undue drama.

Schlesinger scores biggest with his closely-observed characters. Alex has a strained relationship with her parents (Peggy Ashcroft and Maurice Denham) and an unfulfilling career. An extended sequence has her and Bob babysitting the bratty kids of a bohemian couple, providing her with a surrogate family. However, when push comes to shove Alex makes no effort to fight for her man, accepting his flightiness and sinking into ennui. It's a depressing fate but a wholly credible one.

Daniel's characterization is more effective still. Unlike the era's other screen gays (Dirk Bogarde in Victim, Shirley Maclaine in The Children's Hour), he's not a tortured deviant but content with his lifestyle and a skilled doctor to boot. Like Alex, he doesn't mind Bob's infidelity: aging and lonely, he needs something to cling to, even Bob's promises of an Italian vacation. Nonetheless, he's able to find solace with his family, friends and co-religionists. He's the rare gay character not to be defined by sexuality: "I am happy, apart from missing him."

Fresh off his Hollywood breakthrough Midnight Cowboy, Schlesinger successfully returns to his English roots. He colors the film with his usual odd touches: an ill-fated dog, pot smoking children, recurring images of a switchboard, a vividly rendered nightmare, a curiously phallic lava lamp. For all his stylization though, Schlesinger never loses sight of his characters.

Peter Finch (The Nun's Story) is outstanding, exuding charm, middle-aged weariness and subtle emotion. This might be his best performance. Glenda Jackson gives another fine turn in her string of remarkable films: Women in Love, Mary Queen of Scots, A Touch of Class. Singer Murray Head is an effective sexual catalyst but never grows into a convincing character.

The supporting cast is full of interesting faces. Tony Britton (The Day of the Jackal) plays Alex's client-turned-paramour. Peggy Ashcroft (A Passage to India) and Maurice Denham make an outsized impression in small parts. A young Jon Finch (Frenzy) turns up briefly, and 14 year old Daniel Day-Lewis can be spotted keying a car.

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a solid drama. John Schlesinger gives a commendably mature and affecting rendering of a thorny subject.

Midnight Cowboy

John Schlesinger established himself as an English arthouse darling with films like Billy Liar (1963) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967). His breakthrough Hollywood film is Midnight Cowboy (1969). Best remembered as the only X-rated movie to win Best Picture, it plays very well, though its striking direction almost overwhelms the story.

Joe Buck (Jon Voight) flees his small Western town with dreams of scoring in New York City. Hoping to become the "kept man" of a rich benefactor, he finds scoring with NYC chicks isn't so easy as he thoughts. Eccentric loser Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) decides to manage Joe, setting him up as a stud, though many of Joe's clientele are gay. Joe soon tires of the city, and when Ratso becomes ill decides to head for Florida.

Midnight Cowboy is a bleak reworking of Breakfast at Tiffany's, replacing the cutesy humor with grittiness and cruel irony. Joe finds New York City a grimy, rundown rathole, a hopeless dream-crushing metropolis. Even sex is a tricky proposition: Joe's first client is a prostitute (Sylvia Miles) who bilks him. The awkward, ambiguous relationship between Joe and Ratso becomes the film's dramatic pillar, two outcasts who forge an unlikely bond. Their scenes together bonding in a rundown apartment provide the movie's strongest moments.

Schlesinger and writer Waldo Salt dissect the cult of American masculinity. Joe sets himself up as a super-stud in his cowboy duds, but finds homosexuals his primary clientele. Defining himself by sexuality, Joe's self-image grows muddled by a series of bizarre, farcical encounters. A gradually-revealed past and a dream-like, drug-induced party further undermine his image. He's only able to perform when one of his clients (Brenda Vaccaro) accuses him of being gay!

Cowboy's strongest suit is Schlesinger's direction. He experimented with fantasy scenes in Billy Liar but those are tame compared to Cowboy's warped phantasmagoria. The film borders on surreal at times, a traumatic collision of Joe's childhood memories, victimization by a mob and fantasies of the high life. Hugh A. Robertson's chaotic editing, juxtaposing sex with media and religious imagery, is blunt but effective. John Barry's score projects the perfect mixture of alienation and seedy Americana.

Jon Voight gives an excellent turn, refining his caricatural image into a vivid performance. Dustin Hoffman's Ratso is an interesting character but his performance veers towards schtick; his limp, accent and hacking cough are too obviously put-ons. Brenda Vaccaro and Sylvia Miles make an impression as the women who take advantage of Joe. Ruth White (The Nun's Story) is frighteningly effective in her brief scenes. Bob Balaban (Gosford Park) appears briefly as one of Joe's customers.

Midnight Cowboy is a compelling watch. From its striking visuals to the protagonists' warm relationship, it holds up as a bona fide classic.

Marathon Man

Marathon Man (1976) is easily the best of the '70s ex-Nazi thrillers (The Boys from Brazil, The Odessa File). Best-remembered for doing to the dentist's chair what Psycho did to the shower, John Schlesinger and William Goldman craft a stylish, exciting film, combining a gripping story with a top-notch cast.

Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York grad student who gets unwittingly mixed up in a case of international intrigue. Turns out his brother Doc (Roy Scheider) is a government agent with ties to Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi war criminal hiding in South America. A car accident in New York City brings Szell out of hiding, fearing his cache of diamonds is at risk. Because of Doc's unsavory associations, Babe becomes a target of Szell's scheming.

Marathon Man is a cleverly-plotted thrill ride, with Schlesinger's assured direction and Goldman's well-crafted script. The assured plotting and detailed characterizations make the requisite twists and revelations organic and clever. The film never lacks for creative set-pieces: the random car accident that sets the plot in motion, Doc's fight with a hulking assassin, Szell's paranoid walk through Manhattan's East Side ("Der Weise Engel!"). My favorite scene has Babe paying a gang of street thugs to rob his apartment (and distract his pursuers). And of course there's Szell's impromptu surgery on Babe, a scene that still inspires cringes.

A lot of recent movies try and put an "Everyman" protagonist in harm's way, leading to gaping credibility problems: is Transformers anything but a teenaged nerd's fantasy? In comparison, Babe Levy is extremely credible: he's athletic, smart and competent with a gun, but his heroics remain within the realm of plausibility. Coupled with his trouble past (his father was blacklisted by McCarthy) and a deceptively sweet romance with Ilse (Marthe Keller), he becomes a well-rounded and sympathetic hero. It helps that he's not facing impossible odds, his adversaries a grandfatherly old man and a few garden-variety thugs, and that their motive isn't world domination but simple greed.

Dustin Hoffman is in full-on Method mode, playing a particularly intense yet believable hero. Laurence Olivier gives his best late-career performance, making Szell a paragon of quiet, understated menace. Roy Scheider (Jaws) is excellent, though he exits the film way too early. William Devane's (Family Plot) duplicity is never in doubt but the lovely Marthe Keller makes an unlikely traitor. Reliable thugs Marc Lawrence (The Ox-Bow Incident) and Richard Bright (The Godfather) play Szell's henchmen, Fritz Weaver cameos as a professor and Jacques Marin (Charade) turns up as a Paris jeweler.

Marathon Man stands tall as another fine thriller from the '70s. Coupling a smart script with excellent performances and assured direction, it's a highpoint of its genre.

Billy Liar

Last night, TCM did a tribute to Tom Courtenay, the intense, immensely-talented English actor who (along with Albert Finney) best personified the "Angry Young Man" of post-war Britain. Courtenay got a few starring vehicles like The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, a showcase role in Doctor Zhivago (which earned him an Oscar nod), and ensemble work in films like The Night of the Generals and King Rat, but largely faded by the early '70s, perhaps by choice, perhaps because his moment had passed.

Billy Liar (1963) features an atypical Courtenay performance. A light comedy dealing with serious themes, it shows a young man so wrapped up in his self-indulgent fantasies that he can barely function in the real world. The story might be tragic if Courtenay, director John Schlesinger and writers Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse didn't make so it endearing.

Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) is a young Yorkshire man who dreams of greatness. Stuck in a menial job clerking for a stuffy businessman (Leonard Rossiter), he spends most his free time dreaming about his self-created country of Ambrosia, or imagining himself rich and famous. This proves problematic, however, when his fantasies seep into real life: he becomes engaged to two different women at once, and tells everyone he's been hired by comedian Danny Boon (Leslie Randall). Billy quits his job, gets in trouble for pilfering company materials and runs afoul of both fiancees (Gwendolyn Watts and Helen Fraser). When old flame Liz (Julie Christie) comes back to town, she offers Billy an escape to London - but does Billy have the initiative to take it?

Billy Liar loosely resembles a far less grating version of The Graduate, with pre-Richard Lester fantasy scenes worked in. Billy is more confused than angry, stuck in a boring but not intolerable home life, not interested in a simple desk job but not having the ability to advance beyond his station. He certainly has ambition, submitting scripts to Danny Boon and getting a song performed at a discotheque, but when these fail he falls back on his detailed fantasy life. With Billy, it's not so much laziness that sabotages his chances as an indecisive personality that can't handle the pressures of the real world. My, how I can relate.

John Schlesinger (Marathon Man) handles a fine production. He provides straightforward direction, creating a film that's light-hearted without distracting from the serious subject matter. The fantasy scenes (military parades, a funeral, Billy "machine-gunning" those who anger him) are elaborately staged and funny, contrasting nicely with the grim Yorkshire town being gradually demolished. Schlesinger and his writers achieve the neat trick of being both silly and tragic without compromising either mood.

Courtenay gives a superb performance, mixing his habitual working-class anger with charm, guile and confusion. Billy could easily be flaky or obnoxious, but Courtenay makes him a likeable and credible personage. Julie Christie parlayed her small part into super-stardom: her Liz is an utterly charming creation, a free-spirited girl who represents everything Billy's missing in life, without seeming idealized. The movie scores by treating its adult characters with respect: Wilfred Pickles and Mona Washbourne give strong support as Billy's parents, with Pickles getting the film's best scene telling Billy off. Leonard Rossiter (Barry Lyndon) plays Billy's boss, and Finlay Currie (Great Expectations) gets a small but memorable part.

Billy Liar is an enjoyable, well-crafted film. Unlike many of the British "kitchen sink" films, it hasn't dated a bit and remains relatable.