Tuesday, March 20, 2012
You’re written in her book…
By Kevin J. Olson
Basic Instinct is one of those movies that deserve to be rediscovered. That may sound strange for a film that made more than $300 million worldwide upon its release, but there’s a lot more to the film than just the sex, the violence and the controversy that surrounded the film upon its initial release. Like all of Verhoeven’s films — with the exception of maybe Hollow Man — there’s something deeper, something more worthy of deconstruction lurking beneath the film’s familiar template. Verhoeven likes working within genre films so that he can distract one set of viewers with the sex and the ultra-violence that has become synonymous with his name, yet he also likes to use that familiar structure so that he can explicate deeper themes and tropes through his unique lens. Make no mistake: Verhoeven — despite his Dutch masterpiece The 4th Man — does not make art films. Sure, his films have a depth to them that may sneak up on people, but he flaunts his mainstream styling, and, for all intents and purposes, the man is an action filmmaker. However, in 1992, Verhoeven wanted to do something different with Basic Instinct and mine the familiar territory of the Hitchcockian thriller and the character type of the femme fatale.
Joe Eszterhas’ sleazy neo-noir script is perfectly suited for the subversively wry Dutch director. Eszterhas was famous for his ‘80s scripts Flashdance and Jagged Edge (which I really like), and wrote Basic Instinct prompting a bidding war at the time. It was around the late ‘80s when the film’s producers were hoping to get it made with a mainstream actress in the lead. When major stars such as Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathleen Turner, Kim Basinger and Meg Ryan turned down the role, Verhoeven and the producers gave the role to the relatively unknown Sharon Stone (who had a small role in Verhoeven’s own Total Recall). Her performance as Catherine Tramell would go on to define her career and be one of the most iconic and memorable female performances of the ‘90s.
The film’s basic plot structure comes right out of Hitchcock with its twisting narrative and male protagonist who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and who just can’t seem to avoid trouble. Michael Douglas was perfectly cast as the barely-hanging-on detective Nick Curran. Curran investigates the murder of a rock star who died via multiple stab wounds from an ice pick. One of the suspects is the women who matches a description of the suspect and was the last person to see the rock star alive. Crime author Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) wrote a novel titled Basic Instinct in which a character dies in the exact same way (white scarf stuffed in their mouth and killed by ice pick). Curran learns that she’s writing a new book about a cop and soon finds that she uses him, and others, for her material as dangerous real-life situations play out.
Curran serves as the prototypical noir protagonist who enjoys getting a little dirty and gets a little too drawn into the seedy underworld he’s investigating. I love the way that the film sets up the viewer with Nick’s past about being a little trigger happy and a little coked-up while accidentally shooting some tourists while undercover; it’s a nice bit of foreshadowing for the film’s ending which some feel unnecessarily removed the ambiguity surrounding the identity of the icepick killer; however, I like the little bit of punctuation at the end because it makes that final decision Nick makes have more impact. It leaves the viewer with a little bit of a sour taste in their mouth just like those old, hard-boiled noirs used to do. Also, you can’t tell me that Hitch didn’t have a wry smile on his face when he filmed some of his endings in similar vein that left the viewer in a state of, “what the hell was that?”
One thing that makes the film so memorable — and one of my top five choices whenever I get in a Verhoeven-y mood — is the energy the auteur brings to the film. Verhoeven and his d.p. Jan de Bont (who would later go on to make a name for himself in ‘90s action films with the tremendous Speed), are more than up to the task in making Basic Instinct a beautiful and efficient neo-noir that has the right look
and sound; it’s part polished Hitchcock (the style and the music) and part hard-boiled noir (the character types and the language/content). Sure, kinky sex and graphic violence fill the narrative, but many movies like Basic Instinct consist solely of overkill with no sense of vitality or variety (Eszterhas’ own Jade, for example). Quite honestly, there isn’t even that much action in the film, but that energy and style that Verhoeven brings to the dialogue and the characters — driven by Stone’s performance — makes the film feel like wall-to-wall action. Just as he did with the science-fiction subgenre in RoboCop, the Middle Ages action film in Flesh + Blood, the exploitation subgenre in Showgirls, the pro-war propaganda film in Starship Troopers and the WWII drama in Black Book Verhoeven brings unmitigated verve and élan to these overly familiar premises. Even though Basic Instinct doesn't approach the best of Verhoeven’s films, just look at the way he frames Stone in that interrogation scene, the way he shoots bird’s eye as his characters run toward crashing waves on the beach with the overdramatic music in the background, or the fun he wrings from the obligatory car chase. And maybe that’s the word I’m looking for, “fun.” Verhoeven’s zeal often translates into a fun movie experience where you often find yourself laughing unexpectedly because you know the filmmakers aren’t taking themselves too seriously (RoboCop exemplifies this in its purposeful absurdity and seems Dada-esque in its satirical take on a violent dystopian future). Starship Troopers may be one of the most misunderstood of all of Verhoeven’s works because of its subtle satire — something definitely lacking in Basic Instinct. While I don’t see signs of satirism in Basic Instinct as Verhoeven approaches many of his other genre films, I do think that he’s using the overblown and melodramatic (much like he did to great effect in 2006’s Black Book) to sneak in the things he really wants to say underneath that all-too-familiar veneer of sex and violence. One only needs to look to Eszterhas’ other psychosexual thriller of the ‘90s, the aforementioned Jade, to see that these kinds of films aren’t always filmed with the kind of intensity Verhoeven brings to this script. William Friedkin helmed that Eszterhas script, and produced a complete and utter mess; an ugly film that wasted the talents of its leading actress and lacked any of the drama or Hitchcockian qualities found in Basic Instinct. That’s the impact of Verhoeven.
I think now that people can see Basic Instinct in a light removed from its controversy surrounding its portrayal of homosexual relationships (the film was protested so passionately that the filmmakers had to have extra security on hand during filming) and it being just “that movie where Sharon Stone shows Michael Douglas and Newman from Seinfeld her crotch,” they’ll see one of the best modern examples of the femme fatale archetype. Catherine is a character type that Verhoeven has studied before (Christine from The 4th Man kind of acts as a precursor to Basic Instinct), and it’s one of the most memorable characters of any of his films. Stone plays Catherine with such an icy confidence — she’s the perfect femme fatale: she’s confident sexually and ambiguously dangerous throughout the film’s mystery so that you know with certainty she’s the killer…but then again, you’re not really sure. It’s a fine balancing act by Stone who, after this film, wouldn’t really have another performance this juicy (although I thought she was pretty good in Scorsese’s Casino). I love the way in which she completely manipulates Douglas’ character throughout the entire film. Those who think that Stone’s performance, and her character, functions solely as a sex-crazed character couldn’t be more wrong. Sex may indeed be the most valuable weapon in Catherine’s arsenal, and she knows that she must use it in order to maneuver Nick, but it’s not because she’s extremely beautiful, it’s because Verhoeven understands that for the traditional male, there’s nothing scarier than a blatantly promiscuous woman, confident about sex and her sexual prowess. The femme fatale archetype hinges on flipping the preconceived notions about power and sex, and, often, how those two usually connect. No better modern femme fatale has been put on celluloid than Sharon Stone’s portrayal of Catherine Tramell (Kathleen Turner’s Matty Walker from Body Heat ranks up there, too).
Just look at the film’s most famous (or infamous) scene. Catherine being interrogated by a group of male police officers and people from the office of the district attorney — a kind of verbal gangbang as Verhoeven’s camera goes in and out of focus on the men throwing their
rapid-fire questions at her. Catherine maintains total control of the situation, despite the bravado and machismo of the cops tuned up for full effect. Of course, the scene lives in infamy for Stone flashing her panty-less crotch at the officers as she crosses her legs. The scene's importance though stems from Catherine letting these people understand that not only does she feel comfortable showing them that she doesn’t wear underwear, but also that she can wield her control over the room by messing with their minds as well by flipping roles and interrogating Nick about his attempt to quit smoking (which, just like all of his other attempts to stunt his vices, go by the wayside by film’s end). This brings those in the room to wonder if the two know each other from a previous encounter, and it shows that Catherine, on the surface, can manipulate men with her sexuality, but she’s just as keen to mess with their heads. In other words: she’ll fuck you, but she’ll fuck your mind, too, and each will be equally as fun for her. The way Stone plays that scene proves crucial to its success — she doesn’t allow Catherine to be an object, rare in movies such as this and Hollywood in general, yet she allows Catherine’s sexuality to take control of the room as she flippantly disregards the no smoking rule — she performs it masterfully, and it’s a shame that more remember the scene for her uncrossing her legs than her acting and Verhoeven's underlying commentary that follows. It’s interesting to compare Basic Instinct and the character of Catherine with another Michael Douglas film of the ‘90s, Disclosure. In that film, Demi Moore attempts to seduce Michael Douglas and then wrongfully accuse him of sexual harassment in order to ruin his life. It’s all very tame and banal because you don't believe Moore as a femme fatale. She lacks the assurance as an actress that Stone gives Catherine, and because of that, we don’t buy Douglas’ plight; the whole thing just feels lifeless, as if it’s going through the motions. Basic Instinct, on the other hand, is the opposite. Not because Douglas’ character has more definition than in Disclosure, but because we buy why Nick would follow Catherine down into that world of rough sex and violence. Moore brings the sex and tries to play scary…attempts to equal what a male would do in that performance. Stone’s performance, though, does the opposite. As I mentioned earlier, sex happens to be the best weapon in Catherine’s arsenal, and that makes her scary because she cannot be contained, controlled or manipulated like most women in thrillers such as these. Disclosure tries to invert this trope as Basic Instinct does but it comes off so artificially because the movie takes itself too seriously.
What I love about Catherine is that she lacks anything subversive about her character; she’s as blatant an archetype for a femme fatale as you’ll get. From the minute Douglas and his partner meet her, they understand they’re dealing with a woman who controls everything. The film's script makes her sexy and smart, sure, but that’s not the scariest thing about Catherine as a femme fatale — that would be her awareness of her ability to control others. She knows she can control Nick with her sexuality, and more importantly, she knows she can manipulate Nick because he’s willing to let her. Nick can't help himself around her, yet he feels as if he always controls his faculties. When he has a bit of rough sex with his on-again-off-again girlfriend (Jeanne Tripplehorn), it’s eerie and offsetting because it seems as if Catherine’s influence already has penetrated Nick’s daily life; he has succumbed to her power. It isn’t long after this scene that Nick begins his obsession with Catherine. The power games between the male and female leads — those kinds of gender war-type films popular in ‘90s dramas — lacked teeth in Disclosure; however, with Basic Instinct, thanks to Verhoeven’s direction and Stone’s performance, there’s an electricity to it that keeps the film’s over-the-top and headlong momentum rolling.
Paul Verhoeven could be as misunderstood an auteur in mainstream Hollywood system as exists. I admire the fact that Verhoeven goes all-in regarding his films; he just lays it all out there — realism be damned. He reminds me of my favorite Italian horror filmmakers that prove that style can be substance. I mean, sure, the film contains awkward moments of haughty aesthetic, but I like that about Verhoeven. He reminds me of Ken Russell a little bit in that regard: here’s a filmmaker who, if you’re willing to go along for the ride, does have something to say in his films; it’s there lurking beneath the surface of all of that ultra-violence and gratuitous sex and nudity. Twenty years later, people can take a fresh look at Basic Instinct as a film without all the outside distractions. Here’s a film where Verhoeven inverts the experience of the typical theatergoing male. The sex can't be labeled pornographic by any means (a male-dominated exercise, no doubt), but it’s explicit in its portrayal of sex, which I think scares some people more (and probably explains why the idiots in the MPAA initially gave the film an NC-17) in the audience it’s a film where the sex is primarily controlled, orchestrated and because the female lead dominates it. I think that’s Verhoeven being deliciously subversive, and I really admire that about Basic Instinct.
In Roger Ebert’s 1992 review, he wrote, "The film is like a crossword puzzle. It keeps your interest until you solve it, by the ending. Then it's just a worthless scrap with the spaces filled in." Narratively speaking, the same could be said for a number of Hitchcock films; It’s the style that keeps us coming back to those, and it’s the style, as well as the subtext, that keeps me coming back to Verhoeven’s film. I
think it’s incredibly shortsighted of Ebert to see the film in this light considering it’s so heavily indebted to Hitchcock, whose films, for the most part, played exactly as he describes above. Verhoeven always has had an uncanny knack for capturing the particular milieu of whatever genre he’s tackling. Even though he’s over-the-top, he never comes right out and admits his purpose. Perhaps that’s why so many people have trouble with him: he’s so good at it that you think what you’re getting is just another genre film competently crafted and nothing more. I think maybe that’s why people have a hard time looking beyond the general silliness of something such as Starship Troopers or the sex and violence in Basic Instinct as films that are saying something beyond their gruff narratives and ultra-violent surfaces. I also think that the knock on Basic Instinct — and Verhoeven in general — derives from over-the-top tendencies that allow the film to get lost by the end. It results in a well-made, but not great, experience. For me, I love the way Verhoeven goes storming into his narratives, and Basic Instinct (even though it’s “lesser” Verhoeven), 20 years later, still stands as one of his most loopy, over-the-top and slyly fun rides. Tweet
Labels: 90s, Demi, Ebert, Hitchcock, K. Turner, M. Douglas, Meg Ryan, Movie Tributes, Pfeiffer, Scorsese, Seinfeld, Sharon Stone
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Friday, March 16, 2012
Only Connect
By Josh R
Adapting a classic novel to the screen is a delicate proposition; with so many ways to go wrong, it’s always slightly unexpected when someone manages to get it entirely right. In many cases, filmmakers adopt an overly reverential stance to their source material; the approach is typified by lavish sets, swelling scores, and resplendently costumed actors speaking as though they’d learned all their lines in elocution class. The screenplays can be slavishly faithful to their source material, to the extent that the end product feels like a pop-up edition of Cliff's Notes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there will always be certain filmmakers (or auteurs, if you please) who feel compelled to make radical departures from the original, to the point that the resulting film bears only a passing resemblance to the book that inspired it. The mentality that inspires these modifications is somewhat peculiar, in that it smacks of both overconfidence in one’s own interpretive abilities, and lack of confidence in the book. It is very rare — too rare, if we’re going to be honest — that filmmakers trust and appreciate their source material enough to bring it to the screen without treating it like a sacred relic to be handled with kid gloves, or putting it through the ringer and revamping, augmenting and revising the content beyond the point of recognition (or at least beyond the point where the authors — if still living — could resist the urge to sue.) That’s the reason why Merchant Ivory’s superlative production of Howards End, based on E.M. Forster's 1910 novel, stands as one of the best and most satisfying examples of literary adaptation ever produced for the screen. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of its U.S. release this week, it exemplifies how rich an experience a great writing-directing team can create for an audience, merely by respecting the material and keeping things simple.
Howards End followed 1986’s A Room With a View and 1987’s Maurice as the third film adapted from a Forster novel by the veteran team of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their affinity and affection for the material is unmistakable; one of the chief distinctions of Howards End is the ease with which the filmmakers capture the style and tone of Forster’s prose, without getting tangled up in the pursuit of trying to replicate it too faithfully. It should be said that the book — a beautifully written, thematically complex evocation of the rapidly changing social climate of late-Edwardian England — is not an ideal candidate for cinematic adaptation. While not exactly short on plot, much of the action takes the form of conversation, with Forster’s own observations about class, social politics and assorted esoterica (the magical properties of Beethoven’s compositions, for example) taking up a fair amount of space. Jhabvala’s elegant treatment expertly condenses the content of the novel without narrowing its scope; the screenplay manages to be economical without feeling cursory or abridged, or giving short shrift to any of the points the Forster hoped to convey in his illustration of the clashing temperaments, ideas and values of two very different families merging into one.
The repercussions of the unlikely, somewhat uncomfortable union of the Wilcoxes and Schlegels are mordantly humorous on one level, tragic on another. In a way, the novel anticipates what was to happen to Britain in the years immediately following its publication — while Forster couldn’t have augured what was on the horizon (the rumblings were felt in 1910, but the wolf had yet to arrive at the door), his considerations hearken to an impending war abroad that would change forever the rules at home. With the Victorian world poised on the brink of cataclysm, and its quaint, restrictive mandates about class, morality and gender roles being rendered increasingly obsolete, Howards End charts the fallout from a collision of the members of the old guard grounded in the traditions of the past with an intrepid new breed determined to topple the old world order. How far will people go in the vain attempt to hold on to what’s slipping from their grasp, Forster wonders, and how will they adapt in the face of inevitable change? Above all, how do the proponents of two wildly divergent philosophies and outlooks, meeting at the intersection of the death of an Empire and the dawn of a a new era characterized by turbulent social upheaval, not only coexist, but communicate, compromise and connect? The opening epigraph of Howards End is, in fact, “Only connect”; a simple directive in theory, if infinitely more complicated in practice.
The thorny considerations at the heart of the author’s scheme — in a work the critic and essayist Lionel Trilling, among others, considered to be Forster’s masterpiece — are neatly encapsulated in the dealings between a small circle of friends, relations and acquaintances representing three distinct social classes. At the center of the narrative are Margaret and Helen Schlegel (Emma Thompson and Helena
Bonham Carter), two sisters with progressive leanings living on a genteel middle-class income in London — the bohemian social circle of writers, intellectuals and rabble-rousers they frequent is loosely modeled on The Bloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a member. Vacationing abroad, the Schlegels meet and befriend another pair of English tourists, the wealthy business magnate Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Ruth (Vanessa Redgrave). When Helen accepts an invitation to join the Wilcoxes at Howards End, Mrs. Wilcox's pastoral childhood home in the English Countryside, she forms a hasty, impetuous attachment to their younger son, Paul (Joseph Bennett). When their short-lived flirtation concludes on an awkward, mutually embarrassing note, the two families are briefly estranged. Margaret reconnects with the frail Mrs. Wilcox in London, where their renewed acquaintance soon develops into a strong bond of friendship; Margaret is both intrigued and moved by Mrs. Wilcox’s deep connection to the traditions of the past and the natural world, represented by Howards End. Before her death, Ruth wills the house to Margaret — Mr. Wilcox and his two other adult children, Charles and Evie (James Wilby and Jemma Redgrave — daughter of Corin, niece to Vanessa), deliberately decide to withhold the existence of the will from Margaret’s attention, unwilling to cede ownership of what they consider to be theirs by familial right. 
Through a chance encounter, Margaret and Helen strike up an acquaintance with Leonard Bast (Samuel West), a shy young clerk from a modest, lower-class background. Adopting him as a de facto protege and seeking to improve his prospects, the sisters apply to Mr. Wilcox for advice. Mr. Wilcox gives them a faulty piece of insider information about Leonard’s place of employment — which he believes to be on the brink of ruin — that will eventually result in Leonard leaving his job, and unable to obtain employment elsewhere. Meanwhile, Mr. Wilcox finds himself becoming increasingly drawn to Margaret and, after some tentative attempts at courtship, surprises her with an offer of marriage. She accepts his proposal, to the confusion and consternation of Helen, who struggles to comprehend how her sister can forsake their shared ideals to assume the mantle of a traditional wife and helpmate to a conservative capitalist.
While the prospective in-laws adjust to the shifting dynamics of their changing relationships, Helen learns that the unemployed Leonard and his wife, Jacky (Nicola Duffet), have been reduced to a life of subsistence-level poverty. An enraged Helen shows up unexpectedly at Evie’s wedding with the Basts in tow, and angrily confronts Margaret with the consequences of Mr. Wilcox’s casually given, ultimately very costly advice. Seeking to pacify Helen and avoid further conflict, Margaret applies to Henry for help — while he feels no personal responsibility for the Basts’ circumstances, Mr. Wilcox agrees to provide Leonard with a position at his company. When Mr. Wilcox and Mrs. Bast meet face-to-face, Jacky recognizes him as her former lover. A humiliated Mr. Wilcox is forced to admit to Margaret that he not only betrayed the trust of his previous wife, but did so with a woman far below his station in life, whom he subsequently (and rather callously) discarded after tiring of the relationship. Against her own misgivings, Margaret decides to forgive Henry and keep the engagement intact; in a curt, peremptory note to Helen, she informs her that Mr. Wilcox can be of no assistance to the Basts, and orders her sister to abandon her sponsorship of the couple.
As the now-married Margaret and increasingly rootless Helen drift further apart, the latter has a brief affair with Leonard, resulting in a pregnancy. Upon learning of Helen’s condition — and the status of social outcast conferred upon her as an unwed mother — Margaret asks Mr. Wilcox to allow her sister to stay at Howards End. Henry refuses, believing that Helen’s compromised position would bring disgrace
upon the family. Margaret angrily confronts her husband with his hypocrisy, and repairs with Helen to Howards End in flagrant disregard for his instructions. When Leonard — whose identity as the father of Helen’s child has been ascertained by the Wilcoxes — arrives unexpectedly at Howards End in search of Helen, his appearance results in a violent confrontation with a tragic denouement. While no one emerges entirely unscathed, both the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes find there is room for reconciliation, forgiveness, renewal and — perhaps most critically of all — a fundamental shift in values, paired with hope for the future. While the two families, representing the traditional and the modern, will never view the world in exactly the same way, they have at least managed to achieve a measure of balance. Complete understanding can elude even the most devoted of friends, lovers and family members; if we can “only connect,” those who seek to bridge the gap can, at the very least, respect each other’s limitations and forgive each other’s frailties. Forster poses, but offers no definitive conclusion about, the question of who shall inherit England, and whose values and ideals shall give shape to the future; he only concludes that the future cannot improve upon the past in the absence of a true meeting of the minds. Whenever I watch Howards End — as I do periodically, when the depressingly reductive nature of most films based on books I love becomes too much for me to bear — I’m always struck by the naturalism of Ivory’s approach, atypical not only of literary adaptations, but period pieces in general. While the film certainly is beautiful to look at (Luciana Arrighi and Ian Whitaker’s production design received an Oscar, while Jenny Beaven and John Bright’s costumes and Tony Pierce-Roberts’ cinematography also were nominated), there’s nothing over-scaled, overwrought or just plain over-the-top about the visual component of the film. The world of the Howards End is drawn from recognizable reality, as opposed to a heightened fantasy version of Edwardian times (for a bit of comparison — start grinding your teeth now, Copeland — the design aspects of the following year’s The Age of Innocence were so damn amplified and prettified the thing might as well have been set in Disney World.) This blessedly unfettered approach extends to the way Ivory has managed the members of his cast. The film is refreshingly unencumbered by actors striking the romantic poses of Victorian thespians, or intoning their lines as if they were auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company; it seems hard for many contemporary directors to accept that, even a hundred years ago, people still spoke to each other in a conversational fashion. The characters of Howards End may find themselves in melodramatic situations, but their actions and behaviors never strike a false note, or smack of affectation. Likewise, the original score provided by Richard Robbins — augmented with a few selections by classical composer Percy Grainger — is richly evocative without being intrusive; the music underscores the action while resisting the urge to provide easy, obvious emotional cues.
It’s so easy — and really, a little exhausting — to enumerate and expound upon the plethora of acuminous decisions that went into the making of Howards End, and talk about how seamlessly its various elements fit together; but the creative team (with particular credit going to Merchant) most emphatically demonstrated their love and respect for the material in terms of their casting choices. When it comes to casting projects with ostensibly little in the way of commercial appeal, the standard practice involves enlisting the talents of bankable stars; had Howards End been made by a major Hollywood studio in the early '90s, Forster’s intrepid Schlegel sisters might well
have been entrusted to Julia Roberts and Demi Moore (if that was the film that had been made, methinks yours truly would not be writing this 20th anniversary Tribute.) Certainly, Merchant Ivory wasn’t enough of a financial powerhouse — even in the wake of several notable successes — to afford the type of big names that a Tinseltown outfit might have foisted upon the project. Still, the men who controlled the purse strings could have advocated for more in the way of name recognition (The Silence of the Lambs had yet to be released at the time of the film’s shooting) in drafting the film’s ensemble. Instead, they chose to pair rich, challenging roles with actors of commensurate talent who fit the descriptions provided by Forster. Watching the film, you can’t shake the implausible impression that the author must have been writing these characters with these specific players in mind; every member of the cast delivers an emotionally authentic performance that not only highlights Forster’s keen observations on human nature, but embodies the descriptions contained in his prose with an uncanny degree of exactitude. Fresh from his lip-smacking tutorial on scenery-chewing as Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins showed that he was able to shift gears with surprising dexterity. His Henry Wilcox is a masterful study in restraint, rigidity and misplaced confidence. While he is often unlikable, his unflappable certainty and sense of masculine entitlement have a certain magnetic quality; an audience can still understand why the heroine would be drawn to him almost in spite of herself. It’s to the actor’s credit that by the end of the film, the viewer actually can feel a certain degree of sympathy for this hidebound specimen of Victorian prerogatives who can’t adjust to the changing times, or comprehend how little control he has over his own destiny. Samuel West, with his gawky gait and naturally downcast features, does a very fine job of fleshing out the inchoate yearnings of Leonard Bast, grounding a character conceived on a very romantic level. It would be easy for a more conventional performer to come across as too poetic and tragic for words — fortunately, West brings enough quirky specificity to his performance that he doesn’t simply register as delicate and doomed. James Wilby — who played the title role in Maurice — provides a nice vignette of unctuousness coupled with doltishness as the uncomprehending elder son, whose very lack of imagination renders him capable of destruction. 
As fine as the male cast members are, Howards End really belongs to the women — and they are a wonder to behold. As the least-known member of the principal cast, Emma Thompson received fourth billing as Margaret Schlegel; for graciously ceding that status to Hopkins, Redgrave and Bonham Carter, she received the best actress Oscar, along with about every other prize the international awards-giving community had to offer. To many, her rapid ascent from virtual unknown to unstoppable trophy magnet registered as a bolt from the blue; while she had been impressive on previous occasions, most notably opposite her then-husband, Kenneth Branagh, in the BBC miniseries Fortunes of War, it was by virtue of her revelatory performance in Howards End that her film career was launched in earnest. Really, it’s very fortunate that 1992 was such a weak year for leading ladies, a fact Thompson tacitly commented on during her acceptance speech in wishing aloud for “the creation of more great female roles.” Performances this subtle don’t usually win Academy Awards; even before the voting began, the British novice already had a big advantage over her more established competition by virtue of being in the only film on voters’ radar screens (most of the people I went to school with in 1993 hadn’t even heard of the other nominees’ films, let alone seen them - I remain unconvinced that Love Field and Lorenzo’s Oil played on any screens outside of New York and Los Angeles.) In retrospect, it’s no surprise that the actress' career blossomed as quickly as it did in the wake of that acknowledgement — as Margaret Schlegel, she exhibited some of the special brand of self-possession, equal parts intelligence and radiance, that Deborah Kerr trafficked in so well for more than 20 years as a Hollywood staple, tempered with a quickness and quirkiness unique to Emma Thompson.
There are so many moments in Thompson’s performance to treasure — the staircase proposal scene alone is essential viewing for acting students — and her choices are disarmingly original. With the flashes of wit and halting sensuality she brings to the part, it’s fair to say that her creation is actually an improvement on Forster’s (the Margaret of the novel is a bit on the earnest side), and she brings a sense of dramatic coherency to a character whose motives are sometimes difficult to fully accept at the author’s insistence. Margaret is a spirited, independent woman with a lively, intelligent mind and a practical sensibility; in forsaking her values, she is not merely a sheep being led meekly to the slaughter, but the willing architect of her own moral compromise. It’s the shades of loneliness and yearning Thompson brings to the role, as well as her expert communication of Margaret’s dawning awareness of herself as a desirable, attractive woman and growing fascination with Wilcox’s dynamic clarity of mind and purpose, that make the transitions seem logical.
As great as Thompson is — and really, her performance is both the soul of the film and the motor that drives it — Bonham Carter’s contribution in the role of Helen was and remains greatly undervalued. I particularly appreciate her interplay with Thompson; the actresses complement each other beautifully, and strike up a rhythm that truly suggests (as Forster asserts) that the sisters are two halves of the same whole. When they’re finishing each other’s sentences, or reacting to things in unison with near identical physical responses, it seems natural to accept that these two women have been a constant presence in each other's lives since childhood. When the rift between the sisters goes into effect, Bonham Carter displays a fire and urgency unlike anything in her previous work. Helen’s dramatic flashes of temper, the product of being uncertain of her place in the world once she’s lost her moorings (you still feel the tug of symbiotic sibling relationships once you become a solo act), never seem overstated; the sense of hurt and confusion that fuel her character’s behavior are made explicit, without being hammered home too emphatically.
Finally, there is Vanessa Redgrave, who was initially noncommittal when offered the role of Ruth Wilcox. She relented when Merchant told her she could basically name her own price — a gutsy move for the producer of a film being made on a limited budget. Whatever figure the two resolved upon, her services were worth every pound of Merchant’s money; no other actress could have played the part with the same degree of luminousness and lyricism. There’s always been a vague, dreamy quality about Vanessa Redgrave, coupled with an air of inscrutability — a friend of mine once speculated it might be the product of her having dropped too much acid in the '60s (I don’t believe this for a second — but if drug use will help any of today’s young actresses approximate the qualities of Vanessa Redgrave, I say Get Thee to a Dealer.) The character of Ruth is more of a literary conceit than a flesh-and-blood woman; she’s a symbolic Earth Mother figure tied to the land, the properties of nature, and pre-Christian mysticism; ancestral voices are supposed to reverberate in her presence. With her lovely, elegiac performance, Vanessa Redgrave actually makes sense of Ruth as a person. The shades of wistfulness and melancholy she brings to the part lend Ruth’s predicament — that of an ethereal, isolated onlooker bewildered by the modern world, unknowable even to those who love her most — an almost unbearable element of poignancy. It’s a towering performance, delivered on a human scale.
After all this, it is with a certain degree of reluctance that I’ll admit that Howards End is not bound to be everyone’s cup of veddy British tea. For those who prefer films with less resonance — where everything is pitched faster, louder and without much in the way of subtlety — there are surely no lack of entertainments to provide satisfaction (and numbness). Speaking only for myself, I find it heartening to revisit Howards End — a prime example of how good filmmaking can be when a great director, screenwriter, producer and cast embrace and honor the novel they’re bringing from the page to the screen. Forster’s epigraph should serve as guidance for anyone attempting an exercise in literary adaptation: Only Connect.
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Labels: 90s, Books, Branagh, Deborah Kerr, Demi, Emma Thompson, Fiction, H.B. Carter, Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins, Julia Roberts, Merchant Ivory, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Vanessa Redgrave
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Saturday, February 11, 2012
If anyone believes these two families should not join together…
By Edward Copeland
Has a movie wedding ever gone off without a hitch? Now, some can turn out to be enjoyable messes from the old (It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story) to the more recent (My Best Friend's Wedding, I Love You, Man). In the past few years, even when arguably taking the form of "dark" comedy, dysfunction or worse has tended to be the main dish served at the reception ranging from the blahs of Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, the blech of Noah "Just go see your shrink" Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding and the boneheaded bombast of Lars von Trier's Melancholia. NOTE: I've purposely omitted the turd that goes by the title of Bridesmaids from either category because it belongs in a separate one called Overlong, Poorly Written Movies That Claim to Be Comedies but Wouldn't Have Any Laughs If They Didn't Cast Melissa McCarthy. All of this preamble brings us to the film I'm actually writing about in this post, Another Happy Day. Ellen Barkin produced the film and leads a strong ensemble in another tale of tensions that erupt when severed and estranged members of a large melded family must intermingle for the wedding of a shared son. What differentiates Another Happy Day from others of its ilk is that, while it's not a great film, most of the cast and the screenplay succeed at being engaging enough that the movie manages to earn laughs and rip scabs off old wounds at the same time.
It's easy to see why Barkin would help see this film get made so she could play Lynn — it's easily the best part she's had since probably This Boy's Life in 1993 (other than the just-for-kicks Ocean's 13). Barkin plays the perpetually frazzled Lynn, mother of the groom Dylan (Michael Nardelli), the oldest of her four children and one of two from her first marriage by her ex-husband Paul (Thomas Haden Church) and raised by his second wife, a real piece of work named Patty (Demi Moore).
Paul and Lynn's daughter Alice (Kate Bosworth) has been away at college, doing what she can to avoid both parents, though rumors have circulated throughout the extended family that Alice has been cutting herself. As her goofy aunts (Diana Scarwid, Siobhan Fallon) discuss it, they suspect it's some kind of new generational thing and wonder what happened to anorexia — they understood anorexia: Who doesn't want to look good?
Then again, Lynn's second brood presents a handful of its own. Her second husband Lee (a delightful, but underused Jeffrey DeMunn, who also is the best part of The Walking Dead as Dale) seems quite pleasant and at ease with the fact that their 17-year-old son Elliot (Ezra Miller, as wry and funny here as he was frightening in We Need to Talk About Kevin) just finished his second stint in rehab and can be quite rude and nasty to anyone, and their youngest son Ben (Daniel Yelsky), just beginning adolescence, who has a mild form of Asperger's syndrome and constantly videotapes most moments of their lives.
Even before Lynn and the boys arrive in Annapolis for the wedding events, Lynn is second-guessing most of her decisions in life and battling depression. She blames many of her problems on her parents, the bottled-up Doris (Ellen Burstyn), who doesn't recall depression running in her family though Lynn's grandfather did shoot himself to death, and her now-ailing father Joe (George Kennedy). Lynn feels they didn't support her during her divorce, siding with the idea that Paul should get custody of Dylan and Alice.
Another Happy Day marks the directing debut of Sam Levinson (son of Barry), who also wrote the screenplay and won the Sundance Film Festival's 2011 Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his script. What separates it from other recent films that tapped into this area is that Levinson manages to earn both his laughter and his pathos whereas everything, especially in Baumbach's film, just plays flat and maudlin. Levinson must be eternally grateful that he was able to assemble the cast he did, because they're key.
Barkin obviously relishes having this juicy a part for the first time in a long time, so much so that her histrionics do go overboard at times. She's at her best when she's grounded in scenes of truth with other talents such as the always brilliant Burstyn or selected scenes with Church and DeMunn. When she has to go one-on-one with Moore, things gets out of hand since Demi Moore only knows one note to play and it looks as if Barkin instinctively tries to play down to her level. Demi Moore can play "one dimensional bitch in heels" and that's it. That's pretty much how it always has been.
The two who really hold the film up are Ezra Miller and Daniel Yelsky as Lynn's younger sons, particularly Miller as Elliot. Between his work here as the constantly sarcastic addict (so much so that he keeps lifting grandpa's Fentanyl patches and licking the pain medicine off them to get high) and as the demon spawn in We Have to Talk About Kevin, this 19-year-old actor (surprise from all the other sources I checked, IMDb's birth month and year are wrong) definitely is someone to keep your eye on.
Levinson's career also will be of interest to monitor. While Another Happy Day isn't perfect, it's worlds away from something his father Barry would make, though it's interesting that the son gives Ellen Barkin her best part in more than a decade while his father gave her her first credited feature film role in his feature directing debut 30 years ago in the great Diner.
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Labels: 10s, B. Levinson, Barkin, Burstyn, Demi, Demme, G. Kennedy, von Trier
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
That's how you fictionalize your life
By Edward Copeland
While watching 50/50, screenwriter Will Reiser's fictionalized account of being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer when he was in his late 20s, I thought of Godard's famous quote about the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie. Now, I don't think that Reiser and director Jonathan Levine set out to do this, but 50/50 displays an exceptional example of how not to get so locked in by one's life that your movie can't breathe as was the case with Beginners.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Adam Learner, an NPR employee who has been complaining of back pain for quite some time. When he finally gets it checked out, it turns out to be a malignant tumor on his spine. Doing the modern research technique — Adam turns to the Internet to learn what he can and finds that if the cancer hasn't metastasized, the online information gives the person with his type of cancer a 50 percent chance of surviving. When he shares that information with his best friend and NPR co-worker Kyle (Seth Rogen), Kyle likes the odds, telling Adam they are better than he'd get in a casino.
Adam's overbearing mom Diane (Anjelica Huston, in her best role in a long time) eagerly offers to take over and care for Adam despite the fact that she's already dealing with his father Richard (Serge Houde), who has Alzheimer's disease. However, Adam's live-in girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) steps up and says she'll stand by Adam through his treatment. Given the turn his young life takes, Learner understandably sinks into depression, prompting his doctor (Andrew Airlie) to refer Adam to a therapist (Anna Kendrick), only she still has her training wheels on, so to speak, as she hasn't completed her doctorate and Adam is only her third patient.
50/50 contains a lot of laughs, but it's more dramatic than I was expecting. In fact, given that Rogen basically plays a fictionalized version of himself (and when isn't Seth Rogen playing a fictionalized version of himself. Keep in mind, I never saw The Green Hornet.), I can't help but wonder if Will Reiser's story inspired Judd Apatow when he came up with Funny People where Rogen becomes best friends with Adam Sandler's comic character with cancer. Of course, 50/50 contains many major differences from Funny People, the most important being that we care what happens to Gordon-Levitt's character while I suffered some disappointment that they didn't kill Sandler off.
Gordon-Levitt continues to have one of the most amazing careers for actors who began plying their craft at an early age, dating back to TV sitcom work on the short-lived The Powers That Be from Norman Lear when he was 11 and a recurring role on Roseanne a year later. At 14 or 15, he gave the best performance in the wretched film The Juror starring Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin and James Gandolfini. Then he more than held his own as part of the comic ensemble of 3rd Rock From the Sun for six seasons.
Since he's grown into adulthood, he's completely missed the curse that often afflicts child actors, giving good to great performances in films such as Mysterious Skin, Brick, The Lookout, (500) Days of Summer, Inception and now 50/50. Reiser's screenplay delicately blends comedy and pathos and Gordon-Levitt has shown that he's adept at both forms with his previous choices, but 50/50 may be his first vehicle that allows him to display his range realistically within the same film.
Rogen, with the exception of the creepy and defiantly unfunny Observe and Report always plays himself more or less. The Rogen you see in Knocked Up simply is an R-rated version of Seth Rogen the talk show guest or Seth Rogen, award show presenter. In most circumstances, an actor like this would drive me up the wall, but I never hold it against Rogen because from the moment I first saw him on the great TV show Freaks and Geeks, he so strongly reminded me of a friend of mine from high school that each time I see him it's like seeing that friend again.
Huston, as you'd expect, turns in a great performance, even if you don't get that much of her. Howard also does the best job I've seen her do, though she never seems to look the same from one film to the next.
The other real bright spot of 50/50 belongs to Kendrick. She was so good (and Oscar-nominated) in Up in the Air. She also popped up in the fun Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World ss Scott's sister and I first noticed her in her film debut, the underrated and underseen musical Camp.
From all the praise that 50/50 received, it didn't turn out to be quite the movie I was expecting. It's good, but not in the ways it had been sold to me.
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Labels: 10s, A. Huston, Alec Baldwin, Apatow, Demi, Gandolfini, Godard, Gordon-Levitt, N. Lear, Seth Rogen
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Thursday, January 05, 2012
Survival of the greediest
By Edward Copeland
If any Occupy gatherings want a movie to pass the sit-in time which also speaks to the group's issues, the protesters could make no better choice than the riveting Margin Call, a well-acted depiction of the callous way that a fictional Wall Street investment firm treats its employees, its clients and the U.S. economy — all for the sake of perpetuating executive lifestyles, everything else be damned.
Margin Call marks the feature writing-directing debut of J.C. Chandor and an impressive debut it turns out to be. It begins much like John Wells' wretched The Company Men, except that it's an investment firm laying off much of its work force and the movie's focus isn't trying to convince us to cry crocodile tears for the execs who no longer can afford country club fees.
One of the first to get his walking papers is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a senior executive in risk management. His layoff shocks him but Dale seems more concerned about the data on his monitor when he receives the news. He tries to explain to the woman (Susan Blackwell) informing him of his fate about the importance of that in-progress project, but she stays on the severance script, letting him know what his exit package contains and how — for security reasons — his access to email, computer files, etc., has been severed. She sends him back to his office with a security guard to collect any "personal items" and escort him from the building.
As Dale grabs a few things, senior trader Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) sticks his head in to offer sympathies. Eric tries telling Emerson about his incomplete work, but Emerson tells him it isn't his problem anymore. As Dale takes his final walk to the elevator, box of belongings in his arms, one of his assistants, Pete Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), catches up to thank him for the chance to work with him. Eric again mentions his work — and he slips Sullivan a flash drive along with the warning, "Be careful." When Dale gets to the sidewalk, he attempts to make a call on his cell phone only to discover the firm shut that off as well, something that will bite the company in the ass.
Once the floor's layoffs have been completed, its top trading executive, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), comes out of his office to give the survivors a pep talk, explaining that it's been a difficult day but it's one that they may all go through again throughout their careers. On the bright side, with so many people gone, the rest should celebrate because they've all moved up several notches in the firm's hierarchy. Pretty much the entire floor takes the advice literally and heads out for drinks after work, including Dale's other assistant, Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley), who encourages Sullivan to go but Pete has immersed himself in flash drive's data and stays to work on it.
When Pete finally figures out what Dale had discovered, he can't believe the numbers and calls Seth to come look at them, followed by Will Emerson. With the projections, the trading firm has become so overleveraged that if its assets (made up mostly of those infamous mortgage-backed securities) should decrease by 25%, the company will owe more than it is worth. Emerson drags Rogers in and soon the firm's most important players have arrived to work through the night for possible solutions to the impending explosion including the head of risk management, Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore), a particularly cutthroat senior exec, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), and the company's CEO, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons).
As complicated as the subject matter is, Chandor's script makes it digestible and understandable. As a director, Chandor turns the material into a truly suspenseful thriller where no one's physical life may be at stake but it feels as something much larger is. Chandor's screenplay and direction prove great, but he also has been blessed with an embarrassment of riches in the casting department.
Jack Lemmon's influence on Spacey shows in his portrayal of Rogers, the veteran trader who serves as the firm's conscience. Irons turns in a fine performance as the CEO who feels his decisions are based on pragmatism not greed or self-preservation. Baker makes all his scenes come alive simply by the mysterious nature of his character. Quinto (who also served as one of the film's many producers) and Badgley work as a kind of yin and yang of up-and-comers in the business world. Though Tucci's role is limited, he makes the most of his appearances. Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi even appears, playing it straight as a firm lawyer.
For me though, the film's standout ends up being Paul Bettany. He caught my attention first as Russell Crowe's roommate in A Beautiful Mind, but I've been waiting for him to break out ever since, but most of his roles I've missed or have failed to make an impression on me. As Emerson in Margin Call, Bettany creates a cool customer that you're never quite certain where his loyalties lie or whether he even has any. He's also wry and somewhat of a tour guide for the audience through the corporate maze.
Margin Call also boasts crisp editing by Pete Beaudreau and production design by John Paino with set decoration by Robert Covelman that makes the boardrooms and trading office look spot-on real, especially when seen through Frank G. DeMarco's wondrous cinematography. Office interiors don't get heralded enough when filmed this well.
Chandor has won and been nominated for several first feature and first screenplay awards and the Independent Spirit Awards has given this cast its Robert Altman Award for best ensemble, all very deserved accolades. I look forward to seeing where Chandor goes from here.
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Labels: 10s, Altman, Demi, Jeremy Irons, Lemmon, Russell Crowe, Spacey, Tucci
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
From the Vault: The Scarlet Letter
The "A" on Hester Prynne's chest stands for adultery but in the case of The Scarlet Letter it means adapted or, as the opening credits say, "freely adapted" from the classic novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The on-screen admission that what follows bears little resemblance to Hawthorne's text prompts the biggest laugh and one of the last points of interest before this dull and belabored movie shuffles slowly toward its new but hardly improved ending.
Demi Moore stars as Hester, who arrives in America to prepare things for her husband before both settle in the Puritan colonies. Before too long, Hester encounters the young and charming Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale (Gary Oldman). Neither masks their mutual attraction easily, something they abandon even attempting when Hester's husband is presumed dead.
What's odd about The Scarlet Letter goes beyond its lack of resemblance to the novel (It should carry a disclaimer that the names have not been changed to protect the fictional), but it still feels as if it's a Cliff Note version of a story.
It seems as if Hester and Arthur only have met once before they declare their undying love and the actual placement of the "A" on Hester's clothes doesn't come until well into the movie and plays like an afterthought. When Hester tosses the letter into the dirt at the end, the audience hasn't seen her suffer much from having to wear it in the first place.
Hawthorne purists shouldn't even bother seeing this atrocity. For others hoping to see another seemingly pro-adultery romance such as The Bridges of Madison County, it's not in that league either. Of the talented actors stuck in this muck, none suffers more than poor Robert Duvall as Roger Prynne, who goes nuts and in one sequence is forced to wallow naked in mud with antlers on his head.
On the plus side, Joan Plowright gives a fun performance as Harriet Hibbons, a composite of several characters from the book, and Alex Thomson contributes nice cinematography.
In the end, the most ironic thing about The Scarlet Letter is that it exemplifies the satirical ending of The Player where Moore's real-life husband Bruce Willis helped make that film's point about Hollywood filmmaking.
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Labels: 90s, Demi, Duvall, Oldman, Willis
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From the Vault: Gary Oldman
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED OCT. 13, 1995
My first encounter with actor Gary Oldman came as I interviewed the Hughes Brothers for their film Dead Presidents. Oldman wandered into the interview to greet the directing team who had planned to cast him as a chaplain in their new film.
Unfortunately, the actor had to enter rehabilitation for alcoholism and had to pass on Dead Presidents. Oldman was in New York that weekend to promote his latest work, The Scarlet Letter. When the time came for interviews with Oldman, the actor was surprisingly candid about his off-screen troubles which came to a head during filming of The Scarlet Letter.
Oldman portrays the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, half of one of the most famous adulterous pairs in all of literature, opposite Demi Moore as Hester Prynne. Dimmesdale is a change of pace for Oldman.
"I like (The Scarlet Letter) because Arthur's inherently a good guy and it just makes a change playing someone like that instead of just going in with a big gun and killing a bunch of people. You get a little tired of that and I've done enough of that in my time. It appealed to me. It's not a light, romantic comedy, but it's lighter than a lot of the stuff I play."
As one journalist questioned Oldman and assumed that the role of Dimmesdale came after he cleaned up and got "on the straight and narrow," as he called it, Oldman corrected him.
"When I played Arthur, I was in the thick of it. I didn't go and clean up until after the film."
Oldman gives a great deal of the credit for his release from alcohol's grasp to his co-star Moore.
"Demi was instrumental in saving my life. In a sense, it was the gods or something that put me there in this film with Demi. There are only so many days you can come in with an inner ear infection and a tummy bug; there are only so many mornings you can do that. She just went, 'Oh, yeah. You've got to go away. You've got to stop. You've got to come back.' I think I may have reached a point where I gave up hiding it. That's a really sad point when you get to that because you do a great deal of lying when you drink. I think I got to the point that she was there working with me every day so she was the closest to me. She was seeing it every day."
While Oldman is grateful for Moore's help, he also realizes that change must come from within.
"Alcohol addiction is (an) ... illness that you just have to want it to leave. You must make a decision ... it has to come from you. A relationship won't help it. A good film won't help it. A role won't help it. It's got to be independent of all that, because you ultimately have to stand back and say, 'Do I want to live or do I want to die?'"
Oldman himself was painfully aware of what was happening to him.
"I was 36 years old when I made Scarlet Letter and when you're waking up in the morning and crawling across the floor like an 80-year-old man, when your tongue is discolored and you drink three vodkas and you vomit up the first two to keep the third one down so you just level out and feel normal, I think you have a problem. I think you have to say, 'This is not normal. Normal people do not start their day like this.'"
Oldman admits the subject isn't an easy one, but he felt it was necessary to talk about it once his rehabilitation was made public.
"I talk about it only because ... one person might read (an) article and go, 'That's me' and it might just inspire someone to say, 'Maybe I should do something about it too.'"
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Labels: Demi, Hughes Brothers, Interview, Oldman
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Thursday, June 03, 2010
Centennial Tributes: Paulette Goddard
By Josh R
Depending upon which account you believe, there may have been a point at which Paulette Goddard was but a hair’s breadth away from landing the coveted role of Scarlett O’Hara. On paper, it made sense; she was the
right age, she looked the part, and already was an established name with a few notable credits under her belt. Moreover, she had the right combination of kittenish sex appeal and dramatic presence that the role required. Very early on during the long, tortuous process of casting the most iconic character in all of American literature, it was abundantly clear that Paulette Goddard was more than just a pretty face. With talent, wit and beauty to spare, she was not only a credible seducer of men — she had the stubborn, willful insolence of a girl headstrong enough to think she could fight The Civil War all by herself, and enough in the way of fiery sexual bravado to reduce Atlanta to a pile of ashes without even striking a match. David O. Selznick, the impresario responsible for bringing the best-selling novel to the screen, tested her extensively for the part over a period of several months; by time she had made her final test, he was almost convinced that she could do it. Before long, the gossip columnists had already begin referring to her as “Scarlett O’Goddard.” While Wall Street had yet to recover from The Crash of `29, by 1937 Paulette Goddard had all the markings of a blue chip stock. Sure things have a way of falling through, and there are plenty of theories as to why Goddard’s promising forward march, with the magnolia-crested lawns of Tara well within her sight, ended just a few miles shy of glory. The publicity department was not in her corner; Paulette was known as a good-time girl, and was not particularly discreet about it. Her early life story makes for a colorful read — she began her career as a
frolicsome teenage adventuress bound and determined to have as much fun as possible, without worrying too much about what sort of names she was called along the way. She started as a Ziegfeld chorine — probably lying about her age to get the gig — and by the time she was 17, she had married a middle-age lumber tycoon and set her sights West. By the time prep work had begun on Gone With the Wind, she was living with Charlie Chaplin in the Hollywood hills — the status of their relationship remained, at best, ambiguous (there were some farfetched stories circulated by anxious publicists about an impromptu wedding at sea, or perhaps even in China, but the confirming paperwork remained curiously absent). She was popular and well-liked within the Hollywood community, but did not fight as hard as she might have to get to the front of the line. As a result, the starmakers — studio chiefs, agents, publicists - were slightly wary of her. It’s not that she was problematic — a consummate professional, she showed up on time, got along well with others and did her work without causing any trouble — but she may have lacked something in terms of drive and ambition. Often, it seemed as though she was more interested in having a good time than in hunkering down and putting career first. If the press had paid closer attention and conducted its research a little more thoroughly, they would have discovered that the All-American beauty with the frilly Gallic moniker — “Paulette Goddard” could have just as easily suited a countess as courtesan –— was actually Marion Levy from Queens, New York. In the 1930s, it was one thing for a Jew to run a studio; if you aimed to be a movie star, certain things were best left unacknowledged. It is possible — even probable — that one or more of these factors contributed to the failure of Paulette Goddard’s candidacy for the most coveted acting assignment of the 20th century. Ultimately, they do not fully account for why she came up short. Simply put, Scarlett O’Hara was not a role that Paulette Goddard was ever meant to play. Certain things can be chalked up to exigent circumstances, bad timing, the vagaries of subjective taste. The casting of Scarlett O’Hara was not determined by any of those things; as ridiculous as it sounds, it was quite simply a matter of heavenly design. While Paulette Goddard had so many wonderful qualities working in her favor — beauty, talent, and a good head start on rest of the competition — the hand of divine providence had made its own selection. That’s what David O. Selznick saw in the screen tests of an unknown Englishwoman — who pursued the part not merely because she wanted it, but believed that it was hers by right — and what brought the impresario to the conclusion that there were greater forces at work than could be neatly attributed to luck and chance.
The loss of Scarlett was surely a huge professional disappointment, not least because of what came after — if destiny’s plans for Vivien Leigh were awesome in scope, they were much more modestly scaled for the second-place finisher. While there were hits aplenty — Goddard’s track record at the box office was, for a brief period, inspired — the great, career-defining role never materialized. The closest she came was Modern Times for Chaplin; while she played the sprightly gamine to perfection, it was not an assignment which utilized her full capabilities, or showed her for what she truly was — a fun-loving dame and an unpretentious sexpot. Chaplin liked her energy and pluck, but as a matter of personal vanity, insisted on keeping her wholesome; some men would prefer to believe their wives came to them as virgins (the same held true in The Great Dictator, in which Chaplin kept her light even more firmly under the bushel). At her best, Goddard could be slinky, sexy and sharp in the best sense of the word; she could land a
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zinger with the best of them, and was naturally funny without resorting to aggressive tactics. She had a special knack for portraying worldliness in a way that seemed playful and fun — no mean feat at a time when girls who’d been around the block were usually depicted as tawdry and sad. The best Goddard performances are built around the pleasures of foreplay — she’s not just a flirt, she’s a flirt who likes sex and the banter leading up to it, and can dish it out without feeling ashamed or sacrificing one ounce of self-respect; there are few actresses of the 1940s who portrayed so many smart-talking dames with such lightness of touch. In The Women and Hold Back the Dawn, she was a merry golddigger without a mean bone in her body, quick with a quip and entertaining enough to build an entire film around; but these were supporting roles, not leads. She would have been ideally cast in either The Lady Eve or Ball of Fire, both which went to Barbara Stanwyck — but Baby Stan had more variety as a performer and was the superior technician. Goddard might have played those parts for straight-up carnal humor, and would have done it brilliantly — Stanwyck had a great feel for comedy, but also understood complexity of characterization in a way Goddard may never fully have grasped. Sugarpuss O'Shea is Stanwyck's greatest comic creation, but there are occasional glimpses of hardness, cheapness and self-loathing in the mix as well. Goddard was great as a broad on the make, but she wasn't suited to noir — was she too expensive to play cheap? 
The lack of a great lead kept her from entering the pantheon of legends, but a handful of supporting parts kept her in play and gave her opportunities to shine. In addition to The Women and Hold Back the Dawn, there was her Oscar-nominated turn as the navy nurse in So Proudly We Hail, shuttling from Pearl Harbor to battle-scarred outposts of The Pacific theater while pausing just long enough for saucy interplay with appreciative servicemen. She was once again in her element as the kind of libidinous minx who keeps a lacy black negligee in her tack kit while the rest of the girls in the unit shuffle around in shapeless regulation uniforms, but was able to step out of the mold just long enough for some finely observed moments of toughness and tenderness — it was a more fully-defined character than she was generally allowed to play, and she rose to the occasion.
Part of the problem for Goddard was the fact that, after parting ways with Chaplin and Selznick, she ultimately landed at Paramount, a shop that did not do particularly well by actresses; this was the studio that ran out of things to do with that hyper-animated sparkplug Betty Hutton in five years, Veronica Lake in less than two, and never thought to do anything at all with Dorothy Lamour beyond sandwiching her between Crosby and Hope when she wasn’t on sarong duty (of all the major female contact players at The Mountain, only Claudette Colbert flourished for an extended period of time). Goddard did better than most of her stablemates — for starters, she avoided the type of poverty and obscurity that befell both Hutton or Lake in later years — but she never plucked any plums from the Paramount orchards on the order of Sullivan’s Travels or Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. The comedy leads that did come her way — in Pot O’Gold with Jimmy Stewart and Standing Room Only with Fred MacMurray — were not at the level of Preston Sturges, who might have made fantastic use of her if given the chance.
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She was bolstered by a series of huge box office hits that have about as much of a claim on posterity as Demi Moore’s money-makers of the early 1990s. In fairness, nothing she did was as bad as Indecent Proposal or Disclosure; at least two were comparable in terms of frivolity. For Cecil B. DeMille she was photographed in gorgeous technicolor and wasted as The Girl — just The Girl, and nothing more — in two big-budget action-adventure films that were less concerned with drama than with spectacle. The first, 1942’s Reap the Wild Wind, played almost like a parody of Gone With the Wind, and at least permitted her some flashes of spirit as a Southern belle salvaging ships off the Florida Keys (she wasn’t responsible for that blockbuster status of that film; audiences came to see John Wayne wrestle a giant squid.) The pre-Revolutionary war epic Unconquered, in which her flame-haired ingénue was deported to the colonies, sold into indentured servitude, harassed by savage Indians, steered over a waterfall and repeatedly groped by Gary Cooper, was the top-grossing film of 1947, and really only served to illustrate how little DeMille’s concept of directing actors had evolved since the end of the silent era. Between the two behemoths was another, much better top-grossing outing, 1945’s Kitty, a dirty-minded reworking of Pygmalion in which the heroine not only learns to refine her vowel sounds, but dispenses sexual favors frequently and liberally in her ascent to titled nobility. Goddard enjoyed herself more as a rambunctious, barefooted cockney pickpocket than as a corseted duchess in cumbersome powdered wigs — the film had a cheekiness that suited her, but in its second act the performance got smothered in a swath of lavish costuming.
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The decline of the film career was less a precipitous tumble than a slow fade-out; Hollywood hadn’t yet figured out what to do with sexpots of the '40s when they were nearing their 40s. Two ambitious projects,
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Renoir’s Diary of a Chambermaid and Korda’s An Ideal Husband, were well-received but never quite connected with audiences, while the infamous Lucretia Borgia biopic, Bride of Vengeance, was hailed as an unqualified fiasco. She married and divorced Burgess Meredith, and the 1950s brought some B-grade films whose scripts were not commensurate with her talent. She wisely opted for retirement in favor of career rebirth in Grand Guignol; with a personality as light as a champagne cocktail, there was no sense in entering anything as heavy-handed as the Baby Jane sweepstakes. In the late '50s, she married her fourth husband, the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, amassed a modern art collection to rival J. Paul Getty’s, and wound up with more money than she really knew what to do with. She remained the life of the party well into her 60s and 70s. As a jet-setting socialite bedecked in jewels, she was just as likely to be seen on the arm of Andy Warhol at Studio 54 as she would be dining with French President Francois Mitterand on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival. Upon her death, she willed an unseemly amount of money to New York University; Goddard Hall in Washington Square is named in her honor. David Hinton’s documentary on the making of Gone With the Wind features footage of Goddard’s screen tests for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, as well as Vivien Leigh’s. These brief snippets bear out that fact that Selznick was right to entertain serious thoughts of casting Paulette Goddard. She read well for it, better even
than her other performances might lead one to suspect. She was more than beautiful enough, and had enough spark and energy to serve the major demands of the role, if not to embody its contradictions as effortlessly as Leigh did. The biggest difference between the two women observed in the test footage can be summed up very succinctly: one is playing Scarlett O’Hara, and playing her well; the other is living and breathing the part — she is Scarlett. It is obvious that Paulette Goddard wanted very badly to play the role; it is equally clear that Vivien Leigh refused to be denied it. It’s that intensity and conviction that brought the novice Englishwoman to America on her own dime, before it had even occurred to anyone to offer her an audition; she recognized the character on the page as one created specifically for her, the role that she was born to play. The challenger was hopeful; the chosen one was certain. Certainty can be a form of madness — the voices whispering in Leigh’s ear may not have been so different from those heard by Joan of Arc. Fate’s blessing can bring it with a curse; the same type of madness that spurred Leigh on, that anointed her as the only person in the world who could possibly play that particular role in that particular film, overtook her in the end. It’s worth questioning who was the luckier of the two. The blessings that brought Leigh to Scarlett O’Hara also led her into darkness. Paulette Goddard always headed toward the light. Tweet
Labels: Burgess Meredith, Chaplin, Cooper, Demi, J. Stewart, MacMurray, Oscars, P. Sturges, Paulette Goddard, Renoir, Selznick, Stanwyck, V. Leigh, Wayne
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