Truman Capote – The Magnificent 60s

The Innocents (1961) ***

One description of this film’s prequel The Nightcomers (1972) was that, even with the overt sex and violence, it was an arthouse picture masquerading as a horror movie. And obviously absent the sex and violence that’s how I feel about this one. I’m of the old-fashioned school when it comes to horror – once in a while I expect to jump. The biggest problem here is that fear is telegraphed in the face of governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr). Instead of the audience being allowed to register terror, all the tension is sapped away by one look of her terrified face.

Atmospheric? Yes! Scary? No.

Certainly, the set-up is likely to spark the darkest imaginations. Orphans Miles (Martin Stephens) and Flora (Pamela Franklin) are abandoned by their uncle (Michael Redgrave) who wants to spent his time enjoying himself in faraway London without having to bother about the care of the minors. The governesses he installs are given carte blanche to deal with any situation that arises – as long as they don’t concern him with it. And he’s so disinterested in the children’s welfare that he hires a completely inexperienced governess in Miss Giddens despite the fact that the previous occupant of the post, Miss Jessel, had died in mysterious circumstances and a little digging would have revealed that she lived a hellish life under the thumb of valet Quint.

The kids appear somewhat telepathetic or telekinetic – Flora knows Miles is coming home before Miss Giddens does, Miles knows when the governess is standing outside his door. They’re maybe a too bit self-indulgent – Flora enjoys watching a spider munch on a butterfly and isn’t above finding out if her pet tortoise can swim, while Miles has Miss Giddens in a neck stranglehold.

But it’s unlikely the children are summoning ghosts – Quint appears to Miss Giddens at the top of a tower and again peering in through a window, Miss Jessel turns up, too, and I lost count of the number of disembodied voices. The ghosts it turns out have taken possession of the children in order to continue their relationship.

And while this is all very clever it does not chill you to the bone. The children are not as cute as they need to be to make this work. You get the impression, given half the chance, they would happily turn into little savages and experiment with all manner of cruelty. And that would occur whether there was the likes of Quint around to lead them astray because the adults in their lives are so selfish and set the wrong kinds of standards. But with the focus perennially on the trembling Miss Giddens, there’s little chance of getting inside the heads of the children.

Since jump scares are not in director Jack Clayton’s cinematic vocabulary, the best scenes are not visual, but verbal, housekeeper Mrs Grose (Meg Jenkins) filling the governess in on the unequal relationship between Quint and Miss Jessel, Flora imagining rooms getting bigger in the darkness (effectively more dark), Miles seeing a hand at the bottom of the lake.

There’s certainly an elegiac tone and the camera clearly sets out to destabilise the audience but that’s just so obvious it seems more an arthouse ploy than a horror schematic.

This was start of Deborah Kerr (Prudence and the Pill,1968) playing psychologically distorted characters. Over the previous decade she had revelled in a screen persona that saw her playing the female lead (sometimes the top-billed star) opposite the biggest male marquee names of the era – Burt Lancaster (twice), Cary Grant (twice), Yul Brynner (twice), Gregory Peck, William Holden, Robert Mitchum (three times), David Niven (twice), Gary Cooper. Now she turned fragile and that screen persona, introduced here, would see her through the next decade.

So she’s both very good and very bad here. Her character facially registers her inner thoughts but those too often get in the way of the audience. I found the kids more limited in their roles, not through acting inexperience, but through narrative restriction.

Jack Clayton (Dark of the Sun, 1968) directs from a screenplay by Truman Capote (In Cold Blood, 1967) and William Archibald (I Confess, 1953) from the celebrated Henry James story.

A bit too artificial for my taste. Probably heresy to admit it but I preferred the prequel.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) ****

Reassessment sixty years on – and on the big screen, too – presents a darker picture bursting to get out of the confines of Hollywood gloss. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is one of the most iconic characters ever to hit the screen. Her little black dress, hats, English drawl and elongated cigarette often get in the way of accepting the character within, the former hillbilly wild child who refuses to be owned or caged, her demand for independence constrained by her desire to marry into wealth for the supposed freedom that will bring, demands which clearly place a strain on her mental health.

Although only hinted at then, and more obvious now, she is willing to sell her body in a bid to save her soul. Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a gigolo, being kept, in some style I should add, with a walk-in wardrobe full of suits, by the nameless wealthy married woman Emily (Patricia Neal), is her male equivalent, a published writer whose promise does not pay the bills. The constructs both have created to hide from the realities of life are soon exposed.

There is much to adore here, not least Golightly’s ravishing outfits, her kookiness and endearing haplessness faced with an ordinary chore such as cooking, and a central section, where the couple try to buy something at Tiffanys on a budget of $10, introduce Holly to New York public library and boost items from a dime store, which fits neatly into the rom-com tradition.

Golightly’s income, which she can scarcely manage given her extravagant fashion expense, depends on a weekly $100 for delivering coded messages to gangster Sally in Sing Sing prison, and taking $50 for powder room expenses from every male who takes her out to dinner, not to mention the various sundries for which her wide range of companions will foot the bill.

Her sophisticated veneer fails to convince those whom she most needs to convince. Agent O.J. Berman (Martin Balsam) recognizes her as a phoney while potential marriage targets like Rusty Trawler (Stanley Adams) and Jose (Jose da Silva Pereira) either look elsewhere or see danger in association.

The appearance of her former husband Doc (Buddy Ebsen) casts light on a grim past, married at fourteen, expected to look after an existing family and her brother, and underscores the legend of her transformation. But the “mean reds” from which she suffers seem like ongoing depression, as life stubbornly refuses to conform to her dreams. Her inability to adopt to normality is dressed up as an early form of feminism, independence at its core, at a time when the vast bulk of women were dependent on men for financial and emotional security. Her strategy to gain such independence is of course dependent on duping independent unsuitable men into funding her lifestyle.

Of course, you could not get away with a film that concentrated on the coarser elements of her existence and few moviegoers would queue up for such a cinematic experience so it is a tribute to the skill of director Blake Edwards (Operation Petticoat, 1959), at that time primarily known for comedy, to find a way into the Truman Capote bestseller, adapted for the screen by George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch, 1955), that does not compromise the material just to impose a Hollywood gloss. In other hands, the darker aspects of her relationships might have been completely extinguished in the pursuit of a fabulous character who wears fabulous clothes.

Audrey Hepburn (Two for the Road, 1967) is sensational in the role, truly captivating, endearing and fragile in equal measure, an extrovert suffering from self-doubt, but with manipulation a specialty, her inspired quirks lighting up the screen as much as the Givenchy little black dress. It’s her pivotal role of the decade, her characters thereafter splitting into the two sides of her Golightly persona, kooks with a bent for fashion, or conflicted women dealing with inner turmoil.

It’s a shame to say that, in making his movie debut, George Peppard probably pulled off his best performance, before he succumbed to the surliness that often appeared core to his acting. And there were some fine cameos. Buddy Ebsen revived his career and went on to become a television icon in The Beverley Hillbillies. The same held true for Patricia Neal in her first film in four years, paving the way for an Oscar-winning turn in Hud (1963). Martin Balsam (Psycho, 1960) produced another memorable character while John McGiver (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) possibly stole the supporting cast show with his turn as the Tiffany’s salesman.

On the downside, however, was the racist slant. Never mind that Mickey Rooney was a terrible choice to play a Japanese neighbor, his performance was an insult to the Japanese, the worst kind of stereotype.

The other plus of course was the theme song, “Moon River,” by Henry Mancini and Johnny mercer, which has become a classic, and in the film representing the wistful yearning elements of her character.

In Cold Blood (1967) *****

Unfairly overlooked in favor of the Coppola/Scorsese grandiose perspective on gangsters, this changed the shape of the crime picture as much as the best-selling book altered the way readers regarded murderers. Neither whodunit, whydunit nor film noir, nonetheless it invites us into the world of the senseless crime, providing an extremely human portrayal of two men if not natural born killers then their pitiful lives always going to lead them in the wrong direction.

Although Perry Smith (Robert Blake) is a fantasist, dreaming of becoming a singing star in Las Vegas, determined to find the lost treasure of Cortez, and convinced a giant bird protected him from vicious nuns in an orphanage, his life did already verge on the fantastical. His mother, a Cherokee, was a star rodeo performer, his father a gold prospector in Alaska, but the mother, an alcoholic, choked to death on her own vomit and the father (Charles McGraw), a hobo in all but name, is astonished that the child he brought up, so he believes, to recognise right from wrong, would stoop to crime. As a child Perry and siblings watched his mother have sex with clients and his father viciously beat her with a belt. Perry is addicted to aspirin to minimize pain from a leg injury, and you can’t help but feel sorry for this otherwise fit young man massaging the massive disfiguring scar, the result of a motorbike accident.

Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) is a very charming cocky personable con man, leaving a trail of bad checks behind him as he masquerades as a best man who has come out without enough cash to buy a wedding outfit for his buddy and, with his convincing patter, hoodwinking store clerks not just into accepting a check for the goods, later to be sold, but also cashing a personal check. His father, too, is stunned to hear his son had criminal tendencies.

Fatherhood is represented as a holy grail. Hickock enjoyed being a parent until he was caught with another girl and had to do “the decent thing” i.e. abandon existing wife and child. The parents of both boys have wonderful, emotion-filled, memories of loving and being loved by their children.

From another prisoner, Hickock has been told of the “perfect score,” a rich farmer called Clutter in Kansas with $10,000 in his safe. The plan, to which Smith has only momentary objection, is to leave no witnesses. Even muttered in grandiose manner, this phrase surely, in anybody’s mind, conjures up slaughter, Smith’s only saving grace that he prevents Hickock raping the daughter Nancy (Benda C. Currin). Their haul amounting to $43 and a radio, you could imagine the thieves wiping out the family in a fit of fury. But that’s not the case, it’s just cold-blooded thinking, an element of leaving no trace behind.

And that’s just what they do, committing an almost perfect crime, no fingerprints, just the mark of the sole of a shoe imprinted in blood. There’s a red herring – old man Clutter had just signed off on an insurance policy worth $80,000. But detective Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) has to solve the crime the old-fashioned way, with inter-state cooperation and months (years in reality) of footslogging. Dewey could have been straight out of film noir with his nippy one-liners and epigrams.

*Other than Alfred Hitchcock, it was unusual for a reissue double bill to comprise*
*two films by the same director.*

Unlike the novel which concentrated as much on the aftermath among the shocked townspeople, the film focuses on the manhunt and Dewey’s deft way with newspapermen and colleagues. The four murders occur off-camera, but by that point we already know the outcome. There’s a virtue-signalling coda that shows the inhumane conditions in which murders were kept on Death Row, but that is countered by a marvellous speech by Dewey on the inequities of being a cop: hounded by media and public for letting someone get away with heinous crime, generally getting a tough time over police methods, lambasted after catching them for not doing it quickly enough, and then having to stand by while media and public launch an outcry to prevent the killers being executed.

All shade, the documentary style achieves the contradiction of appearing sparingly told yet with a wealth of character detail (location and time are ignored) and none of the grandeur and faux community spirit invested in gangsterdom by the likes of Coppola and Scorsese. Smith and Hickock would never pass the entry test for the Mafia given that at least required discipline and the ability to follow orders. Minus the killing spree, these characters might have survived a little longer in the underclass before ending up inside again.

All three principals are brilliant in the understated manner demanded. Robert Blake (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) is the pick, tormented by future dreams and past nightmares, but Scott Wilson (In the Heat of the Night, 1967) has the stand-out scene, gulling store salesmen with his finely worked con, and there is a sense of the big brother in the way he looks after his friend. This might well be the best work by John Forsythe (Topaz, 1969).

And it certainly is one of the finest movies made by writer-director Richard Brooks (The Professionals, 1966) who handles a very difficult subject with at times such delicacy it is almost a complete departure in style.

Book into Film – “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961)

For a start the book – a novella really, scarcely topping the 100-page mark – by Truman Capote was set during the Second World War. And the book’s narrator Paul (George Peppard in the film) is more of an observer in the vein of in Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby and as such is not privy to every action of Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) rather than, say, the redoubtable Dr Watson who, as confidante of Sherlock Holmes, can faithfully record his every action.

So the first task set screenwriter George Axelrod was to update the picture to the contemporary era of the early 1960s. Fashion-wise, this proves a tremendous boon, allowing the director the give Holly her iconic look. And it does permit more leeway with acceptable sexual mores. However, while in both book and film Paul is an aspiring writer, in the book he is initially unpublished, while in the film he has had a book of short stories published, but is living as a gigolo. In the book he is an innocent 19-year-old, mouth clearly agape at Holly’s shenanigans, while in the film he is clearly more mature.

Since Hollywood is intent on providing a happy ending, it was essential for the screenplay to make Paul an acceptable suitor rather than a young swain largely in awe of the captivating Holly.

Axelrod did not have to do much to capture the book’s Holly. In fact, he appropriated wholesale chunks of dialogue. Capote had done such a wonderful job of describing her unique personality that it made a lot of sense to retain her vocabulary and diction.

Axelrod turns Paul into a more dramatic figure, such that he is able to both challenge himself and Holly, emerge from his own self-destructive trap, and develop his own narrative arc, and play a more significant role in Holly’s life, so that the romantic possibilities, which appear distant in the book, can be more easily realized.

The input of other characters is enlarged or diminished. The Japanese neighbor Mr Yunioshi (Mickey Rooney), who only appears at the beginning of the book, is called into more extensive comedic duties by the screenwriter. Mag Wildwood (Dorothy Witney), only seen in passing in the film, has a more significant role in the book, becoming for a time Holly’s flatmate and rival in love. There is no room in the film for Madame Spanella, held responsible in the book for informing the police about Holly’s arrangement with the gangster. For structural reasons, Axelrod is also able to dispense with bar owner Mr Bell, a pivotal character at the book’s opening.

Otherwise, the book acts as a pretty useful treatment, from which the screenwriter need only occasionally depart. Sometimes this is for clarification. In the film Holly insists her marriage to Doc was annulled whereas in the book this is far from clear, leaving her open to charges of bigamy. Axelrod turns into dialogue some of Paul’s observations and turns some dialogue into scenes. In addition, in the book Holly becomes pregnant by her Brazilian lover, thus expecting marriage to automatically follow.

The couple do steal masks from a dime store, but do not visit Tiffany’s together to have the cheap ring inscribed, but the scene has its origins elsewhere in the book. Nor does Paul in the book introduce Holly to the public library and though he finds evidence of her mugging up on South America it is only in the film that that becomes a scene.

The book avoids the happy ending Hollywood was so desperate to reach. Holly goes off on her own. The cat is chucked out of the cab and although a remorseful Holly immediately chases after it, she is too late.

The notion that a creature as wild and individual as Holly Golightly would submit to marriage to an impoverished writer seems a fantasy too far. Unhappy endings were not unknown in Hollywood, look at Casablanca, but for whatever reason Paramount or Blake Edwards dictated otherwise.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) **** – Back on the Big Screen

Reassessment sixty years on – and on the big screen, too – presents a darker picture bursting to escape the confines of Hollywood gloss. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is one of the most iconic characters ever to hit the screen. Her little black dress, hats, English drawl and elongated cigarette holder often get in the way of accepting the character within, the former hillbilly wild child who refuses to be owned or caged, her demand for independence constrained by her desire to marry into wealth for the supposed freedom that will bring, contradictory demands which clearly place a strain on her mental health.

Although only hinted at then, and more obvious now, she is willing to sell her body in a bid to save her soul. Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a gigolo, being kept, in some style I should add with a walk-in wardrobe full of suits, by wealthy married Emily (Patricia Neal), is her male equivalent, a published author whose promise does not pay the bills. The constructs both have created to hide from the realities of life are soon exposed.

There is much to adore here, not least Golightly’s ravishing outfits, her kookiness and endearing haplessness faced with an ordinary chore such as cooking. the central section, where the couple try to buy something at Tiffanys on a budget of $10, introduce Holly to the New York public library and boost items from a dime store, fits neatly into the rom-com tradition.

Golightly’s income, which she can scarcely manage given her extravagant fashion expenditure, depends on a weekly $100 for delivering coded messages to gangster Sally in Sing Sing prison, and taking $50 for powder room expenses from every male who takes her out to dinner, not to mention the various sundries for which her wide range of companions will foot the bill.

The appearance of former husband Doc (Buddy Ebsen) casts light on a grim past, married at fourteen, expected to look after an existing family and her brother, and underscores the legend of her transformation. But the “mean reds” from which she suffers seem like ongoing depression, as life stubbornly refuses to conform to her dreams. Her inability to adopt to normality is dressed up as an early form of feminism, independence at its core, at a time when the vast bulk of women were dependent on men for financial and emotional security. Her strategy to gain such independence is dependent on duping independent unsuitable men into funding her lifestyle.

Of course, you could not get away in those days with a film that concentrated on the coarser elements of her existence and few moviegoers would queue up for such a cinematic experience so it is a tribute to the skill of director Blake Edwards (Operation Petticoat, 1959), at that time primarily known for comedy, to find a way into the Truman Capote bestseller, adapted for the screen by George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch, 1955), that does not compromise the material just to impose Hollywood confection. In other hands, the darker aspects of her relationships might have been completely extinguished in the pursuit of a fabulous character who wears fabulous clothes.

Audrey Hepburn is sensational in the role, truly captivating, endearing and fragile in equal measure, an extrovert suffering from self-doubt, but with manipulation a specialty, her inspired quirks lighting up the screen as much as the Givenchy little black dress. It’s her pivotal role of the decade, her characters thereafter splitting into the two sides of her Golightly persona, kooks with a bent for fashion, or conflicted women dealing with inner turmoil.

It’s a shame to say that, in making his movie debut, George Peppard probably pulled off his best-ever performance, before he succumbed to the surliness that often appeared core to his later acting. And there were some fine cameos. Buddy Ebsen revived his career and went on to become a television icon in The Beverley Hillbillies. The same held true for Patricia Neal in her first film in four years, paving the way for an Oscar-winning turn in Hud (1963). Martin Balsam (Psycho, 1960) produced another memorable character while John McGiver (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) possibly stole the show among the supporting cast with his turn as the Tiffany’s salesman.

The other plus of course was the theme song, “Moon River,” by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, which has become a classic, and in the film representing the wistful yearning elements of her character.

CATCH IT ON THE BIG SCREEN: This is a restoration of the classic. The Showcase chain is showing it all this week in various cinemas throughout the United Kingdom (I caught it last week at my local Showcase). It is also showing in Barcelona on July 26; Amsterdam on July 31-August 3; Stockholm on August 5; and Gent, Belgium, on August 6.

A company called Park Circus – which has offices in London, Paris, Los Angeles and Glasgow – has the rights to the reissue and if you want to find out if the picture will be showing in your neck of the woods at a later date you can contact them on info@parkcircus.com