Just Blow a Raspberry

BEDAZZLED, the Faustian comedy feature by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, delighted me instantly, though I soon started thinking that this part or that part was dated or awkward or embarrassing. Oddly, as time went by and I got older--two things that occurred simultaneously--the awkwardnesses seem to have hit closer to the mark than I knew, and the dated aspect becomes the perfection of a period piece. In short, the good bits keep getting better and the weak ones either do or become unimportant, and what's left is one of my generation's classics.

Dudley Moore, aka Stanley Moon, is a diner cook in love with the unattainable waitress Margaret Spencer (Eleanor Bron, who I remember best from HELP). Stanley is approached by George Spiggot (Peter Cook), who being Lucifer the Lord of the Underworld offers George seven wishes. Seven chances to win the amazing Margaret, and any one of them should do it, right? Stanley lets himself be convinced: his original sin. The movie shows us the relationship between these two men, with Margaret as a pawn We never see her internal world, and most of her time is spent in scenarios concocted by George in order to ruin Stanley's wishes, and her role is akin to that of another castaway playing a part in a dream sequence on Gilligan's Island. 

George also manages the seven deadly sins, each personified by an actor. Raquel Welch as Lust lights up the screen with a broad Southern accent. He also takes Stanley with him on some of his rounds, which consist of a series of petty annoyances against people (and perhaps animals), because it's his job, as he explains to Stanley at some length. God makes him do this, in a pretty direct way. It's not George's fault. Nothing ever is. (I knew a George.) 

A favorite scene of mine has the two men dressed in white and showing up at an elderly woman's house. George says that they're the Fruney Green Eyewash men, and if she has five bottles of Fruney Green Eyewash in her home, she will win a tidy little prize. Of course she doesn't, but George encourages her to nip to the chemist and bring them back, and he'll pretend they were there all along. After she goes off on her bike, George raids her fridge and eats her raspberries and cream. Stanley complains, but has some too. Anyway, George offers, it's all her fault because she wanted to lie about the eyewash. 

Speaking of raspberries, the deal is that Stanley can end any wish and go back to status quo by blowing a raspberry. George's preferred magic words are "Julie Andrews!" but he can substitute. The scenarios of Stanley's wishes, egged on by George's devilish suggestions, are the formal set pieces of the movie, and they get more and more exacting as Stanley endeavors each time to make THIS one George-proof. Witness ye now my favorite, a self-contained "Ready, Steady, Go!" parody on a show called "Going, Going, Gone!" Stanley has wished for fame, and he has wished to win the heart of the fair Margaret (I love the moment when she's watching Stanley on the stage and is suddenly transfixed by Stanley on the monitor.). 

So Stanley goes on, singing a song written by Dudley Moore, and everything goes according to plan for a while.

 

 

It's the ultimate (as Dudley could well deliver, and often did) in its field, and its field is NEEDINESS. You will never hear a needier pop song, more baldly delivered. Watch the choreography. Then note the exact opposite of all fo it in the follow-up, also by Dudley, delivered by the guy who just couldn't help being tall and handsome and cold.

(Incidentally, Bongwater covered "Bedazzled," the song, gender-flipped and hilariously camp. Recommended.)

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charlie's apocalypse
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[The scenario has just described a brief subliminal of Chaplin being chased around a corner by a cop as The Bomb is dropped. We see the worldwide devastation from a great altitude, then the camera pans down to ground level, and...]

C. (1) ENTER THE TRAMP

He is back to the camera, hunched deeply over, in a tinily narrow alley between two buildings. A rigid forefinger is still jammed in each ear. He is still motionless; frozen.

He comes up as slowly, timorously, tremulously out of his crouch (fingers in each ear pulling timidly away), as a grass-blade recovering, which has just been stepped on. Straightens, still back to camera; and starts straightening his legs and arms inside clothes, and the clothes themselves, turning very slowly, face close to camera, staring into it. He continues to straighten his clothes, going over them very carefully ... polishing toes of shoes on calves of pants; sleeving his derby and resetting it with care on his head; testing his cane: then a sudden trembling shrug (involving a full check-over of body as well as clothes), which is a blend of what a suddenly dampened dog does, and of the feather-adjustments of a suddenly rumpled hen. Then very delicately and timidly, camera withdrawing, he advances, and sticks his snout around the corner of a building, and peers.

The rough screenplay continues with the post-nuclear-holocaust adventures of Charlie Chaplin, at first alone, then with others, then with scientists, and finally [edited to remove spoiler].

It's presented in Chaplin and Agee: The Untold Story of the Tramp, the Writer, and the Lost Screenplay, by John Wranovics. I have to confess that I found the biographical material leading up to the screenplay (here arbitrarily titled "The Tramp's New World") to be more interesting than the screenplay, overall, though the typescript has some interesting bits in it. The part following this, of Chaplin's interactions with the fixed shadows of the vanished citizens of the city, is particularly effective. If it had been made -- if Agee hadn't died when he did, and if Chaplin had shown an interest -- they would have had to lose an awful lot of what Agee worked so hard to include. It's like Alan Moore at his most specific, only he's groping for something that hasn't come into focus yet. An early draft, it's replete with multiple apologies for the roughness, and shows a willingness to compromise some of the details if need be. I'll wager he'd have done a better job on it if it had become a real project, based on his screenplay for the original Night of the Hunter.

I'd cut most of the prologue, which seems to kill the movie before the bomb does. Agee probably should have made his contribution a skeleton at that stage, keeping such bits as the introduction of the Tramp (quoted from above), and perhaps others. I confess that I was not only starting to doze in the comfy chair as I plowed to the finish today, I even started to skip through paragraphs, looking at the first sentence and then jumping ahead.

But it's still interesting. It'd be interesting to let Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have at it, for instance.

Anyway, I finished it just in time. It goes back to the library tomorrow. I saw a used copy at Barnes & Noble, and had Cathy get it on Interlibrary Loan to save $7.

This is cross-posted from my Live Journal in an attempt to breathe some life into this moribund conceit. I will try to remember to add the tag "lj" to such posts in future, to indicate the source of these items.
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