I caught the last five minutes of this film, on TV over 15 years ago.
It looked interesting, but seeing as how I now know how it ends, does anybody think it's worth me hunting it down and watching the whole thing?
I like well written, intelligent films; is this one?
**
I saw it on a rainy afternoon in San Francisco in a second run neighborhood theater in the Richmond in '83. I reveled in the witty repartee. I thought Gowan a cross between Winston Churchill and Edward Albee's George on the wit-0-meter, but now seeing it 27 years later, I realize I am put off my Gowan's cowardice. I guess that trait holds more importance to me that it did then, but to have the love of his life laid out for him like a roast chicken at Sunday dinner and the promise of the happiness the child would bring tossed aside like an empty bottle of cheap bourbon, was very distasteful to me. Filling his empty character like filling his infected tooth with his wit doesn't seem to do the job. Come to think of it, the other thing I saw him in (Shirley Valentine) also required his capabilities as a world class cad. Some people have made careers in playing cads like Laurence Harvey, but for some reason, his Gowan McGland's (that has to be a joke) cad really crawled up by butt. Could it be possible that I'm growing more moral as I grow older? I shudder at the thought. To answer your question, yes, it's worth seeing if anything for the snappy come backs you can gather for future reference, like when you are at a cocktail party and there is someone there you loathe and you want some quip that will cut him/her to the knees, but it will take a whole day before they realize it was a shot.
sharei recommended it to a friend just today (after seeing it for the first time).
and, for those who don't know a lot about the biographical bases of the film, i got this from its wikipedia page (yes, it has a wiki page):
"The film was adapted by Julius J. Epstein from the play Spofford by Herman Shumlin, which in turn was adapted from the novel Reuben, Reuben by Peter De Vries. It was directed by Robert Ellis Miller. The main character in DeVries's novel was based largely on the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who was a compulsive womanizer and lifelong alcoholic, finally succumbing to the effects of alcohol poisoning in November 1953, while on a speaking tour in America."
being a writer of poetry myself, i can certainly glean from conti's portrayal mc gland's paradoxical lust for and need to escape from the "harsh realities" of life (as he calls them at one point late in the film).
yes, this is another "tortured artist" portrait; no, it's not made out to be a cliche.
gregory 11311.
I was thinking through this whole movie.....'wowwwww, Al Pacino can really lift and bring to life this accent he's got going'.
Then I come to realize it's an actor by the name of Tom Conti.
Great performance and movie and the ending will stick to me forever!
A film well worth seeing for anyone who appreciates a little dark humor. I was just recommending this to a couple of friends today. Looks like I'll have to track down a copy on VHS. It's a shame how many good ones are still unavailable on DVD.
shareCould it be possible that I'm growing more moral as I grow older?
You struck a nerve with me there, Speaking as a guy in my 50's who has long been a fan of independent thoughtful films, I find myself increasingly more concerned with whether I should accept the implied moral stances of movies I watch. In the past, I would occasionally see something in a movie that might just tingle my moral sense a bit, but I would dismiss it in my mind. I guess on some unconscious level I figured, "This must be OK ... after all, the writer/director of this movie must be a pretty smart person to be able to get a movie made, especially one like this."
But nowadays with increased maturity (I hope so anyway), I'm more likely to stand up for myself and say: no, I don't accept the moral message being implied here and I don't care how prim and proper it might make me sound.
That being said, however, it's been a year or two since I last watched my VHS copy of Reuben Reuben, and I still enjoyed it. The witty dialogue is great, as you say. What comes through in Gowan's character for me is that this is a man who enjoys life on his terms, who doesn’t accept mainstream society’s notion of how to live. I love that scene where he's dining with those waspy business types who are talking about speed reading, and Gowan says he would willingly pay vast sums for someone to teach him to read his favorite novels at a snail's pace. But of course, he has no work ethic and little sense of accountability. He's not an admirable character in many aspects, but I'm not sure the movie is asking us to find him admirable.
Only for Conti's performance. Nothing much else, really.
It's intelligent to a point - but not as intelligent as it thinks it is... More intelligent than your average Hollywood romance, but that isn't saying much. The writing comes off as kind of smug, and it's a tribute to Conti's acting ability that he makes that sort of quality strangely endearing.
"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"