"And now, Mr. Serling!"

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09/08/2010

"And now, Mr. Serling!"

Rod Serling

The Divine Rod

What an inspired choice, to make Serling the show's narrator. When everything else about The Twilight Zone fades from memory -- plots, performances, actors -- two interstitial, wrapping-paper elements persist: that twinkly-twinkly theme song (second only to John Williams's Jaws score for sheer musical efficiency -- four notes instead of two), and the abiding presence of Serling himself. With his crinkly smile, his pointed, confiding voice, his nervous posture, his aura of a 1950s chain-smoking man of letters, Serling embodies the persistent authorial presence behind the weekly anthology series. He's our favorite slightly weird uncle, making his appearance to tell us another tale of the bizarre. The quality of the episodes varies but he's always there, putting the Official Seal on the proceedings, comforting us, guiding us.

Twilight Zone, liberated by its anthology format, encompasses a wide tonal range -- from gentle Dickensian whimsy to broad humor to outright scariness. As wide as the range in tones is the range in quality. I've had an appropriately worshipful attitude toward the show since childhood, but watching dozens of its episodes now (many for the first time), I start to see the man behind the curtain. The writing depends heavily on ironic, revelatory twists, usually expressing some moral judgment on a good or bad characteristic of the protagonist. The formula isn't especially complicated, the twist is often heavily telegraphed, and the moralism underlying the writing becomes occasionally cloying. But even in its second-tier episodes, Twilight Zone often escapes the trap of mediocrity by extending some element a little further -- either through the impassioned emotion of the lead performances (the show's cast is a who's-who of film and television talent from its era and earlier ones -- you can make yourself dizzy reading off the guest stars -- Burgess Meredith, William Shatner, Buster Keaton, Mickey Rooney, Don Rickles, Robert Redford, and on and on and on), or through the ornately literate dialogue, or a quality of randomness that sometimes creeps into the plotting. Of this last, a notable example is The Odyssey of Flight 33, whose finale offers no resolution but merely drifts into the air. That very absence of resolution -- in contrast to many another episode whose plot is tied up in a neat moralistic bow -- is the thing that lingers with us.

One of the episodes I've most enjoyed, lately, is The Obsolete Man. Written by Serling and directed by Elliot Silverstein, this episode exists at a three-way intersection among George Orwell, avant-garde theater, and German Expressionism. It's not one of the show's perfect episodes, but it illustrates the way weaknesses in one element can be compensated for by strengths in others. Thematically, The Obsolete Man is rather uninteresting -- its depiction of a statist dystopia, exemplified by a ruthless apparatchik (Fritz Weaver) and defied by The Last Noble Individualist (Burgess Meredith, as a humble librarian who's considerably braver than most librarians I have met), is boilerplate. But the two lead actors generate real sparks in their confrontations -- particularly the opening scene, in which Weaver denounces Meredith with such a thundering absence of subtlety that it becomes hypnotic. Weaver's pull-out-all-the-stops performance strengthens my belief in the principle that overacting is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it can have a wonderfully stimulating, breath-of-fresh-air effect. An actor who can really chew the scenery well -- who turns up the volume from strength rather than desperation, who can modulate his voice and gesture convincingly -- can make quite a splash, as Weaver does here.

The Obsolete Man

Fritz Weaver in high dudgeon

Note also the dramatic deep-focus compositions, the heavy reliance on diagonal lines, and the dramatic lighting. We tend to think of Twilight Zone as a theatrical show, dependent primarily on actors and writing for its impact. But sometimes -- here, to be sure, and also (for instance) in the silent-style Buster Keaton episode Once Upon A Time -- the show displays powerful cinematic and visual qualities. The excellent transfers on the CBS DVD release highlight the often-superb black-and-white cinematography. I'll leave with a few more frames from The Obsolete Man, which (to me at least) came as a pleasant surprise, a lesser-known, slightly flawed gem from Serling's oeuvre.

Obsoleteman3_400

Burgess Meredith

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Posted at 11:31 PM in Television | Permalink

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