The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1965)

A fool who is unaware he is a fool is a ripe subject for comedy. A fool who knows he is a fool, but who hopes and believes he is loved not just in spite of his foolishness but because of it only to discover at the critical moment that he is in fact despised, that's the stuff of tragedy.

And thus it is that Shakespeare's greatest comic creation, the blustering, cowardly, buffoonish Falstaff, who made appearances in the Henry IV plays, The Merry Wives of Windsor and finally in Henry V, winds up a tragic figure in one of the Bard's saddest story arcs.

In 1965, Orson Welles, a director of Shakespearean film adaptations rivaled only by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh, put Falstaff front and center where he belongs, stitching together all the fat fool's scenes into a single production. The result, Chimes at Midnight (a.k.a. Falstaff), tells the story of Prince Hal's rise to power through the eyes of theater's greatest clown, and despite technical limitations arising from Welles' lack of funding, belongs on a list with Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil as the best work of the great director's career.

It's also the most personal of Welles's films, a lacerating self-portrait of a man fully aware of the cost of his life of excess and wasted potential—but who's had a good time nevertheless.

Highly recommended—if you can find it. There's a DVD available in Brazil that I hear might work on a U.S. player. Otherwise, it's pretty much YouTube or nothing.

P.S. And on a side note, a point I'd make a few paragraphs further down if I were writing a full-blown essay, I think Shakespeare dispatched Falstaff in such a coldblooded manner largely to get him off the stage—his outsized presence would have thrown the tone of Henry V out of whack—but I think he also wanted to make the point that our greatest leaders necessarily have within them a streak of ruthless pragmatism that's not pretty to look at but which separates them from the Don Quixotes of the world.

It's the price you pay for getting things done.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Chimes At Midnight (a.k.a. Falstaff) (prod. Ángel Escolano, Emiliano Piedra and Harry Saltzman)
nominees: Doctor Zhivago (prod. Carlo Ponti); For A Few Dollars More (Per qualche dollaro in più) (prod. Arturo González); The Hill (prod. Kenneth Hyman); A Patch of Blue (prod. Pandro S. Berman); The Pawnbroker (prod. Philip Langner and Roger Lewis); Repulsion (prod. Gene Gutowski); The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (prod. Martin Ritt); The Train (prod. Jules Bricken)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Sound Of Music (prod. Robert Wise)
nominees: Help! (prod. Walter Shenson); A Thousand Clowns (prod. Fred Coe)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Obchod na korze (The Shop On Main Street) (prod. Milos Broz and Jaromír Lukás)
nominees: Akahige (Red Beard) (prod. Ryûzô Kikushima and Tomoyuki Tanaka); Pierrot le fou (prod. Georges de Beauregard)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker)
nominees: Claudio Brook (Simón del desierto a.k.a. Simon of the Desert); Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold); Sean Connery (The Hill); Burt Lancaster (The Train); Sidney Poitier (A Patch of Blue); Terence Stamp (The Collector); Orson Welles (Chimes At Midnight a.k.a. Falstaff)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou)
nominees: The Beatles (Help!); Jean-Paul Belmondo (Pierrot le Fou); Jason Robards (A Thousand Clowns)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Julie Christie (Darling and Doctor Zhivago)
nominees: Catherineo Deneuve (Repulsion); Samantha Eggar (The Collector); Elizabeth Hartman (A Patch Of Blue); Ida Kamiska (Obchod na korze a.k.a. The Shop on Main Street)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Julie Andrews (The Sound Of Music)
nominees: Anna Karina (Pierrot le fou); Guiletta Musina (Giulietta degli spiriti a.k.a. Juliet of the Spirits); Rita Tushingham (The Knack ... And How To Get It)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Orson Welles (Chimes At Midnight a.k.a. Falstaff)
nominees: John Frankenheimer (The Train); Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos (Obchod na korze a.k.a. The Shop on Main Street); David Lean (Doctor Zhivago); Sergio Leone (For A Few Dollars More a.k.a. Per qualche dollaro in più); Roman Polanski (Repulsion)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Richard Lester (The Knack ... And How To Get It and Help!)
nominees: Milos Forman (Lásky jedné plavovlásky a.k.a. Loves of a Blonde); Jean-Luc Godard (Pierrot le fou); Robert Wise (The Sound Of Music)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Paul Scofield (The Train)
nominees: Harry Andrews (The Hill); Martin Balsam (A Thousand Clowns); Keith Baxter (Chimes At Midnight a.k.a. Falstaff); Tom Courteney (Doctor Zhivago); John Gielgud (Chimes At Midnight a.k.a. Falstaff); Edward G. Robinson (The Cincinnati Kid); Oskar Werner (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Silvia Pinal (Simón del desierto a.k.a. Simon of the Desert)
nominees: Joan Blondell (The Cincinnati Kid); Claire Bloom (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold); Ruth Gordon (Inside Daisy Clover); Maggie Smith (Othello); Peggy Wood (The Sound Of Music)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Orson Welles, from the plays "Henry IV: Part I," "Henry IV: Part II," "Henry V," "Richard II" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare, and the book Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed (Chimes At Midnight a.k.a. Falstaff)
nominees: Robert Bolt, from the novel by Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago); Ladislav Grosman, Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos; story by Ladislav Grosman (Obchod na korze a.k.a. The Shop On Main Street)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Help!" (Help!) music and lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Song); The Beatles (Help!) (Original Song Score); Maurice Jarre (Doctor Zhivago) (Score)

That's Typing Tuesday # 17: My Introduction To Buster Keaton

"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.

I don't know how you first became acquainted with Buster Keaton, arguably the greatest film comedian of all time, but my introduction came from the unlikeliest of sources, a book about the Beatles. In The Beatles in Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night: A Complete Pictorial Record of the Movie, editor J. Philip di Franco interviewed director Richard Lester and asked him the following question:

"How and why do you cut, cross cut, jump cut or shoot a particular scene this way or that. What theory do you use to make films?"

To which Lester responded, quite candidly:

"Well, I think all those things are valid, but you lose the kind of cutting that normally exists. The focus puller has lost focus because he has gone the wrong way with the handle, or the opening and the end of the shot are excellent, and the middle is blurred so you lose it, and you have to piece it where you couldn't see who is in it.

"That is the first kind of editing for me. If you want to go into it, I will show you shot by shot, list by list, of where you are saving a catastrophe by editing. For example, in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Buster Keaton was picked for a role in which he does what he usually does, which is be physical. He arrived dying, in the last stages of an incurable disease and we find that he can walk, but certainly not run. Therefore we have to find a double for Buster Keaton. When you have a shot where he is supposed to be coming along, he does a bit of action, bumps into a tree and falls down, you end up using eight cuts because Buster can't run that distance. So you have to have a shot to establish that it is Buster, then the long shot for the double, then another shot to remind everybody that is Buster, then another long shot, etc. ..., a close-up for him when he says his lines. All that is totally wrong in terms of one's principles, one's hopes, one's feelings toward the scene, but that is what you do. That is number two. I am afraid that I must stick everything that you said down at the end at number three."

Now when I first read that, when I was, I'm guessing, seventeen, I didn't know Buster Keaton from Diane Keaton (or for that matter, Buster Olney, the ESPN sports analyst who was to become a buddy of mine in college—Katherine says "hey," Buster), and it was a long time before I finally saw a Buster Keaton movie, but that story always stuck with me.

Strange knowing the unbearably sad ending of the story before I ever knew its beginning, but there you have it.

Anyway, for reasons I don't understand, I found myself regaling Katie-Bar-The-Door with that yarn this morning, and then I realized that thanks to the efforts of my little brother, who rescued the Beatles book from the trash pile at my mother's house during one move or another, I could share it with you, verbatim.

Now you have a glimpse into what it must be like to be married to a film buff with a pack rat's memory and a penchant for obscure anecdotes. Lucky you.