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Reviews
The Twilight Zone: The Lonely (1959)
"Alicia - show them!!!"
Human isolation in its various forms was one of Rod Serling's favorite touchstones in The Twilight Zone, and it served as the foundation for some of the most outstanding episodes of the series. In "The Lonely", Serling took a fascinating look at what happens to a man almost completely removed from human society.
James A. Corry, wrongly convicted of murder, is sentenced to 50 years of solitary confinement. In his future world, this means exile to a barren asteroid, with only heat, an old car to tinker with, and a few minutes a year of human contact when an Earth ship brings his supplies. He's four years into his sentence, and his will to live is rapidly fading. In a bid to save Corry's sanity, the compassionate captain of the supply ship smuggles an android companion to him. The robot, Alicia, is so lifelike, Corry is convinced she's a living woman - but is she?
Serling's writing artfully leaves this question unanswered, taking no clear sides as to whether Alicia is a constructed person with real feelings, or if her human nature is nothing but the wishful fantasy of a desperately lonely man. As usual, the excellent script is interpreted by an exceptional cast. Jack Warden, as Corry, stands at the center of an ensemble that includes Jean Marsh as Alicia, and prolific TV actor John Dehner as Allenby, the captain of the supply ship. Warden's intensity as a misjudged common man driven to despair and rage plays well against both Marsh's gentle (if preprogrammed) kindness and Dehner's stoic sympathy for Corry's plight. The three of them are on screen together only in the tragic ending, which gives a hard-hitting close to Serling's meditation on where humanity can be found in a lonely world.
I think "The Lonely" is one of the ten best episodes of the entire series. 9.3/10.
The Twilight Zone: The Changing of the Guard (1962)
"I gave them...nothing."
"The Changing of the Guard" is the Twilight Zone at its most unabashedly sentimental. A professor at an upper class boys' school is forcibly retired after more than 50 years of teaching. As Professor Fowler reflects on his career, he becomes convinced his lessons gave nothing of value to his students and concludes he has been a failure. With no future to look forward to, and no past to comfort him, he returns to the campus one final time, to commit suicide. Yet, he will find that his past, of which he is so deeply ashamed, is not so easily escaped.
In this installment, Rod Serling once again relied on a formula with which he'd have amazing success throughout the entire run of The Twilight Zone: the transformation of a sensitive, disillusioned man by way of an extraordinary or even supernatural encounter. As I've noted in other TZ reviews, some of Serling's best episodes were based on a character such as this, and in most of these episodes, a brilliantly cast lead actor allowed Serling's writing to reach its full flower. This time, the incomparable Donald Pleasence was front and center as Ellis Fowler in a portrayal that was deeply emotional without being maudlin. It wasn't often Pleasence had the chance to play someone so sympathetic, and it's a real shame another role couldn't have been found for him in the series. His work in "The Changing of the Guard" is easily among the finest performances ever to grace the Twilight Zone.
This episode was originally broadcast in summer, but its tender themes combined with a Christmastime setting makes this an ideal holiday watch. Ably supporting Pleasence are Liam Sullivan and Tom Lowell just before his first big movie appearance in "The Manchurian Candidate". "The Changing of the Guard" sits right alongside "The Night of the Meek" as being an outstanding holiday-themed episode despite its aggressive playing of the heartstrings. 9.0/10.
The Twilight Zone: A Passage for Trumpet (1960)
"You take what you get, and you live with it."
"A Passage for Trumpet" is a Twilight Zone episode that's not usually considered to be among the best of the series, but it has a thoughtful, moving story that's excellently written and acted, making it easy to recommend. Writer Rod Serling imbued the same pathos into alcoholic jazz-man Joey Crown as he did with the boozy Henry Corwin from the outstanding "The Night of the Meek". No one could capture the sense of the downtrodden urban man like Serling, and his most personal and effective scripts always seem to center on a character of this sort. Joey Crown is indeed downtrodden, run under by his own sensitivity and the liquor he uses to drown it. Only his music makes the world tolerable, but Crown has sacrificed even that to the bottle.
Jack Klugman as Joey Crown turns in the best of his four TZ appearances, though only barely edging out his fine work in "In Praise of Pip". I think it's the best performance he ever put on film, alongside his role in the film classic "Twelve Angry Men". He doesn't just wear his shabby tuxedo, he becomes it, wrinkles, stains and all. His propensity to go way over the top is well controlled, and he gives a mostly restrained and appropriately melancholy turn as the sad drunkard Crown. The only other actor with more than a few lines is the great John Anderson. Usually menacing, here he is uncharacteristically amiable and cool as a mysterious, goateed horn player who carries an important message for Crown.
This episode doesn't have any of the Twilight Zone's more famous twists, and the end is even predictable, but the story is lovely and the characters are sympathetic and likable. Be sure to catch Klugman's monologue about why Joey Crown drinks, and likewise the heartfelt advice that Anderson's character delivers to a repentant Crown -- it's classically great Serling prose, and really wonderful stuff. 8/10.
Exhibition on Screen: Canaletto & the Art of Venice (2017)
Tiring, overly long expose of an unimaginative artist
Count me as solidly opposed to the lavish praised being heaped upon this video study of Canaletto. It's a needlessly long exploration of an artist who, on the merits, is really a crashing bore. As an illustrator, Canaletto was highly skilled. But his fastidious, topographical style of landscape quickly wears out its welcome through the tedium of repetition. He painted views of the canals of Venice in a rigid style for more than 20 years of his life. That he was utterly hidebound reflects in his eventual relocation to London, which resulted in, you guessed it, his exact same thematic rendering of the Thames.
Beyond his bland art, Canaletto the man comes across as thoroughly uninvolving. The film has little to say about his training, or the subsequent legacy of his work among later generations of artists, and ascribes no intellectual, social or political gravity to him. The one interesting aspect of his history touched on by the film concerns his patron, a wealthy Englishman named Joseph Smith. By the middle of the movie, it's quite obvious that Smith's patronage is the source of Canaletto's fame, but that patronage was extended only because it made Smith a lot of money. Succinctly, Smith used his social position and influence as a tastemaker to pimp Canaletto's works as travel memorabilia to (primarily English) high society touring through Italy...all for a sizeable take from the sales. If not for Smith, Canaletto would today probably be comparatively obscure. It's worth noting that Canaletto died poor, while Smith prospered sumptuously in his life.
A solidly detailed telling of just the story of Smith and Canaletto could've been executed in 30 minutes or so, which would've resulted in a much richer film for both its focus on the most interesting documented facet of Canaletto and its avoidance of gratuitous adoration of his works. This burdensome production extends to about 90 minutes, owing to extraneous discussions of some of Canaletto's Venetian contemporaries and plenty of art school puffery about his "mastery".
The Twilight Zone: Long Live Walter Jameson (1960)
"I dreamed, as you dream, of immortality..."
"Long Live Walter Jameson" is a wonderful episode, one of my favorites. It explores a straightforward, yet very interesting concept: what happens to an otherwise ordinary man who cannot die?
Unlike many Twilight Zone episodes that famously conclude with an ironic twist, "Walter Jameson" doesn't finish by upending all that the viewer has seen for the first twenty or so minutes. In fact, the finish isn't really surprising at all. Jameson's immortality is revealed early on, and then rather neatly gets out of the way so that a quiet, contemplative story of character, loneliness, and fear can be told. Interestingly, there is a subtle twist that is almost easy to miss -- when Walter and his friend Sam are having the discussion that is the focus of the whole episode, it's not exactly clear which one of them really is the "older" (i.e. wiser) man.
Kevin McCarthy and Edgar Stehli do great work as the jaded immortal Walter Jameson, and his all too mortal friend, Sam Kitteridge. Watch in particular Stehli's delicate reactions as Kitteridge learns the truth about Jameson and discovers the real consequences of living forever.
This is an engrossing episode, which takes place almost entirely in a single room, and with hardly any musical backing. I rate it as one of the five best of the entire series. Enjoy. 9.5/10
The Twilight Zone: The Night of the Meek (1960)
Carney's finest (half) hour
This is a very uncharacteristic Twilight Zone episode. It's a Christmas themed show that is sentimental and uplifting (and perhaps even a tad schmaltzy), yet which maintains Serling's cutting commentary on the misery of inner city poverty. It also includes one of the finest examples of his signature character type: the noble, sympathetic urban man trapped in the brutality of a mid-century American society with no room for the weak, or the humble, or the poor.
Henry Corwin is a "professional" department store Santa Claus, who ekes out a seasonal living in a tattered and grimy old Santa suit. But Corwin is also a drunkard. He drinks to blot out the grinding hardship of his fellow ghetto dwellers, hardship he cannot reconcile with the free-flowing greed he sees in Christmas shoppers at the store where he has his latest gig. "Just one Christmas" he says to an angry store manager, "I'd like to see the meek inherit the earth". With this, and a rather ordinary looking burlap bag, begins a very unusual night for Corwin: a night of the meek.
Serling's crackerjack writing is only part of this episode's greatness. The rest is courtesy of the inimitable Art Carney. He steps entirely away from his goofy, campy Norton character to provide a remarkable portrait of a besotted, though big hearted, department store Santa. In Henry Corwin he delivers stately dignity and empathy blended with a convincing portrayal of desperate alcoholism. I think it was the best performance he ever gave, and it's a great one.
For me, this is one of those classic 60's TV Christmas shows that has become a seasonal viewing tradition, along with "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". But it's good enough to watch anytime of year. 9.0/10.
The Twilight Zone: Walking Distance (1959)
"Very late. Very late for me."
Perhaps the most biographical of Rod Serling's scripts is the plaintive, simple "Walking Distance". 36-year-old Martin Sloan, worn and disillusioned by the corporate rat-race in New York City, wanders back to the town where he lived as a child. Soon after his arrival, he finds he's not just where he grew up, but when. Having somehow stepped back to the past, he is once again immersed in the sights, sounds, and people of Homewood as he knew them 25 years before. Even his parents are alive and well and in the same house he knew as a boy. Martin has found his way home, and he intends to stay. But Homewood, circa 1934, already has one Martin Sloan, age 11. Can the adult Martin truly reclaim his past, or will he rob himself of his own boyhood in the attempt?
Martin Sloan is Rod Serling's personal mirror, held up to reflect his experiences as a meteoric success in the cutthroat world of TV and movie production and his desire to retain some part of his childhood's simplicity and security. "Walking Distance" is Serling's reconciliation with the knowledge that you really can't go home again. Like any of us, all Sloan has is now, and in reaching for the past he might relinquish both it and the present.
Serling's spare and beautifully prosaic script is complemented by Robert Stevens's sensitive direction and an achingly poignant Bernard Herrman score. But what makes this episode a masterpiece is impeccable acting by Gig Young and Frank Overton. Young's compelling performance makes it easy to suspect that his real-life depression was at the heart of Martin Sloan's world-weariness. His portrayal of quiet, nostalgic pleasure as Sloan eats an ice cream soda at a drug store fountain, one of the strongest emblems of his youth in Homewood, is effortlessly genuine, and as satisfying for us at it is to Sloan. Later, Young is artfully understated as he traverses resolve, desperation, and anguish in Sloan's attempts to reinsert himself into his disbelieving parents' lives. Frank Overton is superb as Martin's dignified and gently compassionate father, and the scenes between him and Young are the highlights of the episode. In one especially notable scene in which the elder Sloan gives his dejected son some touching advice, Overton and Young communicate an authentic father-son affection that makes it clear the whole point behind Martin's fanciful journey was to "hear it from the old man", one last time.
Begin Spoilers ->
By the end of the episode, it's apparent that the 1934 part of the story happened entirely inside Martin's head, probably as he was walking back to his hometown for the first time in 20 years. It was all a fantasy, Martin's reminiscences of his youth transformed into a "what if" daydream. This is why at the beginning of the episode, you can't clearly see whether or not Martin has a limp (an injury that becomes relevant once he seems to have returned to 1934) until he begins his walk to Homewood. Only then do we see him full length, walking normally from the camera while reflected in a vending machine mirror. Likewise, our first sight of him in Homewood is when he appears reflected in a large mirror behind a drug store fountain. He's gone "through the looking glass" on an imaginary journey in which he has no limp, as a fine online article about the show once keenly noted. It's also why Martin doesn't seem to recognize many of the people from his past, and why he doesn't seem that shocked to find he's suddenly moved back in time 25 years. Serling himself touches on this fantasy aspect in his closing narration, when he describes the tendency of men to nostalgically reflect on their pasts with an "errant wish, that a man might not have to become old".
The 1934 events unfolding only in Martin's mind makes the story even more sadly sweet. Martin is facing the stark truth that there is no going back. All that's left for him is to use his memories and sentiments to create a brief sanctuary from a world that he hates, and to conjure up fictional events that allow him to understand why he can't escape his real life and maybe how to deal with it. It's at once a refuge, a farewell, and a resolution. Martin is, in effect, growing up.
-> End Spoilers
This is a remarkably thoughtful episode that resonates with powerful themes of what it means to grow up and grow old in today's world. It's also one of the finest half-hours of television ever created, and for my money, the best "Twilight Zone" episode of all. Not to be missed. 10/10.