I confess; I love movies from the late forties, the fifties, and the early sixties; I love movie musicals and full length cartoons. So it shouldn't be a surprise that I am escaping the summer heat by watching old movies.
Day before yesterday, I watched 1953's Mogambo starring Clark Gable, and I was struck by the resemblance to one of my favorite John Wayne movies, 1962's Hatari! Consider this:
1. The title is one word that makes no sense in English. Is it Swahili?
2. Both were filmed on location in Africa.
3. Both the safaris are engaged in capturing animals for zoos, not trophy hunting. Some kind of mid-century political correctness, I suppose.
4. A baby elephant plays an important role. I don't know a whole lot about what excites men, but watching that baby elephant in Mogambo feel up Ava Gardner was an experience – even for me. In Hatari!, the baby elephants are comic props, but still -- there you are – an important baby elephant.
5. An outstanding supporting cast: Gable had Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, plus Donald Sinden and Philip Stainton, plus a bunch of pineapple-eating gorillas; Wayne had Elsa Martinelli, and the incomparable Red Buttons, plus Hardy Kruger, Gerard Blain, Bruce Cabot, Michele Girardon, and Valentin de Vargas – and some billy goats.
6. The animals of Africa costarred in both movies.
7. Both leading actors were in their fifties, but attracting women less than half their age. (Martinelli, 27, Kelly, 24. Gardner was 31, only 20 years younger than Gable)
One of the delightful flukes of this period in Hollywood was the costuming department. In both movies, the actors look like they just stepped out of a bandbox. Their clothes on safari are crisp, freshly pressed and dazzlingly clean. Either they never saw the inside of a suitcase or one of the bearers – boys, as they keep referring to them in Mogambo (Phew!) – spent all his time washing and ironing. I wish I knew his technique. To be fair, when Ava Gartner returns after the boat taking her away so that Grace Kelly has a clear field runs aground, her immaculate white dress is mud stained to the hips. Otherwise, the costumes were pristine.
It is fashionable to depreciate John Wayne's acting. People who know little about it echo the words of critics who for whatever reason put him down. They say he only played one role – himself. Well, no, that wasn't it at all, what he did was to be natural on camera. That is trickier and more difficult than you might imagine. There are a few critics out there who are starting to reappraise his work – and they are discovering that he was one of Hollywood's best. Watch Red River, The Shepard of the Hills, The Searchers, and something light like McClintock or Hatari! and see if he is playing the same role. Pilgrim.
I found it interesting that Clark Gable is quoted as saying, "I'm no actor and I never have been. What people see on the screen is me." So here is another similarity. They both in one way or another claim or are claimed to be not actors.
Comparing the two movies side by side, Wayne acts rings around Gable. My criteria is simple: I believed Wayne, I didn't believe Gable.
That being said, Clark Gable was great in some roles. The Misfits is marvelous, one of my favorites, and in Gable's estimation, his best performance. I can't even imagine anyone else as Rhett Butler. Gable could act – when he had a decent script. His analysis of the difficulty of playing Gone With the Wind should be in a textbook for writers as well as thespians. He could do it when he had the proper help – he just didn't have it in this movie.
Mogambo is a much triter story than Hatari! The plot is simple. Ava Gardner gets herself stranded at Gable's place in the wilds of Africa. He has an affair with her while waiting for the weekly boat to take her back to wherever. The boat arrives to take her off and bring in Grace Kelly and her scientist husband, Donald Sinton. Gable is immediately smitten with Kelly. The boat runs aground, and Gardner has to come back. Since they have to wait weeks for parts to repair the boat, they take Gardner on safari with them. Gable and Kelly begin to spoon. Since this movie was made in the fifties, we are spared the gory details. It is never clear whether Kelly and Gable consummate their relationship, but there isn't any doubt about Gardner and Gable.
The "road of trials" that make up the second act of the movie is fairly predictable. I frequently don't know whether the middle of a movie was predictable when it was made or whether I've seen the same obstacles so many times since. In this case, in my opinion, the second act was predictable. For instance, I knew as soon as Gable said that they would leave Gardner with the district ranger that they wouldn't be able to. I was right, of course. Predictable.
In the third act, Gable decides to tell Sinden (while he is doing his "scientific work" –photographing the gorillas) that Gable and Kelly are in love and that she will be staying with him. However, he is so impressed with Sinton's work and his discourse about their marriage (I think, anyway) that he changes his mind. He gets drunk and starts to grope Gardner. Kelly catches them, and he deliberately intensifies her disgust -- with Gardner's active cooperation.
Then for some reason that was never clear to me he realizes that he is really in love with Gardner. She, of course, has been in love with him all along. That is the problem. I didn't buy Gable's abrupt changes of heart. With Hollywood, you never know what got left on the cutting room floor. Maybe there were scenes that Gable did enough to sell me. Maybe there was enough foreshadowing to make his decisions reasonable. Maybe.
On the boards at imdb.com, someone asked if the actors in the canoe were really talking about female circumcision. I don't know what else they could have meant. Chastity belts? I never heard of them used in Africa. Sometimes Hollywood writers, producers and/or directors act like sniggling little boys. On the other hand, Kelly's embarrassed delivery of the line, "Oh, I know what you are talking about." earned her that Golden Globe.
Mogambo is supposed to be a remake of Red Dust also starring Clark Gable. I haven't seen Red Dust, but I am skeptical. Let's see: The location is different, the character's names are different, and the occupations of the characters are different. Do they go out on safari? I doubt it, given the above, so the "road of trials" must be different. Maybe they go surveying out in the jungle, given that surveyor is the husband's occupation rather than "scientist." Furthermore, Jean Harlow takes a bath in a rain barrel and cleans out a parrot's cage as opposed to the shower in an open-air, stake-fenced booth that Gardner takes and feeding an eager baby elephant. (male) What took the place of the "battle with the gorillas? I can't imagine. Maybe they transport the gorillas to Indochina. I wouldn't put that past Hollywood.
So, how is it a remake? Uh. Well, the plot is the same – a two way love triangle. How unusual! How original! How many plots are there, anyway? 3, 7, 11, 36? It did, however, give the studio a good slogan: "Only Gable can remake a Gable movie."
Ava Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for the role of Honeybear. She took a very stereotypical character, the bad girl with the heart of gold, and made something three-dimensional out of it. Something I could identify with. Something I could believe. She steals the film.
Besides, whatever else you may say about her, the woman could wear clothes. She had a small waist and narrow hips, but not the anorexia of today's top models. The fashion then was for broad shoulders, so I would assume her shoulders were padded, but they weren't in the peasant blouse she wore, so maybe she just had wide shoulders. She was considered a sexpot back then, but by today's standards she wasn't particularly big-busted. None of that taped together, pushed up, artificial cleavage either. She looked great in the styles of the time, small waist, full skirts, wide shoulders, neck interest, full, but form fitting slacks.
When I am praising the costumes, you know the plot wasn't doing much.
Kelly was also nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for best Supporting Actress. She, too, had a cardboard character: the unsatisfied, married-too-young, submerged-in-her-husband's-career housewife who falls for the first hunk who makes a play for her. (Betty Friedan could have used her as an example of the "problem with no name.") Like Gardner, she wrung every nuance out of an essentially two-dimensional part without going over the top.
Her costumes suited her role, too. Very drab and upper-class. The best evidence of class in the movie. Her English accent didn't do it; that's for sure.
I have nice things to say about Donald Sinden and Philip Stainton. Both did everything they could do with the material. Both apparently gave the director everything he asked for in a performance. Good solid work that never stole the limelight from the stars and did what they could to ensure the success of the movie. Character actors generally have a more difficult time than Stars. If they don't do a good job, they don't get roles. Stars can goof off and still be cast as long as people go to see "the Stars.' Character actors can't –which usually means the characters act at least as well as the stars, if not better. Mogambo is a good example; the supporting actors outacted the star, Gable, even though they had less to work with.
Comparing the two movies, Hatari! is a much better script. True, the actors had more time to develop their characters (157 min.) than the actors in Mogambo. (115 min.) On the other hand there were more characters to develop in Hatari! Sinden and Stainton in Mogambo were sketched rather broadly. As Stainton, Eric Pohlmann hardly gets out of the background enough for us to realize that there is another character. Given the run time of the movie there isn't the time to develop the subplots that make Hatari! so much fun. No subplots in Mogambo.
The point is that competent actors can make something out of a good script. Really good actors like Kelly, Gardner, and Sinden make something out of a marginal script. Gable couldn't.
If I had to make a choice between Mogambo and Hatari!, I would choose Hatari! It is better, it is funnier, and it is more believable. All things considered, Mogambo isn't a bad movie; it just could have been better. But don't take my word for it, see them both. Only, I'd suggest borrowing Mogambo, but buying Hatari!
No comments:
Post a Comment