July briefs: SENNA [6/10]; THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940) [8/10]

Published on: July 4th, 2011

Margaret Sullavan, The Shop Around the Corner
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Senna.
A compelling, high-octane hagiography of Brazil’s charismatic Ayrton Senna, triple Formula 1 World Champion before his untimely death – in harness, as it were – during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

For the visuals, director Asif Kapadia and editors Chris King and Gregers Sall use only existing archival footage of Senna’s life on and off the track, with occasional commentary – via interviews conducted for the film – from his friends, family and colleagues, plus a couple of F1 journalist. But the tone (Manish Pandey receives screenplay credit) is near-uniformly adulatory throughout, and even if Senna does come across as a very decent, admirable, humble individual, the idea that he rose to the top of this most competitive and strenuous of professions through sheer niceness stretches credulity.

Kapadia falls into the classic sports-biopic trap (most heinously displayed in Ron Howard’s disgraceful Cinderella Man) of demonising the impeccably noble protagonists’ foes and opponents. And while the squeaky-clean, pinup-handsome Senna’s rivalry with his rather more devious, rather less photogenic former team-mate Alain Prost obviously became highly – and absorbingly – acrimonious, and while late F1 supremo Jean-Marie Balestre evidently wasn’t the most cordial or fair-minded of individuals (“my decision is the best decision!” seems to be his mantra), that doesn’t excuse the way Senna presents both men in such moustache-twirlingly villainous terms.

For all the inherent fascination in Senna’s rise to international fame as a motor-racing driver whose skill and personality transcended his sport, and F1′s near-simultaneous transformation into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise with global reach, Kapadia’s approach – with its dramatic, near wall-to-wall score – often feels excessively emotive, as if the tale being told somehow wasn’t quite forceful enough to be be told on its own terms (which it most certainly is).

There’s also the nagging sense that the full story – or rather stories – are rather more complicated and nuanced than we’re led to believe. To take one obvious example, Senna goes to great pains to illustrate what a very big deal the driver was in, and for, Brazil – providing welcome good news in an age of political repression and economic hardship. But while Nelson Piquet is briefly shown, and is identified as himself being a triple world F1 champ, the casual viewer would have no idea that Piquet was also Brazilian, and was champion the very year before Senna’s first title. This isn’t to diminish Senna’s achievement in any way, nor the great affection with which he was held at home – but to imply that Senna was the sole example of globally-recognised sporting excellence in the late 1980s is, at best, misleading.

And surely the real tragedy here is the severe plight of Brazil as a result of years of military dictatorship – far eclipsing the fate of a single individual, no matter how wonderful and inspirational he might have been. Regarding that sad fate, Kapadia and company also spend far too much time on the Imola race – lingering on the minutiae of events before, during and after the catastrophe.

Their technique is skilful enough to create tension even among those who know the precise details of the outcome – watching the crash via footage shot from the cockpit of Senna’s own car is almost as gut-wrenchingly suspenseful as the final reel of Paul Greengrass’s United 93. But the film comes uncomfortably close to tastelessness in the way it so very carefully, steadily and lengthily builds up to Senna’s crash – his death a total, out-of-the-blue fluke, it would seem.

The result is undeniably powerful, and the image of Senna’s flag-draped coffin is piercingly poignant – especially as juxtaposed with images of the young, ambitious driver with his loving family at the start of his career. The impression conveyed by this slick, manipulative film, made in conjunction with the Ayrton Senna Foundation, and very much an authorised account, is unmistakeably that of a man who was essentially too good, too pure, too saintly – not just for the grubbily cash-dominated world of Formula 1, but for the world, full stop.

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The Shop Around the Corner.
Loosely based on a Hungarian play of 1937 – and itself remade as In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and You’ve Got Mail (1998), in addition to allegedly part-inspiring BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? – The Shop Around the Corner has long enjoyed classic status as romantic comedies, regarded as a highpoint in the careers of director Ernst Lubitsch and star James Stewart. And while not quite the all-time great some critics have hailed, it has a couple of very special aspects which pretty much justify its lofty reputation.

Though set in a moderately fancy Budapest store specialising in suitcases and luxury items -
it’s never quite clear how one should classify Matuschek and Co, which is part of its slightly disorderly charm – the characters all speak English, nearly all of them American-accented English, with the exception of the distinctly mittel-European Vadas (Austrian actor Joseph Schildkraut).

And it’s surely no accident that, in a film made at the start of the World War 2, the latter turns out to be the most deceitful and despicable individual on view – part and parcel of a movie that has no shortage of sourness, even nastiness, alongside its underlying sweetness. Take the central relationship, between employees Alfred (Stewart) and Klara (Margaret Sullavan) – the duo bickering near-constantly, but, unbeknownst to each other, falling in love as pen-pals via the exchange of letters. It’s only in the very final scene that Alfred reveals the truth to Clara – he’d twigged the real situation some time before, but delighted in stringing her along in a manner that verges on the cruel.

This is all the harder to watch because of Sullavan’s ethereal fragility as Klara – a woman edging towards ‘Old Maid’ wallflower status, and pinning all her hopes on her unseen correspondent. The latter plot-point is the kind of dopey, elaborate contrivance that so often goes with romantic-comedy territory and which dates The Shop Around the Corner – but such is Sullavan’s irresistible appeal that we go along with her winsome optimism every step of the way.

Louise Brooks was among those enraptured by Sullavan’s unique vocal mannerisms, which she compared to “a voice singing in the snow,” and at times she’s truly heartbreaking here. Not that The Shop Around the Corner is entirely the Sullavan show – as errand-boy-turned-clerk Pepi, pugnacious young William Tracy provides a masterclass in comic timing, and hilarious scene-stealing, generally proceeding as if he, not Stewart and Sullavan, were the star of the show.

Neil Young
5th July, 2011

SENNA : [6/10] : UK (/Fr/USA) 2010 : Asif KAPADIA : 106m (BBFC) : seen Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, 2nd July 2011 (£8.00) : {17/28}
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER : [8/10] : USA 1940 : Ernst LUBITSCH : 99m (BBFC) seen Star & Shadow cinema, Newcastle, 3rd July 2011 (£5.00) : {21/28}