Charly (1968)

[4]

Cliff Robertson stars as Charly, a mentally disabled man who agrees to have an experimental operation that makes him more intelligent. But just as the experiment’s success is announced to the scientific world, Charly learns he will soon regress to his original state. Robertson gives an fairly effective performance here, but Charly, based on the required junior high school reading title, Flowers for Algernon, is otherwise a glum, hollow affair that never mines its thematic potential. Instead of tackling moral and ethical dilemmas, the film focuses more on an awkward romance between Charly and his teacher/caretaker, Alice (Claire Bloom).

Stirling Silliphant’s screenplay never quite succeeds in putting us in Charly’s shoes, and even when it nearly does, director Ralph Nelson employs a number of hair-brained techniques — split-screen, psychedelic montage, slow-motion, etc. — to pull us out of the storytelling. And while I’m not always dead-set on films being faithful to their source material, the relationship between Charly and the lab mouse Algernon is sorely underdeveloped here, with key moments from the book (including its namesake) missing entirely from the motion picture.

Academy Award: Best Actor (Cliff Robertson)