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
Donald
Ogden Stewart, as Djuna Barnes disgruntledly perceived as early as her
interview with the playwright and later film writer in 1930, 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
wrote 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 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.
Meanwhile…back at school, the headmaster, Dr. Skillingworth (Alastair
Sim) is fearful that something’s up. He has been discovering, in part through
the bad-boy spying of his own son, messages between the boys, half in Latin and
in other codes that suggest they are planning something. As soon as Johnny and
his friends arrive back at the institution they are called into his office to
shed some light on the illicit messages. While interviewing them, he witnesses
Johnny’s brother, Max (Andrew Ray), attacking his own son, nicknamed Skilly
(Colin Freear) for being a snitch. The school faculty holds a quick meeting,
fearful of the secretive communications—in a way that parallels Johnny’s own
boyhood imagination in which he fears that the headmaster is being spied upon
through secret microphones—between their charges. Leacock, in short, quickly
turns the institution into a metaphoric cold-war world, where fear subsumes any
rational behavior.
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!
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
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2015).
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