I Wonder
I recently saw Woody Allen's latest, Wonder Wheel. Boring, poorly written, don't bother.
The film takes place around 1950. I know this based on the look, and that Winchester '73 (1950) is playing at a local cinema, and that Woody said so.
So I figured sure, O'Neill at that point was considered the greatest playwright in American history (even though those upstarts Miller and Williams were making noise). And Winslet says she once performed in one of O'Neill's plays in summer stock.
And then she says the play was The Iceman Cometh. Come again? That debuted on Broadway in 1946. Why would Woody pick it? I know he writes these movies fast, but he must have known the date didn't work.
Did he want to choose one of O'Neill's better plays? One that's well known? And perhaps he figured the play's theme of pipe dreams fits his own movie.
Except the mistake takes you right out of the movie. Good thing the movie was so bad I was glad to have something to think about.
posted by LAGuy @ 11:00 AM
6 Comments:
Only quibbling.
"Except the mistake takes you right out of the movie."
I am guessing that that since this is relatively obscure information and that you, as one with probably a much greater than average interest in the subject, had to look this up, I am going to class this statement as hyperbole. I believe many historic period pieces get many many facts wrong in the service of delivering a story (i.e. I think the otherwise extremely fact-conscious film, Lincoln, changed the vote of an abolitionist Connecticut congressman to being in favor of slavery (OK against the 13th Amendment) for the debatable purposes of building dramatic tension). Maybe the story and movie are crap- I'll take your word for it- and maybe Woody Allen is not as good a fact checker as he should be but I doubt that it is "this mistake" is what takes you out of this movie. I think its barely noticeable.
I apologize for being grumpy- I had to get up early in the cold to contort myself for stupid physical therapy for old men
I'm not making things up. I thought the look of the film was one of its better aspects, so the period was important. And as soon as Kate Winslet said she once did one of O'Neill's plays in summer stock, I immediately started wondering what it was. And whenever I think of O'Neill, I find it fascinating that he was so well-regarded in the 20s and the 30s, and yet his early work, as intriguing as much of it is, doesn't really hold up that well. He won three Pulitzer Prizes in the 1920s, but does anyone put on Strange Interlude or Beyond The Horizon any more?
And yet his reputation holds as one of America's greatest playwrights, mostly because of work he did late in life (even though he was so ill in his final years that he couldn't write), and that most of the plays on which he reputation rests weren't even produced until after 1950, when this movie is set. I'm talking about A Touch Of The Poet, A Moon For The Misbegotten, and especially Long Day's Journey Into Night. At least The Iceman Cometh, the other in the quartet of late plays, was produced in the 1940s. If you're even vaguely aware of the arc of his career (which I was, even before reading the Gelb's biography of O'Neill earlier this year) you know of the separation of his earlier and later work, so it was much on my mind when Woody brought it up. And Woody, who knows something about the theatre, should have been aware of it too.
I don't claim to know the production date of every show ever on Broadway, though I'm pretty good at landmark shows. If the film took place in 1950, for instance, and the characters cared about Broadway, they would have been aware in recent years of Tennessee Williams due to The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Arthur Miller due to All My Sons (1947) and Death Of A Salesman (1949).
PS If you still doubt me, read this post from a few months ago, where I review of compilation of New York Times reviews of major Broadway productions:
http://pajamaguy.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-final-word.html
Here's an excerpt: "Regarding Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (performed in 1956, 14 years after it was written and a few years after O'Neill's death), the reviewer states the play is so powerful it ranks with Mourning Becomes Electra and Desire Under The Elms. Today, few O'Neill fans would put those plays (which have not dated that well) as high as Long Day's Journey."
Thank I appreciate the learning on O'Neill ands am sufficiently interested to go do some reading. I haven't read his plays much since school. I just thought that Woody's movement of the opening date of the Iceman Cometh back 10 years or so probably wasn't critical to his film (which based on your review I will probably never see) Opinions differ- Obviously you know more of this period, so that apparent whopper meant more.
An interesting discussion, but in every dimension it affects a miniscule audience (am I spelling miniscule wrongly? Google spell check seems to think so.)
I'm interested in whether Woody would keep a line even though he knows there is a technical problem with it.
I would imagine that presents a technical production issue--"I'll check that later" and it's never checked, or "not sure if I care that it is nominally wrong" and never decides. Or he says, "I'm happy to be wrong. I like the line."
I love LAGuy's discussion even though I have next to no interest in what he is discussing, the theatre (or is it theater?). It's like Catholic doctrine or the Torah for me--I'm neither Jewish nor Catholic, but I love the study.
As to what is under discussion here, though, doesn't the added discussion just prove NEG's point? Virtually only LAGuy catches the error. It's a wonderful commentary on LAGuy and a rather sad commentary on the state of the world.
BTW, does it boil down to 1946? Why doesn't that work? Single moms may be busy, but it's not crazy to think one managed enough of a break from the kid to have performed it in the last four years--unless plays don't reach local theater for some moratorium period, which I doubt.
"Minuscule." Just think "minus" is cool.
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