Just a few weeks ago I caught one of my favorite old movies on TV, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Maggie Smith was as amazing as I remembered. I've been fortunate to have some teachers in my life who influenced me greatly; none of them were "a Miss Brodie" - but they shared her passion for teaching and her gift for "putting old heads on young shoulders." Always having known the movie was based on a book I had not read by Muriel Spark, I decided it was time to rectify that situation.
The book is a quick read (less than 150 pages in the HarperPerennial paperback edition). The novel, moreso than the movie, is told from the point of view of one of The Brodie Set, Sandy. But the feel of the story is quite different: its setting is alternatelyThe Marcia Blaine School in early 1930s Edinburgh, and the time much later when the girls are grown and looking back on their days under Miss Brodie's influence. We learn what became of each of the six girls and of Miss Brodie, which the movie does not reveal.
I made my mental notes of where the movie had left out this or changed that; but I was most fascinated by the bigger decisions that had been made by those who created the screenplay (actually from a successful stage play, which came first) to combine certain characters, to move certain pieces of dialog into different scenes, to prune here and emphasize a bit there, creating the engaging character study and drama that the movie surely is. What a skill that must be: to have seen the heart of the story in the little novel as the successful movie it became.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Finding Oz
I had just finished reading a biography of Victor Fleming, of special interest on this seventy year anniversary of Fleming's two big successes: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, made, I've always known, both in that same year of old Hollywood greatness, 1939. Two such different films that are part of the American psyche directed largely by one man in the same year - amazing.
Then I came across Evan Schwartz' Finding Oz. Scwartz has visited all the places where Baum and his close family lived, haunted archives, interviewed surviving family members and given us the story of Baum's creation of the story of Oz. Tellingly, Schwartz describes Baum's achievement as a 'discovery' and gives us insight into the spiritual significance of the story's themes and characters, quoting liberally from Joseph Campbell's observations on the mythic archetypes in human life.
Baum was born in the Syracuse area of upstate New York. He married and with his wife raised four sons. His varied careers in family businesses, retail, traveling sales were struggles to support a family; but his true talent was always as a storyteller. It wasn't until 1899, at the age of 43, that he penned the great American tale we have come to know as The Wizard of Oz.
Schwartz did not set out to write Baum's biography, although the bio details are all there. Rather this is a biography of the great story itself, how it came to be, the myriad influences from Baum's life: John D Rockefeller; the 1893 Chicago World's Fair; Theosophy; Baum's mother-in-law, the underrecognized suffragette, Matilda Gage; the yellow brick road in Peekskill that inspired the iconic path. It traces the making of the movie, production decisions, and remarks on artistic decisions (some good, some not so good) that caused the film to differ from Baum's original story.
The book is a fascinating read, albeit not strictly chronological. At times I wished it included a timeline, which would have helped me place key events and people in context. I also could have wished for a more comprehensive index. Having said that, it's delightful to know so much more about this story that was part of my childhood, in the older years from having read the book, but in the earliest years as the film, back in those pre-VCR days, when watching its annual network broadcast was a spring ritual. We didn't have a color TV when I first saw it - but I could always imagine what Oz really looked like. Like so many young readers and viewers, I just knew.
Then I came across Evan Schwartz' Finding Oz. Scwartz has visited all the places where Baum and his close family lived, haunted archives, interviewed surviving family members and given us the story of Baum's creation of the story of Oz. Tellingly, Schwartz describes Baum's achievement as a 'discovery' and gives us insight into the spiritual significance of the story's themes and characters, quoting liberally from Joseph Campbell's observations on the mythic archetypes in human life.
Baum was born in the Syracuse area of upstate New York. He married and with his wife raised four sons. His varied careers in family businesses, retail, traveling sales were struggles to support a family; but his true talent was always as a storyteller. It wasn't until 1899, at the age of 43, that he penned the great American tale we have come to know as The Wizard of Oz.
Schwartz did not set out to write Baum's biography, although the bio details are all there. Rather this is a biography of the great story itself, how it came to be, the myriad influences from Baum's life: John D Rockefeller; the 1893 Chicago World's Fair; Theosophy; Baum's mother-in-law, the underrecognized suffragette, Matilda Gage; the yellow brick road in Peekskill that inspired the iconic path. It traces the making of the movie, production decisions, and remarks on artistic decisions (some good, some not so good) that caused the film to differ from Baum's original story.
The book is a fascinating read, albeit not strictly chronological. At times I wished it included a timeline, which would have helped me place key events and people in context. I also could have wished for a more comprehensive index. Having said that, it's delightful to know so much more about this story that was part of my childhood, in the older years from having read the book, but in the earliest years as the film, back in those pre-VCR days, when watching its annual network broadcast was a spring ritual. We didn't have a color TV when I first saw it - but I could always imagine what Oz really looked like. Like so many young readers and viewers, I just knew.
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