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Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Separate Tables -1983

Feb 08, 2017

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Page 1: Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Separate Tables -1983
Page 2: Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Separate Tables -1983

SEPARATE TABLES 1983lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2013/06/separate-tables-1983.html

With major motion pictures looking more like overproduced TV shows: Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fastand Furious: God Only Knows How Many. And binge-watch television programming providing the most satisfyingviewing around: Sherlock, Downton Abbey, In Treatment—I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I completelyjettison the cinephile conceit of this blog and concentrate exclusively on network television and cable TV. As it’s awidely-held belief that today’s Golden Age is taking place not on movie screens but on the HD flatscreens in ourliving rooms (a great article on the topic can be found here at Joe’s View); I’ll seize upon the current zeitgeist as anopportunity to highlight a 1983 cable-TV adaptation of a play which takes advantage of the intimacy-enhancingattributes of the diminished-screen medium to produce a work a great deal truer to its source material than theOscar-winning 1958 motion picture adaptation. Terence Rattigan’s two-act play, Separate Tables debuted on Broadway in 1956 after having enjoyed a successfulrun in London’s West End since 1954. Four years later, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, and DeborahKerr starred in a significantly reworked film version that garnered seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture)with awards going to Niven and co-star, Wendy Hiller.

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Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster in the 1958 film adaptation of Separate Tables

Though aware of the 1958 film adaptation of Separate Tables by reputation, I only just this month got around toactually seeing it. Alas, in spite of its pedigree, cast, awards, and overall fine performances (excluding the jarringlyineffectual duo of Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth. He, doing all of his acting with his teeth; she, going forsuperficial but merely coming off as artificial), I was underwhelmed. A handsome production to be sure, butstrangely inert.But to be fair, I suppose the true source of my dissatisfaction with the Lancaster movie lies in my having beenexposed, just two weeks prior, to the vastly superior 1983 HBO television adaptation of Separate Tables directed byJohn Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, The Day of the Locust, Sunday, Bloody Sunday) and starring—be still my heart—Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Heretofore unknown by me (how was THAT possible?), this film is simply anextraordinary acting showcase for all concerned, and comes off as something of a minor theatrical miracle: thefilmed play that satisfies as a film. It's such a feast of stunning performances and heart-wrenching emotion (far morefaithful to Rattigan's play) that the rather cool film version can't help but pale in comparison.

Julie Christie as Anne Shankland

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Julie Christie as Sibyl Railton-Bell

Alan Bates as John Malcolm Ramsden

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Alan Bates as Major David Angus Pollock

Separate Tables was filmed in Bristol, England following the $24 million dollar mega-flop of Schlesinger's HonkyTonk Freeway (1981), a movie that signaled the end of John Schlesinger's glory days as the go-to expatriate directorof big-budget hits. At first glance, the excellence of Separate Tables as a TV-film would appear to signal a kind ofcareer resurgence for John Schlesinger, but instead it represented the last glimmer of brilliance in a steadyprofessional decline for the director that extended from his last hit feature film—the 1976 thriller, Marathon Man—tohis death in 2003.There’s no guessing what lay behind the mediocrity of most of Schlesinger's post-1983 films, but something aboutreturning to his homeland, working with a nearly all-British cast, and being reunited with two actors whose careershe's largely responsible for having ignited (Julie Christie: Darling - 1965, Alan Bates: A Kind of Loving - 1962), bringsout the Schlesinger of old. Always a gifted actor's director with an eye for the broken spirit behind the artifice ofcalm, Separate Tables is top-form John Schlesinger and a triumph on every level. I was hoping for a good movie,but I wasn't expecting a TV-film I hadn't even known existed before this year would turn out to be one of the finestfilms of John Schlesinger’s very distinguished career.

Irene Worth as Mrs. Maud Railton-Bell

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The entirety of Separate Tables occurs within the dining room and lounge of The Beauregard Hotel, a modestresidence hotel in the resort town of Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. Concerning itself with the livesand interactions of the hotel’s sundry inhabitants - most of them elderly, nearly all of them alone - Act I: “Table by theWindow” takes place in December, 1954; Act II: “Table Number Seven” occurs some 18 months later. As is thecustom with most theatrical productions of Separate Tables, the lead roles in Acts I & II, while different characters,are played by the same actors. Thus, not only are we blessed with the reteaming of frequent movie co-stars JulieChristie and Alan Bates (Far from the Madding Crowd, The Go-Between, Return of the Soldier), but we're grantedthe exceptionally rare treat of seeing these awe-inspiring actors in dual roles. (This device was abandoned in thefilm version, which cast different actors in each role and compresses the events of a year and a half into oneoverwrought couple of days.)

Claire Bloom as Miss Cooper

In “Table by the Window,” Julie Christie (looking quite the stunner in an elaborate 50s hairdo that succeeds whereseveral of her high-profile period dramas of the '60s hadn't: getting Christie to abandon her trademark bangs) playsan aging fashion model “accidentally” reunited with ex-husband Alan Bates, a disgraced Labor politician drowninghis regrets in drink and a one-sided love affair with the hotel’s compassionate proprietress Claire Bloom. “TableNumber Seven” has Christie as a childlike, repressed spinster dominated by her mother (the splendid Irene Worth)and infatuated with a posturing military Major (Bates) harboring a dark secret.

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All of these characters share the common, pitiable trait of fighting to maintain a sense of dignity while struggling tocope with regret, loss, disillusionment, age, fear, and most acutely, loneliness. Within the crippling confines of staid,British social conventions—such as the doggedly adhered-to tradition of hotel guests dining at separate tables inspite of sometimes years-long associations—Separate Tables provides a most moving dramatization of thecontradictious nature (frail, yet resilient) of the human soul.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMI’m showing my age when I say I feel the same about good acting as young audiences today feel about noise,explosions, stunts, and special effects: I don’t need much else. Separate Tables is pretty much a filmed play.There’s essentially one big set, no superfluous “opening up” of the sort engaged in by the 1958 film, and if there’sany kind of cinematic dexterity on display at all, it’s Schlesinger’s ability to come up with so many interesting anglesin such cramped quarters (although a pesky boom mic shadow makes an appearance in one scene). But with a castas talented as the one assembled for this TV movie, all you can wish for is that the director keep the filmmakinggimmicks to a minimum and just let the actors do their stuff. And, happily, that is just what Schlesinger does. The

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performances in Separate Tables are the main attraction, and let me tell you, there's not a IMAX CGI experiencethat can match the thrill of watching gifted actors at the top of their game.

Resident busybodies Miss. Meacham (Sylvia Barter) and Mrs. Railton-Bell(Worth) unearth some unpleasant news about one of the hotel guests.

PERFORMANCESA welcome problem with having a favorite actor about whose work one has written enthusiastically time and timeagain, is the fear that you’re going to one day run out of superlatives. Well, in the case of Julie Christie, I think I've hitit. In having already written essays on no less than six Julie Christie films to date, I think I've used up my entirethesaurus of accolades. Which is a shame, because in a long career of noteworthy performances that never fail toleave me deeply impressed by her beauty, skill, and sheer star quality, her work in the dual roles of Separate Tablesleft me fairly thunderstruck. Julie Christie's not just good in Separate Tables, she's magnificent. She gives what is forme the absolute best performance of her career. And given how over the moon I am about her already, that's reallysaying a a mouthful.

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Having carved an early career out of playing shallow, self-involved characters, Christie is in fine form and in well-trodterritory as the vainglorious Anne in "Table by the Window." But what I love is how, after playing variations on thistype for years now, she's still able to mine bits of genius in her characterization that result in making her performanceone that feels wholly fresh, wholly astonishing. A favorite: in a moment of defensive desperation when her characterconfesses to her accusing husband "You see, I've still got a little pride left !" Christie conveys in a split second, withjust vocal emphasis and the look in her eyes, the kind of wounded dignity a person clings to moments before havingto relinquish everything to the fear of being alone. It's a brilliant moment.

But without a doubt, my highest praise is reserved for Julie Christie in "Table Number Seven." I've never seen her inthe role of the mousy underdog before, and witnessing a severely deglamorized Christie - who always registers suchstrength and intelligence - losing herself within a character of tissue-thin self esteem and naked vulnerability, israther glorious. She floored me completely and the double-barreled impact of both roles is both mesmerizing andunforgettable.

THE STUFF OF FANTASYSay what you will about the cultural tradition of “English Reserve,” but a society rooted in formality and ritualsdesigned to conceal emotion and ensure personal distance makes for some seriously fascinating drama. What givesSeparate Tables its profound intensity (and where this particular cast most notably excels) is that the characters sooften speak to each other in ways antithetical to how they really feel. In less talented hands, such restraint can result in a film that feels remote and formal. But when you have a cast ofactors capable of showing the concealed layers of emotion and sensitivity lying behind the stiff-upper-lip dialog, youget characterizations of staggering depth and complexity. It’s very poignant and often heartbreaking to see theseflawed characters struggling to maintain their decorum while every fiber of their being is screaming out to be loved,seen, accepted, or understood. As I've indicated, the entire cast is flawless, but special mention has to go to AlanBates (whose Major Pollock is nothing short of transcendent) and the always-enchanting Claire Bloom. Bloom hasalways possessed a kind of grounded, worldly quality, and never has it been put to better use. Her characterprovides the play with a sensitive ballast to whom the more emotionally uncertain guests gravitate.

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THE STUFF OF DREAMSGay playwright Terence rattigan often wrote works which subtly critiqued the cold rigidity of the upper classes. Indramatizing the crippling effects of sensitive people forced to live lives of suppression and isolation, in SeparateTables, Rattigan (author of The Sleeping Prince, which was made into the Marilyn Monroe film, The Prince and theShowgirl) makes a deliberate plea for the acceptance and tolerance of those who are "different"; those don't easilyfit into the narrow confines of what is socially perceived as normal or conventional.

Sibyl: "What's the matter with me? There must be something the matter withme...I'd so like to be ordinary."

Miss. Cooper: "I've never met an ordinary person. The one thing I've learnt in fiveyears is that the word 'normal' applied to any human creature is utterly

meaningless."

There are other, equally insightful entreaties in the play for the abidance of a compassionate humanity towardsthose we don't understand, all of them capable of inducing a major case of waterworks when delivered by such a

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stellar cast.Note: Those interested can research Separate Tables online to read more about a gay subplot that was consideredfor the Broadway version but ultimately jettisoned before opening.

BONUS MATERIALA big shout out of thanks to my good friends Jeff Marquis and Chris Tassin, two faithful readers of this blog who,upon learning of my obsession with all things Julie Christie, graciously and very generously sent me a copy ofSeparate Tables. This particular film has only ever had a VHS release, never seems to pop up on television, and isas rare as hen's teeth on eBay. You might well imagine that I flipped my graying wig when I received it, and as I hadsuch a delicious time crying my eyes out watching it, I will forever be in their debt.Jeff and Chris are the comic geniuses behind Punchy Players, a series of hilariously loopy viral videos that havemade a smash on YouTube. If you're a classic film fan (and what would you doing here is you weren't?), you owe itto yourself to check out these great videos HERE.

Lastly, I have to give a big hug and kiss of thanks to my sweetheart (whom I'll spare by not mentioning his name).For without him I would never have seen the long-out of print 1958 version of Separate Tables. After watching theSchlesinger version, he knew the film geek in me was chomping at the bit to see how it compared to the award-winning original. I was nevertheless content to wait and see if it would turn up on TCM sometime, when, out of theblue, my hon dug up a rare DVD copy online and surprised me with it! That just about knocked me out.As Separate Tables is a film about the importance of friendship and the indispensability of love, I dedicate this postto my good friends, and my true love. Thanks so much, guys!

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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