Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952)

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Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Film Club’s theme for Movie Night this year is “originals.” That is, movies that were later remade into versions that, for younger viewers, have become more familiar then first. For example, raise your hand if you’ve seen both Peter Jackson's King Kong AND the original King Kong from 1933 or the Coen Brothers' Academy Award-winning True Grit AND the original True Grit from 1969 (with John Wayne). We were pretty intrigued by the idea of seeing these classics. What major differences would emerge? Would technology, or culture, or narrative be the most re-worked element? What made the original so entertaining or flawed that film-makers were compelled to make another one? And the more we talked about it, the more I got the sense that we were chalking this cannibalization of movie stories up to a typical Hollywood maneuver, one usually have to do with economics.

But it’s not. Telling stories, repeating them, adapting them, changing them, blending them with other stories – this is what we humans do, and we’ve done it for millennia. For example, Shakespeare’s plays are reworked versions of older stories. All three of the major Greek tragedians tell versions of the Orestes and Electra myth within a few decades of each other. More recently, Rick Riordan has been updating Greek myths for new readers. We love familiar stories, and we love to hear them with new twists. And sometimes because we love them, we want a small piece that makes us uncomfortable to be changed, so we can go on loving them.

In a trivial example of this, in 2005, HarperCollins, the publisher of the children's classic Goodnight Moon, decided to remove, from a picture that had long adorned the back of the book, the cigarette from illustrator Clement Hurd's fingers, using the magic of PhotoShop. "It [was] potentially a harmful message to very young kids," publisher Kate Jackson told the New York Times at the time. A significant outcry against changing what amounted to a historical document forced HarperCollins to reconsider.

So it may or may not surprise you to find out that there are two versions, an original and a revised, of Roald Dahl’s children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, from which tonight’s movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, comes. The change is a small one, but it’s significant. And it has to do with the Oompa-Loompas, those endearing little people who live and work in Willy Wonka’s famous chocolate factory. Dahl published his book, originally, in 1964. The introduction and description of the Oompa-Loompas goes like this:

Children and parents alike rushed down to the edge of the river to get a close look.
“Aren’t they fantastic!”
"No higher than my knee!"
“Their skin is almost black.” 

At this point there is some incredulity about their size. Mike Teavee doesn’t believe any real person could be so small. And Mr. Wonka points out that the Oompa-Loompas are, in fact, pygmies (as in Faith Jacques original illustrations):

Pygmies they are! Imported direct form Africa! They belong to a tribe of tiny miniature pygmies known as the Oompa-Loompas. I discovered them myself. I brought them over from Africa myself -- the whole tribe of them, three thousand in all. I found them in the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before. They were living in tree-houses. They had to live in tree houses, otherwise, being so small, they would have been gobbled up by every animal in the jungle. And when I found them, they were practically starving to death. ... Poor little Oompa-Loompas!

When Mel Stuart began work on the film version that you’re watching tonight, there was some concern about controversial issues. If you read the passages that follow the original description of the pygmies, you’ll notice right away the stereotypes that have become associated with racist or imperialist imagery: A culture of struggling little natives rescued by a benevolent (white) European, easily adapted to entertainment (“They love singing and dancing. They are always making up songs”), still retaining elements of its "primitivism" ("they still wear the same kind of clothes they wore in the jungle  ... the women wear leaves, and the children wear nothing at all"), and who seem to have no problem with their indenture in a factory.

The studio wanted to ensure that the film was enjoyed by all and, as you will notice, they eliminated the pygmy look and replaced it with the now-distinctive orange and green Oompa-Loompa. Dahl followed suit in a revision of the book in 1974. The passages quoted above were replaced. Instead of Africa, the Oompa-Loompas now came from “Loompaland,” the existence of which is denied by Mrs. Salt. Mr. Wonka begs to differ and retorts:

What a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the entire world – hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping. When I went out there I found the little Oompa-Loompas living in tree-houses.

The fantasy tone of the revised version echoes the fantasy of a magic chocolate factory, and few people challenged the changes. As revised fantasy Loompalanders, we’re less likely to criticize this depiction, which is retained in the revision, and echoed in Quentin Blake's 1998 illustrations for the book (right). Dahl explained the change this way:

"I created a group of little fantasy creatures ... I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the books were ... most unpleasant. It didn't occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others ... After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I revised the book."

This is not to say that Dahl is a racist, or that remakes and revisions exist to correct errors or weaknesses of the past. Dahl came from a time and a place still recovering from an intensely imperial (and imperialistic) past.

And that’s an interesting thing about originals – the window they open to earlier cultures. We get to look at a familiar story, but reflect on the unique way in which the story is told. You’re watching a movie tonight, one with orange Oompa-Loompas and a Willy Wonka definitely not played by Johnny Depp but by Gene Wilder. What elements of 1960s culture do you see built into the story? What elements stay the same? Whatever you notice, you’ll enjoy the riotous, sarcastic, deadpan entertainment of this version of Dahl’s story.

R. Findlay
Film Club adviser

Allan Arkush's Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979)

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George Dunning's Yellow Submarine (1968)

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Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

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Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook’s Mulan (1998)

Have you ever had a craving to watch a movie filled with adventure? A comedy? A musical? Mulan is all of these wrapped up in one glorious package! This adventure about a girl who runs away from home to replace her father in the military is one that I have enjoyed my whole life.

As a child, I begged for movie nights not because of the tacos or popcorn or a break in oh-so-stressful playdates, but because of Mulan. I would be truthful in saying that I watched this movie at least three times a week from age four to age seven, with some spurts and starts. After that age, I think I slowed down to a mere once a week, and am still continuing. That is about 1,040 views total. Yes, I am a little obsessed, but with good reason! It is an amazing film.

The characters are spectacular – a headstrong girl defying the male dominant military to save her father; a strong soldier (and attractive at that); an overenthusiastic lizard that thinks he is a dragon; a group of stereotypical male soldiers – and the family (including an eccentric grandmother) all bring an aspect that everyone can at least find one part to relate to. The characters are so filled with emotion and life that they can make everyone laugh and cry and everything in between. My favorite scenes are not only the funny ones, but the moments where the feeling of unhappiness and loss makes me want to reach out to the characters on the screen.

With all the emotion, this film could never be boring. Even though the movie is set in ancient China, it can still be related to present events. Families face losing members to war and death, like Mulan and her father. Families also have certain expectations children may or may not agree with. However old this movie gets, some part of it remains relevant to our modern life, and thus it never gets old. Women are forever fighting for equality. Mulan herself offers a strong role model for girls and represents the situations they face, like trying to fit in with the norm. Mulan is a princess story where the princess rescues the prince (not to mention all of China).

So, this movie is for everyone, and that does not mean just ‘family friendly,’ as in for ten years and under, but the whole scope. As a kid, I viewed Mulan as a hero. As a teenager I still do. And I can never sit through it without singing along. Adults can enjoy the catchy songs and emotion filled plot just as much as everyone else. My favorite character is Mushu, voiced by Eddie Murphy, who has most of the great lines and keeps the movie funny, a good balance between the harsh emotions of war and the tone of leaving family for the unknown. Mulan’s transformation from docile femininity to tough warrior is one that I have used as an example throughout my life, from dressing up in her clothes to singing her songs to the idea of being strong in the face of every situation. So enjoy Mulan, a powerful movie with strong ideas, beautiful imagery, enthusiastic songs, and incredible characters, definitely one of Disney’s strongest creations.

Charlotte Hughes
Film Club

Jerome Robbins’ and Robert Wise’s West Side Story (1961)

We could write on so many aspects of Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story – the ground-breaking choreography, the cutting edge music, the maturity of former child-actress Natalie Wood, the weirdness of Richard Beymer’s post-Story film career, the imminent fading of the musical as a viable Hollywood genre – but really Your Humble Commentator isn’t fully qualified to take on those topics in this short space. So, today, we want to talk about the Shakespearean adaptation film. Film Club has made it a habit to screen one of these each year, including recently Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and Feng Xiaogang’s The Banquet, (Hamlet).

Robbins and Wise’s West Side Story is, of course, Romeo and Juliet set in a modern, or 1960s, New York. But a more specific question is: is it Shakespeare? A purist will tell you that what makes Shakespeare Shakespeare is language; it’s not his play if they don’t say “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun,” and transform the ether into living space with his awe-inspiring imagery and syntax.

The story, on the other hand, is not original even to Shakespeare. Many versions came before he wrote the play in the mid-1590s, including a major poem by Arthur Brooke, “Romeus and Juliet,” published in 1562, on which much of the play is based. So why don’t we say that West Side Story is really a version of “Romeus and Juliet”? The easy answer is because Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet famous, and no one today has heard of Arthur Brooke. A more complicated answer is that Shakespeare’s work stands so tall that his versions of stories (and all but two of his plays are based on external sources) blot out their antecedents and affect our impressions of every version that follows, even without his words.

A brief aside: Your Humble Commentator once attended the Centenary Shakespeare-on-Film Conference which took place in 1999. A centenary conference celebrates, obviously, the 100-year anniversary of something, so that suggests that the first Shakespeare to be committed to film occurred in 1899. The film, specifically, was a one-minute short, a scene from King John. But think about that: the first Shakespeare film had none of his language (because films were silent) and only one excerpted scene from the play (one minute instead of two and a half hours of narrative). In addition, the film was made more as a novel advertisement for a stage production going on at the time than intended as a stand-alone albeit brief feature. That said, the world’s foremost authorities of the field known as “Shakespeare on Film” gathered together and celebrated this anniversary despite the original film’s rather tenuous ties to Shakespeare’s work.

That’s how it goes. Even without Shakespeare’s language, we consider adaptative versions of his plays still akin to Shakespeare’s work. Whether you watch Ten Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew) or She’s the Man (Twelfth Night) or Forbidden Planet (The Tempest), you are going to enter into a conversation that is as much about Shakespeare as it is about the film you’re watching. Take She’s the Man. Twelfth Night is a rather complex comedy, both subtle and direct in its characterizations and plotting in ways that can be made to please on many levels. She’s the Man, its adaptation set in a modern boys school where Amanda Bynes is “passing” in order to hold her twin brother’s place at the school, play soccer and, eventually, get close to a boy she likes, is a farce, a physical and unsubtle form of comedy. Without Twelfth Night, She’s the Man draws commentary as a product of the teen sex comedy genre and is either remarkable or not as a result of its generic choices. With its connection to Twelfth Night, Bynes’ character, Viola, must contend with all the Violas of history, and Andy Fickman’s film enters into a conversation that necessarily includes 400 years of Shakespearean precedent.

So as you watch West Side Story, you are also watching Romeo and Juliet; the parallels and deviations are part of this larger conversation. What does it mean that we’re telling a version of the same story 400 years later? How are Tony and Romeo related? Or Maria and Juliet? Does the musical genre suggest, metaphorically, that Shakespeare’s language, when brought into the modern age, becomes song – structured, lyrical thought? What other ways does the conversation between the two works leave you understanding both better, more deeply?

Or ignore Shakespeare. West Side Story is one of the great films of the 20^th century, and a great story, something that both screenwriter Ernest Lehman and Shakespeare recognized as they adapted it for their respective mediums.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Richard Thorpe's Jailhouse Rock (1957)

A lot of performers have made the jump from music to film, and done it well. Check out Beyonce in Cadillac Records or Queen Latifah in Hairspray and The Secret Life of Bees. Certainly, being in the entertainment industry prepares you for more than one genre, and Hollywood has a long history of capturing charismatic talents and presenting them on the big screen. But we wonder if Hollywood still thinks of these performers as exploitable celebrity – hey, this guy’s popular; let’s put him in a movie and rake in the dough from his fans – rather than exploitable talent.

Take Elvis Presley. From 1956 to 1969, Elvis made 31 movies, and it may have been "Saturday Night Live" that used to have a joke about them. In a skit, Elvis is portrayed as showing up a little dazed to a film shoot. A director runs in and tells him he’s going to be playing Sam or Dave or Jim, or some other innocuous name, and that he’s going to be in a particular situation. Like:

“Elvis, in this movie you’re Sam and you’re in the biggest car race of your life.” And the Elvis character would sing “Gonna win that race!”

Or, “Elvis, in this scene you’re Dave, and you’re a sea captain trying to save your ship from sinking,” and “Elvis” would sing “Gonna save that ship!”

Or, “Elvis, in this scene you’re Jim, and you’re making out with the Larimer County beauty queen at the State Fair,” and “Elvis” would sing “Gonna kiss that girl.” Etc.

The point was that from a popular perspective, Elvis’s movies were cookie-cutter formula flicks with generic scripts designed to place a visually (if increasingly pudgy) Elvis on screen for his legions of fans and collect their ticket money without much regard to the quality of the films. Just stick him in front of the camera, get him to sing, and people will pay. And that’s certainly true of forgettable movies like Clambake, Spinout, and Harum Scarum.

The irony to all of this is that, in the beginning, Elvis really wanted to be a great actor. His early roles, in films like King Creole and Loving You and Jailhouse Rock, are dark and James Dean-esque, and, dare we say it, require actual acting. As early as 1961 Elvis was explaining to anyone who would listen that he wanted his acting to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the movie studio failed to hear those pleas because it was easier, and cheaper, to throw together lame scripts, go through the motions, and still make money. They considered him more of a B-movie actor and by the mid-1960s he was saddled with regrettable claptrap like Tickle Me.

Here, in Jailhouse Rock, though, we have the early Elvis, a good script, some good actors, and some very memorable songs. It’s no surprise that people still remember this movie after they see it. The images from it have been reused and imitated for decades (see the final scene of the original Blues Brothers), and one can only think wistfully at what might have been if Elvis’s film producer, Hal Wallis, and his manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, had respected Elvis’s wish to become a serious actor. Perhaps Elvis wouldn’t be consigned now to be remembered as an actor by comedy sketches and a critic’s statement that “No major star suffered though more bad movies than Elvis Presley” (Wikipedia).

Fortunately Jailhouse Rock isn’t one of them.

R. Findlay
SPA Film Club Adviser

Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

In 400 years, when our descendants look back on the 20^th century and reduce our culture to a few prominent artists, performers, and thinkers, what will stand out? If today we can only name one English Renaissance playwright (no, it’s not Ben Jonson), what are the chances that the University of Minnesota will have a class in 2407 examining the films of Adam Sandler? When it comes to music, the last century offered us so many geniuses – Igor Stravinsky, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Elvis – it is sad to think how such a diverse period might be encapsulated. For longevity, our money is on the Beatles.

Despite a relatively short “lifespan” (their performances as a group cover only a single decade – 1960 to 1970), the Beatles shaped and changed most popular music that came after them. They moved from pop sensation to socially conscious artists, they expanded their musical scope from western to worldly, they both reflected and motivated the political and social culture around them.

They also made movies, in an era before music videos became mainstream. And while they were not the first musical group to do so – big band leaders and other rock and roll groups, like Bill Haley and the Comets, preceded them – their movies echoed the innovation one finds in their music. Richard Lester’s film A Hard Day’s Night is an excellent example. Far more than a performance film, A Hard Day’s Night builds the persona – cheeky, witty, independent, fun-loving, and lovable – that drew legions of fans to them. The film is as interested with their activities off the stage as on it, but both are performances. In this way, the film is a mock-documentary, anticipating by over a decade the mockumentary style that has become so popular in the films about fake bands (This is Spinal Tap, Fear of a Black Hat) and fake people (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman).

In addition, Lester chose innovative methods of filming to enhance the movie – a cinema vérité style, a minimalist plot that puts the performances in context, and a rapid-fire approach to dialogue that added the naturalistic documentary style. Today the use of black and white also looks innovative, but at the time Lester resorted to it to save money on the production. In retrospect it was the right choice artistically too.

In the end, the movie participates in and establishes the Beatles’ legend. It captures a musical moment, but also acquaints you with the lads as media darlings and individual voices without appearing false or insincere. Wikipedia points out that A Hard Day’s Night was filmed, in 1964, at the height of Beatlemania and that the studio that produced the film rushed the production, believing that fan interest would have dissipated before the film would be finished. They were famously wrong, and the Lester and Beatles went on to make a second film, Help!.

A Hard Day’s Night is clearly secondary to the Beatles music, but it leaves us with a visual reminder of the group just entering the top of their popularity and creativity. Historians will find it harder to overlook them, in part because Lester has done more than document their musicality. He has also captured their winning, disarming personalities in a way that seems authentic. Watching the movie now, 44 years after it was made, it still seems fresh. And we believe it will feel the same, even after 444 years.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser