Irving Kershner and The Luck of Ginger Coffey

It must have been around thirty years ago that I first saw The Luck of Ginger Coffey. At the time, so early on in my experience with the world of cinema, I thought it was an extraordinary film. As I saw more movies, I thought, perhaps, it was not perfect as I imagined but it never fell from my top ten of the best working class dramas of the sixties. It is an excellent film with a commanding performance by Robert Shaw at its center. But its look, its feel, its pacing and its just right touch of pathos and humor can be credited to one man who time and time again exhibited the kind of skill and talent that made several more popular movies work but for which he rarely got noticed. That man, director Irvin Kershner, died on November 27, 2010 and the world of cinema may not quite realize just how great a director it lost.



Kershner wasn't working on any current films so the loss isn't one of immediate impact. There won't be any unfinished work that can't go on without him. The loss is that there is now no time left to honor a director that the world of cinema should have honored a long time ago. Of course, his films will continue to honor him but I would have liked to have seen the man himself share in that honor that seemed to constantly elude him.

On the obituaries you see all over the internet right now, from the major media outlets, three movies are listed front and center by which to remember Kershner: The Empire Strikes Back, Robocop 2 and Never Say Never Again. And I understand, too. Popular titles dealing with franchises such as Star Wars, Robocop and James Bond should not be ignored and if that gets people to notice him, more power to them. Certainly his turn with the Star Wars Saga was the best of the series and took an already excellent screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, and through his expert choices in framing and editing, added layers of depth unknown to any other movie in the Star Wars Universe.

But he did more, so much more, and the pinnacle of his other achievements was The Luck of Ginger Coffey and the impact it had on me cannot be overestimated. When I first saw it, on TBS back in the very early eighties, I was in the opening stages of advanced cinephilia. I had checked out all the classics, from Rules of the Game to Citizen Kane to 8 1/2 to Chinatown, and was steadily taking in more every week. When Ginger Coffey popped up on the schedule I had never heard of it. None of my many "History of the Movies" books had so much as mentioned the title. Kershner wasn't mentioned either, anywhere. So, I watched it with little expectations of anything more than a run-of-the-mill drama, directed by, as it turns out, that guy who did the last Star Wars movie.

Then I saw it, and everything changed. I was floored by how good it was and amazed it wasn't mentioned anywhere. And then, at that moment, I learned my first life lesson of cinephilia: Movie books, critics and historians lean heavily on a select few works, what might be called "the canon", and rarely venture outside of that safety zone. If you want to be a cinephile, you've got to stop relying on the movie books to guide you and make your own way.

It's a lesson movie blogs have really driven home with me, as in the last nearly four years of blogging I have discovered so many great films, films that I would easily rank alongside the canonical ones, that I hadn't even heard of until some adventurous blogger sought it out and wrote it up. It doesn't mean those films in the canon aren't worthy, they are. It simply means there is so much more that's been ignored or overlooked that deserves our attention. The Luck of Ginger Coffey is one of those films for me. In fact, it was one of the first reviews I did on Cinema Styles, something I didn't do often then and still don't but something I wanted to do to call attention to such a good film. It's a review I don't think too much of now, heavily relying on plot description more than anything else, but there it is anyway, one of only four reviews listed on IMDB's "external reviews" for the film, a sad testament to how undervalued it is.

Irvin Kershner died on Saturday and took with him a talent and skill for character in drama that made films like The Empire Strikes Back stand out from the rest of the series and made dramas like Ginger Coffey that much more resonant. He will be missed.

Unseen Images: The Luck of Ginger Coffey

INTRODUCTION

Irvin Kershner is not a famous director, but you probably know at least a few of his films. He directed George C. Scott in the minor 1967 hit, The Flim-Flam Man, Richard Harris in The Return of a Man called Horse (1976), Faye Dunaway in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Sean Connery in his return to the role of James Bond in Never Say Never Again (1983) and most famously, the cast of Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). But most people have never heard of his best film, made on a limited budget with a relatively unknown cast in 1964. The film is The Luck of Ginger Coffey. It starred Robert Shaw who had just recently gone from anonymity to blockbuster recognition with his appearance in From Russia with Love but his skills as an actor were still untested, still an unknown quantity. After this film the matter would be settled. His performance as Ginger Coffey is one of the best performances of the sixties, bar none. Along with Shaw was Mary Ure, Shaw's real life wife, playing Ginger's wife in the film.

By the late fifties, Britain had started to produce what would come to be known as "kitchen-sink dramas." Some notable ones include Look Back in Anger and This Sporting Life. The term came from an expressionist painting by John Bratby featuring a kitchen sink. The critic David Sylvester wrote an article referring to trends in art going more towards featuring the banality of everyday life and referred to the Bratby painting in the article. The term caught on and soon an entire genre was created. Although many films could fit into the "kitchen-sink" genre, generally speaking the characters should be from the U.K., the film should be in black and white, possess no cinematic pretensions and involve ordinary people dealing with ordinary problems. The Luck of Ginger Coffey fits that formulation to a tee and although it is rarely mentioned among "kitchen-sink" dramas it is easily among the best.

SYNOPSIS

It is clear from the beginning that James Francis Coffey, nicknamed "Ginger", is a dreamer. He has moved his wife Vera and his daughter Paulie to Canada in search of a better life. Ginger has so far failed at every job he's taken but he's sure that here he will succeed. "Those jobs weren't for me," he tells his wife. "They couldn't see my true talents." Ginger always has a reason why those other jobs failed and it never seems to be him.

It doesn't take long for Vera and Paulie to lose faith in Ginger and long to return to Ireland. Vera starts saving money for tickets back home but Ginger takes the money and blows it. When confronted with Vera's fury over this Ginger assures her they don't need to save because any minute now his ship will roll in. But the Coffey's do have one thing in their favor, a rich friend who can get Ginger the job he wants at a local paper.

It seems Ginger has always fancied himself a journalist and believes that's what he should be doing. When he's given a job as a low level copy-editor at a local newspaper he accepts it begrudgingly. He doesn't feel a man of his age and wisdom should be starting at the bottom but should be given a byline his first day on the job. At this point, one begins to feel the same frustration with Ginger that his wife and daughter feel and it comes as no surprise to anyone but Ginger when Vera and Paulie leave him, taking up residence with that rich friend. After taking everything with them Ginger has no choice but to move in to the local Y.M.C.A.

Here he meets a man who works for a local diaper service and Ginger is offered a delivery job. He takes it as an effort to show Vera and Paulie that he is willing to do hard work to win them back. Paulie is convinced and with his duel income he is able to afford a small flat for himself and Paulie, all the while assuring Vera that his promotion at the paper to a reporter is just around the corner.

At the diaper delivery job Ginger excels. He comes up with new ideas to make the service more efficient and even re-designs their logo to draw in more business. And that's when it happens. That's when the viewer looks into the eyes of a man destined for failure and knows there is nothing they can do about it. It is all the more frustrating and heartbreaking because while everyone around him can see it, Ginger cannot. The diaper service offers him a promotion, a big one, where he can be in charge of taking the service in new directions.

Ginger turns it down.

Accepting the promotion would mean devoting all of his time to the job meaning he would have to leave his low-level newspaper job. And that's the job that Ginger is convinced is his future. By this point, perhaps feeling sorry for him, Vera has come back. The struggles continue as Ginger has left the diaper service to focus on the paper job only to be laid-off. No promotion. No reporter's byline. And now, no job at all.

Ginger, drunk and depressed, relieves himself on a tree in a public park and is arrested for indecent exposure. In the courtroom, jokes are made about drinking and the Irish and Ginger is humiliated. Ginger tells his story to the judge, who takes pity on him and dismisses the charges. In the final scene, Vera waits for Ginger outside the courthouse. As she tells him it will get better, they walk off across the courthouse lawn together, unsure of themselves and with an uncertain future ahead.

CONCLUSION

The Luck of Ginger Coffey is not a "happy" film by any stretch of the imagination. But it's not as depressing as the synopsis makes it sound either. There is hope for Ginger. One could reasonably assume he could go back to the diaper company with his tail between his legs and get his old job back. But that's not really the point. Like them or hate them, the point of the "kitchen-sink" dramas was to get inside the lives of everyday people and that didn't always mean a rosy ending for the title character, ala Georgy Girl. Sometimes, it didn't always mean an ending at all, at least not in the traditional sense.

As the film ends the story line is depressing but the characters are not. Vera has returned to Ginger and is encouraging him. People cannot change who they are overnight or perhaps ever but they can take steps in the right direction. Ginger worked two jobs to prove to himself and his wife and daughter that he could do it. Sad as the ending may seem there is hope, hope for both of them.

Orson Welles famously said, "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." The point being that we all have multiple happy endings and multiple sad endings but they're not really endings at all, just starting points for the next step. The Luck of Ginger Coffey shows us a man with many happy and sad endings weaving in and out of his life. Picking one to start or end his story would not help the viewer to understand him. We understand Ginger only through watching his decisions produce consequences after an "ending" or "beginning" has occurred. We, the viewers, can see where those starting and stopping points are. The tragedy of Ginger Coffey is that, try as he may, he simply cannot. As he walks from the courthouse we have hope for him and his wife, hope that he will see those "beginnings" when they arrive, but ultimately fear that he will not. It's not a happy ending but it's the only ending the movie can give us. We may not have a cut and dry conclusion, but we know Ginger Coffey well, and we understand him. Hopefully one day, he will too.

*****ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS FOR THIS POST HERE*****