I'm currently in Paris, which is beautiful and eventful and I'll have much to write/discuss soon.
For now, a boring weather report. It's quite chilly (for this Angeleno) but whenever my maladjusted blood gets to shivering, I remember (fondly) the cozy Gimli fishing shack from less than a month ago and toughen up.
Gimli is just so beautiful. And yes, extremely cold. And that cold plays tricks on me. All I see here is that I apparently must find a way to emulate the hermit in the gatefold of Led Zeppelin IV (this is something I think of often. I don't know why. Insanity.) It's a sad attempt (no lantern? No beard? The stick is all wrong.) but a blizzard can really mess with your head.
My brain just kept repeating the symbols .
I've moved on to "Dont j'ai oublié l'adresse, A Los Angeles, Cent vingt mili' tonns de pétrol' brut, Cent vingt mill' tonn's, Dans le Torrey Canyon." I'll come back to that that later...
I love Joan. Forget Christina. Though I'm sure Ms. Crawford was no cake walk when it came to child rearing (more like rare steak walk, if you're up on your Mommie Dearest), I don't judge Joan's acting talent based on how she handled her Comet cleanser. And besides, the bathroom probably was filthy. You know how kids are.
I'm more in line with Bette Davis, who found Joan so phony, so full of airs, so... oh please. But that made Joan, Joan. I love her specifically for her manufactured persona -- her insane need to be a damn star, even while sick and receiving her Oscar in bed. I refuse to choose Bette over Joan (and I've been asked to). Margot Channing over Mildred Pierce? They're both extraordinary creatures (though I'd rather be and be friends with Davis).
But this is about Joan. That control Bette was so irritated by, well it worked quite well for Joan in terms of her talent. Case in point, a movie I adore and have written about a few times -- Harriet Craig. In an interview with David Frost she admitted, with good humor, relating to this part. And oh my, what an admission. I guess this is the closest Joan came to neo-realism. Yes, not surprisingly, Joan was good at playing a controlling, conniving women who will stop at nothing (nothing!) that gets in the way of her marriage. And in Harriet Craig she’s just so sickeningly splendiferous, that you almost root for her.
A daring portrait that revealed the dark, spirit-breaking side of marriage, and the desires of many women to be something else (even if it meant working that something else through their marriages -- and in an ultra negative way), this 1950 picture directed by Vincent Sherman (who really dug into both Joan and Bette) has remained woefully under-seen. It's too bad because it features one of Joan’s most riveting and true-to-life on-screen beeotchs and yet, a woman with just an ounce of vulnerability, Never forget Joan was a vulnerable woman -- on screen and off.
The movie will get under your skin in ways you might not have imagined -- even if you’re unmarried. If you are married, think about your happiness before watching this domestic horror-show of passive aggressive manipulation. And don't watch it with your significant other. I have watched this picture numerous times and with my sister, for reasons I should not disclose but, what the hell. Harriet Craig is my stepmother. I mean, exactly. I won't go into specific details. That's not fair. Even if I'm right.
It's not typical of me to admit such personal information about another person in my writing, and I like to give a person a break (something made her that way, and it probably wasn't pleasant and I want to understand. I just wish I knew), except well, I miss my father, and it looks like I may never see him again. My sister and I -- we'll put up with anything to see our dad. But we're sick of it. For years my stepmother's nickname (she's never heard it -- she would kill me) has been a pretty simple one: Harriet Craig. When we were kids, my brother, sister and I called her (never to her face, again, she'd kill us) Nurse Ratched (she actually had Muzak piped throughout her house, to keep things "calm," I suppose -- which only furthered our inner little R. P. McMurphys, and then we remembered how that worked out for him), but Harriet Craig is just right -- it hits the nail not on, but through the proverbial head. I swear I'm not being Christina here. Anyway, I'd eat that rare steak.
But back to the real Harriet Craig (in the movie). Adapted from George Kelly's play, the movie was in fact a remake of the 1936 Rosalind Russell film Craig's Wife, directed by Dorothy Arzner. Though that picture is usually considered the better picture, I’m fond of Crawford’s special kind of bent and find it more timeless. Not only does she brings that extra Joan panache to the role of a borderline sociopathic wife but she brings more inner turmoil and even a tad bit of sympathy. She also brings more order, coldness and an especially annoying obsession for perfection. If her marriage were a corporation, she would be CEO. But it's not. And she didn't make that choice in life. She should have. But that opportunity is not something that comes easy to a woman, if ever. This is where many women may understand her. Even today.
Poor old Wendell Corey plays the hen-pecked husband whose personal life and interests are sapped by wifey Joan who throws a fit if he puts his feet anywhere near the furniture, smokes a cigar, visits a pal or has a friendly conversation with the widow next door. And then she sabotages his chances for a promotion. The smothering domination reaches an all time high. It almost becomes a horror movie. Actually it is something of a horror movie.
And it's a movie. So I find myself at times, liking her. I wish I liked my stepmother as much as I liked Joan. (That's entertainment) Don't worry, my stepmother will never read this and if she does, perhaps something will happen. Something melodramatic because melodrama is often very real. I mean, she too is some kind of creature. I'm often impressed by her weird manipulations. And I want to have a good relationship, no matter how bizarre. Even Bette Davis would agree. And she is powerful. Power means something.
And if she's wearing Adrian next time I see her, I may forgive her for everything. Well, not everything, but a lot. Perhaps we'd come to terms on a few things. Perhaps, to quote Faye as Joan, we'd simply be mad not at you, he or she, but mad at the dirt. Because, in a better world, I don't want her to end up like Harriet Craig.
Because today is David Lynch's birthday. And because I adore Los Angeles in all of its sunny/dark schizophrenic glory. It's the one city where I feel like it's OK to feel insane. And that makes me feel sane.
I'm in Paris for a few months, which is wonderful and will offer many creative adventures (chiefly the project I'm working on). And, of course, it's a place of countless complexities, high and low, deeply historical, cinematic, literary and on and on. And it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Still, I'm always happy to return to ugly/gorgeous, happy/sad, winning/desperate, crazy, crazy, crazy Los Angeles.
Like James Ellroy wrote regarding his return to L.A. (and in reference to W.H. Auden) Ellroy's beloved L.A. is "The Great Right Place." Sayeth Ellroy: "As L.A. bids pundits to spin epigrams. W.H. Auden called L.A. 'The Great Wrong Place.' I'll ascribe intent. Auden saw L.A. as a lodestone for opportunists and psychically maimed misfits. I sense this because I fall into both categories. Auden couched L.A. in a film-noir construction. Losers migrated here to start over and become someone else. L.A. was a magnet for lives in desperate duress. The sheer indifference of the place consumed the migrants and drove them mad. They succumbed to madness in a sexy locale. The place itself provided solace and recompense. They had the comfort of other arriviste losers. They entered the L.A. spiritus mundi. They handed out their head shots. They joined that unique L.A. casting call."
He could have been describing Lynch's ultimate L.A. movie: Mulholland Dr.
So, with that, a re-post. And again, Happy Birthday Mr. Lynch.
David Lynch gets America. America the beautiful, America the bizarre. We can discuss how "weird" he is, how inscrutable his movies can be, how much he loves oddly conceived babies, oddly shaped humans, oddly pale-faced Robert Blake, oddly obsessed Crispin Glover and his "lunch!", but the man gets what drives our subconscious, our sweet dreams, our nightmares.
So naturally, Lynch understands one of the oddest cities on earth -- Los Angeles. With his brilliant, labyrinthine Mulholland Dr., a movie that started out like a jilted starlet (it was an axed TV pilot) he digs underneath our peculiar Hollywood system -- a system that pedals dreams, desire, sex, money, magic -- dreams that have the ability to spread like a celluloid sickness all over America (especially during the 2000’s. Did he know how prescient he was going to be?). Through the bright-eyes of innocent Betty (Naomi Watts, in a career defining performance), a starlet seeking fame in La La land, he presents a twisted, romantic, funny, terrifying and deeply emotional mystery involving a gorgeous amnesiac, a monster behind a diner, a persona altering box, a pair of elderly folks who slither under doors, and a director who answers to a dwarf, a mobster and a cowboy. And let’s not forget Coco.
Hauntingly beautiful, poignant, funny, subversive, dark, meditative, sexual (Lynch is one of the few American directors who can actually create inspired, erotic and yet intensely emotional sex scenes) and more, Mulholland Dr. poses many questions, but offers few answers, reflecting life in all of its enigmatic complexities. And if you think it’s weird that a box might be responsible for transforming a promising young actress into a suicidal starlet, rubbing herself in a tragic masturbatorial rage, then you need to spend a little more time in Los Angeles. Or on reality television. Or in your girlfriend’s living room after you ditch her. Or in a director’s chair. Or simply walking up and down Hollywood Blvd. between Western and Normandie.
Speaking personally, I can say that living in this city long enough, Mulholland Dr. does not seem that out of the ordinary. And this realization came to me quickly. Directly upon moving here, the very first apartment I looked at, (recommended to me at the noodle joint across from Jumbo’s Clown Room at 2 AM by a weathered, drunk L.A. native waxing nostalgic about seeing Patty Duke perform her mournful "Don't Just Stand There" on Shindig!) was, unbeknownst to me, that very same apartment Ms. Watts inhabited as sad, suicidal Diane. I’ll never forget the creepy familiarity while walking through the grounds, searching for a landlord and knocking on a stranger’s door only to be answered by a stern faced woman who treated me like a suspicious intruder. A lovely place, but, when it hit me just where I was standing, I resisted a possible rental application. I realize it’s only a movie but, no. Living there seemed tantamount to beginning my new life in Roman Polanski’s digs from The Tenant.
That’s how powerful the picture is -- it just gets under your skin and into your bones and bubbles with your blood. It may be notoriously tough to decipher, but truly, Lynch captures the city, its vibe, its ragged romanticism, its cruelty, its impenetrable dysfunction and its absurdity (Billy Ray Cyrus is the pool cleaner. And that makes perfect sense) with his distinct brand of warped clarity. Our country’s often freakish, surreal desperation to emulate or ponder the “glamour” of Hollywood is just as weird and just as affecting and just as relatable as...Winkie’s dream. Mulholland Dr. is a masterpiece. “This is the girl” indeed.
2012. I'm having a tough time getting used to this... number. It sounds too futuristic, and yet, it seems so clunky, like dialing a rotary phone or rewinding a top loader VCR. I'm not sure why I feel this way, but perhaps it has something to do with the only time I use "2012" -- when I'm writing a check, something that's only required for rent and something that makes me feel like I'm cradling a ten pound Western Electric receiver on my shoulder, calling guests invited to my Fondu party. "Don't forget the grass, Cheryl."
Well, no. What am I saying? That clunky check writing, reefer smoking, time machine fantasy my mother lived out in real life is much more charming than "2012." After all, it's not 2010. It's not a Peter Hyams/Arthur C. Clarke movie starring a man who knew how to dial a rotary with Fosse inspired panache (among many other things), the brilliant Roy Scheider. No, it's a Roland Emmerich movie starring John Cusack, an actor who could never, not in a million 2012s, dial a phone like Bob Fosse. It's also the year, if you believe in various theories and chiefly, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, that earth will suffer a major cataclysmic event. The end of the world. If you're depressed, which I have been nearly every January of my life, look forward to December 21, 2012 because we're all doomed. Let's just hope that doomsday shines as beautifully as planet Melancholia. (I'm not kidding about that.)
So, even as it's January 12, 2012, I'm still thinking about 2011, which had a nicer ring to it. With that, here's my 15 favorite of 2011 as pictured on my Tumblr blog. There were many more people, places and things that I loved. But, from Fernando Pessoa to the Nutty Club Candy factory, I stuck to a hard 15. I may go for 15 more, but I always write things like that, which is very 2011 of me.
Here's one:
This clip of Bukka White which I had never seen before:
To ring in 2012, here is my number one movie of the year:
Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)
Universal and personal, blatant and mysterious, sorrowful and funny, nihilistic and yet, sublimely, romantically, celebratory, Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia takes the black bile of its namesake -- the depression of its heroine -- and transforms the “humor” into exaltation. A planet -- a terrifying, dazzling planet that, true to Dane Von Trier’s inspired swan dive (black swan dive) into German romanticism, is set to destroy life on earth: Götterdämmerung via "Tristan and Isolde" (which he uses in the picture’s rapturously beautiful overture), via Ophelia via Cassandra via Von Trier’s own personal mythology. Clinically depressed Justine (a stunningly raw Kirsten Dunst -- Von Trier’s surrogate) does what’s often expected of those afflicted -- wear a brave face and don that damn wedding dress (a creamy dream of a dress that Justine seems strangled by, until she lifts it up and fornicates with another man on a golf green…). Further, she must embrace love, work, family (no matter how dysfunctional) and rules.
Well, Von Trier cannot accept that fate, and in the picture’s first half, in which Justine destroys her nuptials, her actions serve as depressive, rebellious self awareness: “What did you expect?” She asks. Indeed. And then comes planet Melancholia, inching closer and closer, leaving stable sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) panic stricken while Justine, calmly, grimly and at times, cheekily, accepts annihilation, not as easy suicide but as a kind of cosmic extension of despair. Yes. Finally. Justine isn’t wallowing in depression, she’s embracing, seducing it, and in one of the picture’s most exquisite moments, lying beneath it naked -- basking in the glow of doom.
Von Trier, a notorious and real sufferer himself, sincerely understands depression (just as he understood the horrors of anxiety in his brilliant and deeply misunderstood Antichrist), which may be why he maddens so many. How can he do this to these women? Well, because women do suffer, women get depressed, and not merely in simplistic, eye-rolling, I-cry-at-weddings ways (and Justine is not your usual runaway bride, god bless her), but in complicated, sometimes terrifying ways.
Von Trier gets women. I've been stating this for years and have found myself in heated arguments over my stance. But here's something else -- he’s also both in awe and scared of them, which makes him one of the most truthful male filmmakers working. He certainly understands much about human nature -- male and female -- but to me, he is the consummate woman's director. Like George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him (but clearly, his own beast), the experimental, profound, bizarre, sickening, poignant and often genius Dane creates female characters of, sometimes, Joan of Arc proportions -- Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville are the most prominent examples -- and lets them both fight and fold under the weight of their existence.
His women, or martyrs, as many would, often rightfully assert, live in a hard, oppressive world, peopled with individuals who harbor little concern for their goodness or, at least attempt to understand their ugliness. They are human, and so, how they respond to such pressures or the conflicts within themselves often create knee-jerk reactions toward Von Trier. Chiefly, he must hate women. No. He does not. He appears to love women. And then, perhaps like most men, at times, he does not love them. They are maddening and victimized and glorious and, in the end, good (or not?). And master von Trier adds to it all a sardonic touch, spicing up his experimental melodrama with heavy doses of dark humor and personal reflection -- he surely both loves and hates himself as well.
Weaving himself into his characters, he’s sadistic, masochist, empathetic, self obsessed, morbid and morbidly funny and then honest and honestly confused. With Melancholia he grants depressives a gift. Taking Justine’s depleted darkness and imbuing her with celestial life through doomsday, he, to recall another German Romantic, creates an Ode to Joy through heartbreaking and gloriously inspirational…woe.
And ten more (with a tie) to be discussed further soon:
The Turin Horse (Belá Tarr)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
The Skin I Live In(Pedro Almodóvar)
Shame (Steve McQueen)
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)
13 Assassins (Takashi Miike)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Hugo (Martin Scorsese) tied with
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
I will explain this tie further but, briefly, these were two of the most interestingly ballsy/subversive big studio pictures the year. A 3-D children's movie (yes, it was for adults too but...) about Georges Méliès (whom many adults non cineastes have never heard of) and the importance of film preservation? A ballsy move. And a popcorn prequel in which we root for apes to destroy mankind? Perhaps that's all I need to say.
Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder)
And I will get to this choice also but, again, briefly, one of the most misunderstood, feminist, wildly experimental, anti-patriarchy pictures this year. Whatever Synder did, or didn't do, he tapped into something powerfully creepy and poignant regarding victimization. There's much more to discuss but for now...
I'm currently working on an essay concerning the Hitchcock handbag -- they're quite fetishistic, vaginal things those handbags -- and I will post that soon, but while staring at all those crisp, snapped, hard bodied rectangular satchels and muffs, I wanted to return to a post about his women (three in particular) who clutched such wombs of wonder. Three wounded, weird, gorgeous, sexually strange but extraordinarily erotic women -- femmes who'd drive most of us to a state of amour fou. And Hitchcock understood such mad love. He also, despite some claims to the contrary, understood women, or rather, a certain kind of woman. Hitchcock, to whom people love to apply the actors as cattle quote ad nauseam, saw something deeply disturbed inside womankind -- especially blonde womankind. He understood their perfected calculations, their sexual mystery, their age-old competitions, and their alternately reserved and hysterical glamour and power.
Though I could point out numerous Hitchcock heroines (Janet Leigh in Psycho for one), three stick out: Vertigo, The Birds and Marnie. All reveal the director's predilection for leaving his heroines vulnerable to danger, dementia and doom. In these films, we can see Hitchcock's bent, or as Camille Paglia states in her excellent assessment of The Birds, his "perverse ode to woman's sexual glamour...in all its seductive phases, from brittle artifice to melting vulnerability."
Who more perfect to represent Paglia's declaration than Kim Novak, who gave the best performance of her life in Vertigo, and Tippi Hedren, a woman whose career seems to have revolved around Hitchcock's? The luminous Grace Kelly, whom I revere, may be considered the quintessential Hitchcock blonde goddess but she's not as cinematically artistic or powerfully damaged as Novak or Hedren. She is a supreme Hitchcock heroine for certain -- an assured actress with mathematically perfect features, a patrician on the outside and a sexual animal underneath, Kelly's not a simplistic princess. And I love that Kelly is interesting because she's too perfect (James Stewart's complaint in Rear Window and why Sinatra fell for her in High Society). And with that, she never touched the wounded, transgressive eroticism of Hedren or Novak. Part of that could lie in Hitchcock himself -- he never tortured her. The more neurotic Hedren and Novak appeared in his pictures (and Hedren was a particularly bizarre interest for the director), the more responsive they seemed to the darker situations their auteur placed them in.
Hitchcock explored truly disturbed female protagonists in his early films, but none matched the wrenching melancholy displayed by Kim Novak in Vertigo. While Stewart was lauded for his flawless performance as the detective who becomes morbidly obsessed with resurrecting the image of his dead lover, Novak unjustly received criticism (at the time) for her uncomfortable portrayal of that lover. She presented a woman whose beauty bequeathed her a power she was ultimately unable to control, making Novak's Madeleine/Judy both wise and naive, hard and soft. Novak revealed the sadness that lurked beneath the smiling facades of bombshells like Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth, by allowing that nervousness to bubble to the surface. It's all in the way she holds herself, talks or furtively moves her eyes. It's as if her mind seems ill-suited for her body, unhealthy almost, making her something of a sexual contradiction. It’s not merely that underneath the classy, gray-suited, sternly coiffed Madeline there's an even bustier, tight-sweatered and common Judy -- it’s that she, like the picture itself, embodies the irrationality of desire.
Like Novak, Tippi Hedren was criticized for her performances in The Birds and Marnie. But time has proven them to be close to or perhaps just as brilliant and challenging as Novak's in Vertigo. The Birds is a movie of endless complexities--all helped, not hindered, by a terrific performance from Hedren. Hedren's Melanie Daniels, an independent rich girl in pursuit of Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) meets all sorts of problems when she journeys to Bodega Bay, including resentment from every other female character (though there's a strong homoerotic undercurrent in her dealings with Suzanne Pleshette).
But what makes the film so intriguing is that it's not just the millions of bloodthirsty birds messing with poor Melanie, it's the gals as well. Watching the weird interplay between Hedren and Mitch's mother (a wonderfully terse Jessica Tandy) brings up all kinds of strange scenarios -- is the mother just being overprotective, or is she a little too caring about her son? Why does she dislike her so much? Indeed, why does every woman in Bodega Bay seem to hate Melanie Daniels? In one of the film’s most telling scenes, a frightened mother blames the bird invasion on Melanie, screaming at her “I think you’re evil! Evil!”
Though a "carefree" playgirl, Melanie is truly a tightly wound bird herself. Her biggest challenge is handling the numerous flocks (human and otherwise) inhabiting the town. Mothers, sisters, earthy women, common townsfolk and birds crack Melanie's pristine exterior of white gloves, mint-green suits and matching handbags. And by the end, those suits and gloves are torn to bits. It’s not just birds against man, its birds against birds (the female variety) and if they’re flocking together, something is deeply, deeply wrong.
In the psycho-sexual thriller Marnie (a film I've seen too many times to count -- which makes me wonder about myself), Hedren's traumatized woman and criminal past leads her into the imprisoning, Freudian arms of Mark Rutland (Sean Connery). Hedren again plays an independent spirit of sorts, albeit an icy, frigid and mentally traumatized one. She can't stand the color red, she has an unusually strong bond with her horse (but then, what women doesn't?) and she loves her cold, flinty mother to the point of masochism. She's clearly never had a normal sexual encounter and though she shows flickers of attraction and flirtation, she appears to hate men. Or maybe just all of humanity.
But the movie expresses sympathy towards Marnie making it hard to blame the woman for her antisocial tendencies. In her experience, men (people) are beasts who've only done her harm (flashback to a very young Bruce Dern freaking out a very young Marnie). In return she violates them by lying, cheating and stealing without ever giving them the full pleasure of her lovely body. If Connery is going to have her, he must break her, via marriage, psychoanalysis and what can only be described as... force.
Like Novak's Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo, Marnie is a magnet for freaky men. And yet, in spite of her pathological frigidity, there's a feeling that somewhere, a ravenous woman could emerge oozing the kind of kinky sexuality that Judy displays in Vertigo.
And yet, through Hitchcock's subversive eyes (and our own), this unhealthy, yet accurate depiction of sexual madness becomes strangely, intensely romantic. Quite clearly Hitchcock, like Woody Allen (as he professed in Husbands and Wives) not so secretly loved his women a little crazy. I think we all do. And perhaps, also, gripping some nifty clutches -- creamy canals just waiting to be cracked.
And now as the day comes to an end... here's to even more Christopher Plummer and more Elliot Gould in 2012. Excuse my brief post and pardon my hyperbole (the day calls for it), but both of these men are goddamn gifts. Merry Christmas!
I could write about countless Christmas or Christmas-themed movies I revere (Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece, The Shop Around the Corner, which I watched last night and was properly destroyed by is a major example ... and then there's so many more), but I've got other things on my mind this morning. Chiefly, and for some, odd reason: Tom Cruise.
Well, it's not so odd -- as we all know, Cruise stars in the newest Mission Impossible, but it's more than the movie connection -- it's all that insanity-inducing yuletide stress (and then some) so perfectly conveyed in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The picture's social, sexual, surrealist themes with the very festive, pretty and, in this case, creepy, wonderfully creepy (and often hilarious) Christmas background. Bathed in Christmas style, Eyes Wide Shut uses Christmas lights, background Christmas trees and traditional colors of red and green with almost perverse relentlessness. And perverse relentlessness is really what we're about this season. Well, perhaps I am. But this kind, strangely, makes me feel better. With that, I'm dipping into my archives to consider one of Kubrick's most underrated pictures -- a film that in terms of love, sex, death, fear and träume remains timeless. And again, it's a terrific Christmas movie...
In Kubrick's cinematic universe, reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork Orange, the siren call of insanity in The Shining, the hyper fantastical yet authentic Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, or the irony and powerlessness among such transcendent opulence in Barry Lyndon, life was a surreal work in progress -- an ambiguous joke that veered from hilarious to sexy to terrifying, sometimes within seconds. Attempting to understand order, or how any system designed to make our universe more rational or safe seemed fruitless. Think Sterling Hayden approaching such a predicament at the end of Kubrick's The Killing. He watches his life literally fly away on an airport tarmac and bitterly spits one of cinema’s greatest final lines: “Eh, what’s the difference?”
Which brings me to the final line of Kubrick’s frequently misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman states rather flatly, “Fuck” -- as in, that’s the answer, that’s what we need to do. A movie I’ve defended since its release, it’s a picture that deserves closer inspection and a worthy finale for the enigmatic auteur.
The controversial movie (some thought it silly, some, un-erotic) Eyes Wide Shut found the director once again studying the perplexing nature of dreams and reality, this time exploring them in a more personal and private arena: sexuality. As he did with Lolita, Kubrick created more than a film about sexual desire; he created a film about bitter romance, troublesome marital bonds, societal contradictions and, significantly, the fear of death.
An updating of the 1927 Traumnovelle (Dream Novel) by the sardonic Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, the picture remains an unsettling blend of antiquated garishness and modern transgression -- an alternate sexual universe haunted by ghouls of the past, present and future.
In this universe “live” the healthy, handsome walking dead -- Dr. Bill Harford (an impressive Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (a slinky, wonderfully creepy Nicole Kidman), a glamorous, rich couple who appear the picture of storybook perfection. But like most supposed perfection, there are cracks in that portrait, and in their case, it’s the usual: they want to screw other people (or at least they think they do). At a sumptuous party given by Bill's obscenely wealthy friend Victor (Sydney Pollack), Bill almost strays upstairs with two models while Alice flirts with a bizarre Hungarian man who looks like one of the cadaverous party-goers from The Shining. The next evening, in a fit of jealousy over Bill's near indiscretion (he ended up contending with a beautiful, naked drug overdose instead of a debauched roll in the hay -- though the way her body sits in this shot is disturbingly erotic), Alice confesses that she’s had thoughts of cheating and, even worse, reveals that if things had been different, she would have thrown her entire life away for one flight of sexual fancy.
Unmasking something that should remain one of those deep, dark secrets you never confess to your significant other, Alice deftly rattles Bill's perception of her fidelity and the strength of their marriage in a speech that makes his mind spin out of control (Kidman's performance here is superb). After this confession, Bill is abruptly called away to confirm the death of a patient and keeping in tune with the love/death/sex of the picture, the daughter of the deceased makes a pass at him. The grief stricken but, considering the circumstances, kinky gesture aids in Bill’s decision to not immediately return home. Instead, he wanders the streets of New York and embarks on a sequence of actions that, though not as outwardly comic, somewhat resemble those in the Scorsese movie After Hours: He discovers a surreal sexual underworld that he’s both attracted to and repelled by.
A prostitute, a piano player, a bizarre costume-store owner and his Lolita-esque 14-year-old daughter lead Bill to the film's infamous ritualistic orgy sequence, during which participants are cloaked and masked, and naked women are used as sacrificial sex lambs. The gothic, terrifying yet titillating feel of this sequence walks a fine line between horror and parody and true to Kubrick’s genius, manages to cross into both camps. The magnificent, exacting camera work and unrelenting music compel us to look, no matter what happens, and though I was actually a little scared the first time I saw this moment, I found myself highly amused --laughing even. If ever a person was out of place in a Bohemian Grove-like orgy, it is Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill. And yet, I was absolutely hypnotized, watching these moments like a waking dream and investing it with multiple meanings. What the hell is going on here besides a bunch of silly old rich men getting their jollies with beautifully breasted, long legged Helmut Newton models? And further, what do all of Bill’s adventures mean? Are Bill's encounters simply nightmares that will damage his marriage beyond repair, or are they mere titillating fantasy -- fodder for a closer relationship and better sex with his spouse?
Well, I can’t answer that. Given the picture's ominous tone, however, there is something definitely rotten within its slinky, Christmas-lit loveliness. Like the impeccable environment of The Shining, the aura of Eyes Wide Shut is one of beauty ready to be defiled, sexuality ready to be slaughtered, lovely exteriors that reek of formaldehyde. The pall that hangs over this picture is fear: fear of the unknown; fear of yourself or of others; and fear that if sex can lead to freedom, it can just as easily lead to death.
In fact, the picture can be viewed as a commentary on sexual attitudes in the last few decades -- a time when meaningless indiscretions can lead to horrifying blood-test results. It is no surprise, then, that Bill is a doctor and that throughout the film, he flashes his physician's ID as a police detective would his badge. "I'm a doctor," he constantly says, for both reassurance and intimidation. In a profession that requires intimate investigation of flesh that may well be on its way to the morgue, sex is serious. These unsettling references to AIDS, necrophilia and forbidden sex (not to mention Kubrick's own death upon bringing the film to completion, une petite mort of sorts) permeate the picture like one giant prick tease. In today's world, sex is still there for the taking, but at what cost and for what gain? Kubrick's frustrating, brilliant coda neither answers nor ignores its own questions. Rather, it leaves us in a mysterious, contradictory mishmash of dream and reality, where not only are our eyes wide shut, but our legs are too.
And again, it's a wonderful Christmas movie. Happy Holidays!
It's that time of year to make lists, those ubiquitous year-end lists. I'm working on my best of of 2011, and I'm struggling, as usual. So, for now, I'm returning to some obsessions narrowed down to the nice number three.
Of course, given the season, the first entry is an obvious one. For me, anyway...
1. Black Christmas (1974) I've already started watching it...
Black Christmas might be one of the greatest slasher films ever made. It's certainly my favorite. I've watched it too many times to count -- and not just around this holly jolly season. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, on annoying friend's birthdays, the ones who expect 2000 Facebook greetings and so much attention you want to sic a drunken Margo Kidder on them (actually, that would be a treat, maybe just get John Saxon to tell them they're assholes...), it's perfect for any special occasion and any regular day. It's just perfect. Director Bob Clark (who I had the thrill of meeting after he introduced Black Christmas at the New Beverly just two years before he tragically passed away) is also famous for that little subversive yuletide favorite A Christmas Story, made a first of its kind: a sorority house slasher flick, complete with deranged lunatic (whom you never see), extra crazy obscene phone calls and sexy girls -- especially Margot Kidder and the lovely, sad-eyed Olivia Hussey. Darkly atmospheric, gorgeously shot, tense, wonderfully acted (Saxon is terrific here), filled with genuine goddamn scares while also being genuinely touching, Black Christmas is a masterpiece in any genre. Added bonus: Olivia Hussey claims that this was Elvis Presley's favorite Christmas movie. He had his own personal copy and watched it on Christmas. I don't know if that's true, but she told a packed New Beverly audience and I choose to believe her. I love the idea of Elvis forgoing his Blue Christmas for a Black one...
2. The Only Game in Town (1970)
I'm fascinated by the saggy, depressing, accidentally (maybe not accidentally?) quirky picture. Something of a disaster in its day, the movie deserves consideration not only for its interesting and downright strange performances by Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor but for its effectiveness in showing just how lonely and depressing the idea of winning can be. Any kind of winning. Earning tremendously bad buzz for going over budget and for catering to Elizabeth Taylor’s location demands (the film wasn’t shot in Vegas but in Paris so the star could be with Richard Burton while he was making another movie), the picture is indeed bizarre at times, but its claustrophobic weirdness and poignant sadness gives it a power that wasn’t appreciated in its day. Both Taylor’s ex Vegas showgirl and Beatty’s compulsive gambler are losers waiting for their jackpot (Taylor to marry a rich guy, Beatty, to simply win big) which makes their relationship understandable even while being somewhat... off. I like how they appear mis-matched and yet, perfect/terrible for each other at this stage of their lives (on-screen and off). Directed by George Stevens (his final film), the picture moves slowly, but it’s peppered by some intriguing dialogue and memorable interplay between a blousy, still beautiful Taylor and a beautiful, always beautiful Beatty. Incidentally, I own the original one sheet, it comes with the tagline: “Dice was his vice. Men, hers.”
3. Jackie Wilson again...
I love Elvis. But you can’t appreciate Elvis without understanding his influences, and one major artist who knocked the King for a loop was the sublime Jackie Wilson, a performer who burned bright and had one hell of a tragic ending. I’ve written about Jackie before (he was featured in my list of the tragically musically departed) and for good reason -- the man with the operatic range, boxing background and spine tingling octaves was one of entertainment’s greatest innovators. There are countless acts I would kill (kill!) to have seen live and Wilson, a.k.a. “Mr. Excitement” (whom Elvis attributed much of his style to) is very near the top of the list. Check out genius Wilson doing the most inspired, hair-raising, heartbreaking, soul stirring and about every word I can't articulate but the kind that utterly destroy me, version of "Danny Boy" on Shindig! Who sings like this anymore?
A "gentleman’s agreement" is not so easy -- not when it comes to Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper and Fredric March. As I mentioned yesterday, Criterion has released Design for Living on DVD and Blu-ray, Ernst Lubitsch's sublime, soulful and very, very sexy Pre-Code masterpiece. I was thrilled to write the accompanying essay/booklet for this release, and you can read a portion of it here:
Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living (1933) is what sexy should be—delightful, romantic, agonizing ecstasy. And it’s not just sexy but also revolutionary, daring, sweet, sour, cynical, carefree, poignant, and so far ahead of its time that one could cite it as not only a pre-Code masterpiece but also a prefeminist testimonial. A uniquely Lubitschian picture in its elegance and graceful wisdom, with the gruffly intelligent, street-smart Hollywood writer and soon-to-be legend Ben Hecht collaborating, this take on the trials, titillations, and torments of a kind of relationship usually seen in true adult films, a ménage à trois (and one involving the gorgeous trio of Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins), is unlike any other movie of its era.
What film, even before that killjoy schoolmarm Joseph Breen brought his Squaresville strictness to the Production Code in 1934, has ever presented the potentially salacious scenario of three-way love in such a wistfully complicated way? This is neither a bunch of hot-to-trot cheap thrills nor a moralizing sermon on the dangers of sexual transgression—it’s a soulful look at human desire.
Design for Living recognized that desire is not divided unequally between the sexes. It can, in fact, be genderless. A place where gentlemen can be women. And women can be wolves. And men can be romantic Red Riding Hoods, wandering through a quixotic forest only to stumble across a beautiful blonde with shimmering white teeth, delicate little feet, and a big, beguiling wit. “The better to share you with,” she will eventually declare, before not eating them whole but tasting their specific Coop and March delicacies with equal ardency. Here, however, is where the movie reveals clearly that men are indeed men. Male horniness is not to be trifled with. Best friends or no best friends, how can they resist? This is some woman. They surrender, dear.
And that surrender happens from the get-go, perfectly, in a favorite movie location for scintillating erotic interplay: a train. With a wonderfully wordless introduction, the movie—adapted quite loosely from Noël Coward’s notorious play—begins like a declaration: This is a movie. To those expecting two lumps of Coward in their Lubitsch, well, sorry; you’re getting a pinch (and thrown over the shoulder for good luck). This is not a play. This is a motion picture. Faces are the thing, faces writ large, gorgeous faces as directed by the sparklingly urbane Lubitsch.
Please read the rest of my essay at Criterion. And, don't be a gentleman, buy yourself an early Christmas present. Buy it for a friend, but most importantly, buy it for yourself. Cooper? March? Hopkins? Lubitsch? Hecht? You can't go wrong. Well, you, or rather they (the characters) can go wrong, but in all the right, sexy, elegant ways... And that's not exactly wrong. Viva unconventional love!
December is a good month for underseen masterpieces. Two pictures -- both far ahead of their time and both brilliant, are being released on DVD and Burn On Demand. Today, Criterion has released Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch's take on the trials, titillations, and torment of a kind of relationship usually only seen in *true* adult films -- a ménage à trois -- and one between Gary Coopper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins, no less. Sublime, soulful and very, very sexy, the movie is funny, complicated and even, at times, heartbreaking. A "gentleman's agreement" is never easy. I have a lot to say about one of Lubitsch's greatest (adapted from Noel Coward's play by Ben Hecht) so I was incredibly happy to write the accompanying essay/booklet for this release. Please check it out (read a portion of my essay above this post). And then there's Something Wild (MGM Limited Edition Collection) directed by Jack Garfein and starring Carroll Baker and Ralph Meeker. I presented the picture for TCM last year as a guest programmer and am thrilled it's finally being released. With that excitement, I'm re-posting my original piece.
It’s not wild, necessarily. But it's unforgettable.
I never understood the title of Jack Garfein’s beautiful, sad, confusingly romantic and richly empathetic Something Wild. If the title refers to the movie’s brutal rape, a wild animalistic act, it’s certainly nothing wild for the tragic protagonist, Mary Ann (played by a powerfully touching and brave Carroll Baker). Something dreadful is more apt, as she suffers the rough hands of a faceless brute, emerging from the trees like a demon spirit.
And her demise, repulsion, sickness, panic, alienation and finally, near-life-ending depression, isn’t worthy of wild either. Something despondent. She’s desperate to fling herself from her inner demons. She cannot discuss nor process the rape. She can’t even tell her parents. In a classic panic-stricken fight or flight scenario -- she flees from a crowded subway car, gasping for breath as commuters rub against every inch of her violated body. More and more, lovely Mary Ann turns into a withdrawn, clinically depressed, misunderstood woman -- a woman filled with terror and shame -- a woman who hates herself even if she did nothing wrong. A woman who was raped. This is how rape victims feel.
And rape is not something her potential savior/captor Mike (Ralph Meeker, who should have played more roles like this -- his range is extraordinary) can understand -- though in his own wordless way – he tries. He’s nothing wild either. A sad sack with a working class job, a dumpy demeanor (this is not smart alec Kiss Me Deadly Meeker) and a drinking problem, he’s not a healthy man, and not healthy towards women, but then…weirdly sympathetic. He wants this woman. He needs this woman. He needs her to save him.
The picture starts with the innocence of Mary Ann's name. Mary Ann exits off the subway and makes her way home, at night. This appears a usual walk for the woman, but something gives her a start. A rustle of trees, a paper cup blowing on the ground, a general feeling of unease. Her fear is well founded, as a large man, almost appearing like a monster, emerges from the trees, grabs the woman, and rapes her. And he appears to rape her for a long time – even tearing off the cross she wears on her neck. God is not on her side. This rape is not titillating. This rape is just sad and draining, and you feel like Mary Ann walked into a monstrous tree satyr.
The film continues for a good twenty minutes (or more, which seems unprecented for American movies at that time) without any dialogue, and we watch Mary Ann silently trudge her way home, where she bathes, scrubs, looks at the cuts on her body with horror, take all of her clothes and cut them into tiny pieces. She flushes the tattered garments down the toilet. And then she sleeps.
Since the rape has made it impossible for her to conduct herself in normal life, Mary Ann abandons home, unannounced, leaving her mother in a panic to find her. She gets a job where a bunch of judgmental/jealous women make fun of her, she takes a tiny, dumpy little NYC flat, where a bare light bulb offers her only illumination and a loud floozy (Jean Stapleton) cackles nearby. It seems Mary Ann can’t escape the depraved and the diseased – or perhaps, she’s throwing herself right into it – the belly of the best, so to speak. Repulsion meets The Tenantmeets The Collector. And yet, Garfeien’s picture was made before any of these.
But that beast and that belly are not what she expected. After becoming so despondent, that she decides the best choice is to take her own life, she nearly jumps off the Manhattan Bridge. She would have accomplished her act of self-destruction if not for another beast (Meeker), who saves her from leaping.
And then, he keeps her. At first, one thinks, she needs to stay. After all, he’s looking out for her – she can’t attempt suicide again. But the movie veers into far more complex areas after he locks her in – for good. Since confinement, the act of being held down and forced to submit has plagued this poor woman for months; she reacts with anger and panic. And for good reason – he won’t ever let her leave. Like The Collector, he’s keeping his sad little butterfly – a butterfly without wings.
But why? These are questions the picture never easily answers. You understand that he is also a cheerless, lonely person, an alcoholic, and a man who needs this woman near him. In his own twisted way he loves her. When he stumbles home drunk and attempts to molest Mary Ann, she reacts violently and with self-preservation, poking out one of his eyes. Suddenly the film merges Beauty and the Beast with Greek Tragedy -- Mary Ann turns Mike into a Cyclops. The next morning, he claims to barely remember the evening, and seems nonchalant about the eye patch he now must wear. He reckons he may have gotten into some kind of fight. Or maybe he does remember. Maybe he respects Mary Ann for fighting back. We just don’t know. And then again, we oddly can’t hate him.
And so there they continue living in his basement hovel of an apartment, biding their days with his “romantic” meals and need to be near Mary Ann. Mary Ann remains adamant to leave, but she will soon soften. Is this a positive step? Is this a romantic reaction to her savior? Is this indeed, the only man she can now trust? Is this Stockholm syndrome? In any case, it’s all very sad.
The movie, released in 1961, an expressionistic/naturalistic work of art that also recalls Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, before Polanski’s film was made, and Bergman, was far ahead of its time in its European sensibilties (and yet, with its actors and setting, it feels wholly American). Garfein (then Baker’s husband), who survived the Holocaust, well understood the idea of entrapment and subjugation. I have seen few films that not only deal with rape in a sympathetic light (that’s not so hard), but deal with it as a kind of submersion into a subterranean world of dirty rooms and dreams – dreams, in one terrifying moment, where girls have no faces (Lars Von Trier would love this movie) – a world where trauma is expressed through the sounds of vulgar good-time girls, the oppressiveness of the subway, the simultaneous attraction and repulsion to men, work, the city, and sex. If anyone finds Mary Ann’s feelings and actions unrealistic, they have no concept of the odd co-mingling of unreality and harshness that an act of rape can make a woman feel. For anyone wanting to forget the memory -- repression and submersion is natural.
And it’s all very much like a movie you were likely to have never seen in 1961, or now, for that matter. Garfein based his movie on the novel Mary Ann (a better title I think), and enlisted some superior talents to give the movie an expressionistic, gritty, dream-like appeal.
The great Aaron Copland provided the potent music; the legendary Saul Bass created the title sequence, and brilliant cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan worked as DP. Since Schüfftan lensed Lang's Metropolis, Carné's Port of Shadows, Gance's Napoléon and Franju's Eyes Without a Face (among many other accomplishments), the look of the picture is both grubby and dreamlike. It feels like trauma, it feels Jungian, dreamy, hyper real (with such wonderful location shooting). He seems to understand, visually, the horror and fairy tale nature of a victim floating above pain. Mary Ann wants to rid herself of anguish, she wants to float, and yet, she’s stuck in a basement.
Through his lens, Schüfftan both raises Mary Ann from her trauma, while keeping her firmly on the ground -- like Thomas Hardy’s Tess of Tess the D’Urbervilles removing herself from rape by becoming diaphanous and floating above molester Alex huffing on top of her, Mary Ann keeps herself whisper light, and yet, stuck in the dirt. She stays in that basement. It’s tragic, gorgeous, poetic, even mythic, how she lives in two realities, which makes the ending incredibly complex. Mary Ann stays with Mike. How should one feel about this? She’s damaged, she’s now pregnant, she’s in love and yet, she still looks heartbroken. The ending creates a false kind of happiness (intentional, I think) that sits in your soul with such sadness and complication that the movie will not leave you – after all these years, it’s never left me.
Rape is never easy to come to terms with, we know that. But rape isn’t always met with counselors and discussions and getting in touch with your feelings. Perhaps Mary Ann got in touch with Mike. Perhaps she did not. Whatever the case, poor Mary Ann. I hate her entrapment, and I hate that she feels she has nowhere to go, and yet, I pray Mike treats her sensitively. I feel wrong for this, but I want them to work out. This is a dream. Or a nightmare. I can only hope she’s truly happy one day. Not wild, but, happy?
Mary was never dirty. She was un-hinged, a wild child, mouthy, strangely smart, and as sexy as Peggy Cummins shooting guns between her legs in a cowboy hat (I’ll get to Miss Cummins later), but again, she was never thoroughly dirty. Why Mary (as in Susan George Mary, she of the 1974 muscle-masterpiece Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry), wasn’t allowed to be the Crazy of the title has always irked me – just a little (after all, I like Dirty Girls).
Larry (that’s Peter Fonda, her partner in crime among other things), is allowed the nobler appellation of Crazy, and I suppose he’s just as nutty as Mary but…is he? He’s the would-be NASCAR driver, he’s the one who pulls off the heist, he’s the one who really drivesand he’s Peter Fonda. And Peter Fonda, even while heavily tripping on acid, never appears crazy to me. Like his father and his sister, there’s something solid, intelligent, well bred about Peter. No matter how insane he allows his world to become, his default is rationality. Even when satanic snakes cover his camper (Race with the Devil, with the brilliant Warren Oates). That’s why through the entire run of Easy Rider, you know he gets it. There’s a quiet complexity to Peter Fonda that reveals a troubled but organized mind.
So with that control -- I would trust him behind the wheel.
But Mary? No. Definitely, no. And not because she’s supposedly “dirty,” and not because she’s a woman (however, sorry ladies, I will concede that a lot of women are not enviable drivers), but because she really is the crazy one. The fact that she jumps in the car, joins the heist, faces impossible peril -- nearly killed numerous times, and generally gets her rocks off in all her untamed, half open halter-top, Susan George abandon (glorious abandon), that’s crazy. But wonderful crazy. Crazy, like a stone cold fox. Crazy like the girl your older brother dates and your mother can’t stand crazy. Crazy like the young woman your father dates and all of us kids prays he will marry (he didn’t). Crazy like a woman – deliciously deleterious.
And if Mary loves wild joy rides and police pursuits in some hot 1970’s muscle that range from a Dodge Charger, a Chevrolet Impala and a Dodge Polara, then she’s not so loopy. Not in my world anyway.
And now that I’m calling Mary crazy, I wish crazy Mary lived in my world. I wish she lived down the street from me. I’d roll with her in my Torino, we’d go for some In-N-Out drive-through, and we’d take in a double feature at the New Beverly. Preferably Rolling Thunder, Two-Lane Blacktop, Gone in Sixty Seconds (the original!) and, of course, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. And no, not Drive. Walter Hill’s The Driver is more like it.
Where are the Dirty Mary’s in my life? Without them, as Bette Davis famously wrote, it’s a “Lonely Life. But one can dream, and since I’ve entered my auto-erotic girl car-crush reverie here, there’s even crazier, and perhaps dirtier than Mary: Peggy. Peggy Cummins.
As the femme fatale of Gun Crazy (also, appropriately called Deadly Is the Female), Cummins (named Annie Laurie Starr in the picture) the beautiful blonde bad girl of Joseph H. Lewis’s 1950 noir classic, not only, in one famous scene, drive the car, but she shoots a lot of guns -- very, very well. She loves guns. Her boyfriend, the equally gun obsessed Bart (John Dall), is entirely her match, and they meet all phallic, primal cute -- in a sharp-shoot-off. But they also drive.
And in a gritty, exciting, modern, pre-French New Wave moment, she drives Bart to the bank, waits in the car, talks to a cop, knocks him down, jumps in after Bart’s robbed the place, and he takes over the wheel -- all in one take. Brilliant.
Maybe Susan/Mary and I will let Peggy/Annie drive. After all, there’s a bank right down the street.
But to round out the team with a different type of woman, there’s Alice -- the one who doesn’t live here anymore. Yes, Alice. That’s Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s underrated Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Like Gun Crazy, it’s not necessarily a car movie, but there’s some majorly memorable moments in the automobile. Specifically, as Ellen flees her old life after her joyless husband passes away, and motors her enormous station wagon across the southwest with her pre-teen son Tommy in the car.
They talk, they bond, they argue, he tells confusing jokes that take too long and they listen to the AM radio. There’s no computers, no mini DVD players, no game-boys, no cell phones -- just mom and kid and heat and Elton John’s “Daniel.” And T. Rex’s “Jeepster” -- a funny musical moment matching a super cool glam song about a car while Alice and Tommy rumble down the road in a station wagon. Marc Bolan loved cars, and girls, hence the magical verse from “Get it On”: “You’re built like a car you’ve got a hub-cap diamond star halo.” Oh, Mr. Bolan. If only you knew what the verses meant to women who are so smitten with the vehicular.
I adore countless femmes in automobiles. There’s so many others, like Goldie Hawn in TheSugarland Express (I also love Dollars with Hawn and Warren Beatty, a movie not discussed enough); Maybe Thelma and Louise (but they kill themselves) and the sweet and sweely titled Heart Like a Wheel.
There's Katharine Hepburn sexily, insanely stealing cars in Bringing Up Baby; Faye Dunaway -- anytime she's near the car in Bonnie and Clyde (and is shot up to hell in one too); Lana Turner gorgeously losing her mind in the Bad and the Beautifull; Ann Savage's intense anger in Detour (there's so many noir pictures); and most certainly, all the women from Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (Tura Satana would never allow that guy to enter the parking lot with Thelma around).
But as much as I adore those muscle speed sweeties, I’m going to dip from modern, real life this time, slam on the breaks, and… pick up Zoe Bell.
Bell, who plays Zoe Bell in the second (and better) half of Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse homage, Death Proof. I’ve discussed a few women in car movies and moments here, but so far, none have really been about chicks and sticks (sticks, as in gear shifts). But Tarantino’s ode to the glorious cinematic sleaze of the 1960s and 1970s is a female gearhead dream -- a movie that doesn’t just make one roar, but make one vroom. Preferably in a 1970 white Dodge 440 Challenger (AKA the Vanishing Point car Miss Bell so covets).
Tarantino gets women. Or he gets women who are frustrated by their lack of power in the world. His movies offer a lot of fantastical wish fulfillment, and that’s alright with me (after all, isn’t Spider-Man and its ilk wish fulfillment? Or anything with Jason Statham? Not that I don't like Statham. I do.) With his ball busting blast of female empowerment, Kill Bill, an operatic homage to Spaghetti Westerns, yakuza pictures, Hong Kong action films, Brian De Palma, Kinji Fukusaku, Giallo and the "Twisted Nerve" of Bernard Hermann (among others genres and filmmakers and Tarantino obsessions) and Inglourious Basterds, in which, really, a woman and not just the Basterds, takes down the Nazis (and a woman who loves movies – of course), Tarantino crafts pictures that are more aggressively pro-female (even if fantasy) than anything Nancy Meyer is offering the ladies. And he gives us mythic woman a la Charles Bronson, Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin and (oh dear lord my favorite) Lee Van Cleef. We need that.
In Death Proof, after the girls specifically checked out a car simply because it’s the Vanishing Point car (which actually isn’t fantasy. I would do that. I have driven up to creepy houses and test driven cars. That’s how I bought my Torino. How many movies ever show women doing this?) they find themselves pursued by the rakish turned homicidal Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) in a psychosexual act of vehicular rape. The movie’s second set of fiery femme then enact their revenge on not just Russell's Stuntman Mike, but on all the creeps in the world who want to forcibly, well, ram them. It's inspiring -- almost overwhelmingly so -- when we see real life stunt woman Bell actually strap herself to that Challenger, at what looks to be about 80-90 miles per hour, and then un-strapped, clinging to and climbing on that car for dear life. And having a good time -- even while terrified. As Marlene Dietrich might say, had she appeared in Two-Lane Blacktop, this is some kind of gear head.
So daredevil Zoe’s on board. And crazy Mary. And kooky Katharine -- maybe for just a nice, non stunt-laden leisurely drive. I'm sure all of these women enjoy a long drive, eating chips, stopping for ice cream. It's not all about speed demonry. And of course, like perilous Peggy -- we need some cash. And, in a perfect world we need, oh why not (this is my dream) Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me. The women deserve that kind of beauty. Or to be called Jaguar... if I may be so bold.
"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
That was Marilyn. But what about Michelle?
You can feel the question mark hanging in the air: Is she going to pull it off? For anyone who's sat through the My Week With Marilyn trailer in which Michelle Williams plays our Marilyn Monroe, one of the most famous movie stars in the world, you know what I'm talking about. Williams all blonded, powdered and dolled up à la Monroe looks fashionably fantastic and she's a wonderful actress but... is she as wonderful as Marilyn? Is she even remotely approaching the nature of Marilyn-ness? I'm going to assume she's too intelligent an actress to do MM a disservice, but still, how can you capture the essence and power that were distinctly owned by Marilyn? Is it even worth trying?
The reports are mixed, and some are discussing Oscar nomination, but who knows. I'm curious to see (and Kenneth Branagh as an apoplectic Olivier). So while waiting, I've taken a look at six other stars who decided to step into shoes more famous than their own -- always a risky predicament. Some soared, some sank, and some, well, the shoes almost fit too well. Faye Dunaway you are a genius...
Faye Dunaway -- Joan Crawford: Mommie Dearest
The granddaddy (or grand-mommy) of all films with icons impersonating icons, Mommie Dearest is not just a movie but something of a milestone for both the stars playing and being played. And also for many viewers. How can anyone come out of that movie the same? How does one ever look at a wire hanger as a normal object again? The movie, based on the iconic Joan Crawford and adapted from her adopted daughter Christina's famous tell-all biography, became an almost immediate camp classic after a mostly negative critical reception. The story, in which the child-hungry star adopts Christina, only to make her life a series of hellish showdowns, was not a flattering portrait of Crawford and probably unfair, but Faye Dunaway (who will not discuss the part, alas) matched her with divine diva relish. Dunaway must have understood Crawford on a deeper level, far deeper than simply relating to another actress (Dunaway, like Crawford, also worked with Bette Davis for chrissakes... and Davis didn't like Dunaway either!).
She channeled Crawford, from her hunter's-bow lip liner to the inner tumults of the troubled star. Though the performance is large and sometimes hilarious, Dunaway understood Crawford enough to give her moments of vulnerability and pathos. Though Dunaway is reportedly not proud of the role, and too many viewers saw Crawford as a woman who goes insane with the Comet cleanser (and not as the often brilliant actress of Rain, Mildred Pearce,A Woman's Face, Humoresque and Autumn Leaves among so many other pictures), it's a movie that, if you watch it enough, is strangely on Crawford's side. The performance is just too fantastic, too operatic, too iconic -- you have to respect both Dunaway and Crawford by the end.
James Cagney -- Lon Chaney: Man of a Thousand Faces
Playing the genius Lon Chaney is one thing; having another genius -- and a genius for very different reasons -- portray him is quite another. Like Chaney, James Cagney was a superb physical performer. The man could say as much with the rage in his eyes as he could while casually tap-dancing down a flight of stairs. His migraine meltdown in White Heat is so powerful, it's almost infectious -- you feel that damn headache from torment.
And yet, as touching and lovely as Cagney is to watch depicting Chaney, one of the greatest and most innovative screen actors of all time (From The Phantom of the Opera to Hunchback to The Unknown to The Unholy Three and more and more... who sadly, only made only one talking picture), the entire film falls a bit flat around him. Never mind that the movie takes quite a few liberties regarding the facts; it just doesn't convey the brilliance and, no doubt, haunted inner life of Chaney. You can tell Cagney reveres Chaney, and that does feel, at least, good (every actor should). And to be fair to Cagney -- let's see if any modern actor could star in a biopic about him...
Carroll Baker -- Jean Harlow: Harlow
Though Carroll Baker did a fine job as the beautiful, talented and distinctive blond bombshell Jean Harlow, the picture is a rather tepid affair. Released only a month after a more quickie, low-budget version of Harlow was seen on-screen (starring Carol Lynley and directed by Bill Sargent), Joseph E. Levine's version is superior but still lacking. The 1930s icon, with her troubled, sometimes bizarre family and love life (one of her husbands, producer/director/screenwriter Paul Bern, committed suicide two months after their marriage, amid mystery and nasty rumors) and her early death at 26, presented a passionate tale to tell, but, alas, the movie is just there. A lifeless script, a shallow treatment and a weirdly cast Peter Lawford as Bern hurt Harlow.
Interestingly, a book by Tom Lisanti about the two movies and their cinematic faceoff has just been published, titled "Dueling Harlows: Race to the Silver Screen." Though both movies don't exactly befit the Harlow legend, at least an interesting back story resulted from them. Harlow herself made it look easy and if you want a wonderful depiction of her talents, just watch the woman herself in Bombshell where she managed to play herself and Clara Bow.
Cate Blanchett -- Katharine Hepburn: The Aviator
The almighty Katharine Hepburn? Even the seemingly indefatigable Cate Blanchett had a tall (with long, lean slacks) order with this one. How do you play the iconic Hepburn, she with those unmistakable shaky enunciation's, feminist but feminine viewpoints, practical but madcap mannerisms and distinct unconventionality without becoming a parody of the fearlessly unique star?
We've seen Martin Short do Hepburn's nephew as a hot dog vendor -- at least I hope we've all seen that. If not, you've really missed out -- so we know it's not so hard to venture into Frank Gorshin mimicry (how wonderful it would have been had he added Hepburn to his arsenal). But unlike the other stars in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow? Uh, no...), Blanchett pulled it off, I think... I'm still thinking it over.
Jessica Lange -- Frances Farmer: Frances
Though the movie itself and some its facts are problematic, the torrid, tragic tale of the great Frances Farmer, a superb actress from the 1930s who wound up institutionalized in atrocious, unfair conditions, is drop-kicked into the stratosphere by Jessica Lange. Lange not only looks like Farmer but also embodies everything we've ever read about the talented star. Lange's ferocious, fearless beauty and take-no-prisoners performance saved what could have been yet another studio mangling of the life and legend of a notorious woman.
A chance to really tell her story, a tale straight from Nathaniel West or Horace McCoy, was clearly at hand when the film was conceived (read Farmer's autobiography "Will There Really Be a Morning?" --never mind its questionable veracity, read it -- and you can see why), but through script problems, studio requests, and one strange association with the conspiracy-obsessed ex-convict and probable liar Stewart Jacobson (played in the film as "Harry York" by Sam Shepard), Frances veers into fantasy -- a fantasy Frances Farmer would not have appreciated. Still... Lange is outstanding. Giving us what Farmer was -- an intelligent woman struggling in the often alienating business of show, a woman with soul; natural born talent; a real, thinking, searching brain; an outspoken temper; inner demons; and pure beauty -- Lange crafted one of her greatest roles in Frances, a performance almost as iconic as the actress herself.
Sienna Miller -- Edie Sedgwick: Factory Girl
Though not normally thought of as a movie star, Edie Sedwick was a Warhol superstar -- which makes her more movie star than many actresses working today. Thanks largely to a wonderfully cast Sienna Miller (and with much riding on her from Edie fans like me and millions of others) George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl works in spite of its numerous, annoying flaws. Miller's impressive turn as Warhol muse/youth-quaker Edie Sedgwick, the drug-addled, fabulously fashionable and little, lost decadent girl, saves the picture. No one can really look like Edie, save for the sheared bleached hair, the chandelier earrings, the eyeliner and the black tights, but Sienna channels her look splendidly. And, even better, she gets Edie's intelligent, measured (and sometimes slurred) speaking voice down perfectly. Edie was troubled, but she was no dummy, and Miller grants her this dignity. Still, the film relies too heavily on Edie's relationship with a certain iconic musician (Hayden Christensen doing a covert Bob Dylan) and focuses on Edie chiefly as a victim. Edie was screwed up, obviously, but was she simply a victim?
No way. Edie was something of a Holly Golightly, a fab, endless party who attracted many but eventually wore people out. Instead of hailing from Hicksville (Golightly's secret), Edie was well educated, but she had deeply disturbing family troubles (suicide, probable incest) that she both buried and, in a strange way, extolled by flitting the night away on loads of speed. But she was still a madcap light that burned fast, a drugged-out screwball heroine who didn't get Cary Grant or William Powell at the end of the picture. The woman was an absolute charmer -- electric, the living embodiment of the now. Surely the picture could have given us some of her fearless excitement as well? You can feel it in her still photographs -- and thank goodness we've got plenty of those to look at. And of course, she was a genius just playing herself.
"She’s leavin’ now ’cause I heard the slammin’ of the door. The way I know I’ve heard it slam one hundred times before. And if I could move I’d get my gun and put her in the ground. Oh Ruby, for God’s sake turn around."
Chills.
Though generally associated with the lighter, know-when-to-hold-em persona of Kenny Rogers, the song "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town" has always worked a bewitching magic that makes it especially tragic, especially haunting. Right up there with the all-mighty Porter Wagoner's "Cold Hard Facts of Life," it's the plaintive, angry wail of a wounded man done one of the ultimate wrongs. He fought for his country, he loves his girl and this is what he comes home too?
Written by Mel Tillis about a disabled veteran suffering a straying wife after returning from that "crazy Asian war" (Tillis intended the Korean war), it was first recorded by Johnny Darrell, who made it a hit in 1967. Waylon Jennings and Roger Miller also recorded the song and numerous covers have followed, from seemingly every type of performer. The list includes Carl Perkins, Bobby Bare, The Statler Brothers, Faron Young, Cake, The Killers and even Leonard Nimoy, who actually pulls off a quietly sincere version, much more than say, The Killers. I'm sure The Killers admire the song, but once they felt any whiff of amusement about taking this love to town, they needed to step the hell off. Don't force "Ruby." You have to earn the right to slay that one -- even if you're named The Killers.
And though I think Rogers' version is fine, it's certainly not the best. It's too... nice. Interesting Rogers made it the enormous hit it became, even as it reportedly angered some veterans. Initially a smash with his band The First Edition, and then re-recorded later as the superstar solo artist he had become, many thought he was singing about the Vietnam War -- and he was being a bit too light about it. Or that he was just too lightweight. Again, this is Porter Wagoner country, even if he never recorded the song -- you want to feel sublime biblical anger coming out of a tender-hearted now wrathful man. I want to feel the blood of Jesus soaking through that Nudie Suit. When the betrayed one beseeches Ruby to turn around, you better believe he damn well means it.
This is why Dale Hawkins, that Louisiana-born, rockabilly, swamp genius who wrote and recorded "Suzie Q" nails "Ruby" better than any of the above performers. I think so, anyway, and you can disagree. But you won't change my mind. He recorded it in 1968 (from the album "LA, Memphis & Tyler, Texas") before Kenny Rogers, and for me, he owns it.
Hawkins digs right into the veteran's dark pain, his broken voiced insane rage with a deep, murky beauty that understands just how crazy and terrible the man feels. Nick Cave had to have heard this one -- and then skipped a cover when compiling his Murder Ballads. Hawkins out-Caved him, before knowing he could, nearing the zip code of "In the Pines" (which may be the greatest murder ballad of them all). Why isn't Hawkins' version the quintessential "Ruby"? Too weird? Too close to the bone? Too damn true? Whatever the reason, he shines on the swampiest, craziest "Ruby."
Obsessions, obsessions, obsessions. I have been derelict of duty regarding this... site. Well, I have been busy and obsessed. I'm always obsessed. And yet, I neglected my Three Obsessions column for far too long. Not good for me, as, selfishly, I need to unburden my thoughts. Thinking too long about such things makes me a little crazy... and begins entering my dream state but, alas, as of late, not here. Write it down!
Just too many obsessions, I suppose. But I am back. This time with Losey, Hepburn's sexy slacks and...Oh my... Jenny Rock.
These Are the Damned (1963)
Directed by the great Joseph Losey, the masterful These Are the Damned was made in 1961, hacked up by producers and not released in England until 1963. It finally found its way to America in 1965, thank God (or Satan, whomever). The story is convoluted and... sad. Macdonald Carey plays an American tourist who, while vacationing the English seaside, falls for Shirley Anne Field, a young woman who just happens to be the sister of the great, bad boy sexy Oliver Reed, a tough-ass motorcycle gang leader to a bunch of Teddy Boys. Reed hates Carey and exhibits some decidedly incestuous feelings for sis, but that's just part of the problem. Reed is such a violent hoodlum (wonderfully so -- it's a thrill to see him so young here), the new couples run off, but... to a cave under a nearby military base which is where some incredibly weird kid action starts. In this case, a group of children, who've suffered experiments conducted by a scientist intent on developing a race of humans who can survive an atomic blast.
So, naturally, the kids have all become radioactive and have the power to kill anyone who dares to get near them. What's makes this movie so powerful and poignant, is that rather than recoil from these children, the couple yearns to save them. But alas, life isn't so easy (you can't just adopt a brood of radioactive children) and the picture remains hauntingly grim. I'm not begging for any type of remake -- but this seems like something Cronenberg could accomplish, and with some added layers... of birthing scenes. And too bad Reed, Cronenberg's Shape of Rage guru, couldn't have returned to the scene of the brood...
Katharine Hepburn, Slacks
I generally hate dresses. Not all dresses (I long for anything from the 1930s and, if I could, would walk around, all in white, a la Jean Harlow. But that's not exactly practical.) And then, anything from the 60s -- though those coveted chandelier earrings always manage to dangerously snag on anything... usually my hair. Or a kid's curious hand. But when it gets down to it, I would choose Nico's white pant suits over it all. So, with dresses, I usually, feel like Scout when she's forced to wear her fancy duds on her first day of school -- annoyed, uncomfortable, and wishing I could just cross my legs without issue. So of course, I adore that trouser trail blazer, Katharine Hepburn. She is the queen of the pants. And yet, when it comes to Hepburn's style, it's almost hard to pinpoint a specific movie -- she was so defiantly individual.
There's the wonderfully AC/DC, sexy androgyny of Sylvia Scarlett and of course, Christopher Strong. Unbeknownst to David Bowie (or perhaps he knew full well), Ms. Hepburn was the true Thin White Duke. As the dizzy, madcap rich girl ensnaring Cary Grant in the classic screwball Bringing Up Baby, Kate almost sneaks her pants into the film via a nifty pantsuit while discussing her new leopard. It was perhaps "safer" for her to flaunt more feminine togs in this manner but the image is one indelibly linked to the screen legend and an early look at her then scandalous affinity for menswear as seen on full display in Woman of the Year - where even as she famously shows off her legs, oh my... does she look fantastic in a suit. And fantastically revolutionary - so much that, as the story goes, when RKO heads forced her to wear a skirt, she strolled around the studio lot in her underwear until they returned her beloved slacks. "Stockings are the invention of the devil," Hepburn once stated. She's right.
Jenny Rock "Mal"
Years ago, a friend sent me a VHS copy of Jenny Rock covering Deep Purple's "Hush." I was so blown away by her version, so, well, confused (in a good way) and so suddenly in love with Jenny Rock, I watched that thing about 67 times... or more. Rock, one of the Quebecois Ye Ye singers, enjoyed popular singles, and was named Best Female Ye Ye Singer at Montreal's Festival du Disc award show. And she opened for the Rolling Stones in 1965. Not bad. But I love her later work -- when she went a bit crazy. Case in point is her cover of Deep Purple's "Hush" (written first by Joe South for Billy Joe Royal -- thanks Jaime) called "Mal" (also a cover of Johnny Hallyday's version, "Mal"). The below clip fills me all kinds of conflicted feelings. It's sexy sure, it's intense (I love how she SCREAMS-- almost in torment) and excitedly painful and potently, frightfully erotic. After all, she's screeching "Mal!" which means bad or evil in French. Quite different than "Hush." At times, Jenny looks like she's been held hostage and forced to sing to the radical Front de libération du Québec. Or young Kim Jong Il. But she indeed, makes it her own. And in my obsessive fantasy scenario, Ritchie Blackmore breaks in and saves her. And then makes her sing it again. It's that stupendously strange and Ye Ye psychedelic and curiously perverse and sublime. I wonder what Serge Gainsbourg thought of this? I'm thinking he liked it -- a lot.
Ray Charles. We all know Ray Charles was sensational. We should know. And yet, even when the enormously popular, Oscar winning Ray underscored this point (though missing some of the better, grittier details) way back in 2004, many need to be reminded again, and beyond that "and then this happened" biopic. Need I say it again? Ray Charles was cool as hell -- sublimely, raucously, heartbreakingly and effortlessly cool.
O-Gênio is a grand celebration of such cool and of course, "The Genius," or, in Portuguese,O Gênio. Unearthed a few years before Charles' death (from Charles' own vault) the 1963 Sao Paulo concert (and rehearsal) is a rare, somewhat astounding document that gives us Charles at one of his musical peaks -- a year after he'd recorded Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, when he was broadening the boundaries for the type of soul music he'd created. Already an innovator, blending gospel and blues (to many Christian's disapproval) and after he'd left Atlantic and signed with ABC-Paramount where he was the first artist to own his own masters, Charles was now positioned at the top, flying high. And higher. And higher still.
Taking on "What'd I Say," "Take These Chains from My Heart," and an absolutely swinging, gorgeous rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" during which the astonishing Margie Hendrix lets loose her growling solo so emblematic of Charles' stunning version. You'll never think of that typically safe sounding song in the same way ever again. He continues with "Set Me Free," "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," "My Bonnie," a knockout "In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)," "Margie," "Hit the Road Jack," "Moanin'," "Birth of a Band," "Hallelujah I Love Her So" and an untitled jazz instrumental... I could list them all but I'll stop... But, and for lack of better words, Charles and band are, to put it simply, fu**ing brilliant.
Watching Ray, his extraordinary talent, his smooth sensuality, his perfect suits and that iconic sway (really, he doesn't sway or tick out as much as the impersonations show) and with his faultless band including Wilbert Hogan and the impossibly cool saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman and of course, The Raelettes (here, Hendrix, Gwen Barry, Darlene McCray and Patricia Richards) you'll wish (so much) that more of his concerts were recorded for posterity. Strangely, as ubiquitous as Ray Charles is, he remains ever mysterious, which is part of his power.
As many times I've watched Charles (in any early performance I can get my hands on), he never fails to leave me with an almost painful, yet delicious sensation of enigmatic... wow. With the tumults of his pain and unbridled joy -- from "Crying Time" to "Let's Go Get Stoned" (yes, let's) -- he's both immensely moving and beyond our reach. Part of this is Ray Charles real-life complexity. As Charles once told a reporter, “I’m the kind of guy, I conform when it suits me, and when it doesn’t suit me I don’t.” Straight-forward, but complicated, honest but mysterious. So provocative and magnetic was Charles, so private yet revealing, so smooth yet rough-edged, so troubled yet supremely business minded, so ready to laugh during an interview or cry onstage in classics like “Drown in My Own Tears,” Charles was, and is indeed... O Gênio. Watch.
Cruising through my archives, I return to a youthful road and thumb:
I hitchhiked. Once. I was in the seventh grade -- far too young to be exposing myself to the perilous adventures of road-and-thumb. And yet, young enough to believe that the open road could be thrilling, mind expanding, educational -- the way of, as Jack Kerouac said, the “crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way."
I wasn't as sophisticated as Kerouac. I hadn’t read On the Road yet. But I would have glamorized it as such. There had to be a little glamour. I felt the raw and the real and the dark, sometimes with excitement (sometimes with dread) so it was imperative to sprinkle fairy dust in there, somewhere -- even filthy fairy dust. There were too many dingy light bulbs in the world. One had to compensate.
Staring at a long road, cocking your head just the right way, the dirty and the shiny can attain a certain glow. You’ll run into all kinds of broken, gorgeously cinematic sights -- like glimmering colors of shattered glass, curious looking rocks, abandoned cars, abandoned stuffed animals, or most recently for me, abandoned fun parks. My Torino overheating in the hot desert, I pulled my car next to a mysterious building. Spying a fence with a hole big enough to squeeze through I discovered a derelict go-cart/mini-put put golf course complete with a standing lighthouse, its roof perilously close to sliding off, piles of neglected go-carts, and tiny little houses with broken windmills.
Alas, I never saw such a thing when I hitchhiked as a kid. Just candy, creeps and critical elderly folks -- shaking their heads -- bad, stupid girls. I was camping with a friend’s family -- stuck somewhere in nowhere-land, Eastern Oregon. We were sick of roughing it. Her parents had us under tent, roasted hot dog, keep-the-watermelon-in-the-stream lockdown. We were itching for action -- innocent action. When we heard about a mini-mart five miles away, we hatched a plan. Not a terribly detailed plan, but a plan. We would walk.
Walking the distance for two 12- year-olds seemed like a breeze. Licorice, candy bars and ice cold Coca Colas awaited. And more importantly, we could ditch her annoying parents. But how to get back? And at night? “Let’s thumb it,” we said.
I knew it was a tricky predicament. I’d heard a few stories and rented a lot of movies. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hitcher were key don’t-pick-up-the-drifter pictures. My older brother had regaled me with tales from the TV movie Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker the famed (in his eyes) warning of what happens when halter topped, Bundy bait extend their thumb. Through cinema, I understood the dangers of creepy “salesmen” driving from important “conferences,” or thrill kill couples yearning for children, or men fond of goat cheese and slaughterhouses and setting instant photos on fire. They walked among us.
I discussed these various scenarios with my friend, and agreeing we didn’t want to find ourselves next on the Green River Killer’s roster of victims, we came up with some ground rules: No single men (I hadn’t seen Two-Lane Blacktop so...), no young couples, and no groups of guys. We thought (I extended my hands in a cinematic gesture) two words: “Old people.” And then, four words: "Old people in trucks." The safest scenario. We’d recline in the vehicle's bed, and if Ma Pa Kettle got any ideas, we’d jump out and head for the woods. But what I pictured looked like something Hank Snow would sing: "I was totin' my pack along the long dusty Winnemucca road, When along came a semi with a high an' canvas-covered load. 'If you're goin' to Winnemucca, Mack, with me you can ride.'"
So, after many suspicious pull-overs, all of which we had foreseen (the creepily nice solo guy, the hootin’ and hollerin’ group of men looking for a party, the couples, who probably weren’t all that bad…but I’d heard of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley…), we did indeed score a truck. A truck with not the quaint elderly couple, but an elderly man. A grumpy old man angered that we were hitchhiking in the first place. We sat in the back, munched our Hershey bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and let the wind blow through our hair. And laughed. It was all so hilarious. It was great fun. It was great dumb. We were probably lucky. For dramatic purposes, I'm sorry to say nothing bad happened save for the old guy's condemnation. But we felt like we were in a movie. The good hitchhiking movie. The positive hitchhiking picture.
And one of those good movies was a film I had seen and joked about on our road adventure. Frank Capra’s 1934 screwball It Happened One Night, wherein the sexy hitchhiking tradition of showing a little leg originated with the sassy Claudette Colbert and an amusingly frustrated Clark Gable. I so wanted to show a little leg but a 12-year-old shouldn’t be doing such things. And most certainly when Clark Gable isn’t by your side. Humbert Humbert should not be an option. And Humbert wouldn’t have allowed it either.
But Capra's joyful, sexually charged and whip-smart depression-era movie was on my mind as I stared down the pine-tree lined highway (it should have been Five Easy Pieces). A road movie that’s pure Americana, from the wealthy heiress fleeing her father only to end up on a bus with wise-acre newspaperman Gable, to all the adventures they do and see on the road (charming camping areas, waving to hobos on trains, sleeping on bales of hay and again, hitchhiking) -- this was so beautiful to me. I wanted to crawl into those moments. And I wanted that hitchhiking scene.
I loved it. Gable attempts to teach Colbert the rules of the thumb, while she turns down eating a carrot. Sitting on a split rail fence on the side of a rural road, the classy Colbert allows Gable to pick a piece of hay out of her teeth with a penknife (the raw carrot and hay to penknife always feels so sexy to me), and while he chomps on his carrot, they swap hitchhiking techniques. Gable is full of hitcher braggadocio, even suggesting he intends to write a book entitled: “The Hitchhiker's Hail.” To him there are three ways to hail a car: “It's all in that ol' thumb, see... that ol' thumb never fails. It's all a matter of how you do it, though.” He attempts the varied techniques, but to no success. No one pulls over. “When you get to 100, wake me up,” Colbert quips. After countless cars pass them, she takes charge: “I'll stop a car and I won't use my thumb.”
Out come the gams. Hopping off the fence, she casually walks to the side of the road and oh-so-sexily pulls up her skirt, exposing that famous shapely leg (with garter). Of course, the first approaching car screeches to a halt. While enjoying their ride, away from the dirt and dust, she gloats: “I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb.” To which he answers, “Why didn't you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty cars.”
My friend and I didn’t stop forty cars. But we stopped more than we should have. And though this wasn’t depression-era Capra land, we loved the short adventure – an adventure that by then had already died out with rotary phones, communes, LSD movies and Charlene Tilton.
Hitchhiking -- I still yearn to try it again – though I’m sure I never will. But all those cars, all those personalities, all that candy, all those…Tom Neals. At 12, I hadn’t yet seen the Edgar G. Ulmer noir masterpiece Detour, (starring that handsome, real-life mess of danger and destruction Neal, and the tough, brilliant Ann Savage), but it would cut a deep impression on me later. Perhaps one of the most fatalist hitchhiking movies ever made, had I viewed it that young, I would have pondered such an experience. Tom Neal, a cheap hotel room, and a deadly phone cord. A ride.
And I probably would have hitched with him. But I might not be here to talk about it. After all, as Neal wryly asks: “What kind of dames thumb rides? Sunday school teachers?” I did. I won't ever again. Only if Clark Gable’s my Sal Paradise...
IndieWire's Press Play concludes its series on Roman Polanski (Life's Work: The Films of Roman Polanski) with a video essay on the masterpiece Repulsion, written and narrated by me and edited by Matt Zoller Seitz.
Please watch this piece on one of Polanski's greatest pictures, a movie about repulsion and twisted desire, one in which the obscure, slippery and decayed complexities of such desire are conveyed brilliantly.
Roman Polanski knows women because he understands men. He knows both sexes because he understands the games both genders play, either consciously or instinctively. He understands the perversions formed from such relations and translates them into visions that are erotic, disturbing, humorous and, most important, allegorical in their potency. One should not (as so many did with his misunderstood Bitter Moon) take Polanski’s films entirely literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion.
Film scholar Molly Haskell said that at the core of Polanski’s work is the “image of the anesthetized woman, the beautiful, inarticulate, and possibly even murderous somnambulate.” Her observation is astute, but it’s followed by the criticism that in all of Polanski’s films, including Repulsion, “the titillations of torture are stronger than the bonds of empathy.” Of course. And then, no. And then, of course. Polanski’s removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn’t feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself. 1965’s Repulsion proves as much.
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion is one of the most frightening studies of madness ever filmed. Deneuve plays Carol, a nervous young manicurist who shares an apartment with her sexually active sister (Yvonne Furneaux). At first Carol goes about her days in the salon, where she quietly tends to bossy old ladies’ fleshy cuticles; walking outside, where she unsuccessfully avoids the leering glances and advances of men; and languishing about the apartment, where, with disgust, she listens to the noises of her sister’s lovemaking and silently despises the men who visit. She exhibits a pathological shyness and repression that slowly spiral into madness after her sister leaves on holiday.
Carol’s dementia creates perplexing hallucinations: sexual acts with a greasy man whom she simultaneously loathes and lusts after; greedy hands poking through walls and kneading her soft flesh; and the moving and cracking of walls. Left alone, she is able to act out what she is so afraid of: the dark sludge of desire.
The obscure, slippery and decayed complexities of such desire are conveyed brilliantly in Repulsion. The diseased atmosphere of Carol’s womb is meticulously created with Polanski’s use of camera angles, sound effects and images of clutter. Though music is used effectively, Polanski relies more on amplifying the sounds of everyday life—the ticking of a clock, the voices of nuns playing catch in the convent garden, the dripping of a faucet—to convey the acute awareness Carol acquires in response to her fear. Polanski also dresses the film with pertinent details that further exemplify both Carol’s madness and the aching passage of time: Potatoes sprout in the kitchen, meat (rabbit meat, no less) rots on a plate and eventually collects flies, various debris of blood, food and liquids form naturally around Carol. The film’s inventive use of black-and-white film, wide-angle lenses and close-ups creates an unsparing vision of sickness, and Deneuve’s performance is effectively mysterious. The viewer, however, is able to empathize with Carol, which is how she lures us into her web in the first place. As Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor muttered during filming, “I hate doing this to a beautiful woman.”
And yet, one loves doing this to a beautiful woman, especially one like Deneuve. Deneuve’s loveliness makes Carol’s madness more palatable (her unfortunate suitor thinks she is odd, but he can’t help but “love” this gorgeous woman), but eventually it becomes horrifying. Carol is not simply a Hitchcockian aberration of what lies beneath the “perfect woman,” she is the reflection of what lies beneath repressed desire—in men and women.
Polanski has a knack for casting women who are nervously exciting and in their own way, fighting oppression. In Chinatown, Faye Dunaway is a beautiful blinking, twitching mess, harboring that terrible secret about her father. Mia Farrow’s Rosemary is the small voiced good girl, desperately, valiantly trying to save her baby from not just Satanists, but from the sexist controls of husband and doctors who continually tell women they’re hysterical. Bitter Moon’s Emmanuelle Seigner is ludicrously sensual, only to turn despondent and then monstrously vengeful towards the man who not only broke her heart but humiliated her and who in turn, becomes a kind of symbol for all men. Natasha Kinksi’s Tess is so beautiful she’s almost scary and strange, haunting the picture, underscoring the film’s lilting doom. Like most of Polanski’s heroine’s, Tess is trapped in a world of judgment, shame, social position and fate. These women feel dangerous to desire. Polanski doesn’t hand their beauty to the viewer so easily—he makes one insecure, fearful about longing for them.
And Deneuve is certainly nerve-racking. She is so physically flawless that she often seems half human: An anemic girl, she can barely lift up her arm, yet at the same time she is highly sensual, an ample, heavily breathing woman with more than a glint of carnality in her dreamily vacant eyes. Deneuve makes one feel the confusion of a corrupted child: She is an arrested adolescent who, like an anorexic, cannot face her womanliness without visions of perverse opulence and violence. Carol is the personification of sexual mystery—she is what lurks beneath the orgasms of pleasure and pain. What Polanski finds intriguing and revolting is perceptively female, making Repulsion a woman’s picture more than women may want to know, or care to face.
What happens when two fiendish, ferocious creatures, two deadly, demented sadists, two roughly beautiful master manipulators become lovers? Equality. Between man, woman and movies, you can find fair practice, of course, but with such hard-boiled honesty? Not often enough. So leave it to Lawrence Tierney and Claire Trevor in Robert Wise's uncompromising, savage noir Born to Kill to present such a romantically rotten pair with such strangely satisfying equitability. The femme fatale meets her match -- the L'homme fatal. Were they acting? Yes, but then, as you fall into the movie, you begin to think, no. No way. As I rewatched the picture today, I had to repost my adoration for such crazy, mad, demented, deadly, not stupid, scary love.
As Wise wryly noted within the commentary track for his one of his greatest, most beautifully brutal pictures, indeed, Lawrence Tierney was not always acting. Particularly when a scene required a hot-blooded rage so intense that the bad mood bruiser resorts to beating a man and woman to death. It scared the director with its realness. And it scares the viewer. No Adler, no Stanislavsky, no recounting memories of a woman who did him wrong, it was there without the asking -- Tierney was that frighteningly, fantastically natural. And in Born to Kill, he’s something of a thuggish genius.
One of the toughest actors on and off the screen (Ever.), the hard-boiled legend was a notorious character (with a record) who lived on the edge of danger and menace with such tremendous gusto, that you can’t get through Hollywood without hearing a classic, train-wreck Tierney story (my first week in LA and I met a man who told me how, while renting movies with Tierney, he witnessed the legend throw a young man through a display case after Tierney overheard the stranger calling the very much passed away Errol Flynn a homosexual slur). But the man was more than his drunken myth, more than the bald, gravel voiced geezer bad-ass Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs, more than the guy who scared Jerry Seinfeld with a knife (look it up), he was a young, strikingly handsome actor with such a powerfully dangerous screen presence and such a messy personal life that he was just too much -- too much of a good/bad thing.
Born to Kill (along with The Devil Thumbs a Ride) showcases Tierney at the peak of his punching powers. Nasty, mean, mysterious and disturbingly, intriguingly erotic -- his brutality offers the viewer a confusingly attractive blend of sadism and sex. Part of the picture’s kinkiness lies in his pairing with the fantastic Trevor -- again -- the femme fatale to his L'homme fatal. He may beat and kill whoever inspires his ire, but Trevor easily, coolly discusses how painful it is for a victim to die: “A piece of metal sliding into your body, finding its way into your heart. Or a bullet tearing through your skin, crashing into a bone.” she purrs. Naturally, the black-hearted climber falls for the like-minded Lawrence -- nothing’s sexier than finding the one man or woman who’ll understand you, while swirling each other like sharks.
Dysfunction this inspired can only lead to the bedroom. And Trevor was dysfunction on and with legs. As one of the queens of film noir in movies like William Wyler's Dead End, Anatole Litvak's The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Edward Dmytryk's Murder My Sweet, Anthony Mann's Raw Deal, John Huston's Key Largo, Irving Reis's Crack-Up and more, she knew her way around a Bogart, a Powell and a Robinson. So in Born to Kill, with those crafty eyes that could bore right through your soul -- or lack thereof -- she's potent stuff. And she's so strong up against Tierney, that somehow, her black heart gave the man a soul. How could he resist her?
And Wise (working from the novel by James Gunn) understands all this beautiful, hopped up hyper-erotic horror. Utilizing everything he learned from Val Lewton to stunning effect, from his gorgeous noir lighting (with cinematographer Robert De Grasse) to genuinely nightmarish, violent attack sequences, the movie sucks you into its toxic universe with such gritty gorgeousness, you can’t help but be mesmerized by such awful people. You, and especially in the case of Tierney and Trevor, grow to admire them.
This fatalistic fondness is doubly troubling when you again recall the moment Tierney kills his ex-girlfriend and her lover -- it’s still so shocking, you can’t believe your modern eyes haven’t become accustomed to such violence. But this is Tierney after all, a man who he keeps you thrillingly off kilter. Working alongside a stellar supporting cast (Walter Slezak, an inspired Esther Howard and a perfect, noir fixture Elisha Cook Jr.) Tierney is… good god… so wonderfully evil. Young Tierney is a man with immense sex appeal, the ultimate alpha male, the ultimate tough guy just dripping with ticking time bomb rushes of testosterone. When anger flashes across those eyes, he’s potently scary, mad-dog real.
A unique, unsettling cross between smoothness (in Born to Kill his voice is more noir punctuated and level over gravely) and harsh moodiness ready to explode, we immediately recognize he’s no fake. But we are talking about a guy who, in real life was reportedly arrested more times than one of his more famous characters: John Dillinger. Though he grew grumpy of such typecasting, he had to know just how good he was at the level ten tough guy. No other actor tops this kind of specific anger -- an anger we can only wonder about. Where’s this fury coming from? He was troubled, certainly, but perhaps, as Bukowski would say, Tierney was truly born into this. But in Born to Kill, Trevor played him like a fiddle -- Devil and Daniel Webster style. Who knows if she could handle him off screen? The movie sure makes it seem like she could. Anything he can do she can do badder. Or not. And then the struggle continues. And yet, Born to Kill never presumes this woman could tame the beast. Or should.
Here's one of the most brutal moments of Tierney and Wise's film career. Remember: Don't two time Lawrence Tierney.
I'm currently in Toronto, coming off a few of what Ms. Tate's Jennifer North is most likely popping in this picture (though less pure, and strong). Don't judge. Though I've flown all over the world this year, I can't make it within four feet of an airport without mother's little helper. I'm not afraid of flying, or the plane or even crashing (that just means I'm closer to the ground). It's claustrophobia. And panic attacks. And people staring at me while in the midst of that fight or flight (!) battle duking it out in my brain. I think, these strangers -- they notice -- which builds into a kind of Dostoyevskian The Double-like awkwardness -- the Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin variety. Yes, I really get that nervous on planes. The fear of my own self starts spreading to other areas of worry. As Dostoevsky wrote of tortured Golyadkin: "Anxiety and uneasiness in regard to anything near him that was annoying always worried him far more than the annoyance itself." Yes. He gets it. Though, no one ever does notice -- but I notice -- and I take care of it. And once that door closes, well, please don't make my "double" become Neely O'Hara dosed out on dexies and booze. I need to be calm, thank you.
I'm not trying to make light of these things. Neither the fears, rational or otherwise, nor the necessary pharmaceuticals. The latter are addictive and bad and destroy lives. Sure. But as they, or rather, I say morbid, pit-in-the-stomach terror inspired laughter spiked with a few extra benzodiazepines is the best... you know the rest. And once in a while (or often), and on an airplane especially, they transform you into the most delightful traveler a stewardess has ever had the joy to... ignore. With that, I'm tired, I'm talking to much, and I'm taking a break -- for now.
There’s a moment in Bug during which I was so significantly moved, I almost crumbled in my theater seat. It comes when Agnes (Ashley Judd), the worn out, drug abusing, but still beautiful (in that way only certain kinds of damaged women can be) realizes she might be a alone again. As her newfound future partner in psychosis, Peter (Michael Shannon) leaves her; she closes herself in her seedy motel bathroom and sobs.
But there's more to the story.
First, I'll return to sitting in the theater -- back in 2007, when William Friedkin's Bug left many viewers confused, even angry. Based on the picture's previews and poster art, audience's unfamiliar with the acclaimed Tracy Letts play thought they were going to see another Saw or Hostel -- any kind of Lions Gate horror film would do. But they saw something far superior, and in the small audience I experienced the movie with -- they didn't appreciate it. In the dark (I watched the picture alone, on my birthday, which was an oddly perfect personal present) I heard jeers, witnessed walk-outs and when the credits rolled, grumblings of "wanting my money back." Wow, I thought. This is one of the best movies I've seen all year and certainly, one of Friedkin's finest. What in the world? Could it really boil down to -- not enough bugs?
Happily this response didn't affect Friedkin's relationship with Letts. The French Connection, Exorcist, Sorcerer, Cruising director's newest film, Killer Joe (playing Venice and Toronto), was written by Letts (from his 1991 play), who after Bug (the long running play and short release movie), became both a Tony and Pulitzer Award-winning playwright (for his brilliant August: Osage County). Letts, the actor has also earned raves as George in the Steppenwolf Theatre's production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's no surprise (clearly) that the man and artist understands the complexities, the often insane, yet wholly human complexities of relationships, and how this extends further-- into our nightmares and reality -- and the blurring of the two. As Martha states in Woolf: "Truth or illusion George, you don't know the difference."
Which leads me back to the under-valued Bug and Judd's Agnes, so fearful of the void. Though Agnes presents herself as a tough cookie, she realize she needs Shannon's Peter. He’s a lot smarter and sensitive than her ex-husband (a bullying, abusive Harry Connick Jr.) and in spite of some of his crazy rants, she likes the way he talks.
And then... he returns and reveals his distinctly special problem. The reunion of these lovers is so weirdly romantic and such a relief, that you almost forget it will be poor Agnes’ undoing. If love is mad, if love is crazy, then Agnes and Peter are, as Laura Dern stated, “Wild at heart and weird on top.”
So begins their folie à deux but one that moves beyond these lost soul’s tortured union and into modern ideas of conspiracies, post war insanity, disease, infected blood and the kind of paranoia that can spread like wildfire once the flame is (quite literally) ignited. And of course, it’s also about bugs, aphids to be specific, though they’re not swooping down on the pair a la Mimic -- they’re horrifyingly in their blood, brain, skin, teeth and, even more terrifying, we can’t see them. We simply have to believe. Or rather, we have to want to believe. I certainly wanted to believe, just so these people’s lives would make the labyrinthian sense they so desire.
Bug is a movie that will baffle, excite, horrify and anger those who can’t stay with its unwavering intensity. It will even in moments provoke titters, purposefully so, which should be honored rather than mocked -- obsession can be very, very funny. Bug is a rare picture that balances realistic, literal psychological horror with metaphorical meaning with small punches of satirical wit. It’s nothing like you’ve ever seen and so skillfully, artfully executed and so brilliantly acted (Judd and Shannon especially) that the result is less movie and more wide awake fever dream. If you can relate to paranoia and desperate love in any way, you will meld into this movie -- and that only lends to its horror. It is (I’m not going to mince words here), a masterpiece.
The drama starts via the way most people hook up -- through a friend. Judd’s Agnes meets Shannon’s Peter after her lesbian friend R.C. (Lynn Collins) introduces the two and drops him at Agnes’s depressing hovel. She’s immediately intrigued but aware he’s a bit strange (after overhearing the women argue about his weirdness, he repeats “I’m not an axe murderer” -- his timing with this line is like his simultaneously subtle and whacked out performance: perfect). He admits that he makes others uncomfortable (“I pick up things unapparent”) but Agnes is refreshed by his shy, though straightforward sweetness. She’s also, eventually open to his unending beliefs about bugs, egg-sacks, insects implanted in his body via the military or whatever else. And though she argues at first, she will more than believe, becoming necessary and complicit -- partly out of love for her man, partly out of her own burgeoning psychosis (which we question is brought on by speedy drugs and her own past trauma) and partly because, well, maybe there’s something to this bug thing. She is hearing crickets in her room, she’s being bitten and helicopters are flying overhead. Or maybe not.
The fact that Friedkin (and Letts) leaves a small crack open for interpretation (and I really think he does -- especially when the weird-o drug taking doctor comes for a visit) gives the film an extra power and poignancy. Friedkin is a master with sound (you hear those damn bugs so much they burrow into your brain too) and, when in top form, showcases a kind of visceral suspense that, like The Exorcist, feeds from possession. These lovers are quite obviously, afflicted, and so the tension doesn’t come in simply their journey to the other side of sanity, it comes in how far they will go. And where will they go? And will they figure it out? And what are they going to carve out of their body next?
He also bleeds powerhouse performances from his actors. Shannon is alarming, attractive, mysterious, vulnerable, oddly charming -- easy to fall in love with even when all signs say "run away." And, Judd who, when given the chance, can be one of the bravest and most electrifying actresses working. Moving from a quiet, seen-it-all cynicism to a deranged, focused conspiratorial rambling, her transformation is without question. In her earlier moments, you can see that spark of insanity so, when it blooms to full flower, you truly believe she’s exiting the smothering cocoon of her life. She’s found her purpose. She's also attempting to reconcile her damaged past and neglect in one of the most destructive, insane ways possible. But in Judd's hands, she’s so good, so real, so with her character (my God, just the way Judd sits on a couch is remarkably natural) she becomes, in a tragic, twisted way, inspirational.
Some critics believe her character not too bright -- easily led by a sick manipulator who feeds off her to justify and complete his mental illness -- but I don’t see her in such simplistic terms. The real tragedy is she’s stuck in a dead end, trashy life and like a lot of smart “crazy” people, able to make that leap, able to embrace the bizarre, able to question the very nature of things, be it love or the government or some other vast conspiracy, to the point of no return. Like the movie, Agnes knows that nothing, even bugs, can be that easy -- nothing. And, depending on how you express it, understanding such complications is both comforting and crazy. As she says, “Guess I’d rather talk with you about bugs than nothing with nobody.” Yes, indeed.
A few years back, I went through an odd, perhaps disturbing personal film festival during which I would watch a double feature of John M. Stahl's masterpiece Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and King Vidor's underrated Beyond the Forest (1949) over and over again. The only person who knew just how many times I'd stayed up, riddled with insomnia, soaking in the heart-stoppingly gorgeousness of the deranged Ellen Berent Harland and the harsh "what a dump" beauty of scheming Rosa Moline was my sister, who got it -- at first. Two movies about unhappy, deeply disturbed women who go to murderous lengths for privacy and very seriously reject pro-creation? Well, yes indeed, that's a perfect double bill.
But realizing I wasn't writing a dissertation about cinematic women who throw themselves down staircases and hillsides to avoid baby-making ("What to Expect When Certain Women Are Expecting"), she finally, bluntly asked: "Are you pregnant?"
Of course I wasn't. How could I be? I'd been sleepless for two months, staying in, memorizing the exact moment Ellen beautifully whips off those shades before watching her young-brother-in-law drown. I was intrigued. Perhaps obsessed. But in my restlessness, I was struggling to write an essay about the movies, and yet, I never did. Instead of turning to my keyboard, I would turn to the movies. And wonder what was going on with me.
Which fast-forwards me to last year when I discussed this obsession (over Ellen, I had yet to get to Rosa) during a long phone call with my friend and esteemed colleague, Farran Smith Nehme, she of the remarkable Self Styled Siren. I said of Ellen, "I kind of sympathize with her." Sayeth the Siren: “So do I, so do I.”
Well, bless you Siren.
What follows is our viral conversation, studying the complexities and reasons for, as the Siren wrote, having a "kinship" for "our beloved Ellen Berent Harland."
Let it be said that neither the Siren nor her friend condones, approves of nor has any plans for drowning crippled children, indulging in do-it-yourself miscarriages or committing suicide in hopes our significant others subsequently will be executed for murder. One has certain moral limits.
Yet we were both serious. Tierney's character isn’t unsympathetic to either one of us. “She just wants to be left the hell alone with her man,” remarked the lady. “I get that way sometimes, too,” admitted the Siren.
And we do have company, albeit tongue-in-cheek company. The Siren's idol, James Agee, saw what was billed in 1945 as a tale of an evil woman's obsessive love and remarked, "Audiences will probably side with the murderess, who spends all of the early reels trying to manage five minutes alone with her husband. Just as it looks possible, she picks up a pair of binoculars and sees his brother, her mother, her adopted cousin and the caretaker approaching by motorboat."
Now it can be told: Ellen's other contemporary admirer was Kim Morgan of the exceptional film site (she hates the word blog) Sunset Gun. For her love of John M. Stahl's masterpiece, and considering her kinship with the Siren, Kim agreed to chat via email about our beloved Ellen Berent Harland.
Sunset Gun:
Oh Gene. Or rather, misunderstood Ellen. A woman trapped in her obsession, of course, in her obsession with her father, but then, also trapped within the un-permissiveness of the times. Permission for Ellen to do…what would Ellen do? Perhaps that's the problem. This is a time when one is not allowed the strength of being… Ellen. I'm not sure when anyone is allowed to be Ellen, exactly, but she is certainly trapped by some force beyond mere psychopathology. Maybe born so impeccable, that unfaltering, that she even frightens herself? She's not normal. Well, she wants to be normal. A woman who yearns for marriage (to Cornel Wilde, though we're never sure why, maybe because he seems normal), a private honeymoon, some damn solace, a few less tedious family gatherings and…then… just maybe the desire to NOT procreate (albeit, she changes her mind a bit late in the game).
I know I'm giving Ellen a big break (maybe she should have remained single) but her superiority is a large part of the problem. You could call that pure narcissism, but that's not what's going on. She never boasts so much as arrives, right? All she needs to do is walk into a room with those startlingly beautiful blue eyes, flop on a couch and eat a sandwich with that perfect overbite. But it's not that she appears a mere mortal trapped in some super-human, celestial cage, she's both sensitive and smart. Maybe a tortured genius. I think this is a woman who suspects that her husband isn't such a great writer after all (I bet you she's got five better novels in her than he does).
She knows men desire her, how can they not? (I love seeing the film on the big screen because always, always, you hear an audible gasp when Tierney first appears -- she's so staggeringly beautiful). But anyway -- men -- they must have her, they yearn for this woman, this is the ultimate trophy (gorgeous, smart, strong, knows her way with a horse and an urn), but in the end, what they really want is 'the girl with the hoe.' Right?
Which then leads me to what you stated when we began this discussion. Of course -- no (I can't believe I have to say this), but I don't endorse the drowning of little brothers (but with those sunglasses? And that lipstick? Oh never mind... ), but what I certainly don't endorse are book dedications from your husband to your adopted sister who's, well, secretly in love with your husband. And vice versa! Come on! To hell with Jeanne Crain. We all saw this coming just as Ellen did.
But, as everyone prattles on like Ellen is the troubled one (and yes… she let the kid drown, but let's try to put that aside for a moment because no one actually knows that for sure, except us, which yes, yes, makes us complicit if we sympathize with Ellen. I'll take that up with Michael Haneke later…). But, returning to the point, it takes Vincent Price to sort all of the obvious 'girl with the hoe' triangle out? And posthumously, in court?
Well, thank god for Vincent Price. But, like the pregnancy, he came a bit late into the picture (unlike Dana Andrews who fell for her at death, and in a painting…actually, art connoisseur Price and Andrews have a lot more in common than they think, but that's a whole other movie/story). But this all makes me ponder fantasy scenarios like, where the hell was Eve Arden when Ellen needed her? Or Thelma Ritter? Ellen may have left that delicate slipper on her foot had Thelma been fluffing the pillows. Eve and Thelma would've been on to little Jeanne for the Ann Blyth/Veda Pierce she really is. Christ. But Ellen would never hang around these women. What are they going to talk about? Normal things?
And yet, a woman can't have Vincent Price as her only best GIRLfriend -- I think. Well, after death anyway. Though that would be pretty damn great in life. Come to think of it, maybe she needed Conrad Veidt while living.
But again, Gene/Ellen is a modern type of woman, a poetic, ingenious woman, and I always get the sense that her inner struggle to express whatever power or talent she has, well beyond her beauty is pure torture. Many may look in her eyes and see cold orbs of hate, but I see… Wagner's entire Ring Cycle, and beautiful, damnable Richard W. seems especially appropriate since, for some crazy reason, he also managed to write, in "Lohengrin," "Here Comes the Bride" amidst his Götterdämmerung.
Is this an excuse for her dastardly acts? No, but she does serve to symbolize every trapped, powerful woman flapping around her white picket fenced-in bird cage. That war raging inside her twists into a a full-scale blitzkrieg on the… normal people. Her revenge is her final work of art! Her masterpiece!
So of course Vincent Price is the one left in her corner. He's probably the only person who could conduct an intelligent, lively conversation with her about things like… music, paintings and stylish ways to throw oneself down a staircase. He would appreciate the Keats in her -- "La Belle Dame sans Merci" -- "The Beautiful Lady Without Pity." He liked what he knew. And he was usually right. Oh Ellen… She can take the dark out of the nighttime and paint the daytime black...
SIREN:
You're so right--Ellen is about sublimation. If she could focus that fierce intelligence on art or a career, she might be able to stay away from rowboats.
I love the idea of Vincent Price as the one person who understands her to any degree. His character, Russell, tells Ellen he'll always love her, and he would have made a much better life partner for her than Richard (Wilde). Ellen could have been Jill Hennessy to Russell's Sam Waterston. Or even just friends, gleefully prosecuting death-penalty cases and critiquing opposing counsel’s wardrobe.
Amen--a husband who dedicates the book he’s been obsessing over from day one to your freaking sister has got to expect some payback, although we can agree Ellen’s reaction is a wee bit disproportionate. And Ruth's (Crain) love for her sister’s husband is never presented as conniving, but the little minx winds up with just what she wants.
Yet Ellen is memorialized as a monster--”leave her to heaven,” the line from Hamlet about Gertrude. That's ironic to me in a way that probably wasn't intentional, since I always thought Gertrude got a raw deal from her male creator. She’s another woman who's ceaselessly nagged because she wants a man of her own and some peace and quiet.
The movie shows Ellen’s father fixation, and I guess that's something. Usually a femme fatale springs fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, puckering a lipsticked mouth around a cigarette, prepared to pull the wings off men and watch them flop around in a mason jar. But, beautiful as Ellen is pouring her father's ashes out of the urn while riding that horse, don't you feel this one stab at psychology is pat? Half the women I know describe themselves as Daddy's girls. What's this telling us--men want a woman who's never loved another man, including Dad? Now really, who's the one with the jealousy problem?
I always wait for that staircase, for Gene hurling herself down it after carefully leaving one slipper on the top step, like a psychopathic Cinderella. It's a wicked act, but she tells Ruth just before she does it, "sometimes the truth IS wicked." Along with Mildred Pierce, Leave Her to Heaven dares to go down some dark maternal byways, into things some may feel, but no one wants to admit--in this case, pregnancy as a cage, one that's about to slam shut for oh, about 21 years. Ellen's on bedrest, its own kind of "Yellow Wallpaper" hell. (Those insipid posies on Ellen's dressing-room wallpaper could drive a lot of women to the brink.) Look at what she's doing beforehand. She's talking to her own sister about the stroll the girl just took with her husband. Couldn't Richard be upstairs talking to his wife? Making sure she isn't bored and terrified, instead of taking it for granted for that she's rubbing her belly and practicing lullabies? So she grabs her most beautiful robe, and re-applies her lipstick, and she even puts on perfume--because she's about to go back to Ellen, the beauty, and leave behind Ellen, the terrarium.
For me, the poignant aspect to Ellen isn't that she's, well, crazy. It's that she's got a face for the ages, but if she isn't willing to play along, if she insists on being the most important thing in her man's life, that face avails her nothing. She still loses her husband to a girl who uses niceness the same way Ellen used those sunglasses in the rowboat: as a cover for the schemes churning inside. And nobody will be on her side, except James Agee, bless him, and Vincent Price, and you, and the Siren, and whoever else is crazy enough to say, "I kind of sympathize with her."
Thank you so very much Siren. But beware. Rosa Moline is next...
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