At the Mad World screening — and I promise I'll stop talking about it in a day or so — I met a couple of e-mail acquaintances, including Daniel Frank, a clever guy who publishes this weblog. Writing of the movie over there, he remarks…
One minor negative note is that (and I don't know if this is a function of the big screen or of seeing the movie) the stunt doubles in some scenes were glaringly obvious (as in an actor's face would turn to the camera and was obviously not his face).
He's right. In fact, I think I could pick the guy who doubled Dick Shawn out of a police lineup. But then, I always wonder how big a deal that is. Does anyone ever not know when they're seeing the stuntman instead of the star? Even when I first saw the film at age 11, I knew that Spencer Tracy hadn't really swung across the street and crashed into a building. Matter of fact, I might have enjoyed the film less if I'd believed it was him. One of the things that impairs the last few Laurel and Hardy movies for me is that it's not as funny to see an old man fall down as it is to see someone in reasonably good health. (Actually, I've always been one of those folks who watches slapstick comedies and rarely laughs at the slapstick…but you know what I mean.)
I suspect the stunt doubling in Mad World is like a lot of magic tricks: It only really fools you the first time. It isn't the big screen since the movie was made to be shown on an even bigger screen than the one Daniel and the rest of us saw it on the other night. It's that the more you see a film like that, the more you notice the wires, the continuity errors and, yes, the stunt people.
One time when I can recall an obvious stuntman switch really spoiling a movie for me was the last James Bond film with Roger Moore in the lead. Someone had decided that, to make things exciting on the screen, 007 had to perform incredible athletic feats — and though the substitutions were expertly done, they struck me as too jarring. Mr. Moore was close to sixty and even as a young man, he never seemed particularly physical. My grandmother was more likely to be swinging on the cables of a suspension bridge.
I found that distancing. I'm just as conscious of the stuntwork in Mad World but I don't find it distancing. Go figure. Maybe it's that the latter film hooks me with strong performances, or maybe it's just that it's intentionally sillier, or maybe I just plain like it better and am more forgiving. All movies involve a suspension of disbelief but some disbelief is easier to suspend than some other disbelief.