poseidon

A Retrospective Review of the 1972 Classic Film,
The Poseidon Adventure - Article by Simon St. Laurent

It was early 1973. I first heard about the film from my little buddies, "have
you seen The Poseidon Adventure? Have you seen The Poseidon
Adventure?", and so on.

The movie in question was a fresh breeze of populist filmmaking (as an
antidote to the endemic richness in American films at the time; films with
titles such as Medium Cool, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces... I'm drooling just
writing these down).

Like Star Wars a few years later, Poseidon came out at just the right time -
not as gloriously upbeat as that fantasy film nor a repeater as such (a
different kind of film although one with more dimensional characters) but
positive, nonetheless, which only helped its box office success. Adjusting for
inflation, Poseidon made more money than most pictures playing today.

Freshness and box office scoring does not necessarily make a film good
though and often when you see the flick years later you naturally watch with
adjusted eyes. Which leads us to the point of this review...

Now having re-watched the movie in question, it is better than I would
expect it to be after all this time and the fact that is The Poseidon
Adventure still impresses. The opening titles make no mistake what
temperament this movie is going to be. The image of the S.S. Poseidon,
modelled quite literally after the full size and very real R.M.S. Queen Mary,
motoring across the sea is quite beautiful. John Williams' theme music
telegraphs the emotional notes to come, his music - orchestrated by the
great Alexander Courage - all brooding and rendered mainly by the wind
sections of the orchestra. Perhaps this music is a little too on-the-nose but,
hey, the audience knows what is going to happen anyway. (This is back in
the day when Williams was a good film scorer. The recycled drivel was still
years away.) The credits 'super' as we see various shots of the ship cutting
through choppy seas.

The first image after this is of little Eric Shea making his was to the ship's
bridge via the outside. This all reaffirms the tumultuous weather. All this time
the camera is doing one of those classic rocking tilts from side to side. The
film has been set up all through standard cinematic techniques.

We are introduced to several of the stock characters over the next few
minutes: These are inter-cut with scenes with of the ship's captain, one
Leslie Neilson, dealing with the problems of handling a 'top heavy' boat. (It
didn't get to, or have time to, take on proper ballast or bunkers. You see ,
the creepy company representative is on board - and in Neilson's face - and
he keeps insisting they make haste as the S.S. Poseidon, being on old liner -
is awaiting the 'breakers'. Before you think that this plot conceit is merely
utilitarian and unrealistically forced into the script, try reading the papers
after a disaster happens. It all rings true.)

The above all contributes to the sense of the inevitable - and the
helplessness felt by the audience.

After we get a handle on who everyone else is - and we morbidly place bets
on who will and won't survive - the action dissolves nicely into the major plot
thrust: That is, an ocean liner about to meet it's fate. This film wouldn't be
called The Poseidon Adventure if the titular ship were to successfully make
its way to the breakers... well it would be a dull film. Today, the real
adventure would be the poorly paid workers who risk life and limb breaking up
a large ship.

Credible tension is generated as the captain is unable to do his job properly
and as we hear the news that an underwater earthquake has unleashed
something big. The 'camera' concentrates on everybody having a ball of a
time in the ship's grand ballroom; effectively putting these people in the dark
as to what is happening on the bridge also adds to the tension. The captain
is also here, entertaining several guests at his table, but quickly gets called
up to the bridge. Oh, oh. That is a bad sign.

Happy New Year! Up on the bridge all eyes are watching. Here it comes:
Looks like a wall of water... looks like it will do the job, especially to a top
heavy ship. (It should be said that scientists say this is all bunk... would
never happen as depicted here.) Exterior shot of the Poseidon, high angle,
and the dump tank of water washing over the ship. The effect of the shop
slowly capsizing is quite good. A combination of tilting camera and jacked-up
set end.

All his is the springboard for the rest of the story, of course. The survivors
spend the rest of screen time making their way through a giant metal maze.
And ocean liners are mazes, especially when they are upside down. I kept
thinking in upside-down terms for the remainder of the flick.

Gene Hackman is good as the Preacher. He's a kind of a spiritual bouncing
bean throughout the film, always keeping a tempo and exposing everyone's
foibles. This provides for some constant talking: There is a lot of talking in
this film which keeps character revelations happening. This might seem too
simplistic to modern audiences but then again since American dramatic
television programs today never shut up, the result could be that Poseidon's
brand of storytelling is actually more accessible to them.

Shelly Winters is very fine in her role as the overweight and over-the-hill
former swimmer. Naturally she gets to strut her stuff. Her scenes with Jack
Albertson, who plays her husband, contain moments of real tenderness.
There is a sex quotient in Poseidon: Pamela Sue Martin and Carol Lynley get
to wear short shorts (I don't remember whether or not these were in fashion
back then and I certainly didn't care at that time) and even with the
obstacle course before them complete with smoke and oil, their legs look
pretty untouched throughout - the Hollywood Effect. By the way, a lot of
people die in this film, mainly by falling into gurgling or flaming water. It's
really that easy or final?

I was amazed at how efficient the last two or three minutes of screen time
were before the end credits rolled. John Williams' theme again plays here
almost unaltered from the opening reading and from the 'background' cues
used throughout the body of the film. (Actually, the music cues are fairly
sparse for an epic Hollywood film. Irwin Allen was never one for subtleties but
it he is different here. However there is that song within.)

The miniature effects of the S.S. Poseidon were supervised by the late,
great L.B. Abbott. Water is hard (impossible) to miniaturize and during the
exterior shots of the ship at sea are mixed in quality in the sense that the
textures of the ship are very real while the vessel's wake give you clues as
to how big this model is - in this case, 22 feet long. Of course, today you
can digitally matte the model onto a real seascape and use computers to
'wrap' the wake and water spray around it.

All that being said, Abbott's work of the miniature Poseidon model running
over water in the 'artificial lake' looks fine. These shots were done outside in
natural light which helps immensely. The ship itself looks great.

Harold Stine's cinematography is solid and has an epic feel which helps make
Poseidon look like a big movie. Actually, hand held camera work is held to a
minimum. In comparison to what would or could be done today the lighting in
Poseidon is fairly high key - this was a few years before 'high speed' stocks
became available, stocks which didn't require as much light for exposure and
could 'dig' into the dark shadows… shadows which would be aplenty in an
upside down ship.

Stine and company use the Panavision scope frame - meaning the ratio of
2.35 : 1 - very effectively. These were the days when the frame would be
used fully, without compromising the wide-screen by bunching people and
objects together for home video and television broadcast; that being a
rather squarish frame of 4:3 ratio.

The great Fox art director William Creber provided Poseidon's impressive
production design. Creber was a veteran already by this point, working on
such Fox flicks such as Planet of the Apes and Tora! Tora! Tora! He would
go on to work with Irwin Allen to great effect on The Towering Inferno a
couple of years later. With a modest budget, Creber comes up with an array
of crawl spaces, machine rooms, etc.

The late Paul Zastupnevich served as the costume designer. As a
long-standing member of Allen's production team, Paul "Zee", as he was
affectionately called by those who worked with him, was known for coming
up with creative costuming. He was responsible for costume and monster
design on Allen's television shows - such as Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea, Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. (By the way, with
the exception of Voyage's first season, these series' are absolutely awful.
Those of us who are old enough to have watched them as children and
thought at the time what we watching was gold, have now, for the most
part admitted that these programs are best left as pleasant childhood
memories.) Working on Poseidon must have been a refreshing change for him,
that is coming up with civilian clothes of the late 20th century. One
important aspect of Paul Zee's role - and one which was rarely specified in
the on screen credits on Allen's various television shows and movies - is the
fact that he functioned as Irwin Allen's right-hand man, helping out and
assisting the producer on all aspects of production.

As Irwin Allen was such a showman he tended to make people, both the
public and movie types, the impression that he also directed just about
everything he did. Poseidon was directed - at least the actor bits and
dramatic scenes - by Englishman Ronald Neame. As he was a former
cinematographer, or 'lighting cameraman', as the British would call it, Neame
was a smart choice to direct such a complicated film. Orson Welles once
stated that a film director has a tremendous advantage if he or she is
already a 'shooter' themselves. (Neame shot such films as, One of Our
Aircraft Is Missing, In Which We Serve, and The Happy Breed.)

Irwin Allen became famous for directing the action - or 'second unit' -
sequences on his feature films. (I remember seeing The Towering Inferno a
couple of years later. As those great opening titles played and the credit
"Action Scenes Directed by Irwin Allen" came up my friends and I thought,
"wowww"... I would pay to see archival footage of our little
popcorn-munching faces at that moment.) The studio did not want, or let,
Allen direct the film as they felt he would be in over his head with a complex
film such as Poseidon… and one that they were nervous about even doing in
the first place. Allen had directed some of his own films such as The Big
Circus and the 1960 remake of The Lost World. Later, Allen undertook the
same role to get his television shows off to a start, wearing the cap and
scarf for the respective pilot episodes. Still, Fox was nervous. It should be
mentioned that 20th Century Fox took massive financial loses in the late
'sixties on several films including Doctor Dolittle, Hello, Dolly!, and Star! -- all
big budget musicals. I suppose they were being very careful.

Studio executives are justifiably nervous at times, especially where a lot of
money is involved: in this case, six million dollars (about three of which were
their own). It might not seem like a lot of money these days - and it wasn't
in the sense that Fox had just spent $25 million on Tora! and $15 million on
Patton - but remember that some big recessions have hit many times since.
(Just how did we survive all those?!) And 'production inflation' has gone into
Earth orbit.

In Irwin Allen's defence he was known for being well prepared, to put it
mildly: As with his television pilot episodes before, Allen had commissioned
elaborate production and engineering sketches along with meticulous
storyboards - courtesy of his truck-full of illustrators and designers. The
studio should have known that he wasn't intending to just show up to his
sets with his riding boots and bullhorn, without a clue as to what to do that
day. Whatever the case may have been Neame did an admirable job giving
what was expected to be a flat film populated by equally flat characters,
some depth and meaning.

Poseidon's script was written by Stirling Silliphant, a writer who had earned
his stripes writing for the classic television show, Route 66 (starring Martin
Milner, George Maharis, and later, Glen Corbett). Silliphant built a reputation
for being able to work a script through - to him everything was a challenge.
If it was decided by the powers that be that dialogue had to be 'equalized'
among two or more stars (as in The Towering Inferno, with Paul Newman and
Steve McQueen) or a character needed to be added, he would make it all
work. And he did it well, to boot. Unlike many writers who complain about or
fight any changes to their work - known as 'butchering the masterpieces', to
these writers - Silliphant played the total professional. He had the attitude
that he was being paid to write… so write! Former co-workers speak of how
the man was able to engineer scripts, taking different plots, characters, and
elements and fusing them together to make an effective whole. Star-laden
movies such as the ones that Allen loved to make, by their very nature,
contained lots of loose fibres which needed to be binded together to make a
single carrier.

Irwin Allen had a hard time acquiring financing for this picture. Even it this
early stage, Poseidon was known as 'Irwin's Folly'. "Who the hell wants to
see a movie about a capsized ocean liner?" was undoubtedly the oft-quoted
line at many a Hollywood dinner party at the time. Trying to dig up money for
a picture which was now imprinted by such a dismissive attitude is rather
difficult, to put it mildly, especially after a period where traditional Hollywood
had been hit in the pocketbook on too many occasions. The story goes that
Fox would put up only half of the budget. Allen eventually raised the other
two or three million dollars needed to kick-off production, but money
problems would return. Poseidon ran out of money toward the end of principle
photography. (A more elaborate rescue scene had originally been envisioned
- we were supposed to see various vessels surrounding the up upturned hull
of the S.S. Poseidon, but when the money ran out the scene was simplified.)
This is typical of filmmaking, even big budget filmmaking: Money is precious;
there rarely is enough of it.

As was common at the time, and even more common now, the studio wanted
a pop-song shoved into the film. Studios look at this as a way to help
promote the film and increase chances of making money. (As touched upon
above, with the 'vertical integration' in studios today, having all the ancillary
departments involved in a film's production helps insure that profits will be
higher - or, at least, helps recoup expenses. This doesn't guarantee big
returns but it helps ease the pain of financial loss. If you ever wonder while
sitting in the movie theatre after an action film and a song with the dubious
title of "Listen to My Pants" plays over the end credits sung by some
warbling twit, and you ask out loud what that has to do with the movie that
you just barely made it through, well, now you know.)

Having a song in Poseidon was already planned before filming began. This
was necessary. Move over "Auld Lang Syne", here comes a singing Carol
Lynley (well, actually overdubbed by another) belting out "The Morning
After"… I take back what I said previously. This tune makes sense in
Poseidon's case. Songwriters Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn supplied a simple
and catchy song. This song, like the film, has a melancholy ring to it and the
marriage of the two works quite well. The cross promotion definitely worked
when the flick was originally released. (A piece of trivia here for Canadian
television viewers: Kasha and Hirschhorn had only two years previously,
written very sticky themes for the short-lived series, The Trouble with
Tracy… oh no! Stop! Quick, put on some Neil Diamond!)

When The Poseidon Adventure was released back in 1972 there wasn't - the
way I remember it - a lot of fanfare, outside of an excellent 'featurette',
which was played in the movie houses some time before the actual release.
The Poseidon Adventure ended up making a lot of money and also made Irwin
Allen a heavyweight. His next movie would be an "event picture".

All of a sudden the dinner party song had become, "hey, tell Irwin Baby I
wanna do lunch with him!".

2006 Simon St. Laurent

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