Films of the 60s, Part 25: What If I Were Romeo in Black Jeans?

“What if I were Romeo in black jeans,
What if I was Heathcliff, it’s no myth,
Maybe she's just looking for someone to dance with.”
--Michael Penn, “No Myth”



Shakespeare. No one is more ubiquitous in world of English letters than the Bard of Avon. I’ll admit, though the current trend in education is to scale back on Shakespeare and supplement the curriculum with more current material, I am quite pro Shakespeare. It’s not that I don’t agree with keeping it fresh, it’s just that Shakespeare has been relatable to the human condition for over four hundred years. I have read every play and every poem. I have seen many of the plays performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Bill is my boy. Modern filmmakers and critics can hurl all the slings and arrows they like at him, questioning his identity or his legitimacy, and I will still be a fan. In other words, the play’s the thing. His work is so universal that it can be adapted into nearly any situation and still have relevance and connection. Cases in point, the following three films from the 60s, which took the classic works to entirely new levels.



The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Akira Kurosawa)

There have been many great portrayals and adaptations of Hamlet over the years: Olivier, Branagh, Tennant, Sons of Anarchy, Strange Brew… Yeah, you read that right. But, one of my favorites of all time is Akira Kurosawa’s take on the classic tale of revenge, The Bad Sleep Well. Toshiro Mifune certainly deserves to be considered alongside the best that have portrayed the tragic Prince of Denmark, though he was playing a businessman of Japan. Mifune plays Nishi, a young man who, at the start of the film, is getting married to Yoshiko, the daughter of a wealthy executive. In this way, we can already see how the story differs slightly from the classic tragedy. Hamlet never got married, though Ophelia’s grief-inspired dementia is symbolized in the fact that Yoshiko is hobbled. Reporters and police, the latter of which arrest one of the company men, Wada, for bribery, interrupt the wedding. As it turns out, this scandal was previously hushed up conveniently through another businessman’s suicide, and this is just one aspect of an untouchable corporate culture in which lower level employees sacrifice themselves for the higher-ups. Sound familiar?

Nishi seems at first to be complicit in the goings on, guiding Wada to the top of a volcano. Incidentally, this scene is how I always imagined the setting of the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader as opposed to the ridiculous and overblown result. Anyway, Nishi ends up saving Wada and secreting him away as ammunition against the company that ‘killed’ his father. While he tries to find a use for Wada, he leaves a photo of the office building in the company safe, with a red ‘X’ over the window from which his own father jumped. That same building figures prominently throughout the film, taking the place of Elsinore Castle. Eventually, Nishi cleverly enacts scenarios in which Wada appears as a ‘ghost’ to scare the top executives, one by one. Nishi becomes an obsessed character, as any Hamlet model should, even becoming somewhat creepy as he whistles down the street, much like Omar in The Wire. There are great subplots with Yoshiko’s brother and Nishi’s best friend, all of which wrap up nicely in the end, but like Hamlet, there is indeed a tragic ending.

The Bad Sleep Well is one of those adaptations that is usually said to be “loosely” based on the original. In this case, there are several subtle changes. For one, the despicable union of uncle and mother is replaced by a corrupt corporation, but one is still a father-in-law. The brilliance of this change is to turn a revenge tragedy into one that also has social commentary on the state of corporate culture, an institution that did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. Kurosawa showcases something that we are seeing even today, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, in which those being held down by their superiors still curry their favor. As Nishi says, “They starved you and my father with scraps from their table, killed you as scapegoats, and still you can’t hate them.” As we have learned from history, the only way change occurs is either through revolution or protest that alters minds, and eventually laws. As is said in the film, “It’s pointless trying to use the law against evil people.”



West Side Story (1961, Robert Wise)

There was a long period in which any high school class reading Romeo & Juliet was made to watch West Side Story as a way to bring the classic romantic tragedy more up to date. While the language of Ernest Lehman and Stephen Sondheim might have been more accessible to teens than Shakespeare’s, the language of musicals, at least before Glee, was seemingly foreign to those same youngsters. Now, Glee has performed a majority of the songs from the production and has made it somewhat more hip than it was in my time. In my previous survey of 60s musicals, I made a point about the logic of musicals, the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound, and how these affect my enjoyment of the films. West Side Story is one of those films in which people, and in this case incredibly unlikely people, spontaneously break out into song and dance.

We are introduced first to the Jets in the basketball courts of the projects of New York City. (Interestingly, this is now the location of Lincoln Center, which I recently saw as a location in The Changeling). Anyhoo, it’s fairly difficult for toughs to look…well…tough when snapping fingers in unison and then performing highly choreographed dance moves. This is exacerbated by the declaration of “Cokes all around” during the gang tête-à-tête. Nothing says a gang means business like an order of a round of sodas. While at first skeptical and put off, I was soon trying to suspend my disbelief and enjoying the mixture of dancing and fighting, seeing the dance as an artistic expression of anxiety, anger, fear, racial tension, and even love. In case you were wondering, no, I had not seen this film until recently, despite the fact that my parents had the original cast album on vinyl. While I don’t remember them every playing it in my presence, I found that I actually knew most of the songs, most likely due to their huge presence in the canon as musical classics. “America,” “Maria,” “Jet Song,” “Tonight,” and “I Feel Pretty” were all completely familiar to me.

West Side Story holds the distinction of being probably the most faithful adaptation of Shakespeare, up to a point. The Montague and Capulet families are smartly transformed into rival New York gangs, one white and one Puerto Rican. Like The Bad Sleep Well, it successfully adds a new social element, in this case being race relations and the inanity of gang/race/class warfare. “America” also nicely sums up the reason for immigration and the arguments between preserving culture and the concept of the melting pot. The lyrics and themes throughout the film are nothing short of brilliant. Add in the gorgeous cinematography, color, and wardrobe, and you have the reasons this film won 10 Academy Awards, is now a classic, and why I had to wait for about six months for a copy from Netflix. Luckily, in the midst of that wait, the Blu-Ray version was released and I was able to see the film in the way it was meant to be seen, sharp, vivid, and with glorious sound. The ending may be drastically different from its source material, but it is still more than a worthy adaptation, and indeed, all are punished.



All Night Long (1962, Basil Dearden)

To round out the trio of Shakespeare adaptations, we have another one of Bill’s most well-known works, Othello. I suppose the only other tragedy that would have been more infamous is the Scottish play. Basil Dearden’s All Night Long, like the previous two films surveyed above, places the familiar characters in a modern setting, in this case the London of the swinging 60s jazz set. Dearden even goes as far as to include actual jazz musicians in the film, including Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus. Paul Harris plays Aurelius Rex, our Othello, married to Delia, our Desdemona. The great Patrick McGoohan plays Johnnie Cousin, our conniving Iago. We also have a Roderigo and a Cassio, Rod and Cass respectively, but most of their character traits are bundled up into Cass exclusively.

Like West Side Story, All Night Long is fairly faithful in its translation, up to a point. It, too, changes the ending. Whether this is done to make it “less” tragic, or to put a director or writer’s stamp on the story, I do not know. Regardless, the performances in this film are magnetic. It is perhaps not a classic film in the way that the previous two are, but it is entertaining, especially for those who are fans of jazz. The jazz slang seems a little cartoony now, but the drug and alcohol use is at least accurately portrayed. There are no “Cokes all around” in this film. And, while the choreography dulls the sting of the violence in West Side Story, the violence in All Night Long is fairly brutal. When Aurelius shows his anger, it is palpable.

Aside from McGoohan and Harris’ great performances, there is also a young Richard Attenborough playing Rod, a music promoter. He toes the line nicely, bridging the gap between the English and the Americans, and also between warring “friends.” This film also adds a new element, that being one of not just stealing a lover away and ruining a great man with violent tendencies for power and wealth, but also of stealing away a musician from one band to another, or out of retirement. Jealousy is still one of the central theme here, as well as Johnny’s (Iago’s) desire for the limelight. The added element may not be as heavy as corporate malfeasance or race relations, but the original story of Othello is powerful enough to survive in any setting without another substantially important point. However, this might be what leaves it out of “classic” status.