Peeping into Myth…
Perhaps it was merely the recent (eventual) arrival of my Candyman: Special Edition that got me thinking, but the myths and urban myths that surround the world of film have been pressing on my mind.
First port of call for most "myth-busting" is snopes.com. A quick perusal of their film listings confirms the following:
Claim: Ronald Reagan was the actor originally chosen to play the role of Rick Blaine in Casablanca.
Status: False (perhaps the persistence of this rumour owes something to the rather marked contrast between Bogart and Reagan's politics).
Claim: A lovelorn actor portraying one of the munchkins hanged himself on the set durng the filming of The Wizard of Oz, and his death was captured on-camera and used in the final print.
Status: False (Bad news for fans of bizarre midget death. Also, I know that editors are capable of letting 'goofs' into the final print of movies, but I find it rather hard to believe that someone would fail to notice something as striking as 'munchkin suicide').
Claim: The ghostly image of a boy who died in the apartment where Three Men and a Baby was filmed can be seen in the finished movie.
Status: False (Well if it were true it would, essentially, confirm the reality of life after death…so it's rather unsurprising to have it ruled out as false).
A less well-known, and less jazzy, rumour concerns Michael Powell and his now-notorious Peeping Tom (1960). Whenever I've heard the film mentioned, or seen it written about, it is unfailingly described as "the film that finished Powell's career". I had no real call to doubt the veracity of that view until the other night when I came across a tantalising snippet in Karl & Philip French's Cult Movies (Pavilion Books, 1999). In their entry for the film, they had this to say:
"[It] divided critics, most of whom loathed it ('This beastly picture', C. A. Lejeune, Observer), some admired it ('a masterpiece', Sunday Times), and it rapidly developed a cult following. The idea that the vilification ended Powell's career is a myth"
Here was a brief clue to suggest that I, and everyone who discusses Powell, might have been 'myth-taken' regarding how ruinous the film proved.
As that was the only fleeting bit of evidence for this counter-theory, I proceeded directly over to Steve Crook's Powell and Pressburger Pages. I got in touch with Steve and he kindly emailed me back a lengthy response. Here's what he had to say:
I think that Peeping Tom got a bit more blame than it really deserved. But only a bit.
Powell's career was coming to an end anyway. The studios and the way films were financed was changing and he no longer had the support of Rank or Korda. He wasn't too subtle when dealing with the accountants that now ran things. When they wouldn't put up the money and give him total control he was apt to call them nasty names. He was also getting older and it would have been hard for him to get the necessary insurance.
The reviewer for the Sunday Times was Dilys Powell (no relation). Her review in 1960 was one of the most scathing:
"Perhaps one would not be so disagreeably affected by this exercise in the lower regions of the psychopathic, were it handled in a more bluntly debased fashion. One does not, after all, waste much indignation on the Draculas and Mummies and Stranglers of the last few years. Peeping Tom is another matter. It is made by a director of skill and sensibility…The director whose daring and inquiring eye gave us the superb camera obscura sequence and the entry into the operating room in 'A Matter of Life and Death'. Then one remembers that even in his best period Michael Powell would suddenly devote his gifts to a story about a maniac who poured glue over girls' hair. He has got beyond glue here. He has got to the trick knife lovingly embedded in the throat, to the voyeur with sound effects, to a nauseating emphasis on the preliminaries and the practice of sadism – and I mean sadism. He did not write Peeping Tom; but he cannot wash his hands of responsibility for this essentially vicious film" – Dilys Powell, The Sunday Times, 10 April 1960.
But she did recant and reappraised it in 1994. That review does contain the sentence: "Today, I find I am convinced that it is a masterpiece." – shame that was after Michael Powell had died.
However, all of the scathing reviews in 1960 were only from the people that reviewed it for the public. The trade reviews were fairly complimentary telling cinema owners that it should do good business.
So, to sum up, French & French quoted from a 1994 review in The Sunday Times, not from the scathing 1960 review. But the trade reviews were good and there were other factors that added to the reasons why Powell couldn't make any more films.
The films didn't "rapidly develop a cult following". It was hardly seen anywhere for some time. It was only given limited release in the UK and didn't really cause much fuss or attract much attention. I think it was only when Scorsese revived it that people began to pay it serious attention. At the same time it was picked up by some of the more extreme French reviewers and a few articles in some French magazines like Positif and Midi-Minuit Fantastastique. That's when the "cult following" really began.
Many thanks to Steve for clearing up this issue…and for not pouring glue on my hair! So is it fair to say that Peeping Tom really did ruin Powell's career? Well, Yes…and No. The outrage that greeted the film certainly hurt him, but (as Steve points out) there were other factors/circumstances involved in his decline. As is often the case, such tales serve to simplify the complex and messy narrative that is 'real life'.
Having said all that, I'd love to bring out a film that would destroy my career and reputation…unfortunately, I have neither a career nor a reputation to destroy…
September 29, 2005
2 responses to Peeping into Myth…
Of course if all these urban legends were to be believed, then Richard Gere is the biggest threat to furry rodents since myxomatosis and my old design & technology teacher has been continuously masturbating in the school toilets for the last 25 years. Incidentally, the movie ‘Gigli’ recently ended Ben Afflecks career but for altogether less controversial reasons… it was rubbish.
And didn’t Richard Gere actually play an obsessively masturbatory design & technology teacher in a movie once? No? Hmmm…perhaps it was just one of my fevered dreams…