All the other banal bogies

A year or so ago, there was a bit of a hubbub about the long-awaited DVD release of Arthur Hiller’s The Americanization of Emily. Someone, somewhere – and I wish I could remember who – wrote a great piece proclaiming it one of those overlooked great movies deserving of rediscovery. It’s been on my must-see list ever since. I finally caught up with it last night. And I watched it twice.

It’s astonishing. A sinister, darkly hilarious satire, I’m not quite sure how it even got made when it did (1964), nor how Bosley Crowther’s nice review failed to consider the scalding satire sure to offend anyone with patriotic tendencies. Paddy Chayefsky, in his blistering adaptation of William Buie Howard’s novel, delivers a screenplay every bit as audacious –and as entertaining – as his Network.

In his charming commentary to DVD edition, Hill says that the movie is “not anti war, not anti American, but anti the glorification of war.” In these dark days of a new century, the movie packs more of a wallop than ever before.

On the eve of D-Day in a dreary, rain-sopped London, American Navy officer Charlie Madison (James Garner, never better) meets up with war widow and motor pool driver Emily Barham (Julie Andrews, also in her best performance). Having lost a brother in the war and experience firsthand the horrors of battle, Charlie is now an unrepentant coward, enjoying the relative safety of his work as personal assistant to Navy Admiral Jessup (the great Melvyn Douglas fresh off the set from HUD). He’s a “dog robber,” or procurement officer who keeps the brass happy with good booze and easy broads, and a warehouse supply of rationed and contraband steaks, fruit, and other delicacies.

Emily doesn’t approve. He calls her a prig. She seduces him. They fall in love. And both being strong-willed, their bumpy road to romance is punctuated with the kind of gleefully delivered dialogue and debate rarely heard in movies anymore.

Emily:
I despise cowardice, I detest selfish people and I loathe ruthlessness. Since you are cowardly, selfish and ruthless, I cannot help but despise, detest and loathe you. And that is not the way a woman should feel about the man she’s going to marry.

There is great chemistry here and I would wager that one of the reasons the film was never a huge success has nothing to do with its themes but rather with Andrews’ marvelous performance as a smart and sensuous woman who contradicted everything that Mary Poppins (and soon Maria and Millie) stood for. Fans must have stayed away in droves.

Soon, Charlie pays a visit to Emily’s house, to meet her mother, and he arrives bearing gifts (Hershey bars, of course)

Emily:

Well, that’s very American of you, Charlie. You just had to bring along some small token of opulence. Well, I don’t want them. You Yanks can’t even show affection without buying something.
Charlie:

Well don’t get into a state over it. I thought you liked chocolates.
Emily:

I do, but my country’s at war and we’re doing without chocolates for a while. And I don’t want oranges or eggs or soap flakes, either. Don’t show me how profitable it will be to fall in love with you, Charlie. Don’t Americanize me.

Charlie then meets mum (a brilliant turn by Joyce Grenfell), who has lost a husband, son, and son-in-law to the war. She’s charming and a bit loony, still in denial over whom and what she has lost. As she pours tea, they share a polite and utterly ruthless exchange that cuts to the chase of what Emily is all about.

Charlie:
We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

Mrs. Barham:
You’re very hard on your mother. It seems a harmless enough pretense to me.

Charlie:
No, Mrs. Barham. No, you see, now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.

Soon, of course, Charlie finds himself in harm’s way. Big time. And I’m not going to offer a spoiler here. You’ll just have to see it for yourself. Let’s just say the final act provides James Coburn, as Charlie’s gung-ho playboy buddy Lt Commander Bus Cummings, some dastardly funny scenery chewing. He and Garner have an easy rapport here (they had just done The Great Escape the year before). There’s also pitch-perfect cameo by Keenan Wynn as a drunken sailor. Look briefly, too, for that soon-to-be Sock It To Me gal, Judy Carne, as one of Bus’s bedmates.

Like Network, the characters here know what they want and how they want to say it; people never talk like this in real life but Chayefsky’s script makes you wish that we did.
Hiller, coming on after original director William Wyler (and original leading man William Holden) exited the project, makes a confident leap to the big screen following several years in television. This was an early feature, following the sex romp The Wheeler Dealers the year before (also with Garner). It’s a shame that, with the exception of Chayefsky’s The Hospital ten years later, he never really had another great movie to his credit. Some good stuff (like the original Out of Towners but nothing on the level of Emily. And, no, I don’t consider Love Story (his only Oscar nomination, and his only Golden Globe win) worth celebrating.

Shot in crisp, beautiful black-and-white by Philip Lathrop (who balanced crap like Don’t Make Waves and Girl Happy with his grand, gritty Point Blank and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), there’s not a moment of waste here. Every scene is worth savoring.

There is, alas, one sticky wicket that cannot be dismissed, and that’s the fact that Emily vigorously asserts its thesis upon a war that was, to a large extent, necessary. However, even World War II had its share of fools, exploitation and crackpot schemers (as Flags of Our Fathers recently reminded us). Whether you agree with its politics or not, there is plenty to admire about this movie, beginning and ending with one of the best screenplays not nominated for an Oscar. Go to Netflix and put it in your queue. Now.