The Optimists
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bernie Searl, Bruce Purchase, David Daker, Marjorie Yates, Peter SellersBrand: Legend Films
Cinematographer: Larry Pizer
Composer: Lionel Bart
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 111 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-03
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Model: LF00250
Studio: Legend Films
Movie Reviews of The Optimists
Movie Review: The role of Sam, which might have genuinely said to Sellers, I AM YOUR FATE
Summary: 5 Stars
Though arguably Peter Sellers felt that Being There was his finest performance and that the role of Chance the Gardener spoke to him as no other had done, in my opinion, it is The Optimists that captures a deeply personal note and ultimately outshines the indeed transcendental Sellers swan song. For one familiar with the scope of Peter's films, in Being There you very much sense that Sellers knew he was not long for this world--that he was a man living on borrowed time who had too often accepted roles that did not manifest the wonder of his talents as Dr. Strangelove had done. He recognized in Chance the opportunity to revisit the quiet subtleties that were drowned in movies like What's New, Pussycat? and After the Fox and that marked his best work.
The role of Sam, the busker (The Optimists' main character--not Fred as another reviewer wrote) is one that director and co-writer Anthony Simmons had originally intended for Buster Keaton in the early 1960s, and later John Mills, but when Mills suffered a broken leg for which the production company was unwilling to postpone, the project ground to a halt. Simmons then considered a pantheon of screen greats including Charles Laughton, Paul Scofield, Trevor Howard and Danny Kaye before shelving the idea that destiny had earmarked for Peter Sellers. Having successfully published The Optimists of Nine Elms (the film's original title) as a book, Simmons was content, for the time, to move on to other projects, not the least of which was the screen debut of Judi Dench in Four In The Morning.
Not even Sellers himself had knowledge when he took the role in the early 70s, that his name had been suggested to Simmons nearly a decade earlier--before Dr. Strangelove or any of the Pink Panther films, and that Simmons had balked at Sellers as not being enough of a natural clown. Thankfully Peter was unaware of that early rejection, and Simmons later confessed, "I must have been mad," otherwise we might never have seen the beautiful performance he gives here.
Peter was quite literally born into the theater, as his father was a pianist, banjo and ukelele player and his mother, a pantomime artist, performing in music halls and variety. Without question, he draws on those early influences and his education being dragged from one dingy backstage playground to the next to inhabit the antiquated character of Sam, who is an anachronism to the two young children that are growing up in the slum neighborhood of London called Nine Elms.
At first, the children taunt Sam and his similarly aged dog, Bella, but absent the time and affection of their own father, they find in Sam a cohort who is willing to nurture their dreams for the price of their admiration. He shows the youngsters a side of life they have never seen, and when, in one scene after a day outing to Hyde Park, the group passes The Dorchester hotel on Park Lane and Sam comments, "I understand the chef in here makes a very nice Grand Marnier souffle", you can be sure it is Peter who is speaking from experience.
Sellers sings and dances and plays the uke, drawing upon a song taught to him by his father, as well as his belief that the great Victorian comedian Dan Leno was channeling through him to inhabit the role.
I love this movie above and beyond Being There, because here we see Sellers at a time when he was more in his prime physically, and the uplifting and endearing tale does not bear the urgency and more keenly felt inevitable sense of facing death that marked his later triumph. That it has taken so long for one of his finest performances to reach the American viewing public is a sad injustice finally rectified with this dvd release.
Summary of The Optimists
Features include:
?MPAA Rating: UNRATED
?Format: DVD
?Runtime: 156 minutes
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