Archives for February 1, 2019

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review a small-scale off-off-Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Eugene O’Neill, the dour tragedian of 20^th-century American theater, was the least likely of men to have tucked a warm-hearted family comedy in between his bleak tales of life at its direst. Yet “Ah, Wilderness!” hit big on Broadway in 1933, was promptly turned into an equally successful movie and has been a community-theater standby ever since. In addition, it gets done with modest regularity by regional companies that can afford to produce a play that calls for four sets and a 15-person cast. But it hasn’t been seen on Broadway since Lincoln Center Theater’s 1998 revival, and there haven’t been any off-Broadway stagings since then, either….

For that reason, I headed downtown last week to catch a production that is being jointly mounted in a black-box performance space by two off-off-Broadway troupes, Blackfriars Repertory Theatre and the Storm Theatre Company. I’ve never seen “Ah, Wilderness!” done on a small scale, and this production, staged by Peter Dobbins on a set that consists of little more than a few nondescript pieces of furniture, definitely qualifies. Given a competent cast, such a presentation will be powerfully indicative of a play’s inherent quality: If it comes off, it’s the real thing.

I’m pleased to report, then, that “Ah, Wilderness!” passes the no-budget test with plenty of spare room. While Mr. Dobbins’ cast is somewhat uneven in quality, most of the actors are quite good, and two of them, Renée Petrofes and Ken Trammell, are exceptional. As for Mr. Dobbins’ staging, it’s as uncomplicated as the décor: no interpretative agendas, no smart trickery, just a straightforward rendering of the play itself, which is allowed to work its quaint magic without benefit of special directorial pleading….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

A Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast of Ah, Wilderness! Originally telecast by NBC on April 28, 1959, this abridged version of the stage play was adapted for the screen by Robert Hartung and directed by Robert Mulligan. The cast includes Lloyd Nolan, Helen Hayes, and Burgess Meredith:

In my latest Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I talk about They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s new World War II documentary, and the way in which it uses digital techniques to alter and manipulate historic film footage.

Here’s an excerpt:

Few things are rarer than a big-screen documentary that receives wildly enthusiastic mass-media attention—especially one whose subject is something that happened a century ago. But “They Shall Not Grow Old,” Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary, which was screened in select U.S. theaters by Fathom Events earlier this month, got so much favorable press that starting on Friday, it will be shown at 500 theaters in 150 North American markets. If it got any bad reviews, I didn’t see them, and when I saw the film a couple of weeks ago, I was stunned by the compulsive power of its extraordinarily vivid portrait of life in the front-line trenches.

Even so, certain critics have expressed lingering reservations about the extent to which Mr. Jackson has digitally altered the archival film footage supplied by London’s Imperial War Museum on which “They Shall Not Grow Old” is based. Adam Gopnik, for instance, wrote in a largely admiring New Yorker review of the film that such alteration inevitably raises “unsettling questions” about its underlying authenticity. He has a point, too: Not only has most of the footage been colorized, but Mr. Jackson has changed it in other ways, adding a soundtrack, correcting the speed at which it is shown, reconfiguring parts of certain scenes to make them resemble the camerawork you’d see in a modern movie and, most surprisingly, incorporating a 3D effect (though many screenings are “flat”). 

None of this bothered me while I was watching “They Shall Not Grow Old.” But as I reflected on what I’d seen, I found myself asking: Has Mr. Jackson gone too far? Can any movie that manipulates archival footage so extensively be trusted as a historical document? This is especially important because the popular success of “They Shall Not Grow Old” means that it will henceforth become the gold standard for documentaries based on historical film footage. So let’s take a closer look at what Mr. Jackson has done—and not done….

Read the whole thing here.

* * *

The theatrical trailer for They Shall Not Grow Old:

Titus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back to talk about Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past on his latest episode. Our hour-long chat is now available on line.

Here’s Titus’ summary of our conversation:

Terry Teachout and I turn to noir: Out of the Past. Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Jane Greer starring in Jacques Tourneur’s directing of the Daniel Mainwaring script. Roy Webb scoring, Nicholas Musuraca shooting. This is one of the peak achievements of noir and we had such fun talking about it. It is beautiful and tragic. It shows small-town life vs. the big city; America vs. south of the border; and the corruption of glamour that makes a chump of a noble man.

To listen to or download this episode, go here.

* * *

Excerpts from Out of the Past:

Henri Matisse, filmed while working on “Young Woman in White, Red Background”:

To view the finished painting, go here.

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Work, play—at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking—thinking!”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World