Cannery Row | |
---|---|
Directed by | David S. Ward |
Screenplay by | David S. Ward William Graham |
Based on | Cannery Row Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck |
Produced by | Michael Phillips |
Starring | |
Narrated by | John Huston |
Cinematography | Sven Nykvist |
Edited by | David Bretherton |
Music by | Jack Nitzsche |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | MGM/United Artists Distribution and Marketing |
Release date |
|
Running time | 120 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $11.5 million [1] |
Box office | $1.8 million [1] |
Cannery Row is a 1982 American comedy-drama film directed by David S. Ward in his directorial debut, starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. The movie is adapted from John Steinbeck's novels Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954). [2] [3]
During World War II, declining fish stocks lead to the shutdown of the fishing and canning industry in Monterey, California. The bums and prostitutes living on the city's skid row lead colorful and adventurous lives in a balmy seaside setting.
Eddie "Doc" Daniels, a self-employed marine biologist, lives in a dockside warehouse and researches octopuses. Suzy DeSoto, works at the local bordello only out of necessity.
A collection of linked vignettes describes life on Cannery Row. It is depicted as an impoverished area inhabited by a motley band of people who have experienced failures, but somehow have found their niche among strangely kindred souls.
Doc and Suzy do not quite fit in, but are accepted. Mack and the boys gather frogs and sell them to give a surprise party for Doc, which turns into a brawl and breaks the tank housing Doc's octopus collection. To make amends, they decide to gift him with a microscope, but mistakenly purchase a telescope.
A deeper mystery revolves around why Doc stays in Cannery Row. Suzy discovers that Doc was once a professional baseball pitcher but quit.
Another character, Maxie Baker - known locally as "The Seer" - spends his days playing his trumpet on the beach. He depends on the gifts that mysteriously appear, such as groceries. Suzy eventually learns that the Seer is a former baseball player whom Doc injured with a pitch to the head; Doc has been looking after him. Doc and Suzy ultimately find love.
Raquel Welch was originally cast as Suzy but was fired after the first few days of production and replaced by actress Debra Winger, who was 15 years her junior. Welch sued the filmmakers for breach of contract. In the case, MGM claimed Welch was fired for being a "temperamental actress" whose behaviour caused the film to go overbudget. She insisted on doing her hair and make-up at home, and would refuse to co-operate with the director or producers unless she got her own way, thus breaching her $250,000 pay or play contract herself. Welch won the case, and was awarded a reported settlement of $10.8 million in court in 1986. The judgement was upheld at an appeal in 1990, but the whole affair tarnished Welch's reputation in Hollywood. After launching her lawsuit, Welch was never offered another starring role in a major motion picture again. [4] [5] [6] Second unit filming took place in San Diego, California. [7]
In his two-and-a-half star review, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote of the film: "The movie is almost always good to look at, thanks to Richard MacDonald's sets (he linked together two giant sound stages) and Sven Nykvist's photography. And Nolte and Winger are almost able to make their relationship work, if only it didn't seem scripted out of old country songs and lonely hearts columns. It's tough to pull off a movie like this, in the semi-cynical 1980s (it would have been impossible in the truly cynical seventies). I guess we no longer believe in the essential heroism of the little guy, and in the proposition that anyone can succeed with a little luck." [8] Vincent Canby of The New York Times dubbed the film 'precious nonsense' and felt it was a poor adaptation of Steinbeck. [9] Variety praised Nolte and Winger's performance, but felt the material wasn't up to them. [10]
Cannery Row holds a 71% rating on Rotten Tomatoes film review aggregator based on 7 reviews by critics. [11]
MGM head of production David Begelman later said he should not have greenlit the film, saying it "was beyond the reach of the filmmaker to realise the wonderful, wonderful values he had in a brilliant script." [1]
Nicholas King Nolte is an American actor. Known for his leading man roles in both dramas and romances, he has received a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. Nolte first came to prominence for his role in the ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie nomination. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for The Prince of Tides (1991). He received three Academy Award nominations for The Prince of Tides (1991), Affliction (1998) and Warrior (2011).
Cannery Row is a waterfront street in the New Monterey section of Monterey, California, known for formerly being home to a number of now-defunct sardine canneries. The last closed in 1973. The street name, formerly a nickname for Ocean View Avenue, became official in January 1958 to honor John Steinbeck and his novel Cannery Row. In the novel's opening sentence, Steinbeck described the street as "a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." The street borders the adjacent city of Pacific Grove.
Jo Raquel Welch was an American actress. Welch first gained attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she signed a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although Welch had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became bestselling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970), Hannie Caulder (1971), Kansas City Bomber (1972), The Last of Sheila (1973), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Wild Party (1975), and Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976). She made several television variety specials.
Debra Lynn Winger is an American actress. She starred in the films An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), and Shadowlands (1993), each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Winger won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment, and the Tokyo International Film Festival Award for Best Actress for A Dangerous Woman (1993).
Anne Lockhart is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Lieutenant Sheba in the 1978–79 television series Battlestar Galactica.
Of Mice and Men is a 1992 American period drama film based on John Steinbeck's 1937 novella of the same name and is the second film adaptation of the novella, following the 1939 film of the same name. Directed and produced by Gary Sinise, the film features Sinise as George Milton, alongside John Malkovich as Lennie Small, with Casey Siemaszko as Curley, John Terry as Slim, Ray Walston as Candy, Joe Morton as Crooks, and Sherilyn Fenn as Curley's wife.
Another 48 Hrs. is a 1990 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Walter Hill and starring Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, Brion James, Andrew Divoff, and Ed O'Ross. It is the sequel to the 1982 film 48 Hrs. Nolte reprises his role as San Francisco police officer Jack Cates, who has 48 hours to clear his name from a manslaughter charge. To do so, he again needs the help of Reggie Hammond (Murphy), who is a newly released convict. At the same time, a mastermind known only as the Iceman has hired a biker gang to kill Reggie, while a rogue member of the gang (Divoff) is out to kill Jack for the death of his brother from the previous installment.
100 Rifles is a 1969 American Western film directed by Tom Gries and starring Jim Brown, Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds. It is based on Robert MacLeod's 1966 novel The Californio. The film was shot in Spain. The original music score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who had previously also scored Bandolero!, another Western starring Welch.
Rosanna DeSoto is an American actress who has performed in films and television. She is best known for her roles in Stand and Deliver, for which she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, and in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as Azetbur, the daughter of Klingon Chancellor Gorkon.
Sweet Thursday is a 1954 novel by John Steinbeck. It is a sequel to Cannery Row and set in the years after the end of World War II.
Everybody Wins is a 1990 mystery thriller film directed by Karel Reisz, starring Debra Winger and Nick Nolte. The screenplay was written by Arthur Miller, based on his one-act play Some Kind of Love Story (1984). It is loosely inspired by an actual 1970s murder case in Canaan, Connecticut which was the subject of the television film A Death in Canaan (1978) directed by Tony Richardson. It was also the last film to be directed by Karel Reisz before his death in 2002.
The Main Event is a 1979 American sports romantic comedy film starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal, written by Gail Parent, directed by Howard Zieff, and produced by Jon Peters and Streisand.
Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist; and Mack, the leader of a group of derelict people.
Under Fire is a 1983 American political thriller film set during the last days of the Nicaraguan Revolution that ended the Somoza regime in 1979. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, it stars Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy. The musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, which featured jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Score. The editing by Mark Conte and John Bloom was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Editing. The film was shot in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca.
The Three Musketeers (also known as The Three Musketeers (The Queen's Diamonds)) is a 1973 swashbuckler film based on the 1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is directed by Richard Lester from a screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser, and produced by Ilya Salkind. It stars Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain as the titular musketeers, with Raquel Welch, Geraldine Chaplin, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, Simon Ward, Georges Wilson and Spike Milligan.
Pipe Dream is the seventh musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II; it premiered on Broadway on November 30, 1955. The work is based on John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday—Steinbeck wrote the novel, a sequel to Cannery Row, in the hope of having it adapted into a musical. Set in Monterey, California, the musical tells the story of the romance between Doc, a marine biologist, and Suzy, who in the novel is a prostitute; her profession is only alluded to in the stage work. Pipe Dream was not an outright flop but was a financial disaster for Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Black Widow is a 1987 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Bob Rafelson, from a screenplay by Ronald Bass. It stars Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, and Nicol Williamson. Dennis Hopper has a short role at the beginning of the film.
Kansas City Bomber is a 1972 American sports drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by Jerrold Freedman and starring Raquel Welch, Kevin McCarthy and Jodie Foster in her second appearance in a feature film.
Fuzz is a 1972 American action comedy film directed by Richard A. Colla and starring Burt Reynolds, Yul Brynner, Raquel Welch, Tom Skerritt, and Jack Weston.
Sin is a 1971 film written and directed by George P. Cosmatos and marked his directorial debut. The film was produced by Curtwel Productions and stars Raquel Welch and Richard Johnson. It is set on an island and filmed in Cyprus.