There's got to be a mozzarella

Noel Vera

What with the release of Wolfgang Petersen's very visible "Poseidon"
(2006), about a ship capsized by what they call a "rogue wave," it's
useful to remind oneself of the original.

"The Poseidon Adventure" came out in 1972, two years after "Airport"
had proven that there was money to be made in disaster pictures--
again (actually, Hollywood had gone into a disaster-flick kick at
least once before, when "San Francisco" (1936) became a hit,
followed by John Ford's "The Hurricane" (1937) and "The Rains Came"
two years later).

Arguably, "Poseidon" set the formula; "Airport" thirty-plus years
later is a dull affair, a movie literally and comprehensively about
the running of an airport--how to cope with passenger stowaways
(less possible now with all the high-tech security), should they or
should they not offer disaster insurance, and which stewardess is
sleeping with which pilot. The disaster--an onboard bomb explodes,
necessitating an emergency landing--is rather small-scale, and just
one in a collection of plot threads; worse, the climax had the plane
landing safely--no crash landing, no sparks struck off the runway,
not even a death save for the mad bomber (poor Van Heflin, at the
tail end of his career), and no one cared about him.

Irwin Allen knew what was missing; he thought he could do better,
and does. "The Poseidon Adventure" is about the cheesiest enchilada
in a decade full of sticky rolled tortillas--not the best, not even
the most bizarre, but easily the ripest, complete with a set of the
saltiest hams available. Significantly, the director, Ronald Neame,
who started out as David Lean's cinematographer and went on to
direct many undistinguished pictures in various genres, is best
known for guiding Maggie Smith's fine performance in "The Prime of
Miss Jean Brodie" (1969); Allen, I'm guessing, felt he didn't really
need an action director--not even a cut-rate action director--but an
actor's director. He needed someone to direct the people and
dialogue, not the special effects.

(Not that the special effects were nothing--Allen hired two of the
best, L.B. Abbott and the legendary A.D. Flowers (he invented the
formula for fake blood for "The Godfather" and worked on "Apocalypse
Now"). No CGI effects here--there were none available at the time--
but both the capsizing of the Poseidon and the chaos inside the ship
were done with large-scale miniatures and old-fashioned ingenuity,
and featured a solidity and weight and level of detail not even the
most expensive digital effects today can recreate.)

Crucial to the whole enterprise was Gene Hackman in the role of
Reverend Frank Scott, a worldly, even sexy priest not averse to a
little scotch on the rocks for dinner. Hackman's Scott not only
carries the weight of responsibility for the ship's survivors on his
shoulders, he has to deliver lines like "Resolve to fight for
yourselves, and for others, for those you love; and that part of God
within you will be fighting with you all the way." As the survivors
push on to the top, however (which is actually the ship's bottom--
you wonder why they didn't try get more comic mileage out of the
possible confusion), Scott gets more traditionally biblical, even
holding entire conversations with God where he provides the
questions but no one answers (in the end he does the sensible thing--
give up asking).

Hackman does this in all simplicity and total conviction; he's
basically the straight man that makes the plot function while the
gaggle of actors trailing behind him provide all the comic relief--
in effect, Ernest Borgnine as Detective Mike Rogo and his wife,
Linda. Mike and Linda are an inspired invention--we learn that
Linda's a former prostitute, and that Mike has arrested her before
("I had to figure out some way to keep you off the streets until
you'd marry me"); we learn that Linda in many ways is still a
streetwalker in both heart and mouth ("She's got nothing on
underneath!" "Just panties, what else do I need?"). Mike and Linda
are the Ralph and Alice Kramden of this picture; they keep the movie
lively between initial calamity and eventual resolution. Add the
occasional fat jokes made at game Shelley Winters' expense ("Ya had
a lotta guts, lady, a lotta guts"), Leslie Nielsen as ship's
captain, sneaking in a line Lieutenant Frank Drebin might have be
proud of ("(The wave) seems to be piling up in the shallows. By the
way, Happy New Year"), and Carol Lynley with the voice of Renee
Armand singing "There's got to be a morning after / if we can hold
on thru the night / we have a chance to find the sunshine / let's
keep on lookin' for the light" and you've got camp disaster-film
heaven.

Is it possible to do a good disaster flick--"good" as in seriously
good, without the sniggering and flung popcorn (Allen's 1974 follow-
up "The Towering Inferno," with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen for
leads, had enough testosterone to drown out some (but not all) the
catcalls)? Actually yes--Richard Lester's "Juggernaut," same year
as "Inferno," about a luxury liner threatened by a terrorist bomber,
was intelligent, quirky, and visually distinctive (early on there's
this tremendous sequence of the bomb squad team parachuting into
storm-tossed waters and scaling the side of the ship; later Lester
captures infinitesimally close shots of bomb experts cutting and
manipulating tiny wires inside the bombs). The passengers are not
cute kids or lovable old dodgers, but weary tourists with zombie
makeup and nightmare hairdos, waiting around listlessly for the ship
to blow up and end their misery; the bomb team (led by Richard
Harris in one of his best performances) isn't made up of macho
Americans eager to play hero but of recognizably flawed human
beings, struggling with inner demons no less tricky than the
detonation devices they're working on.

But this is 2006, and we have Peterson (who after "Das Boot" turned
into a flavorless hack director faster than you can say "used coffee
grounds") and his superfluous remake. From the early accounts and
the trailer it doesn't look promising: they've apparently decided to
go for straightforward adventure flick, with emphasis on stunts and
computer-animated effects over corny songs and even cornier
dialogue. "Poseidon" could be a hit--actually, Hollywood's world-
spanning markets are expressly designed never to lose money on a big
production--but they've forgotten the cheese.

(First published in Businessworld, 5/12/06)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)