After a couple of iffy choices earlier in the decade, Michael Caine made the surprisingly sweet and enjoyable comedy, Sweet Liberty in 1986. We take a look back…
Michael Caine showed no sign of slowing down as he entered his third decade as a leading man. The 1980s would see him win his first Academy Award (Hannah and Her Sisters), tackle new genres such as horror (The Hand) and shark-based revenge movie (Jaws: The Revenge) whilst continuing to work with interesting new auteurs like Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) as well as old friends from classic Hollywood such as John Huston (Escape to Victory).
Film by film, I’ll be taking a look at Caine’s 1980s filmography to see what hidden gems I can unearth alongside the more familiar classics…
Spoilers for Sweet Liberty lie ahead…
Directed by: Alan Alda (The Four Seasons, A New Life, Betsy’s Wedding)
Tagline: Alan Alda’s hit comedy about life, liberties and the pursuit of happiness.
Other Featured Geezers: Alan Alda as Michael Burgess, Michelle Pfeiffer as Faith Healy, Bob Hoskins as Stanley Gould, Lillian Gish as Cecelia Burgess, Lois Chiles as Leslie, Saul Rubinek as Bo Hodges.
What’s it all about, Alfie?: Alan Alda plays uptight college history professor Michael Burgess (basically he’s just playing Alan Alda), whose serious historical novel about the American Revolution, titled Sweet Liberty, is being adapted into a Hollywood movie.
However, the filmmakers are taking (sweet) liberties with the source material, determined to make it funnier and sexier to appeal to the youth. “This isn’t my book, there are all these naked women and people keep falling off their horses!” Burgess bemoans.
To make matters worse, they are filming on location in his hometown and thus his cosy life is uprooted by the arrival of the eccentric cast and crew including lascivious leading man Elliott James (Michael Caine), committed method actor Faith Healy (Michelle Pfeiffer), and overbearing screenwriter Stanley Gould (Bob Hoskins).
Meanwhile his relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Gretchen (Lise Hilboldt), is on rocky ground due to his unwillingness to marry, and his elderly kooky mother (Lillian Gish) is proving a further impediment to his peace and quiet.
Caine–ness: Caine plays Elliott James, the “international star” taking the male lead of the dastardly British colonel in the film adaptation of Burgess’ novel. Although James, much to Burgess’ chagrin, is keen “to exile the beastliness from his character” to make the colonel a more likeable romantic figure.
James is a big deal. When we first see him, six minutes into the film, he’s emerging from a coach into a crowd of adoring fans. We’re told that he’s “number four at the box office. He comes on the screen in Paris and they wet their pants in Manilla”. He’s universally adored, apart from perhaps by the cinema cleaners’ union of Manilla.
James is a charming cad and a shameless flirt, whether it’s with his makeup lady, Burgess’ girlfriend, or the president of the local college’s wife, Leslie (played by former Bond girl Lois Chiles), whom he takes a particular shine to (who can blame him, she was in Moonraker). He even gets Leslie a small part in the film so that he has an excuse to go “learn lines” with her in his trailer.
When we first see him schmoozing with Leslie, he’s describing the character that he’s playing; “Bit of a bastard actually. Aristocratic, overbearing, insatiable lover.”
“Well how close to you is that in real life?” Leslie asks.
“Only the insatiable part,” the cheeky devil responds.
He does have self-awareness, confessing to Burgess: “I have a wonderful wife and I adore her. But I’ve been very naughty with several of the ladies in the village. I always do that.” But he seems to have little desire to change his ways, perhaps because he’s so effortlessly likeable people simply forgive him his many adorable transgressions.
James is also a daredevil. He does all his own stunts, drives erratically on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic without breaking a sweat, and is an ace at fencing. He challenges Burgess to fence, without masks and jackets, saying “I won’t lay a blade on you, and you certainly won’t lay a blade on me” before proceeding to thoroughly slice up Burgess’ shirt, disarm him and cause him to topple down the side of a small hill. But, as mentioned, he’s so innately likeable that Burgess doesn’t seem to take too much offence at this affable assault on his person.
He casually steals a helicopter for a joy ride during a garden party (he flew them in Korea – whether during the war or on a holiday isn’t clarified) and causes a kerfuffle with the guests on the ground, blowing them and their drinks all over the place, but everyone laughs it all off.
He also takes Leslie, Burgess and Stanley Gould (Bob Hoskins) on an impromptu day trip to an amusement park where, mid-ride on a rollercoaster, he switches places, from back seat to front, so that he can snog Leslie while Gould is having a panic attack in the back. The fun of this scene is that it’s clear from the footage that these four actors actually did just go on a rollercoaster. So, if you ever wanted to vicariously experience a day out at Alton Towers with Caine and Hoskins then this is your chance.
After their theme park excursion James ends the evening dancing along the road singing Knees Up Mother Brown and telling a story about how, one time during the war, he was coming home from the air raid shelter with his family, so bloody glad to be alive, that they locked arms and started singing Knees Up Mother Brown in the street when around the corner Winston Churchill appeared, “he looked at us, and do you know what he said?” James pauses for effect and then launches into another raucous chorus of Knees Up Mother Brown.
Caine, in that scene in particular, but throughout the movie seems to be having such a good time that it’s infectious. He’s totally believable as a lovable movie star (understandably not much of a stretch for him) and he’s also looking particularly dapper.
Caine is second billed, and only a supporting character here, but he’s still onscreen for a good chunk of time and certainly makes an impression. He’s using his usual accent but isn’t shouty or pointy – more smiley and soft spoken. It’s technically Alda’s film, but Caine is one of the supporting players who upstages everyone else.
Caine-nections: Bob Hoskins also had a memorable supporting role in 1983’s The Honorary Consul.
Alan Alda was in 1978’s California Suite, one of my least liked films that I’ve covered for this feature. He makes up for it with his work on Sweet Liberty, so he’s forgiven.
Caine plays Elliott James here, played Doctor Robert Elliott in Dressed to Kill (1980) and played an Elliot in his previous film Hannah And Her Sisters (1986). Talk about typecasting!
*I’m only counting from Caine’s first starring role in Zulu onwards.
Best Non-Caine Actor: The film is peppered with recognisable character actors, whether it’s Scrubs’ John C McGinley in his first credited feature film role as an enthusiastic revolutionary re-enactor with a very special pike, Frasier’s Saul Rubinek as the beleaguered director, or Beverly Hill Cop III’s Timothy Carhart as the stunt co-ordinator.
I was happiest of all to see Bob Hoskins and his many garish suits. The energy of the film picks up whenever Hoskins is onscreen as the overly excitable screenwriter Stanley Gould. Gould is ecstatic to be working with Burgess, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, since his own background is writing questions for game shows. Burgess is less ecstatic.
Hoskins has ten times the energy of everyone else on screen and leaves no scenery unchewed. This especially makes him an amusing double act with the laidback Alda, whom he sometimes kisses on the side of the head in moments of excitement (which Burgess doesn’t appreciate, perhaps because of the inevitable beard rash).
There seems to have been a challenge to find the most bizarrely amusing visual image to place Hoskins within. Whether it’s his head emerging from a tiny shower curtain like a beardy insect birthing from its cocoon. Him preparing to eat a banana in bed with an unnecessarily intense look on his face. Munching on a massive bag of crisps while wearing headphones shaped like burgers. Or him jammed sideways in the back seat of a small car. All comedy gold. A Hoskins for all seasons.
My second favourite character is Burgess’ mother, Cecilia, played by 88-year-old veteran actress Lillian Gish in her penultimate movie. Gish was a silent movie icon, dubbed the “First Lady of the Screen” by Vanity Fair in 1927, and was most noted for her collaborations with DW Griffiths. Sweet Liberty was her 104th film.
Cecilia thinks the devil is in the kitchen, won’t eat any food that hasn’t been sitting on top of her TV for 24 hours so that the radiation has killed off any poison, and is obsessed with tracking down and reconnecting with her ex-boyfriend Johnny Delvecchio (even though he moved towns to get away from her). She’s also desperate for her son to bond with her dog, Rex; “When he hears you on the telephone, he smiles,” she tells Burgess as Rex stares indifferently at him. After Burgess pointedly refuses to give Rex a kiss after his mother asks him to, she plaintively responds, “Not on the mouth.” It’s my favourite line delivery of the film.
Alda is Alda and doing his usual wisecracking deadpan schtick, but he’s likeable enough even though I wasn’t overly invested in his relationship issues with his long-suffering girlfriend Gretchen (Lise Hilboldt). Gretchen doesn’t want to move in with Burgess unless they’re married (which is fair enough since his house looks like he may need to take out home insurance against Amityville horrors). Burgess doesn’t want to get married, and so they are at a stalemate.
Hilbodt only has three other feature film credits, with Sweet Liberty being her only major role, with most of her work being in television. But she’s good in this and doesn’t stand out as being less experienced among her more seasoned co-stars.
Burgess rides a motorcycle which prominently features on the film’s posters, but this doesn’t play a role in the film other than giving Alda the chance to briefly look a bit cool. Burgess also offers practical tips on de-heading an iceberg lettuce that can be followed at home. But in spite of Alda giving his character those two cool traits, he’s still not nearly as effortlessly charming as Caine and Hoskins.
The last notable cast member is a young Michelle Pfeiffer, still early in her career with her biggest hit so far having being 1983’s Scarface. She’s great, and gives a surprisingly grounded performance as method actress Faith Healy. She’s determined to properly capture the true essence of the historical figure she’s playing, which endears her to Burgess who becomes somewhat infatuated with her in her historical guise.
My Bleedin’ Thoughts: I was coming into Sweet Liberty, a film that I had never even heard of before, braced for the absolute worst.
Although some of his finest work has been in comedy drama, Caine’s track record for picking outright comedy projects has so far been shaky (Blame It On Rio and Water being recent consecutive stinkers at this time). To top that, I also have never warmed to Alan Alda as a leading man, here pulling triple duties as director, writer and star in his sophomore directorial outing after 1981’s The Four Seasons.
Unhelpfully, it also doesn’t have the most enticing of pre-title sequences. Instead of a death-defying ski-jump stunt, or a pulse-pounding escape from a massive rolling boulder, to pump up the audience before the cut to the title credit, you get Alda’s character sedately walking along the street discussing his living arrangements with his long-term girlfriend.
As the film went on, however, I quite soon started to warm to it, and eventually, much to my surprise, actually found myself having a pretty good time. Apparently, the original nugget of inspiration came to Alda when, visiting his terminally ill father in hospital, he was given a headshot and a resume by one of the nurses. A similar scene features in Sweet Liberty, and the rest of the plot, which isn’t particularly related to that, developed afterwards from that first incident.
It’s by no means a masterpiece, but it definitely doesn’t deserve to be forgotten or lumped in with Caine’s true stinkers. It’s a gentle and likeable film. There’s nothing controversial or upsetting here; it looks pleasant (Frank Tidy is the accurately named DOP – it’s all competently shot) and has a reassuringly generic 80s muzak soundtrack to soothe the nerves.
I don’t want to oversell it, but I was pleasantly surprised by Sweet Liberty and would tentatively recommend it, especially for those looking for some light escapism.
Trivia (courtesy of IMDB): Reportedly Lillian Gish turned down the role of Cecilia Burgess four times because she believed that the filmmakers had confused her with her sister Dorothy Gish. The fifth time she met with producers, she accepted the part. Much like Candyman, the key to summoning Lillian Gish was speaking her name five times.
Alda’s younger half-brother, Antony Alda, played a movie crew member. To avoid confusion, he really should be called Antony Younga.
The real historical event that Burgess’ novel is based on is the Battle of Cowpens 1781 which was the subject of the film The Patriot (2000) starring Mel Gibson. If this film was about Mel Gibson coming to a small town, it would be less of a comedy and more of a psychological thriller.
Overall Thoughts: A lightweight but surprisingly enjoyable comedy with a solid supporting comic turn from Caine.
Rating: 3.5/5 Rollercoaster rides with Bob Hoskins.
Up Next: You wait ages for a Bob Hoskins and then two come along at once! It’s Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa which sees Caine make a welcome return to the British gangster genre.
