Since we’re staying home on the weekends nowadays, we’ve taken to doing “themes”: watching movies and eating meals that are related to some basic idea. Last weekend the theme was Richard Nixon. Films included All The President’s Men, Nixon, Elvis Meets Nixon, Dick, and various Simpsons episodes mentioning Nixon, among other things. Foods were Chinese food (cause he went to China) and foods that were popular in the Seventies. Apparently Wendy’s was particularly popular then. Before that, we did Dolly Parton weekend—Nine to Five, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and southern food….
This weekend, the theme was: films based on Joseph Conrad novels. I’m a freakishly enthusiastic Conrad fan. And there are tons of films based on his works, many of which I’d never seen.
First up, Hanyut (2016), a Malayan adaptation of Almayer’s Folly. That was Conrad’s first novel, and it’s not one of his best, but it’s also far from his worst. The film is quite good, I thought. It’s available on YouTube, but not on any other service or DVD that I could find. Beautifully filmed, and good acting. The editing’s not perfect, but it’s certainly one of the best and most faithful Conrad adaptations I’ve seen. I think it was the best movie of the weekend.
Next, Outcast of the Islands (1951), which is based on Conrad’s second novel, which is actually a prequel to Almayer’s Folly. So it’s funny to see this film from the 1950s, that has many of the same characters as in Hanyut. This film is only so-so. It certainly has all the brooding and sidelong glances and palm trees you expect from Conrad, and Kerima, who plays Aissa, is gorgeous. But the movie fails to really substantiate Willems’s descent into madness, and the ending seems exaggerated and excessive.
Lord Jim (1965), based on what I consider Conrad’s greatest novel, has a bad reputation, and it’s true that it’s not terribly faithful to the book. But that’s largely because the book is far too complex to be made into a movie. As a result, the film overcompensates with excessive philosophical dialogue and a too-long battle scene that is very loosely taken from the book. The characters of Dain Waris and Sherif Ali are replaced with a composite character called “The General,” Stein is made into a major character instead of the cameo he plays in the novel, and Doramin’s wife is missing entirely, which makes the final scene come off as arbitrary and bizarre. James Mason is great as Gentleman Brown, but the ending appears to make little sense. One gets the feeling that Vietnam and the Cold War had more to do with the final product than did the original novel. The movie starts well but ultimately lets you down—and it’s two and a half hours long, also.
Sabotage, made in 1936 by Alfred Hitchcock, is a loose updating of Conrad’s The Secret Agent. I’ve never been a big fan of The Secret Agent, in part because I’m so much fonder of Conrad’s sea and jungle stories, and in part because terrorism doesn’t seem nearly so exotic to me as it apparently did in Conrad’s day. The film looks terribly primitive by today’s standards, but sequences such as the climactic explosion definitely show Hitchcock’s skills at building suspense. It’s amazing to think that this film was made by the same guy who less than 30 years later would make North by Northwest and Rear Window.
Laughing Anne (1953) is based on a play Conrad wrote that was, in turn, based on a short story he wrote (called “Because of the Dollars”). I had actually never read either. The film is not highly rated, in part because the production quality is quite poor—the boat is obviously a still set being rocked, and the rear projection is extremely poor. But I actually thought it wasn’t bad, and the climactic river-pirate battle is very Conrad, and is quite well filmed. I also liked the idea that the film features Conrad himself telling the story. Seems to me that the way he wrote demands this kind of treatment in any film version of his work.
The Duellists (1977) was Ridley Scott’s first film, and it’s based on a story by Conrad that I’ve never read. It was actually a pretty decent film, bizarre as the story is. Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel do a fine job, and it certainly has that Conradian quality. (Is he really dueling himself? Is it a commentary on non-stop European wars, prophesying World War I?) The music was also lovely. But what does it all add up to? I suspect most viewers will have some difficulty with that.
Conrad’s short story “Amy Foster” has been seen as semi-autobiographical, since it’s about a Russian immigrant who feels like an outcast in English society and whose wife turns out to be poorly matched to him. It’s apparently based in part on a real-life incident that occurred during Conrad’s honeymoon, in fact. But the film Swept from the Sea (1997) is basically the exact opposite of all of this. In this version, Amy Foster seems to have more in common with Ariel from The Little Mermaid than with Conrad’s titular character. This version is more 1990s bodice-buster than anything in the Conrad vein. Still, Ian McKellen is good, as are Rachel Weisz (who, quite the opposite from Conrad’s story, is beautiful). It’s an okay date movie, but please don’t call it Conrad.
The Rover (1967) is an Italian movie starring Anthony Quinn and Rita Hayworth and with music by Ennio Morricone. But that’s almost all that can be said in its favor. At times it descends into B-movie quality, with a bizarre sequence in which one character is apparently insane…but then suddenly isn’t. It’s a pretty bad adaptation of Conrad’s final novel, which is also not considered one of his best—but in my opinion actually does have some things going for it. The film just doesn’t work.
We didn’t get to Apocalypse Now, which as everyone knows is freely adapted from Heart of Darkness and is probably all the Conrad most Americans know. Also not on our list were a few I’ve seen before: Victory (1996) starring Willem Defoe—which I think is a superb adaptation of the novel, possibly the most faithful of all Conrad adaptations—Heart of Darkness (1993) starring Tim Roth—which is a total failure—and Nostromo (1997), starring Brian Denney. The latter is actually a miniseries, never released on DVD, which is faithful to the book, but I don’t think it works that well since Nostromo, like Conrad’s greatest works, is simply not susceptible of translation to the screen. What’s best about him is his prose style and narrative effects that just cannot be reproduced cinematically.
Oh, and food selections included: Pei Wei, Thai Rama Chandler (one of our favorites), a new Polish place we found, and some nice English tea.
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