DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR...

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 1978

2012-01-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

Smart movies are hard to come by. Smart remakes…nearimpossible. Why?

Well, maybe it’s because Hollywood’s attitude towards remakes is builton a kind of Catch-22 logic: If a film is poorly made and flops at the boxoffice—preciselythe type of film, one would assume, to best benefit from being remade—Hollywood won’t touch it.However, if a film is accomplished and financially successful (leaning towardsclassic-status), superfluous existence aside, Hollywood can’t seem to wait to get a crackat churning out a remake.

Wholly motivated by a studio’s desire to repeat an earliertriumph without having to break a sweat, most remakes are cynical, dumbed-downaffairs tricked-up with new technology and a paucity of inspiration. Thelazier, more arrogant cousin of the sequel, remakes (which, by definition,presume an improvement over the original) have been responsible for some of themost painful moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had; e.g., The Stepford Wives (2004), The Haunting (1999), and The Women (2008). Just to name afew.

Yet, as if to provethe rule by exception, every now and then, when a remake is inspired by an idearather than an accountant’s ledger, the results can be surprising, fresh, eventranscendent. Such is the case with Phillip Kaufman’s shrewd andremarkably effective remake of the 1956 sci-fi/horror classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Donald Sutherland as Matthew Bennell

Brooke Adams as Elizabeth Driscoll

Jeff Goldblum as Jack Bellicec

Veronica Cartwright as Nancy Bellicec

Leonard Nimoy as Dr. David Kibner

The original Don Siegel film was a little B-moviemasterpiece of paranoia and dread that, intentionally or not, tapped into America’sambivalence to post-war conformity and anxiety over the anti-communist panic ofMcCarthyism. Staying true to the core story line of the original, Kaufman’sremake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers(a deliciously pulpy title I’m glad the remake didn't abandon) is about aninvasion of plant-like organisms from space that duplicate and replace humanlife— sans emotions. Life continues as before, the sole casualty (and ultimate tragedy)being a loss of personality and individuality.

The timeless appeal of Invasion of the Body Snatchers(it’s been remade at least two other times) may have a lot to do with the factthat we’re a culture which clings to the notion of individuality in theabstract, yet values conformity in the concrete. Even a cursory glimpse at the“comments” section of any Internet news site reveals that tolerance foropposing points of views and ways of life is not exactly America’sstrong suit. Yet that doesn’t stop each of us from harboring, deep within ourdemocratic bosoms, the romantic belief that we honor, above all else, theindividual’s right to be just that: an individual.

What's HE doing here?
Robert Duvall's unbilled cameo as an unidentified priest mysteriously eyeing Brooke Adams as she picks one of the flowers that figure so significantly in the plot, was appropriately mysterious enough to seriously unsettle 1978 audiences when the film premiered

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

What makes this Invasion of the Body Snatchers such achilling delight is how acutely, and with such perceptive wit, it captures the moodand preoccupations of a particular point and place in time, and uses it tobreathe fresh life into a familiar horror tale. The late Ira Levin (with both Rosemary’sBaby and The Stepford Wives) was a master at this sort of thing: creatingtension out of tapping into the core anxieties lying at the center of a shiftingcultural climate.

Instead of the small town setting of the original, the 1978film makes the most of its “Me Decade” angst and takes place in that mostdefiantly individualistic of American cities; San Francisco. Which is,conceptually speaking, perfection personified. Where better to rage a waragainst conformity than a city that prides itself of being a haven for theeccentric, the unique, and the idiosyncratic.

San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid
Throughout the film, shots are composed that juxtapose the unique elements of San Francisco's "personality" with the threat of impending dehumanization

For those too young to have experienced the 70s firsthand, Invasionof the Body Snatchers is an affectionate, but nonetheless spot-on, skeweringof a certain West Coast sensibility. I was attending an arts college in San Francisco in 1978,and this film captures the feel of the time so authentically, it tweaks seriouspangs of nostalgia every time I watch it. Seriously, most of the people I attended class with at The San Francisco Art Institute (myself included) were like the characters Jack and Nancy Bellicec.

This is a post hippie-movement San Francisco during that transitional timewhen the aging free-love crowd was having to make room for the navel-gazingyuppie. It was an age of alternatives: alternative medicine, alternativereligion and alternative thinking. The media was full of cults, causes, conspiracytheories, est training, and best-selling pop psychologists. Communal living wasreplaced by pride in ownership (restored Victorian apartments became symbols ofyuppie affluence) and a reverence for privacy and personal space (asexemplified by high-tech stereo headphones). Ecology buttons replaced peacesigns, and a 1973 book titled “The Sound of Music and Plants” by DorothyRetallck (detailing the effects of music on plant growth…a point referencedhumorously in the film) was just part of a larger exaltation of plant life andvegetation in general.

As in all times of social realignment, unacknowledgedanxieties and uncertainties are part of the adaptive cultural landscape. Itmakes sense to me that in a city as welcoming of change as San Francisco, the perceptive observer wouldnotice a distinct edginess and unease behind the composed veneer of blissed-outbroad-mindedness.

This barely perceptible nervousness is precisely whatdirector Phillip Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter seize on in Invasion ofthe Body Snatchers to provide a contemporary kick to the sci-fi body-switchinghorror. The threat appears to come from deep space, but when it comes down toit, what’s most frightening about the whole body snatching idea is thepossibility that what we most cling to in an interdependent way among friendsand loved ones (our individuality), is what is least valued about us from a societalperspective.

It hardly feels unintentional that the pod people takingover San Franciscoare undetectable precisely because of their behavioral similarity to the urbanprofessionals whose infiltration had been threatening the city’s loosey goosey vibesince the early 70s. Nor are we meant to ascertain unequivocally whether or notthe psychobabble of Leonard Nimoy’s paperback psychologist is pod-talk or thenew language of the New-Age.

PERFORMANCES:

It always puzzles me the way so many directors of horror andsuspense films overlook the obvious fact that the effectiveness of any horrorfilm rests in whatever investment the audience has in the fate of theprotagonists. Take time to flesh out the characters and there’s no telling howfar an audience will go with your premise.

This is especially true with a film whose plot pivots on thatintangible quality known as “humanity.” Invasion of the Body Snatchers appears to have been cast with an eyetowards emphasizing unique idiosyncrasies of its stars, and it makes a world ofdifference in how re respond to all the genre trappings of chases, close callsand suspicious red herrings. Donald Sutherland, sporting the same curly locksfrom 1973s Don’t Look Now has always been a kind of goofy, off-beatleading man. He’s not the lantern-jawed, hero type, so he comes off a believablystrong, but vulnerable enough for you never to be quite sure if he’s up to thetask at hand.

Brooke Adams is oneof my favorite underrated actresses. She was among a small group of intelligent,distinctive actresses (like Geneviève Bujold) the 70s produced and thendiscarded when audience tastes turned to blank prettiness.

As good as Adamsand Sutherland are (and Adams is amazing), the prizes have to go to JeffGoldblum and Angela Cartwright. As just kind of couple you’d expect to find inSan Francisco (they run a mud-bath establishment; he’s a poet, she’s one ofthose espousers of crackpot theories that always sounds more sane than thepeople around her). They are a hilarious and touching pair, and I daresay thatwithout their contributions, as excellent a film as Invasion of the BodySnatchers is, it wouldn’t soar the way it does.

And let’s not leave out Leonard Nimoy. I’ve never been a fanof Star Trek and no doubt I have aminimal awareness of his gifts as an actor, but I must say his role as the infuriatinglylogical psychologist is an inspired bit of casting. Audiences were never likelyto shed their image of him as Spock, so I like that the film intentionallymakes use of our predisposed sense of him in a way that doesn’t intrude, butrather enhances.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

Missed Opportunity or Cultural Sensitivity?

Perhaps it’s a sign of Kaufman’s good taste, but as a gayman, I find it hard to imagine how a film about human cloning set in San Franciscocould resist the impulse to include a scene on Castro Street; home of the “CastroStreet Clone.” For the uninitiated, The Castro is a gay district in SanFrancisco where (at least in the 70s) free-thinking gay men willfully abandonedall personal individuality so as to look identical to one another. Sporting identicalmustaches, haircuts, clothing, and physiques, the Castro Street Clone was acity mainstay, as identifiable and generic to San Francisco as the Transamerica building.

Thinking back though, I recall with great sadness that Invasionof the Body Snatchers was releasedabout a month after the murders of openly-gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milkand Mayor George Moscone. Under these circumstances there would have been noplace in the film for a reference of this nature. I might have this wrong, but I even seem toremember that a jokey line of dialog Donald Sutherland speaks to psychologistNimoy (“The Mayor’s a patient of yours, isn’t he?”) may have been temporarilycut out of sensitivity.

In any event, it was strange watching a movie with so manyscenes taking place at its City Hall. SanFrancisco felt like a very scary place at the time, and, as one might imagine,that tragic real-life event—auguring a mounting intolerance and conservatism inthe city known for its liberalism—only made watching Invasion of the Body Snatchersan even more unsettling experience than it already was.

"It was like the whole city had changed overnight."

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I don’t know if director Phillip Kaufman is an admirer ofRoman Polanski, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a film I’m certain Polanski wouldappreciate. From the very first frames there is attention paid to establishingan atmosphere of ever escalating paranoia and claustrophobia. Every shot hassomething; whether in the foreground or distance, that supports its themes.Plants are in almost every shot, sometimes crowding the frame creating a smallspace of activity for the actors. There’sa brilliant sense of danger taking place beyond the confines of the story we’rewitnessing. People are seen running in the distance, every window seems to havesomeone staring out of it. The tension grows to the point that even banal humanactivities like flossing take on an ominous air (Elizabeth’s boyfriend is seeflossing in an early scene, later at a secret meeting in Union Square DonaldSutherland’s character passes a man flossing in public).

Of course, it’swonderful that all this ambiance is piled on and we’re left to fill in many ofthe blanks ourselves. The act of which engages us and even further and pulls us into the story.

After Rosemary’s Baby,which I, to me, the best horror/suspense film ever made, I have to count Invasionof the Body Snatchers as one of themost consistently scary (and fun) thrillers I’ve ever seen. It delivers asdrama, black comedy, sci-fi, and horror.

Although set in a marvelously evoked 70s San Francisco, thefilm is so smart that it remains a relevant nightmare-maker even after allthese years.

Today, with all the pierced, body-inked, automatons walkingaround with their earbuds buried in their brains, eyes trained on texting fingers,with nary a moment of eye-contact or human interaction passed between them, we might be ripe for another remake. But Ithink we’d better hurry up. From what I’m seeing there’s not a lot ofindividuality left to be fearful of losing.

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER 1959

2012-01-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

Watching Suddenly,Last Summer (adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williamsfrom Williams’1958 play) it’s hard not to think about the frequency with which homosexuality=deaththemes crop up in Tennessee Williams’ works, and to wonder to what extent some gayartists are subtly complicit in perpetuating damaging social perceptions ofhomosexuality.

In 1937 New Orleans (a year necessary perhaps to emphasizethe infancy of lobotomy surgery, but not at all evident in the 50s-styleclothes, hairdos, and make-up on display) super-rich widow Violet Venable seeksto secure— through not-so-subtle bribery—the services of groundbreakingpsychosurgeon John Cukrowicz. Her objective is to have the doctor perform alobotomy on her beautiful niece, Catherine, who apparently went insane theprevious summer after witnessing the death of Mrs. Venable’s adult son,Sebastian.

Lady's Very Hungry Today
"The Venus Fly-Trap, a devouring organism aptly named for the goddess of love."

The mysterious particulars of Sebastian’s death, life,and the reason behind Mrs. Venable’s wish to silence her niece, make upthe narrative body of Suddenly, LastSummer. A film whose Gothic overarching (intentionally or not) parallels closethomosexuality with everything from pedophilia and mother-fixation, to sociopathologyand flesh-eating prehistoric monsters.

Elizabeth Taylor as Catherine Holly

Katherine Hepburn as Mrs.Violet Venable

Montgomery Clift as Dr. John Cukrowicz

If Tennessee Williams’ views on same-sex relations wereunremittingly bleak, I suppose one can’t overlook the fact that Williams (ofwhom nothing I've read biographically would indicate a familiarity with love orhappiness to any sizable degree) was nothing if not a product of his repressed,shame-based time. Raised in that bastion of open-mindedness, the AmericanSouth, Williams (1911- 1983) had his greatest commercial successes during the40s and 50s; a time when balanced/loving depictions of homosexuality wouldlikely have resulted in his professional ostracism, if not incarceration. It’sa certainty that audiences at that time had no interest in seeing homosexualityportrayed as anything other than deviant aberration, but there’s no ignoringWilliams’ willing participation in promoting this perspective. This in spite ofTennessee Williams being one of the few “out” public figures I can recall frommy youth.

Expressly acknowledged homosexual characters appear in onlya handful of this prolific playwright’s body of work: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Skipper, who commits suicide); A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche’shusband Allan, also a suicide); and this, Suddenly,Last Summer (Sebastian, murdered and cannibalized). But wouldn’t you knowit? They’re the works that have had the greatest longevity. (Tennessee Williamsdidn’t initiate popular culture’s tiresomely persistent association ofhomosexuality with death. In Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play, The Children’s Hour, a character’s mere suspicion that she might bea lesbian is enough to induce her to hang herself.)

There are those who believe it’s folly to look at old moviesthrough a contemporary prism. While I think it’s important to keep in mind thecultural context and social time-frame of films, I also believe that all trueart endures. And as such, one of the essential challenges facing any creativework to which the term "art" is to be applied, is its ability to withstand the criticalapplication of changing cultural sensibilities.

Mercedes McCambridge (Giant) and Gary Raymond ( Look Back in Anger)
as Violet Venable's poor relations

Suddenly, Last Summer(my favorite of all the films adapted from Tennessee Williams’ plays) passesthe test because its antipathetic attitude towards homosexuality merely mirror the film’s larger themes of nihilism. NOBODYin a Tennessee Williams film is ever having much fun. It goes with theterritory.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

In an unfavorable review of Suddenly, Last Summer in TheNew York Times, critic Bosley Crowther denounced the film for itstalkiness. A valid point, perhaps, for 1959. But in today’s “Era of the Inarticulate,”the euphuistic language of Suddenly, LastSummer is like an oasis in a desert.

“The dinosaurs are vegetarian… that’s why they becameextinct. They were just too gentle for their size. And then the carnivorouscreatures, the ones that eat flesh...the killers… inherited the earth. But thenthey always do, don’t they?”

“Life is a thief. Life steals everything.”

“Most people'slives, what are they but trails of debris? Each day more debris, more debris.Long, long trails of debris with nothing to clean it all up but death.”

“Mr. Venablewas a good man, but dull to the point of genius.”

“Of course God is cruel. No, we’ve always known about Him. The savage face he shows to peopleand the fierce things he shouts. That’s all we ever really see or hear of himnow. Nobody seems to know why.”

Sebastian's empty book of poetry

PERFORMANCES:

My admiration for Elizabeth Taylor is well documented in theblog posts for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Reflections in a Golden Eye. The realsurprise for me here is how much I was impressed by Katherine Hepburn. Neverone of my favorite actresses, here all of her starchy mannerisms and stylistic affectationshave been put to fine service in helping to flesh out the marvelously complexcharacter of Violet Venable. As the domineering, cold-hearted mother who iswilling to go to monstrous lengths to protect the reputation of her son,Hepburn could have easily played the brittle, icy card exclusively and herperformance would still have been a marvel. What she does that really blows meaway is convey, through wounded, frightened looks and a barely-perceived senseof grasping desperation; her character’s achingly lonely, desolate life. In thefilm’s final moments, when it becomes clear that the obsessive, stifling loveof Mrs. Venable’s life never loved her at all, her character’s complete andabsolute despondency is heartbreaking.

The Goddess from the Machine

Katherine Hepburn’s entrance in the film has to be one ofthe great screen entrances of all time. Descending from the ceiling in an ornate,cage-like elevator, Mrs. Venable addresses the surgeon she has summoned to herhome:

“The Emperor ofByzantium, when he received people in audience, had a throne which during theconversation would rise mysteriously in the air to the consternation of thevisitors. But as we are living in a democracy I reverse the procedure; I don’t rise,I come down.”

It’s very nearly my favorite moment in the film.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

When I was small, I remember my older sister telling me thatElizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift were really the same person, and scenes andphotos of them together were accomplished through split-screen special effects,like on The Patty Duke Show. For a whileI actually believed her… although now it occurs to me that I never asked which ofthe two was the original article.

In the three films they made together (A Place in the Sun, RaintreeCounty, and Suddenly, Last Summer)the dark, strikingly similar beauty of Taylor and Clift always insinuated akind of spiritual kinship between their characters. A quality used to deeply empatheticeffect in Suddenly, Last Summer. WhenCatherine first meets the doctor, we immediately sense (as does Catherine) thatthere is something the two share that makes it possible for him to so quickly allayher fear and apprehension.

It also doesn't hurt that the duality of Taylor and Clift providessubtle subtext to Mrs. Venable’s frequent assertions that her son Sebastian (sotaken with Catherine’s exploitable beauty) would have been “charmed” by theyoung doctor. Although we never see the much-discussed Sebastian, Mrs. Venableis quick to note of Dr. Cukrowicz “You’re very like him” and, “Your eyes, solike his.”

(When informed that the word Cukrowicz is the Polish word forsugar, Mrs. Venable wastes no time in referring to the the physician as Dr.Sugar; although from her tone it’s impossible to ascertain if it’s said in a friendlyor mocking manner.)

The image of homosexuality Tennessee Williams presents in Suddenly, Last Summer may be grotesqueto an almost preposterous degree, but I happen to like how it fits with thefilm’s themes of duality and displacement. In this context, homosexuality is theultimate attraction of self. As manifest by the self-loathing poet, Sebastian,the allure of the similar (similar dark beauty, similar refined tastes, similarpitiless view of humanity) is a hunger unfulfilled. Named for the martyredsaint whose portrait dominates his studio, Sebastian’s face is never shown, but we know his clothes perfectlyfit his male cousin George, and that George (equally as dark as Dr. Cukrowicz andhis sister, Catherine) looks from the back, remarkably like Sebastian.

Recurrent Imagery
Angel of Death statue first appearing in Sebastian's nightmarish garden (above) reappears on the hill in Cabeza de Lobo (Wolf's Head) where Sebastian meets his fate

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I really love the structure of Suddenly, Last Summer. On first viewing, it’s a puzzlinglybizarre Freudian murder mystery that grows increasingly dark and perverse as itleisurely wends its way towards its satisfyingly astonishing payoff. On repeatvisits, the enjoyment derived from Suddenly, Last Summer come from the many fascinating existential questions the film poses about God, humanity, and thenature of evil.

People frequently look to nature and, upon witnessing the brutaldance of carnage and death in the animal world, defend its neutrality. It’s thecycle of life; it can’t be characterized as evil because animals only kill outof hunger and a will to survive. Throughout all of nature (plant life: the carnivorous fly-trap; animal life: Mrs. Venable’s witnessing of the sea turtles devoured by carnivorous birds) unspeakable violence, brutality, and the strong feeding on the weak, is accepted as random,blameless, and part of natural law.

Witness to The God of Carnage

Suddenly, Last Summersets forth the provocative suggestion that man is just a sophisticated, complex animal. As primitive as the plants in Sebastian's nightmare garden. The hungers that drive man may be more complex, but are they just as elemental and necessary to survival as those of any carnivorous plant or four-legged beast? If man has a base hunger for love, a fear of loneliness and a need for human physical contact...aren't the feeding of these hungers simply natural acts, no less elemental than the will to survive? Should man engage in barbaric acts of cruelty and violence to feed these needs, could it be possible that God can belooking down upon it all with the same blameless neutrality we ascribe to nature? Suddenly, Last Summer is an allegorical rumination on the disquieting interchangeably of the words "devour" and "use" for the word "love."

Suddenly, Last Summer The Day of the Locust

That Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal do such an eloquent jobdramatizing such intriguing philosophical concepts is one reason why I’m able to(begrudgingly) overlook the patina of homophobia calcifying along the film’sedges.

But perhaps if I'm really being honest with myself, the one reason, above all others, for Suddenly, Last Summer remaining an all-time, lasting favorite- it is the absolutely breathtaking Elizabeth Taylor

...the last of the great movie stars.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD 1949

2012-01-13T04:14:00.000-08:00

When it comes to The Fountainhead, I wish there werea way for me to return my mind back to the state of blissful ignorance Ienjoyed the first time I saw this amazing film. That was many years ago. Backwhen The Fountainhead’s chief attractions for me were director KingVidor’s overripe, purple-prose approach to the material―a style always threateningto soar even more over-the-top than his notorious sex-and-sand opus, Duel inthe Sun (1946)―and the overheated, over-emphatic screenplay by famed author,Ayn Rand, adapted from her hefty novel.

The plot of TheFountainhead: ruggedly individualistic architect Howard Roarke (GaryCooper, still sexy, but looking a tad careworn at 47) doing battle against aworld of cartoonishly single-minded villains hell-bent on commodifying hisgenius— was always less interesting than its presentation. What I took delightin was the dramatic persuasiveness of The Fountainhead applying a patentlytheatrical and artificial method of acting to a script of arch,over-embellished dialog, all in service of an extravagantly overwroughtpost-German Expressionist visual style. Ayn Rand’s verbose, almost feverishlynonsensical novel resisted any kind of realistic adaptation. King Vidor, in never once rooting the film inany kind of recognizable reality, managed to fashion an compellingly excessivefilm that served her work well.

Gary Cooper as Howard Roark

Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon

Raymond Massey as Gail Wynand

Robert Douglas as Ellsworth Toohey

As a dyed-in-the wool visual aesthete whose lifelongrelationship with film has been a battle with the influence of style oversubstance; I’m aware that my fondness for TheFountainhead has little to do with a sober assessment of its merits andfaults. I’m nuts about the movie chiefly because it’s so visually striking and intoxicatinglystylized. I respond on an almost visceral level to how dazzling it is to lookat, and I marvel at how closely the performances, in all their profoundsolemnity, hew so closely to that mannered, posturing style so expertly playedfor laughs in those old Carol BurnettShow movie spoofs. Indeed, in all of the areas where The Fountainhead seems to overplay its hand (it makes its pointsearly and easily, then goes on to reiterate those same points, ad nauseum,scene after scene) I find I don’t fault the film so much as chalk it up to aparticular type of broad-strokes, post-war American filmmaking.

The window of the past can do that…things you’d findunforgivably false in a film today look perfectly acceptable in a black &white film from the late 40s.

Examples of The Fountainhead's breathtaking cinematography (Robert Burks) and art direction (Edward Carrere).

Well, that’s how things started for me and how thingsremained for some time. Unfamiliar with Ayn Rand or her philosophy (in anydirect way), I was content to revel in TheFountainhead’s overwrought romantic melodrama and ravishing imagery with narya thought given to its portentous themes. Themes that, even as a callow youth,struck me as slightly sophomoric.

When, many years later, I finally got around to reading The Fountainhead, I was actually surprisedat what a windy polemic against Collectivism it was. I enjoyed the novel’s descriptivepassages very much, and welcomed the fleshing out of the slim characterizationsof the film, but its central plot was almost buried below a lot of ideological redundancies. It was nevertheless a book I enjoyed immensely, and, intrigued by Rand’s penchant for narrative overkill, I ventured forth and tackled herlast and most famous novel, AtlasShrugged. Bad move.

I won’t turn this post into a diatribe against Objectivismor the unfortunate adoption of Atlas Shruggedand Rand’s philosophies by America’s Tea Party Movement. But let’s just saythat when it came to learning more about Ayn Rand’s philosophical beliefs, morewas decidedly less.

Flirting with Fascism
Ayn Rand liked to make it easy to identify the heroes and villains.
The villains have weak, effete names like Ellsworth Toohey, and are prone to striking dictatorial poses at the slightest provocation

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Before I had read The Fountainhead,It never crossed my mind that the film adaptation was, in some ways, littlemore than a visual-aid lecture on Objectivism. I just thought it was a great-looking movie saddled with anover-obvious, poorly-written screenplay. In viewing the film from Rand’s perspective,I can well imagine why she despised it; the power of King Vidor’s images overwhelmher words.

And it's a good thing, too, for The Fountainheadis a real “movie lover”s movie. And by that I don’t mean lovers of good film; Imean folks who love the stylized artificiality of film. Realism in film has itsplace, but films that attempt to speak to us through metaphor or symbolism (likeCharles Laughton’s The Night of TheHunter) benefit greatly from an overabundance of cinematic stylization. The Fountainhead is such a film. It’s fullof gorgeous cinematography; sumptuous sets; movie stars who look like moviestars; fabulous costumes, and soap-opera emotions. That none of it bears theslightest resemblance to human life as we know it only adds to its charm.

The Fountainhead is one of those movies where people carry on entire conversations without ever looking directly at one another. Here, Patricia Neal assumes a familiar pose (looking off into the distance) while Raymond Massey and Gary Cooper try in vain to get her attention.

PERFORMANCES:

I’ve always liked Patricia Neal. Her unadorned earthiness inElia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd(1957) and Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963)were the best things about those films. In a sea of lacquered, blonde bombshells, Neal was a home-grown Anna Magnani reminding us that sex appealdidn’t require a bullet bra and the disavowal of intelligence. Familiar only with latter-day Neal, imagine my surprise in seeing her at 22, giventhe full Hollywood-glam treatment in TheFountainhead, her second film. I had no idea she could be so stunning.

Cast as the Dominique Francon (was a time you’d have to opena novel by Sidney Sheldon or Jackie Collins to find a name like that) The Fountainhead’s sole femalecharacter, Neal is first seen heaving a Greek statue out of the window of herhigh-rise apartment because, “I wanted to destroy it rather than let it be partof a world where beauty and genius and greatness have no chance!”

And if you think there’s not an actress on earth whocan pull off dialog like that, well, you’re right. It’s just the first ofseveral scenes where Neal strives mightily against some of the strangest humandialog ever committed to page. She’s not always successful, but she’s never less than fascinating to watch. Juggling numerous lovers and hard-to-fathom-motives, shemanages to be glacially aloof and sexuallyagitated at the same time.

Dominique Francon is a woman of high ideals who, before finding her spiritual equal in the noble Howard Roark, feels frustrated at havingto live in a world that worships mediocrity. She vents her frustration by engaging in behavior favoredby smart and successful women to this day: she intentionally becomes involvedwith inferior men.

Her fiancé, the weak-willed Peter Keating, she chose because“He was the most safely unimportant person I could find.” She later weds hack newspaperman Gail Wynand to make good on herpromise, “If I ever decide to punish myself for some terrible guilt, I’ll marryyou.”

Dominique is nothing if not a gal with a few issues sheneeds to work out.

Obsessing over Howard Roark's drill

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

Shave off all the whiskers and fluff from Rand’s one-sidedproselyting and The Fountainhead is apretty satisfying triangular love story with a few interesting things to sayabout society. The rather unconventional romance between Dominique and Howard (controversiallyincited in the novel by an off-putting rape, but, thanks to the usual stylisticobfuscation of sex in Production Code-era Hollywood, comes off in the film as the usual yes/no, male/female roundelay) is lentcredence by the palpable chemistry between real-life lovers Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.

The rather salient points made by Rand about the dangers ofa society committed to the lowest common denominator (are you listening MichaelBay, Vin Diesel and Adam Sandler?) lack the bite they might have due to thedeck being so heavily stacked on the side of Roark and his philosophy thatthere is almost no real conflict. Indeed, Gary Cooper (not the most expressiveman with dialog) is asked to reiterate his character’s position so often thatthe effect is created of someone trying to convince himself of a argument, not others.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

Living in Los Angeles, a city of agonizingly randomarchitectural design, I can identify with all the heated discussions on thesubject in The Fountainhead. Indeed, in establishing an analogicalrelationship to architecture and any creative endeavor that must struggle tomaintain its personal integrity in the face of public opinion, The Fountainhead is most successful. Inthis age when individuals justify the most heinous points-of-view with the claim“I’m not the only one that feels this way!” (as if that was ever a gauge of honor),and when widespread ignorance is proudly defended as anti-intellectual-elitism,The Fountainhead should feel morerelevant than ever. Unfortunately, Ayn Rand can’t seem to get out of her ownway long enough to let the points she wishes to make stand on their own merits oflogic. Like the character of Ellsworth Toohey, who feels he has to tell thepublic what to think, Rand doesn’t trust the viewer to weigh the issues ofObjectivism for themselves. Rand's fondness for words fails to let the medium of film do what it does best; evoke, not explain. Rand's handling of her own work is all too obvious. When I say TheFountainhead is black and white, I’m not just referring to thecinematography.

Ayn Rand wasn't fond of the architectural designs art director Edward Carrere used in the film. She wanted the buildings to reflect the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Watching the film today, it takes considerable effort to getmy mind to relax and just let the movie entertain me as it did in the past. Itfeels like I spend the first ten minutes or so just trying to blot out the sermonizing.Mercifully, if I allow myself to focus on the sumptuous Max Steiner score (Gone With the Wind, Casablanca), and sink into Robert Burks’ rapturous cinematography (Vertigo, North by Northwest), pretty soon I’m back where I want to be. Nolonger a postulate at the lectern of Objectivism, just a movie fan enjoying afavored film.

THE MEPHISTO WALTZ 1971

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Warning: This particular essay on TheMephisto Waltz is loaded with spoilers. If you haven’t yet seen the film andwish to discover its surprises for yourself, stop reading now and come back later.I’ll still be here.

One of the more effective,least exploitative entries in the post-Rosemary’sBaby occult sweepstakes (before TheExorcist came along and switched up the game-plan, entirely), is 1971’s The Mephisto Waltz. Adapted from the1969 novel by Fred Mustard Stewart— which was itself a rather loud echoing ofIra Levin’s1967 novel— The Mephisto Waltzis a Satanic thriller that succeeds at being enjoyably stylish, suspenseful,and marvelously kinky while never actually giving Roman Polanski’s film anyserious competition.

Jacqueline Bisset as Paula Clarkson

Alan Alda as Myles Clarkson

Barbara Parkins as Roxanne Delancey

Curt Jurgens as Duncan Ely

Bradford Dillman as Bill Delancy

Myles Clarkson (Alda), a failed-musicianturned struggling music-journalist, lands an interview with world-famous classicalpianist Duncan Ely (Jurgens). Taking note of Myles’ lyrical way with thebuttons on his tape recorder, the ageing virtuoso (“I happen to be the greatestpianist alive!”) marvels at Myles’ perfect-for-the-piano fingers and declares himto have “Rachmaninoff hands.” Hands that, according to Duncan (who should know,I guess), only one in one hundred thousand possess.

Oh, and for the record, whennot wowing audiences with impassioned performances of Franz Liszt’s The Mephisto Waltz (“They don’tunderstand that after a concert, there’s blood on the piano keys!”), Duncanfinds time to be a practicing Satanist.

While studying those concert pianist fingers, lets hope he notices how short his life-line suddenly got

Having already learned from Rosemary’s Baby just how pushy devil-worshipperscan be, it comes as no surprise when Duncan and his witchily feline daughter,Roxanne (Parkins), begin aggressively insinuating themselves into the lives ofMyles, his beautiful, no- nonsense wife, Paula (Bisset), and their conveniently-disappearing daughter,Abby (Pamelyn Ferdin). Faster than you can say “tannis root,” we learn thatDuncan, who is dying of leukemia, has plans to serve Myles’ soul with aneviction notice and take up residence in the lean yet alarmingly flabby bodyASAP…with a little help from the devil, of course.

Will the ever-suspiciousPaula, distrustful and jealous of the fawning attentions of Duncan and Roxannefrom the start, unearth the dark secret behind this creepily close-knit father/daughter duo? Or will her pugnacious, Nancy Drew-curiosity and fortitude(“…well, I’m just one grade too tough!”) only serve to place her and her familyin greater danger?

The answers to this and manymore suitable-for-a- Black-Sabbath questions are answered in The Mephisto Waltz …a Quinn Martinproduction. No, really, it is. The sole foray into feature film production bythe man who gave us The Fugitive, The F.B.I., Barnaby Jones, The Streets ofSan Francisco, etc. However, to my great disappointment, The Mephisto Waltz is lacking in thosetwo great QM Production trademarks: the authoritarian narrator and the titlecard breakdown of the story into separate acts and an epilogue.

This strikingly bizarre publicity photo showing Barbara Parkins in the company of a dog wearing a human mask was used extensively in promoting The Mephisto Waltz in 1971

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

As I’ve stated in a previouspost, I consider Rosemary’s Baby to be one of thesmartest, most effectively chilling films ever made. It’s flawless both as a horror film and a psychological thriller. It’snot just Roman Polanski’s cleverly black-humored approach to the material and thefinely-observed performances he elicits from his cast; but IraLevin’s story itself is a masterfully structured bit of Modern Gothic. A superiorexample of contemporary horror.

When The Mephisto Waltz opened in theaters, the promotional buzz was allabout its similarities to Rosemary’sBaby...just as scary only sexier. I was all hopped up to see it, but, beingonly 14 at the time, my mother (whose attentions were well-intentioned, ifinconsistent) wouldn’t let me see the R-rated feature. I had to satisfy my curiosity with a paperback copy of the novel from the local library. I wasdelighted to find it a genuinely suspenseful page-turner with an endangered,resourceful heroine at its center. Just the the sort Ira Levin specialized in.

FACE-OFF
Bisset and co-star bare their fangs

Jump ahead to the 1980s andadulthood, and I finally get to see TheMephisto Waltz at a revival theater on a double-bill with its spiritualcousin, Rosemary’s Baby. I wasn't disappointed. It’s no Rosemary’s Babyby a longshot, but what it is is a nicely crafted thriller that attempts toearn its chills honestly: through atmosphere, character and suspense. If thecontrivances of plot seem somewhat rushed and the performances and directiononly occasionally above standard, 70s-era, movie of the week TV, The Mephisto Waltz distinguishes itselffrom the usual occult fare by force of sheer style. The ante is raised in thekinky sexuality and overall amorality of its theme and lead characters.

The entire premise of The Mephisto Waltz asks that we accept that these two breathtaking beauties would be willing to fight, commit murder, and bargain their souls to the devil for...

...this body.

PERFORMANCES:

When it comes to movie stars,sometimes (too often, in fact) I find myself guilty of the kind ofsuperficiality I thoroughly abhor in others: I cut the beautiful a great dealof slack. Jacqueline Bisset is so stunning that I think I’m not as objectiveabout her acting ability as I might be. Frequently saddled with ornamentalroles, The Mephisto Waltz offers Bisseta sizable lead part requiring a broad range of emotions. How does she fare?With her clipped British diction and somewhat remote demeanor, she handles thescenes requiring scorn, sarcasm, and assertiveness pretty well. She’s lesseffective with scenes where she has to convey her character’s vulnerability andfragile emotional state.

OK, call me superficial, but JacquelineBisset is absolutely GORGEOUS in this movie and I think I would be would behappy just watching her defrosting a freezer.

Jacqueline Bisset goes to Hades
Apparently, converting to Satanism requires considerably less formal instruction that converting to Christianity or Judaism

As if that wasn’t enough,there’s lovely Barbara Parkins (looking like a million bucks) cast in the kindof bad girl role her steely eyes and honeyed voice always hinted at (she wouldhave made a sensational Catwoman). She’s terrific and her bitch-fest scenes with Bissetalways seem on the verge of a cat-fight that never materializes (I can dream,can't I?).

Sticking out like a sorethumb amongst all this portentous pulchritude is ol’ “Hawkeye” himself, AlanAlda; looking for all the world like a film-school intern who’d wandered accidentallyin front of the camera. Alda has always seemed like a very nice guy to me, so Iwon’t go on about how badly miscast he is (Bisset’s then-boyfriend, MichaelSarrazin, would have been great in the role...or perhaps, Keir Dullea who was also very easy on the eyes), just suffice it to say that a huge chunk of plot credibility flies out the door every time he appears.

Alan Alda Michael Sarrazin

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

I think one of the reasons I've never seen a film about the occult to ever come close to capturing Rosemary’s Baby’s intensity and efficacy, is that few of these films, once they latch onto their particular Satanicgimmick, ever give much thought as to how the film might play to those who find it impossible to buy into the traditional concept of Satan. Polanski was smart enough to make his horror film as ifconstructing a paranoid psychological thriller. It works because the structureof the plot is viable whether you buy into the religious myth or not.

In films like The Mephisto Waltz, the fantasticparticulars of the occult gimmick need to be introduced so quickly (in thisinstance, the ability to switch souls) that scant time is devoted to showing ushow otherwise practical characters gradually come to believe the impossible.

Bad Romance
In his shot from the decadent New Year's Eve costume ball sequence, Alan Alda (in fez and monkey mask) and Barbara Parkins offer further proof that just about everything Lady Gaga does has been done before

Jacqueline Bisset’s Paula is fartoo suspicious far too soon and it tips the hand of the plot. Likewise Myles’ swift,unquestioning acceptance of Duncan’s largess. Alda’s character is such a blankto us (we have no sense of whether his abrupt acceptance into the jet-set compromiseshis values) that the eradication of his soul holds no dramatic weight. Howpoignant his death would have been had we had a glimpse of what the rejuvenationof his abandoned music career might have meant to him, or to what extent his defeatedsense of self is flattered by the attentions of one as rich and successful asDuncan Ely.

Similarly, I’ve never seen thedeath of a child in a movie given such short shrift. First off, Bisset lookslike nobody’s mom on this planet,least of all the overexposed child actress cast in the role*; secondly, inorder for the plot to progress, Bisset's character appears to grieve over themurder of her child for about 24 hours, then it’s back to the witch-hunt.

*(Pamelyn Ferdin, immediatelyrecognizable as the voice of Lucy Van Pelt in the Peanuts TV specials, wasnear- unavoidable in the 70s, appearing on everything from Star Trek to The Streets of San Francisco.)

In skimming over the humandrama, The Mephisto Waltz, like somany other genre films, miss the opportunity to have audiences engaged inanything other than the mechanics of plot and plotting.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

As an occult thriller, The Mephisto Waltz plays it prettystraightforward down the line, telling its story crisply and entertainingly. It has its suspense and tension, but neveronce is it disturbing. Certainly not as disturbing as it could be, given the fundamentalamorality of it all.

There’s a layer of a body-fetishsubplot lying below the surface of TheMephisto Waltz’s soul-transplant theme that calls for a director attuned tothe revulsion/attraction of body horror…someone like David Cronenberg. Thefetish object in The Mephisto Waltzis Myles Clarkson. Duncan Ely wants him for his youth, but specifically for hishands. Roxanne wants her father, Duncan, and is willing to get to him throughthe body of Clarkson. Most perverse of all, when Paula finally learns that herhusband is dead and that another man inhabits his body…it’s the body shewants, and (to her own surprise) she doesn’t really care who its owner is.

The film is awash with scenesand dialog emphasizing Myles’ body and physical desirability, both before andafter its possession by Duncan:

Roxanne: (Ostensibly askingPaula’s permission to make a life-mask of Myles) “It’s alright then, I can dohim?”

Abby: (To Paula about theirnewly acquired dog) “He wants daddy.”

Paula: “Don’t we all.”

Paula's best friend: "Oh! He's sexy...don't you think he's sexy? You should know better than I!"

Roxanne's ex-husband, Bill (Bradford Dillman) to Paula aftershe confesses that she still finds Myles sexually irresistible eventhough she knows it isn’t truly him: “They say the truth is, once you've had one ofthem (a Satan-worshipper), nothingelse will quite satisfy you.”

With the utter disposability ofMyles, the man, contrasted with escalating battles for his body, the overarchingfeeling you’re left with is that everybody loves Myles in parts, but not as a whole.Kind of like a perverse corruption of Cole Porter’s “The Physician.”

There’s certainly nothingwrong with having a story to tell and relaying it in as efficient and entertaininga manner as possible. The Mephisto Waltzsucceeds on that score. But had it taken the time to explore the story’semotional and sub-textural themes…who knows? It might have been a genuine Rosemary’s Baby contender.

MOMMIE DEAREST 1981

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“After MichaelRedgrave played the insane ventriloquist in Dead of Night, bits of thecharacter’s paranoia kept turning up in his other performances; it would behair-raising if Faye Dunaway were to have trouble shaking off the gorgon Joan.”
Pauline Kael TheNew Yorker Oct.1981

I grew up during a time when it was common practice to applyhairbrushes, belts, or sturdy switches (a thin branch from a tree or a stalkfrom a root or plant) to the backsides of children for the purpose of discipline.Back then, kids knew the likely consequence of disobedience was to get “awhipping” (spanked) or, if in public, a pluck to the ears or smack to the backof the head (seriously!). Misdeeds that failed to warrant physical punishment weremet with shouts (“Shut up back there!”), threats (“Mouth off to me again and I’llslap you clear into next week!”), or other colorful forms of what we now callverbal/psychological abuse (“What are you, stupid?”).

Welcome to Parenting 101: The Pre Dr. Spock years. Whetherit be corporal punishment, verbal abuse, or psychological intimidation (“Wait‘til your father gets home!”); our parents did it to us because their parentsdid it to them. No one bothered to question such behavior for it was widelyheld to have been the single ingredient marking the difference between the raisingof a juvenile delinquent and a contributing member of society.

This hurts me more than it does you

That’s one reason why when I first read Mommie Dearest—Christina Crawford’s bestselling memoir detailingthe physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her adoptive mother, screenlegend Joan Crawford— I was among those who had no problem believing theallegations made against Crawford were true. For those of us who grew up in the "sparethe rod, spoil the child” era, the behavior described in Mommie Dearest wasconsiderably less shocking than who was engaging in it: Mildred Pierce herself,Joan Crawford.

If ever there was an individual who epitomized the words“movie star,” it was Joan Crawford. Everything about her finely burnished imagefed the public perception of her as a hardworking, glamorous star of ladylike hauteurand refinement. While other stars were battling studio heads, suffering publicmeltdowns (would Mommie Dearest have caused such a sensation had itssubject been one of Hollywood’s more famously unstable stars like Judy Garland?),and living flashy lives of decadent excess, Joan always conducted herself as ifshe were Hollywood’s goodwill ambassador.

Published in 1978 (only one year after Crawford’s death), Mommie Dearest caused quite a sensation.Not only was it one of the earliest examples of the tell-all celebrity memoirbut one of the first popular books to shed light on the problem of child abuse.These days, I would welcome any public figure who didn’t seize on everyopportunity to publicly air their abuses, addictions, and mental-illnesses; butin 1978, it was rare indeed to read such an incendiary airing of dirty-laundryabout a movie star. Especially one with an image as scrupulously manicured as thatof Joan Crawford.

I saw the film MommieDearest the day it opened at Hollywood'sMann's Chinese Theater in 1981. By this time the bestseller had becomesomething of a cause célèbre, galvanizing public opinion into three distinct camps:1) Those who accepted the portrayal of Joan Crawford as a child-abusing,alcoholic, germaphobe; 2) Those who believed Christina’s allegations to havebeen greatly exaggerated and motivated by greed and vindictiveness; and, 3) Thosewho reveled in the memoir’s voyeuristic sensationalism and camp-tastic portrayalof a headstrong diva thoroughly out of control.

To this latter group, the events of Mommie Dearest somehow bypassed sympathetic analysis and barreledheadlong into being a book enjoyed as a Jacqueline Susann- esque hybrid of oldJoan Crawford movies (specifically QueenBee, Harriet Craig, and Mildred Pierce) crossed with The Bad Seed. I don’t know whether itwas Crawford’s grand diva posturing or society’s deep-seated resentment of therich and famous, but there was just something about Mommie Dearest that many found irresistibly satirical.

Pathos Undermined
Being screamed at by your mother:Traumatic
Being screamed at by your mother who's decked out in a sleep mask, chin strap, and night gloves: Priceless

However the memoir was received, the one thing everybody agreed upon was that Mommie Dearest had wreaked irreparabledamage to Joan Crawford’s image. Virtually overnight the name of Joan Crawfordhad become an instant punch line (no pun intended, but see how easy that was?).

Faye Dunaway IS Joan Crawford

Diana Scarwid as Christina (adult)

Mara Hobel as Christina (child)

Steve Forrest as Greg Savitt

The audience that crowded The Chinese Theater that openingday in 1981 was abuzz with that rare kind of anticipation born of knowing you wereabout to see a film that promised a rollicking good time whether it was atriumph or a travesty. A win-win situation!

Much in the manner that the incredibly stylish cubist/artdeco title sequence for Lucille Ball’s Mame (1974) proffered hopes (quicklydashed) of a classy entertainment that never materialized, Mommie Dearestgets off to a very promising start with a dramatically evocative, cinematicallyeconomical montage detailing the pre-dawn preparations that go into thecreation Joan Crawford, the movie star.

It’s a marvelous sequence of compulsive self-discipline anddues-paying that turns a morning bath into a near-religious purging ritualbuilt upon the duty and sacrifice of stardom. (I particularly like howCrawford, autographing photos in the back seat of her limo as she’s driven tothe studio, never allows for a moment of idleness. It calls to mind myperception of what Oprah Winfrey must be like in her private moments…Iseriously don’t know when that woman finds time to sleep.)

Joan Crawford, world-class multi-tasker

For about five minutes Mommie Dearest really lookslike it’s going to work...and then the audience gets its first look at FayeDunaway in her Joan Crawford makeup. Although the transformation is impressive,the effect is startling in all the wrong ways. Gasps are followed by giggles,giggles erupt into guffaws, and Mommie Dearest never really regains itsfooting.

Which is really too bad, because Dunaway, who works her assoff, is really rather good (at least in that dicey, Al Pacino in Scarface/ Jack Nicholson in The Shining way; where a ridiculous performance canbe made to work under the right circumstances). She deserved a better script, a surer production, and a directorprotective enough of her to rein her in when she goes over top. Which, alas, ispretty often.

Perhaps it was misguided to even attempt to make a seriousmotion picture about an actress whose extreme sense of glamour (paddedshoulders, mannish eyebrows, smeary lipstick, and mannered acting style) had longago made her a camp gay icon and favorite among drag queens, impressionists,and parodists (Carol Burnett’s MildredFierce comes to mind). But director Frank Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife) and a battery of screenwriters only compoundedthe risk by failing to find a dramatically viable means of adapting the material.Americawas years away from seriously addressing the issues of parental abuse,alcoholism, and possible bipolar disorder (the success of 1981's Arthur still pivotedon how hilarious alcoholics were). Which may explain why the mother-daughterconflicts in Mommie Dearest…scenes of familial dysfunction worthy ofWilliam Inge…consistently fall short of tapping into the pain at their source.

Mommie Dearest, like its titular subject, gets boggeddown with the superficial. Lacking in depth, the dialog, costuming, andperformances work in concert to turn each of its setpiece scenes intohigh-style, $#*! My Mother Says.

The illusion of perfection

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

I’m guilty of whatever human frailty it is that causes peopleto rejoice when cracks are found in the façade of public figures who insist onportraying themselves and their lives as perfect. I was one of those so shockedat Mommie Dearest’s unmasking of little-miss-perfect Joan Crawford as abit of a nutjob, that I failed to pay much attention to the not-so-funny issueof child abuse, which should have been my focus from the start. Viewing Mommie Dearest today, so many years after itsrelease, I wonder if the film is not guilty of the same thing. The focus shouldhave been on the character of Christina, not Joan. It’s her story after all. Sinceeven the most world-famous parent is likely to be just plain old “mom” or “dad”to a child, the resultant shift in focus might have offered a less traditionalview of Crawford and saved Mommie Dearest from becoming what it frequently feels like: the world’s longest dragact.

Joan Crawford's palatial Bel-Air home (top) first appeared as the mansion of gangster J. Sinister Hulk (Jesse White, bottom photo, left) in the 1964 Annette Funicello musical, Pajama Party

PERFORMANCE:

In spite of the hours of enjoyment I’ve had at Faye Dunaway’sexpense (countless hours of tears running down my cheeks, cramped stomachmuscles, desperate gasps for air between full-throated howls of joyous laughter),as I’ve stated, I really think she does an amazing job in Mommie Dearest.It’s not so much that she’s good, although she does have her moments; so muchas she’s incredibly brave and frighteningly committed. She throws herself intothe role so wholeheartedly that I don’t know that she can be completely faultedfor failing to land right on the mark.

I’m of the opinion that much of what is accepted as funnyabout her portrayal of Joan Crawford is only partially her fault. No insultintended to the Joan Crawford fans out there, but the real Joan Crawford infull “Joan-mode” is pretty hilarious. Dunaway’s impersonation is so spot-onthat the laughs she gets can’t really be attributed to her completely. I meanthose are Joan’s eyebrows and pinched-constipated smile; that isCrawford’s butch, bitch-queen bossiness; and anyone who’s ever seen the levelof overwrought emotionalism she’s capable of bringing to even the mosteasy-going scenes (check out Trog, sometime), knows that even a lot of Faye's overacting belongs to Crawford.

Dunaway makes some odd choices (the cross-eyed bit during the wire hangers scene is justasking for it, and who exactly thought the whole “Don’t fuck with me, fellas!”line was going to work?), but within the confines of a rather choppy script, thereis an attempt on Dunaway’s part to add some dimension to the at-timescartoonish monster Mommie Dearest would have us believe is Joan Crawford.

Joan Crawford (center) flanked by the contenders to the throne. Oscar winner Anne Bancroft (r.) was Christina Crawford's personal choice for the role of Joan. When Bancroft declined, Faye Dunaway (who, ironically enough was a favorite of Joan Crawford's) took over the reins.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that MommieDearest isn’t a bad film so much as a series of gross miscalculations allaround. Here are just a few things the makers of Mommie Dearest failed to takeinto account:

a) 40s era Joan Crawford looks disconcertingly like Dr.Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky HorrorPicture Show.

b) Power plays between curly haired brats and mannish glamourstars are funny.

c) Extreme wealth undercuts tragedy.

e) Casting a legendarily temperamental actress in the role of a legendarilytemperamental actress encourages the audience to wonder if they're watching Dunaway being Dunaway, or Dunaway being Crawford.

Madonna & Child

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

There was a timewhen I really couldn’t get sufficiently past Joan Crawford’s extreme look andaffected style of acting to see her as anything other than a comically camptimepiece. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate her skill and talent, andtoday she’s one of my favorite actresses of all time. Mommie Dearest istoo flawed a film for even nostalgic revisionism to one day convert into amisunderstood classic; but I think there stands a good chance that time will bekinder to Faye Dunaway’s performance. Like many of the under-appreciated performancesof Marlon Brando that have come to light to be among his best (Reflections in a Golden Eye), Dunaway’s Joan Crawford may be a bit “out there” at times, but itis a fascinating, almost athletic performance, far more layered and intelligent thanthe film deserves.

Understatement of the Year Dept:
"Today Faye sees herself 'as starting on a second phase of my professional life, just as Joan Crawford did...'"
People Magazine Oct. 1981

ALL THAT JAZZ 1979

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All That Jazz is the movie I wish had inspired me tobecome a dancer. Bob Fosse's artily stylized, semi-autobiographical, cinematicdissertation on the artist as a self-destructive skirt-chaser, is just the kindof tragic mythologizing of the fragility of the creative instinct that appeals tothe romantic dreamer in me.

As I stated in an earlier post, the movie that actually inspiredme to abandon my film studies and embark on a 25-year career as a dancer is thelegendarily reviled roller-skatin' muse project, Xanadu (1980). Don'tget me wrong... Xanadu, in all itsflawed glory, is, and always will be for me, an infinitely more joyous, emotionallypersuasive experience than All That Jazz ever was (those soaring notesreached by ELO and ONJ on Xanadu’s title track could inspire poetry). It'sjust that when one is recounting that seminal, life-altering moment wherein one’sartistic destiny is met face-to-face, it would be nice to be able to point to aserious, substantive work like All ThatJazz, instead of a film dubbedby Variety as being about, "A roller-skating lightbulb."

Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon (a.k.a. Bob Fosse)

Jessica Lange as Angelique (a.k.a. The Angel of Death)

Leland Palmer as Audrey Paris (a.k.a. Gwen Verdon)

Ann Reinking as Kate Jagger (a.k.a. Ann Reinking)

Ben Vereen as O'Connor Flood (a.k.a. Sammy Davis, Jr.)

All that Jazz isthe story of Broadway chorographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider); a pill-popping,chain-smoking, serial-womanizing choreographer/director who struggles to preventthe demons that fuel his creativity from consuming his life. Simultaneouslymounting a Broadway show and editing a motion picture, Gideon's intensifyingabuse of his health (both physical and mental) manifests, surrealistically, as aliteral love affair/dialog with death (a teasing Jessica Lange). Fosse makes noeffort to mask the fact that Joe Gideon isBob Fosse and All That Jazz is Fosse's 8½. But, as gifted as he is, Bob Fosse is noFrederico Fellini. His essential shallowness of character (something he takes great painsto dramatize in the film) makes for the baring of guardedly superficialinsights, leaving the larger philosophical questions of "what priceart?" unaddressed.

Director/choreographer Joe Gideon engaging in his other talent: disappointing loved ones.
In this case, his daughter, Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi) a.k.a. Nicole Fosse.

All That Jazz asksus to accept that while Joe Gideon is selfish, an adulterer, a neglectfulfather, a philanderer, a manipulator and a liar; gosh darn it, at least he knows it! Nobody’s perfect, the film seems to be saying, but what Gideon offers as a means ofearthly penance for the pain he causes others, is his genius. And indeed for me, Fosse'schoreography in All That Jazz is sobrilliant as to justify almost anything. Almost.

And thus we land at what ultimately dissatisfies about All That Jazz.It purports to be introspective, but at its heart, it’s apologist. Fosse isn’t invested in getting to the root of what makes Gideon/Fosse tick, so much as pleading acase for the redemptive power of artistic genius.

"It's showtime, folks!"

I buy happily into the enduring romantic myth of thetortured, suffering artist. The tortured, suffering artist as asshole? Not somuch. It seems to me a curiously male perspective that allows for the emotional collateral damage of a life of self-indulgence to be tolerated, and ultimately absolved, through one’s art.(The female equivalent: the fragile, too-sensitive-for-this-world type, moreapt to do harm to herself than others.)

Scene after scene of Joe Gideon indulging in theself-serving honesty of the cheater (“Yes, I’m a dog, but I’m up front aboutit!”) never once feel emotionally revelatory.

Rather, they recall this exchange from 1968s Cactus Flower-

(Walter Matthau's aging lothario prostrating himself before girlfriendGoldie Hawn)

Matthau: I'm a bastard. I'm the biggest bastard in thewhole world!

Hawn: Julian, please...you're beginning to make it soundlike bragging.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day when someone will make a film that shedssome light on what kind of women attach themselves to artistic, self-centeredmen; never resenting having to playsecond, third, or sixth fiddle, as they float, interchangeable satellites, inthe orbit of genius.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Gaydar Setting? Off the Chart
Dime-store psychologists seeking the origins of Bob Fosse's serial-womanizing need look no further than these two dishy publicity stills from early in Fosse's dance career.
This guy must have felt he had something to prove.
It couldn't have been easy being a heterosexual (possibly bisexual) dancer in an era when all male dancers were presumed to be gay (the 40s & 50s) and the pervasive concepts of masculinity (none of which applied to the slight-framed, thin-voiced Fosse) were particularly narrow.
The phenomenon is dramatized in the 1977 ballet film, The Turning Point when a heterosexual male dancer admits to marrying and having a child at a young age in an effort to prove to himself he wasn't gay.
(photos courtesy of ilakid.blogspot.com & victim86.blogspot.com)

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

If you haven't yet gleaned it, I'm not overly fond of theautobiographical structure of All ThatJazz's plot. But much like the women who put up with Joe Gideon because he'sa genius of dance, I confess that I endure the clichéd narrative just so thanI can enjoy the stupendous dance sequences. Bob Fosse is my favorite choreographer of all time andhis work here is beyond splendid. It's absolutely amazing, and among the bestof his career.

A legend on Broadway, director/choreographer/sometime-actorBob Fosse directed but three movie musicals (Sweet Charity, Cabaret,and All That Jazz), yet theirinfluence on dance and the genre of movie musical in general has been far-reachingand incalculable. Raked over the coals by critics for the stylistic excesses of1969s Sweet Charity (Pauline Kaelwent so far as to call the film "a disaster"); by the time these talents were honed and polished to afine gloss in Cabaret (1972), Fosse'sfluidly kinetic camerawork and slice anddice style of editing eventually became the definitive visual style forcontemporary movie musicals.

What has always struck me about Fosse's dance style was howit was so perfect for the female form. If the lines of classic balletcelebrated the idealized feminine form— ethereal and untouchable—Fosse'ssensuous style took woman off the pedestal and celebrated her sensuality andreveled in her carnal vulgarity. Drawing from his days in burlesque, Fosse's style somehowsidesteps the passive, camp allure of the showgirl and captures an exhibitionistichyperfemininity that carries with it a touch of danger. To watch the way GwenVerdon moves as Lola in Damn Yankeesis to see the pin-up ideal come to life. I've always thought that if a thatVargas Girl portrait could move, she'd move like a Bob Fosse dancer.

PERFORMANCES:

Fosse elicits many fine performances from his cast. RoyScheider, a non-dancer, is surprisingly good, displaying an easy charm behind akeyed-up physicality that makes him believable as dancer and object ofmasochistic female affection (my heart blanches at the thought of originallycast Richard Dreyfuss in the role). Leland Palmer is perhaps my favorite; a fabulousdancer and one of those actresses who's edgy quality makes you keep your eye onher even when she's not pivotal to the scene. No surprise that Ann Reinking isa phenomenally talented dancer and truly a marvel to watch, but it's nice thatshe also displays an easy, husky-voiced naturalness in her non-dancing scenes. JessicaLange has had such an impressive career that it's easy to forget that her debutin King Kong (1976) almost turned herinto the Elizabeth Berkley of the 70s. Wisely turning her back on Hollywood'sblonde-of-the-month publicity machine, Lange took three years off and reemergedin the small but pivotal role in All ThatJazz that successfully showcased her ability to do more than look prettysitting in an ape's paw.

Flirting with Death

The brilliance that is AllThat Jazz pretty much extends to everything but the central conceit of theplot (which somehow worked for Fellini and no one else. Rob Marshall's Nine was pretty dismal). Fosse getsFellini's cinematographer, Giuseppe Rottuno (Fellini Satyricon), to give the film a smoky sheen, the music issparkling, and the dreamy stylization employed throughout is sometimesbreathtakingly inventive. One just wishes they weren't in the service of suchmeager emotional epiphanies.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

In the book, On theLine: The Creation of A Chorus Line, the authors (several members of theoriginal Broadway cast) recall how, after sever years of film treatments,director/choreographer Michael Bennett was unable to land on a satisfactorymethod to translate his show to the screen. All involved in A Chorus Line thought that Fossehad, for all intents and purposes, beatthem to the punch and delivered (in a virtuoso eight-minute opening sequence),everything that a screen adaptation of AChorus Line should have been. And indeed, the opening of All That Jazz is a matchless example of film as storyteller. It'sso perfect, it's like a short film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I'm crazy about all of the dancing in All That Jazz. Understandably, most people recall the remarkable "Take Off With Us/ Air-ortica" number, but Ihave a particular fondness for "Bye Bye Love/Life" number that endsthe film. A fantasy fever dream/nightmare taking place in the mind of JoeGideon as he slips away on a hospital bed, this number is outrageous in conceptand phenomenal in execution. We're in Ken Russell territory when you have adying man dressed in sequins (complete with silver open-heart surgery scar) singinghis own eulogy to an audience of everyone he's ever encountered in his life,while flanked by gyrating dancers dressed as diagrams of the human circulatory system.

WOW!

I never tire of watching this number as it appeals to boththe dancer and film enthusiast in me. Fosse, whose signature style consisted ofsmall moves, isolations, and minimal gestures, always seemed better suited tothe movies than the stage. He ushered in the use of the camera and editor ascollaborative choreographers, punctuating the rhythms and drawing the eye tothe details.

Bob Fosse passed away in 1987, mere months after the death ofhis closest professional peer/rival, Michael Bennett. Broadway and dance suffered a loss that year that I don't think it has ever recovered from. Bennett didn't live longenough to leave his stamp on cinema, but lucky for us, Fosse left a recordedlegacy that represents the best of cinema dance as art. "Thank you" doesn't begin to cover the debt of gratitude.

Bye-Bye, Love

THE LOVE MACHINE 1971

2011-12-07T01:53:00.001-08:00

"The Waiting IsOver...The Love Machine is on the Screen!"

So declared the graphically austere poster ads (a gold ankh against a simple black background) heralding thearrival of The Love Machine —sorry, Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine— tomovie theaters in 1971. Hard to believe when looking at the film now, but therewas a degree of anticipation attendingthe release of The Love Machine, thebig screen adaptation of Susann's 1969 best-selling follow-up novel to thephenomenally successful, Valley of the Dolls.

A great deal of the anticipation was due to so much having transpiredin the four years since 20th Century-Fox first released Valley of the Dolls to big boxoffice and a flurry of lousy reviews in1967. First and significantly, Jacqueline Susann had proven herself a viable boxoffice name in her own right, capable of selling tickets regardless of the critical reception to a project. Secondly, movies themselves had grown increasingly permissive of nudity and language since 1967(Fox's own Myra Breckinridge had seento that), thus there existed,at least among Jacqueline Susann's broad fan base, the hope that the film of The Love Machine wouldhave license to be every bit as tawdry and smutty as the novel.

Naughty, Naughty
In the 70s, gay characters in movies were shorthand for decadence and "with it" sexuality.
Here we have David Hemmings (r.) in full flame as fashion photographer Jerry Nelson, with his blow-dried inamorato, Alfie Knight (Clinton Greyn).

Also at the time there existed among many, the misguided confidence that The Love Machine was going to be abetter film than Valley of the Dolls.Why? Well, putting aside for a moment the obvious fact that it would be near impossible tomake a film that could be worse, let's focus on Jacqueline Susann (who had never made a secret her dislike for the movie version of Valley of the Dolls ) and her assurances to fans thatboth she and her husband, Irving Mansfield, were going to take steps to guaranteethat they both would have more creative input in the making of The Love Machine.

Thanks to a lawsuit filed by Susann against 20th Century-Fox pertaining to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970):that unofficial, unauthorized, non-sequel - Susann and Mansfield were able to takeThe Love Machine to the greenerpastures of Columbia Pictures. There, Susann acquired a possessive author'scredit, and Mansfield, the title ofexecutive producer (apt enough, given that he was a TV producer by profession andThe Love Machine was all about thetelevision industry).

The Hitchcock of Coarseness
Jacqueline Susann makes another cameo appearance in one of her films.
(That's L.A. newsman Jerry Dunphy on the left)

An author's possessive film credit of the kind exemplifiedby the clumsy title, Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine, ismost certainly rooted in vanity, but it also carries with it the implication thethat the film is a true representation of the author's intent and vision. Well, as anyone will attest who's seen StephenKing's abominable self-penned 1997 TV-movie adaptation of his novel, The Shining (he disliked the many alterationsand omissions in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film); an author'sparticipation in the adaptation of their work is in no way a reliable gauge ofanything resembling quality.

John Phillip Law as Robin Stone

Dyan Cannon as Judith Austin

David Hemmings as Jerry Nelson

Jodi Wexler as Amanda

Maureen Arthur as Ethel Evans

The Love Machinetells the story of the swift rise and fall of Robin Stone, an ambitious localnews anchor who ruthlessly muscles his way into the job of networktelevision president. Despite lookingthin, wan, and desperately in need of a blood transfusion, Robin is an irresistibleladykiller who leaves a trail of broken-hearted lasses in blue bathrobes inhis wake. With Nielsen ratings and audience-share figures where his heartshould be, Robin Stone is like a male Faye Dunaway in Network (1976); crossed with Valleyof the Dolls' Helen Lawson; mixed with a little of Stephen Boyd's FrankieFane from The Oscar (1966).

As with most of Jacqueline Susann's characters, Robin Stoneis allegedly based on a real-life individual. In this case, the late CBS TV executive,James Aubrey - the man responsible for TheBeverly Hillbillies and a host of other lowbrow moneymakers. Like his moviecounterpart, Aubrey is said to have been a calculatingly shrewd cookie who heldthe TV viewing audience in contempt and made a fortune banking on the public's insatiableappetite for mediocrity. Judging by the popularity of today's Jersey Shore/Kardashians train wrecks, you can't say the guy wasn't something of a visionary.

The Love Machine
In all but the most archly ironic circumstances, Jackie Susann was unsuccessful in getting anyone to use the the word "dolls" for barbiturates. She didn't fare much better in persuading the American public to adopt "The Love Machine" as slang for TV sets (because it "sells love, creates desire"...you see).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

My fondness for a certain brand of bad film is as difficultto explain as it is to defend. It's not like I just get off on making fun ofthem. On the contrary, most of these films are very professional, well-madefilms in every department. What I think I respond to is that scary zone in thecreative arts where the attempt fails to match the execution. Where all the talent,creativity, and hard work on one end just somehow ends up being 100% oppositeof what anyone intended. It fascinates me because I believe it can occur atany moment, no matter how heavily the deck is stacked for success. For example: take the idea of Marlon Brandoputting cotton in his cheeks in The Godfather. That's something that could haveturned out disastrous but instead became iconic. Or what about Al Pacino's Cubanaccent in Scarface. Wasn't that a huge risk? It could have derailed the entirepicture!

No, Robin Stone doesn't pay a visit to Pee Wee's Playhouse. This is just a horrific example of 70s chic decor

The point I'm making is that the collaborative art of filmis like a dance on a wire; fiasco or triumph is sometimes based on some intangible miscalculation or moment of overconfidence...something unknown and unseen until after thefilm is in the can. Hindsight makes it all seem like it could have beenavoided, but that's just not the case. That phenomenon fascinates me. You look at a film that cost millions, involved hundreds of decisions, hours of hard work...and the result is sometimes deplorable. If you're lucky, you can catch brief glimpses of things that work, but mostly you sit amazed (and amused) at just how elusive excellence can be. The Love Machinetries to be a hard-hitting, cynical, claw-his-way-to-the-top drama along thelines of The Sweet Smell of Success and TheYoung Philadelphians, but for allits faddish clothes, bare bosoms, and cuss words, it's fundamentally a creakyFannie Hurst melodrama. The Love Machine'sutter cluelessness about how old-world it actually is makes for addictiveviewing.

The real star of The Love Machine is Robin's collection of blue bathrobes.
It got so that I started to miss them if they failed to show up in a scene.

PERFORMANCES:

Robin Stone is portrayed with remarkable ineffectualness by the late actor John Phillip Law, last seen sporting angel's wings and a feather diaper in Barbarella. By all accounts a terribly nice guy in real life, Law latches onto Robin Stone's closed-off, inexpressive side and gives a performance too stiff even for a character referred to as a machine.

John Phillip Law's lifeless performance is perhaps in part due to his stepping in at the last moment for originally-cast actor Brian Kelly (star of TV's Flipper) who was injured in a motorcycle accident.

Dyan Cannon has always been a favorite of mine, but her performance here (no great shakes, but heads above the rest of the cast) is consistently undermined by the jaw-dropping get ups she's called upon to wear. Given that's she's not really provided a believable character to play, her bizarre fashion sense always takes center stage.

Dyan Cannon, playing the wife of a television executive, decides to wear a test pattern

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

For anyone finding the film hard going (it's rather slow by today's standards) I beg you to stick around for the climactic "Hollywood party fight scene." Here Ms. Cannon (balancing 23 pounds of teased hair) finally abandons her heretofore starchy acting style and lets loose with that infectiously raucous laugh of hers, setting in motion a truly memorable free-for-all that should have become a YouTube camp highlight by now. In trying to top Valley of the Dolls' infamous wig-down-the-toilet scene, The Love Machine finally does something right.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

When The Love Machine was first released totheaters, I was a mere 13 years old; too young to see the much-ballyhooedmotion picture, but not too old to take my mom's paperback novel to school andpore over the "dirty parts" with my schoolmates. I'm not surewhat my problem was at such an early age, but I was very much into the book andwent out and bought an "ankh" ring just like on the paperback cover(in my defense, I grew up in San Francisco during the hippie era, and ankhswere kind of everywhere), and unsuccessfully tried to persuade my sister to buythat Faberge "Xanadu" perfume that was cross-promoted in the film (adsrecommended you mark "his" favorite spot with an "x").

Xanadu by Faberge
Samples were given away at many theaters showing The Love Machine

In spite of my unseemly youthful preoccupation, Ididn't actually see The Love Machine until I was well into adulthood. I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. While not nearly as much fun as Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine has more than enough in the way of over-the-top fashions, poky dialog, and questionable performances to rank high among my favorite guilty pleasures.

"...and when you put it on, you'll live forever. And love me forever."

THE MATCHMAKER 1958

2011-11-30T15:08:00.001-08:00

How long has this been going on? This was theGershwin-inspired thought running through my mind the afternoon I happened uponthis comedy gem, unknown to me at the time, on the Turner Classic Movies cableTV channel (TCM) about 10 years ago. As someone who fancies himself a film buff, spend inordinate chunks of his childhood watching old movies on The Late Show and The LateLate Show; how is it this absolutely delightful little film managed to fly undermy radar, undetected, all these years?

The Matchmaker isthe 1958 screen adaptation of a 1955 Broadway play about ameddlesome matrimonial matchmaker (Shirley Booth) in 1880’s Yonkers, New York, who sets her sights on marrying heremployer (Paul Ford). If the plot sounds familiar, it’s because the Thornton Wilder (Our Town, Shadow of a Doubt) farcical comedy is the source materialfor the 1964 Broadway musical, Hello,Dolly! and its overstuffed 1968 movie adaptation.

It took all of 60 seconds for me to know that I was going to be wholly captivated by The Matchmaker, which opens with an antique ink engraving of a New York street scene coming to life. To the accompaniment of a jaunty musical score by Adolph Deutsch, we are introduced to the film's main characters as each breaks through the fourth wall not only to address us directly, but to let us know that they know they're all in a movie:

Shirley Booth as Dolly Levi
"Oh, hello! Are all of you people married?"

Anthony Perkins as Cornelius Hackl
"Are you alone? He's out getting you popcorn?"

Shirley MacLaine as Irene Molloy
(Catching camera lens focused on her legs) "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! (after a thought) "Pretty, aren't they?"

Paul Ford as Horace Vandergelder
"Haven't you any better way to spend your money?"

Characters continue to speak to us throughout the rest of the film. Sometimes filling us in on the plot, sometimes offering commentary, sometimes offering drolly funny asides. The effect is hilarious and instantly winning.

Which is a rather odd conclusion for me to come to given that I have always held for Hello, Dolly!, only a grudging kind of appreciation. I'm not sure if it's the Jerry Herman score (it strives for the robustness of The Music Man but lands at theatrical cheese); the actresses associatedwith the role (garish, drag-queen-like caricatures of women); or that irksome exclamationpoint in its title (grammatically appropriate, I know, but an exclamation pointattached to a musical just seems to bring out the Grinch in me...I'll decide if I'm excited or not, thankyou); but Hello, Dolly! has neverstruck me as anything more than an efficient, inoffensive entertainment of the sort perfect for dinner theaters and high-school productions. Not particularly funny or clever, and far too strenuouslyquaint.

I do admit, however, to harboring a fondness for (and deriving perverse pleasure from) the Barbra Streisandmusical version, simply due to its vast size. Viewing it is like watchingsomeone blowing up a balloon to ever larger dimensions...you want to see howbig it can get before it explodes under its own pressure. I also find Streisand'sschizophrenic performance somewhat fascinating (she’sold/she’s young, she’s sexy/she’s prim, she’s Mae West/ she’s Fanny Brice…)...but TheMatchmaker is another matter entirely.

Somehow everything that doesn't work in Hello, Dolly! works stupendously in The Matchmaker.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUTTHIS FILM:

Chiefly, its scale.The Matchmaker succeeds because the simplicity of its presentation is utterlyappropriate to the material. The overkill of Hello,Dolly! all but submerges the gentle charm of the plot, which is as simple as a fairy tale. In that miraculous way some comedies have, TheMatchmaker lights on just the right tone, just the right balance ofself-awareness and innocence, to make this delicate type of fluff just take wing andsoar. When I first sawthis film I was fairly flabbergasted that in virtually every instance where Hello,Dolly! makes me groan, The Matchmaker gets it 100% right!

Vandergelder Hay and Feed apprentice Barnaby Tucker (l.) and chief clerk Cornelius Hackl (r); near-insufferable characters in the film Hello, Dolly!, are brought to appealing life by Robert Morse and Tony Perkins in The Matchmaker

With a cast that knows its way around comedy, both physical and verbal, I found myself laughing at long-familiar dialog that had never elicited as much as a smile from me before. The difference: they were delivered with skilled timing and in character. The screenplay surprises time and time again by revealing real heart behind the gags and traditional mix-ups and misunderstandings of farce.

The scenes between Paul Ford and Shirley Booth are like comic sparring matches.
Each manages to make their characters farcically funny, yet touchingly human.

PERFORMANCES:

I always enjoy films where even actors in bit roles are cast and directed to fit as part of an ensemble. The cast of The Matchmaker fits seamlessly and are all rhythmically on the same page. Each plays it comically large, but real... like in those great old comedies of the 30s. I get a kick out of seeing the ridiculously young Shirley MacLaine paired with the surprisingly sweet and non-creepyAnthony Perkins. Both are just so likable that you root for their romance the first time you see them together.

Love, Turn of the Century Style

Of course, the top honors go to Shirley Booth, an actress whose work, both dramatic and comedic, I greatly admire. I can't speak to Ruth Gordon's Dolly Levi (she originated the role on Broadway and won the Tony Award), but for my money, the role belongs to Ms. Booth. Along with being refreshingly age and appearance appropriate for the character (Booth was turning 60 when she made this film), she brings to the role a keen comic timing and inflection of delivery that imbues Dolly's busybody antics a touch of poignancy along with the humor. How she achieves this is beyond me, but I find Booth to be one of those actresses who can turn straw to gold. If a line of dialog is funny, she can make it uproarious; if it's only amusing, she has a way of bringing her voice, mannerisms, and facial expressions into play and arriving at something delightfully original and unexpected. She finds the authenticity in even the broadest comedy. Until I saw The Matchmaker, it never once occurred to me that there could be a human being behind that grating buttinsky known as Dolly "Gallagher" Levi. Just check out how Booth handles the big monologue Dolly has with her departed husband. I've seen it performed many times before, but Booth is the only one to make it genuinely moving.

Dolly Levi's philosophy of Matchmaking
"Life is never quite interesting enough, somehow. You people who come to the movies know that.
So I rearrange things a little."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

Those familiar with Hello, Dolly! will find it fun picking up bits of dialog that became songs, taking note of added and eliminated characters, and comparing the changes in acting styles. Me, I enjoyed seeing characters reduced to one-dimensionality in the musical revealed to be rather fleshed out in their original form. And when things are at risk of becoming too sweet or cute, the device of having the actors step out of character to address the audience always seems to add a knowing wink indicating that they are aware of playing parts in a dated - but terribly charming - little confection.

Shirley Booth and Shirley MacLaine appeared as mother and daughter in Hot Spell (1958)

Robert Morse originated the role of Barnaby Tucker on Broadway

Paul Ford was the master of the flustered double-take

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

It's always been my feeling that a comedy that works is that rarest of movie beasts. Everyone's tastes are different and I can easily imagine that Shirley Booth's grandmotherly appeal and the old-fashioned, light-as-gossamer style of comedy employed here won't be to everyone's liking. But for those, like me, who find nothing funny in the contemporary fascination with scatology, rudeness, and the bottomless wellspring of American male oafishness; well, The Matchmaker is a godsend. I may have missed this terrific little film for the many decades it was available to be seen, but since discovering it, I've more than made up for lost time. It's one of my favorite films. Witty script, clever execution, sharp performances, heart, sentimentality, and a moral to boot!

The cast of The Matchmaker bids us all farewell

DEMON SEED 1977

2011-11-23T23:42:00.001-08:00

Back in 1977 I recall asking a friend if she was as eager asI to see the new Donald Cammell film, DemonSeed, opening at theaters that week. Her reply: "Ugh! Hollywoodjust keeps thinking of new ways to rape women." I took that for a no.

Her response surprised me. My friend and I were classmates atfilm school, drawn together by a love for thought-provoking mainstream filmsthat veered into the realm of art, and a shared fondness for Cammell's remarkabledirecting debut, Performance (1971). Given that Demon Seed was only Cammell's second film insix years, I thought my friend would find provocative the prospect of a directoras artistically idiosyncratic as Cammell taking on a film that, in summary,read like something better suited to William Castle or Roger Corman: a supercomputer imprisons a woman (Julie Christie) in herhome, intent on impregnating her and creating a new life form.

I mean, how could my friend so oversimplify what wasobviously going to be some kind of meta-commentary on the uneasy relationshipbetween man and machine played out against the life-affirming emotionalattributes of the contemporary woman vs. the cold, patriarchal dominance oftechnology? It was like someone saying Rosemary'sBaby was just about a hell-beast raping a mortal woman. Subtexturallyspeaking, couldn't my friend see thatthere had to be so much more to DemonSeed than just the impregnation of a woman by a robot?

And what about the Julie Christie connection? Surely JulieChristie—that skilled, intelligent, serious-minded, movie icon of the 60s, whopublicly eschewed Hollywood stardom and cheesecake glamour for serious roles; whoturned her back on untold millions due of her level-headed, principled, proto-feministdisinterest in portraying helpless girlfriends and supportive male appendages—surelySHE wouldn't participate in a film that degrades women! Would she?

Julie Christie as Dr. Susan Harris

Fritz Weaver as Dr. Alex Harris

Gerrit Graham as Walter

Robert Vaughn as the voice of Proteus IV

Well, here it is some 34 years and countless viewings later,and as far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on whether my friend'sdiminution of Demon Seed was rash oversimplification or simply hit the nail on the head.

The marriage between child psychologist Susan Harris(Christie) and computer scientist husband, Alex (Weaver), becomes strained followingthe loss of their child to leukemia. Susan fears Alex has grown increasinglyremote and unemotional, immersing himself in work she views as dehumanizing technology. Specifically: the creation of an organic super-computer namedProteus IV. Attempting a trial separation, Susan opts to remain alone in theirspacious, fully-automated, fortress-secure home, run by an all-seeing computer namedAlfred (a.k.a., Red Flag #1).

Marital discord: "Am I so cold?"

In his defense, it is clear that Alex is confronting his grief in the only way heknows how; channeling his energies towards Proteus IV discovering a cure forthe kind of cancer that took the life of his child. And indeed it is Alex's disinterest in ProteusIV's financial and political potential that leaves him vulnerable to the profit-motivateddemands of his subsidizers who wish Proteus IV to serve man's needs as theydictate.

Alas, Proteus is a thinking computer with a moral code (ofsorts), a man's voice (Robert Vaughn), and a particularly masculine tendency tothink he's right in the face of blatant contradictions. When ordered to conductresearch into an undersea mining operation that would disrupt the eco-system,Proteus high-mindedly declares, "I refuse to assist you in the rape of theearth!"

A point well-taken were it not for the nasty bit of businesshe/it feels perfectly vindicated in embarking on just moments later; the rapingand impregnation of Susan.

Why? So that it, Proteus IV, who possesses all thewisdom and ignorance of all men, can feel the sun on its face and achieve the kind of immortality that only an offspring can guarantee.

Or somethinglike that.

You see, the objective of Proteus' plan to procreatefluctuates from altruistic to despotic, depending on whom he's speaking to and what it is he is trying to reason/intimidate them into doing.

And therein lies the paradox of Proteus IV. Perhaps intentionally, due to Proteus' inconsistent shifts from sadistic tormentor to world savior, we are never sure if we are meant to side with Proteus' rather logical, humane arguments (the Icon Industries money men are portrayed as villanous fat cats) or if Proteus IV is just amachine gone mad. Perfectly valid to have that point left ambiguous, but the way the film is constructed, it feels less like food for thought and more like a lack of focus and sloppy storytelling. (Proteus has the soothing voice of a yoga instructor and shows trippy psychedelic lights when he speaks, yet employs the psychological games of a wife-beater. He physically abuses Susan, all the while telling her that she brought it all on herself by provoking him.)

Captive-women movies like The Collector (1965) and Tattoo (1981) always have a rough time justifying the amount of time they ask the audience to watch a woman brutilized for the sake of making a narrative point. For my taste, these films never successfully transcend their male-gaze oppressiveness, and after a couple of hours of rape and victimization played out for my horror entertainment, I'm usually left pretty numb to any point they're professing to make at the eleventh hour. Demon Seed holds out hope because of the intelligence of Julie Christie's performance and the validity of the horror film/thriller conflict as initially presented. But as much as I think this is one of Christie's best performances and well worth watching, I can't shake the feeling that I'm not in the sure hands of a director intentionallyleading me down a path of provocative science vs.man debates. Donald Cammell fails to leave a distinctive mark and much of what occurs feels like characters manipulated by the demands of the genre.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

I'm not unduly fond of science fiction, but I do enjoy agood psychological thriller. Demon Seeddoes a lot of things wrong, but what it does particularly well is create apalpable sense of dread and tension from a situation that is the stuff of nightmares. Julie Christie's ability to convincingly take her character all the way from mild annoyance, defiance, rage, bewilderment, to abject terror is a thing to behold.

PERFORMANCES:

The absolute smartest thing the makers of Demon Seed did was to hire JulieChristie. Without question she is the single reason the film works at all, her assuredperformance never once succumbing to the usual "helpless victim" clichésof the genre. It's a major asset that Christie is an actress of sensitivity capable of conveying a vulnerability that is at the same time very strong. Christie doesn't have a weak bone in her body. And it is precisely the inconceivability of hervictimization at the hands of man or machine that saves the film from being unendurably lurid and morally offensive. I can't think of another actress more believable as a match for, and worthy adversary of, a diabolical super-brain. As Mia Farrow's performance transcended the horror genre and elevated Rosemary's Baby to the level of a modern classic, Julie Christie achieves as much here, but the film surrounding her standout performance isn't up to her work. She's so good that she only calls attention to how weak the script is and how poorly she is served by it.

Julie Christie gives one of the finest performances of her career in Demon Seed.
One wishes the screenplay were more worthy of her efforts.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

There's no denying that DemonSeed has an intriguing premise that thought-provokingly meshes thetechno-paranoia of 2001: A Space Odysseywith the body-invasion terror of Rosemary's Baby. But unlike either of those films,Demon Seed suffers from the feeling that it is perhaps a couple of storyconferences short of fully understanding what it wants to say about it all.

The computer technicians of Icon Industries
Fans of director Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise will remember Garrit Graham (foreground) as glam-rock star Beef, and Harold Oblong (far right) as a member of the rock group, The Undeads.

Ira Levin & Roman Polanski mitigated a lot of potentialcriticism concerning Rosemary's Baby(misogyny, sensationalism, violence against women as entertainment) through thefirm establishment of a consistent point of view (Rosemary's); a defined moralimperative (Rosemary's lapsed Catholicism reflects the morally ambiguous toneof the film as her love for her child supersedes the immorality of evil); andan understanding of the story's larger social implications (the religious andsocial patriarchal dominance over women and their bodies is presented asinconsistent with the film's sympathetic view of Rosemary).

Like Rosemary's Baby,Demon Seed has at its center, avulnerable yet smart and resourceful woman. But instead of heightening audienceidentification/empathy through the presentation of events from her perspective(an easy enough thing to accomplish given that we've all felt helpless to thewhims of machines at one time or another), Demon Seed keeps us at aremove and puts us in the distasteful position of sharing the voyeuristic eyesof Proteus IV.

I kept hoping for the film to reconcile in some meaningfulway its initial scenes emphasizing Susan's belief in the importance of feelingsand expressing emotions with all the test-of-wills/battle-of-wits sequenceswith Proteus IV. But the film ends without a viable justification, beyond genreentertainment, for asking us to endure the many protracted scenes of physicaland psychological abuse perpetrated against Julie Christie for the bulk of thefilm.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the mishandling of Demon Seed's final moments, which isstaged for maximum dramatic payoff, but does so at the cost of shifting focusfrom Susan and placing the viewer in the shoes of the science-minded Alex (whoregisters about three seconds of concern for his wife before becoming nearorgasmic at the thought of the scientific miracle in the basement). Yes, theaudience is clamoring to see the baby at this point too, but a more skilleddirector might have taken precautions to prevent Susan from being shunted tothe sidelines at the end of the film after she has been front and centerthroughout.

It's a gross miscalculation of the importance of audienceidentification, and one of the main reasons why, in the end, I think that Demon Seed is just not up to the taskset forth by its premise.

It succeeds as a more-thoughtful-than-usual sci-fi thriller,but trips itself up on failing to comprehend how uncomfortable (if notdownright unpleasant) audiences are likely to find a film that asks one to bearwitness to a woman's victimization all in service of an academic techno-geek debate.

The triumph of technology over emotion?
The film ends thoughtfully, if ambiguously, with Christie enigmatically observing her child from the sidelines

KLUTE 1971

2011-11-16T20:51:00.000-08:00

There are many wonderful movie actresses whose work I greatly admire. But before Dunaway, Christie, Streep, Black, Blanchett, and Portman, there was Fonda. Jane Fonda was the preeminent actress of my youth — the gold standard — and for a long while there wasn’t an actress who could touch her. As beautiful as she is versatile, Fonda's transformation from bubble-headed ingénue (Tall Story and Any Wednesday); to libertine sexpot (Barbarella); to compellingly sensitive, serious actress (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?); mirrored the evolving role of women in America and charged her screen roles with an immediacy that quickly turned her into a symbol of the times.

Onscreen she was Woman Emergent: the glamorous embodiment of a new feminine standard of intellectual and sexual liberation. Never more so than in the role of Bree Daniels in Klute. Braless, midi-skirted, sporting that iconic shag haircut, dressed in the height of post-hippie funky 70s fashion... Jane Fonda was the sex symbol redefined and seemed to point towards a new era for women in film in the 70s.

Ostensibly, anyway. I mean, Fonda's Bree Daniels is yet another movie call-girl.

Time is Money: Bree checking her watch in the throes of artificial passion

Yes, even as late as 1971 Hollywood was still falling back on this overused cliché in its limited stock of women's roles. If a woman wasn't a wife; a girlfriend; a marriage-minded virginity-guarder, or repressed businesswoman; prostitute (or nymphomaniac, interchangeably) is invariably where imagination-starved screenwriters landed when stumped by how to write a female character who is attractive, independent, and has a sex life.

Cinema's fascination with prostitutes and hookers-with-hearts-of-gold unquestionably has a great deal to do with their presence allowing a film to feature as much sex and nudity as possible while still maintaining a moralistic (and censor appeasing) tone.

But in Klute, Bree Daniels being a call-girl is more than just steamy window dressing. Her profession is integral to the plot, and, as realized by Fonda, Bree is light years away from the usual idealized fantasy image of a prostitute offered in movies.

Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels

Donald Sutherland as John Klute

Roy Scheider as Frank Lagourin

Charles Cioffi as Peter Cable

John Klute (Sutherland) is a small-town detective assigned to investigate the six-month disappearance of local businessman and friend, Tom Gruneman. His search takes him to Manhattan where it appears that Gruneman is in hiding and stalking a call-girl he has allegedly frequented, Bree Daniels (Fonda). As Klute's investigation takes him deeper into the seedy underworld of pimps, drugs, and prostitution, his routine missing persons case reveals itself to be something unanticipatedly perverse and considerably more dangerous.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

The scene that introduces us to the character of Bree Daniels.

As one in an anonymous, objectified line of applicants at a modeling agency, Bree and is dwarfed by photo blow-ups of a glamorously dehumanized model while being subjected to a blisteringly painful (to watch) "cattle-call" inspection that makes a meat-rack look humane.

Model from1970 issue of Harper's Bazaar

Real-life model Veronica Hamel appears briefly in an uncredited role as a model in Klute. Hamel would later go on to star in the TV series, Hill Street Blues.

This is the first of several scenes depicting Bree's pursuit of "respectable" employment (she's an aspiring model/actress) as being infinitely more humiliating and degrading than her work as a call girl. Potential employers take physical and emotional liberties (they feel free to touch her or make casually cruel personal comments) while she's forced to mask her humiliation and dejection behind nervous smiles. With this cinematic device, director Alan J. Pakula economically and with great visual panache (thanks to cinematographer Gordon Willis) establishes the essential conflict of Bree's life and sets the stage for why she regularly sees a psychiatrist.

Bree, asked by her therapist why is she still drawn to prostitution after professing a desire to quit:

"Because its an act. That’s what's nice about it. You don’t have to feel anything, you don’t have to care about anything, you don’t have to like anybody. You just lead them by the ring in their nose in the direction that they think they want to go in...you get a lot of money out of them in as short a period of time as possible...and you control it and you call the shots."

The extended monologues of Bree's therapy sessions: exposed-nerve, free-association musings on why her life isn't working, wherein she reveals her intelligence and self-awareness; are contrasted with the coolly professional patter she employs with her "johns." Gone is any trace of emotional insecurity as Bree, in a deeply seductive lower-register voice, takes command of the situation while expertly playing the role of the carnal supplicant. Anyone operating so fully in such opposing modalities is clearly someone grappling with a lot of issues, and Jane Fonda brings incredible depth and complexity to the character of Bree, inviting the audience to relate to her as an individual personality, and not merely through the prism of a fixed moral stance taken on prostitution.

Working Girl

PERFORMANCES:

Perhaps the biggest testament to how exceptional Jane Fonda is in this, her Academy Award®- winning role, is how the persuasiveness of her performance got audiences and Academy voters alike to overlook their personal responses to Jane Fonda, the political activist, and lose themselves in the character of Bree Daniels. There aren't accolades enough for me to effectively express how much I enjoy and admire Fonda in this movie. It would have been the most pedestrian detective film imaginable without her. Whereas Klute is atmospherically rooted in the early 70s ("Goddamn hypocrite squares!"), Fonda's performance is timeless.

Life Imitates Art: Bree Daniels' mugshot (above), Jane Fonda's real-life 1970 mugshot (below).
Fonda's by now iconic run-in with the law (you can find this image on everything from purses to T-shirts) occurred after filming on Klute had completed

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

My absolute favorite scene in the film is Klute's initial interrogation of Bree in her apartment. Fonda is masterful in navigating the myriad emotional shifts in her character (anger, defensiveness, manipulation, vulnerability) which contrast to dynamic effect with Sutherland's stolid calm. (Love what Fonda does with Bree's reluctant confession that she is afraid of the dark.)

In addition, this scene is a standout example of how to build suspense and generate fear by showing less, not more. Few things are more fright-inducing than those three little words, "Don't be afraid," so when Klute says this to Bree and leads her away from a skylight, tension grows unbearable as the camera pulls to a confining, low angle shot that shows us only Bree's hands on Klute's back reflected in a mirror. As he reveals to her that he thinks someone is on the roof watching them, Bree's hands, seconds-ago in a caress (and criticized earlier in the film as being "funny'), clench in tension and she emits a genuine terrified gasp that eerily echoes the sound of the orgasm she had feigned with a trick in an earlier scene. Just brilliant. Even today, this scene scares the hell out of me.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I like it when filmmakers don't play their audiences for dumb. When intelligence is applied and respect given to so-called genre films (movies that fit specific narrative constructs like westerns, horror films, and police thrillers), there's a real opportunity to create something unexpected and entirely innovative.

John Klute's world in Tuscarora, Pennsyvania.

Bree Daniels' world in New York. A dingy apartment in a brownstone overlooking a funeral parlor.
In this shot, the small pot of flowers Bree carries contrasts with the lush green of the Pennsyvania scenes

With Rosemary's Baby Roman Polanski took what could have been a routine horror film and fashioned it into a masterpiece of urban paranoia. With Klute, the late Alan J. Pakula (with the indispensable contribution of Fonda) takes an unremarkable detective story (the MacGuffin of Tom Gruneman's disappearance is dispensed with so quickly that even those who like the film would be forgiven if they fail to remember his fate) and emerges with a deeply insightful character drama that's also a solid and genuinely frightening thriller. On that last score, the contributions of cinematographer Gordon Willis (The Godfather) and music composer Michael Small (The Stepford Wives, Night Moves) can't be oversold.

Klute is one of the best examples of what the New Hollywood of the 70s promised: a merging of art-film sensibilities with popular entertainment. And with Klute Jane Fonda, my favorite actress when I was growing up, joined Shelley Duvall in 3 Women and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, in giving one of the finest performances in an American film in the 70s.

"Don't be afraid..."

Said by Bree to a trick to relax him,

by Klute to Bree to calm her,
and by the killer to Bree before...

DAY FOR NIGHT 1973

2011-11-08T02:46:00.000-08:00

I really love movies, but films about the making of films tend to pose their own unique brand of problems for filmmakers.

For one, the process of making films is so fragmented that it doesn't easily lend itself to gripping cinema. Quick bursts of frenzied activity book-ended by long stretches of people sitting around while carpenters, painters, and electricians ply their trade isn't exactly fodder for edge-of-your-seat entertainment.

Secondly, no matter how high the stakes are ratcheted up for dramatic purposes (delays, budget cuts, tantrums, infidelity, accidents, natural disasters, death), it's hard not to make moviemaking come across as little more than elaborate dress-up and make-believe...or worse, the non-essential work of over-privileged individuals in a rarefied environment. In spite of how large the entertainment industry looms in our culture, there's no getting past the fact that in the grand scheme of things (and compared to the work of teachers, surgeons, law enforcement, and fire professionals), making movies doesn't seem all that important. Whenever the plot presents an obstacle threatening to shut down a film within a film, the more impassioned the characters' reactions, the more apt we in the audience are likely to think, "It's just a MOVIE for chrissakes!" A real killer to audience involvement.

Lastly, those who endeavor to make films about moviemaking are inevitably faced with a Catch-22: play up its obvious appeal (the excess, glamour, and unearned cultural privilege; the ugly guys with access to impossibly beautiful women; the insane amounts of money spent and wasted) and you ignite audience resentment. Emphasize the art vs. commerce conflict; the hypocrisy, greed, and compromise, and you create a world inhabited by people the audience couldn't care less about. You can't win!

Artifice & Illusion: Day for Night creates its own magic by revealing what's behind the curtain.

Day for Night. The film takes its title from the cinematic practice of using filters to create the effect of night during the day. This very old-fashioned Hollywood device (the French term for it being "The American Night") has been rendered obsolete thanks to CGI, but is on prominent display in virtually every Roger Corman film from the 60s, and in a great many 70s TV shows and TV movies.

Ever narcissistic, Hollywood has been making films about itself since the days of the silents, but it took French New Wave director François Truffaut to make what I consider to be the best film I've ever seen about filmmaking, Hollywood-style, with 1973s Day for Night.

François Truffaut as film director Ferrand

Jacqueline Bisset as movie star Julie Baker

Jean-Pierre Léaud as leading man Alphonse

Valentina Cortese as former international leading lady, Severine

Jean-Pierre Aumont aging matinee idol Alexandre

Perhaps what all those other films needed was the kind of distancing perspective offered by this, Truffaut's thoroughly delightful valentine to cinema. Set in a small studio in Nice, France, Day for Night is almost Altman-esque in its gentle look at the intersecting lives, personalities, and conflicts involved in the making of an utterly unremarkable melodrama titled, "Meet Pamela."

The shooting of a formulaic film in the old-fashioned, studio-bound style that was fast growing obsolete in the 70s, affords Truffaut the opportunity to pay loving homage to American movies and the directors that influenced him in his youth. Correspondingly, he offers film fanatics like me an endearingly idealized portrait of the job of making movies that fuels my still-in-need-of-nurturing romantic notion that films are made by and for the dreamers of this world.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

As a movie geek and fan of Robert Altman's ensemble films, Day for Night has built-in appeal for me merely due to its premise: a character-based, insider view of the world of moviemaking, from the first day of shooting to the wrap. Whereas Altman would have used it as an opportunity for character assassination and a chance to grind his anti-Hollywood axe (love Altman but never enjoyed 1992's sour The Player), Truffaut is like a host giving a tour of his home and introducing us to his family. The tone is lightly comic, sincere, and loving, with Truffaut poking affectionate fun at the individuals who make it their life's work making fantasy look real. With it's ups and downs and myriad problems (director Ferrand/Truffaut never even finds much rest in sleep), it's obvious that there is nothing else in the world that he'd rather do.

Jean Francois Stevinin as the assistant director and Nathalie Baye as the immanently resourceful script girl.
Truffaut greatly assists in our easily identifying the various members of the film crew by having them wear the same clothing throughout the month-long shoot.

Nike Arrighi, the makeup artist

Dani as the reluctant assistant and even more reluctant girlfriend to the leading man.

PERFORMANCES:

Understandably, everyone who sees Day for Night falls instantly in love with Valentine Cortese's superb performance as the insecure leading-lady, Severine. The sequence in which the increasingly flustered actress flubs take after take of a scene due to two troublesomely similar doors, is deservedly one of film's highlights. As for me, the first time I saw the film the strongest impression I came away with was a heavy-duty crush on François Truffaut. With his charmingly receding hairline, matinee idol profile, soft-spoken, sweet natured, manner (he even wears a tie to work!), he was like the Dr. Kildare of directors to me. Brilliant, dedicated and patient, yet never less than 100% in control, Truffaut's Ferrand was my romanticized ideal of what a movie director should be: an intelligent and sensitive artist with a respect for his craft and his actors. (I look at what pass for directors today and find little to admire. The Brett Ratners, Quentin Tarantinos, and Eli Roths not only look as if they've fallen several rungs down on the evolutionary ladder, but behave accordingly.)

Star Quality...take your pick

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

Truffaut, a student of Hitchcock and masterful storyteller in his own right, really brings a sense of fun to the manner in which he introduces the viewer to the closed-off world of filmmaking. By treating it as merely the day to day work of a group of professionals in a specialized field, he achieves what I most admire in art and poetry of any kind...he makes the mundane look extraordinary.

Aware that the vast majority of the population has no idea of how the films that have infiltrated their fantasies and culture are actually made, Truffaut is like a magician revealing the secrets to his tricks. But whereas a magic trick is spoiled by exposing the smoke and mirrors, Truffaut somehow makes the job of moviemaking appear more magical and fantastic with each behind-the-scenes detail he pulls out of his hat. Indeed, a recurring visual motif in Day for Night is to have scenes end with a pre-fade-out "reveal" disclosing some unexpected plot point or character revelation. The device recalls the "Voila!" moment of a magic act.

Parts of Day for Night were filmed on the immense abandoned set for the 1969 film, The Madwoman of Chaillot

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I've been a fan of film for as long as I can remember, yet after all these years, movies still have the power to feel like magic. Clueless as to how an actor achieves something along the level of Heath Ledger's performance in Brokeback Mountain, it feels like a form of magic to me. Unable to wrap my mind around how Roman Polanski, a director in his late 70s, continues to make films so sharp and surprising...that feels like magic to me. That the images in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan were able to move me alternately from goose bumps to tears; that is magic.

Day for Night is filled with references to Truffaut's own films and passions. In this shot, Truffaut pays tribute to the directors that have influenced him by having fictional director Ferrand peruse a stack of books on cinema.

A film like Day for Night comes from a place that understands that movies get under our skin and become parts of our lives, and are therefore worthy (even in the acknowledgement of their sometimes prosaic gestation) of being regarded as art. Collaborative, sometimes compromised art, but art capable of inspiring in us the kind of passion that the late, great François Truffaut never seemed to have lost.

Dreams are what Le Cinema is for...

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? 1966

2011-10-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

"'Tis the refuge we take when the unreality of the world sits too heavy on our tiny heads."

The above statement, spoken half in jest (and in a Barry Fitzgerald Irish accent) by a subdued, down-cycle, Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) in a brief moment of introspective lucidity, is proffered as a response/admission as to why she and husband George (Richard Burton) seem only to relate to one another through cruelly sadistic games of "truth and illusion."

This surprisingly self-aware avowal of the role illusion and willful self-deception play in tent-posting lives of disappointment and regret not only sums up the plot of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but, especially noting the ironic use of the word "unreality" in the quote, could also serve as an explanation for my own lifelong fascination with, and attraction to, film.

Edward Albee's 1962 provocative, Tony Award-winning stage play was adapted into a censorship-shattering motion picture in 1966 by Broadway wunderkind Mike Nichols. Of course, back then the big attraction wasn't the male half of the famous comedy team of Mike Nichols & Elaine May making his film directing debut. It was the casting of Hollywood's number one power-couple—Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton— and the unlikelihood that one of the most beautiful women in the world could be convincingly transformed into the dowdy, middle-aged harridan of Albee's play.

Elizabeth Taylor as Martha

Richard Burton as George

George Segal as Nick

Sandy Dennis as Honey

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a 2 hour-plus acid bath of personality assassinations and psychological manipulation trussed-up as a cocktail party, was just one of the many age-inappropriate films I saw on Saturday afternoons with my sisters at the local movie house when I was growing up. The year was 1967 and the neighborhood theater was The Castro in San Francisco (back then the district was still referred to as Eureka Valley and the Castro street area was mostly home to a multitude of hippies).

Back in those pre-shopping mall days, I suspect the only peace our recently-divorced mom ever got was when she could ship us all off to the movies on Saturday afternoons, not caring a whit about what was playing, just so long as it kept us out of the house and off the streets until she came for us at 4pm. On the occasion of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, my eldest sister (16 to my 10 years) was apparently all the mature adult accompaniment the theater required to grant us access to a film none of us had any chance in hell of understanding.

Well, I did understand one part. The yelling.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is about one enormously volatile evening in, by all appearances, the ceaselessly volatile lives of George and Martha. George, an associate professor of history at a small New England college, and Martha, the college president's daughter, have been persuaded this night to play night-cap host to the college's newest arrivals: Nick, the newly appointed biology teacher, and his constitutionally delicate wife, Honey. George and Martha, who are 20 years senior to their unsuspecting guests, share a complex relationship of dispiriting affection poisoned by years of acrimony and self-loathing. As a kind of coping mechanism and walking postmortem of their marriage, the elder couple engage their guests in an intricate game of personal attacks and verbal assaults designed to keep real feelings at bay and to mask the real unpleasantness of their existence.

George Segal, an actor amazingly adept at comedic and serious roles, and the brilliant Sandy Dennis, the only actress outside of Elizabeth Hartman who could have made this underwritten role so memorable

As an adult, my partner and I have spent more than our share of squirmy evenings playing Nick and Honey to some sparring couple's George and Martha, but as a kid, the only thing I could relate to in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was the yelling. As my parent's preferred mode of communication with one another prior to their divorce, it was familiar enough to me to at least make the characters in the film recognizable. But beyond that I can tell you I really had no idea of what was going on.

Nor should I, at that age. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is pretty sophisticated stuff for even adults to wrap their minds around.

Dashed hopes and good intentions

I remember my disappointment in discovering that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was not, as I had hoped, a horror film along the lines of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? An easy enough conclusion to jump to given the sound-alike title and the scary-looking poster art that carried the (apparently meaningless) warning: No one under the age of 18 will be admitted unless accompanied by a parent.

When, in later years, I came to revisit Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, it was as if I was watching the film for the first time. Just a little bit of life experience helped to bring all of Edward Albee's agonizingly perceptive observations into sharp relief. I not only got it, but felt so moved by the daringly theatrical means by which Albee dramatizes the simple truth that to live one's life free of illusions is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

It would be difficult to overstate the qualities that Haskell Wexler's expressive black and white cinematography brings to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In these days of HD it's even more breathtaking than ever. What an amazing array of gray tones and shadings!

PERFORMANCES:

I was never much of a fan of Elizabeth Taylor in my younger years. Her unavoidable presence on the cover of every movie magazine (recounting marital problems, movie-star extravagances, and countless trips to the hospital) soured my impression of her as any kind of serious actress. I never thought of her as much of a beauty, either, as she always reminded me more of a less frumpy Ethel Mertz than one of the most beautiful women in the world. The turning point in my attitude towards Taylor came in 1989 when I had the opportunity to see Glenda Jackson (an actress I absolutely idolized) in a Los Angeles production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? directed by Edward Albee himself. Fond of the film version, I was not exactly persuaded by Taylor's performance. Now was a chance to see what a "real" actress would do with this marvelous character.

Well to put it bluntly, Ms. Jackson was terrible. She just seemed to miss everything that was vulnerable about Albee's Martha, and (surprising to me) was unable to muster much passion behind her tirades. As the evening wore on, Elizabeth Taylor's performance began to loom largely and impressively in my memory, and by the time the curtain came down, I was convinced that I had given Elizabeth Taylor a bum rap all those years.

Elizabeth Taylor's monologue in this sequence is some of the finest acting of her career

I've seen a great many Elizabeth Taylor films since then, and not only do I now consider her to have been truly one of the great beauties of the screen, but I feel that her looks and off-screen exploits have clouded many a fair assessment of her talent. I consider her to have been one of the best actresses in film. Her choice of roles may have been spotty, but she was something the likes of which we're not apt to see again, EVER.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

It must have been quite a voyeuristic thrill for fans of Taylor and Burton to see the famously hard-drinking, combative couple, playing a hard-drinking, combative couple onscreen. And indeed, there is something about their easy rapport and effortless chemistry here that is never duplicated in another film. I particularly like those small moments where the couple reveal their deep affection for one another. Even when it's merely a dysfunctional appreciation of the other being able to keep up with the game. That neither plays their roles "one-note" and allow for flashes of tenderness between the bursts of vitriol, is what makes this film such a standout for me.

Liz and Dick: Probably the only real-life couple ever to display any real chemistry onscreen

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

The grace of all art is it's ability to find the poetry in the ordinary and prosaic. As I stated earlier, I grew up around a lot of yelling in my family, and along with lacking anything resembling a poetic thrust, it lacked a sense of danger to me. I was used to it and it thought that was how all people who loved one another communicated. Growing up, I identified with comedies and dramas of familial discord to a disturbing degree. (I was a big fan of Tennessee Williams and those "Eunice" segments of the old Carol Burnett variety show. It was only in later years that I came to recognize that that WAS my family.)

As it turns out, my partner of 16 years was raised in a household where his parents talked and discussed things and never allowed him to see them yelling at one another. So, as you might guess, our first viewing of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? together was almost traumatic for him. Even to this day he really can't take the endless shouting and mean-spiritedness, so this is one film I love that I usually enjoy alone (all the better, because I'm often crying like a baby at the finale).

"Total war?"
"Total!"

What's wonderful is that in our years together, my partner has helped me to see that yelling is not the way that healthy people express love, and I've since learned to appreciate histrionic drama where it belongs, on the screen and on the stage, but not in my life.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? may not be everyone's taste, but it's a beautiful film. Mike Nichols and everyone involved did a marvelous job. If you have the stomach for it, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a deeply affecting look at explosive emotions that you get to view from a relatively safe distance.

"Just us?"
It's Elizabeth Taylor at her absolute best in this, the most painful sequence in the film. Reduces me to waterworks unfailingly.

LOST HORIZON 1973

2011-10-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

It’s not my intention to turn this blog into a celebration of the worst that cinema has to offer (although there are those who would say I already have), but the recent DVD release of the notorious 1973 mega-flop, Lost Horizon, is an event of considerable note. A cause for celebration, if you will, for both lovers of entertainingly bad cinema (yours truly), and those who have come to regard Lost Horizon as an underappreciated classic.

Lost Horizon, James Hilton’s paean to peace and spiritual life everlasting in a magical land called Shangri-La, was first adapted to film by Frank Capra in 1937. Thirty-five years later, MOR pop sensations Burt Bacharach and Hal David were hired by producer Ross Hunter to score this big-budget, semi all-star, musical remake. Alas, Lost Horizon fell prey to the prevailing twisted logic of the day that held that what modern musicals needed most was dramatic talent, so, Columbia Pictures, not having learned its lesson from Camelot (whose revamped set serves a Shangri-La’s lamasery), populated Lost Horizon with a cast of dramatic actors who could neither sing nor dance.

Really? This is 35 years of film progress?: Above, Shangri-La envisioned as a Streamline Moderne paradise in the1937 film; below, Shangri-La as a Las Vegas theme hotel.

To promote Lost Horizon, Ross Hunter—the comb-overed, leisure-suited, closeted-gay producer (his 40-years lifetime partner was frequent co-producer Jacques Mapes) responsible for the Tammy films, Douglas Sirk, and those Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies—appeared in a flurry of self-congratulatory, back-slapping, print and television publicity declaring how proud he was of Lost Horizon, and how (in a subtle slap in the face to the new permissiveness in films) his musical was to be a return to the wholesome family films of yesteryear.

Hunter, who had reason to crow, coming as he did off of the staggering blockbuster success of Airport (1970), was about to get a none-too-subtle dose of hubris when critics and audiences nationwide met the release of Lost Horizon with a conjoined hostility that effectively ended his 20-plus years as a feature film producer. Had Hunter been a little less "proud" of Lost Horizon, he may have emerged from the fiasco reasonably unscathed. Unfortunately (but rather helpfully), Ross Hunter chose to plaster his name in large type above the film's title in any and all publicity, making it easy for everyone to know just where and with whom to place the blame.

These aren't the same guy?
Disaster film producer Irwin Allen (l.), producer of disasters of a different sort, Ross Hunter (r.)

Following much advance hoopla, when ultimately released, Lost Horizon (which provided Norwegian art-house sensation, Liv Ullmann, her ignominious American film debut) had the dubious distinction of being one of the most heavily-promoted, yet widely-reviled films of the 70s. A title it may well have held in perpetuity had it not been for the twin missile launch of two equally high-profile musical bombs later in the decade: At Long Last Love (1975) and The Blue Bird (1976).

Even with the excision of several laugh-inducing musical numbers, Lost Horizon limped along at theaters before disappearing completely within weeks of opening. Soundtrack albums and truckloads of Lost Horizon merchandising items (comic books, paper dolls, etc.) filled the remainder bins. Denied a VHS release and airing on cable TV only in its severely edited-down form, Lost Horizon, a film otherwise destined for obscurity, has over the years risen to must-see status primarily due to its long-standing unavailability and a lingering public curiosity surrounding it actually being as awful as its reputation attested.

Now, for the first time since that calamitous opening week in 1973, the curious and devout alike can witness Lost Horizon in all its fully restored, digitally enhanced, wide-screen splendor, with all but one of its five deleted musical numbers reinstated (a brief Sally Kellerman/George Kennedy reprise of "Living Together, Growing Together" is still MIA). Sure, the recovery of lost footage from Lost Horizon is a bit like a Bizarro World reenactment of the restorations of Stroheim's Greed or Lang's Metropolis, but it’s not usual for a studio to treat one of its money-losing embarrassments with such respect.

Peter Finch, most likely thinking of his paycheck.

Liv Ullmann, adopting the universal "Who knows?" pose when asked why she agreed to appear in this film

Sally Kellerman, upon hearing that her big solo number, "Reflections" is to take place atop a big ol' rock

Michael York, Shangri-La's snappiest dresser

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Although I am very fond of Lost Horizon and have seen it many times, I don't number myself among those who actually think it’s a good film. I like it because of the nostalgia it invokes (the pro-Lost Horizon cult is comprised chiefly of individuals who saw it as children. Bless their undiscerning little hearts); I’m crazy about Burt Bacharach; and because I have a decided taste for cheese. Lost Horizon is a banquet of tacky aesthetics, risible dialog, awkward performances, wince-inducing lyrics, and moldy choreography. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Movies this wrong-headed are just too much fun.

Bobby Van and George Kennedy model the latest in caftan finery from the 1973 Ah Men catalogue: The Allan Carr/Fire Island collection

As with many bad films that provide hours of unintentional entertainment, Lost Horizon’s cluelessness is one of its primary charms. It's just so darn earnest! Fairly dripping with good intentions, est seminar philosophizing , and Me Generation navel-gazing, Lost Horizon intends to be moving and inspirational, but in never adequately landing on a way of dramatizing its themes, the film instead talks about them (ad nauseum) and feels needlessly preachy. For example: Lost Horizon never makes Shangri-La look appealing. The state of peace and enlightenment HAS to be livelier and more fun than this. With all those monks somnambulistically gliding about and everybody looking so gloomily content, the idea of an eternity spent here sounds less like a dream and more like one of those ironic twist endings from a Twilight Zone episode.

Trying to read smutty subtext into schoolteacher Liv Ullmann offering Peter Finch her melon is about as exciting as things get in Shangri-La

PERFORMANCES:

If there’s such a thing as the opposite of “The Midas Touch” then the late Ross Hunter certainly had it when it came to natural beauty. In Airport, Hunter’s old-fashioned notion of glamour turned 32 year-old stunner Jean Seberg into a well-preserved matron, and in Lost Horizon he works the same reverse alchemy on the luminous Liv Ullmann. The stiff, desexed, schoolmarm Lost Horizon fashions her into bears no resemblance to the lovely, earthy actress in all those Ingmar Bergman films.

Along with an unflattering wardrobe, Liv Ullmann is saddled with a terrible dubbed singing voice in Lost Horizon. To hear what her real singing voice is like (metered shouting, actually), check out this clip of Ullmann performing in the 1979 Broadway musical I Remember Mama

Sally Kellerman, though ill-served by the terrible script and a few too many giggle-worthy dance moments, is my personal favorite in Lost Horizon. Perhaps it's the character arc that takes her from pill-popping neurotic to loose-limbed free spirit, or the fact that when she sings she at least sounds like herself (the soulless, antiseptic singing voices given to Finch and Ullman could have come out of a machine). Mostly it's because there's a naturalness to her that I've always found very appealing. Unlike some of her costars who look only embarrassed, one senses that Kellerman liked her role, enjoys singing, and perhaps envisioned herself appearing in a better musical than the one she's in.

Sally Kellerman and a very pregnant Olivia Hussey agree to disagree in "The Things I Will Not Miss" number. A song one perceptive online critic described as a New-Age version of the "Green Acres" theme.
Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye tried their hand at it Here.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

The Holy Grail of lost footage for those with an affinity for the awful has been the infamous "fertility dance" sequence of the "Living Together, Growing Together" number. Legend has it that this sequence, highlighting greased-up male dancers in loincloths, caused so much audience laughter that it was removed from the film during it's opening week. The choreography in this number is hilarious, to be sure, but some of that laughter HAD to have been homosexual panic. After all, there have been hundreds of films with equally atrocious harem-girl dance sequences shoehorned into the plot for the sole purpose of displaying a little female pulchritude. But I guess a big screen filled with gyrating, muscular, semi-nude male dancers was just too much to ask of audiences in 1973. Both confounding and fascinating, it stands alone as the sole moment of an asserted homosexual sensibility in a strenuously heterosexual "family" entertainment created by a coterie of gay men (the aforementioned Hunter and co-producer Mapes; 63 year-old choreographer Hermes Pan; and screenwriter Larry Kramer).

Stop! In the name of good taste

Too many rings around Rosie

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

When it comes to Lost Horizon, I think American audiences betrayed Ross Hunter by acting like they expected something other than vulgar schlock from him (after all, he had been feeding them just that for 20 years). But I also think Hunter betrayed American audiences by falling prey to that great Hollywood sickness: mistaking success for talent.

Airport was a wildly popular film, but, no offense to fans, just add a few Bacharach songs and lead-footed dances and its every bit as awful as Lost Horizon. But since it was the biggest grosser of the year and garnered Ross Hunter his first and only Academy Award® nomination, it was inevitable that he wouldn't just see this as a case of giving the public what they wanted (like a fast food burger), but evidence of his talent. The thing that sinks Lost Horizon is that it just takes itself too seriously and tries too hard to be an important film. When Hunter was content to make glossy, easily-digestible, escapist fluff, he was perhaps the top of his craft. When he actually started to see himself as an artist capable of making a good film...well, delusion crept in, held the door open for pretension, and they both kicked Hunter in the pants.

We film fans are susceptible to our own variation of this sickness. If we like a film, we flatter ourselves thinking it is due to it being good; if we don't like a film, it has to be because it's bad. Ignoring the very real fact that some truly marvelous films are just not our taste, and some real stinkers are dear to our heats. Such is Lost Horizon to me. It's not a good film, but boy, was I excited when I learned that it was coming out on DVD!

Sally Kellerman refuses to let a dangerous trek through Himalayan Mountains interfere with her fashion sense; that fur hat MUST be cocked to the side!

YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW 1966

2011-10-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

Coming-of-age films have always been with us, but they truly came into their own during the youth-obsessed 60s. By their nature, the scope of these films has always been independence, rebellion, sexual awakening, and challenging adult authority- the major preoccupations of young people the world over. So, naturally, when the economic power of America's burgeoning Youth Movement began to be felt at the nation's boxoffices, this romanticism of youthful experience earmarked the coming-of-age film as the preferred voice of the young. A genre tailor-made for the era of the "personal" film, the anti-hero, and the New Hollywood. Even old-guard Hollywood, traditionally suspicious of change, was surprisingly receptive to even the more way-out, avant-garde entries in the genre, as these invariably male-centric reveries always afforded ample opportunity for salaciousness, sex, and the baring of female flesh: tried and true ticket-sellers in any age.

Time has granted Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967) the uncontested title of representative coming-of-age film for a generation, but my favorite entry in cinema’s “pain of growing up” sweepstakes is this delightfully offbeat comedy from a young (27) Francis Ford Coppola. You’re a Big Boy Now was Coppola's first film for a major studio as well as his master's thesis submission to the UCLA film school, and as such, displays an engagingly youthful lack of discipline and over-fondness for camera trickery...two things that don't exactly get in the way in films that came out of he 60s.

Elizabeth Hartman as Barbara Darling

Peter Kastner as Bernard Chanticleer

Geraldine Page as Mrs. Chanticleer

Julie Harris as Miss Thing

Rip Torn as Mr. Chanticleer

Karen Black as Amy Partlett

You’re a Big Boy Now is about the misadventures of Bernard (scornfully nicknamed “Big Boy” by his self-centered father), a woefully under-experienced 19 year-old who, at the insistence of his father and against the protests of his obsessively over-protective mother, goes off to live on his own in Manhattan. Bernard’s naiveté and propensity to lose himself in flights of fantasy consistently get him into trouble as he attempts to navigate life and love on the path toward adult independence.

Given how male filmmakers and writers never seem to tire of wistful, semi-autobiographical looks back on their sexual awakening, there’s no shortage of these “rite of passage” films to choose from. Indeed, one could probably fill an airplane hangar with them. Inherently similar in tone, most suffer from a kind of willful masculine myopia and gender fear that finds endless charm in the sexual fumblings of doltish, socially awkward, physically unattractive, emotionally superficial young men who nonetheless feel they rate the most beautiful woman in the film. Being the wish-fulfillment fantasies they are, our callow hero usually does get the longed-for beauty, but it’s a certainty that before the end credits roll, said dream girl will reveal herself to be somehow undeserving of his noble affections (take THAT pretty girls who snubbed the director in high-school!).

You’re a Big Boy Now doesn’t deviate far from this well-trod narrative path, but Coppola invests the proceedings with such creative exuberance (every scene holds at least one element of surprise; whether visually, verbally, or in the goofily straight/comic performances he elicits from his game cast), that the film feels more like a surreal satire of the genre rather than a representative of the genuine article.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Providing, as it does, a subjective view of the overwhelming and perilous adult world as it's perceived by the sheltered Bernard, there is much to enjoy in the film's many eccentric visual flourishes, absurdist characters, and anarchic editing style. With its blaring (and rather good) score of pop songs by The Lovin' Spoonful, You’re a Big Boy Now is a 60s film to its core, complete with an overarching air of reproach directed at middle-class sexual repression and senseless guilt.

"Don't eat too much, don't stay out late, don't go to suspicious places or play cards, and stay away from girls! But most of all Bernard, try to be happy."

I had always thought of Peter Kastner (right) as looking like a cross between Robert Morse & Michael J Pollard; but a friend nailed it when he said Peter reminded him of Ernie (Barry Livingston) from My Three Sons.
The late Peter Kastner starred in his own TV series in 1968, The Ugliest Girl in Town; about a man who poses as a female model and becomes a boyish fashion sensation, a la Twiggy

PERFORMANCES:

The desirable, yet dangerous, female is as much a staple of the coming-of-age film as the virginal hero having a more sexually sophisticated best friend/advisor (in this instance, the appropriately unctuous Tony Bill). When it comes to scary women, You’re a Big Boy Now has probably the most disturbing, dick-withering example of that gynophobic archetype ever to come out the free-love era: the man-hating, aspiring actress/go-go dancer, Barbara Darling.

The character of Barbara Darling in less capable hands would be just another bitch-goddess cliché, but someone had the inspired genius to cast against type, and the late Elizabeth Hartman manages to be downright chilling, yet terribly funny, in the role. What makes her performance here so amazing is that I saw You're a Big Boy Now only after I had already seen Hartman in A Patch of Blue (1965), The Group (1966), and The Beguiled (1971); all roles emphasizing the gentle, almost fragile vulnerability of this immensely likable actress. Though obviously talented (she was Academy Award® nominated and won the Golden Globe for A Patch of Blue), there is nothing about her performances in any of these films that would lead you believe she could be so aggressively carnal and convincingly, psychotically mercurial. In a transformation the likes of which I've rarely seen, the Eizabeth Hartman of her earlier films is nowhere to be seen in You're a Big Boy Now. She gives my favorite performance in the film.

Displaying her vast range, the man-eater of You're a Big Boy Now is light years away from the Elizabeth Hartman in this promotional clip.
A Cinderella Named Elizabeth: 1965 featurette for "A Patch of Blue"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

You're a Big Boy Now has some great shots of Manhattan and New York's seedy Times Square area that predate the gritty images in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Klute (1971). It's fun seeing theater marquees advertising films like Born Free and The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

What's fun about watching the early works of accomplished directors is trying to catch a glimpse of some kind of nascent artistry or budding style that would later emerge as a defining trait or characteristic of their work. To look at the early films of Roman Polanski or Woody Allen is to see the beginnings of a style and preoccupation with themes they continue to bring to their work even to this day. In watching You're a Big Boy Now, I was left with two thoughts: 1) with this film's pre-MTV kinetic rhythms, how is it that all of Coppola's subsequent musical outings (Finian's Rainbow, One From the Heart, and The Cotton Club) all seemed so flat?; 2) Coppola shows such a flair for comedy here, I'm surprised he hasn't had many comedies on his resume.

Although You're a Big Boy Now has not been widely seen nor is it particularly well-known, Elizabeth Hartman and Geraldine Page were both nominated for Golden Globes for their performances, with Miss Page (who was married to co-star Rip Torn at the time) garnering an Oscar® nod as well. Best of all (for me, anyway, because I'm such a big fan) the film gave Karen Black her film debut. Pretty classy pedigree for a director's first major film.

FREAKY FRIDAY 1976

2011-10-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

What's up with movies for girls and movies for boys? Even legitimate critics resort to using the pejorative "chick flick" label and attributing gender traits to movies as if film reels came swaddled in pink or blue blankets. When I was growing up there was this series of annoying TV commercials about a deodorant made for women, each a variation on the same cloddish, B.O.-challenged husband foolishly reaching for a deodorant, only to have it intercepted at the last moment by a scolding wife reminding him that this particular sweat neutralizer was intended exclusively for the fairer sex. The latter delivered in a piteously supercilious tone that screamed, "You may have more lean muscle mass, superior earning potential, and are favored in a patriarchal society, but I have this deodorant!"

Advertisers need to perpetuate false distinctions to sell more of their product (one deodorant formula—throw in a bit of scent and slap a daisy on the packaging—voilá, a deodorant for women!), but unless we're talking about Vin Diesel movies, films are about human beings. The human experience is universal, not gender-specific, and there is much to be learned from films about either sex.

Barbara Harris as Ellen Andrews

Jodie Foster as Annabel Andrews

John Astin as William Andrews

The first and best of what would become a trend in identity-switch comedies, Freaky Friday is about a contentious mother and daughter who magically trade places for one calamity-filled day. As each gets to see the world through the other's eyes, a mutual respect grows that sweetly translates into a renewed appreciation of self and the people in their lives. Unlike the stale 2003 remake that needlessly piled on the subplots, this version has the smarts to simply mine the situation's vast comic potential and steps politely to the side, relinquishing the floor to Harris and Foster.

As co-stars, Foster and Harris share very few scenes together, yet neither seems to be off the screen for a moment

Advance publicity for Freaky Friday so played up its appeal to its target audience (pre-teen girls) that, despite the presence of a hot-from-Nashville Barbara Harris and the everywhere-at-once Jodie Foster (she had five films in release in 1976, most significantly, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver), I summarily dismissed it. After all, I was a film major at an artsy-fartsy college at the time and had bigger aesthetic fish to fry. Or so I thought.

Leap ahead ten years, and by way of a rented VHS, I finally see Freaky Friday and immediately fall in love with it. Had I seen it in '76, it easily would have been one of my favorites. A surprisingly smart and laugh-out-loud funny film that ranks among the best comedies of the 70s. Who knew? A non-stop barrage of generation-gap gags and silly stunts, plus an impressive supporting cast of familiar character actors, Freaky Friday is like Disney’s answer to Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? and the films of Mel Brooks.

Even blatant product-placement can't compete with the comic talent of Barbara Harris, here going head-to-head with her son/little brother, Ben (a.k.a. Ape Face) played by Sparky Marcus

Veteran TV director Gary Nelson (Get Smart, The Patty Duke Show, Happy Days) and screenwriter Mary Rogers (author of the source novel) serve up much of the same white-bread suburban comedy that typified Disney's live-action outings, but instead of the beige blandness of a Dean Jones or Kurt Russell, Freaky Friday is blessed with (and saved by) its two enormously idiosyncratic stars. Harris, one of the screen’s great unsung comedy geniuses, is particularly good. An actress with the sexy/kooky unpredictability of Madeline Kahn combined with the manic agility of Gene Wilder, she’s a true comedy original.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Freaky Friday has the most amazing supporting cast!

Kaye Ballard & Ruth Buzz as competing soccer coaches

Clockwise from left: Karen Smith (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Marvin Kaplan (Top Cat), Al Molinaro (Happy Days), Jack Sheldon (Run Buddy, Run), and the inimitable Patsy Kelly.

The great Marie Windsor as Ms. Murphy, the typing teacher (l.) and with Sterling Hayden in Stanley Kubrick's 1956 classic, The Killing

Brassy character actress Iris Adrian as annoyed bus passenger (l.) and with Barbara Stanwyk in 1943s Lady of Burlesque

PERFORMANCES:
It's hard to imagine how anyone could have anticipated how well the agreeably opposing comedy styles of Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster would mesh. Foster, who was only 13 at the time, is not much of a physical comic, but she's an exceptionally intuitive actress with a comedian's gift for mimicry. When the tomboyish Annabel switches bodies with her mother, Foster's taking on of an adult persona extends beyond a broadened vocabulary. Employing that slightly starchy quality that would later characterize much of her adult work, Foster, as the child/adult Annabel, seems to rise in stature, her carriage conveying a controlled adult's exasperation in the face of the absurd.

By way of contrast, Barbara Harris' transformation from Mrs. Andrews to Annabel is a thoroughly physical and mental transformation that dispenses with any attempt to mimic Foster's characterization in any way. Rather, Harris' farcically elastic performance is more a reflection of Annabel's liberated spirit. Harris plays a teen trapped in an adult's body like a child let loose in a playground. Annabel is marveling at the freedom that comes with her newfound body (which is free of baby fat, gawkiness, and braces) and is fairly intoxicated by it. It makes complete sense that Annabel in her mother's body would be looser, loopier, and far more physically expressive than the plodding teen we saw earlier. Barbara Harris, with her expressive body, would make for a delicious silent-screen comedian, but given her delightfully wacky sense of timing with the comedy dialog, who would want that? Together, Foster and Harris create the perfect blend of hilariously active and reactive comedy that makes this film work.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

The tone of the film is perfectly set by the cute-as-all-getout animated title sequence and its catchy theme song, "I'd Like to Be You for a Day." The song, written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn. (the team that gave us the love themes from both The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno) is sung by a woman and a girl. The woman sounds a lot like Broadway-trained Barbara Harris, but despite IMDB claims, there's no way in hell that the high, piping voice of the little girl belongs to Jodie Foster. Even on helium.

Title animation sequence by Art Stevens

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

I've never been much of a fan of the way that Disney films, under the guise of providing "family" entertainment, seemed to willfully hold back the hands of time and operate in an air of head-in-the-sand detachment. By 1976 the antiseptic, Leave it to Beaver kind of neighborhood featured in Freaky Friday may have held nostalgic appeal for some, but to me it verged on the witless and indifferent.

What saves Freaky Friday from being a creaky, wish-fulfillment timepiece is how tiny flashes of wit and touches of the off-beat peek through.

John Astin's obvious excitement whenever wife Barbara Harris (inhabited by her daughter) slips and calls him "Daddy" is surprisingly hip comedy for a Disney film

Annabel harbors a crush on the boy next door (Marc McClure), but in the body of her mother, the attraction gets ticklish

Freaky Friday: a kid's movie that's smarter and more perceptive than most comedies aimed at adults; a movie for preteen girls that has a universal message about respecting yourself and others; and a Disney movie with the lunatic comic anarchy of a Mel Brooks comedy. Hmmm...seems like when it comes down to it, labels are no more effective with films than they are with people.

ROSEMARY'S BABY 1968

2011-09-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

“Cinematically speaking, if stressful social times trigger in our culture the need for escapism as a coping mechanism, then such conditions must equally inspire the necessity of what can be best described as a shrouded emotional outlet: an avenue, concealed to the psyche, through which the fears and uncertainties of the times can be safely vented. In this manner the horror film has always been socially revealing.”

Rosemary's Baby: Child of the 60s:

Rosemary’s Baby was released in June of 1968. And as social climates go, one couldn't find a year more defined by stress, fear, and uncertainty than America in 1968. This was the year that saw Richard Nixon elected into office of President; the assassination of two American symbols of hope (Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy); U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam escalate; and big cities and college campuses across the nation wracked by violent civil rights protests and heated anti-war demonstrations. Observed Los Angeles Times journalist Bettuane Levine: “It was a very bad year. Strikes, sit - ins and bloody riots dotted the land, as various groups sought their share of the pie. The result was a country in crisis, our cities in tatters, our dislocated lives punctuated by assassination, Cold War threats, nuclear terrors, and a general feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.”

Real-life Time Magazine cover, dated April 1, 1966, poses the unasked question that Rosemary's Baby's powerfully ambiguous ending inspires.

For anyone endeavoring to make a horror film in the 60s, a seemingly insurmountable hurdle lie in determining what could possibly frighten an audience who had beamed into their homes, on a nightly basis via television, the real-life terrors of war; and who, through photo magazines like Life and Look, regularly confronted graphic evidence of a nation growing increasingly chaotic. What fictional monster could compete with the real-life horror that was modern America?

Enter, Rosemary's Baby. Ira Levin's cannily plotted modern horror story about present-day witchcraft took classic gothic conventions and re-imagined them through the prism of an emerging new world view. A world in which castles, bats, cobwebs, and creaky doorways were no longer considered viable mechanisms of fear. A world that had moved beyond superstition and myth to worship at the altar of science and logic. Rosemary's Baby proposed that even in a world in which God and religion are deemed obsolete, there remain things that never die and primitive evils that no amount of civilization and modernization can eradicate.

Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse

John Cassavetes as Guy Woodhouse

Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet

Sidney Blackmer as Roman Castevet

Roman Polanski's uncommonly faithful film adaptation took Levin's narrative one step further. He threaded the tale of a young bride's mounting certainty that a coven of witches has evil designs on her unborn child with both cultural subtext (is the dawning of the year "One" [1966] and the birth of the Antichrist on earth the true explanation for the world's escalating terrors?), and ambiguity (Polanski initially filmed, and later deleted, several scenes that distinctly confirmed Guy's involvement with the coven. An avowed atheist, Polanski wanted to make a film about witchcraft and Satanism that would play just as well as a psychological thriller about a pregnant woman suffering a paranoid breakdown). No matter how it's viewed, in Polanski's deft hands, Rosemary’s Baby proves to be an overwhelmingly persuasive allegory of social apprehension and the durability of evil.

What a diabolically clever plot: The living Devil born in a Manhattan apartment building (The notorious Bramford, portrayed externally in the film by the notorious Dakota, site of the tragic 1980 shooting death of John Lennon) to a lapsed Catholic, a woman of wavering faith, used merely as a vessel. This act signaling the end of God's hegemony and the beginning of a new, Satanic world order. Historically, this would place the birth of Satan on earth as occuring in 1966, the very year when things began to go violently "wrong" with society on a global scale. No wonder sixties audiences responded to the imaginary "order" this fantasy imposed on the chaos surrounding them.

Under the piercing scrutiny of Roman Castevet, Rosemary's friend, Hutch (Maurice Evans) grows suspicious when shown Rosemary's Tannis Root charm.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Rosemary's Baby truly excels in its dramatization of the banality of evil. Though played for darkly comic effect, it's really rather jarring that the monsters in this contemporary horror film are harmless-looking little old ladies and men. Just the kind of colorless, ordinary people we as a society are so quick to dismiss. Imagine this film playing out in the "Don't trust anyone over 30" climate of the 60s, and you get a taste of just how subversively eerie Rosemary's Baby seemed when it hit the screens. Audiences accustomed to horror films as B-movie double-feature fare were disquieted when this major motion picture (which was intentionally shot to look as if it were a Doris Day comedy) with an art-house director and an A-list cast dared to make a horror film that took itself seriously enough to be truly frightening.

First Betrayal: Polanski has Cassavetes shield his face from the audience the first time Guy lies to Rosemary

In Rosemary's Baby Polanski depicts a world morally turned on its axis, and in keeping so much of its horrors unseen or unsubstantiated, orchestrates a slow, nightmarish transformation of all that is perceived as safe and familiar in our culture into that which is dangerous and sinister. As a cleverly constructed parable of 60s unease, Rosemary's Baby captured the imagination of the country (It was one of the top money-makers of the year) by providing some much-needed cathartic release.

The security and sanctity of marriage as an illusion.

Expectant mothers, in their vulnerability, make for deeply unsettling targets of danger.

Can patriarchal figures of authority (Ralph Bellamy as Dr.Sapirstein) betray us?

PERFORMANCES:

When trying to come up with words to adequately express my admiration for Mia Farrow's performance as Rosemary, my vocabulary proves grossly inadequate. From the moment she appears onscreen she exhibits a vulnerable credibility that anchors the film in an emotional reality necessary to make the horror fantasy work. She's no genre heroine moved about like a chess piece for the sake of furthering the plot. At every instant the actions of Farrow's Rosemary are rooted in something psychologically authentic. It ranks with Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde and Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of the best performances by an American actress in the 60s.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

As he proved with his psychosexual thriller, Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski is expert at conveying, in cinematic terms, the fluid, distorted quality of dreams and the reality-altering effects of paranoia. He handles Rosemary's Baby's pivotal "nightmare" sequence with virtuoso skill.

They didn't refer to this as the "nightmare sequence" for nothing. At age 11, this scene nearly traumatized me.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

Rosemary's Baby wasn't the first film I ever saw, it just feels that way. At 11 years old, it was the first film to ever make an indelible impression upon me. I never forgot it. Part of this was due to the fact that it was absolutely THE most frightening film I had ever seen and was responsible for innumerable bad dreams and a reluctance to enter dark rooms for months thereafter; but mostly it was because Rosemary's Baby was, and is, a small masterpiece.

The scene that made me jump the first time I saw the film (and still makes my blood run cold!)

A horror film that plays fast and loose with the conventions of the genre, blending elements of the psychological thriller and paranoid social drama. Beautifully shot, well-written, superbly acted, and above all, smart as a whip. At no time during Rosemary's Baby do you ever lose the feeling that you are in the hands of a man who knows exactly what he's doing and eliciting from you precisely the response he wants you to have.

It is a film of solid assurance in every aspect.

Rosemary's Baby is the Citizen Kane of horror films. To this day, some 40-plus years after its release, I find it one of the most remarkable and consistently satisfying films I've ever seen.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS 1967

2011-09-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

Given the vast number of great films out there and the slim chance any of us have (in our all-too-brief lifetimes) of ever finding the time to see them all, one has to wonder why anyone would waste their moments watching (and re-watching) a film one already knows to be bad.

Well, first off, the term “bad,” as applied to film, is a terribly subjective signifier governed by strict classifications of rank. For example: there’s straight-out unwatchable, bottom of the barrel bad, like Adam Sandler, Michael Bay, or Eli Roth movies; then there’s the waste-of-celluloid, forgotten-even-as-you’re-watching-it kind of bad you’re guaranteed with a Matthew McConaughey or Jason Stratham film; and finally, there is the top-tier, rarefied, irresistible awfulness of a film like Valley of the Dolls.

What makes this final category of bad so special is that, unlike the sluggish product born of dull incompetence and a lack of talent, this distinguished rank of terrible is the kind of delightfully vibrant, peppy wretchedness that only the truly talented can create. It entertains, it engages, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry (from laughing) ...in short, it does everything a good movie does...but it's not. Now, that HAS to be some kind of achievement!

Patty Duke is Neely (Ethel Agnes) O'Hara: Nice kid turned lush!

Barbara Parkins as Anne Welles: Good girl with all the bad breaks!

Sharon Tate as Jennifer North: Sex symbol turned on too often!

Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson: A gut, fingernail, and claw fighter who went down swinging!

This hilariously self-serious film adapted from Jacqueline Susann's novel about three girls balancing career, romance, and pharmaceuticals in the seamy world of show business, is one of the best examples of that forgotten 60s subgenre: the glossy, career-girl soap opera. Films like Three Coins in a Fountain (1954), The Best of Everything (1959), The Pleasure Seekers (1964), and The Group (1966 ) all purported to be modern exposés on the lives of young, emancipated American womanhood, but what they really were were moldy cautionary tales warning women of the dangers of seeking lives outside of the traditional home and family.

Love Eyes. Career-girl Anne hopes to put the "double harness" on her boss, Lyon Burke (Paul Burke)

A master's thesis could be written (and probably has) on the many missteps taken in bringing Susann's sex-filled potboiler to the screen, but any such dissection has to start with the screenplay and director. Really, who thought it was a good idea to have 60 year-old Helen Deutsh and 57 year-old Dorothy Kingsley collaborate on a screenplay about three women in their 20s? With their tin ear for sixties idioms and maiden aunt's sense of shock at Susann's yawn-inducing concept of naughtiness (spelled out in bold letters in case we are dozing — Adultery! Pre-Marital Relations! Homosexuality! Abortion! Insanity!), Valley of the Dolls has all the up-to-date urgency of an issue of "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang."

53 year-old Mark Robson, the stodgily old-school director best known for that antiseptic paean to small-town debauchery, Peyton Place (1957), directs Valley of the Dolls as if he had made a bet with someone that he could make a 1967 film that looked like it was made in 1957. A bet he would win, I might add. Looking at the film's flat, high-key lighting (that make location shots look like studio sets) and the stiff, camera-nailed-to-the-floor photography, one begins to understand why, in just a couple of years, Hollywood would be opening its doors and throwing directing jobs at anyone under the age of 30.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Everything. And there aren't even many "good" films I can say that about, but it's true. There's not a single thing about Valley of the Dolls I would change. It's a perfect aggregation of people capable of better delivering their worst.

Random thoughts: How did she get all of that hair into that cab?

"Well, Broadway doesn't go for booooze and dope!"

Richard Angarola as Claude Chardot: "Art film" director and winner of the "Pepe Le Pew Award" for the world's worst French accent.

"Ted Casablanca is not a fag!" Neely asserts to sweet, emasculated, homophobe, Mel Anderson (Martin Milner); a.k.a, Mr. O'Hara.

PERFORMANCES:

Although she gets plenty of competition, no one in Valley of the Dolls really comes close to Patty Duke, who was the reigning queen of epically bad performances until Faye Dunaway blew her out of the water 14 years later with Mommie Dearest. Hers is the film's meatiest role, but that meat soon starts to spoil once you get a taste of the risible dialog she's given ("Boobies, boobies, boobies...nothin' but boobies!"), and marvel at her tendency to bark, rather than speak it ("It was NOT a nuthouse!"). She's better than bad, she's magnificent.

Personality Plus. Sparkle Neely, Sparkle!

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

With its old-fashioned plot full of wheezy, show-biz clichés, Valley of the Dolls' sole concession to modernity (60s style) is in its eye-catchingly overblown fashion sense. The wig and mascara budget for this film must have been astronomical!

Neely O'Hara...Younger than springtime- and twice as exciting!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

In 2006, when Valley of the Dolls was released as a two-disc Special Edition DVD in a hot pink case loaded with camp-tastic extras, it became official: 20th Century-Fox was no longer going to pretend that Valley of the Dolls was anything other than what it was— deliciously entertaining, high-octane cheese. That moment of if-you-can't-beat-'em marketing lucidity was rather a long time in coming considering that the gay community had single-handedly kept the film alive for decades. Personally I can't recall when I began to view Valley of the Dolls through jaundiced, cynical eyes, but I recall vividly the first time I saw it.

A young Marvin Hamlisch accompanies that bundle of talent, Neely O'Hara

It was in 1968 at the Castro theater in San Francisco. I was 11 years-old and I went with my older sister who had seen the film the week before and raved about how good it was. Hard for me to imagine now, but at the time, I took Valley of the Dolls deadly seriously and even cried when Sharon Tate's character took that handful of pills and expired so glamorously on that ugly orange bed. I thought Barbara Parkins was very pretty but I was kind of confused at Patty Duke's transformation into an adult with big hair and a potty mouth. I was a fan of The Patty Duke Show, and at age 11, I don't think I was ready to see her looking all puffy and exposed in a bra and half slip. The strongest memory I came away with that day was the almost traumatizing "wig snatching" scene. Not sure why, but it scared the hell out of me.

I'll never be able to view Valley of the Dolls through such innocent eyes again, but I'm gratified that it has finally come into its own as a mainstream cult hit. To this day it amazes me just how durably enjoyable this is after so many viewings. Quotable, full of memorable, jaw-dropping scenes and over the top performances...this kind of bad is too good to be forgotten.

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR 1973

2011-09-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

From Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943):

Joseph Cotten- "How was church, Charlie? Did you count the house? Turn anybody away?"

Teresa Wright- "No, room enough for everyone."

Joseph Cotten- "Well, I'm glad to hear that. The show's been running such a long time I thought maybe attendance might be falling off."

When it comes to the final days in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, movies have been running a near-nonstop show on the subject since 52 year-old H.B. Warner portrayed the screen's first grandfatherly Jesus in Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 silent classic, King of Kings. Since then, Hollywood cranked out a new Jesus film every couple of years or so, often to make use of technological advancements (sound, color, Cinemascope), or to keep in step with the times, theologically speaking.

Thus it's safe to say that by 1973, when the rock-opera Jesus Christ Superstar was ultimately adapted for the screen (it opened on Broadway in 1971), no one involved harbored any illusions that audiences would be flocking to the film eager to find out how it all ends.

The major selling-point of Jesus Christ Superstar was not the story, per se, but its telling. This was to be the screen's first all-singing, all-dancing Jesus, and its daring, once-controversial, "hook" was to the Passion Play told (with a decidedly youthful slant) from the perspective of, and in sympathy with, the apostle Judas. In Jesus Christ Superstar Judas sees Jesus not as a God, but merely a mortal man guilty of believing his own publicity. What distinguishes the film version is that it is not as decided on that fact as the stage production was, and has been fashioned in a manner as to provoke questions more than provide answers.

Ted Neeley as Jesus

Carl Anderson as Judas

Yvonne Elliman as Mary

Barry Dennen as Pontius Pilate

In a huge stylistic departure from the glam-rock roots of the Broadway show, film director Norman Jewison (who so memorably sliced, diced, and bisected theater screens in the stylish crime caper, The Thomas Crown Affair [1968]) went the realist route. Taking a multiethnic cast of young singers, dancers, and actors to Israel and filming on actual locations (some sites breathtakingly dressed by production designer Richard Macdonald with Roman remains and ruins), Jewison lights on a visual concept that, with surprising effectiveness, blends the ancient with the contemporary. A look that abounds with symbolic anachronisms, perfectly suiting the musical score by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

Contemporary symbols of military power provoke and bedevil the morally besieged Judas.

Armed with machine guns and spears, Roman guards march in tank tops and battle fatigues.

The angel Judas descends from heaven by way of an industrial crane.

America's hippie-inspired Jesus movement of the late 60s (Jesus was, after all, the first long-haired, counter-culture revolutionary) that fueled pop-culture works like Jesus Christ Superstar and its off-Broadway cousin, Godspell (1971), greatly influenced my teen-years view of religion.

June 1971

Between the years 1971 and 1974, I attended Saint Mary's College High School in Berkeley, Ca., then an all-boys Catholic school. These were the years when the Catholic Church was all about making itself relevant and hip to us youngsters (Bay Area residents of a certain age recall the regular 60-second radio broadcasts of Father Harry of "The God Squad"), so the Christian Brothers that taught at the school eschewed dark robes and clerical collars for colorful wide ties and bellbottoms, and assembly sermons were apt to be kicked off with a pop song like The 5th Dimension's "Working on a Groovy Thing" blasted over the P.A. system. Add to this the fact that virtually every citizen of Berkeley at the time looked exactly like the flower-children cast of Jesus Christ Superstar (Saint Mary's custodian/caretaker was a ringer for Ted Neeley's Jesus Christ, only taller, muscular, and with really tight jeans—can't tell you all the spiritual inner-conflict that little teenage crush inspired) and you get a good idea of why looking at Jesus Christ Superstar today feels a bit like watching a home movie.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

In spite of my Catholic upbringing, I confess that I find it difficult sometimes to become emotionally moved by religious films. I can enjoy the spectacle, the performances, and the moral of the narrative, but few things are more disconcerting and distancing than having ethics-challenged Hollywood try to convince me of the value of a virtuous life, simply led. Thus, one of the great pleasures of Jesus Christ Superstar is its abilityto be be enjoyed from either a secular or spiritual perspective. Jewison achieves something rather extraordinary in having devised a timeless utterly cinematic approach to the material (the past and present keep bleeding into one another other) that doesn't just open up the play, but rethinks and re-imagines it in a profoundly fundamental way.

The Last Supper - hippie style

The hippy-dippy /flower child look of the film that so many revivals of the show are so quick to discard, is ideally suited to the time-mashup approach of Jewison's vision. It strikes me as ingenious that we are invited to make paralells between Jesus and his followers and the youth of he 70s. It's a device that give the events a timeless appeal while encouraging us to take subliminal stock of the way the hairstyles and modes of dress of 70s-era hippies and college students harken back to the look of ancient Israel. In stressing the contemporarily familiar, Jesus Christ Superstar establishes a narrative point of view that asks us to question the difference between the myth and the man. And it does so in a way that manages to be both impassioned and reverent, yet refreshingly free of the kind of fervent self-seriousness that mars many films about religion. The non-traditional score (orchestrated pop/rock) and refreshing ambiguity of its visuals (what time is all of this taking place in?) invite the rexamination of once-familiar events and characters.

PERFORMANCES:

In listening to 3 decades worth of covers, revivals, and re-recordings, I still find this version of Jesus Christ Superstar to be the best sung of the lot. This is especially true of the late Carl Anderson, whose powerfully clear and expressive voice can still give me goosebumps. Every singer in this role has had to live up to Anderson's standard, and in my opinion, not a single one has.

Carl Anderson's show-stopping rendition of the propulsive title song is one of cinema's great musical moments. And who can resist the envisioning of an angel's wings as the fringe on an Elvis Presley-like jumpsuit?

Oh, and as every rule has its exception: when I wrote earlier that I'm not easily moved by religious films, that still stands; but for Ted Neeley's performance of the song "Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say)." It's the only part of the film that can consistently bring tears to my eyes. Dramatically shot and tremendously intense, it is a really beautiful bit of filmmaking aided immensly by Neeley's wrenching vocal performance. It's the dramatic centerpiece of the film.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

Where Jesus Christ Superstar truly shines is in the stark freshness of its visuals. It's a stunning-looking film from every angle. At turns, whimsical, epic, theatrical, and poetic, it is one of those rare adaptations of a stage success that achieve multiple moments of pure cinema.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

The dancing in Jesus Christ Superstar is phenomenal. And all those thin, lithe, 70s bodies are a welcome change from the earthbound, often clumsy-looking, gym-puffed bodies of so many dancers today.

My absolute favorite number in the film is "Simon Zealotes." It hits me from the opposite end of the emotional spectrum of Neeley's "Gethsemane" soliloquy. It's joy and energy personified, given vivacious, eye-popping life by some of the most fantastic dancers doing dazzling choreography ever filmed. It has the power to bring me to a state of childlike elation in a single viewing. Even now, all I can think when I look at it is, WOW!!! Now that is what I call dancing! (Watching it makes me feel proud to be a dancer, although, if I were to try any of these moves now, I'd likely break into a million pieces like Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.)

Jesus Christ Superstar is yet another one of those motion pictures that grows better with age. Its themes nostalgically remind me of my youth, yet its enduring innovativeness as a film makes me appreciate Norman Jewison's commitment to making this particular "long-running show" one that will hold timeless appeal for new generations.

Judas Kiss

NASHVILLE 1975

2011-09-11T03:03:00.000-07:00

Nashville's unique title sequence recalls a popular style of 70s TV commercial for Greatest Hits record collections
70s K-Tel Record Commercial

A perhaps apocryphal story goes that Fox Television's insanely funny sitcom, Arrested Development was not more popular in the ratings and ultimately canceled because its rapid-fire jokes and almost subliminal sight-gags required viewers to actually pay attention. Whether true or not, it's a theory hard to dismiss when applied to the career of Robert Altman (a director a little over-represented on this blog, I know, but it's his fault, not mine. He was just too damned good). In a career as varied and immune to meeting expectations as Altman's, I don't think it's coincidence that his most straightforward, structurally conventional films—M*A*S*H, The Player, Popeye—have been his biggest hits, while his most intriguingly imaginative works have been critic's darlings but largely ignored by the populace at large.

Altman's fondness for multiple storyline, character-based films with large ensemble casts and overlapping dialog just demanded a level of audience engagement that was rapidly going out of style with American moviegoers. (2001's Gosford Park, which fit the above criteria, was a huge success for Altman. An occurrence attributable to the fact that by then the 76 year-old director and his trademark style had grown as cozily familiar and commodified as Hitchcock's.)

In 1975, American movie audiences- smarting from Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, and the Vietnam War - showed its first signs of wearying of Hollywood's "auteur" era and its films that strove to be art. The blockbuster success of Jaws (released the same summer as Nashville) unceremoniously put an end to America's brief love affair with "difficult" films that challenged and/or affronted them. Speaking with their boxoffice dollars, the country made it known that it was in the mood to be reassured and comforted at the movies again. Whether it be with imaginative retreads of familiar genres of the past (Star Wars, Rocky) or remakes of past successes (A Star is Born, King Kong), America was just sick and tired of being asked to think and pay close attention at the movies all the time.

Ronee Blakley as Barbara Jean

Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton

Lily Tomlin as Linnea Reese

Keith Carradine as Tom Frank

Karen Black as Connie White

Nashville, Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic vision of America as reflected through the interconnected stories of 24 characters over the course of 5 days in America's country music capital, was filmed in 1974, the year Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency, and was released in 1975, one year before the U.S. Bicentennial—which also happened to be an election year.

With one foot planted in an era of scandal and disillusionment and the other poised on what could be the threshold of a renewed optimism and nationalistic stock-taking, Nashville (unquestionably one of the most timely films ever made) rather ambitiously set about giving the country an eyeful of itself. No one was expecting a red, white, & blue love letter from cinema's most acerbically cynical liberal, but Nashville's equating of politics with the phony, image-conscious flimflammery of show biz (the familist, piety-spouting, grassroots show biz of country music, at that) was a cautionary "Not so fast, America" hand raised to the nation's looming steamroller of ego-bolstering, rah rah, Bicentennial back-slapping.

A constant visual and aural presence throughout Nashville is the campaign for fictional Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker

The traffic jam that opens the film and the political rally that closes it are the only sequences that gather all the main characters of the film together in one site.

BBC journalist, Opal (Geraldine Chaplin)- " I need something like this for my documentary! I need it!
It's so...American! Those cars smashing into each other and all those mangled corpses...!"

In 1975, Opal's glaring incompetence and unsuitability for journalism was obvious. Today, she would probably be a member of a Los Angeles morning TV news broadcast, or a top reporter for TMZ.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:

Nashville may not be THE view of America, but it's most certainly A view of America, and like it or not, it's a vision that proves itself more prescient and relevant with each passing year. The first and best of Altman's films to use the multiple-plot format he would later employ in A Wedding, H.E.A.L.T.H., Short Cuts, Pret-a-Porter, and Gosford Park, Nashville is staggering in its deft handling of the myriad shifts in tone and changes in focus required of this genre. I can't think of another director capable of balancing such disparate elements in a free-flow mélange of comedy, drama, tragedy, and social satire.

Some of the more affecting story threads:

The monumentally untalented Suleen Gay (Gwen Welles) would most ceratinly be a contestant on "Nashville Star" or "American Idol" today. In an early draft of the Nashville sceenplay, it was Suleen who would die at the end of the film (suicide).

Linnea (Tomlin in her Oscar-nominated film debut), the only Caucasian in an African-American gospel choir, sharing a family moment with her husband Delbert (Ned Beatty) and their two deaf children (Donna Denton and James Dan Calvert).

Runaway bride Albuquerque (Barbara Harris) and loner Kenny (David Hayward) commiserate on the road.

PERFORMANCES:

Of all the terrific performances in Nashville, Karen Black as Country Western queen (and Barbara Jean rival) Connie White is my favorite. The goody-goody, over-coiffed prom queen look of so many country stars of the era —and typical of every female performer on The Lawrence Welk Show— has always seemed too calculatedly homespun to me, so I love that screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury envisions Connie White... all cotton candy hair and sweet as sugar smiles...as a steely, professional phony with a rapier-sharp competitive streak. Although her role is one of the briefest, the ever-resourceful Karen Black does some wonderful things with the smallest moments. She's hilarious but never less than spot-on authentic in every move she makes (check out how she avoids acknowledging the gift Barbara Jean's husband tries to give her). Watching her is like taking an actor's master class in bringing a character to life.

Connie White sizes up visiting movie star, Julie Christie (playing herself).
Connie, disbelieving Haven's assertion that Christie's actually a famous Oscar-winning star- "She can't even comb her hair!"
A characteristically bitchy Connie White remark improvised by Karen Black.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

The music in Nashville is so good and plentiful that it's a pity a full, complete soundtrack album has never been released. You don't have to be a fan of country music to enjoy the witty and sometimes surprisingly beautiful songs that play wall-to-wall throughout the film (many of which were composed and performed by the film's cast). In fact, so much of country music seems knowingly self-parodying that it's hard to tell the songs that are gently poking fun at the genre (like the self-serving moralizing of Haven Hamilton's "For the Sake of the Children") from the ones that sound like they could be the genuine article (Barbara Jean's rousing [but technologically dated] "Tapedeck in his Tractor").

Troubled married duo, Mary (Christina Raines) and Bill (Allan Nicholls) perform "Since You've Gone." a superb song composed by actor Gary Busey that never made it onto the Nashville soundtrack album.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:
When it comes to a film like Nashville, there can never be too much of a good thing. I can barely stand to dwell on the fact that some 16 hours of footage was originally shot and whittled down to 159 minutes. My only hope is that some company will make good on the long-promised DVD that will feature deleted scenes and omitted songs.

Opal, the easily-distracted BBC journalist.

In a filmed sequence that didn't make it into the final cut, it was revealed that Opal is a fraud and was only posing as a journalist.

What I find fascinating about Nashville is that no matter to what degree the passage of time dates the fashions, furnishings, cars, and music, everything else about the film is disconcertingly up-to-date and of the moment.

I think it speaks well of the brilliance of everyone's work involved that you can extract any single character or situation and find a contemporary correlative. When I look at Nashville, it surprises me how much Altman's intimate style and respect for what is extraordinary in the ordinary person, anticipates today's fascination with reality TV. Similarly, the lure of pop stardom (Sueleen and Albuquerque) and the very American desire to re-invent oneself (Shelley Duvall's airheaded changeling, L.A. Joan, nee Martha) find their modern parallel in image-based celebrities like Lady Gaga and assembly-line superstar factories like "American Idol."

Without question, the most dispiriting evidence of Nashville's ahead-of-its-time/up-to-the-minute grasp of cultural zeitgeist is in its foreshadowing of an era where the line between celebrity and politics becomes inextricably blurred. A time when the senselessness of assassination (a heinous but somehow socially assimilated atrocity due to its exclusive connection to political, religious, or ideological motives) spills over to include any public figure (John Lennon, tragically) so long as it serves to propell the assassin to worldwide notoriety. As we keep learning from TV and the Internet, each of us Americans has a God-given right to be famous. At any cost.

Haven- "This isn't Dallas! This is Nashville!"
As the political rally erupts in tragic violence, a wounded Haven Hamilton loses his toupee and his composure.

Nashville is a movie held in very high regard, yet it's one of those classic films that rarely airs on television. Which is odd, seeing how Altman's layered use of sound is tailor-made for today's advanced sound systems, and his eye for detail and full, busy frame compositions are perfect for all those super-sized HDTVs. I sure would hate to think that this great film is so seldom screened because it just demands too much of our attention.