Gielgud and Moore, high and low
Is it possible a single song stands in the way of this film being considered a classic? I refer to “Best That You Can Do,” also officially known as “Arthur’s Theme,” also unofficially known as “When You Get Caught Between the Moon and New York City,” which of course won Arthur the Oscar for best song in 1981. However much love you bear for Burt Bacharach, and that should be a lot, this dribble is not one of the composer’s notable tunes (its odd credit – four authors are listed for music and lyrics combined – might suggest a reason for this: Carole Bayer Sager, Peter Allen, and Christopher Cross are also the composers). Cross contributes the chamois vocal, a couple of years after breaking through with his soft-rock anthem, “Sailing.”
The song is so redolent of early-Eighties blandness, and so associated with the movie, that it probably reflects back on Arthur in a negative way. But it shouldn’t. This 1981 picture, the remake of which opens this weekend, really is a classic, a rare example of the screwball comedy living a nice life outside the 1930s and 40s. It features a glorious performance by Dudley Moore, a deservedly Oscar-winning turn by John Gielgud, and it allows the peculiar talents of Liza Minnelli to thrive (a rare example of the larger-than-life Minnelli fitting into a generic role but getting to flash her personality as well). You will recall that the plot involves drunken millionaire Arthur being threatened with disinheritance unless he marries a horrible socialite (Jill Eikenberry), an engagement that coincides with Arthur meeting the blue-collar kook and part-time shoplifter Linda, played by Minnelli.
Writer Steve Gordon, who came out of TV, made his feature directing debut with this film; he also died the following year, at age 44, of a sudden heart attack. The movie doesn’t suggest he was a natural-born master of film directing, but it does show a smart insinct for comedy – especially for the business of allowing performers space to do their thing. And “space” means both the figurative room to play around (Moore is clearly riffing at times) and the literal screen space in which to see them: Gordon sets his camera back far enough so we can watch Moore’s full-body physical approach to a bit, or to keep two or three performers onscreen at the same time. The high point, arguably, is Moore’s visit to the mansion of his fiancee’s father (Stephen Elliott), when he uses both an aged butler and a stuffed moose head (“You must have hated this moose”) as props.
A comparison with the new Arthur shows how well the old one works. The 2011 remake keeps returning to close-ups, barely giving star Russell Brand a chance to use his body at all, and the jokes tend to be cut up in TV-style shot/reverse shot style. In Gordon’s version, even a simple scene (like the one in which Linda must improvise a backstory when confronted by Arthur’s fiancee in a horse stable) becomes a nicely-turned bit of comic chemistry by having Moore and Minnelli occupy the same two-shot, side by side, so that we witness how well they respond to each other, and can appreciate Arthur appreciating Linda’s in-the-moment sense of play. And, of course, allowing a few moments of wordlessness to pass by as Arthur and manservant Hobson read their newspapers, in just the way they surely do every day, is an almost-unnoticed grace note.
The new film also brings Arthur into the 21st century, or some such nonsense, because it addresses the drinking that the character indulges in for much of the running time of both movies. Granted, a 2011 movie is not going to play the character drinking from a bottle of Scotch while driving his car to the Hamptons (the one scene in the original that seems as dated as the song) for comedy. But in the new Arthur, the boozing is de-emphasized to begin with, and the hero ends up in A.A. eventually. If he were a real person, that is what we would wish him, but for the protagonist of a screwball comedy, this is a flat-line. The new Arthur is given more supposed seriousness and a dead-daddy backstory that will supposedly explain his childlike behavior, a deadening psychological approach that the original managed to convey with a couple of well-slurred comments (“Some of us drink because we’re not poets”) and Dudley Moore’s presence.
I can’t pretend objectivity about Dudley Moore, who was some kind of genius, but it’s worth noting that in this performance Moore hits all the comic notes with accuracy, as expected, but also manages to convey a neediness and an appetite that seemed to be in Moore’s own personality. Arthur isn’t really a “happy drunk,” although he frequently has a pretty good time; he’s in need of something, which needs virtually no dialogue to express, just Dudley Moore’s instincts as an actor. (When florist Lou Jacobi asks Arthur how it feels to have all that money, Moore’s response – “It feels great” – is understated and almost thrown away, not the way most actors would’ve played it.)
One last lash against the remake: you’d think that a movie released in 2011 that takes place in the New York of money and power would take a moment or two for a post-recession potshot at that venal world. But there’s almost none of that. (In retrospect, the 2005 remake of Fun with Dick and Jane is positively clairvoyant on this point.) That kind of satire certainly isn’t the purpose of the ’81 Arthur, but it’s there in subtle ways. Within Arthur’s knockabout world, it is somewhat startling that his father (Thomas Barber) casually states “We’re all criminals” when describing the moneyed realm that his son is avoiding. And the fiancee’s father is a true corporate vampire, even beyond the goofiness of his revelation that he killed someone with a cheese knife at the age of eleven. That he is played by Stephen Elliott, the lethal monster of Cutter’s Way (which came out the same year as Arthur) and thus the embodiment of what the Eighties were going to look like, only underscores the undertone. With these hints of the world that awaits him, is it any wonder Arthur drinks?
Filed under: The Cornfield | Tagged: Arthur, Dudley Moore, John Gielgud, Liza Minnelli, Steve Gordon | 1 Comment »
The Crop Duster 