Trying compete with the production might of HBO has not been easy for the executives at Showtime. Since they seem to have fairly similar subscriber counts (AFAIK, of course), they ought to have similar monies available, but then again HBO is part of AOL Time Warner and Showtime is owned by Viacom, so the difference may be corporate philosophies. Showtime is trying to pick up the pace lately, while also differentiating itself from HBO with more adult-oriented material, so perhaps in a few years they difference will be minimal.
Last night we watched two original films on the #2 cabler, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and Our Town, both filmed versions of classic stage plays. Each is produced quite often on stage and have been filmed numerous times before, of course, so I’m always curious to understand why someone chooses to do so again. The reason for shooting Our Town was quite obvious: any chance to get some proprietary Paul Newman is worth doing. How much could it have cost to just set some cameras up in front of a stage play where the drama was being staged anyway?
The rationale for Roman Spring is not so easy to uncover but I chalk it up to HBO envy–just look at the movie they’re premiering tonight! A movie with an older star set in Italy, just to make the connection explicit. But I’m surely making too much of this, given the long cycles of decision making and production.
Our Town is primordial drama, written by Thornton Wilder and first produced back in 1938, where small events, a few days in the lives of small people in a small town, are used to scrutinize the largest meanings of life. The late ’30s were a time when, as a friend pointed out today, so many intellectuals were attempting to absorb the messages of Nietzsche and Wilder certainly was trying to do so in an American context. In other words, lump this play in with current megahit Matrix Reloaded as fiction attempting to pull the covers off the bed of existance. without all the cool technology and special effects, of course.
Newman plays the Stage Manager, the central role which narrates the play, providing glue material and enough interpretation to ensure that no viewer misses the core message: savor life’s little pleasures before it’s too late. The production, not surprisingly, is filled with name actors: Lorraine Newman, Jeffrey DeMunn, Frank Converse, and Jake Converse; actor James Naughton directed.
Viewing note: Don’t worry if you don’t have Showtime, since this is a Masterpiece Theater co-production and will be seen on that PBS series in August.
Recommended: I watched it because it’s been years since I saw a serious production of the play and, well, Newman is a great actor and I’ll almost always watch anything he’s in.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone was originally written as a novel in 1950 by Tenessee Williams, after Greta Garbo declined his entreaty to use it as a starring vehicle, then later transformed into a play; the original Broadway production starred Vivian Leigh as Stone, an actress who’s passed that certain age, and Warren Beatty as Paolo, the proud but poor Italian count who services rich American widows in post-WWII Rome.
In this version, shot as a film unlike Our Town, Helen Mirren plays the woman past her prime but not past her pride and Olivier Martinez (the hottie who disrupted Diane Lane’s marriage to Richard Gere in last year’s Unfaithful) as the marcetta (Italian for gigolo). Mirren is a good match for the role, as the wrinkles and changes wrought in her face by Time make the contrast with oh so pretty Martinez as well as her own misgivings absolutely explicit. She struggles with the turn in her fortune–her rich, adoring husband dies early on–and is stalked (or so we would call it today) by a character known only as The Young Man throughout. Finally, Stone’s pitiful existence cannot sustain whatever attraction she once had, Martinez moves on to a more tempting target, and Stone surrenders to The Young Man. I didn’t draw the connection, but another reviewer says that The Young Man is William’s symbol of Death; the movie ends semi-ambiguously with Stone embracing him.
Can’t really recommend this as the best use of two hours of lifespan
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