The Weekly Gravy #69

Rock & Rule (1983) – *½

As a general rule, films with pun titles aren’t good; as another general rule, films which bill the soundtrack above the cast and crew aren’t very good either. Rock & Rule‘s poster and opening credits alike prioritize the original songs by Cheap Trick, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Earth, Wind & Fire, but even if the songs were better (and they’re not that memorable), they wouldn’t change what an ugly, ungainly mess the film itself is. One can feel sorry for the filmmakers, whose film was reworked in post and barely released by MGM/UA (another strange chapter in a very strange decade for this studio), but from what I can see, the film was doomed well before the studio meddled with it.

(A shot-by-shot comparison of the original and re-edited versions can be found here.)

Set in a distant future where the Earth is populated by the anthropomorphic descendants of cats, rats, and dogs (humans having long gone extinct thanks to, I presume, nuclear war), the film deals with the efforts of “super-rocker” Mok (Don Francks, giving easily the best vocal performance) to summon a destructive beast from an alternate dimension, apparently because his most recent concert didn’t sell out. To do so, he needs a certain voice to sing a certain tune, and he finds that voice in Angel (Susan Roman – well, Debbie Harry does her singing), who’s in a band with the egotistical Omar (Paul LeMat), nerdy Stretch (Greg Duffell), and goofy Dizzy (Dan Hennessey).

Inviting the band to his mansion, Mok abducts Angel and has her bandmates disposed of. Only they’re not deterred, and they pursue Mok to “Nuke York,” where he’s taken Angel, in an effort to save her; meanwhile, she discovers Mok’s plot, and tries to foil it, but a villain of such wealth and ego isn’t so easily defeated. It’ll take the power of rock…and love.

Not that you’re likely to care. Mok’s plan doesn’t make much sense – what exactly is his endgame? – and if he’s at least impressively grotesque (he’s like if Gahan Wilson did furry fan art of Mick Jagger), our heroes are hardly worth rooting for. Angel at least has some spirit and integrity, but Omar is one of the most unlikable lead characters I’ve ever encountered, an ill-tempered, pouty, easily manipulated brat. The other characters range from passable to tiresome – the empty-headed Dizzy is like Shaggy if he were an even greater dolt.

The character animation really doesn’t help. Mok is at least supposed to be creepy, but Angel and Omar, especially Omar, look like…well, like furry characters. Omar is essentially a human with a rodent’s snout, and it just doesn’t look right. Better are the supporting characters, who are wholly cartoony, but they tend to be fairly off-putting as well, like Mok’s hulking goons and their sister. The designs are bad enough, but their movements are awkward and uncanny; I’m not sure how much of the film was rotoscoped, but Omar and Angel in particular look it, and it doesn’t make them more likable.

Even the more cartoony characters are queasily over-animated, and many scenes, especially the action and crowd scenes, are damned difficult to follow. As noted, the plot is a total mess, and the messy animation is a big part of why. Shame, Nelvana. Shame. At least the backgrounds and the use of early CGI still look fairly cool – the latter comes into play most effectively with Mok’s computer (Samantha Langevin) and an arcade game Dizzy plays; these scenes at least offer some interest for students of animation.

But the film as a whole has little to offer but curiosity. It’s confusing, nauseating, annoying, predictable, and doesn’t even have the music to make up for it; for my money, the best piece on the soundtrack is Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Dance Dance Dance,” which plays over the end credits and doesn’t have to compete with the absurd imagery for our attention. But thanks to modern technology, you can listen to the whole soundtrack and never bother with the damned film at all. I recommend that.

Score: 34

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) – ***½

In 1969, there was Woodstock, and in 1970, there was Woodstock, the epic-length documentary that won the Oscar (and got nominated for Editing and Sound). Also in 1969, there was the Harlem Cultural Festival, later nicknamed “the Black Woodstock,” but a film about the Festival would have to wait half a century, though when it appeared earlier this year, it met with comparable acclaim. Like Woodstock, it contains a vast array of musical talent; like Apollo 11, it comprises long-unseen footage, allowing a window into the past which dazzles the interview subjects (who are often shown reacting to the footage with great emotion) as much as the viewer.

A series of six concerts, hosted and seemingly masterminded by singer Tony Lawrence, the Festival drew over 300,000 attendees to Mt. Morris Park in Harlem in the summer of ’69, at least partly in the hopes of bringing peace and good vibes to the area during one of the most fraught chapters in American history. Not that the tensions of the era are ignored, either by the performers – most notably Nina Simone, who performs “Are You Ready Black People?” both as a passionate call to arms and a piercing demand – or the film itself, which includes a sequence of attendees criticizing the resources spent on the Apollo mission (which occurred right in the middle of the Festival) when so many in American struggled.

But the predominant attitude is one of love and pride, and the sheer joy music can bring. For my money, nothing surpasses Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples performing “Precious Lord Take My Hand,” Jackson in particular quaking with fervor, not just from the act of performance, but from the knowledge that this was Martin Luther King’s favorite hymn, and his last words were a request for its performance – which Jesse Jackson relates as he introduces the performance.

But there’s also Sly Stone, leading the Family, frenziedly dancing as if to channel the excess energy; Stevie Wonder, bursting with energy, defying his handler, who tries to keep him from falling out of the chair he can’t sit still in; The 5th Dimension, endlessly swaying, the members drifting from mic to mic, a perfectly harmonious unit; Gladys Knight and the Pips, tearing into “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”; the fierce drumming of Max Roach, Ray Barretto, Mongo Santamaria, and a good deal more.

If there’s a weakness with the film, it’s that, for all the emphasis on how overlooked the Festival was, I found myself wanting to know a bit more about the organization and logistics of it. It covered six weeks, each with a theme, but we get no exploration of that. Lawrence, who seems to have been the driving force behind the Festival, remains too mysterious a figure. The contemporary reaction to the Festival, especially after the fact, is perhaps covered in too little detail. As a record of a concert series, it’s impressive, but as a retrospective documentary about the Festival, it’s just a bit lacking.

It is well edited, and the interviews, presumably handled by director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, are insightful and moving. But at almost two hours, it feels just a bit shapeless, and I would’ve happily accepted a longer running time if it meant giving us a better idea of the overall scope of the Festival and the people behind it. In other words, it’s good enough that I wanted it to be even better. Not a bad position to be in, all things considered.

Score: 85

The Power of the Dog (2021) – ****

I was apprehensive about seeing The Power of the Dog for several reasons:

• As one of the most acclaimed films of the year and an awards-season heavyweight, it had a lot of hype to live up to;
• My only prior experience with Jane Campion was with The Piano, which I didn’t care for;
• The people I knew who’d seen it were at best measured in their praise, and at worst outright unimpressed;
• I’ve long found Benedict Cumberbatch overhyped – a talented actor but not a brilliant one.

As such, I find myself in an odd position, now that I’ve seen it. Clearly, I consider it a fine film, but I have it as a low-level **** film; even now, it doesn’t crack my top 10 of the year, and with a number of films left to watch (it’s my 50th film for 2021), it can only move down the list. As such, when I see it racking up nominations and wins, I won’t be upset – it’s a better choice for awards than, say, Belfast – but I’ll wonder why other, better films aren’t winning those awards. Ah, well. It’s all a matter of taste.

Set in 1925 Montana, Power deals with brothers Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons) Burbank, who own a cattle ranch. The rough-natured, antagonistic Phil handles most of the actual ranching, while the mild-mannered George presumably handles the business side of things. After driving their cattle to the town of Beech, the Burbanks and their men have dinner at a restaurant managed by Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), aided by her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil mocks Peter for his lisp and delicate manner, upsetting Rose; George comforts her, and they fall in love.

They marry, to Phil’s dismay, and he needles Rose constantly once she moves in, eventually leading to her developing a drinking problem. Peter, now a medical student, comes to the ranch to spend the summer, and the ranch hands, encouraged by Phil, tease him. But over time, Phil warms to Peter, encouraging the young man to take after him rather than his mother. Matters reach a head when Rose, upset over Phil’s growing influence on Peter, gives away some cattle hides he intended to keep for himself, burning what he didn’t use.

The real meat of the film is less in what happens, or at least what can be easily summarized, than in little details which gradually form something like a picture of these characters’ lives. Details like Phil’s endless teasing of George (whom he calls “fatso”), like Peter’s wearing white shoes out to the ranch, like the way Phil talks about Bronco Henry, who taught him how to ranch, and how he cares for Bronco Henry’s saddle, or like how Rose avoids Phil, even to the point of hiding from him. Or like how two characters share a cigarette in what seems an unmistakably romantic way…except, looking back on it, it might not be what we think at all.

There are definite lacunae in Campion’s script, adapted from the novel by Thomas Savage, and where some add to the mystery and ambiguity of the story, others leave us feeling like we might have missed something. Rose’s alcoholism in particular seems to develop more rapidly than would probably happen in reality, and Phil changes his approach to Peter just a bit too abruptly, given how central this change is to the story. (I’m also wondering if Thomasin McKenzie, as housemaid Lola, originally had more to do.)

But there are also some fascinating and compelling themes at play. Anyone who’s ever been stuck in a bad living situation can understand the particular struggle Rose faces in dealing with Phil; he’s quite good at a very specific variety of psychological abuse, causing others distress without actually doing that much. And the question of just what warmth and humanity might lie underneath Phil’s rancid exterior remains an open one, even at film’s end. Just as he might not be quite so vicious as assumed, Peter might not be quite so weak.

Cumberbatch strikes the right balance of obnoxiousness and prickly friendliness; it’s not a brilliant performance, but he’s all the stronger because we’re not expected to like Phil, or even pity him, just understand him, or at least try to. Smit-McPhee probably gives the best turn in the cast, showing how the sensitive mama’s boy of the opening scenes has a few more layers to him than even we might assume. Dunst, as noted, is hampered by the script taking her from Point Sober to Point Drunk too quickly, but she effectively conveys Rose’s internal struggle and how even the well-meaning George can upset her. And as George, Plemons continues his impressive recent streak, allowing us to wonder if George is oblivious to Phil’s abuse, or simply used to it.

Campion’s direction effectively maintains the tension in nearly every scene, priming us to expect something bad, whether that something is an overt act of cruelty or a passive bit of whistling. Ari Wegner’s cinematography benefits from having the gorgeous New Zealand countryside to take in (it doubles for Montana capably), but she also captures the interior scenes, including some intense close-ups of Cumberbatch’s face, with comparable skill. (The period sets and costumes are quite well done.) And Jonny Greenwood’s spare, haunted score might be the best thing about the film – like Phil and Peter, it reveals layers you might not have expected.

All in all, it’s a very good film, one I can certainly appreciate for adding to the strength of a fairly solid year for movies. That I don’t think it’s the very best of them, or even that close to the very best, makes my position a trickier one, but what of that? As this film shows, life and human nature are hardly so cut-and-dried.

Update 3/7/22: I rewatched the film before doing my film awards, and while I haven’t drastically changed my tune about the film, I do want to share some additional thoughts.

I appreciate the performances more, by and large. Cumberbatch does an excellent job at showing Phil’s fundamental self-consciousness, how he seems ill at ease even when he’s not being an asshole, how nothing seems to come naturally to him except longing for Bronco Henry. Smit-McPhee impressed just a bit less this time; he is very effective at depicting Peter’s own awkwardness and chilly affect, but his performance is just a bit one-note. Plemons might not have deserved an Oscar nomination – though given the strong work he’s done in recent years, I don’t mind – but he does show how George is nearly as frustrating in his passivity as Phil is in his aggression. And while I still think Dunst struggles in her drunk scenes, she’s very good at showing Rose’s growing awareness of the lion’s den she’s entered; just look at her quiet agony in the dinner-party scene.

I think ever more highly of Campion’s direction, Wegner’s cinematography, Greenwood’s score, the editing, the sound, and the production design, all of which solidly merited their Oscar nominations. (I’m honestly surprised they didn’t find a way to nominate the costumes as well.) I really can’t deny how good most of it is.

I think what I still struggle with is Campion’s script. Having not read the original novel, I can’t say what, if anything, was cut, but Campion seems to prefer an elliptical approach, which works in some aspects (we don’t need to know decisively if Phil and Bronco Henry had sex) but frustrates in others (why does no one so much as tell Phil to knock it off?). There are a lot of good lines in the script (“There is something there, right?” “Not if you can’t see it, there ain’t”) and a lot of compelling themes. It’s just, at times, too self-consciously ambiguous for its own good.

In the end, it really is a good film. It still doesn’t crack my top 10, not in so good a year, but I will be fine with it winning Best Picture – if it wins.

Score: 88

Second Effort (1968) – ***

On the IMDb, Second Effort has just 22 votes, which is kind of amazing. After all, it’s one of highest-selling instructional films ever made (probably the highest) and stars Vince Lombardi, probably the greatest coach in NFL history. Millions have seen it; according to the DVD cover, over 15 million people have been “inspired” by it. Maybe there’s not much overlap between those watch instructional videos (or at least take them seriously) and those who rate films on the IMDb, but out of all those millions, I’d have thought more than 22 would’ve cared enough to vote for it. Oh well. Now there are 23.

Not that I watched Second Effort for instructional purposes – I’m not a salesman, don’t want to be, and don’t really buy into the corporate ethos the film embodies. I’m not really a sports buff and find it especially hard to enjoy football knowing what I do about CTE; some of the on-field collisions we see are especially wince-inducing. Nor do I really care for the concept of “Lombardi Time”; punctuality is important, but “if you’re not 15 minutes early, you’re late”? Get out of here.

So why did I watch it? Well, I may not care about sports, but I care about personalities, and Lombardi was a fascinating one – a man who made a tremendous impact on football despite a relatively short coaching career, a man who combined great skill in his chosen field, great devotion to his Catholic faith, and a firm belief in human equality – which led to him rejecting the color barrier in football and even to embracing gay players and staff members.

And, to be fair, some of his advice – given to struggling salesman Ron (Ron Masak) – is useful, in particular his emphases on confidence and discipline. We’re told that he expects a great deal of his players, but he asks just as much of himself and his assistants, and he urges his players to make the “second effort” – to persevere in the face of adversity and maybe, just maybe, see the path to success. One must know when to cut one’s losses, but it is easy to cut them too soon.

As a film, it’s fairly straightforward; Jay Sheridan’s direction is mostly unremarkable, but there are a few moments, like Lombardi preparing to give a locker-room speech, that show some flair. Lombardi himself seems like a kind and sincere individual, but not entirely comfortable in front of the camera (though he does better than Packers legend Jerry Kramer, who appears as himself); it helps that Masak has a natural, likable presence that helps you root for him.

Score: 68

The Little Prince (1974) – **½

Despite its status as a beloved classic, I don’t think I ever read Saint-Exupéry’s book. If the film is anything to go by, I didn’t miss much, but given the book’s enduring popularity and the film’s relative obscurity, I’m thinking it doesn’t do the book justice. Certainly, it wouldn’t make you guess that Stanley Donen was a major director, nor that Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe were the team behind such hit musicals as My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, and Camelot. So maybe it’s best to take the film as something like the Cats of its day, a well-meaning but baffling enterprise, an attempt to render in the literal terms of film what was best left to the abstract realm of the page or the fluid reality of the stage.

The Pilot (Richard Kiley – “spared no expense”) has been frustrated his whole life by the small-mindedness of adults, compared to the boundless imagination of children. He finds himself most at home while flying. During a flight over the Sahara, his engine fails and he makes a forced landing. While trying to repair his plane, he is confronted by the Little Prince (Steven Warner), who wants him to draw a sheep. We learn that the Little Prince came from a tiny planet (Asteroid B-612), where he had a Rose (Donna McKechnie) whom he wants to protect from said sheep.

Deciding he needed to learn about the world, the Little Prince traveled (with the help of a flock of birds) to a number of planets, each inhabited by a symbolic figure. One had a King (Joss Ackland) obsessed with giving orders and defending borders. One had a Businessman (Clive Revill) who “owned” the stars. One had a Historian (Victor Spinetti) who claimed to know everything about everything because he wrote it all down. One had a General (Graham Crowden) seeking an army to seek an enemy, that he might have a war. He finally arrived on Earth, meeting a Snake (Bob Fosse) who offered to send him back to B612 with a bite, and a Fox (Gene Wilder), whom he tamed and who taught him about love and responsibility. Finally, after the Pilot fixes his plane, the Little Prince accepts the Snake’s offer and leaves the Pilot heartbroken – until he hears the Prince’s laughter among the stars.

I can see how the material might have worked on the page; the symbolic characters the Little Prince meets make for a clever commentary on the absurdities of society. Borders are often arbitrary. Material wealth shouldn’t be the end rather than the means. Writing something down doesn’t make it fact. And imagination and rationality aren’t mutually exclusive, even in adulthood. It could’ve made a good film, but whether it’s Donen’s direction or Lerner’s script, it ends up a mess of strange visual gimmicks, ham-fisted messaging, sloppy storytelling, and uneven acting.

The problems begin with the opening credits, which clumsily try to animate Saint-Exupéry’s illustrations with what looks like primitive computer animation. It’s awkward and unappealing. The opening scenes in early 20th-century France look fine, and some of the stylized desert scenes, blending location shooting in Tunisia and studio-shot scenes with vividly unreal skies, are suitably fantastical. But then we get to B-612, with repeated shots of the Little Prince circumnavigating the planet in a few paces, and the attempt to bring Saint-Exupéry’s imagination to three-dimensional is admirable but unconvincing.

Worse are the stiff animation used for the Little Prince’s flock of birds (quite badly integrated with the live action) and the use of fisheye lenses, which soon becomes truly off-putting, with the scenes on the Businessman’s and Historian’s planets being so distorted as to be nearly unwatchable. The fisheye crops up again in the Fox sequence, for no apparent reason. Cinematographer Christopher Challis crafts some handsome images, and John Barry designed some fascinating sets, especially the King’s and General’s planets, but the film doesn’t make the best use of them. The less said about the weird adult undertones, like McKechnie’s writing and the Pilot’s guzzling water from an oasis in slow-motion, the better.

It doesn’t help that some scenes – the visits to the symbolic planets in particular – flash by too quickly to effectively make their points, further diminished by the distorted imagery and Donen’s frantic staging, and others, like nearly every scene between the Little Prince and the Pilot, drag badly. (Let the little snot draw his own sheep.) Nor do the songs help; aside from the Fox’s sprightly “Closer and Closer and Closer” and the Snake’s sly “Snake in the Grass,” they’re a mixture of pleasant music by Loewe (which won a Globe) and muddled lyrics by Lerner – “You’re a Child” is a particular muddle. The okay “I Never Met a Rose” got a Globe nod and the mawkish “Little Prince” was up for an Oscar, but neither deserved to be.

The acting is a mixed bag, with Wilder an excellent Fox, eccentrically wise and warm, and Fosse a sleazily sinuous Snake, his dancing and appearance (an all-black outfit with a bowler hat) being a noted influence on Michael Jackson. But Kiley is only dully adequate as the Pilot; he wasn’t the first choice for the role and feels vaguely miscast. And Warner is frankly dreadful as the Prince, convincing neither in his delivery or in his depiction of the Prince’s innocent inquisitiveness. He’s at best a blank and at worst a pest, making the ostensibly bittersweet ending wholly unaffecting.

In 1974, the Globes nominated The Little Prince for Best Picture – Musical/Comedy over Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, which can best be described as a choice, since there’s not a song here half as beloved as the title song to Saddles or a message as enduring (at least as conveyed here) as “You’ve got to remember that these are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know…morons!” So, I fear, were the Globe voters.

Score: 55

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) – ***½

Growing up, actually going to the movies was a relatively rare treat, usually saved for Disney movies or the biggest blockbusters. That included the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy, all of which I saw with my parents at the mall multiplex. I also saw Andrew Garfield’s first film and greatly enjoyed it, possibly because Spider-Man 3 had so tempered my expectations, but I never saw his second film, which I’ve heard little good about. As for the newest trilogy, I skipped Homecoming in theaters (a mistake – it’s quite fun), but made sure to catch Far From Home, which was also fun. (And I saw Into the Spider-Verse, of course, which was delightful.)

All of this is to say I’ve got a well-established connection to Peter Parker as brought to life on the screen, and the fact that No Way Home not only draws upon the legacy of the seven films which preceded it but manages to make it work as a story, rather than a stunt, is damned impressive. Indeed, for my money it’s easily the best of the Tom Holland trilogy, a film which balances humor, thrills, and poignancy with the dexterity of, well, a spider.

At the end of Far From Home, Peter Parker’s identity was revealed by J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), here re-imagined as an Alex Jones-esque conspiracy theorist who touts the belief that that film’s villain, Mysterio, was a hero murdered by Parker. In short order, Peter, MJ (Zendaya), and Ned (Jacon Batalon) find their lives turned upside-down by Peter’s new notoriety, and their applications to MIT are uniformly rejected. Guilt-ridden, Peter approaches Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), who agrees to cast a spell which will cause everyone in the world to forget he’s Spider-Man.

However, Peter wants a few people to remember, and his requested changes lead Strange to botch the spell, opening a rift between parallel universes. Soon, Peter is beset by Dr. Otto Octavius/Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Norman Osborne/Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Max Dillon/Electro (Jamie Foxx), Flint Marko/Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), and Dr. Curt Connors/Lizard (Rhys Ifans), none of whom recognize him as their Peter Parker. Strange helps him to contain them and prepares a device to undo the spell and send them back to their respective universes.

However, Peter has realized that all of these foes were drawn from their universes at the moment of their deaths at Spider-Man’s hands, and some of them – especially Osborne – have the capacity to reform. He seizes the device from Strange and sets about finding a way to heal the foes before sending them back. But in due time, he’ll learn that doing the heroic thing and doing the right thing are not one and the same. And that’s all I’ll say, because if it seems like I’ve given anything away, the film has a lot more tricks up its sleeve.

Suffice to say, the film has its hands full balancing an unusually large cast of characters spanning multiple universes and multiple points in time – Octavius, for example, is initially baffled by the sight of Osborne, knowing him to have died at the end of the first film. Moreover, the characters from the Maguire and Garfield universes have no knowledge of the Avengers, magic, or really any part of the MCU, allowing for some low-key fun with the whole concept of a multiverse. In a higher key are scenes like the fight between Peter (Holland, that is) and Strange in the surreal “mirror universe.”

But the film also deals with very human themes, like the effect Jameson’s muckraking and conspiracy-peddling has on Peter’s, MJ’s, Ned’s, and even Aunt May’s (Marisa Tomei) lives, and the difficulty of living with one’s mistakes, of having to accept when things cannot be made perfect – when things can be healed, but not fixed. The film itself follows suit, and it’s all the better and more touching for it.

A well-crafted script by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers helps, as does Jon Watts’ direction; he directed Homecoming and Far From Home, and his rapport with the cast shines through in the smaller moments, which are frankly the most effective. That’s not to knock the action scenes, which are suitably exciting and technically accomplished (the sound and visual effects are first-rate), but it’s the characters we’ve really come to see, and they don’t disappoint. It’s not a perfect film – not every plot thread pays off equally well – but it’s a very good one.

The large, impressive cast all do fine work. Holland remains a likably unassuming, perpetually overwhelmed Peter and Spider-Man, Zendaya continues to display her skill at depicting cynical humanity as MJ, while Batalon is cheerfully oblivious as ever Ned. Among the imports from previous films, Dafoe and Molina are especially good at playing men caught between decency and villainy, while Foxx and Simmons have fun in more overtly antagonistic roles. And Cumberbatch plays Strange with a softer version of the arrogant humanity he uses in Power of the Dog. There, his capacity for decency came out too late to change the course of events; here, if anything, it comes out too soon.

Score: 85

MWFF: The Adding Machine (1969) – ***

My rationale:

A film of Elmer Rice’s Expressionist play, starring Milo O’Shea and…Phyllis Diller? (It also has Billie Whitelaw and Julian Glover. Not a bad cast.) I’m certainly intrigued, and the fact that a major studio (Universal) was involved, yet it remains so obscure, only fascinates me the more. Bootlegs are available – posters are not.

My review:

CW: suicide.

I’ve only seen musical versions of Rice’s two most famous plays; I saw the opera of Street Scene (composed by Kurt Weill) and a more recent musical adaptation of The Adding Machine, both staged by my alma mater, both with friends of mine in the cast. It might say something about Rice’s reputation in the 21st century that these are the only productions of his work I’ve seen, or even come close to seeing. And that may explain why this film, made decades after Expressionism had gone out of vogue, made so little impact at the time and is so forgotten now.

I still haven’t been able to track down any posters from the film’s British or American release, and the version I watched was taken from a long-ago broadcast (on, of all things, KUTP 45, a station in Phoenix) and might have been cut for time; there are obvious fade-outs for the commercial breaks, and the print I saw ran 91 minutes, while Wikipedia and the IMDb give the running time as 100 minutes. That, and it just looks and sounds like an ancient tape. God knows if any prints even survive, let alone if there’s any hope of a higher-quality version becoming available.

That’s too bad, because The Adding Machine, while not a great film, is quite an intriguing little fable. Zero (O’Shea) is a bookkeeper at a Manhattan department store, put upon by his wife (Diller) and possessed of an unrequited crush on his coworker, Daisy (Whitelaw). On the 25th anniversary of his job, he’s unceremoniously let go, to be replaced by an adding machine; he responds by killing his boss. He’s tried and sentenced to death, making the acquaintance of Shrdlu (Glover), a comically remorseful matricidal nebbish, before his own execution.

Zero finds himself in a carnivalesque afterlife, encountering Shrdlu, who’s disheartened over not going to Hell, and Daisy, who took her own life after his execution, having nothing left to live for. Zero and Daisy finally express their love for one another, but when he learns about the absence of Earthly morality in the afterlife, he’s scandalized and goes off to find a job. After 30 years operating an adding machine, Lt. Charles (Sydney Chaplin) informs him that his soul is to be sent back to Earth, revealing that Zero’s soul has lived thousands of lives, growing more pathetic with each go-round.

The notion of Heaven as an inscrutable bureaucracy has turned up in quite a few films since, including Here Comes Mr. Jordan, A Matter of Life and Death, and Defending Your Life. Here, there’s no beating the system, no overcoming one’s destiny to be repeatedly reborn, improving or declining each time as the case may be. Charles is resigned to it, and doesn’t much relish his job, but Zero is too weak to effectively object, just as he’s too bound by the limitations he placed upon himself in life to embrace happiness in Heaven. It’s depressing, the more so because it rings true. (I’m reminded somewhat of Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.)

Other themes that come into play include the exploitation of labor – here as it relates to office drones rather than manual labor – racial prejudice, such as when Mrs. Zero and her bridge club talk about “our kind,” and the relationship between crime and guilt. Zero feels little guilt for his own crime, and none for wishing his wife dead so he could marry Daisy, while Shrdlu feels nothing but guilt, repenting having read the “profane” Treasure Island and convinced of his damnation for killing his mother, despite his lack of malice and abundance of remorse.

Director Jerome Epstein was an associate of Charlie Chaplin’s (Chaplin reputedly suggested the carnival setting for the afterlife), and while the low budget – around $500,000, according to Wikipedia – is obvious, especially in the misguided use of stock footage at the start of the film, he shows some style, especially in showing the moments of fantasy and flashback which pop up throughout; at his trial, Zero makes a speech to the jury as if he were delivering a monologue on the stage, spotlight and all. The sets, whether of the Zeros’ drab apartment or the various locations in the afterlife, are well executed. (The opening credits are also extremely well done.)

So are the performances, which occasionally struggle against the material. Zero himself is a fairly pathetic character, but O’Shea throws himself into the role, never being quite likable but convincing us of Zero’s doltish, narrow-minded nature. Diller, who gets top billing, is likewise convincing as the irritable, irritating Mrs. Zero, but wisely, she doesn’t overplay the role – we can feel a bit for Mrs. Zero, stuck with Zero for a husband, and in their parting scene she conveys a real comic humanity. Whitelaw is playing a bit against type (compared to The Omen, say), but she’s likably sad, and you wish Zero would get out of his own way and enjoy the afterlife with her. Glover is quite funny as the prissy, histrionic Shrdlu, especially when he’s lamenting his non-damnation while shoving a hot dog into his face.

The Adding Machine isn’t a great film, though it’s hard to properly judge with so diminished a print on hand. But I honestly rather liked it, liked the gloomy fantasy and the social satire of it, and enjoyed the performances considerably. Here’s hoping it can someday be seen to better advantage.

Score: 75