If this film didn't quite have me literally convulsed with laughter, it certainly had me bouncing up and down in my seat and pounding my knees in genuine paroxysms of delight. Not since watching "Steamboat Bill Jr" in a packed-out auditorium earlier this year had I derived quite the same hysterical disbelieving pleasure from a film, and I'd have loved to have had the experience of seeing this one in the cinema just to share the audience reaction -- although on reflection, the silent film has the edge from this point of view, as half the dialogue would probably be lost in the sound of laughter! Meanwhile, I'm extremely grateful to the BBC for producing it from their collection.
"Champagne for Caesar" is not flawless, but it is very, very funny. In addition to that, of course, I identified immediately with the central character; as an omnivorous bookworm myself, how could I possibly fail to like a man whose day begins with books over breakfast and ends in reading himself to sleep, and whose level of absorption is such that no external racket can distract him? I've been there so many times before...
Ironically, what was intended at the time as contemporary satire is now -- with the rise of quiz-show culture, "Big Brother", 'dumbing down' and a generation prepared to do absolutely anything for a few minutes' fame on TV -- as apt today as it ever was back in the early television age. But what really makes the film for me is not the skewering of big-budget advertising or trivia celebrity, but the unusual decision to take a lead character who is a brilliant, unworldly repository of abstract learning, and depict these as *positive* qualities; to show the hero winning fame and glory on a one-man crusade, not via brawn or bullets but by brain and biting wordplay alone.
From "College" to "Bringing up Baby", from "Indiana Jones" to "Jurassic Park", the standard character path for the Hollywood 'nerd' has been to cast off his intellectual shackles and prove that he too can achieve hero status and get the girl by transcending his dry-as-dust pursuits. Beauregard Bottomley is the only leading man I can think of who is allowed to achieve victory through intellectual put-downs and out-manipulating everyone, from the femme fatale to the general public. In normal Hollywood practice he'd probably be played by George Sanders or Clifton Webb with a sneer of effortless superiority (and I'd find myself supporting him anyway, in opposition to the author's intent); here, he is awarded the matinée-idol charm of Ronald Colman, whose perfect timing and reactions display a quite unexpected talent for comedy.
And Vincent Price, of course, as the egomaniac executive with more than a little emphasis on the 'maniac', is quite simply insanely funny. I wouldn't have recognised him; this isn't just mad professor territory, this is prima donna neurosis, beyond the bounds of the probable into the sort of regions that only the extremely wealthy can get away with inhabiting. He is aided and abetted by an excellent musical score, as when the Dead March weaves itself into the background while an apoplectic Price collapses, rigid as a board, into the arms of his acolytes.
I would have rated this film very much higher than I have if only it were not for what I found (as, alas, so often) to be a largely arbitrary romantic subplot. My chief trouble with the love-interests in question was that I simply couldn't see any redeeming features in either of them: it was a mystery to me how anyone, let alone an intelligent and self-supporting woman, could possibly fall in love with Happy Hogan, while Flame O'Neill (setting aside her deeply bogus name, which should have made any man suspicious) apparently fascinates the hero by means of deeply annoying behaviour -- moving herself into his bedroom, taking away his books, fiddling with his bedclothes, and keeping him awake by giggling at him.
If he'd fallen for poor stupid lovely Frosty I could have swallowed it, for she at least is charming and sweet: 'Flame' comes across as a man-eater without an ounce of kindness, and no redeeming qualities save a supposed scientific intelligence which we never see convincingly deployed... probably because constructing such a love-scene would have taxed the script-writer's own abilities, although the incongruity of it could have been very funny! Frankly, short of a scene in which Beauregard discovers her as a real intellectual soul-mate (a cursory reference to a book she claims also to have read doesn't cut it), I find it hard to believe in the required attraction at all. Celeste Holm is a fine actress, but the character is a cardboard cut-out. It is to the film's credit -- and that of Mr Colman and Miss Britton as the brother and sister in question -- that I found myself accepting the result as a genuinely happy ending for the characters' sakes, even if I couldn't exactly have been said to have hoped for it from the start.
The chief charm of this film lies in its wickedly sharp script: it lags in some of its wordless sequences and straight romantic drama, but the characters are never so entertaining as when they are sniping at each other, and at its best -- when the victims are not only confounded but richly deserved -- it is not only hilarious but very, very satisfying. I confess to a sensation of vicarious revenge; but the ability to identify with a character on the 'right' side for once is undeniably attractive for a change! And have I by any chance mentioned that in the process it is exceedingly funny? ;-)
"Champagne for Caesar" is not flawless, but it is very, very funny. In addition to that, of course, I identified immediately with the central character; as an omnivorous bookworm myself, how could I possibly fail to like a man whose day begins with books over breakfast and ends in reading himself to sleep, and whose level of absorption is such that no external racket can distract him? I've been there so many times before...
Ironically, what was intended at the time as contemporary satire is now -- with the rise of quiz-show culture, "Big Brother", 'dumbing down' and a generation prepared to do absolutely anything for a few minutes' fame on TV -- as apt today as it ever was back in the early television age. But what really makes the film for me is not the skewering of big-budget advertising or trivia celebrity, but the unusual decision to take a lead character who is a brilliant, unworldly repository of abstract learning, and depict these as *positive* qualities; to show the hero winning fame and glory on a one-man crusade, not via brawn or bullets but by brain and biting wordplay alone.
From "College" to "Bringing up Baby", from "Indiana Jones" to "Jurassic Park", the standard character path for the Hollywood 'nerd' has been to cast off his intellectual shackles and prove that he too can achieve hero status and get the girl by transcending his dry-as-dust pursuits. Beauregard Bottomley is the only leading man I can think of who is allowed to achieve victory through intellectual put-downs and out-manipulating everyone, from the femme fatale to the general public. In normal Hollywood practice he'd probably be played by George Sanders or Clifton Webb with a sneer of effortless superiority (and I'd find myself supporting him anyway, in opposition to the author's intent); here, he is awarded the matinée-idol charm of Ronald Colman, whose perfect timing and reactions display a quite unexpected talent for comedy.
And Vincent Price, of course, as the egomaniac executive with more than a little emphasis on the 'maniac', is quite simply insanely funny. I wouldn't have recognised him; this isn't just mad professor territory, this is prima donna neurosis, beyond the bounds of the probable into the sort of regions that only the extremely wealthy can get away with inhabiting. He is aided and abetted by an excellent musical score, as when the Dead March weaves itself into the background while an apoplectic Price collapses, rigid as a board, into the arms of his acolytes.
I would have rated this film very much higher than I have if only it were not for what I found (as, alas, so often) to be a largely arbitrary romantic subplot. My chief trouble with the love-interests in question was that I simply couldn't see any redeeming features in either of them: it was a mystery to me how anyone, let alone an intelligent and self-supporting woman, could possibly fall in love with Happy Hogan, while Flame O'Neill (setting aside her deeply bogus name, which should have made any man suspicious) apparently fascinates the hero by means of deeply annoying behaviour -- moving herself into his bedroom, taking away his books, fiddling with his bedclothes, and keeping him awake by giggling at him.
If he'd fallen for poor stupid lovely Frosty I could have swallowed it, for she at least is charming and sweet: 'Flame' comes across as a man-eater without an ounce of kindness, and no redeeming qualities save a supposed scientific intelligence which we never see convincingly deployed... probably because constructing such a love-scene would have taxed the script-writer's own abilities, although the incongruity of it could have been very funny! Frankly, short of a scene in which Beauregard discovers her as a real intellectual soul-mate (a cursory reference to a book she claims also to have read doesn't cut it), I find it hard to believe in the required attraction at all. Celeste Holm is a fine actress, but the character is a cardboard cut-out. It is to the film's credit -- and that of Mr Colman and Miss Britton as the brother and sister in question -- that I found myself accepting the result as a genuinely happy ending for the characters' sakes, even if I couldn't exactly have been said to have hoped for it from the start.
The chief charm of this film lies in its wickedly sharp script: it lags in some of its wordless sequences and straight romantic drama, but the characters are never so entertaining as when they are sniping at each other, and at its best -- when the victims are not only confounded but richly deserved -- it is not only hilarious but very, very satisfying. I confess to a sensation of vicarious revenge; but the ability to identify with a character on the 'right' side for once is undeniably attractive for a change! And have I by any chance mentioned that in the process it is exceedingly funny? ;-)
