Censors in both the United Kingdom and United States demanded considerable emendations to the film which led to significant deviations from the source material by Van Druten and Isherwood. Although critically unsuccessful upon its release, the film became a smash hit at the 1955 British box office.[3][4] Long overshadowed by Cabaret, the 1966 stage and 1972 film adaptation of the same source material, contemporary critics have noted the historic interest of this earlier presentation.
Plot
In contemporary London, Christopher Isherwood attends a literary party for the launch of a memoir, the author of which he is surprised to learn is Sally Bowles. This knowledge sparks a reverie, and the film flashes back to Berlin, New Year's Eve 1931. Broke and frustrated with his writing, Christopher plans to spend the night in, but his would-be gigolo friend Fritz insists they go to a night club to see Fritz's new inamorata, Sally Bowles, perform. Fritz hopes to live off Sally's earnings as a film star, but his ardour quickly cools at the sight of her fiancé Pierre, with whom she plans to leave for Paris that night. Instead, Pierre absconds with her money. Chris, taking pity on her, invites her to stay at his boarding house. They arrange for Chris to move to a smaller room, and for Sally to take his old room. Over the course of a long and unproductive winter, in which Chris cannot write, and Sally finds no work, Chris attempts to initiate a sexual relationship with Sally. She rejects him, saying it would spoil their friendship.
Their spirits renewed by the Spring, Christopher and Sally splurge on a Champagne cocktail at a café, and Sally quickly orders far more cocktails and caviar than they can afford. They are extricated from the situation by wealthy American socialite Clive Mortimer, who pays their bill and takes them on a tour of Berlin night spots. Thus begins a whirlwind relationship between the three, culminating in a planned trip to Honolulu. The trip never happens, as Clive wires that his plans have changed. Chris and Sally have a terrible fight, resulting in a rift in their friendship, and Sally's planned departure.
Feeling as though he has reconnected with real life, the formerly a-political Christopher starts a street altercation with a group of Nazis. Returning home, he discovers that Sally has not left, because she is pregnant. Christopher proposes marriage, but Sally refuses him.
Writing up an account of his Nazi altercation, Chris sells his "Portrait of Berlin" to an American magazine to raise money for Sally to have an abortion. The magazine editor hires Chris to write a series of portraits of European cities, expecting him to leave the following day. When he returns home, Sally has changed her mind; she plans to keep the baby and marry Chris. The next morning, Sally tells Chris that she has miscalculated the dates, and was never actually pregnant. She is also leaving Berlin for Paris, in pursuit of a film executive with whom Clive has connected her.
Back in present-day London, Christopher and Sally re-unite. Upon learning that Sally is again penniless and homeless, Chris invites her to stay in his spare room.
In a subplot, Fritz tries to secure the affections of Natalia Landauer, a wealthy Jewish department store heiress and Christopher's student of English. When Natalia fails to respond to his charms, Sally suggests that he "pounce", i.e., make a sexual advance. He reports that this tactic is unsuccessful, and Natalia refuses to see him. Fritz confesses to Christopher that he is Jewish and has been concealing it for years, but vows to stop lying about his heritage. Their story concludes with Fritz and Natalia's announcement to Chris and Sally that they plan to marry and emigrate to Switzerland.
For the 1955 film, Julie Harris recreated her stage performance as Sally Bowles. Her performance in the 1951 play had garnered rave reviews.
After the play had a successful West End run in 1954, film producers John and James Woolf began exploring the idea of adapting Van Druten's play for the screen. In April 1954, director Henry Cornelius and the Woolfs sent a copy of the play to the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) for evaluation. The Board's preliminary report found numerous problems with the play which, if unchanged, would inevitably lead to an X certificate (no one under 16 admitted). The Board's initial report offered suggestions for how the play could be adapted to secure an A certificate (suitable for children if accompanied by an adult), including shifting the play's focus away from Sally Bowles, but recognized that such changes were unlikely because of how markedly they would depart from the original play.[5]
Director Henry Cornelius asked Isherwood to write the screenplay. He was forced to decline, as he was engaged working on the screenplay for Diane, a biopic of Diane de Poitiers, for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood.[6]
The first draft of John Collier's screenplay was submitted to the BBFC in October 1954. While the screenplay was being prepared, the Board sent four different examiners to see the play. Each agreed that the play as written was unsuitable for filming, although one held out hope that modifications could be made to allow for the A rating.[7] The BBFC demanded changes to the script, including insisting that Sally Bowles be left poor and unsuccessful at film's end because of her sexual promiscuity in the Berlin flashbacks.[8] Negotiations between film-makers and the Board continued through November. Finally, on 29 November, a resolution was reached which left film-makers prepared for the likelihood that the film would be certified X regardless.[9]
Filming commenced in mid-October 1954. Cornelius had wanted to film in Berlin, but was unable to because of currency issues with the studio.[1] Isherwood had hoped to be in London for the filming, but his lover Don Bachardy was unable to secure the permission of his local draft board to obtain a passport.[10]
Ron Randell was cast on the strength of his stage and TV reputation.[11]
Ratings and certification
The BBFC reviewed I Am a Camera on 9 May 1955, and objected to a single line of dialogue ("Surely he hasn't got a crush on shoes at his age?") that carried an implication of foot fetishism.[9] With that line replaced, the film received an X certificate.[12] In 1961, Associated-Rediffusion asked the BBFC to review the film, hoping to secure an A certificate so as to broadcast the film on television. While acknowledging that the subject matter was mild in light of subsequent films like Room at the Top, Look Back in Anger, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, the BBFC found that the abortion subject matter prevented re-certification without re-editing.[13]
Upon its American release, I Am a Camera was denied the Production Code Administration seal of approval.[14]Joseph Breen of the PCA had reviewed a copy of the Van Druten play as early as May 1953, and deemed it to have multiple Code violations. His recommendations were sent to John Van Druten, who disregarded them.[12] The PCA's Geoffrey M. Shurlock, in denying PCA approval to the finished film, cited "gross sexual promiscuity on the part of the leading lady without the proper compensating moral values required by the Code".[15] This included the film's treatment of the subject of abortion. Many cinemas would not run the film without the seal.
Fred J. Schwartz, head of American distributor Distributors Corporation of America, tried to schedule a hearing with the Motion Picture Association of America in August 1955, hoping to overturn the PCA decision and obtain the seal. Schwartz hired civil liberties lawyer Morris Ernst, and scheduled a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in November, hoping to turn the film into a test case against the Production Code. However, the film did not rally the critical support it would have needed to defy the code in the way that the 1953 film The Moon Is Blue had. In February 1956, Schwartz wrote to Shurlock offering to include an additional scene in which Harvey as Isherwood condemned Sally's promiscuity, but would not address the subject of abortion. The Production Code section on abortion was revised in December 1956, and Schwartz once again appealed to Shurlock. Shurlock responded later that month, re-affirming the denial on the basis of the light treatment of the subject matter. Following this denial, Schwartz dropped his pursuit of the seal.[16]
On 25 August 1955, the National Legion of Decency condemned I Am a Camera, and at least one cinema pulled the film in response to attacks on the film by Catholic priests.[17]
Box Office
The film was one of the most popular at the 1955 British box office.[3] According to Kinematograph Weekly it was a "money maker" at the British box office in 1955.[4]
Reception
The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther blasted the film's script by John Collier for largely discarding the original source material by Van Druten and Isherwood.
British critics were nearly uniform in their disappointment with I Am a Camera, with negative reviews appearing in the Evening News, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Daily Mirror, the News Chronicle, and Tribune. Each believed that Laurence Harvey had been miscast as Isherwood. For the most part, they agreed that Harris's performance was a bright spot, although the Daily Sketch expressed a preference for Dorothy Tutin,[18] who had played Sally on stage in 1954.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times gave I Am a Camera a bad review, finding it "meretricious, insensitive, superficial, and just plain cheap". Crowther was particularly appalled by John Collier's script, blasting it for largely abandoning both the Van Druten and Isherwood source material. He also sharply criticized the abortion material, deeming it a "capstone of cheap contrivance and tasteless indelicacy". Julie Harris he labeled a "show-off", while Laurence Harvey is "an anxious straight man for her jokes", with all parties directed by Cornelius with no eye to any subtlety of character.[19]
In an August 1955 pictorial, LIFE magazine called the film's party sequence "violently funny". LIFE praised Harris's acting, while at the same time finding the film spends too much time on Harris's character. Still, LIFE felt confident in predicting the film's success.[14]
Julie Harris was nominated for a 1956 BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress.[20]
Isherwood recorded his distaste for the film in his diary, noting his attendance at a 22 June 1955 preview. He found the film "a truly shocking and disgraceful mess. I must admit that John Collier is largely to blame – for a sloppy, confused script. But everything is awful - except for Julie, who was misdirected."[21] In a letter to friend John Lehmann, Isherwood called the film "disgusting ooh-la-la, near pornographic trash – a shameful exhibition".[22]
On the occasion of its video release in 1985, Lawrence Van Gelder, for The New York Times, found that this film, while suffering in comparison with the more lavish Cabaret, is still charming in its way, mostly because of Harris's performance as Sally.[23]
Phil Hall reviewed I Am a Camera for Film Threat in 2005. He questioned the casting of Harvey as Isherwood, saying that the role called for a light comedic touch that was never Harvey's forte. Harvey's underplaying of the part, he wrote, clashes with Harris's unrestrained stage-style performance of hers. Still, he found that the film is "an intriguing curio" that garners interest for its exploration of the anti-Semitism that gave rise to the Nazis, and for its handling of "touchier aspects" of the original sources, including Isherwood's homosexuality[note 1] and Sally's abortion, which became a false pregnancy scare for the film.[24]
Notes
↑ Isherwood lived as more or less openly gay in Berlin, but concealed his homosexuality in the source material; the film would state only that the character Isherwood was a "confirmed bachelor".
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement".
Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith was an English novelist and playwright. She is best known for writing I Capture the Castle (1948) and the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include Dear Octopus (1938) and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live-action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 film. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003).
Julia Ann Harris was an American actress. Renowned for her classical and contemporary stage work, she received five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play.
Cabaret is a 1972 American musical period drama film directed by Bob Fosse from a screenplay by Jay Presson Allen, based on the stage musical of the same name by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff, which in turn was based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten and the 1945 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. It stars Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson, Fritz Wepper, and Joel Grey. Multiple numbers from the stage score were used for the film, which also featured three other songs by Kander and Ebb, including two written for the adaptation.
Cabaret is a musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff. It is based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten, which in turn was based on the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood's novel drew upon his experiences in the poverty-stricken Weimar Republic and his intimate friendship with nineteen-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross.
John William Van Druten was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
Donald Jess Bachardy is an American portrait artist. He resides in Santa Monica, California. Bachardy was the partner of Christopher Isherwood for over 30 years.
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany and consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." The novel's plot recounts factual events in Isherwood's life, and the novel's characters were based upon actual persons. The insouciant flapper Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross who became Isherwood's intimate friend during his sojourn.
The Berlin Stories is a 1945 omnibus by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood and consisting of the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The two novels are set in Jazz Age Berlin between 1930 and 1933 on the cusp of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power. Berlin is portrayed by Isherwood during this chaotic interwar period as a carnival of debauchery and despair inhabited by desperate people who are unaware of the national catastrophe that awaits them.
I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play by John Van Druten adapted from Christopher Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, which is part of The Berlin Stories. The title is a quotation taken from the novel's first page: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." The original production was staged by John Van Druten, with scenic and lighting design by Boris Aronson and costumes by Ellen Goldsborough. It opened at the Empire Theatre in New York City on November 28, 1951 and ran for 214 performances before closing on July 12, 1952.
Prater Violet (1945) is Christopher Isherwood's fictional first person account of film-making. The Prater is a large park and amusement park in Vienna, a city important to characters in the novel for several reasons. Though Isherwood broke onto the literary scene as a novelist, he eventually worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter. In this novel, Isherwood comments on life, art, commercialization of art and Nazism.
Peter van Eyck was a German-American film and television actor. Born in Prussian Pomerania, he moved to the United States in the 1930’s and established a career as a character actor. After World War II, he returned to his native country and became a star of West German cinema.
Joe Masteroff was an American playwright.
Mr Norris Changes Trains is a 1935 novel by the British writer Christopher Isherwood. It is frequently included with Goodbye to Berlin, another Isherwood novel, in a single volume, The Berlin Stories. Inspiration for the novel was drawn from Isherwood's experiences as an expatriate living in Berlin during the early 1930s, and the character of Mr Norris is based on Gerald Hamilton. In 1985 the actor David March won a Radio Academy Award for Best Radio Actor for his performance in a dramatisation of the novel for BBC Radio 4.
Hillyer Speed Lamkin was an American novelist and playwright. He is best known for his first novel Tiger in the Garden (1950) and was called "the poor man's Truman Capote" by the composer Ned Rorem. He was a recipient of a 1950 O. Henry Award for his short story Comes a Day.
Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood and based upon 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. The character debuted in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press, and commentators have described the novella as "one of Isherwood's most accomplished pieces of writing." The work was republished in the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin and in the 1945 anthology The Berlin Stories.
Christopher and His Kind is a 2011 BBC television film. It tells the story of Christopher Isherwood's exploits in Berlin in the early 1930s. The film, adapted by Kevin Elyot from Isherwood's autobiography Christopher and His Kind, was produced by Mammoth Screen and directed by Geoffrey Sax. Isherwood is played by Matt Smith, whilst the cast also includes Douglas Booth, Imogen Poots, Pip Carter, Toby Jones, and Alexander Dreymon.
Christopher and His Kind is a 1976 memoir by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood, first printed in a 130-copy edition by Sylvester & Orphanos, then in general publication by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the text, Isherwood candidly expounds upon events in his life from 1929 to 1939, including his sojourn in Berlin which was the inspiration for his popular 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin.
Jean Iris Ross Cockburn was a British journalist, political activist, and film critic. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), she was a war correspondent for the Daily Express and is alleged to have been a press agent for Joseph Stalin's Comintern. A skilled writer, Ross worked as a film critic for the Daily Worker and her criticisms of early Soviet cinema were later described by scholars as ingenious works of "dialectical sophistry". Throughout her life, she wrote political criticism, anti-fascist polemics, and socialist manifestos for a number of disparate organisations such as the British Workers' Film and Photo League. She was a devout Stalinist and a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Distributors Corporation of America (DCA) was an American film distribution company which distributed 60 films in the US between 1952 and 1959. DCA distributed the 1956 re-releases of The Naked City (1948) and Brute Force (1947), both produced by Mark Hellinger and directed by Jules Dassin.
References
Aldgate, Anthony and James Chrighton Robertson (2005). Censorship in Theatre and Cinema. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN0-7486-1961-5.
Fryer, Jonathan (1977). Isherwood: A Biography. Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company. ISBN0-385-12608-5.
Harper, Sue and Vincent Porter (2003). British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference. Oxford University Press US. ISBN0-19-815934-X.
Isherwood, Christopher, and Katherine Bucknell (ed.) (1996). Diaries Volume One: 1939—1960. Michael di Capua Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN0-06-118000-9.
Lehmann, John (1987). Christopher Isherwood: A Personal Memoir. New York, Henry Holt and Company. ISBN0-8050-1029-7.
Mayer, Geoff (2003). Guide to British Cinema. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN0-313-30307-X.
Slide, Anthony (1998). 'Banned in the USA': British Films in the United States and Their Censorship, 1933–1960. I.B. Tauris. ISBN1-86064-254-3.
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