Faced with a problem of turning the printed word into visual
images Von Stroheim, for GREED in 1923, used a method of literal
transfer: page by page, word by word, almost comma by comma. In
his 1935 film of John Buchan's THE 39 STEPS Hitchcock (with
Charles Bennett, Alma Reville and Ian Hay) virtually threw away
the book and used his imagination. But five years later, with
REBECCA, he departed scarcely at all from Daphne du Maurier. By
then he was working for David Selznick - whose long string of
popular films from literary best-sellers included DAVID
COPPERFIELD (1934), A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935), ANNA KARENINA
(1935), THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937), THE ADVENTURES OF TOM
SAWYER (1938) and GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). Box-office hits, all
of them; but nobody could claim that a majority of cinemagoers
would have read the orignial novels. Somehow, Selznick and his
scriptwriters managed to keep faith with the book while
presenting a film acceptable to audiences who were concerned only
with enjoying what they saw on the screen.
My feeling aboutg THE SCARECROW is that director Sam Pillsbury
and his co-sriter Michael Heath are closer to Stroheim than they
are Selznick. Obviously they were determined to do justice to
Roland Hugh Morrieson's extraordinary blend of innocence,
sexuality, villany, abnormality and boredom in a small town
environment. If readers of the book are happy with the outcome,
some viewers of the film maybe left a little in the dark.
Darkness, of course, is very much what the film is all about.
Not just the darkness of night time, but darkness of the minbd
and of the human spirit. Where THE SCARECROW is most successful
is in its macabre juxtaposition of the twin themes of the
virginal and the vile. What gives the film its powerful sense of
menacing horror is its contrast between the normal and the
bizarre; but, as in the book, even what is normal is open to
question. By a startlingly effective use of chiaroscuro Sam
Pillsbury has heightened the melodrama and the sense of looming
evil.
Much the same sore of technique that Pillsbury and his lighting
cameraman, Jim Bartle, have used in THE SCARECROW was a feature
of Selznick's film of TOM SAWYER (cameraman, James Wong Howe).
Mark Twain's story is also concerned with the outwardly
uneventual life of young people in a rural community. But when
Tom watched the grave-robbers and when Becky was chased by Injun
Joe in the cave sequence, light and shadow made the suspense
almost unbearable. So it is with Salter's appearance in Klynham.
The photography gives an edge of fear to the friendly darkness of
the badly lit streets. Every shape and every shadow takes on a
new meaning. Klynham is not longer a quiet backwater; it is the
nightmare world of every child's worst imagining.
If THE SCARECROW differs noticeably from other recent New
Zealand films it is in its portrayal of a rural community. In
John Laing's BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT, Geoff Steven's SKIN DEEP
and Roger Donaldson's SMASH PALACE the inhabitants of the small
towns are little more than a background to the frama of the main
action. SKIN DEEP in particular, I though, failed to make the
most of its opportunity to show us the people of a country town
in any real depth. In adapting THE SCARECROW Sam Pillsbury and
Michael Heath strted with the immesnse advantage that Ronald Hugh
Morrieson had already drawn a picture (off-centre, admittedly) of
a New Zealand township. He had established a place and an
assortment of people he knew and understood. But it is because
they started with such a rich source that Heath and Pillsbury
have, in a sense, come to grief. They have not quite integrated
the strangeness of Klynham with the dullness of its everyday
life. Without its linking narrative (voice, Martyn Sanderson) THE
SCARECROW might well be incomprehensible to someone not familiar
with the original text. That is a very real fault. But it doesn't
make the film any less remarkable. Vivid characterization,
authentic backgrounds and some truly astonishing lighting effects
make Klynham a small town that is larger than life. It becomes,
in a way, the New Zealand counterpart of all those 'typical'
English villages, American settlements and French towns we have
come to know in the cinema.
By now almost everyone must know that Morrieson's book opens
with the arresting sentence 'The same week our fowls were stolen,
Daphne Moran had her throat cut;. Without attempting to represent
that in exact visual terms, the film settles for a flurry of
shots which put the audience into a suitably jumpy state for what
it to come. They are then introduced to Ned Poindexter, his
sister Prudence and his friend Les Wilson. They are at daggers
drawn with the Lynch gang, Klynham's toughies - but while Ned and
Les are worried about that, Prudence is in much greater danger
from a madman named Saler - the throat-cutter of that rivetting
first sentence. The fact that he is a necrophiliac is not really
so very odd in Klynham, which numbers among it resident
population a simpleton whose fetish is to stand naked outside the
local music teacher's window; a bedridden old man who is
encouraged by his weird sister to fondle his nubile nursemaids;
and an alcoholic undertaker whose worlshop is full of rotting
coffins and a lifetime's dustry rubbish. When Morrieson created
Klynham he created an image of decadence, impotence and
frustration. Sam Pillsbury's achievement is to have re-created
that image in visual terms. His failure is to have made it a bit
more or less faithful reproduction rather than his own impression
in another medium.
Pillsbury and his team are to be congratulated for a thoroughly
professional, wonderfully well obseved film version of a complex
literary work. Whether it is wholly satisfactory as a film is
another question. It is certainly one of the most individual
films yet made in the present series of New Zealand productions.
That is possibly its greatest strength. Schtung deserve
particular mention for their atmospheric score. Neil Angwin's
design is also a major asset. Although the look of the 1950s is
well sustained, I must admit I did wonder if yound lads in those
days wore such brief underpants. But it is Jim Bartle who has
probably done most to give THE SCARECROW the tension and the
strangeness that makes it so distinctive. The cast is uniformaly
excellent. Tracy Mann is nicely provocative yet naive as
Prudence; Jonathan Smith and Daniel McLaren are believable as
schoolboys trying to come to grips with a hostile world; Bruce
Allpress and Jonathon Hardy are true Kiwi 'characters' and boozy
cronies. As the intruder, Salter, John Carradine is appropriately
sinister.
Good though it is, THE SCARECROW illustrates yet again the
difficulty of changing words into pictures. The answer must lie
somewhere between the absolute fidelity of a Stroheim and the
possibly too simple interpretation of a Selznick. There is a lot
to be said for the film that owes nothing to any other art
form.