Dr. No (1962)

Posted on November 23, 2013 at 9:08 am by Jeff Kuykendall

One of the main pleasures of watching Dr. No (1962) now is observing the formative steps of what will become the most popular and widely imitated film series of all time; it’s watching the iconic in its nascent stage. In many ways, there’s a similar thrill offered in Casino Royale (2006) and Skyfall (2012), that of watching the pieces of the “James Bond movie” come together, but theirs is by necessity self-conscious, nostalgic. When Miss Moneypenny finally arrives in Skyfall, seated behind that desk as James is summoned to meet M. through an adjacent door, we smile because these seemingly trivial elements are important to us. Although producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli intended their debut 007 picture to be a smash, even they couldn’t have predicted how lucrative and enduring the franchise would become. That’s why there’s still some charm and excitement in seeing the gun-barrel logo opening the picture, filling the screen with blood, before the “James Bond Theme” blasts at us. They were trying something different; they couldn’t know with certainty that this would work. Moneypenny is played by a hard-working British actress (the wonderful Lois Maxwell) seated behind a desk, flirting with Bond in a brief, charming little scene; there is no reason to find her presence significant. There are no real gadgets, no Q., and the story is limited to only one scenic locale – though we can attribute our own significance to it, since we know it’s the place where Ian Fleming lived and wrote all the James Bond novels: Jamaica.

Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder.

But Saltzman (a Canadian) and Broccoli (a native of Queens, New York) were fans of Fleming’s popular novels, and intended to elevate Dr. No above the typical low-budget British spy thriller: they wanted it to be the spectacular first entry of a series. (Cary Grant was considered for the lead, but it was assumed he’d never come back for a sequel.) Shooting in color and on location in the place where the novel was set was the first significant step toward separating Dr. No from its contemporaries. The film gained an exotic, even erotic charge from the clear blue sea and white Jamaican beaches. Jamaica was one of the film’s greatest special effects; the other was Swiss model and actress Ursula Andress. Arriving with her husband, photographer John Derek (as well as, incidentally, Bunny Yeager, who shot some of the most famous Bettie Page photos), the young, statuesque beauty embodied what would become the Bond Girl: a little-known model or beauty queen, preferably European, who looks great in a swimsuit. And like so many of the early Bond girls, her voice would be dubbed. The chosen director, Terence Young, would do much for establishing the detached cool of James Bond, and would go on to direct the second Bond installment and one of the most satisfying of the entire series, From Russia with Love (1963). The Bond villain is one of the most memorable of Fleming’s novels, living in an island fortress populated by uniformed, machine gun-toting guards; the half-German, half-Chinese Dr. No, with his deadly metal hands, would be played by Joseph Wiseman (Viva Zapata!) in a manner that would influence all series villains to come. His booming, disembodied voice as he intimidates his henchman, Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson, The Curse of the Werewolf), foreshadows Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s chilling tenor. Singer-turned-composer Monty Norman composed the “James Bond Theme” with an arrangement by composer John Barry, and it is this which plays over Maurice Binder’s stylish opening titles; unlike later films, there is no proper theme song, unless you count a calypso take (by Byron Lee & The Dragonaires) on “Three Blind Mice,” which during the credits takes over following some pounding drums and gyrating silhouettes. (The most prominent song in the film is “Under the Mango Tree” sung by Norman’s wife, Diana Coupland. If you are looking for a song-with-lyrics that’s most closely associated with Dr. No, then look no further. Honey Ryder sings it while looking at her seashells, and while Bond is “just looking.”) Norman and Barry’s theme music for 007 was so enjoyable, so addictive, so whistle-able, that editor Peter Hunt – another invaluable asset to the early films – happily applied thick globs of the theme everywhere. Bond enters a room: the Bond theme plays. Bond lights a cigarette: the Bond theme plays. In these Daniel Craig days of restraint, the theme is rationed out very carefully. Not so in the joyous time of Dr. No, when everything that clicked was treated as a marvelous discovery.

James Bond (Sean Connery) is tailed on his way to a rendezvous with the duplicitous Miss Taro.

Then there’s the matter of Sean Connery. He was not yet a recognizable star (one of his larger roles was in Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People), and was chosen after a long search by the producers, who reportedly considered at various points Richard Johnson (The Haunting), Patrick McGoohan (Danger Man), and Roger Moore. It is Connery’s Bond, more than any other element, that holds Dr. No together and ensured the success of the franchise. As much as I enjoy Craig’s 007, anyone who claims he’s the best of the Bonds really must rewatch the first three films in the series to see how good, how natural Connery was in the role. Was he Fleming’s James Bond? Not quite, and perhaps Craig’s is closer on that score. Fleming’s Bond was more self-questioning, more weary of the job, more reluctant to kill in cold blood. Yet the best scene in Dr. No does not take place in Fleming’s novel. After placing Dr. No’s sexy spy, Miss Taro (Zena Marshall, Let’s Be Happy), under arrest – she’s escorted off in a taxi with a government official – Bond makes up the bed to look like someone’s sleeping in it, then waits behind the door, biding his time with a game of solitaire. He knows Taro was trying to delay him until one of No’s men could arrive, and soon the assassin emerges through the door, firing with a silencer at the bed. Bond disarms the man, revealing him to be Professor Dent. When Bond briefly lets his guard down, Dent seizes his gun and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. “That’s a Smith & Wesson,” Bond says, unperturbed, a cigarette dangling from his lip, “and you’ve had your six.” He proceeds to shoot Dent; the man convulses violently in the air and lands on his face on the floor. Bond then shoots the inert figure in the back. It’s a cold, brutal scene, and perhaps – arguably – a step further than Fleming would have gone. As this comes just after we’ve watched Bond blatantly exploit Miss Taro, a treatment that causes her to spit in his face, we’re given a memorable introduction to the hard-boiled, envelope-pushing sex and violence that the initial Bond films would offer eager audiences of the 60’s. Connery’s Bond is certainly a chauvinist and a playboy, a man of an era that now seems like ancient history, but his charisma still holds. Dr. No is rather leisurely paced compared to later Bond entries, but you can’t take your eyes off Connery as he acts the detective (which is how he describes himself to Honey Ryder), following clues, evading assassins and double agents, determining who he can trust (John Kitzmiller’s Jamaican fisherman Quarrel, Jack Lord’s Felix Leiter) and who he can’t.

The novel, with cover art for the 2008 Ian Fleming Centenary edition by Richie Fahey.

Differences between Fleming’s Bond and that of the films bothers me less than some because although I enjoy the books, I don’t hold them up as timeless, unimpeachable works. Some are better than others; some are burdened too much by Fleming’s dated views on race and gender. (For the record, my favorite Bond novel is Moonraker, a book so darkly ironic that Bond doesn’t even get the girl.) But it would be wrong to describe Dr. No as unfaithful to its source material; to the contrary, Saltzman and Broccoli insisted the script (by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather) adhere as close as possible to Fleming. If anything, they’re required to pad the story out from the original text, since the novel Doctor No – published in 1958 and the sixth in the series – is unusually tight and simple, getting to No’s island headquarters pretty quickly for an extended showdown between hero and villain. All changes are largely done by necessity. Dr. No doesn’t retain a giant squid for Bond to battle, and he isn’t killed by being drowned in seabird guano (something that would have risked parody, though certainly the humor was intentional on Fleming’s part). An attempted murder of Bond with a centipede becomes a tarantula onscreen. An extended, agonizing crawl through a booby-trapped tunnel that Dr. No has created for Bond as an endurance test is simplified to the point of losing its original narrative purpose (Bond now simply crawls through a shaft and only risks scalding water). Young attempted to film a scene from the novel in which Honey Ryder is tied down and left to a squadron of sand-crabs, but the crabs arrived half-frozen or dead, and the scene was changed so the threat is death by drowning instead. Unlike in the novel, Doctor No here works for SPECTRE, the international criminal organization led by Blofeld, a character who won’t be introduced until the next film. But one of the more interesting examples of the film’s faithfulness is the famous scene of M. (Bernard Lee) replacing Bond’s Beretta .25 with a Walther PPK 7.65 mm, to Bond’s displeasure. M. mentions that the Beretta almost cost Bond his life in a previous mission. That mission was actually From Russia with Love, the novel which preceded Doctor No, and which ended with Bond’s apparent death by Rosa Klebb. Yet the film adaptation of From Russia with Love would come next, and act as a sequel in the film series continuity.

Joseph Wiseman as Dr. No.

Location shooting occurred not very far from Fleming’s Goldeneye home – the author paying frequent visits to the set –  but interiors were filmed at Pinewood Studios, where production designer Ken Adam (Dr. Strangelove) sculpted Dr. No’s headquarters. The designs range from the ornate and intricate, such as No’s Captain Nemo-styled dining room (which contains a giant aquarium, a fireplace, natural rock and hardwood floors, and stolen works of art), to the deceptively simple, such as the chamber where No’s voice interrogates Dent, lit only by the round grate in the ceiling that creates a domed shape of light and shadow against the wall. This Modern Art production design is so indelible that it’s become permanently associated with 60’s superspies, and paid tribute to in the Austin Powers movies and The Incredibles (2004). Adam would continue to top himself in the Bond pictures, reaching his creative zenith in the elaborate spaces of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and his 007 swan song, Moonraker (1979). You see his sets and you want to walk around them, live inside them. The film ends, as Bond films must, with the fiery destruction of the enemy base, and it’s only in the climactic battle – Bond and Dr. No wrestle in radiation suits – that the film stumbles a bit; the size of Adam’s set notwithstanding, Young needed to apply a slightly more creative touch to enliven the climax. (Maybe we did need the squid and the guano.) But by this point, Dr. No has already distinguished itself from stock B-pictures. It had provided an ideal template, and its worldwide success would allow Saltzman and Broccoli the opportunity to refine, improve, excel. That path started on a Jamaican beach underneath the mango tree, and would continue with a nail-biting trip out of Istanbul on the Orient Express.

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Clash of the Titans (1981)

Posted on November 17, 2013 at 9:55 am by Jeff Kuykendall

So yesterday I went to Thor: The Dark World (2013), and – probably because I had just re-watched 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) that morning, I was particularly struck by how far special effects have come, how casually sophisticated they are. Hardly a scene in the film goes by without some kind of CGI effect. In one moment, we catch a glimpse into some kind of Asgardian museum where it appears that a galaxy is suspended in the boughs of a tree. It’s not commented upon; it’s just there. It’s a fine moment of surrealism, or at least Marvel-brand psychedelia in the vein of Jack Kirby’s Thor comics. Of course, since this was a Marvel film, I was obliged to sit through the ending credits for the Easter egg at the end. The seemingly endless scrawl listed one special effects company after another. Fast-forward to later in the evening, when I decided to revisit the original Clash of the Titans (1981). The credits were much shorter, because most of the work – apart from some assistance by Steven Archer and Jim Danforth – was by one man, Ray Harryhausen. Sure, his creations don’t look as “realistic” as the monsters and cosmic environs of Thor: The Dark World. But his stop-motion miniatures all moved at the guidance of his hands, and that makes a difference: this is a spectacle with fingerprints.

Perseus (Harry Hamlin) enters the Underworld to confront Medusa.

The appeal of the original, analog Clash of the Titans – and I make this distinction because the 2010 remake feels like a bland video game, one that you’re watching someone else play – relies a lot upon your affinity for Harryhausen, as well as how old you were when the film came out. I was five. Harryhausen fans of an older generation probably have mixed-to-negative feelings about the film, since it simply can’t touch the brilliance and magic of his seminal works, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Those films are much better, but they also belong to the childhood of the so-called “monster kids.” To the next generation, Clash of the Titans – along with Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) – helped form the basis of their blossoming imaginations. At least, they did for me. And while Clash of the Titans‘ weaknesses seem more evident the more time passes, I have an inescapable nostalgia for this movie, partly because I grew up with it – I’m pretty sure this is where I saw a naked woman for the first time – and partly because it became Harryhausen’s swan song. Stop-motion would stick around for just a little while longer, but in more subtle forms, such as go motion, to further the illusion of reality. It was even briefly considered for Jurassic Park (1993), until Spielberg became convinced that computer effects had come far enough to deliver his dinosaurs. In middle school, and long before Jurassic Park, my Latin teacher showed Clash of the Titans to the class, and as soon as the first of Harryhausen’s creations – the giant winged vulture – appeared on the TV, the students started to laugh. I wanted to stand on my desk and lecture them on who Ray Harryhausen was and the depths of his achievement. In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing I just shrunk down into my seat instead.

Judi Bowker as Princess Andromeda.

With the benefit of hindsight, this is a fitting end to Harryhausen’s string of films with producer and longtime partner Charles H. Schneer. The film has an all-star cast, some attractive location shooting, and – most importantly – lots of monsters; it was a return to form after stumbling slightly with the low-budget Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), a film that had the misfortune to be released the same year as Star Wars, and which Harryhausen fans frequently, casually refer to as the master’s weakest (for the record, I enjoy Eye of the Tiger, and as I’m writing this, the gorgeous poster for the film is staring down at me). The credits proudly boast the presence of Sir Laurence Olivier as Zeus, and as far as I’m concerned, his is the definitive interpretation, though I also have a fondness for the more earthy, low-key Niall MacGinnis in Jason and the Argonauts. Besides Olivier, the film has a post-Rocky Burgess Meredith as the poet Ammon, Ursula Andress as Aphrodite (though present, it seems, just to sell the film – she hardly gets any lines), and a host of esteemed British actors including Maggie Smith – Professor McGonagall herself – as the vengeful Thetis and Claire Bloom (The Haunting) as Hera. Olivier spends most of the film sitting at a throne with sparkling blue laser-lights beaming from behind his head. He projects the regal quality necessary, and only falters in a strange scene where he speaks to his son Perseus (a pre-L.A. Law Harry Hamlin) through a magic shield: he delivers his lines as though heavily sedated. Of the gods and goddesses, the real star is Smith, whose Thetis is perennially annoyed at Zeus for the favoritism he shows his bastard son, and the punishment he visits upon her child, Calibos (Neil McCarthy, Where Eagles Dare): he gives him horns, scaly green skin, and a lizard’s tail. Smith captures the righteous anger of a goddess quite well as she invokes a curse upon the city of Joppa through the image of her stone idol – a scene that truly feels like Greek mythology brought to life. Although Hamlin’s performance is only adequate, he’s given plenty of solid support with Burgess Meredith as his mentor, an appealing Tim Pigott-Smith (Quantum of Solace) as his soldier friend Thallo, and the stunningly beautiful Judi Bowker (Brother Sun, Sister Moon) as his predestined lover, the Princess Andromeda.

One of Ray Harryhausen's creations: Dioskilos, the two-headed guardian of Medusa's lair.

What attracts me to the worlds of Harryhausen is that around every corner there’s a lost temple or some fearsome creature. The highlight, and the raison d’être, of the film is Perseus’ journey to the Underworld and his subsequent duel with Medusa. Even among Titans detractors, no one argues that the Medusa sequence belongs in every Harryhausen highlight reel. But I love everything that leads up to it, including the River Styx ferryman Charon, a skeleton dressed in black who appears out of the fog, extending his bony hand to request the toll. They should at least descend down some kind of pit to reach the Underworld, not simply walk there, but it seems nonetheless significant that it’s that easy. In a Harryhausen film, wonders await at the end of a long journey, you simply have to go. After a battle with a two-headed dog, Dioskilos (kind of a demi-Cerberus), Perseus and his men enter a dark temple of pillars lit only by torchlight. Harryhausen’s design of Medusa is creative: not only does she have snakes in her hair (which move, unlike Hammer’s The Gorgon), but her lower body is nothing but a snake’s tail, including a rattlesnake’s rattle. Since Perseus can’t look at her directly, he can only hear the hiss of her snakes and the shake of her rattle, before she nocks an arrow and lets fly. When one of his men is caught in Medusa’s gaze, her eyes glow green, and he turns to stone. As a demonstration of Harryhausen’s craft, the sequence is superb: he captures the flickering torchlight upon her scaly features, while he moves every serpent, as well as her roaming eyes and the arms that pull her body across the temple floor.

A page from the Golden Press softcover graphic novel, depicting the introduction of Bubo the owl. Art by Dan Spiegel.

Other notable creations in the film include the winged horse Pegasus, Bubo the mechanical owl, and the villain Calibos. Like Pegasus, Calibos (inspired, in a nice touch, by Caliban of The Tempest) is stop-motion only in long-distance shots, and the cuts between stop-motion and live action are always obvious and never seamless (but who cares?). The advantage of stop-motion is that Harryhausen can get Calibos’ lizard-tail moving with expression as he battles Perseus in the swamp. Perseus’ capture of Pegasus is memorable not just for the beautiful animation of the horse flapping its giant feathered wings through the evening sky, but also the way it tries to “buck” its rider – a nice example of Harryhausen’s subtle humor and empathy for his creatures. A battle with giant scorpions, which grow from Medusa’s blood, evokes his earlier giant-animal movie Mysterious Island (1961), and even if the climactic appearance of the Kraken is more iconic than impressive, at least it has four arms! As for Bubo, he’s always been a divisive character. Though Harryhausen often protested it, there’s obviously an R2-D2 influence (Perseus is the only one who can understand his electronic bloops and bleeps); and in the remake, his cameo is little more than an excuse to insult the poor little fella. I always liked him, though, again, I was five when this came out. As with all Harryhausen films, the Blu-Ray treatment has a tendency to spotlight the seams of every effect; many of the optical effects are embarrassing as a result (to name one example, Poseidon floating beside the Kraken’s undersea lair looks pretty horrible). But look past the rougher moments and there’s plenty to enjoy. Advances in technology may have pressed Harryhausen into an early retirement, but with Clash of the Titans he provided a satisfying send-off to the era of stop-motion fantasy. Much of it shows its age, but Harryhausen’s charm is preserved just fine.

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Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)

Posted on November 10, 2013 at 12:16 pm by Jeff Kuykendall

In the official pressbook for Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983), the last of the Monty Python films and the formal end of the group’s creative output, Graham Chapman described the film’s story thusly: “We start just prior to fertilization, I suppose, and then move on through the fertilization of the ovum until we reach, more or less, the fetus, and then birth shortly followed by death. Well, there’s an intervening stage called life, but then we’re on to the more important bits again – death, and the consequences of it.” Eric Idle wrote a poem which adorned the pressbook (and which he read in a bit filmed for the 2003 DVD); it began, “There’s everything in this movie, everything that fits/From the meaning of life in the Universe, to girls with great big tits.” For the record, Idle’s description is more accurate than Chapman’s. The Meaning of Life would prove to be an appropriately spectacular capper to the career of Monty Python, but it also suffered a particularly painful birth (even more awkward than the one which begins the film), and in subsequent years, most of the Pythons have expressed dissatisfaction with it. Fans tend to prefer Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) or Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), but I recall that in my high school years The Meaning of Life was one of those you-have-to-see-this movies thanks to its sheer outrageousness. Mr. Creosote and his wafer-thin mint! Every Sperm is Sacred! And, yes, those “girls with great big tits,” chasing Chapman over a cliff in the film’s shortest sketch, which surely helped make this a must-see among teenage boys. The Pythons have a right to grumble about the film’s shortcomings; they’re the authors, after all, and in their eyes the film didn’t meet the standards they’d set with their previous work. But Life of Brian was magic: the anarchic, occasionally juvenile, frequently razor-sharp Python humor leveled at the big, fat, and utterly taboo target of organized religion. That was an achievement that was difficult to top. And if Meaning of Life isn’t as good as the other Python films, surely it’s funnier, more insightful, and more chock-full of visual delights than most cinematic comedies of its day, or since.

Roman Catholic Michael Palin teaches his army of children that "Every Sperm is Sacred" in the eyes of God.

As Michael Palin recalls in The Pythons Autobiography, “We wrote a huge amount of material that never got used. It was much more of an uphill struggle getting The Meaning of Life going. It’s very, very hard to know where you go after Life of Brian. In fact, I remember us thinking that – where do we go next? And I think the seven ages of man – birth, life, death – that idea, the really big one, was seen as the only way you could cap Life of Brian. We never really considered going back and doing a smaller, gentler movie.” He notes that one of the suggested titles was “Monty Python’s World War III.” The pressbook offers a few other working titles: “Sex and Violence” (not coincidentally, the title of an early episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and “Monty Python’s Fish Movie.” Hoping that lightning would strike twice, the Pythons attempted to recreate their tremendously productive 1978 Barbados sabbatical which resulted in the Life of Brian script; this time, they went to Jamaica for two weeks to hammer out a screenplay. It was a logical move: increasingly, the Pythons had been taken in different directions by their burgeoning careers. John Cleese was, for the time, content to turn out humorous corporate training videos; he was considering even retiring from films altogether. Palin had made The Missionary (1982) for Handmade Films. Chapman was working on Yellowbeard (1983). Terry Jones had hosted a BBC show called Paperbacks and written a scholarly book, Chaucer’s Knight. Idle had made The Rutles (1978) with his friends at Saturday Night Live, and wrote a play called Pass the Butler (1981). Gilliam had made Jabberwocky (1977) and Time Bandits (1981), and was already thinking about his next project, which would become his greatest work: Brazil (1985). It’s hard to keep a band together. So in Jamaica, the stakes were high: either produce a work as a team, or dissolve Monty Python for good. After two days of nothing being achieved, frustrations mounting, Cleese and Palin were ready to abandon the project and just enjoy a nice vacation without the pressure of work. It would mean the end of Monty Python, surely (though Palin did float the suggestion that they could turn their written material into a TV series). But overnight Jones had come up with a structure for the film: their material could be anyone’s life story, from birth to death. (Later, Idle would lament that they didn’t push the idea just a little bit further, and have the sketches form the life of one central character – say, their usual leading man, Chapman – passing through the Seven Ages of Man.) A skeleton of a shape in place, work resumed.

Terry Gilliam's short film, "The Crimson Permanent Assurance."

There was no argument that Jones should be the director, having instituted a happy working atmosphere on Life of Brian; Gilliam was frustrated in his previous attempts to wrangle the stubborn Pythons on Holy Grail, and disliked sharing the director’s chair as he did with Jones on that film. Instead, Gilliam would get free reign on a short segment intended to be inserted halfway through the film, “The Crimson Permanent Assurance,” described in the published screenplay as “A Tale of Piracy on the High Seas of Finance.” With minimal oversight, the budget quickly ballooned on Gilliam’s mini-epic, as did the running time. Jones recalled in Monty Python Speaks!, “We originally thought he was doing a five-minute animation, it was only when we heard that Terry wanted another million dollars or whatever it was, we suddenly realized it was a whole different feature going on! We kept going to his studio next door, and he had these huge sets compared to what we had.” We shouldn’t complain, because we don’t “balance the books” (to borrow a line from Idle’s accompanying sea-ditty); we just get to enjoy the end result: a sixteen-minute comic fantasy which resembles one of his Flying Circus cartoons brought wondrously to life, and clearly the testing grounds for what would become Brazil (the image of an office building with billowing sails weighing anchor and breaking free from the city, its elderly employees dressed up with everyday office supplies to resemble buccaneers, is clearly the work of the man who directed Sam Lowry’s paperwork-themed dreams). After test screenings, it was clear that “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” couldn’t remain anchored to the center of the film; the motley film broke free to become the short that precedes The Meaning of Life. At the appropriate moment, it then crashes into the main feature and temporarily hijacks it, until that usual polite Pythonesque apology is heard in voice-over, the “Permanent Assurance” miniature is unceremoniously flattened, and The Meaning of Life resumes.

Jones as Mr. Creosote.

The best-known segments in the film admittedly trade on shock value. The most famous involves gallons and gallons of fake vomit. It is, of course, the “Mr. Creosote” sketch, in which the character – for which “morbidly obese” is an insufficient description – vomits so frequently that a single bucket beside his dinner table quickly proves insufficient. As a piece of comedy, it’s fascinating, because on the one hand Cleese’s performance as a French waiter sells the bit: he’s almost profoundly patient, impeccably polite, and, just before the bill can be presented, rebellious and devious in the way that only those suffering in the service industry can be (when Creosote is finally full, Cleese pushes an after-dinner mint: “it’s only wahffer thin…”). Cleese has defended the sketch as a treatise on greed. But on the other hand, when I watched this for the umpteenth time last night, I found myself laughing aloud at the comic timing of the vomit. Yes, we can all admit it: the vomit is funny too. When the bucket is removed so another one can be fetched, and Jones, as Creosote, launches another stream straight onto the carpet, it’s hilarious. Partly because we can see the horrified reactions of the patrons in the background. Partly because the scatological can be very, very funny when used just right. Earlier in the film, Cleese is teaching a classroom full of students (and conspicuously middle-aged Pythons) about sex with a live demonstration. As he takes the missionary position with his wife (The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Patricia Quinn), he grows increasingly irritated with his bored, distracted audience. I particularly enjoy Palin’s schoolboy whose ocarina is confiscated by Cleese. He’s asked to bring it to the front, and Palin awkwardly walks right up to the naked Cleese and Quinn, proffering the ocarina. “[Put it] on the table!” Cleese scolds. There’s plenty of shock value in “Every Sperm is Sacred,” but all at the service of completely decimating the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control. It seems impossible to watch that musical number and still believe there’s any logic to the official Papal stance on coitus. But, yes, you’re also laughing because Palin is delivering graphic dialogue to a cast of children: “Oh, they’ve done some wonderful things in their time. They’ve preserved the might and majesty, even mystery of the Church of Rome, the sanctity of the sacrament and the indivisible oneness of the Trinity. But if they’d let me wear one of those little rubber things on the end of my cock, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now.” (Not to worry: Palin actually said “sock” before the kids, and they dubbed in “cock” later.)

Idle and Palin, who may or may not have stolen an army officer's leg, try to justify why they're wearing a tiger costume (in Africa).

The apparent consensus about The Meaning of Life is that it’s an uneven film: it has good bits in it, everyone seems to say, but it’s not that successful on the whole. I’ll politely disagree. The birth-to-death arc works, and as a sketch film – always a difficult thing to pull off – it holds together quite favorably when compared to others in the genre (it’s much more cohesive, clever, and satisfying, I would argue, than Mel Brooks’ similar History of the World: Part I). The film could be tightened, and some of the bits dropped: Palin’s “Marching Up and Down the Square” drill sergeant sketch falls flat, though at least it’s short. The film needs more of the stream-of-consciousness linking material we got in Flying Circus, though some of this can be blamed by last-minute changes: the winning “Protestant Couple” ends awkwardly only because a linking sketch was dropped at the last minute, for example (kind of a shame – the deleted piece, “The Adventures of Martin Luther,” is an exceptionally silly bit that’s more in the vein of History of the World: Part I, but boasts some very funny performances by Jones, Chapman, and Palin). Maybe Gilliam should have been persuaded to do more animation to tie everything together. The Meaning of Life contains the last of his work in this medium, but the opening title sequence – set to Idle’s hilarious theme song, sung in a disgusted French accent – ranks among the best of his Python animation. Jones has also matured as a filmmaker, having cut his teeth on the previous Python films. It would be wrong to state that Gilliam’s short outclasses the rest of the film. Although Jones’ technique has always been to spotlight the comedy – to make sure the bits work and the actors get laughs, regardless of how it looks – there are enough striking visuals (and visual gags) to ensure that the big-budget, cartoon-brought-to-life quality of “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” is maintained throughout. Think of the grubby domestic kitchen falling away to reveal the vast universe and “The Galaxy Song” (after Idle emerges from a refrigerator, for some reason). Think of the sprawling, Oliver!-style musical number of “Every Sperm is Sacred,” which eventually brings in a fire-eater and a Chinese dragon. Think of the bed that emerges organically from the wall of Cleese’s classroom, or all the kitsch sights contained in Chapman’s “Christmas in Heaven” number. It’s a visually dense movie, rewarding multiple viewings with its attention to every funny little detail.

Fishbowl-shaped promotional single for the film.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Python is their attention to every aspect of their brand, at least while they were still active (that standard has loosened since, and now you can get Python anything). This is the group that once released the world’s first three-sided comedy record. For Holy Grail, they issued a soundtrack album that boasted lots of new comedy sketches written and performed especially for the album, and the tie-in book contained different drafts of the screenplay, allowing the fan to see how the film developed. The Meaning of Life only saw a slight flagging of enthusiasm on the part of the Pythons: the soundtrack was mostly just dialogue from the film, with only a tiny bit of new linking material thrown in. The tie-in book was just the screenplay, although well-designed and featuring deleted material, including the aforementioned “Martin Luther” sketch. But the single, “The Galaxy Song/Every Sperm is Sacred,” offered another fine Python collectible in that it was the first ever vinyl single shaped like a fish bowl. (Perhaps the best by-product came in 1998, in the form of 7th Level’s enjoyable Meaning of Life PC game, made with the involvement of all the surviving Pythons. For a while, playing the latest 7th Level Python game was the closest thing to getting a new Monty Python movie.) As for the film, it won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. The release date was brought in and the film reached audiences sooner than expected; upon its arrival, Newsweek called it the troupe’s “best movie.” It seemed that Monty Python could still shock, but people had grown to expect that, and welcomed it. Rather than inspiring the kind of picketing and boycotting that Life of Brian did, the Pythons were becoming an institution. No wonder they called it quits – and Chapman’s death in 1989 closed that door permanently, barring the occasional incomplete reunion. It’s all for the best. The Meaning of Life, whatever its faults, is a fitting end for Monty Python, returning the sextet to their roots as an anarchic sketch-comedy troupe; as though confident this would be their swan song, the eerily appropriate final image of the film is the opening credits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, playing on a television set that floats slowly off into outer space. The Pythons were often called the Beatles of comedy, and, like the Beatles, they were allowed to write their own ending; this is essentially the Python equivalent of Abbey Road, the gang coming back together in opposition to those tidal forces that were pulling them apart, all for one last send-off. For that, I treasure this film.

NOTE: On The Meaning of Life‘s 30th anniversary, a Blu-Ray has been released which ports over most of the DVD’s special features, as well as a new hour-long Python reunion. Sadly missing from the previous release is the option to watch the film with the deleted segments re-inserted; the scenes are viewable as a supplement, but not without Jones’ commentary running over them. (In other words, someone at Universal screwed up. Don’t throw your old DVD away.)

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