Planet of the Apes is, I’m fairly sure, the first film I’ve ever watched and known the director started in television. Franklin J. Schaffner has a lot of dynamic shots--helicopter shots, three dimensional motion and camera movement (which is rarer than one would think)--but none of them go together. It’s like watching a different movie every cut. There are also definite commercial breaks in the film and the first hour, until Charlton Heston speaks to the apes, is really a fifteen minute teaser drawn out with a lot of monologues, walking, and chase scenes.
When I started watching the film, I marveled at how bad Charlton Heston’s performance is. He actually gets better, but it’s one of those cases of not knowing if he actually gets better or if the viewer has just been conditioned to his performance. It’s kind of funny, though, to see über-Conservative Heston in a role basically advocating (small c) communism. That correlation is about the only one I could pull out of Planet of the Apes and I had to use a big pair of pliers. We’ve gotten used to seeing science fiction as metaphor and there’s none of it in Apes. It’s an incredibly straightforward approach, which could work well in the film’s favor, if it wasn’t so inconsistent with its characters and generally dumb.
The problem with the film--its stupidity--is in the package. The film asks the viewer to accept this ape civilization--a planet--which doesn’t seem to be larger than a city, doesn’t know anything about science except has verbose scientific terminology (how did they learn them?) and has working firearms--lots of them--but supposedly is opposed to killing. The characters, with the exception of Heston and the two good apes, flip back and forth, the worst being Maurice Evans’s. He goes from being the big bad guy, to just a guy, to sort of a good guy, to a bad guy, to just a guy. Or ape. Whatever. I think he’s supposed to be an orangutan, actually. He generally changes character between commercial breaks (oh, and Schaffner doesn’t know how to do establishing shots). The film’s about ideas (and running) and getting them presented is the only important thing.
Once the movie gets to the end and Heston’s wailing in the surf, I realized it actually could have worked. There was a big thing--during the opening, the twenty minute walk--about Heston wanting to get off the planet Earth because he hated the way things were going (war--yes, this film does actually star Charlton Heston and it has a big anti-war message, one about 150 feet tall). Anyway, there’s a metaphor there, about Heston returning to the Earth he dreaded, where everything he feared had come to pass, and so on and so on. I wouldn’t want to write it, but I would have wanted to see it. Or, at least, I know it’d have been better than what they did.
CREDITS
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner; screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle; director of photography, Leon Shamroy; edited by Hugh S. Fowler; music by Jerry Goldsmith; produced by Arthur P. Jacobs; released by 20th Century Fox.
Starring Charlton Heston (George Taylor), Roddy McDowall (Cornelius), Kim Hunter (Zira), Maurice Evans (Dr. Zaius), James Whitmore (President of the Assembly), James Daly (Honorious), Linda Harrison (Nova), Robert Gunner (Landon), Lou Wagner (Lucius), Woodrow Parfrey (Maximus), Jeff Burton (Dodge), Buck Kartalian (Julius), Norman Burton (Hunt Leader), Wright King (Dr. Galen) and Paul Lambert (Minister).
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Joe Russo // Dec 30, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Oddly enough, sir (or madam) Heston was actually on the liberal side of the coin when PLANET OF THE APES was sanctioned/filmed (1966–67)…so enough of the typical and tired Chuck-politics bashing. if Heston’s performance in this film is “bad” as you say, perhaps you can list for us ten performances in film you would consider “excellent”. I actually think this is an excellent portrayl by Heston, and he nails the character of George Taylor almost perfectly (I say “almost” because precious little in life is actually,literally “perfect”). Your other comments are confounding as well–the planet doesn’t seem to be larger than a CITY? I can go on for 10 paragraphs on that ridiculous assesment. In fact-I give up commenting on your hair-brained comments on this CLASSIC film!
ari_1965 // Feb 16, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I agree about the city. The film gives the impression that on one side there is the body of water the ship lands in, mountains and the plain that the mute humans flee across. And then on the other side there are caves, the Statue of Liberty and the sea. Ape City is in between. There is no indication or hint that there is any other group of people or other cities on the planet. There isn’t even the ubiquitous Star Trek-like painted backdrops of cities/villages off in the distance. Or cattle grazing. Or even much sky once we get past the waterfall scene. It has that TV feeling–picture the whole Korean theater of war reduced to the MASH 4077 set.