Charly (DVD)

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Word has it that Pres. John F. Kennedy selected Cliff Robertson as the man to portray him in "PT-109" (1963), the Hollywood version of his WWII heroism in the South Pacific. But Robertson hand-picked himself to play "Charly," for which he won the Best Actor Oscar in 1968.

Robertson had played the same part on television, but after being passed over for two meaty roles he'd played on TV that went to Paul Newman ("The Hustler") and Jack Lemmon ("The Days of Wine and Roses") in big-screen versions, he was taking no chances. This time, Robertson bought the film rights to "Flowers for Algernon," a book by Daniel Keyes about a mentally challenged man whose intellect rises following experimental brain surgery.

The Keyes story should be familiar to many Americans, because it's frequently included in junior high and high school curricula—undoubtedly because the language is so accessible and the story so straightforward. In the Nebula Award-winning 1966 novel, Charlie Gordon is a likable man with an IQ of 68 who tells his story in "progris riports." Part of the interest comes from watching his language change as his world, his sense of himself, and his surroundings gradually expand. At the start of the novel, Gordon is as naïve as Alice Walker's narrator from "The Color Purple," though, like Celie, he's determined to learn how to read and write.

The film opens with Charly hanging out on college campuses listening to heady (and, we might add, pretentious) overlapping conversations that to him are white noise on the order of cars backfiring, police sirens wailing, children laughing, drivers honking, and passers-by jabbering. Director Ralph Nelson jumps right into what Charly wants: to elevate himself so that he can understand what his co-workers and "friends" at the bakery are saying. We learn that he's been catching free rides on a Boston tour bus each week in order to expose himself to the spiel and signage along the same route, and that he's been taking night classes in English for the past two years in an effort to master language. Robertson's performance is solid, but one might add "two-note" as he works slack-jawed and shuffling with vacuous eyes to portray Charly, and basically plays himself as Charlie. Then again, this isn't a "Rain Man" script with a range of highs and lows. The most demanding scene asked of Robertson is one where Charly's fixation with his teacher goes from love to lust, and from gentle to forceful actions.

Claire Bloom plays the ESL teacher who is also inexplicably the psychologist that conducts Charly's interview in a room where Drs. Straus (Lila Skala) and Nemur (Leon Janney) watch from behind a two-way mirror. She's stiff and proper but obviously has a soft spot for Charly, whom she hopes will be selected as the first human guinea pig for these seemingly benign Frankenstinian folks. Drs. Straus and Nemur have somehow managed to elevate the intelligence of a mouse they call Algernon through brain surgery. Now, this couple, which comes across more like Masters and Johnson, want to do the same for a human by "removing damaged or underdeveloped portions of the brain and permit implanted tissue which has been chemically restructured to produce brain protein at an accelerated and supernormal rate." That's how the Keyes novel qualified for a sci-fi Nebula Award, and before that, a 1959 Hugo Award when it was much shorter and less developed.

"Eight is Enough" fans will probably get a kick out of seeing a very young "Richard" Van Patten with a full head of hair playing the lab assistant whose primary task seems to be conducting maze experiments. While Charly is being screened to see if he is a likely candidate for the operation, he's pitted against Algernon. While the tiny white mouse races through a maze to find food, his frustrated human counterpart struggles with pencil and a paper copy of the same maze. "How'd you feel if you was dumber than a mouse?" Charly says to his teacher, Mrs Kinnnian.