The Screengrab : max steiner

Summerfest '08: "A Summer Place"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Summer is one of my favorite times to see a movie. Growing up in Arizona in the shadows of a shopping mall, going to the multiplex on a hot summer day when I didn't have school and wanted to kill a few dozen brain cells out of the blinding sun and wilting heat was one of my absolute favorite things to do. Let the cool kids go show off by the swimming pool: for me it was the air-conditioned comfort and the fulfilling fantasies of the silver screen. This summer, in between checking out what's new in the world of blockbusters and indie flicks of today, I'll be bringing you a mini-review of 15 'summer' movies of the past, judged by criteria I made up the other day over a couple of watermelon margaritas. They won't always be good movies, but they'll always bring you a certain summery je ne sais quoi.

Let's start with one of the most famous summer flicks of all time: 1959's A Summer Place.

THE ACTION: Rich toff Richard Egan totes his snobby, moralistic wife (Constance Ford) and pouty, vine-ripe teenage daughter to a New England resort. The owner of the resort is grungy failed capitalist Arthur Kennedy and his lovely lady Dorothy McGuire, who run the joint alongside their dimwitted but hunky son, Troy Donahue. Twenty years prior, Egan had a little thang-thang going with McGuire, and as everyone goes about their summer business, the two rekindle their hot and heavy relationship, as their hormone-crazed children follow suit. This being the 1950s and all, Ford completely flips out, a shameful divorce takes place, a pregnancy scare ensues, and everyone looks at each other very meaningfully while wearing not particularly revealing swimwear. You got all that?

THE PLAYERS: Writer/director Delmer Daves brought to the big screen this adaptation of the biggest '50s potboiler novel this side of Peyton Place, but the real stars here are Donahue and Dee, the resplendent teen idols of the era. Their hot bods and perfect features cast a glare off the screen that you can feel on your brow, and their bad acting raises a stink that overpowers the smell of sea breezes and stale popcorn. Anyone who thinks that vapid, over-exploited, undertalented teen sensations are a recent phenomenon needs look no further than the clunky performances of Troy and Sandra, who became huge stars with the movie's success. (Daves hitched his wagon pretty thoroughly to Troy Donahue's star after this, which is probably why you've never heard of him before.)

SUMMER FUN: If your idea of a good time is hanging around a shabby beach resort and sipping cocktails, this is a real good-time party movie. But it's sadly lacking in any real watusi-and-Bacardi throwdowns, and the ugly shadow of rock and roll never rears itself across the door of the B&B. (Instead, you get Max Steiner's memorable score, which, when recorded by Percy Faith and his orchestra, became a monster hit, and one of the most inescapable tunes of its day.) The adults' idea of fun is sitting around sipping cocktails and making catty comments, along with some fun class resentment over who can afford the better well drinks, and there isn't much surfing to be had around here, so the kids have to follow their parents' lead and fill the long empty summer days with lots and lots of '50s-style fucking. Repressively delicious!

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: There's not a lot of room for the universal signifier of summer fun here. The movie is set on the east coast, so it leans more towards clamdiggers and outfits that look like they weren't quite formal enough for the tennis court. (Oddly enough, though, the resort where the movie takes place -- designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, no less -- is not in New England, but in Carmel, California. Would it have killed them to throw in one surfboarding sequence, I ask you?)

BIKINI PARTY TIME: Ho yeah! Let those who doubt the awesome power of sublimated sexuality behold rock-ribbed, blank-faced Troy Donahue, lounging around in his tight shorts, vainly attempting to figure out what everyone else in the movie is trying to say. Behold also Sandra Dee, America's favorite symbol of purity, being despoiled before our very eyes, decked out in barely modest beach couture as she frowns out the famous line "Have you been bad, Johnny? Have you been bad with other girls?" Has he ever! A Summer Place is a little too crammed with soap-opera histrionics and Freudian middle-class guilt to be a real good-time summer party movie, but as a prime example of potboiler sex romps and the movie that launched a million shameful teenage boners, it's well worth a look.

No, But I've Read the Movie: THE FOUNTAINHEAD

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Up until now, the "No, But I've Read the Movie" has focused on great works of western literature, and assessed the movie versions to see if they can possibly stand up to the titanic reputations of the novels upon which they are based. That ends today! For today, we will focus on one of the most successful, and yet overrated and overblown, works of the western canon: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It's a novel that helped launch her career as one of the preeminent authors and philosophers of our time, but as a novel, it's hokey, overlong, bloated, and filled with characters one dimension short of being one-dimensional; and as philosophy, it's incomplete, inconsistent, and unable to look past its own epistemological shortcomings. Rand's ideology of Objectivism became hugely popular, just as her novels became huge best-sellers, but whereas most literary adaptations were doomed to failure because what makes a great novel rarely makes a great movie, anyone daring to tackle her endlessly preachy books would be faced with the prospect of improving on the original, rather than dumbing it down for the format. Given the runaway success of The Fountainhead -- Rand's story of an incorruptible architect who refuses to compromise his craft to satisfy the demands of the masses -- it was inevitable that there would be a film adaptation. The question is, how would it handle such a patently unworkable premise and fundamentally unbelievable storyline?

Mistakes, as they say, were made. Casting the young, fiery Patricia Neal -- 26 years younger than her co-star and with virtually no big-screen experience -- was one major gamble. Casting earnest, plain-speaking Gary Cooper, who excelled in playing jus'-folks characters who knew what was right as the pompous, speechifying Howard Roark was another. And it didn't exactly do anyone any favors to select the hapless King Vidor (who, for every Stella Dallas or The Crowd he had in him, also had a Duel in the Sun or Beyond the Forest) to direct. But what should have sent a jolt of fear down the spines of everyone involved in the production is who Warner Brothers hired to turn Ayn Rand's mess of a novel into a coherent screenplay: none other than Ayn Rand. She made it a condition of the sale of the rights to the novel that only she could write the script, and her fierce demeanor during pre-production (she apparently nearly drove the formidable King Vidor to a nervous breakdown) meant that, as with her hero Howard Roark, it would be her way or no way at all. This was made explicit when Warner wanted to trim Roark's famous speech before the jury at his trial down to a manageable length because it was rambling and dull; Rand pitched a fit, demanding it be included in the movie in its entirety or there would be no movie. The result is right there on the screen for all to see, in all its rambling, dull glory. She got the movie she wanted -- the question is, did anyone else?

WHAT IT HAD: You certainly can't fault The Fountainhead for inauthenticity. With the force of nature that was Ayn Rand writing the script and throwing her weight around as much as possible behind the scenes, it's as faithful an adaptation of the novel as we're ever going to get. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is subject to debate, but its truth cannot be denied. The score is one of Max Steiner's livelier ones, and King Vidor occasionally gets to hit those whoozy melodramatic notes at which he excelled. A few of the supporting cast, including Raymond Massey as the newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand and Robert Douglas as the cartoonish villain Ellsworth Toohey, figured out what they were up against pretty quickly and decided to throw in the towel, resulting in some enjoyable performances. And, again, the basic story and the ham-handed philosophy from the novel are there, more or less perfectly intact, for better or for worse.

WHAT IT LACKED: Aside from a point, a direction, or any sense of style, decency or restraint? Pretty much everything. Vidor was clearly phoning it in as much as possible, even for a hack like him. Ayn Rand's script, much like the novel, hasn't got much going for it; the characters are cardboard-thin, the motivations are as transparent as the glass in Howard Roark's skyscrapers, and the situations strain the credulity of anyone who, unlike Ms. Rand, has actually interacted with other human beings and seen the way they behave. The two leads are amongst the least charismatic in screen history: Patricia Neal's heaving, fire-breathing, nearly psychotic Dominique Francon would be ridiculous just on her own, but is especially so when contrasted with Gary Cooper's abysmally miscast Howard Roark. Cooper reportedly didn't understand the screenplay at all, and tried to downplay Roark's character, leading to total disaster: one of the great tragedies of Charlton Heston's recent death is that the overwrought ham never had the chance to take a shot at Howard Roark, the character he was born to play.

DID IT SUCCEED?: Critics hated it then, and they hate it now, but Rand's books have always been rather critic-proof, both in literary and philosophical terms. More pertinently, it wasn't much of a success at the box office, either; at the time of its release, it barely broke even (it didn't cost much to make due to Rand and Vidor ramming it through to completion in less than two months, and it shows). However, it's picked up a certain degree of cachet in subsequent years: devotees of Objectivism have flocked to it because of their cultlike fervor for Rand's works, and it's also acheived a bit of a cult status in so-bad-it's-good circles. Rand herself blamed studio interference for the movie's failure (because it certainly couldn't have been her fault) and vowed never to write for the movies again. She never did, but her books still exert a mystical hold over some people in Hollywood; a big-budget adaptation of the interminable Atlas Shrugged is in preproduction and slated for a 2009 release, and longstanding rumor had it that a remake of The Fountainhead was brewing, to be directed by Michael Cimino. It never happened, thus robbing us of the delightfully egomaniacal romp that would have been, but rumors of a remake persist, this time -- even more wonderfully/terribly -- with Oliver Stone's name attached.