Reeling Backward: "The Changeling" (1980)

"The Changeling" has an impeccable cinematic pedigree. Not to be confused with the 2008 drama starring Angeline Jolie, this was a horror/thriller featuring George C. Scott as a famous composer who discovers strange things going bump in the night in the old mansion he has rented out.

In the tradition of all haunted house stories ever, rather than immediately decamping upon realizing the threat, he stays and tries to puzzle it out. Because, of course, otherwise we wouldn't have a movie.

(Though some aspects of Eddie Murphy's stand-up days are now considered impolitic, I still think he best nailed it on haunted house movies.)

In addition to Scott, who was then at the height of his powers, the movie also features Golden Age screen legend Melvyn Howard in his next-to-last role, playing (we eventually learn) the titular character. Scott's real-life wife, Trish Van Devere, co-starred with him as a helpful local and hinted-at love interest. Director Peter Medak was (and still is) a busy, respectable maker of film and television.

A Canadian production, "The Changeling" cleaned up at the first-ever Genie Awards, their equivalent of the Oscars, winning best picture as well as the prizes for adapted screenplay, cinematography, sound, sound editing and art design. Amusingly, Scott and Van Devere also won Best Foreign Actor and Best Foreign Actress, respectively.

(Native Canadians Christopher Plummer and Kate Lynch won Actor and Actress, with all others dismissed to the furriner categories.)

So with all that said, I was tremendously disappointed in the movie. The first hour is stultifyingly boring, largely consisting of Scott puttering around the enormous mansion, reacting to noises, peering quizzically at objects. Somehow, he seems to wear a sportcoat, sweater vest and tie in every scene, to the point I wondered if he sleeps in that outfit.

He's playing John Russell, a well-known music composer who has just suffered the tragedy of losing his wife and young daughter in a car accident. He leaves New York City to take a job in Seattle teaching at a local university, to quiet his mind and get away from it all.

The local historical society decides to rent him the Carmichael mansion, which has been vacant for more than a decade, though no one will say why. It's demonstrably ridiculous for one middle-aged man to occupy such a huge space -- four stories and dozens of rooms -- but the place comes with a cool old piano for Russell to noodle upon.

Though it's a supernatural thriller, "The Changeling" doesn't have that dizzying aspect of serendipity about it, as if any number of metaphysical possibilities abound in this place. When we finally learn "the secret" of the haunting, it becomes a mundane story of greed and power. Douglas plays a tycoon and U.S. senator who turns out to be an orphan raised in place of the actual Carmichael son, who was murdered by his father for being born sickly.

(Sorry, the sell-by date on spoilers for 1980 movies has long passed.)

Russell does the usual stuff -- poring through historical records, talking to oldsters, holding a seance at which objects go flying. But it's not until he listens to a recording of the seance that he starts to hear the voice of the boy, pleading for mercy.

Perhaps the film's only truly scary scene is the one in which the murder is depicted, as the father goes into the attic room where the child has been hidden away and drowns him in his bathtub.

The story is supposedly based on the actual experience of a playwright who moved to Denver in the 1960s, and events played out more or less the way they are shown in the film, right down to the hidden body and gold medallion the child wore.

Coming more or less in the middle of Hollywood's haunted house/possession heyday -- "The Exorcist," "The Amityville Horror," "Poltergeist," etc. -- "The Changeling" is the stodgy uncle that wants to hang with the cool kids, knowing the words but not the music.

Reeling Backward: "Billy Budd" (1962)

 "You in your goodness are as inhuman as Claggart was in his evil."

So says the master of the ship in "Billy Budd," the 1962 adaptation of the Herman Melville novel directed, produced, co-written and starring Peter Ustinov as the conflicted captain who utters that line. This gripping and overlooked drama presents two men as paragons of innocence and depravity, and uses them as a lens to peer at the reactions they inspire in the muddled masses of the rest of the crew. It's a morality tale writ in stark shades of gray.

"Billy Budd" was the first major film role for 24-year-old Terence Stamp. Despite playing the title role and the protagonist, Stamp was only nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars. It's obviously a leading role, but older established actors like Robert Ryan and Ustinov received first and second billing, respectively.

It's a full-blooded performance that's built on vacancy. In the commentary track accompanying the DVD, Stamp confesses that he was barely able to speak a word to Ustinov at their initial meeting, so impressed was he by the older man's "powerful aura." It turns out this was the exact quality Ustinov had been seeking, interviewing dozens of young British actors to find someone capable of profound passivity.

He wanted Billy to be a reactive figure who absorbed the worst in other men and returned it with a smile. Indeed, after condemning Billy to death by hanging, Captain Vere (Ustinov) literally begs Billy to despise him for choosing duty over morality. Billy, who gives his age as "17, or 19 ... or 18," responds with his usual quizzical puzzlement. "I did my duty, and you're just doing yours," he says. Vere is more tortured by Billy's absolution than any hatred he hoped to inspire.

When impressed into service in the British navy in 1797, Billy finds the crew aboard the H.M.S. Avenger to be quaking in fear of the cruel master of arms, John Claggart (Ryan). A vicious man who delights in having men flogged for the most minute of infractions -- and even manufacturing ones when they can't be found -- Claggart sees the entire world as an endless chase of prey and hunted. The surface of the sea is calm, he tells Billy, but beneath it every creature is a killer. It's the same on land or on board the ship, he insists.

There's some suggestion that Claggart, who is educated and worldly, once held a high position in the British kingdom and has now fallen low due to outstanding debts or some other scrape with authority. This is a man who does not limit his a vengeful eye to a single person, but casts it upon the whole of society. "I am what I am and what the world has made me," he declares.

Billy, who is guileless to the point of the appearance of idiocy, looks upon Claggart and only sees a man who is lonely and afraid. Claggart nearly succumbs to Billy's offer of friendship, the bile in his soul finally rising to drown any hint of human kindness, which he views as weakness.

It's a chilling performance by Ryan, who often played well-meaning loners. The way he pounds his baton against his leg with every stroke of the floggger's whip, his lips quavering with hunger as he counts the strokes, is one of the most revolting depictions of sadism I've ever seen on film.

Billy, as written by Melville and faithfully translated by Ustinov and co-screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen, is like an angel of God put on Earth unawares of his celestial grace. As a babe he was left on the door of a house in a silk-lined basket, hinting that he was the bastard child of a noble parent. With his nimbus of wavy blond locks, placid blue eyes and slightly androgynous beauty, Stamp truly seems like something not of this world.

Much of this is due to that aforementioned silence. Billy spends an astonishing amount of screen time just staring at and reacting to other actors. When he does speak, he does so in mellifluous tones that impart an organic sort of wisdom, like a child objecting to the wretched constructs of the adult world. "It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man," he says on his first day aboard the Avenger.

Billy also suffers from unintentional silences. When sorely vexed, he is overcome by a stammer that prevents him from any speech. This is pivotal in the final confrontation with Claggart, in which the master-at-arms manufactures accusations of mutiny against Billy, who finally pummels him with a single blow to the chest. After he falls and cracks his head open on a post, the final contemptuous smile Claggart casts at Billy is the devil's sneer of victory.

"Claggart killed you the moment you killed him," Captain Vere tells Billy with sadness.

The officers overseeing the court martial are determined to set Billy free, seeing it as the just triumph of good over evil. But Vere insists their duty is to the laws of the wartime military, not their own personal sense of justice, and browbeats his underlings into returning a death sentence. The idea of stringing up Billy for killing the hated Claggart sets off a mutiny amongst the crew, but Billy quells it with his final, smiling words: "God save Captain Vere!!"

The cast of "Billy Budd" is spectacular. Melvyn Douglas plays The Dansker, an old Danish (he says) sailmaker who seems to have a religious background and acts as the conscience of the ship. The chief officers are ably played by Paul Rogers, John Nevill and David McCallum. Ronald Lewis has a memorable turn as Jenkins, the outspoken chief of the rigging crew who ends up a martyr to Claggart's cruelty. Lee Montague plays Squeak, Claggart's right-hand toady. And John Meillon plays Kincaid, who has his back laid open for insulting Claggart.

"Billy Budd" is a tremendous film, and seen in retrospect its single Academy Award nomination feels like a terrible oversight.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Ninotchka"

"Ninotchka" may just have been the very first romantic comedy.

Although Hollywood produced many romances around 1939, and many of them were funny, I think "Ninotchka" stood out for several reasons. One is that it was Greta Garbo's second-to-last film. She famously abandoned acting in her mid-thirties, at the height of her fame.

Another is that it was among the first mainstream movies to explicitly criticize the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. Don't forget, he was "Uncle Joe" until after the war.

But watching it today, what most jumps out at me is how closely it resembles the structure and form of modern films like "The Proposal," "When Harry Met Sally" or "Leap Year."

The basic formula of the romantic comedy is two very different people meet, hate each other, but eventually come to realize they're in love. External forces conspire to drive them apart, but they subvert them and end up together. The End.

There are obviously a lot of variations, but most films that we dub romantic comedies follow this basic outline. And "Ninotchka" trailblazed the way.

Garbo plays the title character, an envoy from Russia (the movie never refers to the U.S.S.R.) sent to Paris to negotiate a settlement to the jewels belonging to the Grand Duchess Swana, a former member of Russian aristocracy. She lost her family jewels in the Communist takeover, and is trying to prevent three bumbling Russian diplomats from selling them.

The unsmiling, brusque Ninotchka is brought in to iron things out. On the street she runs into a suave gentleman, Leon (Melvyn Douglas), who pitches woo. He's a slick capitalist who prefers not to work, and basically represents everything she reviles. Nevertheless, she's soon smitten.

Soon they realize that Leon is a friend (and perhaps lover) of the duchess. As soon as the business with the jewels is concluded, Ninotchka has to return home and end the romance. Leon attempts to follow her, but is denied as a counter-revolutionary.

In the end, Leon cooks up another diplomatic mess in Constantinople that forces the Russian minister (Bela Lugosi, in a bit part) to send Ninotchka, reuniting them.

The film was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the German-born master who segued easily from silent to sound pictures. But I think the real triumph of this film is in the screenplay, by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch. It just crackles with great dialogue and humor that bites without ever seeming nasty.

For me the best exchange comes when Ninotchka and the duchess meet at a swank restaurant. Ninotchka is there with Leon, and Swana is none too happy with the presence of the woman who has (from her perspective) stolen her jewels and her man. Ninotchka has just made a pointed reference to the aristocracy using the Cossacks to whip the people into line:

Duchess: "You're quite right about the Cossacks. We made a great mistake when we let them use their whips. They had such reliable guns."

Or this exchange, when Ninotchka steps off the train and refuses to let a porter take her suitcase.

Ninotchka: "Why should you carry other people's bags?"
Porter: "Well, that's my business, ma'am."
Ninotchka: "That's no business. That's social injustice!"
Porter: "That depends on the tip."

I can't say as I was particularly dazzled by the Garbo/Douglas pairing. It's one of those goofy movie romances where the leading man falls in love within minutes of meeting his lady, and he spends the next reel or two convincing her -- and the audience -- it's true love.

If "Ninotchka" were made today, it would come off as a cliched knock-off of the old romantic comedy model. But it endures because it is the mold, not the imitation.

3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"

One of the things that drives me crazy about movies is how circumspect everyone always is about money.

Characters in films almost never mention exact dollar amounts, as if doing so would throw off the audience. Maybe it's because the orders of scale are so crazy in Hollywood, and filmmakers just don't have an idea how an average family making $50,000 or so gets by. Even on an inexpensive movie, that amount is probably less than the catering budget.

That's probably also why movie homes are so huge. Even in cinematic families that are presented as middle-class, the children will have bedrooms that are larger than most real homes' master suites. I guess they just can't fit the cameras into a 10' x 9' suburban bedroom.

So one of the things I really liked about "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" -- other than the fact it's a top-notch comedy -- is that it's very specific about money. Since it's the story of a New York family that gets in over their heads while trying to procure their ideal domicile, figures are quoted exactly and frequently. Watching Cary Grant as the put-upon title character, you can practically see the dollar figures flying before his eyes.

Compare that with "The Money Pit," a more modern film with a similar theme. My memory may be fuzzy, but I don't recall a dollar amount ever being stated in that movie. Wonder how you can characterize anything as a "pit" when you don't even know exactly how much money is being dumped into it.

Right off the start Mr. Blandings' lawyer/best friend/narrator, Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas) says that Blandings is an insurance executive who does pretty well, making $15,000 a year. Using the U.S. Labor Bureau's handy-dandy inflation calculator, I learn that equals nearly $135,000 in today's dollars. So Mr. Blandings is upper-middle class, but not what most people would call wealthy.

(Keep in mind that even in 1948, when the film was made, New York's cost of living was astronomical. By today's numbers, that $135,000 salary works out to only about $61,000 in Indianapolis.)

The film (directed by Henry Potter) opens with a neat scene in which the Blandings go about their normal morning routine. Jim Blandings is assaulted by boxes falling off the closet shelf when he goes to fetch his robe, and by bottles careening out of the medicine cabinet when he's trying to brush his teeth. That's after he's finished waiting for his daughters (Sharyn Moffett and Connie Marshall) to get finished in the bathroom. Then he must duck around the head of his wife Muriel (Myrna Loy) to see in the mirror to shave. They can barely squeeze the whole family into the tiny dining room for breakfast. Clearly, the Blandings are boxed in.

However, they do have their own maid, Gussie, which begs a lot of questions. If Gussie cooks and cleans, and the Blandings girls (about age 12) can mostly take care of themselves, what exactly is it that Mrs. Blandings does all day?

After shooting down a proposal to redo their apartment for $7,000, Mr. Blandings hatches on a scheme to buy a Connecticut spread. His idea is to spend a few bucks more than they would have unloaded on the apartment to buy a whole big place with plenty of room for everyone. Of course, everything goes wrong from the get-go.

They spend $11,500 on a run-down old place that every engineer they talk to says must be torn down. They hire an architect (Reginald Denny) with the proviso not to spend more than $10K building a new place. But their dreams of the perfect place run amok, with demands for private baths for each bedroom, a study, flower room and so forth. The shocked look on Cary Grant's face when they get the final estimates -- the lowest is $21,000 -- is priceless.

The story continues with various snafus and foul-ups making the construction more frustrating and costly. The funniest bit is their hiring an old-timer to drill a well. He drills down 227 feet -- at $4.50 a foot -- before the construction crew discovers a natural spring six feet below the basement floor.

There's also some subplots about Mr. Blandings suspecting his wife of having an affair with Bill Cole, and Jim's unsuccessful attempt to come up with a new sales slogan for his biggest account, Wham, a meat-like product with a more than passing resemblance to Spam.

"Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" is a thoroughly entertaining family comedy, with some riffs on the American dream/obsession about getting ahead. And when it comes to dollars and cents, it's right on the money.

3.5 stars