Saturday, July 22, 2017

Cannery Row has never been like anywhere else...

July 24, 2017

There are movies that stay with you from the first time you see them. The classics, yes. But some will never be considered classics, yet they just hide deep in your brain, and peek out from time to time, bringing a smile to your face that nobody will ever understand. For me, Cannery Row is one of those movies.




I mean, look. It’s based on a Steinbeck book. That alone hooked me because I had just fallen into the worlds of Steinbeck and I’ve never looked for an exit. There are hundreds of self-declared critics that say Cannery Row is a bastardization of Steinbeck’s work. I disagree, though, because, when all is said and done, Steinbeck wrote about the human condition he saw in America. Right, wrong, funny, sad, he captured the true human spirit better than almost anyone to put pen to paper. And THAT, folks, is what you see in Cannery Row. A group of extraordinary people in a quaint little community. No superheroes, no psychic warriors or sparkling vampires or serial killers, just people trying to get by in post-Depression Monterey, California.

The movie takes place in a little corner of Monterey known (obviously) as Cannery Row. All of the fish canneries in the area have closed, but people still live there.  They are all primarily down and out, but they don’t want to leave. The most upstanding member of the community is Doc, played by Nick Nolte. Doc is a marine biologist who makes his living by collecting marine specimens for research. Even he, though, is running from his past. He has spent the past few years trying to make up for a tragic mistake in his past.

Enter Debra Winger as Suzy DeSoto, another lost soul with few job skills. She reluctantly takes as a “floozy” in the local whorehouse, a job her openly headstrong demeanor makes her completely wrong for. She and Doc find an immediate attraction, but their personalities clash so hard they can barely speak to one another. The other citizens of Cannery Row do whatever they can to help Doc and Suzy get together, but when all is said and done, Suzy and Doc have to find their own way before they can commit to someone else, be it one another or anyone else.

There is so much in this movie, from the narration by Oscar-winning director John Huston, to the performances of the entire supporting cast, that can be called “perfect.” The supporting cast almost overshadows very good and understated work from Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. I will be the first one to say that it is a rare moment when you can use the word “understated” when you speak of Nolte, but he is brilliant here. His rough voice and gruff exterior work well to show how Doc just wants to be left alone, but, dammit, his Doc is so subtly warm-hearted, you just want to buy him a beer and say, “You wanna talk about it, buddy?”

I have never been a fan of most of Winger’s work on screen. Her breakout role as John Travolta’s love interest in Urban Cowboy makes me wish he didn’t apologize for hitting her at the end of the film. The small town I live in had only two movie theatres when I was a vibrant teenager, and in 1983, one of the theatres held Terms of Endearment over for 10 weeks. That was TEN WEEKENDS of dating life, and you either went to see Terms of Endearment over and over again, or you went to the other theatre and spent more time looking for the mice you could hear in the walls than watching the movie. By the end of those ten weeks, I would cheer loudly when Winger’s character died, I was so tired of that movie. An Officer and a Gentleman, she was okay in, but, again, you find yourself hoping Richard Gere would just dump her and go off to Pensacola alone. All that aside, though, Debra Winger is wonderful in Cannery Row. Everything you don’t like about her in other movies works perfectly in this one. Her abrasiveness elsewhere makes Suzy DeSoto exactly what a Steinbeck woman would be like.


The stellar supporting cast features Audra Lindley, known primarily at the time as “Mrs. Roper” in TV’s Three’s Company, playing Fauna, the madam of the whorehouse. The group of what we would call today “homeless people” features M. Emmett Walsh and Frank McHugh, two of the most underrated supporting actors in movie history. Walsh earned his own “rule” in the late, great Roger Ebert’s “Little Movie Rule Book,” which declares as a rule that “no movie can be considered completely bad if it features M. Emmett Walsh.” (This rule was amended a few years later to add Harry Dean Stanton.)


Now that I have built Cannery Row up to the level of genius, let me tell you this – it used to be damned hard to find this movie on DVD. You either had to buy it on VHS or pray it popped up on HBO. Thankfully, though, the brain trust at MGM finally realized people wanted to own this movie and released it. It is long-overdue for a Blu Ray release, but until MGM wakes up and listens to the fans again, the plain old DVD will have to do.

You are not going to get a history lesson out of Cannery Row. I freely admit, it is not Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind. And, honestly, this is a good thing. Cannery Row does not need to have any legends about its making or casting. It does not need to make any AFI top ten lists. It’s not an epic of biblical proportions. It is just a very well-made movie, directed by David Ward, who is much better known for writing the screenplay for The Sting.


Give it a look on a rainy afternoon. As I said at the start, that one look will stay with you. It will stay with you in the best way possible. 

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