daedalus apologizes to his son
by Douglas Messerli
Gilbert Holland (Donald Ogden Stewart) (screenplay, based on a play by Roger MacDougall), Philip Leacock (director) Escapade / 1955, USA 1957
Donald Ogden Stewart, as Djuna Barnes disgruntledly perceived as early as her interview with the playwright and later film writer in 1930 (see My Year 2000), seemed to have been born to succeed. Already by that time he had been immortalized in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises as the character Bill Gorton, was a member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, and had authored several plays and novels. Soon after, Stewart would go on to write the film scripts for Tarnished Lady, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, Life with Father, and other popular films.
by Douglas Messerli
Gilbert Holland (Donald Ogden Stewart) (screenplay, based on a play by Roger MacDougall), Philip Leacock (director) Escapade / 1955, USA 1957
Donald Ogden Stewart, as Djuna Barnes disgruntledly perceived as early as her interview with the playwright and later film writer in 1930 (see My Year 2000), seemed to have been born to succeed. Already by that time he had been immortalized in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises as the character Bill Gorton, was a member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, and had authored several plays and novels. Soon after, Stewart would go on to write the film scripts for Tarnished Lady, Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, Life with Father, and other popular films.
After his interview with Barnes, Stewart
also became increasingly involved with politics, in 1936 serving as one of the
founding members of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. He joined several left-wing
organizations, including the American Communist Party, in part because of their
support of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
Accordingly by the late 1940s, when he
made the George Cukor film, Edward, My Son in England, he strategically chose to escape from Hollywood,
particularly since the House on Un-American Activities was already involved in
its witch hunts, for which he refused to testify. With his second wife, Ella
Winter, the widow of activist Lincoln Steffans, Stewart permanently moved to
England, over the next decades writing, under various names, for British and
American films and contributing English dialogue for Roberto Rossellini’s Europa51.
Based
on the play by Roger MacDougall, Stewart
wrote the screenplay for the 1955 film, Escapade, under the pen name of Gilbert Holland. Later, Stewart wrote other
memorable films such as Summertime and
An Affair to Remember. In 1974 he
published his autobiography, By a Stroke of Luck!, the introduction to which was written by his friend Katherine Hepburn
who described him as one of the great wits of the 1920s, 30s. and 40s. Stewart
lived a long life, dying in 1980 at the age of 85.
Philip
Leacock’s 1955 film, Escapade, with a
script by American Donald Ogden Stewart, is an exceptional apologia of the older generation to the young.
From the very beginning in this
comedy-drama, it is clear that the adults are all having problems. John Hampden
(John Mills), a notable pacifist writer, is meeting with argumentative
fellow-pacifists, each expressing himself in loud outbursts of frustration and
anger. Before John’s wife Stella (Yvonne Mitchell) can even serve up
sandwiches, the group has vociferously disbanded, unable to even come to a
resolution for reading the formal minutes of their last unsuccessful meeting.
“They are all idiots,” Hampden summarizes.
Their young son Johnny (Peter Asher),
recovering at home from the measles, is busily attempting to read comics in
bed, his gentle grandmother (Marie Lohr), John’s mother, comforting him and
closing the window so that he might not hear the argumentation occurring below.
Soon after, however, he is even more disturbed by an argument that breaks out
between his mother and father, occasioned by Stella’s attempt to convey to her
husband just how self-centered he has become—particularly since he has grown so
involved with his cause, seemingly sending off his sons to boarding school to
find more time for political activities. As she later suggests, he is a father
to them only in the biological sense. Johnny fears that, instead of being sent
back to school, he and his other two brothers will be brought home, losing the
active community of the school-boy chums.
With slight proto-feminist stirrings,
moreover, the film suggests that Hampden not only ignores, but is completely
insensitive to his wife. While arguing for the cause of Asian women, he has no
ability, evidently, to see that he is treating his own wife in a manner that
may be even worse that the stereotypes his speech is about to disdain. Even
Stella’s attempt to tell him that she needs to leave for a while, in a desire
to sort out her discontent, is met with absolute incomprehension and disbelief.
Back at the homestead, Stella is sorting
out phonograph records into his and her piles, signifying that her temporary
respite from marriage may be a much more significant separation than she has
first suggested. A verbal row ensues, with the avowed pacifist again displaying
his violent propensities, and Stella, although attempting to be reasonable,
erupting into something closer to a volcano than a cold “star.” So loud are
their shouts that they fail to hear the doorbell ring when, in a most
surprising twist of plot, the headmaster appears at their door to report that
Max has, once more, attacked his son. Once again, John is filled with adamant
protestations and threatening gestures, while Stella returns to the role of disturbed
mother. Why has her docile son suddenly become so violent? she and her husband can
only inquire. No sooner has John suggested that the problem might lie with the
educational methods of Skillingworth, than he receives a call: Max has
apparently used a homemade weapon to “shoot” another professor. He is locked
away in his room when the phone suddenly goes dead!
Given the series of events outlined so
far, we might almost expect this film to turn into a kind of comic, bad-boy
film such as Jean Vigo’s Zero for Conduct
or, even more disturbingly, a horror film in the manner of Wolf Rilla’s
later Village of the Damned. But
Peacock and Stewart quickly surprise us, by switching the roles, as it soon
becomes apparent that the scheming children are involved in an enterprise meant
for good, while the adults show themselves as caring less about their charges
than about the dangers of publicity for the school (in Dr. Skillngworth’s case)
and their own reputation (in the example of the Hampdens). Only Stella seems to
be solidly on the side of her sons; yet even she willingly joins her husband in
their examination of their son’s Icarus’ room and private notebooks. And when a
nosey newspaper reporter, Deeson (Colin Gordon) show us, the representatives of
local authority—parents, educators and media spokesmen—all join together,
attempting to trick the younger generation into revealing secrets they now
understandably, given the insidious methods of the adults, want
to protect.
Despite their fellow students’ evasions,
however, the trio of incompetent sleuths soon discover that the Hampdens’ sons
have stolen an airplane and two of the boys, Max and Johnny, have suddenly
turned up in Luxembourg—Icarus, as his name might imply, rushing on toward the
rising sun of Vienna.
The shock of these maneuvers finally force
all the involved adults to begin to rethink their own behaviors, and before
long, the Hampdens—reunited if only by the search for their missing boys—admit
some of their failings; for the first time in the film, John even suggests that
he no longer has the answers. Skillingworth, previously playing only the
nemesis of Hayden, offers up his admiration not only for the pacifist writer,
but openly expresses his appreciation of the intelligence and ingenuity of
Hayden’s sons. Even the reporter, admitting his own children have been killed
in a wartime event, suddenly becomes an ally instead of an enemy of those
around him.
Quite obviously such a sudden turn-around
of the film’s incompetent adults is absolutely unbelievable, but as creaky as it
is, it contributes to our final sense of righteous pleasure we get out of the
decisions of the young to take over the weak and failing negotiations the
elders have made for a better world. Icarus, it is soon revealed, is heading to
Vienna with a manifesto of sorts, carrying a document, signed by the students
of his school and numerous others, that none of them will ever kill students of
their age—as if suddenly answering the plea of the alien visitor of Robert Wise’s
The Day the Earth Stood Still of just
a few years earlier, in which the space visitor failed to convince the world’s
populace to stop their warring.
We have no way of knowing to whom this
young Icarus presents his utopian plans or how it might be received by European
leaders. And we—as adults always are—can be only cynical about the ultimate
success of his voyage. But Icarus’ young compatriots, nonetheless, have no
serious doubts, lighting up the sky throughout England with bonfires
symbolizing their hope and faith that the future will bring about the changes
their generation desires.
We never even catch a glimpse of this new
Icarus, who instead of falling into the sea, seems to have, at the very least,
lit a spark of new possibility among his compatriots. The film ends as he is
about to return home, with his literary craftsman father, Daedalus implicitly apologizing
for his inattention and doubts about his own son’s capabilities.
Nonetheless, we know that Leacock’s and
Stewart’s post World War II film is simply a feel-good film, a kind of
pipe-dream fantasy that somehow the future generation will solve the problems
the current generation has been unable to resolve. We can only fear—an emotion
already instilled through the character’s consistent presumption that Icarus
has not survived the voyage and through the fact that he has never literally
appeared in human form before us—that the figure stands more as an ideal than a
human being who has accomplished the impossible. And, although the bonfires
that suddenly flare up across the screen, lit in at near-by schools in support
of the boy’s applaudable values, may certainly warm the hearts (and bodies) of
those who stand nearby, we can only doubt, sadly, that his acts have warmed the
hearts of the general human species.
Tragically, history has proven us right
In failing to realize his legendary Icarus
as an everyday human kid, finally, Stewart has simply continued the tradition
of naming names, instead of exploring the human beliefs that have motivated his
character’s acts.
.
Los Angeles, January
4, 2015
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