ANDY WARHOL'S BAD 1977

Back in my dating days, I had what I call my "Taste Test Films" (two such films, in fact: Robert Altman's 3 Women and Andy Warhol's BAD). These are films for which my appreciation is so intensely personal and self-defining that I used them as a gauge in determining the compatibility of my tastes with those of potential partners I felt I might be getting serious about. Both films are so completely my aesthetic, humor, and world view, I reasoned that if someone didn't "get" these movies and their appeal to me, they likely wouldn't "get" or understand me, either. Similarly, if you were the kind of guy who appreciated the idiosyncratic allure of these films (spanning the rather broad spectrum between acute human empathy to outrageous, misanthropic black comedy), it was a pretty safe bet that you'd be my kind of fella.

3 Women is such a thoughtful, intriguing film that most anyone I was interested in was likely to find something to like in it, but Andy Warhol's BAD (directed by Jed Johnson, but a delirious mash-up of those camp/trash geniuses, John Waters and Paul Morrissey) was definitely the litmus test.

Carroll Baker as Hazel Aiken

Perry King as L.T.

Susan Tyrrell as Mary Aiken

Charles McGregor as Detective Hughes

Bridgid Polk as Estelle

Hard-as-nails Queens housewife Hazel Aiken (a perpetually pissed-off Carroll Baker) operates an electrolysis business ("Six-Hundred and Fifty hairs an hour!") out of the home she shares with her ailing mother; ineffectual, unemployed husband; and whiny daughter-in-law (Susan Tyrrell) and grandson. To make ends meet and subsidize her cache of furs, jewelry, and perfumes, Hazel also runs a dial-up, all-girl hit squad. The dispassionate efficiency of her bloody all-female enterprise is compromised when circumstance necessitates the reluctant taking on of a slow-witted punk (Perry King).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Strange as it may seem, Andy Warhol's BAD reminds me of a simpler, gentler time in America. Back when there was really such a thing as a "counter-culture"; back when movies designated as "underground" or "independent" actually were; and back when standards of morality and decency were observed by enough members of the population that they could be burlesqued in a film like this. Today we live in a country where ignorance is rewarded (thank you, Jersey Shore), bad behavior is commonplace (Arnold "The Sperminator" Schwarzenegger), and nobody denounces the hamburger for posing as steak (calling all Kardashians). Andy Warhol's BAD, once thought outrageously offensive enough to warrant an X-rating, is positively quaint and remarkably moral in comparison. You can't poke fun at tacky, suburban aspirations towards upper-class chic in a world that can't distinguish class from trash.

French Provincial Luxury- Hazel, enjoying the fruits of her labor

Viewing this film feels like having front-row seats to the end of an era. You just can't make a film like this anymore. When the lowbrow and sleazy becomes the cultural standard, there's nothing left to satirize. It used to be that you had to seek out underground films from Warhol or John Waters to enjoy comically amateurish performances and flat, monotone line readings. Now, you need look no further than the multimillion-dollar multiplex crowd-pleasers from Michael Bay and Vin Diesel. Andy Warhol's BAD tries very hard to be nasty and mean-spirited - the ever-present TV is forever spewing out bad news, people perform the most heinous atrocities without batting an eye - but the entire film is kinder and more humane than any 10 minutes of The Bachelor.

Hit-girls, Marsha (l.) and Glenda (r.) flank the misanthropic Estelle as she plots revenge on a neighbor.

Estelle: "I'm telling you, people stink. All they do is eat, fuck, and watch TV!"
Marsha: "I know. The more you smell, the more they stink."
Estelle: What's that supposed to mean?"

PERFORMANCES

To her credit, Carroll Baker held no illusions about Andy Warhol's BAD providing her with any kind of American film comeback (It was her first American film since leaving the country in 1965). Quoted as recently as June of 2011 on working on the film:

"It had nothing to do with film-making, it had nothing to do with any other experience I ever had. It was like working on the moon. But he (Warhol) wanted me, he cast me in it, I wanted to do it, and it was such a big hit in Europe."     Carroll Baker  New Journey Journal

Baker's level-headedness serves her well in Andy Warhol's BAD, for she creates in Hazel Aiken (the role was originally offered to America's Ethel Mertz, actress Vivian Vance) one of cinema's most memorably twisted villains. Devilishly deadpan in her single-minded belief that she is just doing what has to be done ("I like to help people!"), if Beaver Cleaver's mom was an avaricious sociopath, she'd be something like Hazel. A woman so lacking in decency she cheerily accepts calls in her kitchen for contract killings and views Polaroids of gruesome slayings as if they were vacation slides. The only remotely competent person amongst a menagerie of slackers and oddballs, Hazel's near-constant exasperation finds amusing subtext in Carroll Baker; an Academy Award-nominated, Method actress, working alongside Warhol's "actors"... many of whom sound as if they learned their lines phonetically.

(Substantiating my theory that big budgets sap the imagination of indie-filmmakers, John Waters, with a budget more than ten times that of Andy Warhol's BAD, mined similar material in 1994's Serial Mom, but it wasn't half as funny.)

Mary - "What kind of a grandmother are you? Having baby-killers in the house with a baby? She'd kill any baby!"
Hazel - (Indignant) "She would not! She only does what she's paid to do. You wouldn't pay her, so she wouldn't do it!"
Mary - "You're crazy! You're really not all there!"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

All-girl hit squads were a camp/pulp staple of 70s exploitation flicks (and, my personal fave—the 1967 James Bond spoof, Casino Royale) but the women in Andy Warhol's BAD are something else again. These girls don't kill for kinky thrills, they seem to do it just because they're bored. Funniest by far are Marsha and Glenda (real-life sisters Maria & Geraldine Smith): the Laverne & Shirley of Murder Incorporated. Armed with thick New York accents and a canny sense of comic timing, their scenes are among the sharpest and off-the-chart hilarious in the film.

Dressed to Kill
Looking like models in a Laura Mars photoshoot, Marsha (brandishing the stiletto) and Glenda lie in wait for their next victim.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Andy Warhol's BAD is a darkly comedic satire on the banality of evil; a topic that's fascinated me since Rosemary's Baby (1968) posed the provocative notion that a harmless group of elderly New Yorkers could unleash the living Devil into the world. We movie fans find it reassuring when our monsters can be  easily identified—usually as crazily hateful maniacs and criminally unbalanced psychopaths. Perhaps that's because it's so unsettling in real-life to be offered evidence on a daily basis (most of which we prefer to ignore) that unspeakable evil is often perpetrated by the so-called "normal" members of our society.

Hazel Aiken's cockeyed ethical standards, which are played for absurdist laughs (a proud capitalist, she willingly kills man, woman, or child for a fee, but draws the line at vulgar language and keeping stolen property in her home), underline what is so scary about most truly evil people: they consider themselves to be the most normal of all.

All In A Day's Work
Amidst the trappings of middle-class domesticity, Hazel gets a call for another contract killing

Hazel, with all her pragmatic speeches about personal responsibility, work ethics, and doing what has to be done because nobody else will do it, reminds me a lot (too much, actually) of the fear-goading political candidates, flag-waving radio commentators, and defenders of family values who cloak themselves in "normalcy" to rationalize philosophies of hate.

The 1965 film The Loved One, which satirized the L.A. funeral industry, was promoted with the slogan "The motion picture with something to offend everyone!"  Twelve years later, Andy Warhol's BAD promoted itself with the New York Post review quote: "A picture with something to offend absolutely everybody." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Hazel - "You're really sensitive, aren't you? Well, I can't afford the luxury to be sensitive because I have to do everything myself!"

I find it interesting to note that today, neither of these films, which had their battles with the censors and were met with much hand-wringing over the declining state of the world, is really very offensive at all. Indeed, in failing to in any way glamorize the lives and behaviors of its principals, Andy Warhol's BAD is, as I've indicated above, very moral in its view of the world. It presents the characters as the bottom-feeders they are, and even throws a bone of hope to the audience when the lunkhead, played so nicely by Perry King, reveals that as bad as he is, he isn't prepared to do anything for money. 

What's ironic are the number of safe, family-friendly entertainments of yesteryear (classic films, Warner Bros. cartoons, TV sitcoms) that, due to blithely accepted attitudes of sexism and racism, I consider to be blisteringly offensive today. (One example: an entire episode of the "feminist" 60s sitcom That Girl actually attempts to extract laughs from the far-from-hilarious plot point of a husband breaking the jaw of his loudmouth wife with an ashtray.)

Talk about the banality of evil.

"Looks aren't everything."

Oh, and for the record, both of my "Taste Test" films have been officially retired. I showed them to a fellow I was dating who not only loved them as I did, but, on a single viewing, opened my eyes to insights and jokes contained in both films that I had never seen before. Understandably, I couldn't let a guy like that go. That was 16 years ago going on 17, and we still get a kick out of re-watching these films together. Even after all these years, we can make each other laugh just by uttering the raging Estelle epithet: "O'Reilly O'Crapface."

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011

I LOVE MELVIN 1953

In what must certainly be one of the oddest cases of inspiration I can think of, I was moved to revisit this pleasant, largely overlooked MGM musical after recently suffering through the film, Love and Other Drugs (2010), a fatuously formulaic romantic dramedy that crosses the creaky "ailing kook" scenario (think Sandy Dennis in Sweet November) with the overused yuppie-sleazeball-gets-redemption, cliché (Rain Man). The re-teaming of Brokeback Mountain's Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway in this painful-to-sit-through exercise in forced chemistry got me to thinking about the days when reteaming past romantic co-stars was something of a common practice in Hollywood.

Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds were twin, cute-as-a-button, bundles of energy in 1952's Singin' in the Rain; but, as the 19-year-old Reynolds was the love interest of 39-year-old Gene Kelly, (O’Connor was 26), the pair shared few scenes together. To cash in on that film's success, MGM swiftly re-teamed the more age-appropriate duo in this feather-light, low-budget feature that, while ultimately failing to launch the two as the next Judy Garland / Mickey Rooney, proved itself to be one of the more light-heartedly entertaining entries in MGM's late-era roster of musicals.

Debbie Reynolds as Judy LeRoy, nee Schneider

Donald O'Connor as Melvin Hoover

Una Merkel as Mom Schneider

Allyn Joslyn as Frank Schneider

Richard Anderson as Harry Flack

Being the story of a photographer’s assistant who tries to win his girl by promising to get her picture on the cover of Look magazine (that’s the entire plot, folks!), I Love Melvin is about as insubstantial as they come. But in sidestepping the excesses and pretensions of some of the more elephantine musicals of the day (An American in Paris, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The King & I, South Pacific, etc.), I Love Melvin distinguishes itself by way of its simplicity. The charm rests squarely on the appeal and chemistry of its two stars, and its wisp of a plot never gets in the way of their considerable talents.

A night out at the movies result in Judy's affections being torn- almost literally -between Melvin and her little sister, Clarabelle (Noreen Corcoran).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
When I was growing up, Friday nights were a big deal around our house because my parents let me stay up late and watch TV. Before the age of cable and the infomercial, late-night television programming was an oasis of old movies. The Late Show; The Late, Late Show; and The Early Show offered a virtual Master’s Class in film history. All manner of obscure and noted films of every stripe were unspooled (along with countless commercials for the local auto dealership) exposing me to a library of before-I-was-born movie gems, many of which rank among my favorites to this day.

I first saw I Love Melvin (even its title pokes fun at its modest ambitions) when I was 13 years old, sullenly holed up in my room in a typical adolescent funk over something or other. I had never even heard of the film when I settled down to watch it, and what I most vividly recall is how quickly and thoroughly the bouncy cheeriness of this unassuming little musical overcame my pre-teen gloom and fixed me in rapt attention to the dazzling singing and dancing on display. On reflection, it's clear that I responded strongly to the way Debbie Reynolds's character was depicted as a moony, dreamer type. Her penchant for losing herself in comically overblown, Walter Mitty-esque fantasies echoed my own experience.

In one of Judy's many fantasies, she envisions herself dancing with a trio of Gene Kellys and a trio of  Fred Astaires

Since the daydreams and fantasies of a shy, introverted kid eventually led to a fulfilling life as a professional dancer on stage, film, and TV—that’s MY story— I’ve always held a spot in my heart for movies that encourage young people to believe in and work towards their dreams (Xanadu: “Our dreams don’t die. We kill them!”; The Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Don’t dream it, BE it!”; and of course, Nine, and the song that gives this blog its name).  

PERFORMANCES

I’ve always liked Debbie Reynolds, but I can't say I've always had the stamina to sit through some of her movies. She was the screen's first and best Tammy (Tammy and the Bachelor [1957]), but I wouldn't wish Goodbye, Charlie (1964) or How Sweet It Is! (1968) on my worst enemy. Yet, even in these less-than-pleasing outings, Reynolds' great gift was that she exuded a genuine likability and tomboy toughness that added a much-needed spark when the material at hand wasn't up to her talents. In I Love Melvin she is in fine form, handling the comedy and musical numbers with graceful assuredness.

Debbie Reynolds was always a better actress than she was given credit for. She played frighteningly against type in What's The Matter With Helen? (1971) and really should have won the Oscar for her standout performance in Mother (1996).

The rubber-limbed Donald O’Connor is the kind of extraordinarily athletic dancer that I never tire of watching. Like Gene Kelly (a personal fave), Donald O’Connor always looked like he was having the time of his life when dancing. In I Love Melvin, O'Connor's boyish appeal so perfectly suits Reynolds' wholesome charm that the only reason I can think of for why this film didn't click with audiences is because, as written, the romance only STARTS when the movie ends. Up until that point, it's all pursuit; there are surprisingly few scenes of the couple just getting along. By way of contrast, the pairing the almost asexual boyishness of O'Connor with the smoldering, sex-on-the-hoof Marilyn Monroe in 1953's There's No Business Like Show Business was so odd that it bordered on the perverse.

In I Love Melvin, O'Connor shines in several showpiece dance numbers. Here he adopts Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain lamppost pose.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I know it's just my personal taste, but the '50s were my least favorite decade for musicals. Not only did the need to compete with the burgeoning threat of television result in a glut of visually garish, needlessly grandiose behemoths, but the choreography at the time--with its modern dance influence--was of the squatty, inelegant style showcased in the "Get Happy" number from Summer Stock (1950) and later parodied in the "Thanks a Lot, But No Thanks" number from It's Always Fair Weather (1955). I think a lot of people who say they don't like movie musicals got that way after watching a '50's musical.

I Love Melvin is the exception that proves the rule, if only because it contains one of my top, top favorite musical numbers...one that ranks with the classic clips of Astaire, Busby Berkeley, Bob Fosse, and Eleanor Powell. It's the dance duet, "Where Did You Learn To Dance?" performed with personality plus by Reynolds and O'Connor.  Exemplifying all that is right with the film, it's a number shot on a simple set with no pyrotechnic choreography, yet achieves moments of tiny greatness in merely letting the energy, talent, and charm of the two carry the sequence. It's one of those disarmingly "simple" numbers that you know was hell to get to look so flawlessly effortless.

 It makes me feel like a kid just watching these two underrated talents burn up the screen. As far as I'm concerned, it is THE best number in the film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

It's to I Love Melvin's credit that, whether intended or not, so many of the scenes involving Reynolds and her onscreen family recall the eccentrically homey touches Vincente Minnelli brought to Meet Me in St. Louis. Reynolds's character lives with her parents and younger sister in a small New York apartment (there are some great location scenes, especially of Central Park) and their interplay is nicely modulated with moments of character comedy that are farcical but never overplayed. By way of conflict, Reynolds is given an unsuitable suitor - the handsome Richard Anderson - in what was once referred to as "The Ralph Bellamy role" (later known as "The Dennis Miller role").  As is often the case when the heroine is given a rival who's fated to be dumped for the hero by the final reel, I Love Melvin jumps through hoops trying not to depict Reynolds' dismissive treatment of Anderson as unkind, but it never truly succeeds.

Cruel to be kind?
Hollywood musicals like to show love as a fated destiny, but they habitually ignore the collateral damage

I've become something of a broken record of late as I bemoan, in post after post, how I feel contemporary movie musical talents fail to measure up to even the most workaday talents of the past. I don't suspect my opinion will be changing any time soon. Not when I Love Melvin; a sprightly film of hummable tunes, clever dances, and captivating performances, can be considered so commonplace in its day as to be overlooked, yet there's not a director, choreographer, composer, or performer today capable of coming within a hair of its modest brilliance.

In a whimsical take on the college musical, Debbie Reynolds stars in the "Football Ballet" as (what else?) the football.

AUTOGRAPH FILES:

Reynolds autographed this photo following a Los Angles performance of her touring one-woman show,  "Alive & Fabulous" in 2010

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011

ALL ABOUT EVE 1950

In spite of owning two 2 DVD copies (those “Special Editions” get you every time) and having seen the film more times than I can count; All About Eve is one of those movies I still find I’m unable to tear myself away from whenever I happen to come across it while channel surfing the TV. Perhaps due to its origins as a short story published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1946 ("The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr), All About Eve's somewhat vignette structure lends itself perfectly to a la carte viewing. It’s one of those rare films that's equally satisfying whether watched in its entirety or in brief snippets. Brimming with witty dialog, keen performances, and by-now classic cinema “moments,” All About Eve is an all-time, escapist favorite. 

The familiar story of how aging Broadway diva, Margo Channing, takes conniving über-fan, Eve Harrington, under her wing and lives to regret it, is a tale borrowed and revamped in films as diverse as: 1987's  Anna, which cast Sally Kirkland as an aging Czechoslovakian film star taking in the deceitfully ambitious Paulina Porzikova. 1972's The Mechanic, where aging hitman Charles Bronson plays father figure to deceitfully ambitious hit man-in-training, Jan-Michael Vincent. And, of course, Paul Verhoeven’s  Showgirls (1995), which defies description. Each of these films is both a legacy attesting to the enduring dramatic appeal of All About Eve’s simple plot and a testament to the old adage, "Often imitated, never duplicated."

Bette Davis as Margo Channing

Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington

George Sanders as Addison DeWitt

Celeste Holm as Karen Richards

Gary Merrill as Bill Sampson

Thelma Ritter as Birdie Coonan

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM:
What do Valley of the Dolls, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Kitten With A Whip, and All About Eve have in common? (Insert joke here.) Answer: They are, without a doubt, the most quotable movies ever made. Anyone who's a fan of All About Eve has his favorite quotes. Here are just a few of mine:

Lloyd- "Eve did mention the play, but just in passing. She'd never have the nerve to ask for the part of Cora."

Karen- "Eve would ask Abbott to give her Costello."

Eve- "Get out!"

Addison- "You're too short for that gesture. Besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske." 

Birdie- "Next to a tenor a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business. She's got two things to do—carry clothes and press 'em wrong. And don't let anybody try to muscle in."

Miss Casswell- "Oh, waiter!"

Addison- "That isn't a waiter, my dear. That's a butler."

Miss Casswell- "Well I can't yell, "Oh, butler!" can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler!"

Addison- "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point."

Marilyn Monroe as the hapless bombshell, Miss Casswell.
A graduate of The Copacabana School of Dramatic Art.

  

PERFORMANCES

Davis is too good an actress and Margo Channing a character too broadly drawn for this to be my favorite Bette Davis performance (that would have to be Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes or her turn in The Letter), but for anyone seeking the full Bette Davis "experience" in all its glory, this is the film to see. Inspiring literally generations of impersonators, impressionists, and drag queens, Bette Davis as Margo Channing, the ultimate over-theatrical diva, is an actress 100% on her game. The film just wouldn't work if we didn't buy Margo as this dynamo of histrionic affectation who never stops being "on" even after the curtain comes down. And it's to Davis' credit that she somehow gives this potentially one-note character a great deal of depth. Far from being over-the-top or camp, Davis creates in Margo, if not exactly a recognizably real human being, then a surprisingly likable, larger-than-life creature of fiction possessing warmth, humor, and intelligence.

Part of Margo's intelligence lies in her lack of illusions about herself. She knows she's an aging actress in a business preoccupied with youth, but she's terrified of inhabiting a world that requires nothing more of her than just to be "herself'." The problem: after a lifetime of play-acting on the stage, Margo isn't quite sure who that is.

My favorite Margo Channing moment is when she catches sight of Eve posing in a mirror with one of her costumes. The look on her face as she watches her biggest "fan" imitating her is really something. It's a look of surprise mixed with affectionate amusement, and for a fleeting second, a trace of maternal tenderness.

"I wouldn't want you to marry me just to prove something."
Life imitating art. Older Bette Davis and younger Gary Merrill fell in love 
during the filming of All About Eve.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As much as I delight in All About Eve’s lively dialog, I’m quick to admit that the film is at times too clever for its own good. All that sophisticated repartee has a way of distancing me from the characters and keeping me at a remove from the drama at hand. Still, it’s no small feat the way in which the film so thoroughly succeeds in pulling off the kind of witty wordplay and bitchy sarcasm it so readily scarifies audience engagement to achieve. Indeed, a recent viewing of 1973's The Last of Sheila (screenplay by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim) points out how hard on the ears failed attempts at biting, sophisticated bitchiness can be.

Joseph Mankiewicz's crackerjack screenplay has the necessary smarts for appropriately witty and sophisticated banter, but good dialog is meaningless without a talented cast capable of putting it across. Thelma Ritter and George Sanders are standouts in this department.

Eve Harrington is about to find out why it's not a good idea to laugh at Addison DeWitt

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

All About Eve has been a part of my film consciousness for so long that I have no direct recollection of the first time I saw it, nor any idea of what my first impressions were. Watching it now is an experience, I would imagine, similar to that of a child being read his favorite bedtime story: whatever pleasures initially derived from the unexpected twists of plot and character have since been supplanted with the thrill of anticipating, then reliving, the entertainingly familiar.

I love All About Eve’s catty, backstabbing vision of life in “The Theatah,” and I never tire of Margo’s tantrums, Eve’s Machiavellian power plays, or Addison’s snide comments. But, given how much fun I always have watching it, emotionally speaking, All About Eve is kind of a cool experience. The film’s sleek professionalism is entertaining as all get out, but I can’t say I’ve ever been moved by Margo’s age-angst and well-placed paranoia. By way of contrast: Sunset Boulevard and The Wizard of Oz are two films steeped heavily in cultural overexposure and camp sensibilities, yet they have something about them that still makes watching them a touching, poignant experience after all these years.

Perhaps there was a forgotten time long ago when Margo’s fear of aging (“Forty. 4-0!”) and Eve’s hunger to be loved carried some emotional heft for me, but I’m afraid too many years of impersonations, spoofs, and camp parodies have made it impossible for me to enjoy All About Eve on any level deeper than exquisitely quotable melodrama.

In the final analysis, All About Eve’s appeal for me may be all surface and style, but trust me, that’s far from a complaint.

The coveted Sarah Siddons Award
Suitable for placement where a heart ought to be.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011

DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE 1970

Films about young people's disillusionment with the American Dream were a staple of late '60s and early '70s cinema, but the New Hollywood had a decidedly Old Hollywood feel about the way America's youthquake was depicted onscreen. Anthropologists looking back on that era through its films might well assume that the most put-upon, oppressed members of American society were its males. White or Jewish, middle-class males, at that.  The Graduate, Five Easy Pieces, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker,  The King of Marvin Gardens (and just about any film starring Elliot Gould or Richard Benjamin) all viewed the shifting zeitgeist through a decidedly male prism. The crisis of male existential torpor was treated with near-heroic solemnity; lampooning and satire were reserved for individuals and institutions daring to challenge the counterculture hero's quest to find himself. 

"I believed in all those square values...loyalty, fidelity."

On those rare occasions when the feminine perspective was considered at all, filmmakers, perhaps in subconscious deference to the presumed male gaze, often seemed at a loss to find an appropriate tone or distinctive point of view. As if lacking confidence in believing women's issues were really anything to get all worked up over, the results were either gloomily over-determined bummers like Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970) and Play it As It Lays (1972);  or stultifyingly arch satires in the vein of Stand Up & Be Counted (1972) and Up the Sandbox (1972).

At a friend's urging, I remember going to see the then-popular student-protest movie, The Strawberry Statement (1970) and being somewhat taken aback (even at 13 years of age) that in this film about counterculture revolutionaries, the only jobs these shake-up-the-system extremists could devise for women was to fetch food and work the copy machine! With few exceptions, women in the films of the New Hollywood were depicted as either sexually available embodiments of the "free love" movement or killjoy symbols of marital conformity.

To appropriate affect, the 1969 Allen Jones sculptures, "Hatrack" & "Table" make cameo appearances in a Diary of a Mad Housewife party scene.

Small wonder then, that Diary of a Mad Housewife stood out from the crowd. Here was a film that was a serious, considered look at America's changing values from a largely ignored perspective.  It was also a stingingly funny, spot-on satire of a certain breed of early-70s East Coast urban animal: the young Upper West Sider. Representing the flip side of post-hippie-era anti-materialism, these creatures attended protest rallies in their liberal, Ivy-League colleges, but, thanks to their parent's money, never served in the war and went straight into business after graduation. Quick to sell out whatever ideals they may have once harbored, they cultivated lives of status-climbing consumerism that left them lost and bereft of purpose.

The couple in question: Tina and Jonathan Balser. She, an educated, family-focused housewife, he, a socially ambitious young lawyer. They have two children and live in an 8-room apartment across from Central Park. Is it just coincidence that their lives are exactly the lives Rosemary & Guy Woodhouse aspired to in Rosemary's Baby? (Minus, of course, that nasty little business with the Devil.)

Carrie Snodgress as Tina Balser

Richard Benjamin as Jonathan Balser

Frank Langella as George Prager

  

Tina Balser, former Phi Beta Kappa at Smith College, is a privileged Manhattan housewife, married to an overbearing, pretentious, social climbing, name-dropping, bore of a lawyer who treats her like a personal assistant (and whose idea of a romantic come-on is "Teen, how about a little ol' roll in da hay?"). She shuttles her two bratty girls off to private school and spends the day in her sizable Upper West Side apartment smoking, developing an alcohol habit, navigating her Liberal fear of offending the "negro" housekeeper, and depressed to the point of inertia.

Oh, and Tina thinks she's going mad. Why?

Well, were she a male protagonist in the same scenario, she, like The Graduate's Benjamin Braddock, might engage in sullen brooding and take out her frustrations on the people around her in defiant rebellion against society's expectations. But, not being male, Tina takes the route typical of repressed, dissatisfied heroines throughout 19th-century literature (a theme explored in the book, The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar), she takes her anger out on herself and just quietly goes mad. Not stark-raving, howling-at-the-moon mad, just a slow, gradual retreat into paranoia, tractability, and the kind of sexual devitalization recounted in Germaine Greer's groundbreaking 1970 feminist text, The Female Eunuch. 

Frannie Michel as Liz Balser / Lorraine Cullen as Sylvie Balser 

"Personally, Vida's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young."
Eve Arden in Mildred Pierce - 1945


WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
It all sounds pretty heady and serious, but Diary of a Mad Housewife is actually brilliantly funny. The film's offbeat balance of social commentary and dark character humor is established in the wonderful, pre-credits opening sequence. It's like a tragi-comic burlesque of 20th-century marriage as envisioned perhaps by Valerie Solanas in her SCUM Manifesto (remember her? She's the radical feminist who shot Andy Warhol in 1968).  In the space of 10 minutes, Richard Benjamin heaps what seems like an entire lifetime's worth of complaints and criticisms on the head of the mutely tolerant Snodgress as they go about their morning rituals. You sense somehow that this is a "new side" of her husband Snodgress is seeing (in the novel by Sue Kaufman, an unexpected inheritance is the catalyst for Jonathan's sudden obnoxious turn)  and her strained attempts to hold it together in the face of the onslaught is like a sly feminist take on the "Plastics!" party scene in The Graduate.

PERFORMANCES
It's no wonder that everyone was hailing Carrie Snodgress as the new star of the '70s when Diary of a Mad Housewife was released. She was an original. Her unadorned naturalism, husky voice, and air of self-assured "smarts" made her a welcome relief from all the well-intentioned bimbos (Karen Black cornered that market) and lost waifs (Liza Minnelli) littering the movie landscape. Her performance here is a delight of small details. Check out the catalog of emotions she conveys in the party sequence when she meets up with Langella for a second time. She's absolutely fun and fascinating to watch. Carrie Snodgress never chased the stardom that was hers for the taking, and when she passed away in 2004, cinema lost one of its best.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As its title suggests, Diary of a Mad Housewife is told exclusively from Tina's perspective. And, as she is admittedly going mad (the film we're watching is actually Tina's disclosures to an encounter group) she is the quintessential unreliable narrator. In taking such a precise point of view, the film reminds us that we are seeing the world as Tina sees it, not necessarily as it really is. Richard Benjamin's broad-strokes caricature of the modern FDM (Forceful Dominant Male) is a lot easier to take under these circumstances.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Diary of a Mad Housewife came out at the height of the Women's Liberation Movement, which may explain why so many critics at the time expressed disappointment in the perceived passivity of the Carrie Snodgress character. Half felt the film amounted to little more than male-bashing, stacking the deck to make Snodgress the guiltless victim. Others complained that Snodgress' inaction in the face of so much abuse rendered her an anti-feminist heroine and only added another docile female character to the ranks of cinema leading ladies.

Both arguments have some validity, but seeing the film today, I'm actually grateful Diary of a Mad Housewife showed so much restraint. It has a lot on its plate, culturally speaking, but it never becomes a preachy polemic on feminism and always remains a character-fueled comedy/drama. I'm reminded of those awful final seasons of that TV sitcom Designing Women when the show took on an air of self-importance that had each show ending with a character serving as the mouthpiece for the creators' political views and launching into some windy monologue. Mercifully Diary of a Mad Housewife avoids that fate.

Yuppie Ennui

A group therapy member after Tina has told her tale of upscale angst: 
"I joined 'group' with the understanding that I would get help with my very real and terrible life's problems. She has a husband AND a lover AND an 8-room apartment on the Park!?!  Why does SHE need help?"

Diary of a Mad Housewife, a very funny and perceptive female alternative to all those 70s male-angst movies. It skillfully sidesteps becoming a single-minded political indictment of male oppression and chauvinism, and remains a look at one woman faced with her own inability to make anything meaningful of her existence. Tina isn't socially conscious, repressed, or even oppressed. She's too smart for that. She is incredibly lucid about the absurdity of the life her husband seems intent on pursuing, and, when she's really feeling attacked, she has a mouth on her and a quick, biting wit that gives as good as she takes.

No, Tina's problem stems from having lost her way in her pursuit of the American Dream (in this instance, home, family, and loving husband) and her questioning of the values she grew up believing in. Drifting into a pseudo-masochistic affair with a man arguably as insensitive as her husband, she finds little comfort and certainly no answers. In her own way, she's as spiritually adrift as the bikers in Easy Rider.

"I'm just a human being."

Copyright © Ken Anderson