Ill-Informed Gadfly

I do try to be thorough, hence this trip back to the year of my birth (1978) to revisit the original “Superman.” There were parts I remembered pretty well, although I can’t believe now that I ever saw the first 45 minutes or so, encompassing the prologue on Krypton, Superman’s childhood and teenage years in Smallville and the 18-year-old Superman’s discovery of his Fortress of Solitude. I didn’t remember anything until after Clark Kent’s arrival in Metropolis. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, that’s when the movie comes to life.

I had read that Christopher Reeve brought a lot of sly humor to his performances both as Superman and as Clark Kent — Roger Ebert has been particularly kind to him retroactively — but I couldn’t be sure if it was well-meaning nostalgia. I thought, perhaps, critics were treating Reeve delicately because of the horrific turn his life took in the mid-90s. They weren’t. Reeve deserves most of the credit for this movie’s success. When “Superman” is fun and lively, it’s largely because of him. I can’t say it better than Ebert, who wrote in his review of “Superman Returns” that Reeve “could play the character straight and let us know he was kidding.” Reeve clearly gets a kick out of playing Superman. He manages to make an indestructible icon seem loose, free and human.

Given the talent the movie surrounds him with, it’s all the more remarkable that Reeve seizes control. Marlon Brando got $3 million, and top billing, for 11 days of work as Jor-El, and I think the producers overpaid. They get good mileage out of his voice, but that’s about it. He looks like his mind is elsewhere. Gene Hackman makes a shrill, largely ineffectual Lex Luthor. The scenes between Hackman and Ned Beatty, as Lex’s bird-brained henchman, Otis, just die up there on the screen. It’s rare to see two great actors twisting in the wind like that. Both are capable of such subtlety that I’m not sure they know what to do with humor pitched to the six-year-olds in the audience. I don’t really blame them, though: Their byplay is poorly written, and the director, Richard Donner, brings little comic timing. And yes, my spotty memory did serve me right: In the scenes in Lex’s sub-Grand Central Station lair, they do seem to be drowning in the production design.

When “Superman” doesn’t click, that’s the reason. Donner and company try too hard to create a storybook feel. The movie is overproduced (a hallmark of “presenter” Alexander Salkind and his producer son, Ilya), reverent and often bland. One can sense the duty Donner and his screenwriters felt not to screw it up. At least they get the setting-up of the sequel out of the way first, with the banishment from Krypton of the three villains who will be central to “Superman II.”

Ultimately, though, the movie remains watchable. John Williams unleashes the blaring trumpets for an unapologetically triumphant score, and his cue for the flying sequence with Superman and Lois Lane is among the most beautiful of his early work. Salty old Glenn Ford was a great choice to play Jonathan Kent. Margot Kidder is quick, high-strung and earthy as Lois Lane (although her rhyming interior monologue while she flies is an embarrassment to all involved). She’s an endearingly imperfect love interest for a perfect guy; her flaws win you (and Superman) over. And Donner, unlike Bryan Singer, doesn’t oversell Superman’s heroic deeds. There’s a nice little montage in which Superman discovers that he can rescue people in peril and fight crime, then that’s pretty much it until the climactic sequence.

In that climax, Donner again does what Singer couldn’t: He finds a way to make it impossible for Superman to do everything, with Lex Luthor launching two missiles simultaneously, the second causing a massive earthquake in California that ultimately kills Lois Lane. Superman then has to defy his father and interfere with human history, reversing the earth’s rotation to turn back time and save her. It’s a lovely resolution, one that tests Superman’s physical and moral strength.

I look forward now to “Superman II,” which was being shot at the same time as “Superman” before Donner was fired. Richard Lester was brought on, reshot most of Donner’s footage and, by many accounts, left an indelible mark. He’s a far more interesting filmmaker.