Movie review - "Frances" (1982) **

 Key teammembers  behind Elephant Man - the writers, the producer, Mel Brooks - try another biopic, and it should be great (Frances Farmer) and there are elements of greatness (the performances of Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley) but it's boring. And annoying. And darkly lit.

The Sam Shepherd character is annoying - not real and he kept popping up to say things. It's never clear why Farmer is collapsing just that she has a bad time and has a bit of a mouth on her.

I think the filmmakers didn't "get" her. So they do "nightmarish" scenes - Frances cracking up, going nuts in the shower, being lobotomised. How is it her parents' fault?

Comes alive during the Clifford Odets bit. 

 

Book review - "Cary Grant" by Scott Eyman

 Typically excellent biography by Eyman of the legendary Hollywood star. Discussion in recent years has centered around Grant's sexuality - this one presents the evidence rather than making conclusions (some dicey... who cares what Budd Boetticher thought?) and basically leaves it for the reader to decide. He mentions Grant's physical beating of his first and fourth wives without comment.

Grant's father married above his class; the mother would pester him and was a bit eccentric - dad got jack and had her sent to a lunatic asylum, which he could. No wonder Grant became a bit odd and wanted to reinvent himself.

It's a tribute he turned out so normal. He was genuinely smart and charming,capable of kindness. Open minded about sex. As mentioned Eyman quotes a number of people who insist Cary was straight but quotes a bisexual dude who said Grant was open about that to him and the evidence seems to imply otherwise. Loved kids (he should have had more than one and he knew it - he tried).

He had his flaws. Stinginess, if you count that as a flaw (he would present house guests with a bill). He hit his first and fourth wives. Controlling.

A superb actor. Didn't push himself as much as he should have. A great friend of Clifford Odets.

Possible movie in this... Cary Grant married to Besty Drake, who came up with the idea of the film Houseboat. Grant sold it with Drake to co star but then fell for Sophia Loren, had the film rewritten for her, Loren and he had a fling but she refused to leave Carlo Ponti, Grant is left alone, but finds happiness via LSD.

Play review - "Waiting for Lefty" (1935) by Clifford Odets

Famous 30s Depression era play, with a wonderful central idea, fabulously theatrical - it's a union meeting where the members are discussing whether to strike or not, and we flash back to different vignettes about capitalist exploitation. It's not subtle, and is certainly naive (eg praise of the Communist Party) but it's passionate and energetic, and you're swept along with it's bombast. Also Odets' way with language is entertaining. Must have been wonderful to see it during it's original production.

Movie review – “The Big Knife” (1955) *** (warning: spoilers)

This starts wonderfully with a great Saul Bass credits sequence that consists of Jack Palance sitting in the dark and freaking out, and the first scene between Palance and Ida Lupino is very good. 

I bought Palance as a Hollywood star (well he kind of was, wasn’t he – and it’s specified here he was in lots of boxing films etc) and Lupino is excellent as his wife (hard exterior, soft interior – someone who’s been around the block a bit). Rod Steiger’s methody performance as the studio head might have its fans – it certainly can’t be ignored, full of ticks and melodrama. 

 

Wendell Corey is better value as a ruthless studio hatchet man, but the story becomes less believable as it goes on – studios are mean, but I didn’t buy they would consider murder to save a star’s name. Also this might have worked better if set twenty years before – by 1955 studio power was clearly on the slide. I did buy that a movie star killed himself – it’s all about crossing the line of personal principles, and Palance does that.

 

Shelley Winters does her normal Shelley Winters thing as a trashy woman and I hated the ending with the noble Hollywood writer threatening to tell the story. Directed by Robert Aldrich from the play by Clifford Odets (Aldrich helmed a few plays during his career, notably this, Attack and The Killing of St George), it’s got a lot of Aldrich intensity and shouting.

Play review - "The Big Knife" by Clifford Odets

Odets once again on the topic of selling out. A movie star is being offered a massive 14 year contract with script approval and plenty of time off. You might think "what's the problem?" but his wife doesn't want him to take it, he's sold out his career, he should go back to Broadway, etc. In 1949 these were considered serious issues - of course in hindsight we know he should have taken the money and ran. The emotional stuff about being a sell out really works, its just the mechanics to get there are a bit contrived. There is some good stuff where the wife gets the abortion, the movie star has a guilty secret which is exploited. Best characters are the rutheless Hollywood tycoon (Harry Cohn crossed with Louis B Mayer) and his equally deadly offsider (surely based on Eddie Mannix), plus the Hollywood blonde. The "good" characters - the wife and the writer (a recovering alcoholic who has found redemption) aren't very interesting. Plenty of hysterical high falutin' dialogue and heaving duty confrontations but it showed Odets was still an adept writer.

Play review – “The Country Girl” by Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets is famous (among writers at least) for being the playwright who sold out and went Hollywood, where he was destroyed. Most bios on him commented “he never lived up to his original promise” – which is a bit rich, since his later years produced works such as this, The Big Knife, and the screenplay for The Sweet Smell of Success. Thinking over it, though – most of the themes of those works deal with selling out, so Odets certainly encouraged the myth himself. This play is from 1950 is about the attempts of a theatre director to hire an alcoholic actor in his latest play; although there are supporting roles such as a ruthless producer and kindly playwright (way to go, Odets), the meat of the drama concerns the director, the actor and the latter’s wife – in particular the dysfunctional marriage of the last two. Three strong characters, in good conflict. Strong stuff, with some flowery dialogue. There’s a scene were we see the alcoholic actor actually act, and we’re supposed to be impressed by it – that’s risky (what if he sucks?). I remember Laura Brannigan in Backstage supposed to be a great actor, and you’re sort of willing to go with it... but then they show it. Likewise any actor who plays the Kate Hepburn part in Stage Door actually has to be good.

Movie review - Elvis #7 - "Wild in the Country" (1961) ***

Back from army service Elvis made two films for Fox which attempted to stretch him - Flaming Star and this one - but neither particularly found favour with the public the way that Blue Hawaii and GI Blues did and so Elvis found himself trapped like a fly in celluloid amber. 

Here he plays juvenile delinquent living in the backwoods who, in true Elvis form, lost his ma when he was a kid - he has a pa, but pa is mean, as is his brother, so Elvis is angry at the world - angry, you understand, so he punches the brother and winds up on parole. He's sent to work for his uncle, whose daughter (Tuesday Weld) is one of those cat on a hot tin roof baby dolls - married with a kid despite her youth and hot to trot for Elvis, which causes no end of concern for El's childhood sweet heart (Millie Perkins).

But actually Elvis' main romance in this film is with his shrink (Hope Lange) - making this his third film where he tangles with an older woman (four if you change "older woman" to "mentor figure" meaning you can include Jailhouse Rock), one of the less discussed aspects of Elvis movies. I wonder what prompted it? Sometimes the woman was a Col Tom Parker surrogate; maybe it was also simply a way of increasing Elvis' appeal to older women, as well as adding a dramatic tang. When Lange reads some of Elvis' short stories and declares that he's got a great literary talent you think "a ha - this is just like those three JD-rise-to-fame-films he made before going into the army simply with writing substituting for music" but the book aspect isn't really developed - he's merely a good enough writer to get a college scholarship. 

So for a third act we have a plot where there's a scandal over Lange sleeping with Elvis - which didn't happen, but the two characters spend a rainy night in a motel together, kiss and declare their love (a hot scene - Elvis eventually leaves for not very convincing reasons), then they throw in Elvis accidentally killing someone in a fight (again - just like Jailhouse Rock) and it all becomes a bit of a mess. 

Apparently the original cut of the film had Lange's suicide attempt at the film (another very effective scene - most of her moments are winners in this movie) succeed - but the changed version, where she lives but tells Elvis to go to college, is a lot more effective. Lange didn't do anything worthy of killing herself.

Actually the whole scandal-over-Lange-and-Elvis doesn't really work because the two obviously like each other and make a good couple. (If they remade the film today they'd just have the affair but then Lange would still let him go to college - just like The Heartbreak Kid). Lange is a lot more suited to Elvis than Weld (though you get the impression Weld would be great for a fling) or Perkins (in only her second role after The Diary of Ann Frank - and you can understand why Fox had trouble in finding roles for her, she's a sort of unengaging child-like figure, who doesn't seem too engaged with what's going on and has little chemistry with her male co-star). 

The third act would have been better off doing more with Elvis' writing maybe, or Weld getting pregnant to him, just something else - as it is it kind of peters out the way it is. I think this, rather than the fact Elvis was playing a dramatic role, is what hurt the film at the box office. 

Gary Lockwood plays the son-of-a-rich-man who keeps appearing at key dramatic moments to push the plot along (lazy writing this - he interrupts a liaison between Elvis and Perkins, then Elvis and Weld, then Elvis and Lange). Lange is very good and Elvis is pretty good - its wonderful to see him trying, to see him challenged, and handling himself.

Movie review - "The Sweet Smell of Success" (1957) ****

OK maybe HHL were pretentious and silly at times, but they are badly missed because they made films like these. The public didn't like it but deservedly its reputation is strong today - a powerful look at the power pushed by a gossip columnist and the people who suck up to him. Burt Lancaster is very strong as the egomaniacal writer, full of himself but with strong feelings for his sister (the Borgias and Scarface showed you can't go past a bit of cloest incest in a character to make them interesting). But the film is stolen by Tony Curtis in an electrifying performance as the weasly press agent prepared to do anything to get ahead. Wonderful dialogue - why do people whine about Clifford Odets never living up to his potential when he had credits that included this towards the end of his life? The juvenile couple are a little on the "wet" side.