Cliff Robertson had been burned twice before. He had starred in television adaptations of "The Days of Wine and Roses" and "The Hustler", only to lose the screen roles to Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman. Both Lemmon and Newman received Best Actor nominations for their performances.
In 1961, Robertson starred in "The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon", a television adaptation of the classic short novel "Flowers For Algernon". This time, Robertson made sure that he would play the lead character in the cinematic version. He bought the rights to the story. He was eventually rewarded with an Oscar for Best Actor, for his role in Charly.
Charly is a friendly, mildly mentally retarded man. He works as a janitor at a bakery, where the employees play endless dirty tricks on him. He also attends night school, earning the sympathy of his attractive teacher, Alice (Claire Bloom).
Charly volunteers for experimental brain surgery that will make him smarter. The operation eventually succeeds. Not only does Charly become smarter than his fellow patient, a mouse named Algernon, he becomes a genius. He also makes a long-expected pass at Alice. But while times are good for Charly, it turns out that the benefits of the surgery may not be permanent.
Look for a young, thin Dick Van Patten as one of the staff doctors.
Robertson apparently won his Oscar due to the complexity of his role. He must play a character whose intelligence changes with nearly every scene. Hollywood liberal sympathies for the handicapped may also have contributed, as was the case for Oscar winners in films like Johnny Belinda (1948), My Left Foot (1989), Children of a Lesser God (1986), and The Miracle Worker (1962).
Charly shows great sympathy for the retarded. A key scene, perhaps the best in the film, has Robertson-as-genius helping a retarded waiter, whose clumsiness is cruelly laughed at by the pub's patrons.
But the film's direction is sometimes as clumsy as the waiter. For example, Charly only becomes attracted to his teacher as he becomes intelligent, as if a positive correlation exists between hormones and I.Q.
Spurned by his teacher, Robertson apparently joins a biker gang, whose plotless escapades get the split screen, psychedelic treatment from director Ralph Nelson. Later, Robertson delivers a bitter diatribe against society and its future. His speech is a gratuitous insertion of social commentary, and the passage of time has made its predictions appear both paranoid and misguided.
But while Charly has its weaknesses, it remains a marginally good film. The script is more than competent, and Robertson's sympathy and respect for his character is evident. (60/100)
From the classic Daniel Keyes novel Flowers for Algernon comes this moving (Boxoffice) and unforgettable adaptation. Featuring an Academy Award -winni...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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