Royal Albert Hall, 25th June 2022

“Can you read my mind? Can you picture the things I’m thinking of?” No? Okay, I’ll tell you then…

Postponed from last summer for obvious reasons, Christopher Reeve finally took flight at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the ongoing Films in Concert series. Taking the place of the original film’s London Symphony Orchestra were the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, with Anthony Gabriele conducting. John Williams’ score is a largely strings and brass affair filled out with percussion. The strings supply the requisite swoops and swishes of cape and heighten the romantic air. The brass announces the presence of the Man from Krypton and gives us a grandiose and often almost militaristic feel, not out of place in a film where “Truth, Justice and the American Way” is the title character’s ethos (and yes, it was hard to hear Superman say that just days after SCOTUS overturned Roe vs Wade, on top of everything else that ethos represents now).

It strikes me as a bold choice to eschew the woodwind but it feels in keeping. The film itself is a peculiar although effective clash of two styles. The grandiose, even pompous, Krypton scenes, most of the origin story and the many “Look! It’s Superman! Flying! In space!” shots are counterpointed by the light comedy antics of Lex Luthor and his henchpersons, as well as the old-fashioned screwball comedy between Clark and Lois. Williams completely understood what this film was doing; the warmth usually supplied by woodwind is up there on the screen, when needed, already and doesn’t need to be on the soundtrack.

I first saw this at the pictures when it came out back in December 1978. I’d have been 9 years old, my Dad would have been 39. This is pertinent because as a lad in the 1940s he read Superman comics just as I did in the 1970s (as a retired businessman he’s rather proud of the way he used to sell them to his mates for half-price to part-fund his next purchases; I enjoy pointing out that if he’d been that clever he’d have kept them!). The film knows full well that its audience is spanning a generation or two, and knows how to please both. 1978’s Superman, on screen and on paper, is broadly little different to 1938’s version. A little more sophisticated (and certainly better drawn in the comics’ case: the reprint of Superman #1 that followed this was a strange and disappointing experience for a kid – why can’t they draw?) but we’re a few years away from the seemingly endless reboots and Crises that would tangle the mythos of Supes and so many of his DC peers in an attempt to simplify which, to my mind, completely backfired again and again.

By which I mean you didn’t need Google to hand while reading a DC comic back then. Superman is unquestioningly good, Lois is plucky and brave, Jor-El is absolutely right about everything and Lex is a complete rotter. One of the joys of this film is how these sketches of characters are filled out not by adding to the mythos or giving them an unnecessary modern spin, but by nailing the casting.

Reeve and Kidder come with no preconceptions, so they are Clark and Lois to most of the audience, certainly at the time. Margot had actually been doing films for a decade but had yet to get her big break, Reeve a complete unknown to anyone but fans of the soap Love of Life or Broadway enthusiasts. Most of the other major roles are filled by heavyweights your parents (assuming you were a kid and they were taking you) knew and liked. We have stars of the Golden Age of cinema, such as Glenn Ford as Pa Kent and Jackie Cooper as Daily Planet editor Perry White. We get familiar faces from US television like Phyllis Thaxter as Ma Kent (also co-producer Ilya Salkind’s mother-in-law at the time but that’s no slight, she was great) and Larry Hagman as the pervy Army General. Ned Beatty as henchman Otis and Valerie Perrine as Lex’s moll Miss Teschmacher both had been making waves in the sort of films your parents saw while you stayed home with the babysitter because you were too young (thank goodness video recorders were just around the corner and I could catch up with some of these people’s work, especially Valerie’s, she was/is glorious).

Rounding it out we have a bunch of old British movie stars and RADA types, mostly as the Kryptonians. None of whom know how to pronounce Krypton – they all say “Crypt-un” as if Marlon Brando got it wrong on the first day of shooting and no one had the nerve to correct him (I will bet Marlon’s fee, $3.75 million plus 11.75% of my future gross income, that that was what happened). Many of these may just as well have been extras, but nonetheless we get the likes of William Russell (Doctor Who’s Ian Chesterton) and John Stuart (star of The Pleasure Garden, Alfred Hitchcock’s first film way back in 1924) milling about in the background while Trevor Howard and Harry Andrews dare to argue with Marlon Brando (a foolish move on screen and in real life!).

Ah yes, Brando and his extraordinary fee. Along with Gene Hackman as Lex, their casting sent a message – “We’re taking this seriously”. It’s easy to forget now that half of Hollywood movies seem to be about superheroes, that no one had ever made a proper, big budget, superhero film before – the nearest we’d got was the spin-off movie from the Adam West Batman; piles of family fun but nowhere near this scale and certainly not to be taken seriously. To my mind Brando was worth every penny for that, even if he and Hackman sharing top billing and the lion’s share of the money pot seems terribly unfair to Chris and Margot, the film’s real stars.

Time and cruel fate have of course made watching these two a bittersweet experience now. The “can you read my mind?” flying above the clouds sequence, probably embarrassing and boring to young me, is now a moving little capsule capturing these two just as they will be remembered, before everything went wrong for them.

Does a live orchestra add to the experience of watching? Absolutely, although having been to a few of these now it does depend a little on where you’re seated and where your eyeline ends up. Up close one can’t not focus on the orchestra and the film becomes something of an extra to be paid attention to when there’s no music. Further back, as I was here, the screen held my attention throughout. I was aware of the orchestra below it of course, but the music becomes a living thing that’s in the room with you. It’s a lovely feeling with a good soundtrack, a part of the film itself is right there.

As for the presentation, we were watching director Richard Donner’s 151 minute 2020 Expanded version, about 8 minutes longer than the theatrical release. This includes sequences such as “old Kryptonians wondering why RADA had never taught them ‘falling into chasms on an exploding planet’ acting”, and “Otis goes for a very long walk while being followed by cops, one of whom meets a grizzly end under a train”, plus other bits and pieces. This is Donner’s preferred version so fair enough and it’s mercifully much shorter than the extended 3-hour TV edits (made deliberately very long by the Salkinds as the TV rights were under a “pay by the minute” deal). I appreciated the use of subtitles throughout, important especially as of course the music can’t be balanced in a live environment with as much finesse as it can on a soundtrack.

One criticism I’m torn over was the decision not to include the end titles as part of the main performance. Torn because on the one hand it’s still music, still part of the film, and the purist in me was a little annoyed. Fading to black just before them with the music building to a final crescendo brought it all to an unexpected and sudden end. The credits then played silently after the orchestra had taken their bows, with a well-deserved standing ovation. On the other hand, this film’s end credits are notoriously long at about 8 minutes and would no doubt try the patience of some. Plus considering the strike action affecting trains and some tubes it probably was for the best as it turns out. Wouldn’t like this to become standard practice though.

Verdict: A great night out with a film which has its flaws but which has aged very well in many regards and is a lot funnier than I remembered. If you haven’t seen it for a long time give it a go – even without an orchestra in the room it feels like the comics you (or maybe your parents or even grandparents) grew up with. 9/10

Andy Smith