John Marley – Movie Musings

Smash-hit romance that I found forced, smug, tiresome and very mediocre

Director: Arthur Hillier

Cast: Ali MacGraw (Jenny Cavilleri), Ryan O’Neal (Oliver Barrett IV), John Marley (Phil Cavilleri), Ray Milland (Oliver Barrett III), Russell Nype (Dean Thompson), Katharine Balfour (Mrs Barrett), Sydney Walker (Dr Shapeley), Tommy Lee Jones (Hank Simpson)

Right from the top Love Story tells you it ain’t Happy Story, as grieving Oliver Barrett (Ryan O’Neal) wistfully asks in voiceover what you can say about a 25-year-old girl who died. The girl, we quickly work out, is Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw) and the fact we all know she’s doomed didn’t stop Love Story turning into a mega-hit. But a mega-hit isn’t a good film: and Love Story, to tell the truth, is not a good film. And, in the spirit of its mantra “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” I’m not apologising for that (it also sounds like the sort t-shirt friendly message you might see an abusive spouse wearing).

Oliver comes from a wealthy background, with expectations from his father (Ray Milland) that he will follow in the Barrett family footsteps, to study in Barrett Hall at Harvard and join the Supreme Court. Jenny is the daughter of a baker (John Marley) who dreams of becoming a musician. They meet at college, fall in love and want to marry. Oliver’s father asks his son to wait, Oliver says no, is cut off and he and Jenny work to put him through Harvard (to inevitable success). He gets a high-powered job, she gets a terminal illness. Let the tissues come out.

Anyway, Love Story charts the star-crossed romance between O’Neal and MacGraw, defining their careers and melting the hearts of millions. But to my eyes, this dull, distant, dreary romance lacks charm. The dialogue strains to try and capture a Hepburn-Tracy sparky banter, but it’s as if writer Erich Segal has heard about what a screwball comedy is without ever having actually seen one. O’Neal calling MacGraw a bitch within 180 seconds of the film starting doesn’t feel like a spiky banter, but just plain creepy. All the way through the film’s sentimental courtship, the dialogue consistently makes its characters sound sulky, whiny and self-involved.

This isn’t helped by the fact that both actors lack the charisma and energy these sorts of parts need. Both end up sounding infuriatingly smug and their leaden dialogue clunks out of their mouths, stubbornly refusing to come to life. When the emotion kicks in, neither can go much further than wistful stares with the hint of a tear, which isn’t much of a difference from their forced laughter and studied embraces. Put bluntly, both O’Neal and MacGraw do little to breathe life into the Romeo and Juliet construct the film totally depends on. Watching it with my older, cynical eyes… I quickly lost patience with this pair. I also find it hilarious that O’Neal himself married age 21, divorced by 23 and essentially said the whole thing was a youthful mistake.

Is it really that unreasonable for his father to suggest that perhaps Oliver shouldn’t rush into marriage with a girl he has literally just met? It wouldn’t take much reangling to see Oliver as a Willoughby-type, leading on a love-struck young woman in a selfish act of rebellion. Certainly, I can’t help but see Oliver as (to a certain extent) a stroppy, entitled rich-kid rebelling against his Dad. Just as I can’t help but feel, when he aggressively tells Jenny to mind her own business when she broaches a reconciliation, that he’s more than a bit of a prick. But then, the film keeps vindicating him, by implying his Dad must be an arsehole because he’s rich and reminding us that of course love means never saying you’re sorry.

As for Oliver’s whining about his money problems, being forced (can you believe this!) to actually work to make his way in life – give me strength. Clearly, we are meant to side with him when he is incredulous that Harvard’s Dean refuses to grant him a scholarship (on the grounds they are for academically gifted poor kids, not scions of the Founding Fathers with Daddy Issues). But Holy Smokes, Oliver reacts like a brat who no-one has never said no to before. He even has the gall to complain that he is the real victim of the economic status quo. Every time he bangs on about the difficulties of paying for Harvard (even after Jenny dutifully abandons her dreams to help pay for him), I literally shouted at the screen “sell your car you PRICK” (how many coins would this high performance, expensive to run, classic car get him?). The film never really tackles Oliver’s sulky lack of maturity (he can’t even get through an ice hockey match without throwing a hissy fit), not helped by O’Neal even managing to make grief feel like sulking.

To be honest Jenny isn’t much better. This is a ‘character’ where quirk takes the place of personality. From her forced nick-name of “Preppy” for Oliver (better I suppose than his early nick-names for her, most of which use the word bitch), to her pretentiously shallow love of classical music (she knows all the classics and that’s about it). Her whimsical insistence about calling her dad ‘Phil’ because she’s such a free spirit. MacGraw’s limitations as an actress and flat delivery of the dire-logue accentuate all these problems, preventing Jenny from ever feeling anything other than a rich-kid’s wet-dream of what a boho pixie-dream girl from the sticks might be like.

You can probably tell that the film got my back up so much, I felt like giving up on love. Everything in the film is smacking you round the head to make you feel the feelings. Its vision of New York is a snow-soaked Narnia where it’s always Christmas. The Oscar-winning song soaks into the syrupy soundtrack. I suppose it’s interesting to be reminded of an era where the husband is told about his wife’s fatal illness before she is (and warned not to tell her). But so much else about Love Story had me reaching for a paper bag.

Surprisingly distant, dull, led by two unengaging actors speaking terminally flat dialogue, it was nominated for seven Oscars and made millions. But the longer this Love Story hangs around, the less interesting it seems. A love story that feels like it will only move those who have never seen a love story before.

Zany western comedy, a little dated, but with almost enough good jokes

Director: Eliot Silverstein

Cast: Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou), Lee Marvin (Kid Shelleen/Tim Strawn), Michael Callan (Clay Boone), Dwayne Hickman (Uncle Jed), Nat King Cole (Sunrise Kid), Stubby Kate (Sam the Shade), Tom Nardini (Jackson Two-Bears), John Marley (Frankie Ballou), Reginald Denny (Sir Harry Percival)

In a town out West in Wyoming, Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda) is to be hanged as a notorious outlaw. How did she end up here? Let Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye tell you as they recount ‘The Ballad of Cat Ballou’. This young, would-be school-teacher ended up on the gallows after a feud over her father’s (John Marley) land with Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny). Percival has a brutal hired gun, Tim Shrawn (Lee Marvin). So, Cat hired her own gunman, the legendary Kid Shelleen (Marvin again) who has become an equally legendary drunk. After the death of her father, Cat, Kid and her friends and love interests form a gang to bring Percival’s corporation down.

Cat Ballou stems from an era when audiences were not quite ready for the violent, nihilistic Western revisionism that would spawn the likes of McCabe and Mrs Miller and The Wild Bunch, but could no longer take the Ford/Wayne style Western seriously. Instead, it takes its inspiration from Swinging Sixties comedy, playing like Tom Jones or a Dick Lester Beatles movie. It’s zany, tongue-in-cheek, daubed in primary colours and nothing in it is meant to be taken particularly seriously, not even the bullets. It’s a fast-paced entertainment and if it looks rather dated today, at least it has its moments.

It’s most notable as the film that won Marvin the Oscar for his double performance as the drunk, shambling Kid Shelleen and the Marvinesque heavy Tim Strawn (with missing nose). Marvin revelled a chance to showcase his comic skills – and even have his stereotypical role as a bruising, violent killer as a contrast. Kid Shelleen doesn’t turn-up until almost a third of the way in, but all the film’s most memorable moments involve him. Slurring, scruffy, stumbling and only able to shoot straight when a little bit pissed (in an early shooting test he literally can’t hit a barn door), Marvin offers not only a red-eyed piece of comedy acting just this side of hammy, but also a neat jokey commentary on the truth behind an army of Western heavies (Cat is hugely disappointed to find the stories she’s read of Kid’s exploits, in no ways matches the mess she sees before her).

Marvin, rather graciously, always claimed of his Oscar “that half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in San Fernando Valley”. It’s a touchingly modest reference to the film’s closing sequence – the inevitable rescue attempt on Cat – where Kid turns up pissed, riding a horse that seems as drunk as him (a neat shot, that took much careful animal wrangling, shows both Kid and his horse leaning lopsidedly against a wall, the horse with its legs drunkenly crossed). But Marvin’s performance works because it nails the tone of the film in a way no-one else really does.

That’s arguably true of Jane Fonda, who seems either slightly bemused or mildly contemptuous of the role she’s ended up in. When the film throws in moments close to tragedy, she reacts with more emotional realism than a zany comedy can support. She’s not willing to surrender herself to the moments of farce or flirtation, not helped by the dull or forgettable performances of her love interests. Callan lacks charisma or flair as outlaw Clay Boone, Dwayne Hickman overeggs as Boone’s comedic partner-in-crime Uncle Jed while Tom Nardini tries hard but lacks grace as Jackson Two-Bears. Fonda is also stuck in the only role where she can’t corpse at the drunken antics of Marvin.

The film bounces along, from its animated opening, via a series of comedic twists on Western tropes (a dance, a fight, a train robbery etc). Personally, I’ve never really been a fan of zany comedies, and my mind wasn’t changed here. Mixed with its very 60s view of the West, all colour splashed checked shirts, the try-hard craziness of Cat Ballou can start to wear cynical modern viewers like me down.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t a good joke here or there, or that Marvin isn’t worth the price of admission. Silverstein directs with a professional smoothness that leaves the actors to get on with it (perhaps a little too much). The darker moments of the film don’t always marry up successfully with the tone – Cat’s reaction to the death of her father is from a different movie altogether – but generally it glides along, helped with some catchy tunes well sung by Cole and Kaye as a ballad-touting Greek Chorus.

Cat Ballou might actually be best enjoyed by taking a leaf out of Kid Shelleen’s books: get a couple of whiskies inside you and you’ll find the accuracy of your laughter jumping up several notches.