The Americanization of Emily

Think of Network or The Hospital, Paddy Chayefsky was seeing into the future and what he saw was ugly. Here we have an insane admiral and how his men, who know he's crazy, stand in line to follow his wishes/commands. An anti war film without sentimentality. Julie Andrews is a total delight as the tough cookie with a razor sharp mind. James Garner has the best lines of his career. His tea with Joyce Grenfell is a superb written scene. Joyce Grenfell as Julie's mother is divine, yes, divine! Melvyn Douglas as the crazy man in charge is the Howard Beale of the situation and what he does with it is pure genius. Highly recommend it.

For those of today's fans who think Julie Andrews made her film debut in Mary Poppins, they would be wrong. After leaving Camelot on Broadway, The Americanization of Emily was the vehicle with which Julie made her debut. And she sings not a note.

She didn't have to. Beneath all the comedy revolving around the scheming and conniving of James Garner to stay as far away from the hail of bullets as possible are some profound statements about the futility of war and the geopolitics that got the USA in that particular war.

James Garner is in a quintessential James Garner role as set down by Bret Maverick, the part that made Garner a star. He's a "dog robber" a military aide to an admiral who specializes in acquiring certain creature comforts for his boss. Garner became one after serving some combat in Guadalcanal and finding it not to his liking. Fortunately for him, he had the connections to get out of that situation unlike several thousand others. Not a very admirable man.

But despite herself, stiff upper lip Britisher Julie Andrews finds herself falling for him. There's is one rocky romance.

Through a combination of circumstances Garner finds himself going to the front on D-Day to film the Naval Engineers disabling the mines in the water at Normandy Beach. Once again, it's not to his liking.

Garner and Andrews get good support from the supporting cast consisting of James Coburn, William Windom, Joyce Grenfell and Melvyn Douglas as the battle fatigued admiral who's Garner's boss and who got him in the situation described.

One of my favorite scenes involves two sailors, Keenan Wynn and Steve Franken who get assigned to Garner to make the film. The three of them get cockeyed drunk and Garner's immediate superior James Coburn finds them in a state of uselessness. He has them hauled aboard the transport with the cargo.

One of the great things this film had going for it was the Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer title song of Emily. They were a hot combination of movie song writers then, having one back to back Oscars for Moon River and Days of Wine and Roses. Frank Sinatra, Jack Jones, and Andy Williams are some of the artists who recorded that song back in 1964.

I can't give the ending away, but let's say that Garner through a bit of sophistry winds up doing exactly what he said he never would. But then again as Garner says, he's not interested in some great philosophical truth, just the momentary fact of things. He and Julie Andrews together are what counts most.

Masterfully scripted by Paddy Chayefsky, this 1964 anti-war film is not quite a classic but nonetheless an unexpected treat and one that deserves resurrection by a new generation of viewers. Set in WWII London, the dark hearted plot focuses on Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Madison, an especially notorious personal assistant to the mentally unstable Admiral William Jessup. Madison's job is to make sure Jessup gets anything he wants, and he has a warehouse full of contraband to back him up. Smug in his self-awareness about his cowardice, he meets Emily Barham, an English war widow who has lost her father and brother as well as her husband to the war. She is repulsed by Madison's manipulative agenda and cavalier materialism, and he finds her priggish and self-righteous. Needless to say, they fall in love. Complicating matters is Jessup's hare-brained scheme to ensure the first casualty of the D-Day invasion on Omaha Beach be a naval man. Without a glimmer of irony recognized, the admiral assigns Madison and his colleague "Buzz" Cummings to find the appropriate sailor and film his heroic death.

The sheer audacity of this task is a hallmark of Chayefsky's vitriolic style, and the film is full of his brittle, observant dialogue and sharply articulate soliloquies. You need an actor of consummate charm and cunning to play Madison effectively, and Garner responds by turning in one of the best performances of his long career. He shows not only his deft comedic touch but also a piercing insight into the integrity that can come from an acknowledged lack of courage. Squeezed in between her twin juggernauts of sugar, "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music", Julie Andrews gives an intelligent, passionate performance as Emily that actually eclipses her acting in either mega-hit. The movie's title comes from her character's resistance to what she sees as cheapening her values by becoming more American. Together, they not only spark romantically but also trade speeches of barbed cynicism making Chayefsky's words fly off the page with supple dexterity.

Screen stalwart Melvyn Douglas is a terrifically befuddled blowhard as Jessup, while an especially energetic James Coburn aggressively turns "Buzz" into a monomaniacal yes-man. Joyce Grenfell is superb in her few scenes as Emily's no-nonsense mother. For interested baby boomers, you can even see future "Laugh-In" regulars Alan Sues and Judy Carne in bit parts, as well as the late Sharon Tate. If there is a weakness to the film, it comes from Arthur Hiller's pedestrian direction making the film more episodic than it should. The 2005 DVD package has a sharp print of the film and includes Hiller's informative commentary on an alternate track. He is understandably proud of the film since his subsequent work ("Love Story", "Making Love") has not even come close to the quality of this production. There is also a short, "Action on the Beach", which shows how the realistic filming of the D-Day scene was executed. It would be interesting to see this film in a double bill with Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" to get alternative perspectives on the same event.

This film is being released on cable again here in the fall of 2002. I guess I hope some liberal Hollywood mogul is doing it on purpose, to give us, especially those of us in the US, another good dose of anti-war. The movie seems especially apt for me, for my countrymen, because it is both funny and serious, and, set in England, it gives a pretty good sense of what a people who know war think and feel about it.

I'm afraid I doubt that it's going to have much effect against the probably coming Iraq action, but I'd like to think it might have a bit.

Both James Garner and Julie Andrews do well in the film, and Melvyn Douglas is real good as an American ranking Naval officer who's sane about the "glories of war". The Brit who plays Julie Andrews mother, whose name I unhappily cannot remember, deserves strong mention, too, especially with her scene about the absurdity and stupidity of memorializing the first Allied death in the invasion at Normandy in WW II.

Americanization of Emily is not an anti-war or pacifist film. Its position is anti- glorification of war or heroism. Chayefsky himself was a war hero and awarded a Purple Heart. His position on war is stated clearly by the James Garner character in the amazing garden scene with Emily and her mother, who has been driven mad with grief over the loss of her husband, son-in-law, etc. in the war. Emily takes Charlie's cowardice and throws it back at him. The film was unavailable for years since the widow of the author of the book on which it is based held the copyright and would not release it for DVD. It is finally available for a new generation, and the ideas are still timely and valid. The theme song, Emily, is a jazz classic that has become better known than the film itself.