From Novel to Film pt. 29: The Last Unicorn

THE NOVEL

When I mentioned to a friend I was thinking of reading The Last Unicorn, he responded: "Beagle's prose is stunning - ethereal, profound, a physical pleasure to read. I've read it a couple of times, and upon each revisit have found glittering shards of truth." I've heard similar - though not as well-put (and in the final analysis, spot-on) sentiments over the years from a cross-section of people. I've been eager to see for myself but wary of clearing the high bar surrounding it.

I'm happy to report, though, like Dune earlier in this FNTF series, that the praise heaped on the quality and breadth of the writing was not hyperbole. It was perhaps even understated; The Last Unicorn is a masterpiece. It's a mix of humor, romance, philosophical insight, high fantasy (with spells and prophecies and castles and magical creatures) and deconstruction of the fantasy genre, with a post-modern sheen, much like the later genre-work of Neil Gaiman or Clive Barker. The butterfly whose stream-of-conscious ramblings introduce the idea of the Red Bull (who (it sings) chased all of the unicorns of the world out of history on behalf of the remote King Haggard) does so amidst a blizzard of old campfire songs and commercial ad-jingle; one of the forest thieves admonishes another to relax and "have a taco," etc.

For a plot overview, here's Sara Polsky's from her review at Strange Horizons, along with some screencaps from the 1982 animated feature. (Italicized quotations from the novel itself.)

"The basic plot is probably familiar to fantasy fans: a unicorn, living at peace in her forest, overhears a human conversation about the fact that there are no unicorns left in the world." 

"Determined to find the rest of her kind, she sets out into the world. Most of the humans she meets fail to recognize her for what she is, looking at her and seeing only a white mare. She is imprisoned in a carnival cage with other mythical and extraordinary creatures, and even there, a witch must still enchant her to convince the carnival's visitors they see a unicorn."

Mommy Fortuna's carnival is a real treat. Among the other exhibits is a manticore and the Midgard Serpent - just an old lion and a snake, but charmed so those with the will to see them are bedazzled. But she's also captured a real harpy, which glowers at her (and everyone gawking at it) with horror. Mommy's carnival is (according to the author) a statement on 20th century show business vanities, as well as about the menagerie we gawkers co-author with the silly old witches who nonetheless know something of glamour.

Even if they can't truly see her, so pure and powerful is her presence that people can't help but react to her as she really is.

"The only rope that could hold her would be the cord with which the old gods bound the Fenris wolf. That one was made of fishes' breath, bird spittle, a woman's beard, the meowing of a cat, the sinews of a bear, (and) mountain roots. Having none of these elements, nor dwarfs to weave them for us, we'll have to do the best we can with iron bars."

The harpy, once free, quickly enacts her revenge.

The unicorn escapes with the help of her newfound companion, Schmendrick the Magician, whose incompetence is legendary. At one point he recalls the words of his former mentor:

"My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately it seems to be working backward at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time; but frankly, you should live so long as that will take you. Therefore I grant it that you shall not age from this day forth, but will travel the world round and round, eternally inefficient, until at last you come to yourself and know what you are. Don't thank me - I tremble at your doom." 

Nevertheless, when confronted with the Red Bull and urged on by Mollie (he and the unicorn's other companion on their quest to find King Haggard), he is able to harness "the magic" (a somewhat independent source of energy, difficult to harness and not always predictable, in the world of The Last Unicorn) to change the unicorn into a human woman in order to save her. Once human, the Red Bull loses interest in the chase.

This section amused me because Schmendrick is reluctant to intervene even as the unicorn proves no match for the Bull because (as he makes clear) he simply can't guarantee what will happen. But Mollie keeps screaming at him to "do something! DO SOMETHING!" When he does, she's horrified and just keeps repeating "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" And once the unicorn realizes she is now in human form, she joins in the chorus. Sheesh, ladies! Choose a goddamn lane.

Anyway, on to King Haggard's castle, a remote outpost ("Its skinny spires looked nothing like a bull's horns, but rather like those on a jester's cap. Or like the horns of a dilemma, Schmendrick thought: they never have just two") on the edge of the sea.

"When the three companions arrive at the castle, Lady Amalthea quickly catches the attention of Prince Lir, Haggard's adopted son, who busies himself with quests meant to win her favor and, in the process, becomes a hero. Schmendrick serves as magician to King Haggard, who has spent his life trying and failing to figure out what makes him happy, and Molly serves as cook."

A quick word on Haggard and Lir. Haggard's unhappiness and almost Vulcan attitude about it is as well-realized as Lir's somewhat humorous fumbling at being the valiant hero. ("As a hero, he understood weeping women and knew how to make them stop crying - generally you killed something - but her calm terror confused and unmanned him, while the shape of her face crumbled the distant dignity he had been so pleased at maintaining.") I gave up on dog-earing every page that had a quoteworthy line from either of these two; each is individuated exceptionally well.

Haggard reveals that the Red Bull - which serves him only because he doesn't fear it - has driven all of the unicorns into the sea so that he can watch them in the tide and try to regain a feeling of happiness he experienced when first he espied a unicorn in his youth. He knows the unicorn (now called Lady Amalthea in her human form) is not who or what she says she is, but he allows the charade to continue. 

Lir and Lady Amalthea fall in love, but when she begs Schmendrick to allow her to remain a human, Lir intervenes. He tells her he knows about quests, and they don't end like this. She must do what she came to the castle to do and find (and free) her kind.

"A talking skull explains to them that the way to the bull is through a clock. But the path will only work if Schmendrick and Molly change their conceptions of time. 'When I was alive, I believed ... that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so,' the skull tells them. 'I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door....(But) you can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere.' 

It is, Schmendrick says, the way the best magicians think of it, and the characters can only defeat the Red Bull when they start thinking that way too."

Eventually, motivated by Lir's sacrificing himself in the bull's path, the unicorn re-transforms and drives him into the sea, thus freeing the unicorns from the surf.

Resulting in the destruction of the castle and the re-blooming of the land.

"Although Schmendrick, Molly, Amalthea, and Lir ultimately defeat the Red Bull and King Haggard and free the unicorns, and although the secondary characters resolve their own quests, the story's ending is not entirely happy. Amalthea resumes her unicorn form and must part from Lir. Having once been human and in love, a new sadness hangs over her even after she returns to life as a unicorn. Still, Beagle convincingly makes the point that the unicorn's journey from her forest to mortality and back again was worth all the trouble because of the humanity it gave her."

"The prince is very brave to love a unicorn.  

A cat can appreciate valiant absurdity."

Quite a story. I hadn't realized until looking up stuff for this post that Peter Beagle was a fellow attendee of the same Stanford writing workshop class that produced Ken Kesey and Larry McMurtry. I learned that from the interview between the author and his former editor and business manager (whom he's presently suing for $52 million; you can read that story here) for the IDW adaptation. 

THE FILM

(1982)

"I was utterly contemptuous of (Rankin-Bass). To me they were Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and they'd just done a godawful Return of the King and a Hobbit I didn't like at all. I actually snapped as straight as you could when sitting in a VW Bug, banging my head on the roof - Michael (the producer who arranged optioning the book) was driving me to the Burbank Airport at the time - and screamed at him: 'Rankin and Bass! Why the hell didn't you just go all the way and sell it to Hanna-Barbera?' And Michael just looked at me with immense sadness and said 'They were next.'

- Peter Beagle, interview from IDW adaptation.  

 

Despite his misgivings, Beagle has praised the finished product, mentioning that it brought him enduring friendships with Christopher Lee (who plays Haggard) and Rene Auberjonois (who plays the talking skull with a taste for wine) that he wouldn't have traded for anything. (Understandably). 

Myself I was less enthused about the movie. (Perhaps it's the lack of subsequent palling around with Odo and Christopher Lee.) I didn't dislike it, really, but it's a significant step down from the novel. Although it is remembered as childhood nightmare fuel by at least one reviewer, I watched it dozens of times before the age of 10 and don't recall being especially freaked out by it. I hadn't seen it probably since the mid-80s, so it was interesting to revisit earlier this week. I'd forgotten most everything about it, but a few visuals triggered memories of being nine years old and uncomfortably bewildered...

I mean sheesh. Or the three-boobed harpy, which while mythologically accurate was still kind of icky.

and the songs (performed by America, they of "Horse with No Name" and "Ventura Highway", and composed by Jimmy Webb) definitely kicked loose a few mental pebbles. Mia Farrow's and Jeff Bridges's overreaching duet on "Noob the Loser" is the sort of historical curiosity you want to keep at the ready to impress your pop-culture-referencing friends.

It's not a bad movie or anything, and it's a faithful rendition of the story. Beagle only excised two sizable portions of his original story - the town where Schmendrick is kidnapped by the forest marauders (where he meets Molly), and the town of Hagsgate, the first city Haggard conquered long ago and one whose own fate is tied to his. Portions of the book's last few pages are left out, as well, and these absences definitely undermine the painful learning curve of it all. These revisions aren't dealbreakers, though. Beagle got it right the first time: the production style of Rankin-Bass is just an uneasy fit for both the story and prose. It may be their finest effort, but something less Rankin-Bass-y would match the prose better. On paper, though, I can see how this idea would have seemed like the most natural pairing imaginable.

Topcroft Studio - Rankin-Bass's go-to for animation - later became Studio Ghibli.

There's an awful lot of design repetition in their work for Rankin-Bass.

But some of the landscapes are quite pretty; Henri Rousseau-esque, even.

The Red Bull and the unicorn look pretty cool, as does Haggard's castle.

The real coup is the voiceover casting. Although I wasn't overly thrilled with each of the performances - something I'll lay at the director's door - it's an undeniably impressive cast:

The In-Laws-era Alan Arkin as Schmendrick, Tammy Grimes as Molly, and A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy-era Mia Farrow as the unicorn/ Lady Amalthea. Mia's probably a weak link, here, of the three of them.

Tron-era Jeff Bridges as Prince Lir.

And of course Christopher Lee as a suitably grim King Haggard.

Brother Theo and Angela Landsbury deserve chapeaus for their spirited performances as Rukh and Mommy Fortuna.

There's even the always-outstanding Paul Frees as Mabruk, King Haggard's original magician whom Schmendrick supplants. The only misstep is the cat who befriends Molly (and gets that great line about Prince Lir, quote above) who is given a pirate's accent. It's only a small part and thus a small enough misstep, but the cat is a cool character and I did not picture any "Yaaaaar!"-ing while reading the book.

Arthur Rankin considered The Last Unicorn his finest work. Had I not just finished reading the book directly before watching it, maybe I'd have been more positive on it, since it is for the most part an extremely faithful transition from page to screen. And I was pleasantly surprised by some of the compositions: 

I trust you don't need me to caption any of these to tell you why they work.

Final Verdict: Awesome book. Its reputation has not been overstated. The movie fails to transcribe its lyrical power to the screen, but if you're unfamiliar with the book, it's probably a pretty unique and enjoyable experience of its own. The soundtrack hasn't aged as well, but if your tastes run to such things, it's a good one for a vinyl party.

From Novel to Film pt. 12: Rosemary's Baby

Novel (1967) written by Ira Levin.

Film (1968) written and directed by Roman Polanski.

"I've always felt that the film of Rosemary's Baby is the single most faithful adaptation of a novel ever to come out of Hollywood. Not only does it incorporate whole chunks of the book's dialogue, it even follows the colors of clothing and the layout of the apartment. And Polanski's directorial style of not aiming the camera squarely at the horror but rather letting the audience spot it for themselves off at the side of the screen coincides happily, I think, with my own writing style."

- Ira Levin

This is true. The story is so identical from page to screen, in fact, that to look at the novel and film separately like I normally do in this series makes little sense. 

THE PLOT IN SEVEN SCREENCAPS.

I'm going to assume most people are familiar enough with the story, even if you haven't read the book or seen the movie. Most of the novel's seemingly innocuous bits of foreshadowing are preserved from page to screen. Here are a few:

- "The Bramford is owned by the church next door." 

- When Rosemary shows Guy that the baby has moved) "You feel it?" she asked. 
He jerked his hand away, pale. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I felt it."

- When Guy speaks of the role he wins due to the coven's influence: "It's one hell of a part." 

Sure it's a common expression, but I like it in context.

- When Abe Saperstein, Rosemary's coven-selected obstetrician, examines her: "Listening to the stirring baby, he betrayed an excitement that was unexpected in a man who had guided hundreds upon hundreds of pregnancies." 

- "The baby kicked like a demon." 

Just a few examples, not all of them. They effectively and continually remind the reader of the danger Rosemary is in. By the time Rosemary catches up to what we know or at least suspect all along, of course, it is far too late. 

The only bits omitted from the novel are: 

- a further subterfuge on Guy's part, when he gives Rosemary tickets to The Fantasticks. 

- a trip Rosemary takes to Hutch's cabin in the woods after the rape scene. Guy tells her the morning after that he had sex with her after she passed out, not wanting to miss baby-making night. Hearing this and discovering her body is covered with scratches disturbs her, and she goes out of town for a few days to collect herself.

Guy's cover story "I already filed them down" is a little on the flimsy side, but luckily for him and the coven, Rosemary doesn't give it a second thought.

- and the film does not feature Rosemary's insisting at story's end that the baby's name is Andy, not Adrian. 

None of these omissions hurt anything. Levin recounts how Polanski had never adapted a novel before, so he was gun-shy about taking too many liberties with the source material. This works especially well, since Levin's source material is so carefully woven. (Stephen King and Peter Straub both refer to him as the Swiss watchmaker of craftsmen, and it's easy to see why.) Polanski gave himself much more latitude when adapting Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Club Dumas as The Ninth Gate in 1999, another story concerned with raising the devil.

For an idea of what Rosemary's Baby would look like if re-imagined and decidedly off book, look no further than the 2014 mini-series with Zoe Saldana. Make a few changes here and there, and the delicate structure Levin created and Polanski preserved falls apart pretty fast.

THE CAST

As officially designated by the Library of Congress in 2014, Rosemary's Baby is an institution. A lot of the credit must go to Mia Farrow, who gives a career-defining performance in the lead role. 

Guy is brought to life memorably by John Cassavetes. He conveys just the right mix of collusion, guilt, and blunt, remorseless ambition

The husband, as King notes in Danse Macabre, "lowers himself admirably to the occasion."

That Danse Macabre review, by the by, is reprinted as the introduction to the Stephen King Horror Library edition of Rosemary, released in 2003. Does anyone know whatever happened to this series? As near as I can tell, only 5 of the planned 10 volumes were ever published.

As good and essential to the film's success as Farrow's and Castevetes's performances are, though, they are all but overshadowed by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as Minnie and Roman Castavet.

While for me - and for most people, I guess - the ironic blend of ultimate evil with seemingly-goofy old people was exactly the right touch for the plot, my dearly-departed friend Aharon always found this element of the film to be utterly ridiculous. I'll never forget watching it with him for the first time and how angry he got by the juxtapositions of elderly with sinister. 

"Shut up with your Oh Gods or we'll kill ya, milk or no milk."
"Oh hush, Laura-Louise!"

I think he eventually came around to the film, but I can't recall for sure. But I bring it up to make the point of how pivotal this aspect of the film is. If you are down with the idea of Satan's true coven being a bunch of old biddies, I don't think you can get better than the way it's presented here. (Though Brotherhood of Satan, God bless it, gives it the ol' college try. I so wish that movie was based on a novel so I could review it as part of this series.) If you aren't, then it's a distancing effect that's difficult to overcome.

While we're here, Roman and Minnie's original choice as the Antichrist's incubator is a derelict they "rescued" from the sidewalk outside the Bramford. She's played by Victoria Vetri aka Angela Dorian.

Better known in some circles as Isis from "Assignment: Earth."

Another pivotal role, that of Hutch, Rosemary's surrogate father figure, is played by Maurice Evans. 

His wiki argues his best-known role as Dr. Zaius in Planet (and Beneath the Planet) of the Apes. Really? I'd think it'd be Samantha's father on Bewitched or this one before Dr. Zaius. Not that he doesn't kill it as Dr. Zaius, just that his features are hidden under ape make-up and all.

He is kicked off the Kennedys' boat in Rosemary's rape-dream ("Catholics only.") but re-appears, waving a butterfly net and yelling warning of a typhoon.

Although the coven conspire to send him into a coma before he can warn Rosemary, he is able to get this book into her hands with the clue "the title is an anagram." Rosemary learns of Roman's true identity - but, again, alas too late.

WHO IS THE MAIN VILLAIN?

As with Levin's The Stepford Wives, it's tempting to see the head of the group of antagonists as the main villain. (Diz in Stepford, Roman in Rosemary's.) But of Roman or Guy, who is more truly the novel's main villain? Guy after all offers up his wife to be raped by Satan - this is far worse than anything Roman does. Not that Roman's an innocent or lawful character, just his actions follow logically (if deceitfully) from his religion; Guy's crimes are worse because despite his bluster to Rosemary at the end of how he did it all for them and "we've got Paramount right where we want him," his actions follow logically from his own ruthless self-regard, not to mention a sociopathic disregard for his wife. 

In this respect, his removing of Rosemary's ring during the rape scene is key. He is, as many have noted, abdicating his role as husband and taking up the role as Best Man to Satan in the ritual to follow.

And what of Abe Saperstein, the Beast's obstetrician? 

Outside of Guy, he is the character to most actively mislead and lie to Rosemary. His role in the process is crucial, and Rosemary's reliance on his expertise is so cruelly exploited that a good case can be made that he is the story's true main villain.

Or is it Satan? Probably Satan, I guess. It's an interesting question - not from philosophical grounds but in terms of the literary construction of the story. 

THE SIXTIES

King sees the novel as reflecting one specific aspect of the era that created it: "the God-is-dead tempest whirling around in the teapot of the sixties."

Chuck Palahniuk, on the other hand, writing in his preface to the 2001 edition, sees the whole thing as an allegory concerned with women's rights to control their bodies. Whether or not King or Palahniuk has identified the central concern Levin had in mind, it's certainly true that all three were fellow travelers in the 60s milieu to which King alludes.

Rosemary's dream sequence - which is actually not a dream at all, of course, but a spell cast over her senses while the devil is conjured forth to rape her - features the foremost Catholic celebrities of the age: the Kennedys and the Pope, each of whom re-assures Rosemary that all is well, all is forgiven, and that she is in the best care possible.

Back to King:

"The weakening of religious conviction is an opening wedge for the devil, both in the macrocosm (questions of world faith) and in the microcosm (the cycle of Rosemary's faith as she goes from belief as Rosemary Reilly, to unbelief as Rosemary Woodhouse, to belief again as the mother of her infernal Child. (...) In the religious pilgrim's progress that Rosemary goes through, Levin gives is a serio-comic allegory of faith."

Levin's actual intentions were less high-minded, as recounted in full here:

"Having observed that the most suspenseful part of a horror story is before, not after, the horror appears, I was struck one day by the thought that a fetus could be an effective horror if the reader knew it was growing into something malignly different from the baby expected. Several years later, the thought came back to me when, in the wake of a Broadway flop, I was fishing for an idea for a suspense novel.

I tried to figure out exactly what that fetus (might grow) into. Genuine medical horrors were out; hardly the stuff of popular fiction. I could imagine only two possibilities: my unfortunate heroine had to be impregnated either by an extraterrestrial or the devil. ETs had already fathered children in The Midwich Cuckoos, a novel by John Wyndham, and though that book had dealt with several children growing up rather than their mothers bearing them, I nonetheless felt I was stuck with Satan. In whom I believed not at all. But I had no other intriguing ideas and a family to support. I read up on witchcraft and, late in 1965, set to work. 

(Now) two generations of youngsters have grown to adulthood watching depictions of Satan as a living reality. Here’s what I worry about now: if I hadn’t pursued an idea for a suspense novel almost forty years ago, would there be quite as many religious fundamentalists around today?"

I think the answer to that last question is yes. Unfortunately. And fundamentalism isn't  exclusive to religion these days, which is even worse. But the point being - his story accurately reflects the cultural strife of the time without his explictly setting out to do so.

THE CITY VS. THE COUNTRY

King refers to Rosemary's Baby as "a sinister Woody Allen film." I think that's very insightful (and given the real-world catastrophes between Farrow and Allen, has more nuance in 2015 than it did when he wrote that in the late 70s.) While many of Allen's films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, or A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy rely on a sense of the city's superiority to the country, Rosemary's Baby turns this urban paranoia in the other direction: the city is where a nice girl from Nebraska can move to and find herself impregnated by the devil, all while under the watchful care of the city's top obstetrician and her loving, budding-film-star husband. 

Tabitha King (as relayed by her husband) points something else out: Rosemary's Baby is (on the surface) conservative paranoia played out as farce - mixed marriages don't work and invite disaster. Which adds another amusing layer of irony.

ROSEMARY REDUX

Ruth Gordon returned in Look What Happened To Rosemary's Baby, a 1976 TV movie.

I've never seen it, but as this review details, it is not well-regarded. It does, however, feature Tina Louise in the role of "Satanized prostitute," so there's that, I guess. Even less well-regarded is Levin's official sequel to his novel, released in 1997:

I actually enjoyed it. I read it immediately after finishing the original novel and maybe that was the key. I seem to recall Stephen King (or maybe it was Peter Straub) having praise for it, but I can't seem to find confirmation of this out there on the web or elsewhere. Nevertheless, I feel this is misunderstood, particularly the twists in the last act. I'll not spoil its secrets, but I'll let you in on one poorly-kept one: your interpretation of things probably hinges on how you solve the book's mystery anagram ROAST MULES. 

This and the following 'caps are not re-arrangements of Roast Mules - I'm just re-purposing the Scrabbled-pieces scene from Rosemary's for this section.

Levin died without solving the anagram officially, though nowadays a quick visit to Wordsmith's internet anagram server will give you the answer that most agree is the one he intended: SOMERSAULT. How you interpret this - and I apologize for being coy; it doesn't really make any sense outside the context of the novel - likely informs your opinion of whether the sequel works or not.

Myself, I kept getting stuck on SOUL MATES. Which is one letter shy. SOUL MATERS looks and sounds awkward, but I'll be damned (ahem) if it doesn't tie the book together more to my satisfaction than SOMERSAULT.

THE VERDICT: As a novel/ film/ adaptation - all brilliant.