I review movies for two basic reasons: because I am noticeably impressed with it on the whole, which means I can appreciate why it was made, and because it has no reviews or at least reviews that address what I think and feel about it. With 1968’s Charly, the movie version of Daniel Keyes’ novel Flowers For Algernon, I’ve read several professional reviews on and off Epinions that complain of its datedness, especially in the latter portion of the movie, but I can understand the need for some of that as I will explain later.

After reading Keyes’ classic work not long ago, I reviewed it and in comments was told I really should see Charly and how wonderful the movie was, so I finally found it at Hollywood Video one night and popped it in to watch with my biker sweetie. He has not read the novel and now, after seeing Charly, has no desire to, even though I argued for the novel’s superiority.

What a shame, to miss out on what Keyes’ grand vision for Charlie Gordon was! Is it a tragedy with most movies that are made from bestselling novels? From what I’ve reviewed, I know that Tuesdays With Morrie and Cocoon as movies delighted me endlessly more than their paper counterparts, but they remained true to the books’ visions and had stellar actors. The Last Temptation of Christ and Frankenstein were much more sensitive in the original books by Kazantzakis and Shelley, while Born Free and Living Free by Joy Adamson couldn’t go wrong in either version.

Perhaps it’s a toss-up. Generally I’m inclined to believe that, like Charly, movies based on wonderfully-written books never match the depth of character and meaning found in the many nuances that the words convey. This would explain why Patricia Nell Warren’s record-breaking gay story from 1974, The Front Runner, still hasn’t been cinematized, for the general public are just not ready for a movie true to Warren’s vision (or Epinions for a negative review--mine, try a search). This doesn’t make Charly a veritable failure to be dismissed outright, though! Despite its vision problems, Cliff Robertson scored a well-deserved Oscar for his demanding, title role of the mentally retarded man who grabbed at a chance for his dreams of intelligent normality and had it stolen away with a slap of his hand.

The Story

As the 103-minute movie opens, Charly struggles visibly to become smarter in night school so he can understand vociferous college students and the gang at the bakery where he works as a janitor. He thinks the gang loves him, but we see how they just amuse themselves with playing cruel jokes on him. His comely teacher, Miss Kinnion (Claire Bloom), convinces a couple of scientists to give Charly a chance to speed up his brain with an operation that created superintelliigent Algernon, the mouse.

After the surgery Charly becomes a genius within a week or so. Suddenly he notices how attractive Miss Kinnion is and their relationship blossoms despite her being engaged, but more on that later. When Charly discovers a dead Algernon at the big conference of neurologists he attends as an “exhibit,” he realizes the genius effect will again only be a dream before long, breaks off with Alice Kinnion and reverts back to normal, but lovable stupidity.


Comments


I couldn’t help but point out to my sweetie all the discrepancies between Daniel Keyes’ novel and Stirling Silliphant’s screenplay. I usually don’t do that, but it was so disappointing to see Robertson (Uncle Ben in Spider Man and The Big Kahuna in 1959's Gidget!) sweep me--and everybody else--off our feet with his uncanny portrayal of Charly as a struggling “retardate” and then lose that child-like magic as his intelligence grew.

In the novel Charlie does become less likable, also, disenchanting everybody with his superior mind, but we understand how it upsets him because he cannot help it. For instance, we understand why he gets fired from the bakery in the book, but not in the movie. We appreciate Miss Kinnion’s emotional quandary about Charlie in the book, but in the movie she forgives his attempted rape and desperately wants to marry him anyhow because, I don’t know, he proved he was now a man by learning to ride a motorcycle and hang with biker chics?

It doesn’t wash, seeing this special educator with a fiancée rush pell-mell into the arms of a mentally-unstable man like a 70s flowerchild. Of course, maybe TV actress and Crime And Misdemeanors' Claire Bloom gloried in a character who wanted to prove she wasn’t a prude since the movie was made during the hippie movement and Vietnam, so soppy, escapist love stories like Charly and Love Story were the in thing. The times also explain Charly’s withering condemnation of society and its future at the neurologists’ convention.

Needless to say, my biker sweetie and I had a good laugh at the split-screen images of “Charly Baby” wiping out on his bike and tearing it up with different girls on dirt roads and in discotheques. It certainly made sense to us that Charly would need to release tension, anger and guilt the way an adult man would rather than riding bumper cars as Charly did before the operation, but most critics shoot it down as an unnecessary detraction. Just like the hallucinations genius Charly experienced of stupid Charly were a waste of time to them, although this did happen in the book.

But the abrupt ending did leave me wondering if the producers ran out of money because the novel certainly didn't end with the lame ending of the love story.

Directed by Ralph Nelson (Embryo), scripted by Stirling Silliphant (he redeemed himself of atrocities like The Day The Earth Ended with Oscar-winning In The Heat of the Night), original, but unremarkable music by Ravi Shankar and cinematography by Arthur J. Ornitz, Charly boasts a respectable cast with Lilia Skala and Leon Janney as the scheming and debating scientists, Dick Van Patten as Bert the lab assistant and Ruth White as the motherly landlady.

My recommendation is to enjoy the 1968 movie for being the product it is of its time. Robertson should be seen to be believed. I don’t know how much better Matthew Modine plays Charly in a 2000 TV movie, Flowers For Algernon, but if that’s on video, you might enjoy a more contemporary dramatization of Keyes’ novel.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8