Cinema: Quiet Destruction

In the late 19th century, Anton Chekhov raised the nuance to an art form. The technique moved one of his contemporaries to complain to him of The Sea Gull: "My dear fellow, it isn't dramatic." The paralyzing problem with this film version of Chekhov's first major play is that it is far too dramatic.

Chekhov's narrative is meticulously simple, containing, as he put it, "much talk of literature, little action, and five poods* of love." Director Sidney Lumet, who hammered home The Pawnbroker, pummels away at Chekhov's plot. At the country estate of a retired civil servant named Sorin (Harry Andrews) is assembled a group of people who over the course of two years will quietly destroy one another: Sorin's sister Arkadina (Simone Signoret), an aging actress vacationing in the country with her lover Trigorin (James Mason), a successful author; Arkadina's son Konstantin (David Warner), who yearns also to be a writer; and Nina (Vanessa Redgrave), an aspiring actress worshiped by Konstantin and enamored of Trigorin. Almost ritualistically, they feed on each other's weaknesses and delusions.

Chekhov called The Sea Gull a comedy, but any traces of wit have been pretty well destroyed by Lumet's lumbering technique. The actors perform as if they were all on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Only David Warner as Konstantin and some of the supporting players—notably Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott, Ronald Radd and Kathleen Widdoes—effectively explore the full dimensions of their roles. Lumet moves his camera incessantly to give the illusion of action, but uses fadeouts to duplicate the curtain falling at the end of an act. He attempts to preserve the tense theatrical effect of the family's silent realization of Konstantin's suicide—but betrays the whole purpose of the scene by cutting away to a shot of the boy's bloody body floating in a lake. Most disturbing of all, Lumet and Cinematographer Gerry Fisher (Accident) have shot the whole film in softly gauzed pastel colors, thereby reducing Chekhov's intricate dramatic tapestry to the sleazy cheapness of a picture postcard.