THE FAN 1981

If theater geeks and Glee habitués ever longed for their own 80s slasher film, then The Fan fits the Playbill, so to speak. This unappetizingly violent, yet oh-so delectable blend of backstage musical, slasher-thriller, and woman-in-peril melodrama (to borrow a line from one of the Louis St. Louis [Grease 2] showtunes crooned over the course of the film), “Got no love” when released in the spring of 1981, but is deserving of rediscovery. 

And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other! And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in our childhoods. And that's showbiz...kid!
(This Fred Ebb lyric pretty much encapsulates the psychological backstory of The Fan)

No low-budget gore-fest populated by a cast of nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was A-List all the way. It had then-hot-as-a-firecracker producer Robert Stigwood (Grease); a sizable budget; great Manhattan locations and a distinguished cast of New York actors; and pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice contributed two songs).
It also had and up-and-coming creative team comprised of TV commercial/music video director Edward Bianchi (making his feature film debut), and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t StopThe Music, Annie). The production was conceived as a stylish, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980).

Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross

Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen

James Garner as Jake Berman

Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman

Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews

Unfortunately, somewhere along the path from screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmutated into something which simultaneously confounded and confused. Star Bacall claimed the final film turned out to be bloodier and a great deal more graphic than the initial screenplay indicated, thereby turning off her audience base. Meanwhile, the typical youth-based demographic for slasher films like Halloween and Friday the 13th had a hard time relating to The Fan’s largely middle-aged cast and theater world setting.

Of course, what proved most grievously detrimental to The Fan’s ultimate public reception was the December 1980 shooting death of John Lennon by an obsessed fan (The Fan, having wrapped that summer, was already in post-production). This tragedy was followed by the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in March of 1981 by a fan obsessed with actress Jodie Foster. This happened just two months before The Fan's May 1981 release date. Further compounding the whole reality vs. fiction creep-out factor of all this was the fact that Bacall, portraying a Broadway star opening in a new musical, was at the time indeed opening on Broadway in the musical, Woman of the Year (March, 1981). As if that wasn't already too much too-close-for comfort coincidence, Bacall happened also to be a resident of The Dakota apartments, the very site of Lennon’s fatal shooting (and the birthplace of the Antichrist in Rosemary's Baby; but let's not confuse fantasy with reality any more than we have to at this point).

 The Fan makes use of a great many terrific Manhattan locations. Here, the famed Shubert Theater serves as the site of Sally Ross's opening night in Never Say Never, the fictional musical that provides so much of  The Fan's camptastic eye candy

Depending on how cynical one was, the general atmosphere at the time couldn't have been better or worse for the release of a film about a star drawing the homicidal attentions of an obsessed fan. Paramount, perhaps to its discredit, chose not to postpone the release of The Fan and instead instead distributed theatrical trailers featuring a disclaimer stating that in no way was The Fan inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. An act which actually served to  to remind people of the Lennon tragedy under the guise of distancing itself from it. Whether seen as sensitive or in poor taste, in the end it didn't really matter.

This starkly simplistic (aka: cheap) graphic looks more appropriate to an Italian gaillo cheapie

Torpedoed by probably one of the worst posters in recent memory and mixed to pan reviews, The Fan continued on its inexorably jinxed, undeserved course to obscurity. 

Alienating the very audience that might most be interested in seeing a film offering up healthy doses of musical theater, showtunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode; The Fan drew the ire of many Gay Rights groups with its self-loathing, not-so-latent homosexual stalker. After the release of Windows in 1980 - a film about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising in 1981 - about a gay psychopath, nobody was really waiting with bated breath for another film which portrayed gays as slice-'em-dice-'em psychos

Celebrity and fan obsession is a compellingly intriguing topic for a thriller. The whole codependent, love/hate, need/resent, fear/envy aspect of the “relationship” between the famous and the adoring public is ripe fodder for film treatment. The connection between celebrity and fan is a "relationship," by design and necessity, doomed forever to be one-sided: the fan feels an intimate kinship with someone who doesn't know they exist. Perhaps because of this imaginary, essentially hungry, connection, it's no surprise then how quickly fawning fandom can change to bilious hate if the fan’s attentions are even marginally rebuffed.

I’m reminded of a scene in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (a marvelously dark black comedy about fan obsession that would make a great double-bill with The Fan) in which talk-show host Jerry Lewis is walking down the street. When asked by a fan at a public phone to say a few words to her friend on the line, he politely demurs, claiming that he's running late. At this point, the seconds-ago adoring fan flips to bile-spewing enemy, shouting “You should only get cancer! I hope you get cancer!” Yikes! 
But such is the mercurial, frighteningly delicate line between love and hate that is fandom and celebrity obsession. Had The Fan set its sights on examining this already terrifying dynamic in the form of a strict psychological thriller, it had the potential for providing an insightful, genuinely chilling look at our increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture. In going the slasher/stalker route, The Fan cheapens and sensationalizes the material, making the events appear more remote and unlikely than in reality they are. 

Anyone who has ever attended a celebrity autograph convention or looked at the crowds outside of a movie premiere knows how Day of the Locust-like and unnerving celebrity-worship feels. There are so many things The Fan does right (depicting the many ways in which the famous are vulnerable to the public, conveying how the promise held forth by fame-culture fuels a never-to-be-satiated hunger in fans) but in not trusting the inherent, subtle creepiness of the material as is, misses a terrific opportunity to scare us with a bracing look at ourselves.

The Celebrity Conundrum
Nothing angers a worshipper of celebrity more than listening to the famous gripe about how much they hate all the attention that comes with celebrity

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical Never Say Never, which is to be star Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut. What with its use of recognized Broadway dancers, NY locations, and knowing attention to procedural detail; the feel is very authentic, very 80s, and very stylishly evoked. I find these scenes a bit camp to be sure (what with all those legwarmers and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), but I have to say all of it contributes to giving us a refreshingly novel backdrop for a suspense thriller. Silly as they may be, they are also terrifically fun. Of course it doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer, or that in 1983, when I took my first trip to New York, I studied dance at Jo Jo's, the studio featured in the film.

Cheek to Cheek
That's Kurt Johnson providing literal backup to Lauren Bacall as she sings " A Remarkable Woman," one of two Marvin Hamlisch/Tim Rice compositions introduced in the film

All The Boys Love Sally
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line, and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in the original Broadway production of Cats 

PERFORMANCES

If you’re going to make a film about the kind of classic Hollywood star capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you can't do much better than all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is really very good at portraying a character not very far removed from what the public perceives her to be. She is so good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow for the basic character drama of this ageing star grappling with loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability, play itself out minus all the genre machinations.

The charmingly lived-in romance of James Garner and Lauren Bacall is a welcome change from the  usual blank-faced couplings of callow youths typically found in slasher films 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The '80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. I don't care if I enjoy these sequences for all the wrong reasons, they're a hoot and absolutely fantastic!

A Remarkable Woman

More Like Hot Flash, Baby, Tonight
I saw The Fan the night it opened at Mann's Chinese Theater in L.A., and I swear,  the entire audience did a collective spit-take when Ms. Bacall launched into this hilariously inappropriate disco-ditty.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full, glossy evidence), But with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012

THE RITZ 1976

Three distinct memories spring to mind when I think of the movie version of The Ritz, Terrence McNally’s gay liberation-era Broadway farce that won Rita Moreno the 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play: 

1) I was 18 years old and attending college in San Francisco when The Ritz had its West Coast premiere there. I recall the local papers running photos of Moreno posing on a special The Ritz cable car surrounded by a phalanx of attractive young men in tight-fitting “The Ritz” t-shirts, ready to be transported to the film’s screening, and later, if memory serves, to a disco after-party held at one of the city's more popular gay bathhouses. Movie premieres were rare in San Francisco, and everything about this one (disco-themed, gay-centric, hip, and a little kinky) encapsulated all the things I associate with that particular time and place.

2) The Ritz was released in the summer of 1976. America was caught up in Bicentennial and Olympics fever, and me...I was swept up in a fever of a different kind. One resulting from prolonged exposure to the pervasive and persuasive ad campaign for that other summer '76 release, The Omen ("You are one day closer to the end of the world!"). I went bonkers for that movie and saw The Omen at least four times that summer, never getting around to seeing The Ritz even once (although, in my defense, The Ritz performed so poorly that it was in theaters only a short time). 

3) Curiously, while I couldn't be troubled to see the film itself, I did make the effort to go to the theater where The Ritz was playing just so I could buy myself a "The Ritz" t-shirt. It was this very cool (for 1976, anyway) European-cut white shirt with the film’s title in black art-deco lettering on the front and Al Hirschfeld’s poster art caricatures of the film’s cast on the back. I absolutely loved that shirt!  It lasted all through college and survived for many years until finally disintegrating in the wash sometime in the mid-'80s.

Even the usually reliable Ebay has proved fruitless in searching for another one of these T-shirts. I knew I should have bought two of them when I had the chance back in 1976

When I finally got around to seeing The Ritz on cable TV in the late-'70s, I found I enjoyed it a great deal, and it instantly became one of my all-time favorites. I was so impressed with the attempt to create a kind of modern Marx Brothers comedy of chaos —a classic farce full of broadly pitched performances and McNally's irreverent send-ups of everything from homophobia to show business, gay culture to gangster films. 

The raw material is a great deal of outrageous good fun that could have perhaps benefited from that intangible, crazy "something" that Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich brought to Young Frankenstein and What's Up, Doc?, respectively, but while The Ritz never reaches the heights of comic lunacy necessary to make this kind of comedy really soar, it nevertheless has a tremendously funny freneticism to it that throws new things at you so fast that even if you're not laughing, you're rarely, if ever, bored. 

Rita Moreno as Googie Gomez

Jack Weston as Gaetano Proclo

Jerry Stiller as Carmine Vespucci

Treat Williams as Michael Brick

F. Murray Abraham as Chris

Kaye Ballard as Vivian Proclo

One of the things that most struck me about seeing The Ritz for the first time, just a few short years after its initial release, was how swiftly it had become a period piece. Not in the superficial things like clothes and disco, but in reflecting an emerging liberalism that was already about to have the lid shut on it. In the intervening years since the glory days of the sexual revolution (the days of porno chic, Erica Jong, key clubs, wife-swapping, and Plato's Retreat —lest we forget that sexual recklessness was not the sole province of gays in the '70s) fundamentalist nutjobs like Anita Bryant, the AIDS crisis, and the burgeoning conservatism of the '80s conspired to render The Ritz's pro-sex, pro-acceptance, live-and-let-live egalitarianism something for the history books.

I always regret that I didn't first see The Ritz back when the climate of the times better reflected the optimistic spirit of healthy hedonism depicted on the screen. This out-and-proud retooling of the classic bedroom farce was one of the earliest (if not the first) mainstream examples of gay sexuality presented as normal, fun, and every bit as prone to comical chaos and misunderstanding as heterosexual sex. Gay characters are introduced in a non-tragic, comic milieu where for once, the humor derives from their personalities. Being gay is merely a part of who they are, not the source of a joke. I can only think of a handful of films from that era (Saturday Night at the Baths, A Very Natural Thing, Some of My Best Friends Are) that successfully portrayed gay people in a gay-specific environment that was neither defined nor impacted by hetero acceptance or disapproval. 

The fictional  bathhouse in The Ritz is modeled on New York's The Continental Baths, the infamous '70s recreational sex venue that boasted a pool, gym, cafe, disco, and most popularly, a cabaret where stars like Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, and Peter Allen got their start 

Summarizing a farce's plot in print is thankless and the written equivalent of a tongue-twister: you know what you intend to say, but it often sounds garbled. But I’ll give it my best (and briefest): Cleveland sanitation company president Gaetano Proclo (Weston) has a hit put out on him by his mafia-connected brother-in-law (Stiller), and mistakenly picks a N.Y. gay bathhouse to hide out in. 
Hoping to just lay low for the duration, Proclo finds himself the unwitting target of an amorous chubby-chaser (Paul B. Price), a blackmail-minded private detective (Williams), and a monumentally untalented Puerto Rican cabaret singer (Moreno) who mistakes him for a producer. Of course, everything that can go wrong does, and complications escalate to a delightfully silly pitch, all leading to the anticipated chase/free-for-all finale. 
Taking place over the course of one frantic evening, The Ritz is a door-slamming, identity-mangling, towel-snapping, man-chasing, gun-wielding, lunatic comedy of absurdly subversive sexual politics. Behind all the hilarity is a nifty little commentary on how hard it is to pin labels on people when everyone’s dressed in only a towel.

Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) leapfrogs over what could have been the unendurable cliches written into the character of Chris, a befuddled bathhouse regular swept up in a comic case of mistaken identity 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Depending on the critic, the film legacy of director Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, Petulia, The Three Musketeers) has been categorized as either varied or uneven. But that which has been most consistent in all of his work—a talent for brilliant bits of staged pandemonium—is well-suited to this screwball fish-out-of-water burlesque that mines traditionally uncomfortable gay/straight confrontations for laughs.
In comedy, all is forgiven if you just come through with the funny, and on that score, Lester, with just a few minor lags in pacing, succeeds in keeping things moving at the requisite frenetic pace. Lester's confident handling of the dizzying particulars of so many characters, doorways, and complications never gets in the way of his Broadway-trained cast (Moreno, Weston, Stiller, Abraham, and mustachioed chubby-chaser, Paul B. Price all reprise their stage roles), each of whom is allowed their moment to shine.

Devoted fat-fetishist Claude Perkins (Paul B. Price) puts the moves on a badly-disguised Gaetano Proclo (Jack Weston)

PERFORMANCES
Before talent-free, self-deluding, fame-whores became a staple of show-biz (thanks, reality TV), they were the deserving targets of satirical derision. After years of American Idol, Rita Moreno’s Puerto Rican bombshell, Googie Gomez, doesn’t seem nearly the awful performer she’s supposed to be (she sings only marginally worse than, say, Katy Perry), but the loony, comedic brilliance of Moreno’s performance hasn't waned a bit. Like the late Madeline Kahn, Moreno is an actress capable of being outrageous and natural at the same time. Fabulously sexy, Moreno imbues Googie with a comic lunacy that steals every scene she's in. 
Legend has it that Terrence McNally wrote The Ritz for Moreno after seeing her perform the character of Googie at parties. If so, the man should be commended for resisting the impulse to place this dynamically colorful character at the front and center of the play. As a peripheral but indispensable element of crazy in The Ritz’s party mix, she is the film's spice;  The Ritz offers just enough Googie ineptitudes, tantrums, and malaprops to leave you wanting more.

Googie Gomez launches into a grievously misguided rendition of "Everything's Coming Up Roses"

Every member of The Ritz’s gamely peripatetic ensemble cast is worthy of accolades (this film must have been a continuity nightmare), but Jack Weston is my personal favorite. A rubber-faced master of the double-take with all the corpulent grace of Oliver Hardy, Weston makes me laugh aloud time and time again over his incredulous reactions to the not-so-fine mess he’s gotten himself into.

Googie tries her hand at seduction

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The Ritz is about as New York as you can get in terms of setting, subject, and humor, but was filmed, most likely for financial reasons, in the UK (the illusion is shattered less than a minute into the film when the actress cast as Jack Weston’s daughter delivers the line, “I want to go back to Cleveland” with a pronounced British lilt). What fascinates me about The Ritz is how British and Carry On-ish it all feels despite hewing so faithfully to the stage show and employing a largely Yankee. Director Richard Lester may be American by birth, but in having made England his home since 1956, I think he brings something to The Ritz that makes me wonder if perhaps there isn’t something to the widely held belief that there are really subtle and not-so-subtle differences between British and American humor.

In farce, all beds are made for hiding under, and situations are never as they seem

A curious thing about The Ritz, something that Kaye Ballard mentions in her memoirs, is that for a film set in a gay bathhouse, the movie is woefully low on male pulchritude. The Ritz has been cast with a straight male's detachment from (or fear of) his appreciation of male beauty. Lester found a way to include (in the burlesque tradition) a bevy of sexy females in 1966's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum but clearly didn't think turnabout was fair play in this wholly appropriate male atmosphere. A peroxided Treat Williams (hilarious and endearing as the private eye with the helium voice and boyish nature) is pretty much it when it comes to beefcake.

"See something you like, buddy?"

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Given that the heaviest topics can be lightened through levity, humor has always been one of the most pain-free ways to broach controversial subjects on film. With The Ritz, audiences otherwise loathe to spend 90 minutes watching a movie set in an environment as alien and potentially disconcerting as a gay bathhouse can galvanize around and have their latent homophobia assuaged by the more traditionally accessible comedy targets: sexism - the sexually rapacious heterosexual female; xenophobia - Googie's Puerto Rican assault on the English Language (I think Al Pacino studied Moreno her for his accent in Scarface); and irony - Googie's deluded belief in her own talent.
And if laughs are hard to elicit from viewers unsure of what to make out of a nonjudgmental look at an establishment where men gather to have anonymous, promiscuous sex with other men, then Gaetano Proclo’s exaggerated Alice Through The Looking Glass sense of bemused amazement provides the perfect outlet for all that nervous tension building up inside.

If, however, at film's end, audiences are left with their presumptions challenged, replaced with only the awareness that one has spent 90 minutes in the presence of a bunch of zany, eccentric characters, each unique and yet somehow the same...sympathetic, misunderstood, likable;...well, to me that's one small blow for the power of comedy.

Three Gay Caballeros

The Ritz is not perfect, but it IS a funny film, and there are more genuine laughs to be found here than in a great many more well-regarded comedies out there. It's a forgotten gem that has garnered a well-deserved cult following.  
The Ritz was revived on Broadway in 2007 for a limited run and featured Rosie Perez as Googie.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012

SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON 1964

This film was first brought to my attention by a friend in a discussion on The Stepford Wives and director Bryan Forbes. Informed that the stylistically uneven and nepotism-prone director (wife Nanette Newman appears, by contract, it would seem, in virtually every one of his films) had really scored a hit with the noir-ish kidnap caper film Séance on a Wet Afternoon, I was eager to get a look at this well-regarded British thriller that seems to have fallen through the cracks a bit here in the U.S. Well, rather obligingly, TCM recently screened Séance on a Wet Afternoon and I must say, I was seriously floored and thoroughly impressed. What a marvelous, wholly satisfying surprise! If, as I suspect, Forbes was hired to helm The Stepford Wives on the strength of this film, I fully understand why. Where has this movie been all my life?

Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a claustrophobically tense suspense thriller/crime drama about a kidnap plot hatched by an eager-for-fame trance medium (Kim Stanley) and her dominated husband (Richard Attenborough).

Kim Stanley as Myra Savage

Richard Attenborough as Billy Savage

Nanette Newman as Mrs. Clayton

Patrick Magee as Superintendent Walsh

Mark Eden as Mr. Clayton

Possessed, since childhood, of a psychic gift granting foresight through communion with spirits in other dimensions, Myra Savage has always known she was “different,” but has sustained herself with the notion that she is also "special." But an adult existence of workaday mundanity (she supports herself and her unemployed, asthmatic husband by conducting once-a-week séances in the gloomy Victorian home they share) and lingering remnants of a past tragedy have conspired to render her gifts, if not wasted, then of minimal consequence. Determined to right fate's wrongs and fulfill her arrogate destiny, Myra prevails upon her weak-willed husband to carry out the "borrowing" of the daughter of a wealthy businessman so that a charade might be enacted wherein, after ransom is demanded and the press alerted, Myra can gain notoriety by way of what she calls  "The lie that reveals the truth": the feigning of psychic intervention in leading the grieving parents to the whereabouts of the daughter and the discovery of the ransom.  

Of course, the Gothic turn of the screw in Séance on a Wet Afternoon is Myra’s obvious mental instability (raising doubts about her claim of psychic talent) and the peculiar, Lady Macbeth-ish influence she wields over her apprehensively compliant, yet devoted husband Billy.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 
I have a fondness for films about crime capers that go terribly wrong. Whether due to human error (some character’s “fatal flaw”) or merely faulty planning, it always strikes me as a marvelously theatrical dramatization of the folly and arrogance of mankind ever thinking it has control over the outcome of anything. The rather deranged motivations that set in motion Séance on a Wet Afternoon’s kidnapping plot are unsettlingly compounded by the codependent master/slave relationship shared by Myra and Billy. 

Many shots in the film are composed to place Myra in positions of looming dominance over her passive husband 

In an ambiguous interplay that recalls the dysfunctional dynamics of George and Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the “gifted” Myra, the family’s sole breadwinner and whose inherited house they share, clearly dominates Billy. But Billy’s brow-beaten silences have an air of weary condescension. One senses that he has learned that it is easier to suffer his wife’s erratic behavior and cutting invectives than to challenge them. Billy relates to Myra as one might a person suffering from Alzheimer’s. In scenes where Myra appears to forget or has re-imagined some event from the past, Billy either recants or hesitates at revealing the truth (e.g., when Myra turns off the blaring Victrola only moments later to accuse Billy of doing so, he doesn't contradict her). 

Myra visits the parents of the kidnapped girl to offer her services as a "professional psychic"

PERFORMANCES
Kim Stanley’s screen appearances may have been infrequent, but in each instance (most notably Paddy Chayefsky’s The Goddess- 1958) she seriously came to clean house. This woman wasn't fooling around! In portraying the escalatingly unhinged mastermind of a spiritually mandated kidnap-for-fame scheme, Stanley creates and inhabits a character of mesmerizing and terrifying complexity. Both fragile and steely, Myra Savage is a role so inherently distasteful that marketable stars Simone Signoret and Deborah Kerr declined it outright. Yet Stanley imbues Myra with such a mercurially shifting palette of conflicting emotions that she emerges never exclusively a villain or victim; merely a frighteningly authentic incarnation of the internal desolation that is madness. Stanley's performance garnered an Oscar nomination, and rightfully so.

Billy - "We're mad, you and me. Both mad."

I never thought I could ever forgive Richard Attenborough after what he did to A Chorus Line (1985), but after seeing his chilling turn in 10 Rilllington Place (1971) last year, and now Séance on a Wet Afternoon…well, I can see that the man is quite prodigiously talented when kept in front of the camera. As the somewhat infantilized spouse (there’s an emasculating absurdity in this well-past-middle-aged man being referred to as “Billy”), Attenborough’s quiet anguish is well-matched with Stanley’s showier display of insanity. Not allowed a “backstory” as to how he came to be so cowed by his wife, Attenborough’s surprisingly expressive eyes convey the defeated compromise and devotionally loving tolerance that binds this obviously intelligent man to a delusional woman determined to lead them both toward tragedy.

Portraying a largely silent character, Richard Attenborough's eyes betray a past of torturesome sorrows

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Atmospheric and loaded with dramatic tension, Séance on a Wet Afternoon nevertheless might be too procedural and talky for some people’s tastes. Indeed, the screenplay, as adapted by director Forbes from the 1961 novel by Mark McShane, could easily be turned into a stage play with few alterations. (In the year 2000, Séance on a Wet Afternoon was remade as a Japanese horror film titled, Séance, and in 2009 it was made into an opera composed by Wicked’s Stephen Schwartz.) 

The unpleasant topic of a child being terrorized has been said to have accounted for the film's mild reception upon its release. Here, schoolgirl Amanda Clayton (Judith Donner) attempts to thwart her abduction by Billy Savage by locking him out of the car (Richard Attenborough) 

Personally, being a tad weary of the flash cut, ADD, CGI stuff of today, I enjoy seeing a film so deliberately paced. It's nice to have a film that trusts an audience to allow events to unfold as they need to, not just in a way dedicated to providing a thrill-a-minute. The time spent in allowing us to know and understand the characters on a more substantial level has the remarkable effect of creating empathy for both the villains and the victims. I found myself simultaneously rooting for and against the kidnappers' detection.  
Note* Based on several reviews and summaries I've read online, it seems there exists the possibility of misunderstanding what occurs during the film’s gripping conclusion if one fails to pay close attention. What is spoken is so important during these crucial final moments (and alas, the DVD release comes without a “captions” option) an unheard word or two is apt to leave you walking away with an entirely different impression of how this film really ends.

The Savages - as unsavory a couple as ever appeared in a film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Shot in exquisite black and white by cinematographer Gerry Turpin and employing all the deep-focus/high-contrast flourishes of the best of film noir and mid-'60s thrillers, Séance on a Wet Afternoon makes a great companion piece to those similar exercises in bloodless terror: The Innocents (1961) and The Haunting (1963). I very much liked the hauntingly sinister score by the late, great John Barry, and Bryan Forbes' methodical buildup of suspense was especially to my taste. It’s often difficult to know specifically what a director is responsible for in a film, but in comparing The Stepford Wives with Séance on a Wet Afternoon, I’m leaning towards investment in character over plot. Both films kept me riveted because the characters came alive for me in such complex, deeply flawed (human) ways, I cared about what happened to them. For a film to succeed in drawing the viewer into the emotional reality of a film, seems the most thrilling special effect of all.

The bleak Victorian London home where most of the film's action takes place. A house haunted by more than ghosts

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

FUNNY GIRL 1968

I've always been a big fan of movie musicals, but enjoying them often requires a kind of dexterous agility when it comes to the suspension of disbelief. I learned long ago that if I really want to surrender myself to films in which ordinary people in natural surroundings spontaneously burst into fully-orchestrated song and dance, well…it’s just best I not hold too tight a tether on reality. 

In the patently false world of movie musicals, believing in impossible things is, as the White Queen explained to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, not so very difficult to do. What poses a significantly greater challenge is that hybrid genre of musical fantasy which also purports to be rooted in fact: the musical biopic. For years, movies like The Great Waltz (Johan Strauss), Gypsy (Gypsy Rose Lee), and the 1955 Ruth Etting saga Love Me or Leave Me (penned by Funny Girl screenwriter Isobel Lennart), have been tunefully blurring the lines between truth and myth, gleefully playing havoc with audience suspension of disbelief...all just part of Hollywood's long history of playing fast and loose with history.

Funny Girl, William Wyler’s big-screen adaptation of the smash 1964 Broadway musical based on the life of Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, is one of the more successful stage-to-screen translations of a musical to come out of the '60s. It's colorful, vibrant, funny, with a score of hummable songs marvelously rendered by an engaging, highly photogenic cast. In short, it's a great deal of old-fashioned fun. And yet, in its own way, it's also rather perplexing. 

By this I mean that whether by design or sheer force of star power, somewhere along the line this biopic gently shuttles aside the character of Fanny Brice at some point and becomes a Barbra Streisand infomercial—I'm never quite sure which myth I'm supposed to be following. 

Like a cinematic dissertation on the Wormhole Theory, Funny Girl's fictionalized depiction of the life of Fanny Brice feeds into the real-life Brooklyn-to-Broadway legend of Barbra Streisand the stage star, which in turn funnels into the from-obscurity-to-fame mythologization of Streisand, the movie star. Whew! Streisand's image hews so closely to Funny Girl's representation of Brice, small wonder then that as a kid I used to think Brice's signature song, Second Hand Rose (written in 1921) was actually introduced by Streisand.

"Hello, gorgeous!"
I know, I know. It's trite, cliche, and been done to death. But you knew it was going to crop up somewhere. Better now than leave you in suspense...looking for it...wondering when it was going to spring out at you.

Fanny Brice, née Fania Borach, was one of four children born to New York saloon owners Rose and Charles Borach in 1891. Fanny, who changed her name to Brice in 1908, was a plain-but-talented burlesque comedienne/singer who rose to international stardom as a headliner for Broadway impresario, Florenz Ziegfeld in the early 1900s through the mid-1930s. In 1912, the already once-married Brice found her true love in still-married con man/ex-convict Jules “Nicky” Arnstein, and after six years of cohabitation (Nicky’s divorce was a tad slow in coming), they wed. Their tumultuous union lasted nine years—at least three of which Arnstein spent behind bars for bond theft—producing two children: a boy and a girl. Along the way, Brice got herself a nose job, unsuccessfully tried her hand at dramatic roles, and made a few modest forays into film. A third marriage and greater career triumphs were to come…but that's venturing into Funny Lady territory. So there you have it, the Fanny Brice story. 

Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice

Omar Sharif as Nick Arnstein

Walter Pidgeon as Florenz Ziegfeld

Funny Girl, on the other hand, is about a charismatic, extraordinarily talented, exotically beautiful, ragingly self-confident woman with dragon-lady nails, Cleopatra eye-makeup, and immense, gravity-defying, '60s-type hair. Coincidentally—and only by coincidence—also named Fanny Brice. Set in a picture-postcard, quaintly ethnic New York during a historically imprecise era in America’s recent past (where 1910 showgirls look like moonlighting taxi-dancers from Sweet Charity’s swinging '60s Fandango Ballroom), Funny Girl is the rags-to-riches chronicle of Brice’s rise to fame as star of The Fanny Brice Follies (misidentified in the film as The Ziegfeld Follies, in spite of the fact that the film makes it abundantly clear she calls the shots and is the show's main focus), and her ill-fated marriage to the dashing and atypically ethical gambler, Nick “Too-proud-to-be-Mr. Brice” Arnstein. 

Echoing the themes of countless other “There’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway” musical made since movies first found their voice, Funny Girl ends with Brice reaching the pinnacle of success only to discover (to no one’s surprise but her own) it’s lonely at the top. Our final image: Brice onstage—it’s the only place she can find happiness, y'know— symbolically bathed in a solo spotlight, looking like a million bucks, resplendent in her noble suffering.

Fame - Gotta Get a Rain Check on Pain
Aphoristically speaking, I think Billy Dee Williams said it, if not best, then certainly cheesiest, when he informed the candle-wax-encrusted Diana Ross in Mahogany: "Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Sure, in many ways Funny Girl is corny, derivative, and certainly not the direction movies were headed in the Bonnie and Clyde late-'60s. But given the leaden flatness of similar big-budget musicals of the era (Camelot, Finian's Rainbow), it’s rather amazing Funny Girl came out so well. Doubly so when you realize that it is the only musical ever made by veteran and versatile director, William Wyler (65 at the time and hard of hearing, yet). Seriously, Funny Girl’s opulent sets, sparkling cast of character actors, and seamless blending of music and narrative have the look and feel of classic Vincent Minnelli. In the end, perhaps a little too classic.

For all the pleasure I derive from the film, I'm the first to concede Funny Girl feels altogether too familiar in its telling and is so much the archetypal show-biz biopic that it seems to have been cobbled together from bits and pieces of every backstage Hollywood musical that came before (especially A Star is Born–both versions). Its plot: an equal parts mélange of ugly-duckling fantasy, rags-to-riches fable, soap opera, hagiography, tearjerker, and paean to noble female martyrdom—unfurls as predictably and without incident as a morning train commute, with nary a surprise or unanticipated curve along the track. It's blessed with a sprightly score of songs by Jules Stein and Bob Merrill, and several, by-now-iconic musical setpieces (who today can look at a tugboat and not think of Streisand?...I mean in a good way); but there’s nothing in Funny Girl that I haven’t seen a half dozen times before. Except Barbra Streisand.

Make that the phenomenal Barbra Streisand. A new kind of movie star for a new kind of Hollywood, Streisand’s thoroughly one-of-a-kind, 900-megawatt star quality has the effect of single-handedly wresting Funny Girl from its wholly traditional moorings. Just a decade or so earlier Streisand's unconventional beauty would likely have relegated her to a career of Nancy Walker-type supporting roles in MGM musicals. But in 1968 her look was the new glamour, her voice the new sound, and her talent the singular spoonful of sugar that made this at-times antiquated musical medicine go down.

Streisand's Swan Lake schtick

PERFORMANCES
Personally, I don’t think most musicals benefit from naturalistic acting (i.e., One from the Heart and New York, New York). Musicals operate in a kind of theatrical hyper-reality that requires the actors, when emoting in non-musical scenes, to adopt this thing called “performative excess” - a superficially broad style of acting pitched to a level so as not to render the incidental introduction of fantasy sequences of song and dance ridiculous or incongruous. It's a style most recognizably associated with farces, screwball comedies, and a good many of those grating TV Land sitcoms.

Rumors surrounding Anne Francis (she'll always be Honey West to me) and her displeasure at finding her co-starring role (as Follies showgirl Georgia James) whittled down to nothing, are as plentiful as they are contradictory.

Bullying but delightfully erudite movie critic John Simon once wrote of  Liza Minnelli’s acting:  “[It's]...a desperate display of synthetics forlornly straining for the real thing.” Take away the malice from that statement, and you have exactly what I think is most effective about Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. The vitality of Streisand as a performer—an energy that feels at times as though it might jump right off the screen into your lap—is born of her studied artificiality. She's "on" every single minute! Self-aware and controlling every aspect of her performance down to the bat of an eyelash, with nary a move or gesture left to chance or spontaneity (She played the role on stage for nearly two years). Streisand is a skilled physical comedian with marvelous delivery, but in Funny Girl I think she is rather more an entertainer than actress. Hers is a synthetic method of acting that actually succeeds in conveying the real thing. The result? A stylized performance that feels sublimely attuned to the rhythms required of an intentionally old-fashioned vehicle like Funny Girl .

In a kind of meta reenactment of all those tabloid rumors that had movie first-timer Barbra Streisand squaring off against veteran director William Wyler, Follies neophyte Fanny Brice goes toe-to-toe with boss Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon)

Streisand is one of those stars whose movie career has been built on essentially playing herself in film after film. It may sound like a put-down to say so, but I believe it to be something of a gift to be able to project one's personality dynamically on film. Not everybody can do it...just ask Madonna. 
Streisand can be a wonderful actress and comedienne (personal faves: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and What's Up, Doc?) but I don't believe anyone goes to a Barbra Streisand movie hoping she’ll so immerse herself in a character that they'll forget it’s her. No, when you’re paying for Streisand, you’re pretty much counting on getting Streisand...and plenty of it. (One exception: In 1981's All Night Long Streisand amusingly played against type in a supporting role as a soft-spoken suburban housewife who dreams of being a country & western star…only she can’t sing. Audiences stayed away in droves.)

12-minutes into Funny Girl, Streisand sings "I'm the Greatest Star" a tongue-in-cheek showstopper that is nevertheless (to borrow a line from the musical, Chicago) "A song of unrelenting determination and unmitigated ego."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

If I seem to speak of Barbra Streisand to the exclusion of all else in Funny Girl, it’s just that without her, I suspect I would be rather on the fence about the film as a whole. Funny Girl is professional and competent in that way you’d expect from a big-budget studio feature, but I can't help but feel it lacks a certain distinction. The cinematography by Harry Stradling, Sr. (A Streetcar Named Desire, My Fair Lady) can’t be faulted; he turns Streisand into a goddess with each loving (and frequent) close-up. Nor do the musical numbers by Herbert Ross (later Streisand’s director for The Owl and the Pussycat and Funny Lady) come up short, being amiably witty if not particularly dance-filled. The music arrangements, while anachronistically contemporary in sound, show off Ms. Streisand’s million-dollar voice to great effect, and Irene Sharaff’s eye-catching costumes call attention to what a thoroughbred clotheshorse Streisand can be.

The pairing of Sharif and Streisand became an international incident when the Egypt/Israeli War broke out during filming. The married pair (to other partners) consoled one another...if you get my cruder meaning.

Three-time Academy Award-winning director William Wyler, in this his penultimate film in a four-decades-long career, is no stranger to divas (Bette Davis – Jezebel, The Letter, The Little Foxes), camera neophytes (Audrey Hepburn – Roman Holiday), or spectacle (Ben Hur), and as such, acquits himself nicely his first time to bat in this toughest of movie genres. Accounts vary as to whether Wyler molded Streisand’s performance or merely got out of her way, but whatever the circumstances, the result was a critical and popular success that became the second highest-grossing film of 1968, garnering Streisand her first and only Best Actress Oscar win (Wyler was left out of the film's eight nominations).

 Note* Lightning failed to strike twice for "Funny Girl" producer Ray Stark when he enlisted the talents of John Huston—another veteran director not known for musicals—to bring the Broadway hit, "Annie", to the screen in 1982.

Funny Girl's only other nomination in the acting categories was a Best Supporting Actress nod for Kay Medford as Mrs. Brice.   (Folks of my generation will remember her as a regular on "The Dean Martin Show") 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Sometimes I think film is called a lively art because the longer I live, the better certain films begin to look. Funny Girl was released 44 years ago, and since that time, not only has the quality of musicals drastically declined, but the only criteria for stardom today seems to be a pulse and a personality disorder. As I grow older and nostalgia gently overtakes discernment, Funny Girl’s flaws gradually diminish, born of an awareness of Streisand having, in the ensuing years, more than made good on her promise/threat of being "The Greatest Star" (minus scandals, drug busts, or rehab, I might add). 

A healthy suspension of disbelief might be necessary to reconcile Funny Girl's historical and biographical inaccuracies, anachronisms, and outright fabrications; but as a lasting record of the career genesis of one of the last of my generation’s truly great stars, Funny Girl could practically be classified as a documentary.

William Wyler and Streisand on the studio backlot

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012