Kudos to Kino: the video company has released a boxed set of the acclaimed AFT feature films.
By Raymond Benson
.
Want
to go see a Broadway or West End stage play—but at the local cinema? No, it’s not a filmed stage production. It’s a play translated to the film medium,
but with complete faithfulness to the original play script. Not only that, it stars big name actors and
is directed by a top-notch director. To
complete the conceit, you get handed a playbill (program) when you enter the
theater. There might even be an
intermission—or two! And you have only four
showtimes at which you can view the picture before it disappears, and you have
to buy your ticket in advance with a subscription for a whole “season†of these
filmed plays, or staged films, or whatever you want to call them.
This
was the unique and exciting experiment called the American Film Theatre.
Back
in 1973, producer Ely Landau launched this daring and unprecedented cinema
series that played in the U.S. for two “seasons,†with a total of fourteen
titles (but only thirteen were shown), all renowned works—classic and modern—originally
produced on the stage. Landau and his
wife Edie were not Broadway producers, but they were Theatre People and had
helped launch the “Play of the Week†series on PBS television, produced Sidney
Lumet’s film version of Eugene O’Neill’s Long
Day’s Journey Into Night (1962), and were keen on inventing a way to make
Broadway (or the London stage) accessible to everyone in America—at their local
movie theater.
There
have always been stage plays adapted for film—A Streetcar Named Desire, for example, or The Miracle Worker, or Hamlet. But plays like these were “re-imagined†for
the film medium—the script was often changed or re-written with added or
deleted scenes, the action was “opened up†to include locations outside of a
single, claustrophobic stage set, and the roles were usually re-cast with
“Hollywood actors†rather than “Broadway actors.â€Â Then there were also the few stage
productions that were filmed as is, i.e., cameras were set up in front of an
actual proscenium stage while an already-rehearsed play was performed and the
cameras simply recorded the production. Waiting for Godot (1961), for example,
was done this way for television.Â
The
American Film Theatre concept tried something different. The directive was to take a great stage play,
not change a word, and in most cases,
use the actual play script as the screenplay.Â
The next step was to hire an accomplished film director to interpret the
text for the film medium but stay
faithful to the play. Sometimes the
director was the same person who helmed the original stage production. A further step was to persuade the original
casts from the Broadway or London productions of those plays to star in the
film; or, when that wasn’t possible, to cast big-name Hollywood or British
actors. Thus, the result was indeed a
filmed play—but you as an audience member wouldn’t be watching it from the
middle of the orchestra or from the side or from the first balcony; instead you
were up close and personal in a realistically-presented world (on studio sets
and/or real interior or exterior locations)—just like in “regular†movies. You had the best seat in the house, so to
speak, but there’s no proscenium arch.Â
It’s a movie. But it’s a
play. Get it?Â
Landau
didn’t have a lot of money to produce the series. Getting the rights to the plays was the easy
part. In most cases, if the playwright
was still living, he was more than happy to take a modest fee to see his play
translated faithfully to the screen.Â
Edward Albee, for example, had already gone through a Hollywood
experience with Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf? During that production, he
and producer/screenwriter Ernest Lehman often clashed over the script until
Lehman finally gave in and used Albee’s original play text as the film script
almost verbatim (and yet Lehman was credited for the screenplay and received an
Oscar nomination for it!). So, when
Landau approached Albee about doing A
Delicate Balance in the American Film Theatre with promises that the actual
play would be the screenplay, and Albee would have director and cast approval,
the playwright jumped at the chance. Landau
collected the rights to the plays he wanted in this manner and started from
scratch with every production, except for two.Â
Three Sisters, from the Anton
Chekhov play and directed by Laurence Olivier, had already been produced and
released in Britain only in 1970. Philadelphia, Here I Come!, from the
Brian Friel play and directed by John Quested, was an Irish production set to
be released in 1975. Landau bought the
U.S. distribution rights for both films and presented them as two of the
entries in the AFT program. Thus, Three Sisters and Philadelphia, Here I Come! were the only pictures in the entire two
seasons that Landau and his team did not produce.
The
talent (directors, actors, designers, technicians) was asked to work at a
reduced rate or at scale. No one
refused. It was for a cause they all
thought was worthwhile. Lee Marvin, for
example, joked that he “lost $225,000†by starring in The Iceman Cometh (which meant he did the movie for only
$25,000—his going rate at the time was $250,000).Â
Grants
from American Express and other organizations helped fill out the rest of the
production costs. Finally, audiences
were asked to subscribe in advance to a certain number of films in a particular
season. They could buy tickets for the
entire season or a lesser selection if they desired. Only four performances per film were shown at
selective theaters around the country—simultaneously—and a new film premiered
every month. Just like theatre, only in
the cinema.Â
Being
a Theatre Person (defined as someone who has studied and worked in the theatre—I
was majoring in Drama at the University of Texas at Austin in the fall of 1973
when the American Film Theatre premiered)—I found the series exhilarating. Most people who appreciated and knew the theatre loved it. They understood and “got†what Landau and his
team were trying to do. Unfortunately,
the rest of the public met the series with a collective shrug. Film critics complained that the films were
“too much like stage plays†(duh!).Â
True, many of the productions were a bit claustrophobic because, like
the original plays, they took place in single settings. In only a few cases were the plays “opened
up†to include scenes outdoors (such as Rhinoceros
and Lost in the Stars). What the critics didn’t understand was that
the series was created to celebrate playwrights,
and so the emphasis was on the plays. With
great acting. And wonderful
direction.Â
Speaking
of the acting, I assert that the AFT series contained some of the best performances
one can see on the silver screen—ever. It’s a shame that none of the films were
eligible for Academy Award consideration (due to the limited showings and non-traditional
distribution); otherwise we would have seen many of the AFT’s stars up for
Oscars. Only one of the films, The Man in the Glass Booth, was released
in a regular theatrical run in 1975 after the AFT seasons were finished—and
Maximilian Schell was indeed nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in
the picture.Â
AFT’s
first season consisted of eight films/plays.Â
Beginning in October 1973, one picture played each month through May
1974. The second season consisted of six
features (only five were actually shown) and ran in 1975.Â