This essay on the 1948 drama The Snake Pit  was written by Megan Boyd, PhD candidate in UW Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. A 35mm archival print of The Snake Pit will screen in our Sunday Cinematheque at the Chazen series honoring the centennial of Olivia de Havilland on December 4 at 2 p.m. at the Chazen Museum of Art.

By Megan Boyd

It is not mere coincidence that 20th Century Fox’s unsettling film, The Snake Pit, was released the same year as the monumental Paramount decision. Even before the Paramount decision ordered studios to divest themselves of their theaters, 1940s films like The Snake Pit were rendered possible by shifting production practices and power relations between studios, directors and performers throughout the decade. Directors and performers were able to obtain some influence within the studio system, and the 1940s would be marked by these developments—developments that would allow personnel to explore controversial ‘prestige’ themes and for performers such as Oliva de Havilland to have more control over their projects.

Even before the Paramount decision in 1948, studios like Fox had already been shifting from central producers to a package-unit system that granted certain producers, directors and performers a certain amount of independence during their working process. This encouragement of certain directors and performers, particularly those associated with A pictures, to pursue riskier but more ‘artistic’ projects was partially in response to the lessening of B-level production in the 1940s. Studios now had to compete with one another primarily with A films and thus, there was increased competition to make the A projects distinctive from those of other studios. At Fox, Daryl Zanuck produced a series of ‘social problem’ projects that might have previously been considered box office poison. The Snake Pit’s use of psychoanalysis and Olivia de Havilland’s performance both demonstrate critical shifts in film content engendered by this more permissive atmosphere.

Following the critical acclaim and award onslaught for Zanuck’s Academy Award-winning Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), an indictment of anti-Semitism, Zanuck went on to produce The Snake Pit. The Snake Pit was based on Mary Jane Ward’s semi-autobiographical novel, which described a woman’s mental breakdown and experiences within a mental institution. While The Snake Pit is often examined within the context of Zanuck’s social problem films, the content of the film correlates more directly with a rising interest in psychoanalysis in 1940s American cinema. Like Gentleman’s Agreement, The Snake Pit both benefits and suffers from its 1940s cultural context. By this decade, Sigmund Freud’s notions of psychoanalysis, particularly in regards to social repression and women’s hysteria, had acquired a significant pop cultural cache. Filmmakers frequently explored character psychology, sexual repression and problematic familial relations, seen in films such as King’s Row (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Locket (1946) or Mourning Becomes Electra (1947).  As in many of these other film efforts (with the exception of Spellbound), the female mind is presented as a fragile, problematic site to be investigated.  While Ward’s novel was much more critical of mental institutions as a whole and openly addressed some of the restrictive elements of marriage that led her to her breakdown, the film adaptation, as with Gentleman’s Agreement and some of Zanuck’s other social problem films, rewrites the institutional problem as an individualized problem—often localizing blame for social injustices on female characters. For instance, many of the dislikable male nurses from the book are removed and replaced with cruel, female nurses, who are given extended sequences in the film where they are shown tying protagonist Virginia in a straight jacket or speaking harshly to other patients. The blame for Virginia’s condition is assigned in flashbacks to the cold, callous nature of her mother, which forced her to become unnaturally fixated on her father. These childhood concerns are attributed as the source of Virginia’s inability to let her husband touch her. This maternal source of Mary’s breakdown differs from the blame placed on marital discord and stifling domesticity present throughout Ward’s autobiography. Finally, while the character Virginia is equally critical of her male doctors in the book, Virginia’s male doctor in the film is portrayed as a sympathetic savior—the only one willing to treat Virginia like a human being. In the book, Virginia critiques, “I do not like thee, Dr. Kik. I think you are rather silly.” This is quite a contrast from Virginia’s reliance on Dr. Kik and male diagnosis in the film, where she instantly accepts his judgment with responses such as, “It’s funny…everything you’ve said makes sense. I feel as though I know it.” The troubles of mental and marital institutions then, are reassigned to ‘nasty’ women—the callousness of the institutions’ nurses, Virginia’s mother and Virginia’s own frigidity.

Despite the troubling nature of the film’s recasting of institutional problems, the film presents Olivia de Havilland in a memorable performance. De Havilland’s treatment by film scholars often seems to reflect her treatment by characters in her films; she is never a source of fascination or fixation, but rather, acknowledged as dependable and competent. Yet de Havilland’s double Academy Award-winning career, particularly in the 1940s, was nothing short of remarkable. Though de Havilland began her career in sweet, ingénue roles, such as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) or Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), she transformed her career (partially thanks to a lawsuit against Warner Brothers that encouraged more freedom of choice in actors’ selection of screen roles) by specializing in plain or somewhat unsympathetic characters that are underestimated by those around them. These were the crowing achievements of her career—not the seductive or glamorous roles embodied by many of the 1940s female stars, from Rita Hayworth to Betty Grable.

De Havilland’s performance as Melanie in Gone with the Wind (1939) provided a blueprint for many of her memorable 1940s screen performances, including The Snake Pit. De Havilland performs Melanie largely as a sweet, liltingly voiced character, almost too gentle for this world—until she begins to create key vocal shifts in moments of surprising grit. The audience is almost taken aback when, having gotten used to the contrast between Melanie’s sweetness and Scarlett’s spirit, Scarlett has shot a Northern soldier and Melanie emerges from her room to pronounce in a low, husky voice (while holding a sword), “Scarlett, you killed him. Good. I’m glad you killed him.” This ability to shift abruptly from lilting to harsh vocal tones remained a key staple throughout de Havilland’s most acclaimed performances. De Havilland incorporates this in The Snake Pit as we see the contrast between early moments of happiness between Virginia and her husband and Virginia’s later jarring screeches and cynical, dry narration in the mental institution. The performance contrasts are perhaps most effectively employed in de Havilland’s Academy Award-winning appearance the following year in The Heiress (1949), in which the audience watches de Havilland’s plain, naïve protagonist gradually shift to a bitter, stronger woman determined to teach her former, fortune-hunting suitor a lesson. That de Havilland could remain such a star in the 1940s, when her Academy Award nominated performances contain such a lack of romance—even bordering on the grotesque—is particularly worthy of note in a decade not often seen as opportunity-laden for female film performers.

Please enjoy The Snake Pit, both for its place within a radically shifting 1940s film industry and for Olivia de Havilland’s unusual position amongst Hollywood screen heroines.

This essay on Dave Thomas' & Rick Moranis' Strange Brew (1983) was written be Leo Rubinkowski, PhD candidate in UW Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. A 35mm print of Strange Brew will screen at the Chazen Museum of Art on Thursday, November 17 at 6 p.m.. The screening is one of two adaptations of Shakespeare's Hamlet presented in conjunction with the Chazen's presentation of the First Shakespeare Folio through December 11.

By Leo Rubinkowski

Here’s the short version:

Last week, Hamlet (1948): “Good night, sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
This week, Strange Brew (1983): “Take off, you hoser!”

If you don’t like it, take off, eh!

Here’s the long version:

From their first appearance in 1980 as hosts of SCTV’s fictional talk-show segment “Great White North,” the McKenzies were defined by genial irreverence. At the time, SCTV’s half-hour broadcasts to Canadian audiences included two extra minutes of programming compared to the broadcasts syndicated for NBC affiliates in the United States. Seeing an opportunity for cultural outreach, the Canadian Broadcasting Company required that SCTV devote the time to uniquely “Canadian content.” Seeing an opportunity for mischief, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas complied by inventing Bob and Doug, respectively, avatars of the Canadian spirit who spent their time frying back-bacon, drinking beer, eating jelly donuts, and discussing issues of national significance (like how to fit a mouse into a beer bottle).

The McKenzie sketches were bare-bones—two actors improvising two-minute bits back-to-back-to-back for an hour with a single cameraman after the rest of SCTV’s crew had left for the night—but they proved wildly popular, both at home and south of the border. (When SCTV occasionally ran short, network affiliates in the US made up the difference by running the longer Canadian version with the McKenzie bits.) In 1981, Moranis and Thomas released a comedy album as their alter-egos titled “The Great White North,” which charted in the US and Canada and earned the duo a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album in 1983. A feature film seemed like a reasonable next step.

(Enter Shakespeare.)

At a glance, Strange Brew is very obviously based on Hamlet. (Why else would we have paired the two for a Cinematheque series?) In place of the Danish royal family’s estate, Elsinore, we get Elsinore Brewery. Rather than King Hamlet’s murder by his brother Claudius, who usurps his throne and steals his wife, Uncle Claude takes over the family brewery as a lackey of Brewmeister Smith, who murdered John Elsinore (Claude’s brother) to keep him from exposing a plan to take over the world through tainted beer. Instead of Hamlet and Ophelia, who both end up very dead, Pam Elsinore and one-time hockey great Jean LeRose save the day while very much alive. Finally, the comic relief: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the original, and the McKenzies here. (Is there a Hosehead-Laertes connection I’ve missed? Oh! I forgot the play-within-the play, which is reproduced in minute detail as The Mutants of 2051 AD.)

If the correspondences look cursory, and if any perceived homages feel indelicate, that’s because they are. Taking Dave Thomas at his word, he and Rick Moranis faced a pair of problems in developing the McKenzies for the big screen, and Shakespeare solved both problems. First, their executive producer at SCTV had threatened to sue the pair for breach of contract if they wrote a movie using their “Great White North” characters, so they handed off the initial script-writing duties to Steve De Jarnatt. Second, Bob and Doug were products of improvisation; neither Moranis nor Thomas was fully prepared to develop a 90-minute script for two characters who spent their lives on a couch. Rather than leave De Jarnatt with nothing, though, they offered him Hamlet, saying “Why don’t you play with that structure. That’s at least a story that works.”

And that’s about as far as Shakespeare influenced Strange Brew (at least as far as I can tell).

(Exit Shakespeare.)

With a script in hand, Moranis and Thomas had no trouble securing a distribution deal with MGM. At the same time, the two actually rewrote a good deal of the script, because they felt that their improvisational style hadn’t been adequately reproduced in the first draft. What could they add to Shakespeare? Basically anything that entertains despite (or because of) its cartoonish absurdity. Some portions of the script toward the end were re-worked (apparently, Hosehead couldn’t fly in the first go-around), but Dave Thomas points primarily to the first half of the film, when he said: "…the opening of the movie, if you look at it texturally, is quite different than the back half. The back half really locks into the story of the evil Brewmeister trying to take over the world, whereas [in] the beginning of the movie Bob and Doug present a little sci-fi with Rick as Charlton Heston at the end of the world…picking up a miniature Statue of Liberty and…then we’re in a movie theater watching our own movie and we release moths, cause a riot, and end up having to run out of our own movie premiere. The script was far more bizarre and conceptual in the beginning than it ended up being at the end. If we had been able to rewrite the whole thing, we would have made the whole thing like that probably, but we weren’t sure how far we could go with the studio."

When Strange Brew hit North American screens in late August 1983, Janet Maslin of the New York Times called it “a movie that’s barely there,” assuring her readers that the cost of admission “could buy enough beer for an experience at least as memorable as this one.” With all due respect to Maslin, she must not have been watching in the preferred 3-B. While allowing that the plot isn’t exactly air-tight (“Tunnel to the brewery? Take off! How convenient!”) and acknowledging that it lacks the emotional and psychological force of, say, The Merchant of Venice, viewers should also keep in mind that this isn’t Shakespeare. A better point of comparison, in fact, is offered right in the film: cartoons. In MGM’s Tom & Jerry shorts (to say nothing of the Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes libraries owned by Warner Bros.), basic rules of logic don’t apply. The same goes for the universe inhabited by Bob and Doug; critical comparisons to the real world (or to basic standards of dramatic narrative) just get in the way. It’s easier to suspend expectations and be perpetually surprised at the antics of these two lovable goofballs and at the inarguable novelty of their adventures.

Oh! Beauty!

This essay on Laurence Olivier's movie of William Shakespeare's Hamlet was written by Erica Moulton, PhD candidate in UW Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. A 35mm print of Hamlet will screen at the Chazen Museum of Art on Thursday, November 10 at 6 p.m.. The screening is one of two adaptations of Hamlet presented in conjunction with the Chazen's presentation of the First Shakespeare Folio through December 11. A screening of Warner Bros' 1935 adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream will screen as part of our Olivia de Havilland retrospective on Sunday, November 13.

By Erica Moulton

“This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.”

Laurence Olivier opens his 1948 film adaptation of Hamlet with these words, the only ones heard in the film that do not belong to William Shakespeare’s play text. Despite the simplicity of this statement, upon closer inspection, it proves to be more question than axiom. The “man” at the center of the statement, the young prince Hamlet, has posed many problems for critics, theatre directors, filmmakers, and actors since he first appeared on the page and stage around 1600.

Since then, he has been the favorite son of the literary and theatrical set, with every critic worth their muster penning an essay or book on Hamlet, and every actor waiting for their chance to cut their teeth on the role. In the 1910s, D.H. Lawrence said of the character: “I have always felt a strong aversion from Hamlet: a creeping unclean thing he seems….[the] character is repulsive in its conception, based on a self-dislike and spirit of disintegration.” Lawrence’s attitude towards Hamlet is extreme, but in describing a poster-boy for self-loathing and neuroses, Lawrence is not far removed from the 20th century project of aligning Shakespeare’s plays, particularly Hamlet, with the work of Sigmund Freud.

Freud’s influence on Olivier’s Hamlet is well-documented and highly evident to viewers even casually familiar with Freud’s writing. When Olivier stages a climactic argument between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude, with the two writhing and struggling on her bed, he isn’t insinuating anything. Psychoanalysis had edged its way into popular consciousness by the middle of the 20th century, with filmmakers like Hitchcock directing his ode to head-shrinking, Spellbound, in 1945. Olivier was certainly interested in laying the subconscious of Shakespeare’s characters bare in the film, but it is the way that he does this, how he shoots and frames the action, that ultimately makes this Hamlet both satisfying and occasionally frustrating.

While Freud gets referenced often in discussions of this film, of equal importance is Hollywood cinematographer Gregg Toland, whose collaborations with directors like John Ford, Orson Welles, and William Wyler in The Long Voyage Home, Citizen Kane, and The Best Years of Our Lives greatly impacted Olivier and his cinematographer Desmond Dickinson. Olivier is adept at using deep space to stage the conflicts both external and internal between Hamlet and the members of the court at Elsinore. When Hamlet is introduced, he sits at the end of a long table, foregrounded, with his uncle (now step-father) Claudius gazing imperiously at him from a throne in the background. Hamlet has become a stranger in his own home, and after receiving a shocking revelation from the ghost of his dead father, the old King Hamlet, he sets out on his journey of revenge. The camera roves, meanders, peeks around corners, eavesdrops on private conversations, and leads its audience through the labyrinthine castle Elsinore.

The cast of Hamlet are also subjects of scrutiny as they move through the dark and cavernous halls and winding stairwells. Felix Aylmer and a very young Jean Simmons are standouts in the cast, as the grizzled royal advisor Polonius and his daughter Ophelia, who is caught between her duty to her father and her love for prince Hamlet. This family drama mirrors that between the royal family, and loyalties between fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are tested. Olivier chose to pare down his text to only include the family intrigue, jettisoning the larger political themes of the play, as well as multiple characters. What is left is an intense psychological drama, a cat and mouse game that, like the title of Hamlet’s play-within-a-play, traps the characters, each brought down by a fatal flaw.

One question that Olivier grapples with is—whose flaw is it? Is it, as the opening declaration suggests, Hamlet’s inability to make up his mind that brings about the downfall of his family, and consequently, the entire nation of Denmark? Or is it the “stamp of one defect” each man (and woman) is cursed to bear that causes this unraveling of humanity? Olivier offers no easy answers, but the film, like the play, is a puzzle to get lost in again and again. It is not a tragedy—it’s the tragedy.

This essay on Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) was written by Erica Moulton, PhD candidate in UW Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. A 35mm print of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte will screen in our Sunday Cinematheque at the Chazen salute to Olivia de Havilland on Sunday, October 30, at 2 p.m. at the Chazen Museum of Art.

By Erica Moulton

Hush hush, sweet Charlotte
Charlotte, don't you cry
Hush hush, sweet Charlotte
He'll love you till he dies

The lyrics to the theme song of Robert Aldrich’s delightfully disturbing 1964 film Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte sound like a lullaby from a bygone era, but in between the dulcet tones of Frank De Vol’s song hides a deadly message. The eponymous Charlotte, played with maniacal élan by Bette Davis, is an aging southern belle plagued by violent mystery from her past that has left her an agoraphobic deranged old women. She clings to the dilapidated Louisiana mansion left to her by her long dead father (an imposing Victor Buono in flashback scenes), refusing to yield the property to the construction crew who show up every day to tear down her house to make way for a highway (Bette Davis even fires a shotgun at the crew foreman played in a cameo by George Kennedy.)

The story has its roots in the southern gothic stories written by the likes of Flannery O’Connor or Carson McCullers, but the execution is pure psycho-biddy, with Davis and Agnes Moorehead hamming it up as mistress and housekeeper of Hollis house, screeching and mugging their way through the film. Olivia de Havilland shows up as cousin Miriam, who is tasked with talking reason into Charlotte. Moorehead, sporting a nearly incomprehensible southern dialect, plays Velma, who suspects that Miriam’s intentions may not be entirely honorable.

At the core of the film is a murder mystery, which Aldrich introduces in a lengthy pre-credit sequence. Flashing back to 1927, Charlotte’s father, Big Sam Hollis, is unhappy his young daughter has taken a married lover (Bruce Dern in one of his first roles). At a glamorous party, the lover is brutally decapitated and the murderer is never found. The townsfolk and, at times Charlotte herself, suspect that she murdered him when he told her he planned to go back to his wife (played in present day by Mary Astor). The shocking sequence is as disturbing today as it must have been to audiences in 1964. Back in present day, a group of children stand outside Charlotte’s house taunting her, singing:

Chop Chop Sweet Charlotte
Chop chop ‘til he’s dead
Chop Chop Sweet Charlotte
Chop off his hand and head.

The film was made for 20th Century Fox and planned to reunite costars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford after the success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, which was also directed by Robert Aldrich. Hush…Hush was the first film produced by Aldrich’s newly formed Associates & Aldrich production company, and his entire family was involved in the production, with his younger children appearing as actors and his older daughter acting as script supervisor. Aldrich may have surrounded his cast and crew with his family, but one person who did not feel welcome on the set was Joan Crawford.

The legendary feud between Crawford and Davis came to a head during the making of Hush…Hush, and Aldrich sided with Davis. Halfway through production, a dissatisfied and bitter Crawford left the film, citing illness. Aldrich accused her of lying to get out of her contract, and even hired a private investigator to follow Crawford. The director was forced to shut down his production for three weeks in search of an actress to fill Crawford’s role. Davis suggested her old friend from Warner Brothers, Olivia De Havilland, but convincing her to take the role proved a challenge for Aldrich. De Havilland lived in a remote estate in Switzerland, which Aldrich traveled to and spent four days at her home cajoling her into taking Crawford’s part. Looking back on the decision, De Havilland remarked, “I can't say I regretted it, because working with [Davis] was special, but I can't say it was a picture I am proud to put on my résumé.”

Despite her reservations, De Havilland relented, and the film was reshot with her in the role of Miriam. Davis, Joseph Cotten (who plays Charlotte’s family doctor) and Aldrich reportedly toasted Crawford’s replacement on set with Coca-colas (a dig at Crawford, whose late husband was the chairman of Pepsi). There was not enough time to make new costumes, so many of the clothes De Havilland wears in the film are her own, and the cosmopolitan glamor and gentility she brings to the role perfectly offsets Davis’ unhinged look, all spindly braids and flowing nightgowns.

After a fraught production, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte was released in December of 1964. Part horror film, part demented romance, part crime thriller, and a southern gothic tale to boot, it perplexed some critics but delighted audiences, grossing $7,000,000 at the box office. Bosley Crowther, chief critic for the New York Times called the film “grisly, pretentious, disgusting and profoundly annoying” in his review. He also mentions the rather eccentric acting styles, singling out Agnes Moorehead in particular, writing that she “is allowed to get away with some of the broadest mugging and snarling ever done by a respectable actress on the screen. If she gets an Academy award for this performance—which is possible, because she's been nominated for it—the Academy should close up shop!”

De Havilland gives by far the most restrained performance of the main cast. Her naturally warm onscreen presence belies the more sinister aspects of her mysterious character, making the film’s final twist both surprising and ridiculous. Who would have thought that Melanie Hamilton from Gone with the Wind would one day wield a severed head!