Paul's Case (1980)

Seen on PBS

Written By: Teleplay writer Ron Cowen, based on the Willa Cather classic

Starring: Eric Roberts, Michael Higgins

Directed By: Lamont Johnson Description: Lost in a world of fantasy, young working-class Paul dreams of escaping his dreary existence in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. As fate would have it Paul gets his chance by stealing some money and subsequently running off to glamorous New York City.

Once there, Paul experiences everything he ever dreamed of…from a luxurious hotel suite to his first taste of champagne. However, when reality finally comes crashing down around him, Paul realizes the desperate course he must now take.

In a powerful and intense performance, Eric Roberts (Academy Award nominee "Runaway Train", "Star 80") plays the title role in author Willa Cather's PAUL'S CASE. As the tortured and tragic young man, Roberts brings to life this classic American story of a sensitive soul pitted against an uncaring materialistic society.

DVD Features: Author Bio, Actor Bio, Printable Study Guide, About the American Short Story Collection, Audio Interview – Robert Geller, Henry Fonda Intro, Trailer

American Idol 1900

This short story adaptation is beautifully wrought. The acting, direction, scenery, costumes all work together to bring over the kind of quality production one remembers well from the heyday of the BBC back in the 1970s when "Brideshead Revisited" was shown on PBS. Now that PBS does auctions, and the BIG Three do amateur-hour auditions, one must turn to HBO. The story is wonderfully conceived. A young boy, bored to death in the everyday life of Pittsburg, and crushed by uncaring adults including an unsympathetic father, is drawn to the arts, visual and performance. He has what has come to be known a an artistic temperament, is shy, withdrawn, effeminate, and unproductive. He has no talent,no discipline, no artistic training, no ambition. He just wants to "be" an artist or be with artists. His kind now makes up about 50% of the upper-middle class in America, and attends schools like Oberlin to major in romance languages or Russian literature. Is the author sympathetic? Is she saying that those of artistic temperament can't live in brutal America, or that this wannabe wants the wrongs things - champagne, cut flowers, suites of rooms at posh hotels - and wrongly thinks them artistic? Who knows? And where might I ask do they dig up these gorgeous young men with Irish pale skin and jet black hair to play in these dramatizations of classics, while our cop shows and audition shows and fake tropical islands are solely populated by uglies? June 3, 2007

"The First 'Entitled' American Child"

Willa Cather was astonishingly prescient in pointing out one kind of child the American plutocracy - entering the age of celebrity - must inevitably produce. Her character Paul is a bored kid at the throat of everyday parents, teachers, and classmates because they lack the artistic glamour that enraptures him. (Today he'd sport tattoos and metal studs on his face, imagining these would give him the charisma of a rock star.) Since he's full of artistic temperament, yet has little real talent himself or money of his own, he's eager to lick the boots of any artistic types or even of the rich swells who frequent concerts in his hometown. Working as an usher at the local Pittsburgh opera house and freely serving as a valet to the leading man at the adjacent theater, he dreams of one day hobnobbing with the really moneyed upper class New Yorkers who live the high life, drinking champagne and staying at the Waldorf.

Still, he is on target in seeing the Pittsburgh of his day as a pretty dull place, given over as it is so largely to the life of routine wage slavery and philistine materialism. He yearns for something more, something finer and joyous, and his awareness that something's missing in everyday life is the open sesame to our sneaking sympathy and finally pity for him.

This wonderful adaptation of Cather's short story avoids the dullness that so often characterizes Masterpiece Theater productions of classics. While wholly faithful to the story, it has been reconceived as a film. The camera moves a lot, the 19th century settings are superb, opera arias and harp music of the period are added, and above all the subtle acting of Eric Roberts, ranging from requisite sly smiles to fitting looks of childlike bemusement and finally loss is undeniably brilliant.

This outstanding DVD from an old PBS series deserves to be better known. May 14, 2007

paul.s case

its glance into American history but also eric roberts younger years.
eric roberts is very boyish and innocent.
Great acting and great movie
a must see movie for those eric robert fans
interested in the past
July 3, 2005

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