Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 13. June 11 1979

Film — The Pods are Back in Town

Film

The Pods are Back in Town

[ unclear: Irne] city at the moment you've got a [ unclear: ha] of four remakes Warren Beatty [ unclear: nd Baven] Can Wait, Don Sharp's The [ unclear: Thire] Nine Steps, Philip Raul man's [ unclear: In asio] of the Body Snatchers, and (not [ unclear: o h] a remake as yet another reteling) raco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth.

[ unclear: Bore] discussing Invasion of the Body [ unclear: naters], the most interesting (though not [ unclear: hi] of these new versions, here's a quick [ unclear: consner] guide to the others:

[ unclear: ven] Can Wait — sweet, substanceless, [ unclear: mild] amusing but tends to be soggy in [ unclear: pa-ches] Refreshing in its innocence, but not to ruffle the complacent calm of [ unclear: cy-e] me, Dyan Cannon is funny, Julie [ unclear: e] and Warren Beatty are good, James [ unclear: masc] is boring.

[ unclear: D] Thirty-Nine Steps — better than I expect but stil not as exciting as the 1935 [ unclear: ock] version. Nonetheless, the [ unclear: narra-tive] handled with assurance and the story [ unclear: word] well even without Hitch's handcuff [ unclear: etism]. Robert Powell, makes a [ unclear: dogged-y mpathetic] hero and looks Strikingly but place in the 1914 setting.

[ unclear: Jeas] of Nazareth — not only does [ unclear: Wei] get a shorter version than Auckland [ unclear: wh] of course didn't see this [ unclear: made-for-tele] epic in its entirety in the first [ unclear: p-ace] we get (as usual) a lousy print — scratches, rough cuts, damaged soundtrack, the works. But that aside, Zeffirelli does quite well by the hallowed and oft-attemp-ted tale. He creates a canvas that looks like all the Sunday School illustrations you've ever seen, come to life; but contributes enough original details and identifiably human episodes to make the film satisfying for even the non-believer. The Nativity seems ridiculous and contrived, but after that the film slowly picks up, and by the time we get to Gethsemane things are really moving. Rod Steiger (Pontius Pilate) and Anne Bancroft (Mary Magdalene) are particularly good, Robert Powell is just divine as Christ himself, a: d Michael York (John the Baptist) is, of course, awful.

And so to:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Majestic

Just a few weeks ago, the Wellington Film Society screened the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, made in 1956 by Don Siegel. It's brilliant. Certainly one of the best science-fiction films ever made, for all its simplicity and almost total absence of special effects, and a most memorable film in anybody's language.

But there are in it certain things that today's audience finds comic, especially the voice-over narration of the hero (which runs along the lines of "I should have known then and there that something was wrong, that somehow much much more was going on that met the eye, but I put it down to my anxiety at seeing Susan once more.....etc, etc.), and the handling of the relationship between hero and heroine. Both facets seem pretty dated — they certainly weren't 'sophisticated' enough for the Film Society audience, which reacted with superior amusement — and so it seems there's some justification for remaking the film, up-dating it so as to remove these barriers that tend to alienate a modern audience from what Siegel was saying way back in 1956.

Photo of an arched doorway

And in 1956, what Siegel was saying was pretty hot stuff. So potentially controversial, in fact, that he was forced by the studio, once they were alerted to the film's political implications, to film a soft (happy) ending - the one the film was released with.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers emerged directly from one of the blackest hours of Western democracy, the hysterical anti-Communist trials led by senator Joe McCarthy, which fed off and further inflamed all of America's paranoia, prejudice, and distrust. It was in many ways like the Nazi Party's campaign to make scapegoats of the Jews — but more insidious and dangerous, because after all anyone, even your best friend or a member of your own family, could be a secret Communist, hence pledged to your destruction. It was a time when even the mere accusation of having present or past affiliation with the Communist Party could mean the ruin of your career. Once thus accused, the only way to secure mercy from the Un-American Activities Committee was to sell out your friends. Hollywood in particular, a notorious breeding ground for Reds, suffered a severe backlash. Some movie land figures, like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, campaigned against the McCarthyist madness. Others, like John Wayne (soon to recieve a Congressional Medal of Honour, for God's sake), actively supported it. The two most famous 'literary' reactions to these events were Arthur Miller's play. The Crucible (which deals with witch trials in Salem in the 1690's), and Siegel's Body Snatchers.

"They're Here!"

In the film people get replaced overnight by 'pods', a plantlike alien life form that perfectly duplicates human beings, producing exact copies of individuals. The pod people, though, have no emotions, and can experience none of the feelings we think of as being characteristically human. This dehumanizing spreads like a malignant cancer through the small town closest to the area infected by the alien spores. In their desperate attempt to warn the outside world, the few people alerted to the threat can trust no-one, not even their own relatives or spouses. In Siegel's original ending, they are unsuccessful. In the released version (the one you may have seen on TV a while back), the outside world is warned in time, and we assume that good triumphs.

The story works like a charm on both its sci-fi adventure and social commentary levels, and so I had high hopes for Philip Kaufman's new version. But I was disappointed. Make no mistake about it: there are lots of very good things, and some superb action scenes, in the movie. The special effects are impressive, the 'faults' in the original are ironed out, and Kaufman makes some clever jokes — especially one involving the hero of the original film, now nearly 25 years older, still running through the streets yelling "They're here!"

But something's missing. Except for a few scenes shortly after the interval, I never really felt for the protagonists. In Siegel's film, despite their often cliched dialogue and the total dependence of the heroine on the hero, I did identify strongly with the characters. It's largely a question of tone, I think; or ambeince, or whatever. Or maybe it's just the fact that the new film follows the plot of the old one so slavishly, that for anyone who's seen the original there's precious little suspense.

Even so, it's still very noticeable that the movie's best lines, and even camera set-ups, are lifted straight out of Siegel.

A shame, because where Kaufman does new things, they're often very good. Back in 1956, the good guys, pretending to be zombie-like pod people, get given away by a dog. Here the same thing happens, but the dog's a real surprise — a mutant that has resulted, unpredictably, from earlier action in the film. Things like that make the film worth seeing, so don't let me put you off, especially if you've never seen the first one.

But if you haven't, and you get a chance to, go.

Paul Hagan.