Charly
by Ralph Nelson
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DVD details
Actor: Claire Bloom, Cliff Robertson, Leon Janney, Lilia Skala, Ruth WhiteDirector: Ralph Nelson
Brand: MGM
Cinematographer: Arthur J. Ornitz
Producer: Ralph Nelson
Editor: Fredric Steinkamp
Producer: Selig J. Seligman
Writer: Daniel Keyes
Writer: Stirling Silliphant
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-08
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Charly
DVD Review: Another example of "never see the movie soon after reading the book."
Summary: 3 Stars
Charly (Ralph Nelson, 1968)
Any list of Hollywood's greatest screenwriters would have to include Stirling Silliphant. Village of the Damned. Nightfall. In the Heat of the Night. Telefon. The Towering Inferno. But, like most screenwriters, every once in a while, he got it wrong. The Poseidon Adventure. The Swarm. Over the Top. Yes, Over the Top, the infamous Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling movie. That was him. Where Charly falls onto this line probably depends on how you feel about the novel.
Loosely based on Daniel Keyes' classic Flowers for Algernon, Charly is the story of Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded man who undergoes an experimental brain operation that makes him smart, and the trials and tribulations that come from getting everything you wish for. I tried to look at Charly as being an entirely separate beast from the novel, but I'm not sure that's the way to go with this one. Whether I look at it in comparison or not, the movie still suffers.
Compared to the novel, the difference is that Charlie Gordon (Cliff Robertson, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance) himself is an emasculated character, a passive observer of events, where the novel's Charlie was active, a participant in things. Many of the novel's subplots that made Charlie into a man of action have been removed; he's no longer the inquisitive scientist who discovers the seeds of his own downfall, but someone who's asked to help stop that downfall after it's revealed to him. His parents are gone; the complex relationship he has with his teacher Alice (here played by The Haunting's Claire Bloom) is turned into a simple, if slightly confusing, love story. (Confusing because there's a fiance mentioned who pops up nowhere in the book; he disappears again as soon as it's convenient, getting no actual screen time.) I understand that even a slim novel has to be trimmed to fit into movie form, but other things were added that brought nothing of comparable (or measurable) value to the table. Which leads me to the other option.
Taken on its own, it's an intriguing beginning that goes horribly, horribly wrong about two-thirds of the way through, when it stops being a story about a guy in an interesting situation and becomes a one-dimensional piece of political screed barely worthy of existence. (I kept thinking about Slaughterhouse-Five during the awful Q&A scene.) It does improve again after that, but that scene, sitting in the conceptual center of the film with no anchor, and indeed no reason for being there (it's a pivotal scene in the novel, though it plays out in a much different manner), is claptrap of the most nauseating kind.
I know part of my reaction to the movie is my own fault. I usually stick to my rule about not seeing a film adaptation until at least a year after I read the associated book. That said, Flowers for Algernon was such an amazing book, I wanted to see the movie ASAP. Well, the saying "the bigger they are..." applies here, most definitely. It wouldn't be an awful film, without the inclusion of that one horribly offensive scene. That, however, drags the whole thing down. ** ½
Description of Charly
From the classic Daniel Keyes novel Flowers for Algernon comes this "moving" (Boxoffice) and unforgettable adaptation. Featuring an Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning* performance by Cliff Robertson and a "shrewd, talented" score (Variety) by Ravi Shankar, this timeless tearjerker is "definitely one to see" (Cue). When a mentally retarded man named Charly (Robertson) undergoes experimental brain surgery, he is miraculously freed from the prison of his own mind. As his IQ soars to genius proportions, Charly's eyes are opened to a world he's never truly seen. But when the effects of his operation inexplicably begin to fade, Charly must find a way to halt his regression before his own mind destroys his life, his newfound romance and the man he's become. *1968: ActorAdapted from Daniel Keyes's novel Flowers for Algernon, Charly must be viewed as a soap opera of and for its zeitgeist--the halcyon '60s, when "natural" was nirvana, the air hummed with the mantra "Everybody's beautiful," and all ills stemmed from institutional monoliths such as Science, Government, Education, Religion. Accordingly, Charly (Cliff Robertson) is a 30-year-old retardate whose doofus sweetness makes him superior to most able-minded folk, whether they're the bigoted dolts he sweeps floors for or the ambitious scientists who see him as the human equivalent of Algernon, a mouse they've surgically (but impermanently) smartened up. Naturally, post-op Charly, sporting a genius IQ, "sees things as they are." Trotted out as the neurosurgeons' poster boy, he stands up to the "learned" audience--shot as faceless, inhuman interrogators. He's every '60s flower child, berating his "elders" for blighting their brave new world.
The one gift Charly gets out of becoming Brainiac is sex. In a lengthy montage resembling a retro TV commercial, he and his special-ed teacher (Claire Bloom, madonna with eternal Mona Lisa smile) romp through an Edenic outdoors, their embraces hallowed by sunlight glinting through leaves, moonlight glinting on water, and sappy Ravi Shankar music. (Stylistic clichés also include embarrassing outbreaks of split screens and multiple small screens within the frame, notably when rebellious Charly turns biker.) Robertson's performance is well-meaning but hokey. Still, in the penultimate moments when Charly begins to slide back into retardation, the actor achieves a genuine tragic gravity, and he became a surprise Oscar winner for his pains. --Kathleen Murphy
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