Cannery Row (1982)

CANNERY ROW  (1982)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢    
    D: David S. Ward
    Nick Nolte, Debra Winger, M. Emmett Walsh,
    Frank McRae, Audra Lindley, Sunshine Parker
In the first paragraph of his 1945 novel, John Steinbeck describes Monterey's Cannery Row as many things, one of them being a dream. In David S. Ward's screen adaptation, the dream remains intact. The movie's based on two Steinbeck novels, "Cannery Row" and its sequel, "Sweet Thursday", published in 1954. The time frame in the film is indefinite, but looks like the late 1940s. The canneries are closed and there's not much work, and the two most visible segments of Cannery Row's resident population are hookers and bums. The outliers are Doc (Nick Nolte), a marine biologist who makes a living collecting specimens for other researchers, and Suzy (Debra Winger), a drifter from Indiana who's looking for waitress work, but settles for a stint in a cathouse. And there's the Seer, a brain-damaged visionary who lives in a shack on the bay and has a connection to Doc that Suzy eventually figures out. The sets are a character, too. They were created on an old MGM soundstage and there's something unreal about them. They're a part of the dream. Doc's storefront laboratory, the local diner, and the abandoned boiler Suzy moves into look small on the outside. Inside, you could throw a barn dance in them, and in Doc's place, they do. There's not much character development for most of the hookers and bums, and when M. Emmett Walsh sits down to play the piano, it's a little too obvious he's not really playing it. Which would probably bother me more if Nolte and Winger weren't so believably down-to-earth as Doc and Suzy. Both are damaged, their mutual attraction undercut by that and the fact that they can't agree on anything except the fact that they can't agree on anything. There's a scene where they challenge each other to a dance contest and do this clumsy jitterbug to Glenn Miller's "In the Mood". They're not any good, but neither of them will admit it, or give in, and you can see a lot of what's going on in their relationship in that stubborn, awkward dance. Plus, nobody ever looked sexier in pantaloons than Debra Winger. See for yourself.