Movies I'm Watching: Battleground and Bottle Shock

One reason I saw so many birds in the yard last Friday was that I had a day of no work, the morning of which I  spent relaxing on the sofa with a book, a pair of binoculars, and the TV remote control (remember when you had to walk over to the TV to change the channel, and there were only six channels, and you didn't have to pay for anything?). In between a few more chapters of Orchestration and watching the birds, I took in an old film called Battleground (1949; Directed by William Wellman; starring Van Johnson, Ricardo Montalban, and others).

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have bothered, but Orchestration was beginning to feel very abstract--mainly because I can't hear the music on the page the way some people can--and bird watching is a slow-paced sport. Also, a quick look in Halliwell's movie guide revealed that the film had won a couple of Oscars and that it was wildly successful in its day. So, I began to wonder why I'd never heard of it. Turned out to be nothing special--which answers that question. The story of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge has been more eloquently told. Still, it was mildly entertaining. Its showing was part of a tribute to Ricardo Montalban following his death last week. He's made better films. I'm afraid I will always remember him gesturing at a grotesque automobile made by Chrysler in the 1970s saying something about "soft Corinthian leather" which turns out to have meant nothing, really. It didn't come from Corinth and Corinth was never known for leather, as far as I know. More to the point, it wasn't even leather. It was vinyl. I remember Corinth for its canal, the view from Acrocorinth, and the well-preserved latrine in the remains of the old city, kindly brought to my attention by the Blue Guide to Greece.

Forgive me. Back to the movies. 

Last thing I saw in a theater was Bottle Shock (2008; Directed by Randall Miller; starring Alan Rickman, and others). I happen to live about a seven-minute walk from one of the best movie houses in the North Bay Area, perhaps the best--The Rialto Lakeside--across from Howarth Park in Santa Rosa. I've taken to going alone from time to time in the past year or so, thinking it a shame not to take advantage of the place more often, and drawn there also by something else--ghosts perhaps? I rather like sitting in an almost empty theater. I enjoy the space. The main reason I got out of the habit of seeing movies on the big screen was my long stay in Japan, where it was often standing room only. For standing room you had the privilege of paying the equivalent of about $20 a ticket--and that was years ago. To sit down it cost about $35. The Color Purple--released in 1985, I believe--was the last thing I saw in a Japanese movie theater. Coincidentally, I went to college in St. Louis with one of the actors in that movie, but that's another story. 

Bottle Shock was entertaining enough on the surface, but it was ruined for me by the liberties the screenplay took with the facts. The writers would have done just as well to make up a plot out of thin air--which is almost what they did. Bottle Shock purports to be the story of the famous Judgment of Paris. No, not the old Greek story you've seen depicted in paintings if you frequent art galleries, but the story of the 1976 Paris wine tasting that first opened the eyes of many to the quality California wine was beginning to attain at that time. It was done blind. Respected French judges shocked themselves and many others by choosing wines from California as the best (in both the red and white wine categories), passing over famed French wines. The filmmakers seem to have thought the true story wasn't good enough to hold an audience's attention, so they augmented, and added, and exaggerated--as they so often do. 

In a nutshell, Steven Spurrier wasn't the sourpuss portrayed by Rickman; his partner was left out of the film entirely; Spurrier didn't break down on the road and happen to be helped by one of the story's main characters; the wines weren't carried to France by accommodating strangers at the airport; the winning white wine wasn't sold off to be dumped and then rescued dramatically by the woman at the bar (in reality the winemakers understood fairly quickly what had happened to the wine--the "bottle shock"; there was no sexy blonde intern at the winery to provide the love interest (is that still required in every movie?); the tasting was in a hotel (not outdoors); and Bo Barrett didn't attend the tasting. Oh well, they tried. I guess.

If you want to know what really happened, read George M. Taber's book, The Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Wine Tasting that Revolutionized Wine (Scribner, 2006). The story needs no augmentation.