Lord Jim

Saturday, March 29, 2003: A great day of: rare sunny and warm San Francisco weather; Mr C and I went to Crissy Field for good times; a stop at Swenson's Ice Cream on Hyde and Union (waffle cone: peppermint stick and mint chip); Mr C got a bath; our two heroes rested together on the couch and watched some Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And then I decided to head to the Castro for Lord Jim (1965) -- in 70mm! Originally I put this movie off because it was long and usually only got mediocre reviews. Then I put it off because when the Modern Library put the novel on it's list of 100 Best Eng-Lang novels of the 20th Century, I wanted to read it first. But a nice 70mm print at the Castro is hard to turn down. Plus it's a nice cast featuring Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Curt Jurgens, Eli Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Daliah Lavi, Andrew Keir, Jack MacGowran, Walter Gotell, Christian Marquand, and director Brooks has done some good work (The Blackboard Jungle, The Professionals).

So, 7:20pm, a quick stop in at Hot Cookie for a peanut butter and a snickerdoodle, then the Castro 3 doors down. Med popcorn, med Coke.

Not that big a crowd, but not too small either. I was a little surprised that Lord Jim 1) got the weekend and 2) got two days (Friday and Saturday). It's not that highly regarded. Richard Brooks doesn't have a huge cult following or anything. Neither does anyone in the cast. Maybe because it is so rarely seen -- and never seen on the big screen with such a beautiful print as they had.

Joseph Conrad 1857-1924

This is a pretty complete synopsis, so beware of spoilers... Our story opens in the Orient. Jack Hawkins is narrating. He appears in the first part of the film, but pretty much only in montage sequences with no lines. We see and he tells us that Lord Jim (O'Toole) is very dapper and responsible, and just wants to be a great seaman.

Then O'Toole breaks his foot hurrying down a ladder. Hawkins takes him to the hospital, and says goodbye -- they must leave without him. O'Toole then recovers and takes the first job on the first boat that comes his way.

This boat is captained by James Bond's Walter Gotell -- a real weasel. So this ship is carrying a bunch of Indians, and the captain treats them all very shabbily. O'Toole attempts to be decent and honest. O'Toole tells the guy with his foot on the gas to slow it down, Gotell shows up and says "I'm in charge! Drive fast!" It's totally foggy. O'Toole is disapproving. Boom they hits a iceberg! Everybody duck!

Not an iceberg, really, but something. O'Toole goes down to check the damage. There's damage -- a hole and water gushing in. O'Toole heads back up top. On the way, a spokesman for our foreign travelers, says to O'Toole, "you are going to let us die, yes?" and O'Toole says (with lots of honorableness), "you really think that?" Then the guy says, "no, I guess not" or something like that.

So, O'Toole goes up and the bitch captain and the couple of drunk crew members are getting in the lifeboat, abandoning the passengers. O'Toole is outraged, but finally goes with them. He's feeling really badly about himself. A few days later they row in to port -- their ship is in port too! The crew and captain are pissed -- O'Toole starts laughing. The crew and captain skip town immediately. O'Toole goes to the authorities and tells them what happened. He is tried and disgraced, and brings disgrace to the uniform or the queen or something. We see Jack Hawkins in the court, all sad, and at about this time he stops narrating and just disappears.

O'Toole hates himself and tries to disappear. He takes odd jobs and lives very poorly. He's delivering some barrels of booze and gun powder from the ship to the shore, one of the workers pours gas all over the place and lights a fire. Everybody jumps off. O'Toole doesn't. Instead he decided to put the fire out, risking his life. Obviously in an attempt to try to make amends for his previous act of cowardice.

The owner, Stein (Paul Henried), sees this and takes O'Toole under his wing. Soon enough Henried sends O'Toole upriver with some guns and stuff for the poor rebels, who are fighting against the evil Eli Wallach (think The Magnificent Seven). Stein's previous employee, Curt Jurgens, has gone over to Wallach's side and is working with him, when he's not drunk or swallowing diamonds that he can shit out later and sell.

O'Toole sides up with the poor peasants and, like his T.E. Lawrence, is considered their great white hero -- they call him Lord Jim now...

There's a battle, Wallach is killed. That jerk Jurgens escapes. Back to the mainland. Craps out his diamond. Shows it to the dirty, filthy, fat, unshaven Akim Tamiroff. These two bums take it to Gentleman Brown -- James Mason enters the film with only 45 minutes left of it's two-and-a-half-plus running time.

Mason is probably the most villainous of any of our villains -- Wallach, Jurgens, Tamiroff and Gotell. "Gentleman" is ironic. Because he ain't be no mother fudgin' gentleman.

So, Mason, Jurgens, Tamiroff go upstream with a small group of thugs.

Meanwhile back on the native island, O'Toole has fallen in love with Daliah Lavi (Casino Royale), and Henried has shown up. Henried has found out O'Toole's shameful secret and tries to get his young friend to tell the villagers about it because it will make him (O'Toole) feel better. O'Toole freaks: "No way! You're like my daddy, Mr Stein, but please don't try to get me to do that!" "Fine," says Stein.

The bad guys arrive. Mason smashes Jurgens' handle of Beam (or whatever) with his heavy metal stick and tells him to keep sober. Mason also has some of the best lines of the film. The drunk baby Jurgens hates Jim so much -- because Jim has some honor and makes Jurgens feel that much worse about himself -- that he pleads with Mason's Brown to kill Jim. At this point Mason says something so funny and cutting, but I can't remember it exactly, and I can't find the quote anywhere online. It's something like, "shut up you dumb drunk, everything you touch goes more and more wrong, instead why don't you just try to remain simple failure." But it's shorter than that and classic cutting, quick Mason. Bulletin! A loyal reader has just emailed us the correct quote: "You have a natural talent for disaster. Try to improve yourself imto an ordinary failure by keeping your mouth shut!"

And now I'll give away the ending. So stop here for sure, if you haven't already stopped and don't want to know what happens. O'Toole makes a deal with Mason, so that the bad guys can leave, and no one (including the natives) will be killed in any skirmish. The villagers aren't sure about this. O'Toole says, "look, fellas, if any one of you is killed, I will sacrifice my own life."

Mason and Co. pull a double-cross. They are killed (similar to the way R.G. Armstrong is killed in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid), but so is the village's favorite son. Henried makes a deal with the town's leader (also the father of the young dead man) so that O'Toole can take Daliah Lavi and leave that night, but if he's around in the morning, he's dead. Henried tries to get O'Toole to leave, O'Toole knows that this is his only chance to regain his honor -- he must stay and die.

Roasting Lord Jim: Peter O'Toole and the natives.

In the morning a funeral is going on, O'Toole steps out all dressed up, hair tonic, carnation in lapel, walking stick, top hat, tails, says "hey what up" to everybody (and everybody still seems to be cool with O'Toole). O'Toole steps up to the old man hands him his rifle, steps back, looks up at the sun, -- Bang! O'Toole's dead. They bury him with the dead boy (and a little child who was killed earlier -- who O'Toole was pals with), because they respect him. Lavi is there holding his blue coat, the old man takes it in a very dignified manner and sets it on O'Toole's wrapped up corpse, and they burn the whole thing -- a funeral pyre I think it's called.

Of course, this leads one to wonder whether doing what O'Toole did was honorable, or merely stupid, or the act of someone who suffers from severe depression, or is bipolar. Definitely stupid promise to make -- if any one of you guys is killed by this band of murderous villains who are just, you know, right over there hiding in the fog, then I'll sacrifice my own life as a sort of apology/"you were right, I was wrong -- whoops!" thing.

From the Castro Theatre's schedule: "This restored 70mm print of Oscar honoree Peter O'Toole's rarely-seen epic is based on Joseph Conrad's tale of guilt and redemption. Set and shot in Southeast Asia, Lord Jim is a British seaman who battles to save native people from a predatory warlord and corrupt British businessmen. With James Mason, Curt Jurgens, Jack Hawkins and Daliah Lavi. Adapted and directed by Richard Brooks. (1965) 154m."

Cast
Peter O'Toole .... Lord Jim
James Mason .... Gentleman Brown
Curt Jurgens .... Cornelius
Eli Wallach .... The General
Jack Hawkins .... Marlow
Paul Lukas .... Stein
Daliah Lavi .... The Girl
Akim Tamiroff .... Schomberg
Tatsuo Saito .... Du-Ramin
Jack MacGowran .... Robinson
Andrew Keir .... Brierly
Walter Gotell .... Captain of Patna
Ichizo Itami .... Waris
Tatsuo Saito .... Du-Ramin
Christian Marquand .... The French Officer

Directed by Richard Brooks. Screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on Joseph Conrad's Novel. Genre: Adventure. Tagline: Filmed in the far corners of the Far East... High Adventure that reaches across the world! IMDb User Rating (as of 3.29.3): 6.5/10 (277 votes). Associate Producers (uncredited): Richard Brooks, Jules Buck, Peter O'Toole. Original Music by Bronislau Kaper. Oriental Music Advisor: Professor Mantle Hood, UCLA. Conductor: Muir Mathieson. Cinematography by Freddie Young. Film Editing by Alan Osbiston. Production Design by Geoffrey Drake. Art Direction by Ernest Archer, Bill Hutchinson. Costume Design by Phyllis Dalton. Production / Distribution Columbia Pictures Corporation. Runtime: 154 min. Country: UK. Language: English. Technicolor. Sound Mix: Mono (Westrex Recording System) / Stereo. Certification: Finland:K-12 / Sweden:15 / Spain:18.

More synopses/reviews/critiques/etc on Lord Jim:

Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide: Joseph Conrad's cerebral, philosophical novel Lord Jim is streamlined and simplified by producer/director/writer Richard Brooks for the action-and-adventure crowd. Peter O'Toole plays the first officer of a tramp steamer, who, during a hurricane, cravenly abandons ship, leaving the passengers to drown. Disgraced, O'Toole seeks out ways to redeem himselfónot only in the eyes of the British maritime commission, but in his own eyes. He signs on to deliver a shipment of dynamite to a tribe of natives somewhere in the uncharted Orient. He also joins the natives' fight against feudal warlord Eli Wallach, hoping perhaps to die in their service, thus purging himself from shame (and, in true Messianic fashion, becoming a martyr in the process). Despite the impressive star lineup of O'Toole, Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Curt Jurgens and Paul Lukas, most press coverage went to leggy leading lady Daliah Lavióincluding the 1964 Saturday Evening Post article about the making of Lord Jim, written by Richard Brooks himself. Filmed in Cambodia and Hong Kong, Lord Jim isn't precisely the Conrad novel, but fans weaned on O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia will be satisfied.

Lord Jim (1965) Asian film poster featuring Peter O'Toole.

Yahoo! Movies: This faithful adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1900 novel tells the story of a romantic young Englishman, Jim (Peter O'Toole), who takes to the sea on a merchant vessel in his quest for adventure. Imagining himself to be a great man with a bright future, Jim instead deserts at the first true test of his mettle--in a torrential storm that threatens the ship and the lives of its passengers. Wracked with guilt and shame over his cowardly act, Jim travels the world in search of an opportunity to prove his worth and retrieve his lost honor. He finds such an opportunity in the jungles of Southeast Asia, where he leads the oppressed natives in a revolt against the tyrannical general who rules over them. Peter O'Toole is charming as the well-mannered and honorable Englisman who is haunted by his past mistakes. Surrounded by lush beauty and the captivating spirit of the islanders, he rediscovers his courage and honor and ultimately finds redemption. Filmed on location in Cambodia and Hong Kong, this epic resonates with the power of its exotic and gorgeous settings, creating an almost dreamlike atmosphere.

Cinebooks Database at TVGuide.com: This stunningly exotic film of Conrad's classic features O'Toole in the title role. He serves an apprenticeship at sea under the protective eye of Hawkins and later graduates to first officer of a tramp liner, the Patna, which carries religious passengers on an awful passage in which the ship is mercilessly lashed by a hurricane. In a moment of desperation, the idealistic O'Toole abandons the ship and leaves its passengers to their fate. The craft survives, although many of its passengers are drowned, and O'Toole loses his license and sinks into waterfront obscurity. To redeem himself, O'Toole agrees to take a shipment of dynamite from Lukas and deliver it to a tribe of natives in uncharted territory. The tribe is in bondage to oppressive warlord Wallach. Surviving ambushes and treachery from his own crew members, O'Toole manages to get the explosives to the settlement and hide the barrels, exploding one to make Wallach and his henchmen believe that the entire shipment has been destroyed. Wallach captures O'Toole and tortures him, but native girl Lavi helps him escape. He joins the natives and organizes an attack on the fortress, a seesaw battle that finally sees O'Toole and the natives triumph and Wallach killed. Jurgens, however, escapes to join river pirate Mason, and they muster their forces to return to the fortress to obtain Wallach's fabulous cache of jewels stolen from the natives. O'Toole greets the thieves with a cannon shot that decimates them, but the son of the native chief is killed in the encounter and, to make up for the death, O'Toole nobly sacrifices his own life at the finish. Beautifully photographed by Young and tightly directed by Brooks, LORD JIM is moving and suspenseful. Shot on location in Cambodia and Hong Kong.

Capsule by Dave Kehr, from the Chicago Reader: Joseph Conrad's elaborately structured fiction poses monstrous problems for film adaptation, and the solution proposed here by Richard Brooks--plodding literal-mindedness--doesn't come close to working. Still, it is a handsome film (photographed by Freddie Young) with an appealing population, including Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Paul Lukas, Jack Hawkins, Akim Tamiroff, and Daliah Lavi (1964).