Title Tale

There is a character called Harry Morgan in the film; he has a boat and works the same waters. That is about where the similarities end. The novel is bleak and politically despondent. The film is bright with the prospect of victory in the war and ecstatic about the romance between Bogart and Bacall--or Harry and Slim. It could have been called Having a Cigarette and a Match or even It's a Wonderful Life, it is so loaded with fun, laughs and happiness.

The virtues of the musical, four-word title that means anything and everything reach their peak just where you might expect--with what is really the most successful film of all time: Gone With the Wind. The woman who wrote the 1936 novel (and never wrote another book), Margaret Mitchell, hardly knew that she was writing one of the great sellers. She was filled with doubts. All through the writing of her book, and until about six months before publication, she wanted to call Scarlett O'Hara "Pansy." As far as the title was concerned, one alternate she preferred was "Tote the Weary Load." Well, who knows, it might have worked under that sadder phrase. On the other hand, the word "weary" is a downer, and "tote" was not even common in the '30s. Gone With the Wind is braver, somehow it seems more fatalistic and yet it is the sentiment of survival and endurance. It may sound fanciful to stress the soft play on two W's, to underline the rhythmic sweep of the title. But the book was a phenomenon, and every little thing helps. I think Tote the Weary Load is as depressing as Gone With the Wind is romantic. In the same way, I don't think producer David O. Selznick could ever have made the world go mad over the search for the right Pansy O'Hara.

Such things are beyond proof. But that need not deter the impulse of, or our faith in, those bold figures--authors, producers or directors--who hold out for one title rather than another. For months as he wrote his play, Tennessee Williams was stuck on the title The Poker Night. There was even one scene that he introduced with that label. But as he worked on the several drafts of the play, while living in New Orleans, he noted: "I live near the main street of the quarter. Down this street, running on the same tracks, are two streetcars, one named 'Desire' and the other named 'Cemeteries.' Their indiscourageable progress up and down Royal Street struck me as having some symbolic bearing of a broad nature on the life of the Vieux Carré--and everywhere else, for that matter."

He did not add these streetcars to his play. There is no mention of them. But somehow he was convinced about a title, and so the play became A Streetcar Named Desire when it might have been By Royal Street to Cemeteries. The play was a wild hit. The title is so strange and unexpected, and for most people so inexplicable. Yet, honestly, give the play to a hundred people and ask for a title. Don't you think The Kindness of Strangers would prevail?

Then there are titles that guide you into the heart of the mystery. In 1957, Alfred Hitchcock was developing a picture with the working title From Among the Dead. Which, I think, sounds like a horror film. The project was adapted from a French novel, D'Entre Les Morts [Between Deaths], by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. When published in English, the novel had been called The Living and the Dead. None of those satisfied Paramount, the studio making the film. There was a search for titles, with many candidates, including Tonight Is Ours and The Mad Carlotta (which only shows that if you ask enough people you'll wonder why you bothered to ask anyone). Then Hitchcock had a brainwave: Vertigo. It was a story about a man who suffered from vertigo, but it was also a film that explored the full poetic meaning in the idea of "falling in love." The studio sighed. Vertigo was off-putting. It would remind people of dizziness and feeling ill. Instead, they urged _Face in the Shadow and Possessed by a Stranger. In the end, Hitchcock prevailed, and in the next few years his films were emblazoned with two of the greatest of movie titles--_North by Northwest and Psycho.

Well, of course, I could go on forever (rather a nice title for an autobiography). Titles lead in so many odd directions. There's a film named for a character who never appears (Rebecca). There's another named for a country never visited (Brazil); yet another with the name of a district where only the last scene takes place (Chinatown). There's a movie with a title that seems to be in defiance of how you're meant to behave at the movies (Don't Look Now). And there are titles so full of information and yet so inaccurate they seem to have been chosen by a deranged computer (The Postman Always Rings Twice).

With such infinite possibilities, one might as well stop (the second, concluding volume of the autobiography). But I wouldn't be true to the contemporary rabid taste for "best" lists if I didn't offer 10 American titles that are deserving of praise even if they're not necessarily the 10 best. I should add that I have deliberately omitted titles already mentioned in this brief survey:

1. The Big Sleep (it comes from the Raymond Chandler novel, of course, and no one ever falls asleep in the movie; but wise guys know that it's a grand metaphor referring to the ultimate rest);

2. Pulp Fiction (nothing whatever to do with Quentin Tarantino's story, but a fond tribute to the whole genre he is emulating);

3. They Live by Night (the perfect group name for those in and watching film noir);

4. The Third Man (and David Selznick wanted to call it Night in Vienna);

5. Fatal Attraction (brilliant contradiction in terms);

6. The Searchers (with its inbuilt sense of failure, and its inner alert to inwardness);

7. _Notorious _(some words are just made for lights);

8. Radio Days (the pure sense of period and the pun on daze);

9. The Shop Around the Corner (just makes me smile to think of that old Hungarian section of Culver City);

10. Some Like It Hot (nobody's perfect--so step on the gas).

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David Thomson wrote "10 Oscars That Make the Academy Look Good" for the March issue of Movieline.

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