It been a spooky season, and I've been watching a lot of spooky films. Last night, I saw The Phantom Carriage, directed by Victor Sjöström, who also plays the protagonist in the 1921 silent.
The film uses double exposure to create haunting images, and seems strongly influenced by A Christmas Carol. By the 20th century, I imagine that not only Charles Dickens's novella but several stage versions of it had become widely known in Sweden, where the film was made. The movie's plot revolves around not Christmas but New Year's, which makes the film also reminiscent of another supernatural piece by Dickens, The Chimes.
Recently, I was curious to learn of a dark Tennessee Williams film adaptation, The Fugitive Kind. It's based on Orpheus Descending, which reworked a previous Williams play, Battle of Angels. I had to look the film up after I found out it was directed by Sidney Lumet with a host of great actors, including Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, and Maureen Stapleton. Brando was paid a million dollars to be in the film, which was unheard of in 1960 when the movie was released.
In spite of Brando's star appeal, the film lost money. It did better than Battle of Angels, though, which closed during tryouts in Boston. The reworked version, Orpheus Descending, did much better, running for 68 performances at the Martin Beck on Broadway. Stapleton played the female leading role of Lady on stage, but was replaced with Magnani in the film, taking on instead the substantial but smaller role of Vee. The story, in all of its iterations, is a Southern Gothic tale of lust, revenge, and murder.
This evening, I watched another spooky movie, Guillermo del Toro's new adaptation of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Like A Christmas Carol, that novel has been adapted for the stage over and over again. In fact, next weekend I'll be seeing a new stage version at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. Monsters, figurative or literal, tend to do well on stage, especially this time of year.
