Screenshots I'm hosting for another internet project.

 

  

We could've been anything that we wanted to be.

Bugsy Malone (1976) doesn't sound like a real movie. The premise is ridiculous on its face; it's a G-rated gangster melodrama set in Prohibition-era New York, with a cast made up entirely of child actors. Oh, and it's a musical!  However, this is a movie that commits completely to the bit, and it has a couple of secret weapons hiding up  its sleeve.

The young cats present themselves as adults, and some of the boys are even sporting period appropriate mustaches, but everything is presented through a child-friendly lens; the vintage cars are pedal-powered, the liquor racket is replaced by the sarsaparilla racket, and most importantly, nobody gets shot, they get splurged.  Traditionally this takes the form of an old-fashioned pie to the face, but Dandy Dan (Martin Lev) has armed his gang with splurge guns, which are basically Tommy guns that use whipped cream instead of bullets.  However you're splurged, though, the effects are the same. You don't die, but you're washed up, out of the game, and out of the movie.

Dandy Dan's gang are the only ones with splurge guns,which means they're cutting a swathe through the businesses run by Dan's rival, Fat Sam (John Cassisi), who owns the speakeasy where much of the action takes place.  Sam controls a gang of mostly lovable incompetents, most notably Knuckles (Sheridan Earl Russell), who earned his name by constantly cracking his knuckles.  Sam is also dating the film's family friendly femme fatale, Tallulah (Jodie Foster), who is the speakeasy's star performer.

Tallulah is not the speakeasy's only performer, though, so singer and aspiring Hollywood actress Blousey Brown (Florrie Dugger) arrives to audition for a role in the chorus,only to be told that Sam is busy and she should "come back tomorrow."  At the speakeasy she also meets Bugsy Malone (Scott Baio), a struggling boxing promoter, and she finds him reasonably charming.  The pair strike up a low-key friendship.

Things are getting worse and worse for Sam. Dandy Dan is squeezing his business dry, and most of his men are lured into an ambush and splurged. Sam desperately tries to pretend that it's business as usual, and hires Looney, a hitman from out of town, to take down Dandy Dan.  He's going to need a driver, though, and Knuckles can't drive.

 Blousey is auditioning across town to replace diva Lena Morelli (Bonnie Langford), with Bugsy there to give moral support,but before she can sing a note Lena strolls in and takes her old job back.  Bugsy takes her back to Sam's place for another audition, and this time she gets her shot. She also spots Bugsy with Tallulah,and while there's really nothing going on there Tallulah still plants a chaste kiss on Bugsy's forehead.  (G-rating, remember?)  Blousey has had enough.

Bugsy needs to win Blousey back. He wants to take her to Hollywood, but to do that he'll need money. The good news is that Fat Sam is looking for a driver for a special job. And so begins Bugsy's G-rated spiral into a life of crime. The movie's only 93 minutes long, so there isn't much actual criming involved,and what little criming there is is directed at dandy Dan and his gang.

So, the movie is mostly a harmless ball of fluff with a bizarre premise. Why watch it today?  First, the songs, written and largely performed by Paul Williams, range from (in my highly scientific and impartial opinion) pretty good to great.

And then there's the acting. The assembled child actors are, for the most part, fine.  They're clearly having a good time, and that sense of fun counts for a lot, but they can't help but be overshadowed when they're standing next to Jodie Foster, who at this point had spent years honing her craft on TV and the Disney family film treadmill, as well as a few months of personal acting lessons with Robert De Niro on the set of Taxi Driver, which came out earlier in 1976.  Tallulah is a relatively small part, but it's a good part, and Foster's careful craft shines next to the talented amateurs around her. I've never seen an actor stand out from the rest of the cast that much before.

 

August in Wonderland: Alice in Wonderland

The Alice books are a popular subject for the stage as well as film.  (Your humble scribe was once cast as the Caterpillar's butt.)  In 1983 PBS's "Great Performances" broadcast an adaptation of the recent Broadway revival of Alice in Wonderland, retaining Kate Burton as Alice but recasting most of the other roles.  And the end result is visually striking, recorded in a TV studio but with constructed sets and a light splashing of special effects and transitions, making it look like an enhanced stage play.

There is also a new framing device.  Rather than a bored Alice watching her sister read, Alice (Kate Burton) is an understudy for a stage production of Alice in Wonderland, desperately running lines as the rest of the cast and crew gossip about whether she's ready.  Alice flubs a recital of "Jabberwocky," then slips through the looking glass and meets a White Rabbit (Austin Pendleton.)  That is not the way this normally goes, but from that point onward it's a fairly faithful (if abridged) adaptation of the book.  Alice tangos with a Mouse (Nathan Lane), consults the Caterpillar (Fritz Weaver), argues with a Cheshire Cat (Geoffrey Holder), crashes a mad tea party (featuring Andre Gregory, Željko Ivanek, and Dean Badalto), plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts (Eve Arden) and then interrupts the trial of the Knave of Hearts (Tony Cummings) before declaring that they're "Nothing but a pack of cards!" and returning to her dressing room.

Only for a moment, though, because this is an adaptation of both books.  Alice meets the Red Queen (Colleen Dewhurst) and eagerly agrees to become a pawn in the ongoing chess game so that she can reach the Eighth Square and become a Queen.  That means more episodic adventure, including dancing with Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (Andre De Shields and Alan Weeks) and assisting the White Queen (Maureen Stapleton).  

After a frustrating meeting with Humpty Dumpty (Richard Woods) Alice is on the verge of tears, and then the movie wheels out its secret weapon: Kate Burton's father Richard, playing the White Knight, riding on a pantomime horse.  There's a sudden shift from nonsense to sincerity, as Alice and the Knight have a brief but sincere conversation, the Knight sings a sad song, and then he goes on his way.  The two have managed to cheer each other up, and Alice is prepared for the madness of the finale.

The sudden shift in tone might be surprising, but it is exactly what happens in the book; in all of Alice's journeys, the White Knight is the one character who is consistently kind to her, and he is the one person she's said to remember fondly.

"Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she always remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday—the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight—the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her—the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet—and the black shadows of the forest behind—all this she took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading her eyes, she leant against a tree, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song"

 And the Burtons seem to be delighted to be on screen together.  It is a big shift in tone, but it works.

 Alice in Wonderland has a fabulous cast, and I haven't had time to mention them all.  While the whole production looks and feels stagey, most of the acting is understated and naturalistic, which really works; when the Mad Hatter isn't busy being flamboyant and wacky, for instance, the menacing tone of the text really comes through.  The one exception to this is, surprisingly, Kate Burton's Alice, who is almost aggressively chipper.  This is an Alice who is having a great time until she's not.

Finally, the costuming and scenery is gorgeous.  Everything is designed to look like a Tenniel illustration come to life.  Not inspired by Tenniel - the stage is made of black and white illustrations, and the costumes include cross-hatching and line work.  It's one of the best looking Alices I've ever seen, as well as a great performance.