THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE is directed by Simon Callow and produced by Ismail Merchant. It stars Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine, Cork Hubbert, Rod Steiger. It was written by Michael Hirst (borrowing on Edward Albee's 1963 Broadway play version) and adapted from Carson McCullers's 1943 novella of the same name.
Carson McCullers was a writer of mysterious, gloomy Southern gothics. She was a frail, tormented author, who died in 1963, whose three major novels have been translated to film with unusual fidelity (A MEMBER OF THE WEDDING, 1953; REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE, 1967; THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, 1968). This tradition continues in the fourth major treatment, THE BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE, which she wrote at the age of 24.
The film, produced by Ismail Merchant, was directed by one of the great contemporary English actors, Simon Callow, who many of us best know as the Rev. Beebe in ROOM WITH A VIEW. Callow, in a recent interview, said that Southern literature has a strong attraction to the British because both locales have essentially rural, agricultural cultures. Be that as it may, Callow has served McCullers very well, preserving the odd, isolated sadness and gothic extremism of the original, as well as the weird flashes of humor. The production design is by Bruno Santini, who gives us a gritty, dirt-poor, spiritually worn-out version of the South (the movie was shot in Texas, btw). The score is the haunting work of Richard Robbins, and the cinematography of Walter Lassally emphasizes the other-wordliness of the story.
The star of SAD CAFE is Vanessa Redgrave, who, as one of Seattle's newspaper critics put it, was born to play Miss Amelia. Miss Amelia is tall, strong, rawboned, the richest person for miles around, who completely dominates the local landscape otherwise inhabited by zombie-like millworkers and farmhands. She owns the town store, the cotton plantation, the local still, gives out home remedies, and coldly repossesses a family's sewing machine to settle a $2 debt. She is a tyrant, a feudal ruler, who is caught in the memories of her dead parents, living in their house/store, fingering their mementoes. Redgrave captures this mysterious, inexplicable, unknowable character completely with her scowl, her loping stride (in a wedding dress!), her tomboy blonde hair; she is power, strength, irrational, autonomous, and unchallenged.
Keith Carradine (Marvin Macey) is the local bad boy who becomes obsessed with Miss Amelia and marries her in one of the funniest and oddest courtships and marriages you will ever see. Carradine is a great favorite of mine and he has never been better, at least since CHOOSE ME. He is run out of Miss Amelia's life once and returns to settle the score in a fight scene that ought to put Arnie et al to shame. As the husband, Carradine is weak and placating; as the avenging demon, he is powerful and irresistible.
The third element in the story is Lymon, a "bro'back" (hunchback dwarf), Miss Amelia's putative cousin, and the only one who calls her Amelia and can order her around. He is the one who gets the idea to change the store to a cafe as way to amuse himself and to ensure company to help him get through the nights he so fears.
It is the cafe that brings Miss Amelia and the town to life. As Earl Hindman who plays one of the townspeople says: "I'm not worth much in this world, but now I feel good." It is Lymon who is instantly obsessed with Marvin Macey, who is obsessed in one way or another with Miss Amelia, who is obsessed with Lymon. Lymon is played to great effect by Cork Hubbert. Like all literary hunchbacks and dwarfs, Lymon's affliction is an outward manifestation of a spiritual brokenness. His appearance is one justification for McCullers and critics to call SAD CAFE a fairy tale. Hubbert plays up his part with the energy and detemination that far exceeds his stature and becomes the Satan, or at least the familiar, of the piece.
Rod Steiger in the expanded role of the preacher has a long speech about the lover and the "be-love" which is supposed to explain the action (the one who is loved more than loves grows to hate the lover etc.), but honestly I think it's a red herring. The real explanation, pour moi, is power. Each of the principals cannot love or respect anyone who is less powerful than him or herself, but has to destroy this other, less powerful person in order to establish his or her own power. Strictly pecking-order stuff. I don't see any love here, only power, or the lack of power. Maybe power is love in this crooked, twisted world of McCullers's South.
SAD CAFE is a remarkable film with memorable performances. It is a fit counternote to the big-budget, low-character summer hits. I can recommend it highly, even at full ticket price, to any adult film goer.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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