The Forgotten Nominee '83: Order of ham, make it a double

Ever take a look down the list of what the Academy has nominated for Best Picture in years past? Go on. Go take a look. I think you’ll notice that unless you’re a serious movie buff with a taste for films with heavy critical praise, there’s at least one film for each year that you’ve never ever heard of and know nothing about. What are those films? What happened to them? How did that particular film, out of the hundreds of film released every year, get put in the elite five nominees, and why did it pass from the realm of popular consciousness? Did it ever get to the popular consciousness in the first place? Was it justly forgotten, or did even an Oscar nomination not get it the recognition it deserved?

I intend to find out. From now until whenever, I will be reviewing the most unnoteworthy, unremembered or unloved Best Picture nominee from 1966 to 1996. Any older than that and all the nominees tend to be forgotten. Any younger and they haven’t gotten the chance to be forgotten, although the ultimate fates of The Queen or Letters from Iwo Jima are already questionable.

Of course, in many years there’s more than one forgotten nominee (and some lucky years, like 1975, have no forgotten nominees). That’s why, in moments of dispute, I turn to the Internet Movie Database. The nominee with the least number of votes wins the title. What will I find? A handful of lost gems? Or a big pile of overpraised, unwatchable middlebrow crap?

The Dresser
Directed by: Peter Yates
Major Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Albert Finney), Best Actor (Tom Courtenay), Best Adapted Screenplay (no wins)
More forgotten than: The Right Stuff, Terms of Endearment, The Big Chill, Tender Mercies

I have a theory about the vast majority of the movies I’m going to watch in this little Forgotten Nominees project, which is that I’m going to be watching a lot of supposedly “great” films that are almost good films, really. That’s certainly the case with Peter Yates’s 1983 film The Dresser, and honestly, I don’t think I’m going to find a nominee that could possibly be more forgotten in my little project. The Dresser (somehow more forgotten than Tender Mercies, a strong contender for the title) is about a famed Shakespearean actor (Finney) and his gay dresser/personal assistant (Courtenay), and their attempts to get through a performance of King Lear.

They have to “attempt” to do so because Finney is off his rocker. I’m not sure what it is; a nervous breakdown, dementia of some sort. In any case, the play doesn’t even look like it’s going to happen because Finney is admitted into the hospital for shell shock or some such thing. He leaves, probably against doctor’s orders, to put on the play, but while there gets stricken by undefined psychological problems – stage fright, memory lapse, could be any number of things, and it’s up to Courtenay to get the old master up and running.

Both Finney and Courtenay are way over the top. They ham, they ham, and they ham some more after they’re done hamming. I wouldn’t say that’s quite the problem with this movie. I mean, the two are playing a veteran Shakespearean actor and an openly gay theater professional (imagine Michael Gambon and Alan Cummings in the roles if this was remade – or actually, Finney could still probably play this role). These are not roles to underplay, and I accept that. But it is part of a bigger issue, which is that these are very theatrical performances in a not-at-all theatrical movie. Courtenay and Finney go as far over-the-top as they can, but the movie doesn’t go with them. Set in London during the Blitz, this movie is extremely gray, dingy and frankly kind of ugly. I’ve only seen two of director Peter Yates’s other films, the Steve McQueen vehicle Bullitt and the Jaws wannabe The Deep, and I think it’s safe to conclude that Yates is not a very good director, and certainly not a stylish one. He’s very down-to-earth and kind of flat.

This is a huge problem. As you know if you’ve ever hung around drama people, they naturally tend towards the melodramatic, and it’s often hard to take them seriously. I’m pretty sure we don’t ever see Finney alone; he’s always in front of someone, and so it’s hard to tell if he’s being genuine with his problems or if he’s just performing – exaggerating, being a prima donna. When doctors at the hospital tell him that he needs to get some sleep, he of course launches into the “Sleep perchance to dream” part of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. It reminded me very much of the gag from Airplane! with the shell-shocked pilot who thought he was Ethel Merman, but I don’t know if it was supposed to be funny here. Whether or not it was intended to be, it has the effect of making it difficult to take seriously problems which are meant to be very serious indeed. (And on top of that, it’s not very funny – there are a few bits of light comedy throughout the movie, the worst being a moment when Finney stops a moving train with his powerful Shakespearean voice.)

There’s also some kind of implication that Finney and the rest of the troupe are heroes for putting on this play. Going from bombed-out town to bombed-out town every night has taken its toll, it’s hard work. Early in the movie, Finney gives out some free tickets to some sad-looking Londoners who are watching firefighters put out some flaming wreckage. Finney says it will lift their spirits; at first, I thought it was a pathetic trifle to someone who’s just lost their home or whatever, but no, the film makes him look like a paragon of homefront heroism, doing what he can in wartime to keep morale up. Air sirens go off shortly before the curtain opens, but the play continues. By keeping the show going, the British are basically issuing a middle finger to the Germans, saying, “You know what, we’re British, we’re so dignified we don’t have excretory systems, so you can go screw off while we continue to enjoy our high culture.” (Shakespeare, no less, that oh-so-British symbol of high culture.)

Now, normally, this kind of British stiff-upper-lip-ism strikes me as self-congratulatory crap (particularly in the completely worthless Chariots of Fire). But you know, I just watched the city of Boston twist itself sideways trying to rid the city of light-up cartoon characters in the name of Homeland Security. So right now, I’m a little more inclined to see the benefits of national dignity.

Still, I can’t help but feel that the stakes are a little low. The world goes on whether the play does or not, Finney has no real need to perform that night for any real reason, and Yates’s flat direction never makes it feel otherwise. So it’s a good thing that none of this is really the meat of the story. The real story is how Courtenay sacrifices of himself in the service of Finney and gets nothing in return. Courtenay and Finney share double-billing and both got Best Actor nominations, but this is really just Courtenay’s film – it’s called “The Dresser,” not “The Actor,” and the writer based the film on his experiences as a dresser for a real actor. Courtenay babies the actor, gives him tough love, butters him up with gifts, basically tries every possible thing to help Finney through the play. He even convinces the director to keep the play going when she tries to cancel, not out of regard for Britain but for his beloved master. He also pretty obviously has a big gay crush on the man. At the end of the play, we are shown pretty definitively that all his work has gone unappreciated.

So, was this intended to be the story of a martyr, or a guy with a martyr complex? I’m inclined to believe the latter. The film keeps an admirably clear-eyed view of Courtenay’s character and his relationship with Finney; though the film makes him a loyal, long-suffering servant and confidante, the film declines to give him nobility and dignity through his suffering. When an admiring ingenue comes close to seducing the old man, Courtenay instantly becomes a catty, jealous queen. And at the end of the movie, when Courtenay and Finney’s relationship comes to an end, Courtenay lashes out in a tirade about how much respect and appreciation he didn’t get. See, him helping Finney get through the play wasn’t a selfless act, he did it as a misguided attempt for approval. I feel his pain, quite honestly. I’m not gay, but the guy completely in love with someone he can’t have? Yeah, I’ve been that guy. And the guy who slaves away in the service of someone who doesn’t appreciate his devotion and sacrifice? I’ve been that guy too. And while it’s tempting to cast oneself as heroic and wronged when in that role, at some point one has to ask themselves why they don’t attempt to rectify the situation instead of sitting there and taking it like a b!tch.

Courtenay puts up with it because it makes him feel special and needed, but really, how far above and beyond the call of duty is he going? He’s just another assistant to Finney, and who’s to say that another assistant wouldn’t have done the same? We sympathize with Courtenay but we also are given enough distance to see him for what he is. Still, somehow, I can’t quite give this film the full thumbs-up. I think the problem is that The Dresser is split between two threads; Will the play go on? vs. Relationship of an actor and the dresser that loves him. The latter thread doesn’t have enough room to breathe, despite the attempts to illustrate every facet of the relationship. I prefer the approach of Terms of Endearment (which beat The Dresser, remember), which let the mother/daughter relationship unfold over the course of a decade. There’s stuff we aren’t seeing here, more than can be told over the course of a single night.

So why’d it get the nomination? Well, the Academy loves stuffy British movies (see the worthless Chariots of Fire), they love it when actors play actors (see the worthless Being Julia), and this film is an actor’s dream, written entirely to give the lead roles the chance to show off every conceivable emotion. That it pulls it off believably is commendable, but there’s just too much holding this movie back for it to deserve to be remembered. And that’s why it isn’t.

Check out other Forgotten Nominee reviews: Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), My Left Foot (1989)