So those are my thoughts on the film version of The Invisible Man: okay, but not as good as the book which I do recommend reading. I own a physical copy of the film, but I think it's out of copyright now so should be available, free and legal, in various places online if you feel like having a go at it.
I've owned a copy of the 1933 movie The Invisible Man for a number of years but had never gotten around to viewing it. I pulled it out on Saturday night and put it on, as I thought I should watch something for Halloween. And it was... okay. The book (written by HG Wells in 1897) was better. The film version of The Invisible Man came about because the 1931 movie Dracula starring Bela Lugosi had been so popular that naturally Universal wanted to repeat its success. With that goal in mind, they made Frankenstein and started developing The Invisible Man and a number of other monster movies. The Invisible Man is, of course, the tale of obsessive scientist Dr. Jack Griffith who figures out how to turn himself invisible and, driven mad, embarks on a plan of murder and mayhem with the ultimate goal of world domination. This doesn't work out for him quite as planned. First, let's cover the positives in this film; a big one is Una O'Connor. How much do I love watching this woman? She pops up in many classic films- I first saw her in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)- and it's safe to say that she steals every scene that she's in. She certainly does in The Invisible Man. I personally would watch an entire movie of her as the innkeeper- she's just great in the very limited screen time she has in this role. More of her would make this a better film. Then of course, there's Claude Rains, who plays the titular character. This was actually his first movie; think how difficult this must have been for him: new to film acting, he had to convincingly portray a character with his face- even his eyes- unseen. Of course, he has his great voice, which helps a good deal... I think he does as well as anyone could do in this role. And obviously, this movie led to many more- and better- roles for him. He was a fantastic character actor who probably successfully played more memorable villains than any other actor in history. So whoever pulled him from the theater for this movie really did the film world a favour. Unfortunately some of the other performances, such as that by William Harrigan as Dr. Kemp, are rather wooden though this may have more to do with the dialogue written for him than his acting ability. As the movie is from 1933, I was expecting the worst from the special effects, but in actual fact they're not bad at all. Of course not up to today's standards, but I've seen much later films with much worse effects. The only time I really felt like laughing about them was at one point early on in the movie, where Griffin is prancing about in nothing but a shirt, and that does look rather silly. Other than that though, they really were ahead of their time. The basic story mostly follows the book, with some glaring differences such as a shoehorned-in romance which doesn't work because there is no time for it to develop in any meaningful way. The movie is only around 70 minutes long; there's no time for a romance of any sort, let alone the love triangle they take a weak stab at pushing. They also have the Invisible Man- Griffin- kill Kemp in the movie where he survives everything in the book. Griffin also kills a lot more people in the film than in the book, which makes the film feel rather uneven because it tends to waver back and forth between almost slapstick humour and coldblooded murder. The book, though not devoid of humour, is more serious than the film although, ironically, less deadly. Less deadly does not mean less violent however; in the film, Griffith is eventually surrounded by police and shot, later dying in hospital with his grieving girlfriend by his side. In the book, he is stopped in the process of trying to murder Kemp by a bunch of road workers who proceed to beat him to death with their shovels and whatever other implements they have to hand. In both cases he returns to his visible form after death, though in the book, it's his broken, naked body lying in the road rather than a more decorous and dignified (and clothed) death in hospital. Also, in the film Griffin repents of his actions, gasping out his regret before dying. In the book, he remains villainous until the bitter end, no deathbed confession- or death bed for that matter- in sight. Of the various changes made for the film, I think the one which I liked the least was that in what caused Griffin to become a murderous psychopath. In the movie, this is explained away by the dangerous chemicals he treated himself with, one of which is known to cause madness. In the book however, his behaviour is not caused by anything that he's injected. We see in the backstory that Griffin was always a selfish and unethical scientist, willing to cheat- and even steal- to attain his ends. The story of The Invisible Man deals with what happens to such an individual when the bounds of civilization and society no longer constrain him to adhere to at least some level of decency. It's more to do with human nature, and what men can become when given extraordinary powers and few limitations. The movie takes the easy- and less thoughtful- way out: he just swallowed something that made him crazy. So those are my thoughts on the film version of The Invisible Man: okay, but not as good as the book which I do recommend reading. I own a physical copy of the film, but I think it's out of copyright now so should be available, free and legal, in various places online if you feel like having a go at it.
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Quatermain and the rest of his party head off on their quest to find Sir Henry's brother and the riches- real or imagined- of King Solomon's Mines. Almost immediately though, they are sidetracked by an elephant hunt which takes a sudden bad turn: a wounded elephant charges at some of the men. Captain Good trips and falls while running to get out of its way (he's wearing improper footwear); one of the hired men bravely diverts the maddened animal, saving Good, but is himself killed much to everyone's great regret. It seems an ill-fated start to their adventure. They travel until they reach the edge of a desert. There they leave the oxen in the care of a nearby inhabitant, as the ox carts will be of no use in the sand. They enter the desert traveling by foot. Despite carefully rationing their water, the party nearly dies of thirst before they eventually make it to the oasis which is shown on their dubious map. The party eventually make it to the base of the mountains referred to as, er, Sheba's Breasts (referring to the Queen of Sheba who is linked with King Solomon in many legends, and is also recorded as having visited him the Biblical account of I Kings 10:1-13). Sheba- or Saba, depending on the source- was an ancient Arabian kingdom which compassed parts of Yemen and Ethiopia. They make the gruelling climb up one of the peaks; it becomes progressively colder and more dangerous as they ascend the mountain. They finally take refuge in a cave where they find the frozen body of Jose Silvestra, the explorer who had originally drawn the Quatermain's map back in the 1700's. They spend the night there in the relative shelter of the cave, but in the morning find that one of their hired men has frozen to death. They put his body next to Silvestra's and continue their journey, desperate to leave the deadly cold of the mountain heights. As they descend on the other side, they find themselves in a lush and fertile valley which is called Kukuanaland, as they soon discover. The group is just recuperating from their terrible journey when they are confronted by a bunch of Kukuana warriors who are intent on killing them. The warriors are given pause, however, when they take Captain Good for a sorcerer of some sort: caught while performing his ablutions, he's not wearing trousers, has only one side of his face shaved, and has his false teeth in hand. Never having seen the like, the warriors recoil fearfully from the man with his white legs, half-beard, and removable teeth. Quatermain and Sir Henry capitalize on this fear, killing a small deer with one of their guns, a weapon the Kukuanas have never seen before. To them it seems as though they killed the animal just by pointing at it. They tell the warriors that they are white men from the stars and, to maintain credibility, have to constantly perform "miracles" to impress the natives. They also inform Good that he's going to have to stay as he is- pantless and half-bearded- to keep up the fiction that he is a sorcerer. The warriors take all of them to their king, Twala, who is a ruthless tyrant. He gained power when he murdered his brother, the former king, and had his brother's wife and young son Ignosi driven out into the desert where they're presumed to have died. The Kukuanas know King Twala's the worst, but no one challenges his rule for a couple of reasons, only one being his control of the Kukuana army... plenty of them would be willing to go against him if another leader presented himself. The real problem is that Twala enjoys the support of self-styled witch Gagool, a ghastly old hag who conducts frequent ceremonies during which, through her "magic", she identifies men who are traitors to King Twala. These unfortunates are subsequently killed by the king's loyal soldiers. Coincidentally, these always tend to be influential men who might have the power to set themselves up as rivals for leadership. This gets rid of these men as threats to Twala's power, and also acts as a deterrent for others who might entertain ideas about deposing the king. Twala and Gagool put on one of these ceremonies while Quatermain and the others are involuntary guests and insist that they attend. They watch in horror and disgust as Gagool dances about and points to several men, who are then brutally murdered right in front of their eyes. Then, shockingly, the hag dances up to Umbopa, the African who had insisted on hiring on to their crew. She points evilly at him, and soldiers spring forward to carry out his execution but Quatermain, who had noticed her eying Umbopa earlier, suspected she was going to pull something of the sort and now intervenes. Through threats and intimidation, they prevent the murder of Umbopa, much to the rage of Gagool and Twala. The reason for Gagool's targeting of Umbopa is soon revealed: he is in actual fact Ignosi, the son of the previous king- and Twala's nephew- whom everyone thought was dead. He insisted on coming on the search for Sir Henry's brother because he knew they would have to pass through the land of his people, where he was determined to challenge his uncle for the kingship of the Kukuanas. Many of the tribesmen, fed up with Twala's bloody rule, are ready to join forces with Umbopa/Ignosi to defeat the king. Quatermain, Sir Henry, and Captain Good decide that they are duty bound to help Umbopa; despite having ulterior motives, he has been with them through thick and thin throughout their dangerous journey and they feel they owe him the same. Besides, they all hate Twala and that old toad Gagool. So, their search for King Solomon's Mines temporarily on hold, the three men find themselves standing shoulder to shoulder with Ignosi and his new allies, preparing to wage war against King Twala and his army. (To Be Continued...) Related Posts: “Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it’s not supposed to exist! … They believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process!…The living soul demands life; the soul won’t obey the rules of mechanics.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky. If you don't know what the Bechdel Test is, congratulations: you may want to turn back now and continue to live your life in happy ignorance. For everyone else, the Bechdel-Wallace Test is one which measures the representation of women in movies. The requirement is that the movie must have at least two female characters, and they must talk to each other about a topic which doesn't revolve around men. If the movie doesn't meet this criteria, the proponents of the Bechdel test declare it to be a failure: it has failed to achieve peak gender equality. By this standard, a lot of brilliant films- everything from His Girl Friday, to Fiddler on the Roof, to all Jane Austen adaptations- would be considered failures; ditto Ben Hur, Chariots of Fire, The Wrath of Khan, Master & Commander... heck, the list of great films which would be termed "failures" by the fembots is endless. I remember a few years ago, when Dunkirk was in theaters (I went to see it- one of the very few times I've gone to a movie by myself- and enjoyed it immensely) some wacky opinion columnist at USA Today wrote a critique of the film, complaining that there weren't enough women or people of colour as leads. In the British army. At Dunkirk. In 1940. I literally can't even. It rather reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I once read: It takes a special kind of hubris to watch a mostly factual recreation of an historical event- a disastrous retreat and a desperate and heroic evacuation- and say, "Not good enough! Where are the warrior women of colour, leading the charge?!" But there is, alas, a lot of this form of egotism, wrapped up in pretentiousness, pronouncing judgement on films based not on the merits of their plot and characters, but on whether or not they garner a certain amount of clicks on the diversity meter. This, I hardly need say, is bad for the film industry- we have daily proof of this as we peruse the current lists of movies proffered for our "entertainment". We're not exactly living through a golden age of cinema. There are, of course, many factors which have resulted in the degraded state of modern popular entertainment, but enforced inclusion not only of female characters, but a certain type of female character, has had a pernicious influence on the film industry in a number of ways. I will discuss some of the problems the fembots and their enablers have wrought over the course of a couple of posts on this subject. 1. Historical Inaccuracy: Since I already brought up the example of Dunkirk, I'll first tackle the topic of attempting to change past deeds to pacify present mores. History is not politically correct and it is ridiculous to pretend that it is. Attempting to distort the past in order to make a certain group or, indeed, an entire sex, feel good about themselves now is dishonest, patronizing, and silly. Let us take, for example, the case of the 2019 "biographical" film The Aeronauts, which we are assured earnestly, is "inspired by true events". Indeed it was: the 1862 balloon ascension which broke the world flight altitude record, reaching heights of up to 36,000 ft in the air. Eddie Redmayne portrays the true-to-life scientist James Glaisher who in actual fact was accompanied by professional aeronaut Henry Tracey Coxwell. In the "biopic" however, Glaisher is accompanied on the balloon ascension by a completely fictional woman, one Amelia Wren portrayed by Felicity Jones. Poor old Coxwell was completely erased from his own biographical movie and, to add insult to injury, he had heroically saved Glaisher's life during this trip into the air. When they reached such high altitudes, Glaisher passed out from lack of oxygen, and the freezing temperature caused Coxwell to lose the use of his hands. Amazingly, he managed to not only stay conscious, but pilot the balloon safely back to the ground by steering it with his teeth. Never mind all that, though; his daring deeds- indeed, his entire person- had to be sacrificed on the altar of female empowerment. The director, Tom Harper, admitted that this was why they disappeared Coxwell: "I wanted it to not be two middle aged men in a basket. I wanted it to be reflective for a contemporary audience." And apparently a contemporary audience needed to be soothed with polite untruths; it's untenable that women didn't take active part in every important event or discovery in history; we'll just manufacture a false narrative that they did, so that the poor dears can feel important and of value. Some benighted sticklers for truth pointed out that there were plenty of actual female scientists during that time period who would have been fine subjects for a film instead of making up a fictional one, but Harper disagreed: "There were female scientists around at the time, but not in the Royal Society... to this day, only eight per cent of the Royal Society is female." So to make up for this gross inequality, real dudes need to be erased and replaced with fake women. After all, better a pretend woman in the hand- or Society, as the case may be- than ten in the bush, or wherever lowly women scientists who aren't in the Royal Society and thus don't deserve a movie, spend their time. Another example of this would be the recent film The Woman King in which, despite the title, the woman is not the king. Billed as an "historical epic" this movie tells the tale- the tall tale- of the Dahomey Amazons, a troop of women warriors in West Africa. Unlike Amelia Wren, these women did actually exist, but the filmmakers were so excited by the thought of real-life women warriors that they not only omitted inconvenient truths, they manufactured new "truths". The Dahomey warriors used to attack African villages, murder a good deal of the residents, and sell the rest into slavery. Selling slaves was their main source of income. But in the film, they are portrayed as the good guys, who are trying to put an end to the slave trade. In reality, they fought to maintain it until forced to do otherwise. Just imagine how it would go over if someone made a movie about a pre-Civil War plantation owner on the deep South- a slave owner- that portrayed him as the one in the right, and- despite his slaves- as being anti-slavery. How do you think that would go over? Engaging in wholesale historical revisionism- one might call it shameless lying- does not empower women. If anything, it suggests that we can't handle the truth about the past, and our place in it, so history itself- at least on screen- must change. It also insinuates that, unless women of the past were behaving like men, they could not be brave, strong, or interesting in their own right. And this ridiculous take has affected more than just "historical" movies; fictional films have also been infected with this nonsense. But more on that in my next post. Related Posts:With the autumn upon us, I'm now trying to get some of the projects done which I meant to have had finished by now... oops. Oh, well. I sewed this baby quilt for my newest niece a little while ago, but have yet to deliver it; I forgot to take it with me the last couple of times I was seeing my sister and her family. One of these days. I had started one of these socks ages ago, but had put it aside to work on other things. Since we were all travelling to New Brunswick a couple of weeks ago in a van for the Ladies' Retreat, I decided to bring along my half finished sock to work on. Between the trip there and back, I managed to complete the entire pair. Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either. Elizabeth Zimmermann I knit this hat off and on over a few days; it's actually a very easy pattern... you just have to keep increasing your stitches on one side of your work and decreasing on the other, then sew the two sides together to make the swirl. I knit the rib, sewed the sides together, gathered the top, and made the pom pom while watching The Talk of the Town, a 1942 film starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. “And in the act of making things, just by living their daily lives, they also make history. Knitting is clothing made in spare moments, or round the fire, whenever women gathered together... It's something to celebrate-clothes made in love and service, something women have always done.” ― Anne Bartlett, Knitting When you are knitting socks and sweaters and scarves, you aren't just knitting. You are assigning a value to human effort. You are holding back time. You are preserving the simple unchanging act of handwork. -Stephanie Pearl-McPhee This is true, of course, but mostly I'm just knitting, trying to get gifts done for family members. Oh, and I'll have more to say about The Talk of the Town later, but here's a scene from the movie:
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