Presentation Is Everything

Maybe there are films that somehow aren’t meant to work no matter what. There can be good intentions, the script might actually read ok, good and talented people are involved but whatever house they try to erect in the form of this two hour narrative simply cannot stand. And that’s just what happens. For the first time in more than a few years I decided to check out MULHOLLAND FALLS and to be honest I didn’t entirely mind sitting through it much at all but that’s almost more because of the film I want it to be instead of the film it really is. I guess I’m just easy in my quest for enjoyment but ultimately even I have to admit that the film never really clicks together and almost seems based on a faulty concept as if the pitch came from a mix and match game of pieces from post-war history. Sure, you can say “The Black Dahlia killing investigated by the legendary Hat Squad crossed with an atomic age conspiracy!” but does that inherently make it a good idea? All right, anything can maybe be turned into a good movie but in this particular case I wonder if something was off in the inception. The film has a variety of interesting names involved both in front of and behind the camera but it all seems sort of for naught considering the effect, or lack of effect, any of it ultimately has. I admit to an odd sort of fondness for the film partly due to the presence of 90s Jennifer Connelly and also partly because a few scenes were filmed in my neighborhood but…actually, I can’t really come up with an end to the sentence to finish that thought. That’s the kind of movie it is.

Los Angeles, the early 50s: Detective Maxwell Hoover (Nick Nolte) runs the four-man Hat Squad an elite LAPD unit that includes Ellery Coolidge (Chazz Palminteri), Eddie Hall (Michael Madsen) and Arthur Releya (Chris Penn) that answers to no one, using their own vicious means such as tossing suspects off what they refer to as “Mulholland Falls” from way up in the Hollywood Hills to make sure that any and all organized crime figures stay out of Los Angeles. Their detail is going along normal as always when they investigate the mysterious death of Allison Pond (Jennifer Connelly), a young woman Hoover has a past with, one that his loving wife Kate (Melanie Griffith) knows nothing about it. Investigating Alison Pond’s life leads to discovery of certain films secretly taken at her apartment and the trail leads them out to the desert and the top secret testing site of the Atomic Energy Commission led by General Thomas Timms (John Malkovich) resulting in the discovery of a much bigger conspiracy altogether.

MULHOLLAND FALLS was released by MGM at the end of April 1996 when I imagine production of the following year’s L.A. CONFIDENTIAL was ramping up and I guess we should be grateful some producer on that film didn’t look at the results of what had just come out and decide to quash the whole thing. A production that seems all the more promising due to the names involved (in addition to the cast there’s production designer Richard Sylbert, cinematographer Haskell Wexler and Floyd Mutrux who is listed for co-story in what appears to be his last screen credit to date) there also are a surprising amount of unbilled bits by recognizable faces giving the impression that this was a project that just exuded a certain coolness at the time, a chance to play in the world of noir for a little while. This kind of period piece seems to have a great deal of potential but these cool characters wind up feeling like they’ve gotten the wrong movie to star in and MULLHOLLAND FALLS doesn’t leave much of any kind of impression, making it ultimately little more than a chance to see some decent actors wear hats and drive around L.A. And then they drive around some more.

Director Lee Tamohori (ONCE WERE WARRIORS, THE EDGE, DIE ANOTHER DAY) seems to have a knack for working with actors but doesn’t display any particular affinity for the material while the screenplay (story by Pete Dexter and Floyd Mutrux, screenplay by Pete Dexter) has potential with the occasional speech that offers genuine bite but it feels like too much may have been bled out via rewrites and studio notes. It was also edited by the late, great Sally Menke and individual sections often play fine with certain edits within scenes in particular showing off how good she was but the entire picture doesn’t coalesce, as if a reel or two was accidentally left out of the release version (Glenn Erickson at DVD Savant seems to have been in the know on the production and confirms that cuts were made). Nothing really connects very much—the central mystery involving Connelly is never as enigmatic as it seems it might be at first and any metaphor, whether connected to the nature of the film’s title or the atomic age imagery, just comes off as a void like that huge pit in the middle of the desert courtesy of a test blast that the squad stops to gape at.

CHINATOWN explored the rape of Los Angeles via the use of water and what that meant for the growing city. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL contained all the passions that emerged from its collision of law and vice. MULHOLLAND FALLS looks nice, I’ll give it that much, but that’s just about all it has so any of the specific points meant to dig into what it’s ‘about’ never really come together. As directed the film doesn’t seem to pay much attention to how much of a brute the lead character is, a thug who falls for this woman who could be a part of his world in a way that his wife couldn’t, that he didn’t want her to be. The sight of her falling for him instantly as he injects something unknown but presumably deadly into a thug has an undeniable charge but it never seems to know a way to probe into these feelings. The movie doesn’t seem to notice much about the characters at all, so elements like Palminteri’s Coolidge being obsessed with psychology as part of his anger management is just left to dangle there, an attempt at letting a particular actor steal the film when maybe it should be paying attention to making the plot more compelling. There’s no heat, no passion so it all stays as tight as the brim on Nick Nolte’s hat. It’s easy to believe that he’s haunted by his affair with Jennifer Connelly because, well, who wouldn’t be but there’s no particular heat from any of it, no believable element of passion. Quick flashes we get of the affair isn’t enough and instead we continually go back to those home movies taken of Allison, looking for clues in them just like searching for meaning in this film. Some spare moments are intriguing like Nolte discussing with Griffith how Hemingway wrote women or Palminteri musing about going to westerns as a child (I’m wondering if he’s too old to have seen Gene Autry in the movies when he was a kid, but never mind) but these moments are too isolated, feeling like refugees from a more intriguing, more resonant storyline.

The period feel is pulled off pretty well just as the L.A. location work is always interesting to look at but it also comes off as phony at times, like the early shot of the Squad driving down Wilshire Blvd. on the wrong side of the street. Still, some of what we do get to see is just another reason that I wish that the story was something that didn’t involve going out to the desert for all that atomic stuff. In particular, Hoover’s house is tucked away near where I live in Los Feliz on a residential street that I’ve always admired because of the vintage nature of the homes—since the film was made the house next door has been torn down and a new one built (the replacement is pretty ugly and would never be considered period appropriate if another production came around). Allison Pond’s apartment complex is actually just a few blocks away from Hoover’s, close enough that he could have easily snuck over to his mistresses’ place on foot in the middle of the night if he’d wanted to. I want to give MULHOLLAND FALLS some credit for at least being a period drama aimed at adults set in the always fascinating world of L.A. noir, unlike the awful GANGSTER SQUAD which went over some of the same historical detail in the most moronic way possible and even featured Nick Nolte playing the police chief role Bruce Dern appears in here. But just because you have serious goals it doesn’t automatically make the result any better and just because symbolism is aimed for it doesn’t mean the result will be any deeper. I don’t have any particular animosity towards the film and I honestly did enjoy some of this revisit because of the sort of film it is while acknowledging how little of it came close to being a satisfying watch, just like how I’ve always secretly liked the catchy Dave Grusin score even though what feels like the composer reaching for Goldsmith doing CHINATOWN winds up sounding a little too much like 70s TV. The metaphor of the title seems to connect somehow with the way certain people are thrown to their death more than once from an airplane and…yeah? You got anything here? The point of the movie feels missing like a phantom limb—the metaphor of the atomic age in KISS ME DEADLY was potent and still is now. In spite of the portents within the speechifying by John Malkovich’s General Tims talking about how atoms are made up of empty space (well, there’s inadvertently stating a theme if I ever heard it) not much of it seems to mean anything so when the credits roll it’s hard not to think, ‘that’s it?’ Something’s missing. Maybe it’s a scene that reveals why this movie exists, why this story needed to be told. What is this movie really about in the end? It feels like the answer was lost somewhere along the way so all that’s left is the sight of good actors getting to dress up like they’re in a 50s noir. Which is nice and all but it’s not enough. It’s a mysterious briefcase that looks expensive and inside is, well, nothing.

MULHOLLAND FALLS is also a reminder that a great cast doing very solid work does not automatically mean that the film itself is going to work. The four leads all look like they’d be right at home in a movie about the Hat Squad actually made in the 50s which makes it more of a shame. Nick Nolte does excellent work that lets us see the cracks beneath his hard exterior every now and then as if that damn hat he’s always wearing is some sort of shield to keep people seeing what he’s really obsessing over. Chazz Palminteri (during that ’95-’96 period when he was in seemingly half the films released) is an enjoyable chatterbox going on long after his partners have lost interest in whatever he’s saying but it feels unfortunate how it throws off the balance—as a result Michael Madsen and Chris Penn look continually ready to go into action but don’t get to do very much, more or less disappearing during the second hour. Jennifer Connelly looks about as jaw-droppingly stunning as she ever did (hard not to think of this as her character from THE ROCKETEER meeting an unfortunate end) but with just a few actual scenes is more of an image than anything. Melanie Griffith doesn’t get to do much either but it’s a dud role, really—she’s playing the second choice to Jennifer Connelly and that’s what she is too but the movie doesn’t do anything to transcend this feeling. Andrew McCarthy offers the scraps of what looks like a strong performance but he’s discarded with pretty quickly. Treat Williams as a colonel at the military base seems like he’s going to be an interesting character at first but is really just a cardboard bad guy. Kyle Chandler, now a familiar face, appears as William’s aide but he doesn’t make much of an impression either. John Malkovich is as enigmatic as you’d expect John Malkovich to be but it somehow seems like it’s in the wrong movie—still, it does make me imagine him playing the Albert Dekker role in KISS ME DEADLY so maybe that’s where he should be giving this performance. Daniel Baldwin offers appropriate arrogant slime as a federal agent. Production designer Richard Sylbert appears onscreen as the coroner and has a few nice bits. Familiar face Ed Lauter turns up long enough to get immediately shot and killed, another indication of what might have been cut. Maybe he’s playing his ROCKETEER character too. Along with Bruce Dern as the police chief William Petersen, Rob Lowe and Louise Fletcher also turn up for unbilled bits. In his autobiography Bruce Dern (quite good here, just to say) briefly mentions the title then says he doesn’t want to talk about the film. Maybe that sums it up best.

Not yet twenty years on since its release MULHOLLAND FALLS hasn’t aged badly so much as unfortunately playing about as ineffectual as it did on opening weekend. What do you say to sum up a film where you can’t think of much to say about it in the first place? Maybe the end credits should include a recommendation of non-fiction books that cover the historical period depicted here. “This isn’t America. This is L.A.” growls Nick Nolte near the very beginning. That line has resonance in the end as Nolte realizes how there really are powers greater than him, even in the City of Angels. But it still deserved a better movie. In the meantime I’ll just have to live with dreams of Jennifer Connelly. Dreams of cinematic images depicting the neighborhood I live in. Dreams of the better movie I wish this was as I sit up late at night, wondering what this town used to be like seen through the prism of Hollywood, faced with the reality of what it is now.

Like A Shooting Star

It took a few years for the 80s to become the 80s, as far as films were concerned anyway. Many major studio releases during the first few years of the decade feel like they’re just beginning to branch away from the feel of the 70s but there’s still some of that roughness in the air and the future doesn’t seem completely formed just yet. The montages that we remember from the likes of TOOTSIE or NIGHT SHIFT are still done with that sort of Grusin/Shire/Bacharach easy listening vibe that feels like remnants of the very 70s world of AN UNMARRIED WOMAN--an excellent film and one I should write about one of these days but still very much a part of that decade. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this (to prove it I will now go for a walk listening to the TOOTSIE score on my iPod. All right, I’m back) but with some distance you do get a feel of how certain movies fit into exactly when they were made whether intentionally or not. If 1984 wasn’t the most 80s year of that decade it at least feels like the year where what we remember the 80s to be blossomed full bore. And looked at that way Robert Zemeckis’ ROMANCING THE STONE, released 3/30/84, could almost be considered one of the first real 80s movies. How much you consider this to be either praise or criticism, maybe I should leave up to you. Hell, even I’m not entirely certain. Maybe better described as CHARADE in the jungle than the RAIDERS knockoff the ads presented it as, the plot of ROMANCING THE STONE feels so slickly assembled to the point that there really isn’t much substance in the film at all and at times it feels like it was designed strictly for the purpose of demonstrating structure insisted on in screenwriting books, many of which didn’t even exist yet. Having said that, there’s not a wasted moment through the entire running time in a way that is genuinely admirable and revisiting it now it’s a very entertaining film which is no easy feat even if there’s still not a lot of meat on the bones. Do you care? Does anyone? It’s still pretty good. At the very least, I don’t regret the five bucks I paid for the Blu-ray at Target. Maybe sometimes it makes sense to study these things.

Shy New York romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner), who lives all her romantic fantasies within the books she writes, is forced to go to Columbia when her kidnapped sister Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor) desperately needs a certain treasure map which was mailed to Joan from the country by her recently murdered husband. Once Joan lands she is immediately sent in the wrong direction by villainous Colonel Zolo (Manuel Ojeda) who clearly is after the map himself and soon meets up with bird smuggler Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) who is the only one that can help her get out of the jungle to help Elaine. But soon they are on the run from Zolo and his army as well as antique smuggler Ralph (Danny DeVito) who is trailing her close behind but once Jack becomes aware of the map he soon comes up with his own plan for the two of them to go after what it leads to.

The deleted material included in the special features section on the ROMANCING THE STONE Blu-ray, presented without explanation, is particularly interesting since it seems to consist solely of rough versions of scenes that were later reshot using some of the same dialogue but played completely differently. Certain visual clues in this footage make me wonder if a good amount of the film’s structure in its first half may have been arrived at after the fact in the editing room and reshoots—in particular, lots of information seems to have been consolidated into when Joan and Jack hide out overnight in the downed plane hull to allow for more emphasis on chases and banter at other points so things don’t get overly bogged down in exposition. The final versions of these scenes in the finished film almost inarguably play better than the discarded footage without exception—humdrum scenes involving Joan Wilder and her male book editor have been replaced in the finished film by much snappier material featuring Holland Taylor in the role—getting right to the point in stronger ways, all serving as a reminder that these films don’t just fall from the sky fully formed. As it plays now, ROMANCING THE STONE (written by Diane Thomas although several other writers including Lem Dobbs reportedly worked on it uncredited) wastes no time with its plot and moves startlingly fast with Swiss watch-level pacing that has helped it to age pretty well, playing as continually engaging along with being bolstered by a cast that gives it lots of energy, not to mention the obvious chemistry between the two leads. It’s tight, well-assembled (credit for this pacing should go to editors Donn Cambern and Frank Morriss as well), exciting, constantly moving and continually enjoyable. Even if the building blocks of the structure feel much more apparent to me than it once did the way it pulls that off feels a little like a lost art now when so many films going for the same goals are both dumbed down or drag on interminably past the two-hour mark.

Sure, some of it moves fast enough that it’s probably pointless to ask logic questions. A maintenance man in Joan’s building is killed off early on but you can bet that’s never heard about again. The scenes involving Holland Taylor’s editor, all sharp and funny, seem comprised of dialogue that is at least three-quarters blatant exposition. Even the detour involving the kindly drug runner played by the always enjoyable Alfonso Arau doesn’t pause to let the characters sit down to discuss things just giving it enough time for the bad guys to show up and let them make their getaway (I particularly like Arau pointing out sights in his tiny village during the chase). I’m particularly hazy about the logic behind some of what happens around the 70 minute mark and any suspense the film tries for over what Jack Colton’s real motivation might be for going after the stone (where the title of the film more or less comes from) never amounts to much of anything. And though some of the dialogue is just a little too broad at times like Joan Wilder’s “I went to college,” response to finding marijuana in the downed plane, the chemistry between the characters—all of them, not just the two leads—makes the film endearing, more than it might have been in other hands. Maybe not so politically correct in its portrayal of life in South America (hey, it was the 80s, who cared about political correctness?) but in its own slick style the film achieves exactly what it’s supposed to throughout.

ROMANCING THE STONE opened in fourth place on opening weekend at the very end of March 1984 so maybe the heavily RAIDERS approach to the marketing campaign didn’t get people excited right off the bat but I’m going to assume good reviews and word of mouth resulted in the film playing for months even after TEMPLE OF DOOM arrived in theaters. By the time the big summer guns began to emerge in June it was still hanging around the top ten finally coming in eighth place for the year. A film that knows how to get right to the point in scene after scene, there’s not an ounce of fat in there and it keeps the plot moving, knowing all the right beats to bring out character detail as well. Yes, some of it is a little broad now and, yes, it’s really not a deep film although I can’t imagine anyone wanted it to be. And, yes, this is a for-hire gig for Robert Zemeckis who buries much of the manic Preston Sturges style of the earlier scripts he co-wrote with Bob Gale and directed himself (I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, USED CARS; they also wrote the screenplay for 1941) to make this that much more of a mainstream commercial entertainment. Even the character beats like Colton pining for dreams of the boat he wants to sail away on feel nicely doled out.

The deleted scenes do make me wonder how much of the original material was about Joan Wilder finding her dream man and how much it was meant to tweak that notion since in the end Jack Colton seems to bring Joan Wilder out of her shell as opposed to serving as the rugged fantasy hero she dreams of from her books that will save her in the end. His introduction seems designed to deliberately resemble how the book’s hero ‘Jesse’ appears on the cover of those books but Zemeckis seems all right with tossing away the moment--Turner even seems to play the beat as recognizing the image but the director doesn’t hold on her response. Douglas is even a few beats too late to save her at the climax, arriving just after she’s already accomplished the job herself. It is her story after all and while I’m not sure how interested Zemeckis ever was in any feminist viewpoint at least the movie remembers this much. Not bothering to pause even as the plot winds down (Joan’s sister Elaine is presumably ok at the end, but we just kind of have to assume), the period of time between the middle of the final fight and when the credits roll is less than ten minutes. No point in sticking around, the film seems to be saying. Jack and Joan had fun, you had fun, now let’s go to dinner. Was there a better date movie in 1984? Probably not. Yes, the Zemeckis-Gale scripts offer more in repeat viewings than this does but that’s of minor concern (the overall shallowness of certain Zemeckis films is something that I’m still pondering). Incidentally, when Fox first saw the film they thought so little of it that they fired the director off of his next project for the studio, COCOON and when ROMANCING was a hit he was finally able to get BACK TO THE FUTURE, which he had already co-written with Bob Gale, going elsewhere. Maybe there were more problems in that early cut than we realize but it’s also a reminder that in this business you just never know.

One of the most successful and likable characterizations of Kathleen Turner’s career, revisiting this performance is a reminder of how perfect she would have fit in during Hollywood’s golden age. She pulls off the correct balance between her character’s insecurities and whatever assertiveness pulls out, selling the let-down-her-hair transformation just right. Michael Douglas plays his role as totally confident, ready for big-screen stardom and with no problem in occasionally looking foolish during the climax which manages to make him seem even cooler. Between the two of them, it’s a certain kind of movie star chemistry that just doesn’t happen very much anymore. Danny DeVito, coming hot off TAXI with maybe his first really good Danny DeVito role in a film, gets laughs in practically every moment while Zack Norman (as in, “Zack Norman Plays Sammy in ‘Chief Zabu’”) as Ira gets the right sort of slimy, canny intelligence to his smuggler while getting laughs as well. At one point he has a well-played speech about main bad guy Zolo which implies more characterization than we ever really get from the one-dimensional portrayal but Manuel Ojeda still offers an intriguing presence with relatively little dialogue. Alfonso Arau, also in Zemeckis’ USED CARS, kills in every moment he has like the scene stealer his character is clearly meant to be and Holland Taylor spits out all that exposition in the opening scenes like a total pro.

The very 80s sax courtesy of composer Alan Silvestri (who provides a solid score with hints of his later work for BACK TO THE FUTURE and PREDATOR) that accompanies the end credits reminds me of a girl I once lent my old DVD of the film to who never gave it back. Actually, later on she claimed that I had said she could have it. Maybe I could seek her out to learn the truth, but best to let this one lie (hence my picking up this Blu-ray for five dollars). Anyway, she clearly had a fondness for the film and I’m sure others out there do too. Funny, exciting and fast-moving with endearing lead characters maybe ROMANCING THE STONE is exactly what it should be. ROMANCING THE STONE of course was followed by the non-Zemeckis THE JEWEL OF THE NILE less than two years later which was also a hit but no one seems to remember that film now, Billy Ocean music video aside. A remake has been in the works for some time now and I’ll bet somewhere in the halls over on the Fox lot in Century City it still is. The 80s are long over (thankfully) but somewhere someone tries to keep them alive. ROMANCING THE STONE is the sort of film that people still want to be there as a sort of comfort food, just like whatever Joan Wilder is dreaming about in her Upper West Side apartment. Nothing too wrong with that, I suppose.

What Was Going To Prevail

There was an unofficial blogger get together held at the Formosa Café the night before this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival began. I was invited but went without RSVPing, not knowing if I would actually go in, not knowing if I would stay, not knowing if I would just poke my head in for a minute then turn and leave as a few spare people wondered if they actually saw me. Sometimes I’m like that and this was one of those times. As things turned out some of those people seemed happy that I was there and I stayed for much longer than intended. I didn’t close down the place or anything but it was a pleasure to not only meet some of them but also learn that they knew who I was and enjoyed my work. Maybe I’m terrible at taking compliments but this meant a great deal and the only real drawback is knowing that you’re not going to spend as much time during the festival with them as you’d like. The sudden realization that you really are among friends can be a very good feeling and it was on that night even as I left several hours later still only partly feeling like I belonged in that crowd.

Its fifth annual event in the heart of Hollywood now a few weeks in the past, the TCM Classic Film Festival is wonderful and exhausting in all the best possible ways. Of course, you have to make choices during that long weekend which ran April 10-13 and they’re not always easy, made even less easy when you’re trying to get in on the standby line like I was. Upwards of six films or other programs going on all at once and your own decisions of scheduling have to be precise so it all flows from one into the next. But there are choices you sometimes have to make, regardless of what surrounds it. This year, I made a few. I got to see Paula Prentiss speak before a screening of THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT along with Merrie Spaeth, one of the girls from the film. Alan Arkin was there for a full discussion about his career as well as turning up before a showing of THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Joe Dante introduced the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, covering a number of topics from the history of the film to his own friendships with the film’s star Kevin McCarthy who appeared in a number of his films. William Friedkin presented the premiere of the restoration of his phenomenal 1977 film SORCERER, playing in the Chinese for the first time since 1977 when it was the film that followed STAR WARS into the house and was booted out a few weeks later for the return of STAR WARS. Now I can cross that one off my bucket list. There were others as well, not to mention choices I ultimately didn’t make. But of the ones I did, Jerry Lewis appearing before a screening of his masterpiece THE NUTTY PROFESSOR was maybe the most important, meaning that I had no problem whatsoever getting to the standby line well over two hours of showtime where I wasn’t even at the very front of it (I was #7, for the record). As I was standing there in front of the El Capitan on Hollywood Blvd a massive swarm of people emerged from the theater who had just viewed a screening of HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY with Maureen O’Hara in person and a few of those who I briefly talked to seemed genuinely moved by the experience. Hard not to envy them for that but I had to do what I had to do. This was Jerry Lewis after all.

And what we got was worth the wait. Coming several hours after he placed his hands in the cement in front of the legendary Chinese Theatre, the interview conducted by Illeana Douglas (whose “Second Looks” series on TCM last May showed that she should be a much more regular presence on the channel) was clearly a highlight of this year’s festival. Douglas was genuinely emotional as she introduced him and, considering what a notoriously difficult interview subject Lewis sometimes is, it was a thoroughly engaging discussion with the legend, covering multiple areas of his long career starting with his relationship with his father and partnership with Dean Martin, moving into directing and the open set policy that allowed fans to come and watch his films being shot as well as even touching on how he essentially took charge of all the talk show sequences in Martin Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY. Of course, since we were about to see THE NUTTY PROFESSOR part of the talk also focused on that film as Illeana Douglas discussed with Jerry his feelings on the character of Julius Kelp and female lead Stella Stevens as well as his opinion on possibly his greatest cinematic creation, Buddy Love -- “I HATED HIM!” was the immediate response.

Many have speculated about the origins of the character with the long-standing speculation that it was a dig at Dean Martin in spite of how Buddy Love never resembles Martin’s onscreen persona or even anything that’s ever been written about him. Other names have also been mentioned but what makes the most sense considering how personal THE NUTTY PROFESSOR feels, with a story that always has more edge than any of the other films Lewis directed, is how much the characters are essentially two warring sides of himself, the kindly nebbish that is Kelp with the utter monster that is Buddy Love. And he is a monster oozing with contempt for everyone around him, male and female but what has stayed with me for many years is a late night talk I had with a friend long ago where, probably after I’d been moaning about whatever frustrations I was feeling at the time, he bluntly and seriously stated that the best way to get tips on how to picking girls was to study Jerry as Buddy Love in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. This was after several drinks of course of course and when I reminded him about this much later on he acted somewhat embarrassed by the whole thing. But there was truth to what he said, ugly as it was. I just try to never remember a single word of it. That ugly truth is probably a big reason why the film, and both of those characters, has lasted longer than any of Jerry’s other films.

Whatever their ultimate qualities, nearly all of the films that Jerry Lewis directed play as extremely personal now. Not just in their portrayal of his screen persona as nebbish battling the world around him but in how he also sees that world—the eye-popping colors, the big brassy music, the episodic nature, the bellowing men in suits, the presence of Kathleen Freeman, the ingénues who will eventually express their love for him while Jerry as director treats them as gently as possible. THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, written by Lewis and Bill Richmond, is the one that goes further. Telling the story of Dr. Julius Kelp and his quest to better himself resulting in this Dr. Jekyll giving birth to the Mr. Hyde known as Buddy Love, much of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR in any number of ways isn’t that different from the films that Jerry was directing at Paramount in the early 60s during the height of his powers. But THE NUTTY PROFESSOR stands out from the likes of THE LADIES’ MAN and THE PATSY which, much as I like them, do have a tendency to blend together through their episodic nature sometimes. THE NUTTY PROFESSOR is the one where everything he throws at the camera he’s playing for comes together with total directorial confidence in how he plays the straight horror movie elements, particularly the first-person camerawork building up to our first look at Love, and the gags throughout feel that much more integral to the story. Even the occasional indulgence like Kelp’s fantasy sequence of the Stella Stevens’ Stella Purdy parading an array of fashions plays as uniquely personal, an honest examination of whatever is going on inside Jerry Lewis’ (or Julius Kelp’s or Buddy Love’s) head.

And the setup is also the most ingenious way for Jerry Lewis to get around the use of his own screen persona as he got older—whether playing the idiot kid we usually think of him or those times in the 60s when he tried to somehow play a ‘normal’ person which never quite took and never really worked until Martin Scorsese took what we imagine ‘Jerry’ to be and appropriated it for THE KING OF COMEDY. But even within the midst of this dual character study it is continually clear how much he loves his (largely recurring) supporting cast. In the case of Stella Stevens his camera seems to literally gaze at her like none of his other leading ladies and he’s more than happy to let her gaze right back. The result is the best work of Stevens’ career, an undeniable bombshell and yet one with enough canniness to know that she can’t quite figure out what the deal is with Buddy Love and is still somehow drawn to him. One of the unexpected joys of seeing this film on such a huge screening was getting to pay attention to a particular shot holding on Del Moore shuffling papers for no particular reason and Kathleen Freeman, whose initial appearance caused the audience at the El Capitan to go bonkers, practically walks off with the film without even really doing anything. No matter what the film, it feels like Lewis as director is rarely as happy as when he gets to put Kathleen Freeman in front of the camera and Jerry’s obvious fondness for her makes you wonder about latter day quotes from him saying women can’t be funny. And Lewis as director makes the most of every moment making certain shots almost unexpectedly painterly at times, particularly the color scheme in the Purple Pit (maybe my favorite movie nightclub of all time) which should probably be studied in schools. Late in the film as Julius Kelp swallows down some emergency formula his choking face slam cuts to a trombone being played as part of Les Brown’s Band of Renown at the big dance—that’s Jerry’s directorial style. Trombone in your face. Pay attention. This is cinema.

Some of the moments where Buddy Love challenges whoever crosses his threshold goes beyond mere comedy to a place that sticks causing it to linger long past the point when Jerry Lewis trips and crashes into the camera at the very end. THE NUTTY PROFESSOR is funny, yes, and when you have a scene like Julius Kelp dancing or somehow trying to deal with his hangover analysis really isn’t necessary but it’s more than that. Just over fifty years after it was made, the film is a knockout. It deserves to be thought of as his masterwork. If anything, in spite of how it’s the one of his that’s remembered, it’s been underrated through the years, maybe because of whatever people think of Jerry Lewis as actor, director, personality at this point in time. Whether intentional or not, some of the film did manage to tie into the overall theme of this year’s TCM Festival which was “Family in the Movies”, well represented by the likes of MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES as well as my first ever viewing of I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER which had Illeana Douglas introducing a performance her grandfather Melvyn was nominated for an Oscar. But since it was possibly an unintentional connection the placement of THE NUTTY PROFESSOR of all this comes from another place with the realization that a good portion of Julius Kelp’s personality that he has to work through comes from seeing his parents as a baby. At the end of the film, as an adult, he’s almost more befuddled than ever. But he has Stella Purdy, ready to help him move on in the world, a few spare bottles along to help when needed. After all, sometimes you need a little help to Be Somebody. Nothing wrong with that, either. Just figure out some sort of balance.

At one point during the interview Illeana Douglas asked Jerry his film THE DELICATE DELINQUENT, the first solo film he made after his partnership with Dean Martin ended and in which the story pauses at one point to allow him to sing a song called, “By Myself” the meaning of which is fairly obvious. Jerry confirmed this, saying that it was important to him to let the audience know that even if he was now alone, everything was going to be ok. Sometimes you’re by yourself and you need to be. Sometimes you find yourself among the right people and it couldn’t be more right. Both of those feelings sometimes work, just as there needs to be a middle ground somewhere between Julius Kelp and Buddy Love. The TCM Classic Film Festival is an event filled with people who love films, breathe films, bleed films, a passion that matters. And there is a feeling of family in all that, even if it’s only with someone you connect with for a few minutes at the Formosa. Plus they honored Jerry. And that’s a good thing. Illeana Douglas’ last question to him, referring back to Julius Kelp’s realization that, “You may as well like yourself, think about all the time you’re going to have to spend with you,” for the final question of the talk Illeana Douglas asked Jerry, “Do you like yourself?” to which he responded with an enthusiastic, “Yeah!” Anyone who knows much about Jerry Lewis must know that the answer is more complicated than that but this appearance seemed to present a man, a legend, who was at peace somehow and treated like the king of comedy he truly is. And that’s another thing the TCM Festival was able to do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been meaning to finally try an Alaskan Polar Bear Heater.

Few And Far Between

You can’t always get what you want, as Hugh Laurie says to Lisa Edelstein in the pilot episode of HOUSE, that’s for sure. Life isn’t fair that way. We go to the movies to forget sometimes. We also write films where we wind up with the girl we always wanted, win the race that we never could, to be as good as we always want to be in what our dreams are, all that Heroes Journey nonsense and all that. But it doesn’t happen in life. Sometimes the films that stick to the ribs the most remember that they’re not trying to spoon feed us that sort of nice, pleasant, hopeful story, instead providing something bitter that makes us think about all the things we presumably go to the movies to forget about. Sometimes we don’t want those films. But sometimes they’re what we need.

I’ve always wondered what Billy Wilder thought of A SIMPLE PLAN, assuming that he saw it of course. He was still alive when the film was released in December 1998, after all, and it always seemed to me that it might be right up his alley, a portrayal of humanity at its bleakest and most pessimistic. It’s even the sort of film I could imagine he would have wanted to make, not that I can picture that director willingly spending much time in rural Minnesota in the dead of winter at whatever age he was then. The immortal DOUBLE INDEMNITY is of course the obvious comparison point for Wilder’s career as is ACE IN THE HOLE but I also think of the ever-increasing layers of pure, uncut cynicism that encroached on his films as he got older, even the comedies, in a way that made it sometimes seem like an all-encompassing view of humanity as he moved towards his winter years. Though directors including Mike Nichols, Ben Stiller and John Boorman had been attached to the project over the years, A SIMPLE PLAN was ultimately directed by Sam Raimi and it arrived in theaters almost four years after his previous film, the western THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. It had been even longer than that since I had sold him a copy of the paperback of the novel “A Simple Plan” by Scott Smith at a bookstore I was working at in Brentwood back in those days, as I’ve written about before. THE QUICK AND THE DEAD was not a box office success and this return to directing (the intervening years saw him working in television including executive producing the HERCULES and XENA shows) was a drastic departure from his previous films, dialing down the stylistic extremes of his visual style known from the all-holy EVIL DEAD series to practically nothing, essentially plunking the camera down on sticks and simply photographing the actors.

It was almost as if making this film was an experiment Raimi chose to conduct on himself to see what else he had to offer if his bag of tricks was taken away, making it not the Sam Raimi film for people who don’t like Sam Raimi films so much as Sam Raimi trying to find out what would happen if he tried to not make a ‘Sam Raimi film’. It also seems notable that once when asked to name his favorite film in an interview he chose John Huston’s THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, the influence of which can most definitely be seen in the film he made. What he accomplished was better than might have been expected, showing that he really did have something more to offer than the (admittedly brilliant) visual insanity of his earlier films which contained a feel of genuine, unmistakable humanity surrounding its darkness. Revisiting A SIMPLE PLAN after a number of years away I found myself having a complicated response to the film, as if now that I’m older some of the conclusions it reaches are that much more unpleasant to face. But the story still contains an enormously potent sting along with an undeniable power within its own simplicity.

During a cold rural Minnesota winter Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) is paying a New Years’ Eve visit to his parents’ grave with his brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) when after a truck mishap the three chase after Jacob’s dog into the nearby woods. Soon they come across a small downed airplane which contains the body of the dead pilot and, more surprisingly, a bag containing over $4 million dollars in cash. After arguing over what to do with their newfound, and very probably stolen, riches the three agree to hold onto the money until the inevitable time the plane is found by the authorities and see who, if anyone, might be looking for the money. Hank shares the secret with pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) but things begin to go wrong almost immediately resulting in a further cover up of what they’ve done, an insistent Lou demanding his share and the ever watchful eye of the law represented by the local Sheriff (Chelcie Ross) as well as a suspicious FBI agent (Gary Cole) looking for a plane he’s heard went down in the area for reasons that he won’t reveal.

An offhand moment close to the midway point has Jacob enter the wrong hospital room when he arrives to visit Bridget Fonda’s Sarah who has just had her baby. None of these people are any different from each other, the moment seems to indicate, and it’s a key theme of A SIMPLE PLAN (screenplay by Scott Smith adapting his own novel) but of course Bill Paxton’s Hank discovers pretty quickly that he is different from others, just in the worst possible ways. A SIMPLE PLAN, like George A. Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, begins with a trip a few siblings take to visit a parents’ grave and in both cases what occurs as a result is a complete and irrevocable break of that family unit, even if that family unit wasn’t very strong in the first place. And in this film the appearance by literal zombies aren’t necessary for this to happen. Hank expresses surprise that brother Jacob has been out to the cemetery recently, leaving Jacob to point out that nothing ever says that they only can go out there on the specific day tradition dictates. Hank, smart as he thinks he is, figures everything always has to go according to plan and that the rules state things are always going to get better as if just waiting while letting out the air out of his car’s tires as he demonstrates to Jacob in one scene, is going to make it all work out. No one emerges from A SIMPLE PLAN unscathed. Not even a kind thought or noble gesture comes out of it in one piece, no attempt to make things better works out. You can’t lose anything by trying, a character states at one point, and if A SIMPLE PLAN reveals anything it’s that can be all you really need to lose.

It’s a harsh and bitter lesson that the film passes along about what money does, what lying does to the soul, with a little bit of GREED along with TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE as well. To be honest that lesson has more sting for me now than it once did and returning to it now I’m not only struck by that realization but also in wondering if maybe a few of the more drastic actions barely even a half-hour into the film are a little too much to swallow at first, even in the context of a dark crime drama, to the point that I almost found myself briefly checking out this time around while wondering about certain characters’ immediate acceptance of such horrific events. But as the film goes on and the quicksand they’re caught in gets increasingly deeper I find myself accepting what they wind up doing even more, cringing as I become all the more aware of the desperate humanity evident in even the most horrific moments as they turn on each other. And these aren’t even just moments of extreme jeopardy but when Hank learns the truth about certain things, about his families past, as wife Sarah plots their next move while holding their newborn and the desperation just zeroes in on their faces. It’s those faces that the film pays attention to. Very little else about A SIMPLE PLAN tries to be particularly distinctive visually outside of the oppressive feel of all that snow, very few images seem designed to call attention to themselves outside of those crows flying over the plane (maybe a bit much, actually, revisiting the film now).

More than anything in directing the film Raimi seems to be paying attention to the text and through that paying attention to the actors saying those lines and performing those horrible actions, almost making them as responsible for the film as he is. Instead of the elaborate camera moves he is so known for in the past, here a simple cut to a close up of characters at certain points saying all that needs to be said with Danny Elfman’s score trickling around the edges of scenes with Hank not knowing exactly how much he should be worrying at one time or another along with subtly effective camera work by DP Alar Kivilo (who also shot Harold Ramis’ THE ICE HARVEST, another dark tale co-starring Billy Bob Thornton about people in wintery conditions scrambling after stolen money). With the exception of a few very specific moments it’s maybe the one Sam Raimi film that doesn’t feel prepared within an inch of his life (a reminder that I must revisit his 2000 film THE GIFT which was co-written by Billy Bob Thornton) and he seems more willing to let its actors move around the edges of the frame than ever before. A few scenes feel almost a little too loose as a result, as if he maybe could have gotten more coverage from other angles but chose to go with a simpler overall approach with his pleasure at suspense coming through on occasion like getting the pleasure out of being stuck in that plane or fumbling around looking for the right sort of bullet for a gun. And he pulls off a few confrontations that are almost unbearably tense in their messy realism, even on repeat viewings, as a result. Almost most surprising about this very dark film is how it feels like he made a decision to not go overboard on the blood at certain points, as if he wanted to focus on the performances in the midst of this carnage as opposed to setting up the squibs for the takes with even certain particularly grisly moments occurring in partial darkness.

In some ways the film for Raimi seems to be as much of an attempt as what his old friends the Coen Brothers did with the snowbound setting of FARGO and the kidnapping-gone-wrong plot in the background of this film seems like some sort of mirror of that film’s inciting incident—another time and another place maybe the Coens would have been the filmmakers to attempt the more sober version of this sort of story. Even a few specific moments here oddly correlate to FARGO, as if attempting to provide a non-arch mirror to the earlier film – Paxton trying to truthfully explain something illogical to an irate customer recalls William H. Macy and his sneaky unloading of the Truecoat as does a moment of Paxton collecting himself before calling the police after something horrible has happened, not trying to feign tears but silently rehearsing for the lies that have to come. The intent is different of course, just as where the two films resolve themselves. FARGO finds some sort of redemption in its carnage, delicacy in the lead character played by Frances McDormand, the impending arrival of her baby and her husband with the 2 cent stamp. A SIMPLE PLAN has a pregnant character as well only any sense of purity and innocence that we got from a glimpse of her belly early on is gone by the end. Also unlike FARGO, the baby has already arrived when it ends but there’s no sense of redemption coming from the cries heard in the next room.

The original novel is arguably even more cynical and any film made from it could have taken things to further extremes. One character exits the book much earlier and this adjustment to the film seems correct in how it makes it much more about the two brothers and a liquor store climax in the book which takes everything to its logical, most horrific extreme, read as vividly cinematic (it wouldn’t have been at all out of place in the blood soaked Tarantino 90s) and yet I can understand why it was left out. Maybe someone felt that it was a few steps too far but more than that as things have played out once the films key relationship reaches its climactic point the story is in effect over. Nothing else really matters.

A TV news report early in the film pertaining to the plot is followed by a lighter item in which the onscreen anchor opens with ‘playful pooches or killer canines’, a question that seems like an editorial comment from the film on the characters of Hank and Jacob. This bit of dark humor almost feels like one of the only blatantly Raimi-like touches in the film, instead focusing on how horrific it all is. It’s those close-ups that linger, the questions of what it really costs to have a life, to be happy—Hank repeatedly telling Jacob that it’ll be ok and just stick to the story, Jacob’s admission that he’s never kissed a girl, Sarah stating flat out to Hank what their future holds if he lets this slip away, Hank realizing in his own face what he has to do at the very end. There’s no chance for hope and although no one wanders off into madness like Edward G. Robinson after his crimes in Fritz Lang’s SCARLET STREET maybe the punishment here is worse. No one else is going to come after the characters who remain technically unscathed after the end credits roll. They just have to live their lives.

In some ways it’s hard not to think of Bill Paxton in this film as partly also about Paxton wanting to be the leading man, correctly coming off as ‘normal’ and eager (this reminds me of how good he was in last year’s 2 GUNS playing a, well, supporting role), trying to get everyone to go along with his plan but things just can’t go in a straight line. He imbues the role with a sense of decency that gets totally misplaced before the character even realizes it and as the rock up against his two main co-stars with showier parts he's goddamn heartbreaking. Billy Bob Thornton, playing a role that caused someone I saw it with at the time turn to men forty-five minutes in asking when Billy Bob Thornton was going to show up, takes this goofy looking guy with barely a decent idea in the world and infuses him with not just an unexpected layer of intelligence, like during a key scene where he lays in on his brother for a reason that it isn’t entirely clear right away, but also laying clear how much Jacob is just a bottomless soul of pain that can never fully be cleared out. In the end, Thornton’s performance is devastating and unforgettable.

Bridget Fonda (I miss her) is also extremely powerful, taking a role that seems designed as ‘the wife’ and quietly laying the groundwork for her most devastating moments late in the film with the tone of her voice as she spits out the phrase “checking out books” coming off as if she’s giving herself a lifetime sentence. There’s also strong supporting work from Brent Briscoe, Chelcie Ross (recently Conrad Hilton on MAD MEN) and Becky Ann Baker (currently seen on GIRLS) plus I’ve always particularly liked Gary Cole’s complete poker face as FBI Agent Baxter which doesn’t reveal his true motives until the last possible second.

A SIMPLE PLAN was released by Paramount, just as some of Billy Wilder’s most acclaimed films in the 40s and 50s were, but it didn’t receive the same sort of attention (only $16 million at the box office), even with a favorable critical response and two Oscar nominations for Billy Bob Thornton and Scott Smith’s screenplay—did Wilder mark it down on his ballot? But it did help to revive Sam Raimi’s directing career and by the time it was in theaters he was already in production on his next film FOR LOVE OF THE GAME starring Kevin Costner. And a few years later there would be SPIDER-MAN, a film where he seemed to have figured out a way to fuse his style with paying attention to the actors caught up in and reaping the benefits of what he chose to experiment with here. But I have a fondness for late 90s Raimi, a brief spurt of films where it was like he was trying to do something different, testing himself, pushing himself, something that I wish directors like him did more. It was a while since seeing A SIMPLE PLAN when I pulled it out to write this and I imagine that it will be a long time before I revisit the film again. It’s just too sad, too disturbing, much more than it was for me at one time. We all need money. Hey, I could use some right now. Plus some of its emotions make me think of some of my own family-related matters that sometimes pop up in the back of the brain, like an abandoned house that lingers as a part of your past, a past which will never really die. A lot’s changed for me over the years, but some things never change at all. And you still can’t always get what you want, let alone what you sometimes need.

Not With The Eyes But With The Mind

The lyrical melody of the song “Crazy World” plays over the opening credits of VICTOR/VICTORIA and like so many other pieces of music for films directed by Blake Edwards it was composed by Henry Mancini. It’s a surprisingly gentle melody to open such a big and boisterous musical comedy and while the viewer may not know the title of the song that goes with the music just yet it manages to announce a certain affection for its main characters right from the start so we almost like them even before they’ve appeared. They’re caught up in all this insanity just like we are and seen through the eyes of Blake Edwards it would probably be best to relax along with them to simply let the inevitable madness happen since, after all, it’s only natural in such a crazy world.

Released in March 1982, VICTOR/VICTORIA is the great triumph of the latter stretch of Blake Edwards’ career, a film which feels like nothing less than a culmination of the writer-director’s ambitions and thematic preoccupations. Overflowing with style, it’s a Lubitsch-inspired pastry of wit and music brought together in a way that only Edwards seemed to know how to do when he was at his best, framed through his Panavision eye while always ready with the next pratfall as someone crashes to the ground. It serves as a tribute to the type of comedy he clearly loves while also a chance to put onscreen some of the most successful musical numbers he ever pulled off. Considering how much I’ve written about Blake Edwards in the past even I’m a little surprised that I haven’t written about this film until now considering its ongoing popularity (looks like from his last fifteen years of directing only THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN still remains for this blog). Of course, many others have sung its praises through the years so you don’t exactly need me to repeat what’s already been said about it but I also suppose somewhere deep down my Blake Edwards fantasy world has more to do with the Bel Air-Malibu Southern California anarchic malaise of the likes of “10” or S.O.B. rather than the fantasy Paris of the 30s depicted here but in revisiting it now I’m reminded how the accomplishment that is VICTOR/VICTORIA really does represent one of his finest achievements. It’s a tremendously entertaining film featuring some of the most well-executed gags of his entire filmography, excellent music and an undeniable air of sophistication to it all. The film does fall short in a few ways that have always bugged me a little considering how good so much of the film really is, small issues that make me feel like it doesn’t entirely have the courage of its own convictions all the way to the end and my overall fondness for Blake Edwards means that I feel a little bad bringing them up at all. They’re ultimately minor points, I suppose, and for the most part this really is the Blake Edwards film where just about everything comes together. With an extremely strong screenplay his direction displays total confidence and it’s a truly lovely production made even better by several actors doing some of the best work of their career.

In 1934 Paris, impoverished soprano Victoria Grant (Julie Andrews) is about at the end of her rope, penniless and jobless, about to be thrown out of her shabby hotel room when fortune smiles in the form of her meeting nightclub performer Carroll Todd, better known as Toddy (Robert Preston), who is in need of money as well due to losing his own job. Knowing how good Victoria’s voice really is and fully aware that no one is looking for such a singer, soon enough circumstances give Toddy an idea: have Victoria masquerade as a man who masquerades as a woman in a nightclub act, in effect being a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman and they’ll have a female impersonator act like no other. Victor/Victoria’s undeniable talent turns the show into an immediate smash but on opening night the visiting King Marchand (James Garner), a nightclub owner from Chicago with mob ties immediately becomes at once fascinated and flummoxed by him/her and is determined to figure out exactly what the truth really is.

Confusion regarding sexual identity is a running theme in Blake Edwards’ films from a key plot point in 1967’s GUNN to men dressed as women baffling Inspector Clouseau in several PINK PANTHER films all the way through to the 1991 comedy SWITCH starring Ellen Barkin as a male chauvinist turned into a gorgeous blonde. While it’s easy to imagine that the worldwide success of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES at the time helped to get VICTOR/VICTORIA green lit, the film (based on the 1934 German film VIKTOR AND VIKTORIA written by Reinhold Schunzel—Edwards wrote the screenplay for his version by himself) feels like the director’s own ultimate examination of sexual identity and just about every shot, every line of dialogue, seems to address the thesis somehow. One musical number in particular speaks to this, a line of four dancers at the Chez Louise nightclub, all appearing as men on one side and women on the other with every other dancer the ‘real’ male or female version. The music changes tempo continually through the routine, fast to slow, manic to serene, in a way that makes it an encapsulation of the very film it’s a part of, complimenting the farce in just the right way. Coming immediately off of S.O.B., which even now plays as one of Edwards’ most bitter films (in all the best ways, of course), VICTOR/VICTORIA is one of his most completely endearing, displaying a true love for the characters who are involved in their own version of this nightclub dance routine. Even with the continual appearances of physical humor that are fully expected from this director (“That stool is broken.” “It is?”) it has a true lyricism not often found in his films, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S aside.

Impeccably plotted, luxuriously paced, VICTOR/VICTORIA is the sort of movie where a half-hour seems to go by in the blink of an eye, where even minor characters feel fully fleshed out on our first glimpse of them, where a sequence feels almost like an entire movie within itself but still is a key part of the overall design. A visit to a restaurant which serves as the centerpiece of the film’s first half-hour where Andrews’ Victoria plots to get a free meal out of the place and she first meets Preston’s Toddy lays out all the elements perfectly, each line in place, the continual hangdog glares by the great Graham Stark as the hapless waiter adding to it all. Incidentally, from the first moment he walks in from the kitchen this role is Stark’s immortality—a few bits from the PINK PANTHER films may be more famous, particularly “That is not my dog” in STRIKES AGAIN, but this film is the pinnacle for him and he’s a perfect complement to everything around him. Every beat of the sequence flows beautifully from every time he emerges from the kitchen with another plate of food with the Mancini score in the background even down to a shared laugh Victoria and Toddy have at one of the waiter’s retorts which quickly gets across that they’re becoming instant friends. And it builds up to the wide shot looking into a window from outside into the madness that has just erupted from a certain cockroach which feels like an absolutely perfect capper to it all. That view is an encapsulation of the world Edwards is depicting, the shot of the restaurant spanning the full 2.35 frame with a few incredulous extras passing by playing the role of the audience—Edwards films are filled with incredulous extras unaware of the chaos they suddenly find themselves in the orbit of—as Victoria and Toddy make a run for it. Once when I saw Edwards speak many years ago this scene came up in relation to the subject of improvisation in his films and he used this shot as an example of something that he couldn’t simply come up with on the spur of the moment, that it had to be planned well in advance. For all the freedom that he famously gave his actors this gives an indication of how much the director always had his eye on the pure construction of the piece, knowing exactly how long certain scenes needed to be and what would be just the right beat to go out on. He didn’t always get the timing right but on occasions like this few have ever been able to do it better.

I suppose it should be mentioned, as many have before, that Julie Andrews isn’t particularly convincing as a man or, as it should be said, someone who is meant to be convincing as a man. (Or, for that matter, whether the term ‘gay’ in this regard was part of any sort of nomenclature in 1934, in Paris or elsewhere.) It could also be argued whether this really matters in the slightest particularly considering how good the actors are in responding to this, not to mention that it’s all set in this stylized fantasy Paris of the 30s anyway. Plus this is, after all, Blake Edwards indulging in the chance to provide his wife with a full-blown musical to star in, providing the actress with one of the very best roles of her career. Over a decade before this he had directed her in DARLING LILI, another lavish musical which while maybe not the washout that its reputation has indicated, was enough of a flop that the go-for-broke nature of the musical numbers here gives the impression that he somehow wanted to make up for what happened with that film and direct his wife in a memorable musical once and for all. The “Le Jazz Hot” number introducing Victor/Victoria to the world feels like a career highlight for all involved—it’s a dynamite piece of work in every regard, really—but it also succeeds as a metaphor for the film itself which involves characters finding their own ‘new kind of music’ for their lives. When Victoria corrects Peter Arne’s nightclub owner Labisse as to the type of singer she is he first responds with a “Whatever you are…” before dismissing her and VICTOR/VICTORIA is ultimately about whatever a person is in the end, finding out what sort of person you really are, finding out that the people closest to you aren’t at all what you thought in the first place and how much any of that really matters.

So much of it goes together just right, down to every beat, so even what would normally be the purely shoe leather scene of introducing powerful agent Andre Cassell (John Rhys-Davies) is played in the most delightful way complete with yet another elaborate physical gag. Edwards’ knack for staging his scenes in long takes, cutting only when necessary, has just about never been better than here, particularly during scenes with Lesley Ann Warren’s moll Norma yammering on nonstop, something that wouldn’t have anywhere near the same effect if broken up. Filmed in England entirely on soundstages at Pinewood Studios the look of the film with cinematography by Dick Bush and sumptuous production design by Roger Maus is fully in the spirit of the famous Ernst Lubitsch quote, “I’ve been to Paris, France and Paris, Paramount. Paris, Paramount is better.” Even the way characters seem to breeze from Paris to Chicago and back seems like something that could only happen in a 30s movie set mostly in a world of fancy gowns & tuxedos and several times we get the welcome reminder that Blake Edwards never met an elegant nightclub that he didn’t want to destroy by having a fight break out in it.

It actually says something about how well-assembled the construction in Edwards’ screenplay is that the way pieces are moved around to allow for certain things doesn’t cause it to fall apart even if the maneuvering does result in a few problems. The lengthy sequence involving Garner’s King Marchand sneaking into Victoria and Toddy’s suite attempting to learn the truth about her is impeccably laid out shot for shot but considering what he definitively gets a look at it makes his later declaration to her, “I don’t care if you are a man” before moving in for the kiss mean absolutely nothing (It’s not all that gallant an action either—would Melvyn Douglas sneak into Garbo’s bathroom?) and the story doesn’t have as much punch as a result. The sequence could have been designed to somehow have Marchand fail to learn the truth and, really, a moment where James Garner—Jim Rockford, Bret Maverick, the Scrounger in THE GREAT ESCAPE, among many other examples—declares his love for what he genuinely believes to be a man in a major studio release in 1982 would have been truly transgressive if it had happened (“I still don’t care,” he tells her when she fesses up and that response doesn’t matter either). In Garner’s autobiography “The Garner Files” he says it originally was this way and Blake Edwards ultimately chickened out, admitting as much. Maybe it’s a minor point but it does feel like an unfortunate case of maneuvering around an issue and makes the film fall short of its own principles even if the occasional line of dialogue (“Kill him, but musn’t kiss him,” Toddy comments on what apparently are acceptable gangster activities) still has some resonance even in 2014.

One other issue, and I’m hardly the first person to bring this up, would be the final musical number (I’ll avoid spoilers but it involves an alternate version of “Shady Dame From Seville” by a different character), one which really isn’t necessary and seems designed to end things in the broadest way possible more than anything—the days of Ernst Lubitsch ending this sort of thing in the most graceful way possibly were long since gone, I suppose. Plotwise the way the chess pieces are arranged is fine (although one final exchange between Andrews and Garner would have been nice) but it’s hard not to wish that everything could be resolved in a much more succinct, elegant fashion. As things play out it just causes much of the plot stuff to simply fizzle away. The film does close out the story of Victoria Grant by a quick shot of Andrews silently mouthing along the words to the song in question as a way of saying goodbye to Victor. It’s a nice touch—awfully economical, too—and while there’s one last spectacular pratfall near the very end that I would never want to lose the close isn’t quite up to the rest of the film, congratulating itself before we’ve had a chance to do that for ourselves. Are the characters laughing? Are the actors breaking character? Have we suddenly moved into Hal Needham territory?

That shot of Andrews mouthing the words at the point of ‘the rest of the tale’s not a pretty one’ seems more interesting than the film seems to notice, as if it’s a wistful sign of regret from Victoria that this rollercoaster is coming to an end and things are returning to normalcy, even if she is better off than when she started. In some ways the climax of the film has already happened close to a half-hour earlier—the one-take performance of “Crazy World” which comes as Victoria and King decide to become a couple seems to sum up everything about the film and the lead character’s feelings about it all while also harkening back to Edwards’ gorgeous and even more ambitious opening shot of the box office disaster DARLING LILI. Thing is, there’s still another thirty or so minutes (and, yeah, in this 133 minute film you do start to feel that running time after a while) of plot and other issues to deal with at this point including how living a lie, any kind of lie, is no fun at all. I wish those strands could have been dealt with in a more graceful way but as was memorably stated in a certain classic comedy about cross-dressing made in 1959 (not to mention a few characters in other Blake Edwards films here and there), nobody’s perfect.

I vaguely recall that when I saw the film in a theater long ago it seemed like on the big screen if you sort of squinted that Julie Andrews almost, kind of, if you really wanted to go along with it, might almost conceivably resemble a very effeminate male. And that’s really giving the whole thing the benefit of the doubt but, like I said, it really doesn’t matter. Andrews is wonderful, selling the comedy beautifully—I love how she almost loses her balance after belting out that first high note—as well as every single musical number and with her performance gaining in resonance as the film goes on it really is one of the best characterizations of her career. She’s also paired up beautifully with her two main costars and as a matter of fact, it feels a little bit like Edwards has created this wonderful part for his wife while splitting the surrogates for himself into two, the loyal friend that is Toddy and the crafty but still somewhat mature King Marchand. James Garner, opposite his old THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY costar Andrews, is effortless in his charm and comic timing, about as good here as he ever was onscreen. The scene where the two of them attempt to reasonably discuss their differences is particularly good with these two characters in a larger than life world trying to face this farce in a simply human way and both actors play off each other in a way that feels completely natural. Robert Preston, no matter which of his costars he’s playing off, takes every single line that he has and makes it sing beyond all belief allowing him to basically walk off with the movie. “If Mr. Preston doesn’t get an Oscar for this film, he never will,” said Vincent Canby in The New York Times and, sadly, he was right but seeing him express such joy in getting to play this role and say this dialogue remains alive.

Lesley Ann Warren is also fantastic as moll Norma Cassidy, taking the basics of the Jean Harlow stereotype to the nth degree and imbuing it with a complete life of her own particularly in her own show-stopping musical number but also in a memorably laid out scene involving a train car. The entire cast is ideal including Alex Karras, John Rhys-Davies, Peter Arne and of course Graham Stark (can’t mention him too many times—lest we forget, the sight of Graham Stark shouting, “COCKROACH!” is one of the reasons that movies exist). Edwards regular Herb Tanney makes his usual cameo, playing the Clouseau-like private investigator hired to uncover the truth about Victor, this time billed as “Sherloque Tanney”.

In its combination of wit and style, laughs and music, character and subtext, VICTOR/VICTORIA (available on DVD from the Warner Archive) features Blake Edwards as writer and director at his very best. Upon release it was one of the most acclaimed films of his career and the seven Oscar nominations included one for his screenplay, the only one he ever received in his career. Julie Andrews was also nominated as were Robert Preston and Lesley Ann Warren but in the end the only Oscar it won went to Henry Mancini and lyricist Leslie Bricusse for the song score. One of the other films that year of course was Sydney Pollack’s TOOTSIE, a very different cross-dressing farce made by a director not exactly known for comedy but in some ways on both a thematic and dramatic level it does stick the landing that VICTOR/VICTORIA doesn’t quite nail. Again, I suppose this is a minor issue considering how much joy VICTOR/VICTORIA continues to provide to this day. In his beyond ecstatic rave in the New York Times Vincent Canby stated that the film is “so good, so exhilarating, that the only depressing thing about it is the suspicion that Mr. Edwards is going to have a terrible time trying to top it.” His immediate followups were both TRAIL and CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER, so, well, yeah, and nothing else over the following decade approached the level of acclaim that this film received (this also included directing a stage version of VICTOR/VICTORIA on Broadway starring Andrews which opened in 1995) although I am on record already as liking a few of them, maybe more than the rest of the world does. So while the likes of S.O.B. might be the sort of Blake Edwards-infused whiskey that I prefer downing on more occasions than not and while everything in VICTOR/VICTORIA isn’t as good as its best moments it has still aged absolutely beautifully which stands as a testament to the talents of its director, talents which maybe still aren’t as appreciated as they should be. But I suppose that’s the way it sometimes is in such a crazy world.