I came home yesterday and watched “Terminal Station,” a Vittorio De Sica film starring Montgomery Clift and Jennifer Jones. It certainly wasn’t one of his best works, like “Bicycle Thieves” or “Umberto D.” It seemed more like a preview of “A Place for Lovers,” one of the worst films of all time.
Jennifer Jones is Mary Forbes a housewife from Philadelphia vacationing in Italy. She has an affair with an Italian professor named Giovanni Doria, played by Clift. She decides to end the relationship and head for Stazione Termini in Rome to take a train to Paris and head back to the United States. Giovanni appears at the station to plead with Mary in his overwrought, hysterical way. He certainly behaves like a pathetic, lovesick teenager.
That’s basically the movie, although there’s a lot of atmosphere and commentary on social classes. Mary’s nephew Paul appears at the station with her suitcase. There’s a suggested of something Oedipal in his feelings for her. The young actor who plays Paul would be Tony in “West Side Story.” One of the problems with this movie is that the real subject matter could only be hinted at. I thought it was obvious that the principals have had a sexual encounter, but in 1954, that could only be expressed through facial expressions and meaningful editing.
Preview audiences apparently hated the movie. Montgomery Clift’s method acting was irritating, with his fiddling around and stuttering. The movie was in trouble when he is the one to ask the woman, “What am I to you?” Normally it’s the woman who asks that question. The so-called passion is overblown, to the point of a scene where Clift walks in front of an oncoming train is laughable.
I liked the shots outside the train station, particularly one showing the trainyard. Mary and Giovanni also have a love scene in an empty train car that brought to mind Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca.”
The preview audiences became impatient with Jennifer Jones’ character, and so would anybody else with half a brain. What is supposed to be so great about Montgomery Clift, anyway? His character is so clinging that it gives you the creeps.
After the terrible previews, producer David O. Selznick edited the film from 89 minutes down to 72 minutes. The shorter cut also included an eight-minute musical segment with Patti Page, with the songs “Autumn in Rome” and “Indiscretion.” This made the feature slightly more than one hour in length. It must have been a disaster at the box office. The change of the title to the unappealing “Indiscretion of an American Wife” certainly didn’t help to attract viewers. The Selznick version did have more flattering close-ups of the stars. I think there is something to the Selznick philosophy of photographing the stars the way you want to see them. You don’t want to see a lot of crap on the screen. Modern filmmakers could have a lesson here, but in a different way. They jam their films with a lot of quick, worthless cuts. There’s no emotion or tone to the way they do things.
Truman Capote reportedly wrote the dialogue for a couple of scenes. I couldn’t tell which ones. I didn’t really think too much about “Brief Encounter” while I was watching this movie, although there are certain similarities. This movie is definitely not essential, not even as an item of interest from De Sica. Years later, though, De Sica would have an artistic comeback with “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” which would make us all forget about films like “Terminal Station.”
I watched the news, and there was a feature about texting while driving causing accidents. Drivers were having trouble with the new S-curve on the Bay Bridge. After I had something to eat, I sat down to watch “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” It had Anthony Quinn as Mountain Rivera, a boxer at the end of his career. Jackie Gleason was his manager Maish, and Mickey Rooney was his trainer. Rivera has taken so many blows to his left eye that he’s in danger of going blind, so he has to quit. Maish, in Pete Rose style, has actually bet against his fighter and lost because he went seven rounds instead of only four, so he’s in debt to the dreaded Ma Greeny. Maish thus has an incentive to scheme to keep Mountain fighting, or at least keep him under control for a while longer. Mountain, seeking employment outside the boxing racket, meets the employment counselor Miss Miller, played by Julie Harris. They have a budding romance that looks fated to be brutally crushed.
The movie starts with a big fight between Mountain and Cassius Clay. The young Muhammad Ali did appear as himself, and I was surprised to hear him refer to Anthony Quinn as “kid.” I was also surprised that such a big fight would be held in such a dump of an arena. In fact, what would Cassius Clay be doing fighting such a broken-down fighter in the first place.
Late in the movie, Maish pushes Mountain towards becoming a wrestler. There’s the suggestion that wrestling is the bottom of the barrel because it’s fake and nothing but show business. Boxing is supposed to have some measure of dignity. Of course, in the years since 1962, boxing has also degenerated to the point that it’s not really any better than wrestling at all. When George Foreman could regain the heavyweight crown, being so ancient and slow, you can’t take any of it seriously. You can only shake your head at all the pay-per-view suckers out there.
Jack Dempsey makes a cameo appearance, which didn’t really add too much to the picture. I was amazed at how young Julie Harris looked. I thought that Mickey Rooney and Jackie Gleason were pretty believable in their roles. Anthony Quinn was also very good, although I’ll always have stronger memories of him in “La Strada” and “Zorba the Greek.”
It was a pretty good movie, and definitely better than one of those hour-long episodes of “The Twilight Zone.” If my neighborhood still had a theatre that showed double features, it should show “Requiem for a Heavyweight” with “The Wrestler,” the movie with Mickey Rourke.
I looked over Rolling Stone magazine’s 1987 list of the 100 greatest albums of all time. The key albums that I still don’t own are Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla,” Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow,” Richard and Linda Thompson’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” and T. Rex’s “Electric Warrior.”
With the end of another month, I give my list of Top 5 Biggest Jerks of September 2009:
5. Serena Williams
4. Richard McCroskey III
3. Raymond Clark
2. Kanye West
1. Joe Wilson
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