Take One (Sep-Oct 1972)

— SD Wee 94 2c De ee Vere eer OF oe ee rer one ial POS SE Oe oe Oe On ee eee tr? es OK: be Papillon An Allied Artists release of a Corona/General production. Producers: Robert Dorfman and Franklin J. Schaffner. Director: Schaffner. Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr., based on the book by Henri Charriere. Music: Jerry Goldsmith. Photography: Fred Koenekamp. Film Editor: Robert Swink. Cast: Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Victor Jory, Don Gordon, Anthony Zerbe, Robert Deman, Woodrow Parfrey. Panavision. Technicolor. The historical “epic” is probably the most difficult film to pull off as both an artistic and commercial success. The incredibly high costs, ranging from ten to twenty million dollars, must be made back threefold at the box office for the film to make any money, and therefore the production must have the broadest possible audience base. Action is a must, be it verbal, violent, or psychological, while character development and the interplay of good versus evil in any of its forms is equally important. Papillon, Franklin J. Schaffner’s new film, succeeds on both levels, a feat only this director has seemed able to accomplish these past few years. The problem with most historical films is the tendency to rely too heavily on action or character development, thus ending up as boring but well mounted melodrama (as Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire), well-acted history lesson (as Cromwell), free-forall action-adventure romp with little character development and sense of reality, as The Vikings [Twenty years passed... and though his castle became the stronghold of all England, Aella was unable to stop the Viking raids.”], and at worst unmotivated schlock with nothing to offer save giggle value, as The Long Ships. The great historical epics can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Lawrence of Arabia, Zulu, The War Lord, The Seven Samurai, and Bridge on the River Kwai. Zulu and The War Lord were not commercial successes, but these five are heartily agreed on among Cultists and connoisseurs. Until 1970, David Lean was the unchallenged master of the epic. His three great historical films were all commercial and artistic successes, and it looked as if his upcoming drama, Ryan’s Daughter, would not disappoint his followers. The stumble that turned into a downfall of sorts for Lean worked wonders for Schaffner. Patton picked up the honors normally reserved for Lean films both at the box office and at the Academy Awards ceremonies in the spring of 1971. (Seven awards, the same as Lawrence and Kwai had received, two more than Zhivago). With Nicholas and Alexandra, Schaffner consolidated his position, prompting many film scholars to go back and re-view Planet of the Apes and The War Lord. Pieces that had been hanging in space fell together, and now Schaffner sits atop the throne of epicdom. It’s possible that Papillon may lead to Schaffner’s downfall (or a return to normal budget films): he extended himself in character development at the cost of action, as Lean had in Ryan’s Daughter. But the only test is numbers at the box office and filled seats in cinemas from Kansas City to Milan. Schaffner’s films are great for many reasons, but none so sure as his uncanny ability to evoke three-dimensional characterizations from what have traditionally been cardboard cutouts in this genre. McQueen and Hoffman give performances that can only be termed classic. DELSON: The Schaffner hero is a man who must fulfill his destiny, a man driven to keep up his own vision of what he thinks he should be, driven to make everyone see the image of him that he sees: a man with monumentally bad character judgement in terms of trusting other people... these faults leading to his downfall. SCHAFFNER: | guess there are always threads that run through someone’s work. A personality imposes itself upon everything. | guess I’m really fascinated by the study of giants with feet of clay rather than ordinary people with heads of clay. | think that’s very likely the reason that | do the kind of pictures. that | do. | grant that it’s easier, but at the same time | think it’s more effective to make a comment aside from the basic entertainment value of the picture which has to be paramount. It is more effective to make a comment from a removed plateau than it is from the one on which one is standing. Having suffered the hell of solitary with McQueen, or the tragedy of political intrigue with Henry Fonda in The Best Man or even with Scott in Patton, one may wonder where this mine of personalized characters come from. Interestingly enough, the careers of Frank Schaffner and David Lean run quite along the same lines. Both directed character dramas in the first stage of their careers, although Schaffner rose much faster once he got into directing features. Starting in television, Schaffner won Emmy awards for his direction of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Twelve Angry Men, and The Defenders series. Much the same as Lean’s changeover from editor to director, Schaffner’s move into film was erratic. His first feature, The Stripper, was well directed, well acted by Joanne Woodward, horribly titled and a flop. The Best Man, however, won him some notoriety as an “‘actor’s director,’ and with The War Lord, his first cult was formed. Universal cut the film down from a detailed epic study of obsession to what they thought would be a fairly successful little action film. Instead, action fans stayed away, the _ intellectuals were turned off by the advertising Campaign and_ release pattern (dumping), and the film died. It wasn’t until several years after its initial release that the film started to receive any recognition at all in the States, though the Encyclopedia Brittanica had cited it as one of the five best films of 1965, and one of the most ~ successful recreations of medieval life to date. The War Lord should have been a breakthrough film, but it wasn’t until two years later that Schaffner scored big. The film that made possible the Schaffner jump from artist to box office dynamite was his adaptation of Pierre Boule’s Planet of the Apes. Papillon is the latest arrival in the modern epic phase of filmmaking. With the cutbacks imposed on the studios and independents in the past three years, only a handful of men can command the budgets necessary to make true epic films. The failure of Catch22, Paint Your Wagon, Lost Horizon, Man of La Mancha and the like have forced the hotshots to cool down, and have made up-and-coming directors take their time in choosing properties. Schaffner alone has made films at ridiculously high prices and shown a profit. Papillon is the acid test, however, as its cost of $13,000,000 will have to gross over $30,000,000 to break even. In the history of film, less than twenty have made that much, so it is likely to be an uphill fight. Rotten notices to the contrary (Doctor Zhivago, the sixth highest grossing film in history, also received the worst notices of 1965), Papillon is an audience picture. Aside from his renown as an actor’s director, one of Schaffner’s strengths lies in his ability to perfectly recreate the milieu in which his stories take place. His production designers are given the money ‘and time to work out all the problems and situations that arise, and in Papillon have presented us with the same sort of richness, atmosphere and illusion of reality that have stood out in all his films, from the patchwork quilt stone keep of The War Lord, through the grotesque Ape 29