CANNERY ROW: Blu-ray (MGM, 1982) Warner Archive

With its superb vintage recreations of a dilapidated fisherman’s wharf, ably supplied by Richard MacDonald’s production design and William F. O’Brien’s art direction, sumptuously photographed by Sven Nykvist, a ‘shoot from the hip’ screenplay, coauthored by its director, David S. Ward and William Graham (the latter, receiving no screen credit for his efforts), and, some hard-hitting chemistry from stars, Nick Nolte and Debra Winger, this big-screen adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row (1982) had a lot going for it. It also promised a lot more than it could ever deliver. It still might have clicked – if only Ward had been more circumspect about his own aspirations to fundamentally transform Steinbeck’s authorship into a Punch and Judy show. Alas, no. That it all somehow degenerated into a caliginous caprice, fatally afflicted with tongue-in-cheek sentiment for better things never to emerge, was therefore a colossal disappointment; one, from which the picture failed to recover. Critics savaged it, and audiences stayed away. Somehow, a trailer showing Nick Nolte’s hero, single-mindedly invested in the passionate research of octopi failed to whet viewer’s appetites in previews. Go figure. And Steinbeck purists were hardly satisfied with the results either.

The movie is based on two of Steinbeck novellas; the aforementioned title piece, first published in 1945, and Steinbeck’s sequel, ‘Sweet Thursday’ (debuting almost a full decade later). Steinbeck had based much of the locale for both novellas on waterfront street in New Monterey, California, a once thriving coastal enclave whose primary business - sardine-canning had dried up due to over fishing. For inspiration, Steinbeck had also based the central character of Doc on his ole pal, Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts, a pioneering marine biologist/author, who not only wrote the best seller, Between Pacific Tides, but also coauthored Log of the Sea of Cortez with Steinbeck. Indeed, Steinbeck had spent some of his happiest times inside Ricketts’ laboratory near Pacific Grove. But by 1941, the love-in was over; Steinbeck's crumbling first marriage forcing him into a retreat back east before documenting the war in the Mediterranean in 1943 – a devastating experience. With his second marriage also on the rocks, Steinbeck withdrew into a sort of self-imposed halcyon for Depression-era nostalgia and that vintage Monterey of his youth, now, comforted by his own prosperity and fame as an author. Alas, unable to recapture the essence of that ‘happy place’, a disillusioned Steinbeck departed the west coast for New York, where he would remain for the rest of his days. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel laureate for literature. With works like The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden among his achievements, it is fairly easy to recommend the honor. However, Cannery Row, while popular with his readership, was not altogether well-received in its own time, its milieu of soft-headed vagrants, big-hearted whores, dim-witted merchants and other societal drop outs, seemingly too quaintly realized for the palette of most literary critics.

David Ward, who won the Best Screenplay Oscar in 1973 for The Sting, marked his directorial debut with Cannery Row. In its infancy, the picture ought to have starred Raquel Welch, unceremoniously sacked by Ward after a week’s work after Debra Winger – his first choice, having made her splash in Urban Cowboy (1980) – suddenly became available. The ‘official reason’ for Welch’s being ‘let go’ was reported in the trades as taking too long to get to the set. As Welch felt the termination unwarranted, she sued MGM and won a multi-million-dollar settlement, paid out by Turner Entertainment, then, the present-day custodians of the beleaguered studio. Metro’s head of production, David Begelman – previously indicted in a notorious embezzlement scandal at Columbia Pictures (aside: it’s a wonder anyone would offer him such autonomy in the picture-making biz again after that!) was to later go on record with his own reservations about green-lighting Cannery Row – as though to suggest executive foresight in hindsight, claiming there was no way Ward could realize all of the ‘wonderful’ things in his ‘brilliant’ screenplay. There is, in fact, something to this, as Ward’s reincarnation of Steinbeck’s sentimental recollections from youth painfully ventures into the heavily scripted clichés most readily revived in old country songs; the hyperbole laid a little too thick and gritty for semi-cynical audiences, more readily to embrace the abject failure and misery of these social misfits, than their more altruistic and resolute strain of heavily romanticized heroism, emerging at the end of this movie.

Budgeted at an impressive $12 million, of which a good chunk was spent by MacDonald and O’Brien, recreating the derelict town on a massive set linking together two formidable sound stages at the old MGM, Cannery Row barely earned back $5 million – a colossal flop that only served to put an even greater strain on the studio’s dwindling finances. The picture stars, Nick Nolte as Doc – the introverted ex-ball player, come marine biologist who has taken to hiding out in plain sight in Cannery Row atoning for his terrific sins. Doc has since become the benevolent leader of a cohort of simpleton vagabonds, fronted by the wide-eyed, Mack (M Emmet Walsh) and oafish, Hazel (Frank McRae, playing it strictly for laughs), with assists from Tom Mahoney (Hughie), John Malloy (Jones) and James Keane (Eddie). Doc’s reputation as a queer loner precedes him, and has even reached the ears of newcomer to these parts, Suzy Desoto (Debra Winger) who, suitcase in hand, has girded her loins to offer herself as one of ‘the girls’ at the Bear Flag Restaurant, a curiously well-stocked house of ill repute, run by the cheeky, Fauna (Audra Lindley) – the mother of all madams. Ward’s screenplay adroitly introduces us to all of these principal participants, and, for the briefest of moments, it seems as though Cannery Row is shaping up to become one hell of a good time had by all.

Alas, somewhere along the way, the joy of the piece clots in its treacle – intermittently, freed of its morass by John Huston’s able narration, cribbing directly from Ward’s excised passages of Steinbeck, with pungent and plangent timbres that do much to capture the quintessence of the period and mood, yet strangely fail to advance our appreciation of either. Set during WWII, we are introduced to this motley crew of disparate hooligans and harlots, united in their curious love for this forgotten, sad little ramshackle of businesses dotting ‘cannery row’ – a moodily half-lit and perpetually damp outpost on the edge of the Pacific. Doc, a self-employed marine biologist, has taken up residence in a dockside warehouse where he obsesses in his research of octopi. Newly arrived in town, grifter, Suzy DeSoto takes up work at the Bear Flag, under the auspices of Fauna – a madam who regards hers as the noblest profession. “We don’t call ourselves floozies!” she insists. The novice hooker takes her lumps with a bumbling sailor, but secretly pines for Doc, whom she later comes to realize used to pitch pro-baseball, but has since retreated to the relative obscurity of doing his pure research without too much human engagement – even with his hand-picked friends. Suzy recognizes Doc as an outcast. It takes one to know one, I suppose.

Still, she is very much attracted to him, despite his concerted efforts to keep her at arm’s length. This, of course, infuriates Suzy. So, she trades sex for money. So what? Quietly, a plot is hatched between Doc and Fauna. She wants Doc to placate Suzy with romantic overtures, just enough to convince her to give up hooking as Fauna is losing money on her. It seems Suzy has very definite ideas about her chosen profession and is not afraid of vent them with Fauna’s eager clientele who just want to get down to business. Meanwhile, Mac and the fellas, believing Doc and Suzy have already established ‘a connection’, decide to push love along its merry road, gathering frogs to sell, and, using the monies to give a surprise costume party for Doc where Suzy will be presented to him as the ‘Snow White’ belle of the ball. So far, so good. Except a gathering of frat boys, eager to partake of the pleasures only Fauna’s gals can provide, decide to turn the event into an ‘A-1’ public brawl. Mac and the gals defend their territory. However, in the process, Doc’s prized tank, housing his precious octopi, is destroyed.  Meanwhile Doc, having earlier fled the party, due to his conflicted feelings regarding Suzy, now returns to discover his place is a shamble. Feeling exceptionally guilty about everything, Mac and the boys, Fauna and her girls, gather their coins together to make him a gift of a microscope. Regrettably, having about as much knowledge of science as they do of astronomy, the friends accidentally buy Doc a telescope instead.

The deeper mystery in Cannery Row is almost a sideline. Having wheedled from Fauna Doc’s real name – Eddie – and his past, as a once famous pro-baseball player who left the sport at the height of his career, Suzy sets about to learn the real reason for Doc’s departure. In tandem, the Ward/Graham screenplay keeps offering us glimpses of ‘The Seer’ (Sunshine Parker); a trumpet player who serenades the residents of Cannery Row with mournful/soulful horn-playing soliloquies from atop his perch on the roof of a nearby factory. Investigating further, Suzy comes to understand ‘the Seer’ was once a hell of a pro-ball batter whom Doc seriously injured by clipping him in the head with his fast ball pitch. As Doc could not live with the thought, he had wrecked Seer’s career, he instead agreed to leave baseball too, and has ever since supported Seer financially. Charmed by the understanding the man she loves, far from being remote and unfeeling, has a genuine heart, Suzy falls in love with Doc all over again. As she is the only one who completely understands his pain, Doc allows himself the luxury of this basically good – if thoroughly outspoken – woman. Love takes its course and Doc and Suzy wind up as a couple, with Suzy leaving ‘the life’ to become Doc’s wife.

Cannery Row would be a fairly entertaining movie if not for director, David Ward’s chronic desire to take a relatively simple – and occasionally, somber tale – and Disney-fy the hell out of it. The brawl that levels Doc’s scientific abode, as example, is played with cartoonish aplomb, as though to have been excised from a Three Stooges’ slapstick routine meets the tactless and sophomoric humor of Animal House. Outside of Nick Nolte’s resolute Doc and Winger’s occasionally grating and opinionated Suzy, each drawn with intimate tinges of sincerity, the rest of the cast are characters broadly sketched from ‘Character-ville’ – cliché stick figures with no soul, whom thoroughly lack in motivation outside of their own ‘paint-by-number’ existence to further along the romance between our central protagonists. What is wholly absent here is subtext and subtlety – elements Ward seems incapable of even fathoming, much less delivering on the big screen. What is present often veers into pulp and pizzazz of the cheapest and most artless form known to the legitimate theater, best left to the sellers of corny country tunes that begin ‘Mister, I met a man once when I was very young…’  When all else fails, John Huston’s mellifluous narration momentarily brings Steinbeck’s voice back into focus – only to have Ward’s screenplay dismiss it again and again. Richard MacDonald's elaborate studio-bound sets, seemingly to stretch into infinity, remain impressive, and, are as strikingly captured by Sven Nykvist’s perpetually misty cinematography. It all looks quite good at a glance. But again, Cannery Row is a movie never to venture beyond these superficial assets. So, despite its barely 2 hr. run time, the picture seems to run on interminably, sloshing all over the place with its rank sentiment and a lot of clunky corn, the veneer of what little charm it starts out possessing, gradually stripped down to bedrock well before the final fade to black. Interestingly, Nolte and Winger – who manage something of a vague chemistry here – would reunite eight years later to make mincemeat of another imminent storyteller’s proses - Arthur Miller’s Everybody Wins (1990); an even bigger dud at the box office.

Cannery Row arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) and, predictably, it looks very fine indeed in 1080p.  I am not certain why I continue to write critiques about WAC’s product because with very few exceptions, their consistency in quality is so above and beyond the competition, I could just as easily ‘cut and paste’ references from a review written for any of their other Blu-ray product to explain away the exemplars in video mastering that have become the company’s hallmark, forever striving to achieve perfection. Cannery Row sports an exceptionally nuanced hi-def image, showing off Nykvist’s cinematography to its very best advantage. Colors are deliberately desaturated. Contrast is excellent. Fine details abound and film grain appears indigenous to its source. Occasionally, a few shots can appear soft, but this is likely built into Nykvist’s cinematography and not the fault of these mastering efforts. So, top marks – again. The 1.0 DTS audio accurately captures the original theatrical experience. This isn’t a movie you will want to show off to friends for its surround capabilities. The only extra is a theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Cannery Row isn’t much of a movie. But WAC’s Blu-ray makes it an almost passably sweet experience. If you love this movie, you will want to snatch up this disc. But for the rest, especially those anticipating Steinbeck in cinematic form, pass – and do not feel as though you have missed anything out of life because of your decision. Regrets.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

0