There’s an old episode of M*A*S*H (I guess they’re all old since the series concluded over thirty years ago but whatever) in which the guys in the camp are all excited to get a copy of The Moon is Blue, airing today on TCM, which, I probably don’t have to say, they didn’t have (also, the film came out a few months after the war ended, but we’ll ignore that, too). Anyway, they’re excited because they’ve heard about its sexual raciness and how it was banned in several places but when it finally arrives, no one is impressed. Hawkeye (Alan Alda) is particularly dismayed. Father Mulcahy (William Christopher), in an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons, remarks that the movie did use the word “virgin.” Hawkeye replies, “That’s because everyone in this movie is one!” Had Hawkeye and company been expecting what The Moon is Blue actually was, and is, a relationship comedy adapted from the stage, they might have liked it a lot more. But sometimes our expectations are so off, it changes our regard for the movie from the negative to the positive or vice versa. This has happened to me on a few occasions, sometimes because I simply misinterpreted the title, sometimes because my idea of what the movie was about was from a different universe.
The first time I ever saw one of the works of Ingmar Bergman, it was Wild Strawberries and it was on PBS. Bergman had built up a reputation, wholly undeserved in my book, of being an artist of obscure and arcane intentions. According to this rep, his movies were puzzles not easily understood by the average viewer. Then I watched Wild Strawberries and saw an excellent film about an old man coming to grips with his past in the form of a road movie. Then The Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring, Scenes from a Marriage, Fanny and Alexander, and many others and easily and readily concluded that whoever came up with that assessment of Bergman had clearly never actually watched his movies. Even his acknowledged art films, like Persona or Hour of the Wolf, both of them personal favorites of mine, aren’t exactly inaccessible. But back to Wild Strawberries - when I realized I was watching a road movie, I sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed the movie much more than I ever thought I would. It’s a great film with a fantastic central performance by Victor Sjöström. My expectations of it, and Bergman, were completely wrong and that made the experience better, not worse.
Other times, I have no one to blame but myself. For instance, Stella Dallas, with Barbara Stanwyck and Anne Shirley, directed by King Vidor. For years, due to absolutely nothing I read or heard, I was somehow under the impression that it was like Mildred Pierce but without the guns. I had this idea that Stella was devoted to a selfish, horrid daughter who wanted only to live with her rich father and berated Stella until she (Stella) finally backed down and exited her life. This is not what the movie is, at all. When I finally decided to watch it, thinking, “Okay, let me slog through the sacrificing mom to the brassy, selfish daughter routine,” I was shocked to find that the story was nothing like that but instead featured a daughter so loving and devoted that when Stella sets it up for her to have a better life with her dad, she refuses, saying she’ll never leave her mom (there was a lot of throat clearing that happened with me at that moment). And Stella, far from being the meek, plain Jane mother I thought she was, was a strong-willed, down and dirty lady, out of reach of the class level needed to blend in with the richer sorts. Also, Alan Hale. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me how absolutely awesome Alan Hale is in this movie?! So, anyway, instead of slogging through it, I loved it. Every scene was a surprise and a welcome one.
Another big one for me was a movie I wrote up right here at the Morlocks a few years back, Peter Weir’s 1977 mystical masterpiece, The Last Wave. Boy, was I wrong on that one! Here’s what I thought it was: A courtroom drama about a lawyer defending a group of Aboriginals on murder charges. Yes, that’s a part of it, but it’s like saying that Rosemary’s Baby is about an actor who finally lands that role he wants when another actor goes blind. That’s in there but there’s a whole lot more. With The Last Wave, the courtroom proceeding is simply a way in to the real story, one of mystical connections between spirits, reincarnation, and the coming apocalypse. Seriously had no idea that stuff was the meat of the movie, or even in the movie, until I saw it.
Probably my biggest misunderstanding of all time came with the John G. Avildsen directed Joe, from 1970. Starring Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, and Susan Sarandon, the movie is about… well, it’s about nothing I thought it was. Here’s what I thought it was about: I thought it was about a working class guy named Joe (Peter Boyle) who falls on hard times (maybe a job layoff) and bucks the system, standing up for the little guy until he becomes a folk hero. Susan Sarandon falls in love with him and he reluctantly takes up the mantle of being a spokesman for the people. If you’ve seen the movie, you may now commence laughing at this description. I was in for quite a shock when, just a few years ago I finally decided to watch what I thought was going to be a kind of warmed over Mr. Deeds and instead got a movie about a violent bigot who spews racist, hate-filled diatribes at the local bar and comes up with solutions to his problems like getting guns and killing people who live in communes. Far from being Capra-lite, it’s a scary, tense look into the life of hateful coward, all too willing to lay all the blame for all his problems on any counter-culture scapegoat he can find.
There have been a few others, too, but those are the big ones for me. Sometimes something as innocent as a title can mislead (Wake of the Red Witch is not about a witch) but unless I have real built-in expectations, it’s not a problem. That said, I look forward to reading some left-field assumptions from commenters so I know I’m not alone in sometimes being completely clueless when it comes to movie plots. In the meantime, I’m going to watch a few movies to pass the time. I’ll start with The Young Lions, which I assume is about some young cubs making their way on the Savannah, then take in Brazil, which I can only guess from the cast and title is a romantic comedy set in Rio (yes?), and finish up with Heavenly Creatures, a movie about two best friends who go on picnics with one of their moms. How sweet. Sometimes you have to take a break from dark movies, you know?