classicalsteve

I would like to begin this review by offering my admiration for Steven Wadlow whose family has owned the portrait-painting for several decades. By chance, someone saw the painting in his house and thought it had a striking resemblance to Shakespeare. Wadlow has gone on an extensive investigation on whether his painting could be a portrait of William Shakespeare, the most celebrated playwright-poet of Elizabethan England.

However there are two glaring challenges in the logic of the inquiry as presented in this documentary, above and beyond the inquirer Wadlow. Firstly, the entire argument hinges on whether the famous (or infamous) portrait located in the so-called Shakespeare First Folio by Martin Droeshout is a truly accurate portrait of the writer/playwright. This is a controversy which has continued to challenge the "orthodox" view concerning the identity of the poet-playwright. One of about two dozen such controversies. Scientific study is used to compare the portrait-painting in question and the portrait-engraving of the First Folio.

The other problem is more straight-forward. Sumptuary laws, regulations concerning dress, were very strict. The kind of garments worn depended upon one's social status. The lace collar of the subject seems to be that of a nobleman. Despite popular misconception, actors and playwrights (aside from nobility who wrote for their own entertainment) had a relatively low status in Elizabethan England. So if the "orthodox" view of Shakespeare is true, that the bard was the son of a glove-maker from Stratford-upon-Avon, the portrait-painting seems very self-contradictory. Shakespeare would not have sit for a painting wearing such a fancy lace collar associated with the nobility. Let's now explore comparisons with the portrait-engraving of the Shakespeare First Folio.

In 1623, about seven years after the passing of William of Stratford, the orthodox figure who supposedly wrote the plays as attributed to "William Shakespeare", the first collected works of his plays appeared in 1623. The book is nicknamed "The Shakespeare First Folio" and includes several works which had never appeared in print before, such as "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar". To offer a perspective on the value and importance of this book, which about 240 are known, a copy sold at auction recent to this writing for about $10 million.

Around the time of production, a portrait engraving was commissioned by someone associated with the publication of the book but we don't know who. Possibly Isaac Jaggard, the printer or John Heminges and Henry Condell who supposedly edited the folio.

However the documentary sort of glosses over any controversy regarding the first folio portrait.

One commentator simply says that the portrait must have been done in association with someone who knew what "Shakespeare" looked like. This is not evidence but only supposition. We have no primary source evidence as to the production of the portrait except for its appearance in the Shakespeare First Folio.

The first controversy regarding the Droeshout portrait (not to be confused with the painting in question) is offered by Ben Jonson himself who says in a poem flanking the title page which contains the portrait "look not on his picture, but his book." It's as if even Ben Jonson is saying the portrait is not a likeness and the 'real" Shakespeare can be found in the plays.

So the documentary relies on the portrait in question "lining up" with the Droeshout portrait. However if it were ever proven the Droeshot portait is not really of Shakespeare then the entire documentary's argument begins to fall apart. If one link is weak the entire chain can't hold.

As has been pointed out, in the Droeshout portrait, the doublet appears to be on backwards, except for the buttons. But even more intriguing is the head seems to be oversize and there's a strange line running on the right side of the face. Scholars skeptical of William of Stratford as the true author of the plays suggest it subtly shows that the "face" is in fact a mask. No other portrait by Droeshout has an over-sized head with a line on the side of the cheek.

During the documentary, an interesting argument about the portrait-painting was made about its possible "use". Maybe the portrait in question was a prop for some of the plays produced by the acting troop the Lord Chamberlain's Men and later the King's Men in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Experts who are offered the portrait for testing often comment how good condition the painting is! If this painting had truly been a prop in Elizabethan and early Jacobean productions of Shakespeare, it would be a wreck at best! Or entirely non-existent. Consider that theatrical productions of the time were rowdy affairs. Audience members got into skirmishes, there was pick-pocketing and sometimes food and other objects were thrown at the stage when they were displeased. So far as I know almost NO theatrical props survive from the period. And yet the commentators point out that props were used extensively in these productions.

Props didn't survive because they ended up destroyed in productions simply because they were used "to death". No one at the time thought there was any use for them beyond their pragmatic functions. Only one small drawing of a Shakespeare scene survives from prior to the publication of the First Folio so far as I know.

So the notion that this portrait by an unknown artist possibly of William Shakespeare could have been a prop is a bit tough to swallow. Even paintings housed for centuries in safe manor houses often have sustained damage. So the idea that a portrait being on display in dozens if not hundreds of performances and yet retains its exceptional condition is quite a stretch.

In my mind, the documentary proved it is a late Elizabethan/late 16th-century portrait of a nobleman. That's really it. The rest of the documentary assumes the Droeshout portrait is of William Shakespeare and some analysis suggests the portrait-painting has similarities with the First Folio portrait.

To set the record straight, if Shakespeare was a humble actor and theatrical writer, and also a tradesman of grain and land, he would not have been a nobleman. As the late Samuel Schoenbaum, staunch Stratfordian, was often fond of saying "He was a man among a men." As if one could otherwise! I think what Schoenbaum is suggesting is Shakespeare was not a nobleman but a "common man of the people". But the portrait-painting appears to be that of a nobleman! To my mind that's more crucial.

Yes William of Stratford might have been able to petition for a coat-of-arms but the orthodox view holds he was not of landed gentry. But another possible author of the Shakespearean canon, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was of landed gentry. Trouble is the portrait doesn't look like him either!

A good try but I think to prove this portrait is of William Shakespeare, poet/playwright, it would hinge upon nearly universal agreement that the Shakespeare First Folio portrait-engraving is also. Even Samuel Schoenbaum was skeptical of the Droeshout portrait. Story goes when Schoenbaum showed it to his son, his son thought it didn't look like a real person at all. He said it looked like a cartoon!

As a 49er fan and a great admirer of Joe Montana, I believe this documentary succeeds because it doesn't idealize Montana, a direction which might have been tempting. One of the most interesting segments is during his first season with the 49ers and the NFL in 1979. His NFL debut was not some predictive moment. He was put into a game against the Minnesota Vikings and completed no passes.

It's not for another year until he finally gets the nod as the starting quarterback. And this was a game for the ages even though at the time the 49ers had no chance to get into the playoffs. They were going against the New Orleans Saints.

At half-time, the 49ers were losing 35 to 7. Having a 28-point lead is usually more than enough to win a game. But Montana and the 49ers made one of the biggest come back wins in NFL history. They won the game 38-35.

The next year the 49ers with Montana at the helm and the genius of Bill Walsh guiding the team, the 49ers would make the most unlikely run for the Super Bowl in NFL history. At the beginning of the season, odds-makers had the 49ers at 300 to 1 against winning the Super Bowl.

So the doc is really about how Montana struggled to become the quarterback he became. He went from a precarious beginning with the Niners to probably among the two greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time, the other being Terry Bradshaw. Both quarterbacks were eclipsed with the emergence of Tom Brady who won a staggering seven Super Bowl titles. Still, being in the top three greatest quarterbacks of all time is not bad.

"The Poseidon Adventure" was at the beginning of the brief stint of disaster movies which were in vogue from circa 1970 to 1979. The producer of "Poseidon" was Irwin Allen who coincidentally (or maybe not!) produced "The Towering Inferno" a few years later. When "Airplane" spoofed the disaster movie in 1980 by making fun of all the cliches, the popularity of the disaster movie sort of sank.

After the passing of Gene Hackman my brother and I decided to consume "The Poseidon Adventure" which neither of us had seen but had known about for decades. It was interesting finally to give it the ole college watch. I would grade it as a bit above average among these types of films which doesn't mean everyone desires to watch these kinds of films!

The popcorn movie stars Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott who offers a sermon to some of the passengers before the mayhem begins. He sounds more like the basketball coach of "Hoosiers" than a preacher! He tells the congregation not to look to God for help but find their own resolve. Ironically it becomes the "theme" of the movie. Leslie Nielson billed as "The Captain" in a small role eventually stars in "Airplane!"

In the middle of a New Years Party aboard the cruise ship Poseidon somewhere in the Mediterranean, the ship capsizes. People go flying around. Strangely many passengers who were partying on the bottom of the ship survive to varying degrees because they are more or less on the top! The yeoman purser tells the passengers to remain where they are.

Reverend Scott (Hackman) differs from the purser and begins to formulate a plan for the surviving passengers to escape. In a sense he is acting out the sermon he preached. Lieutenant Mike Rogo (Ernest Borgnine) reluctant agrees but becomes the hot-headed foe of Scott.

A lot of the movie is about a kind of tug-of-war between Scott and Rogo regarding what to do next. On more than one occasion Rogo says to Scott "Who do you think you are?" which I guess was a popular phrase of the time. At one point, Scott uses a lot of expletives. Rogo calls him out by saying "You better watch your language, Preacher. You sound like you come from the slum or something!" Would somebody who's life is in serious danger really worry about someone else's "language"?

In true Hollywood style, A-list and name talent actors are among the small party of survivors who follow Hackman, including Red Buttons, Roddy McDowel, Shelly Winters, and child actors Eric Shea and Pamela Sue Martin in addition to Borgnine. (Martin went on to play Nancy Drew in the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mystery series). I don't have to tell you what happens to the non-name actors!

Still it's a decent flick which gets better as it goes along. When we the audience focus more on the dilemma and the characters' plights rather than their nuttiness it gets more tolerable. Still a few laughable lines pop up here and there. It does have the tendency for the characters to talk "too much" about the plot but that's how movies were made at the time.

The dialogue at the beginning is as dated as the ruffled shirts worn by many of the adult males. One of the back stories involves Rogo whose wife Linda we learn was a prostitute. She has a great line "I saw a young officer on deck the other day, and he looked DAMN familiar... even with his clothes on!" Is this a disaster movie or a bit of a comedy?