The Americanization Of Emily (1964) Was there ever, in Hollywood history, a screenwriter granted the amount of creative control given to Paddy Chayefsky?
His scripts, filled with verbose meticulously crafted speeches for actors to sink their teeth into, came with non-negotiable deals.......no tampering, deleting or rewriting of the words.
Therefore the films written by Chayefsky stand as anomalies.....(and beacons to aspiring screenwriters).......movies where the primary auteur in charge was, of all people, the writer.
(Not an inconsiderable achievement, considering a studio mogul once referred to screenwriters as "shucks with Underwoods"......)
'Emily' gave Chayefsky his first golden opportunity to assume the position of cinema's most eloquent, witty and decidedly pissed off social satirist......and he proved well deserving of that honor. He'd later move on to eviscerate healthcare in 1971's "The Hospital" and television's grip on American culture in 1976's "Network".
But in '64 he first cast his sharp critical eye on nothing less than the phony romanticizing and false glorification of warfare. Quite a daring, ahead-of-its-time move, considering his script makes its points while dealing with our most worshipped and celebrated of conflicts, World War 2.....and its most pivotal historic moment of courage under fire - Europe's liberation begun with the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy.
Consider our unlikely 'hero' here. Navy Lt. Commander Charlie Madison (one of James Garner's best roles ever). A shameless devout coward, Charlie lives the high life in war torn London, scrounging booze, women, chocolate bars and assorted bootleg goodies for his dementia-riddled boss Admiral Jessup (Melvyn Douglas).
A playboy slapper of girls' rear ends, the cheeky Charlie gets slapped right back in the face by his British army driver Emily Barham (Julie Andrews, also in top comedic-dramatic form). Emily, grieving from the loss of her husband and brother to the war, is fed up with the nobility of heroes and heroics. So naturally she gravitates to an affair with Charlie, since she finds his craven devotion to avoid life threatening combat as his best feature.
But things go awry when Admiral Jessup, in one of his less than lucid moments, tasks Charlie to personally lead a camera crew into the June 6th combat. ......in hopes of filming and then lionizing the first sailor to die on the D-Day beaches. For a dedicated chicken like Charlie, it's his worst nightmare come true.......
Andrews and Garner are gifted with some of Chayefsky's most lengthy, perceptive monologues about the nature of war - why it's fought, how it's fought, and how we deal with it.....its horrors, its triumphs, its tragedies, the way it brings out the very best and the very worst of humanity. True enough, war does the same for Charlie......
And watching this again, I wonder if audiences paid careful attention to the fine points the script puts on this topic. Chayefsky clearly honors and lauds World War 2 as a necessary battle against tyranny, but on the other hand reviles those who exalt and memorialize war without ever having experienced it themselves first hand.
(The film hammers down this theme in one brilliant cinematic sequence - the expressions of sheer terror on Garner's face as he awaits hitting the beach, listening to the rage of battle around him....)
Yet even with all the multiple points of view on display, the Last Angry Screenwriter still finds his way to a perfectly funny, romantic and ironic conclusion......in which both cowardice and valor somehow win the day at the same time.
My other reaction on revisiting 'Emily'.......why can't we cultivate more brilliant, screenwriting craftsmen like Paddy Cheyefsky? In today's rancid, steaming landfill of barely literate scripts cobbled together with dumbed-down dialogue and cardboard characters, is there any writer out here capable of scripts like "Network", "The Hospital", or "Sweet Smell Of Success", or "The Professionals"?
If you've yet to see this film, and you pine for the lost art of literate screenwriting, then put this on your "Must View ASAP' list. 4 stars (****).
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