Reviews

In a way, PETER GUNN was (and is) to be enjoyed as Hollywood's own modest version of the virtues of French auteur, J.P. Melville: a dreamily nocturnal jazz-laced exercise of style over content in which the achingly desirable Lola Albright provides counterpoint sultriness to the stone-faced stoicism of Craig Stevens' Cary Grant-like Gunn.

But there is one episode entitled "The Comic," starring Shelly Berman as a neurotic funnyman (Danny Arnold) who insists his wife is out to destroy him and enlists the hero's help to prevent it. The show is basically two monologues: the first one is of Arnold explaining the cause of his concerns to Gunn; the second is of a crucial portion of the nightclub stand-up act itself, in which through metaphor and analogy, it becomes increasingly more clear that it is Arnold who is a mortal threat to his wife and not the other way around. His monologue which is "killing" the audience is thus transformed in the story from being merely comic to a confession of first degree murder.

Berman's performance defines what tour-de-force means and is one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) neglected acting job in the history of network television (he received no Emmy). It is also quite possibly the most personal, successfully concentrated expression by Edwards of his divided, comedic/depressive sensibility. So direct, so simple, but the final effect is enormous.

That this half-hour installment is not one of the legends in the annals of the golden age of television is one of the Industry's cruelest mysteries.

Rating for the Series: A generous 8

for this one sterling episode: a steely 10

Composite Score: 9

This is a beautiful movie. Its most celebrated scene is of two men in a tent, one a war correspondent, named Ernie Pyle, the other an army captain, called Walker. They are shown together commiserating about the men the latter one feels responsible for sending to their deaths. This is an idle moment, an intermission from the killing but not the squalor, composed of words, rain, mud and pregnant pauses between swigs of a shared bottle of grappa. Nothing "happens" except that the viewer is privy to a communion of souls and the spectacle of what seems like the two most believable actors (Burgess Meredith as Pyle, and Robert Mitchum as Lt. Capt. Bill Walker, respectively)to ever share screen space and time together in the same motion picture.

In his famous review of it, James Agee compared the packed emotionalism of GI JOE's final lyrical outburst with the elegiac verses of Whitman's Civil War poetry and while the great author of "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" and "A Death In The Family" was wont to gush about certain pet favs of his (John Huston, the 'Silent Age' of Charles Chaplin, and a documentary approach to the cinema, in general, spring most immediately to mind) on this occasion, when composing the longest essay he ever devoted to a single picture, I believe Agee got it exactly right for of all the war films dealing directly with the miserable business of fighting and dying and soldiering on regardless, only THE DEER HUNTER comes remotely close to equalling its weary blend of stoical honor and boundless remorse in the face of such heartbreaking images of battle.

The anecdotal design of THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (the underrated, deceptively original script is by Leopald Atlas and Guy Endure) frustrates as standard narrative mechanism but coheres poetically as a whole, as an ode to the nobility of the human spirit. It ingeniously incorporates surprisingly choice ingredients of the period: the overcast quality of Robert Capa's combat photos haunt the cinematography and give this William Wellman film an expressive look (and grace) none of his others possess; the early scenes in the African desert and a hurried-up wedding between a WAAC and enlisted man have the flavor of a series of mordant Bill Maulden cartoons. Most obviously, there are the words of Pyle himself, especially the inspiring ones culled from "The Death of Captain Waskow," spoken by Meredith on the soundtrack that conclude the movie.

Wellman wraps it together with the utmost tact and unerring sensitivity (qualities not usually associated with him)- with a divine instinct that seems to derive from the beyond. This makes it the greatest of Memorial Day movies. In its stark juxtaposition of brutal inevitability (the men look out for each other like muddy boots dangling in the wind, ready to drop) and the recording of amazingly tender impulses under duress, G.I JOE is the most cathartic of fighting films. It wasn't until the Peckinpah westerns that anybody surpassed it.

Say what you want about this race of retrousee-nosed, cheese eating, wine swilling snobs, when it comes to the putting on of religious-themed movies, they know how to do sanctity. OF GODS AND MEN has affinities to A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (in this instance, a prior of a French monastery in contemporary Algeria is being pressured by Islamic terrorists to leave the region) while also sharing a strange connection to Howard Hawks's THE THING (1951) and Ford's 7 WOMEN (1966) in the way it limns the contour of an indefinite hostile force outside the monastery gates. But what distinguishes this film from the famous Robert Bolt play about St. Thomas Moore is that the community leader (played with steely intensity by Lambert Wilson) is not necessarily the smartest or best man in the room. His conscience is conditioned by spiritual factors (and necessities) more humbling than they are flagrantly noble. Secondly, the monks do not circle the wagons against their impending destruction the way the Hawks and Ford films do. Here, the characters remain, existentially, open to the harrowing environment that defines their service to God and man. Director Xavior Beauvois' mise-en-scene draws on the classically austere examples of Dreyer, Bresson and Rossellini (the decision to rely on master shots, silence and incisive close-ups) to fashion a divine milieu; it's an extraordinarily lucid picture about spiritual matters. All the performers are exceptional. However, Michael Lonsdale (reminescent of Maurice Pialat's confessor in his great film, UNDER THE SUN OF Satan (1987)) gives a performance beyond praise as the Trappist doc who listens and tends to the local tribespeople. He - with the others - bestows upon the the despised masque of martyrdom a human face.

Rating: 9 out of 10. And if you want to take it higher go for it.

Lubitsch's evolution as a director is the most delightful and surprising of Hollywood's old Guard giants. In a sense, he arrived on the scene from Germany ready-made; with little visual skill but a prodigious talent for gags which were transparently clever and loaded with innuendo but too rigorously rehearsed to be as funny as their reputation suggests. There's plenty of inventive bits of business in his 30s output to warrant the reputation for the "Lubitsch touch," but in review, the supreme brittleness of these pictures represents a spoon feeding arrangement between a maestro and an odd assortment of players (including Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald) who seemed to be taking their marching orders on blind faith alone - rather than in thoughtful collaboration with the puppet master.

But then in 1940, the naughty knowingness of cynical bedroom farce is replaced by the comedy of quiet desperation of workers at their appointed stations in the sublime SHOP AROUND THE CORNER. A true sense of actor participation and a celebration of democratic spirit (in spite of the artificial Budapest setting) is projected with unforgettable humour and warmth by a perfect ensemble featuring Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart, the blessed Felix Bressart and the most precious Frank Morgan. Instead of merely mirroring what the master wants in shadow play, the performers, for the first time in a Lubitsch production, appear in full command of their instruments. And there is something else that undergoes a transformation in Lubitsch's art as well.

The screenwriter of THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, Samson Raphaelson, started with Lubitsch in the 30s adapting Continental stage comedies (into English) to the screen. SHOP was pivotal; still ostensibly set in Eastern Europe, it was as much about American manners as it was Old World sentiment. HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1943), starring Don Ameche, Gene Tierney and the invaluable, Charles Coburn, was explicitly a satire by Raphaelson and the director (lovingly administered) of U.S. sexual mores but before that, with TO BE OR NOT TO BE (1942), starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, allusions to the English classics (ie. Shakespeare)took precedent over German ones (eg. Molnar)

Ernst Lubitsch never mastered American popular culture (eg. the intricacies of baseball) to the same degree of expertise that his logical successor, Billy Wilder, did but, philosophically, his conversion to an Anglo-American outlook was more sincere and more surprisingly profound.

His most perfect film remains THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER. He and Raphaelson accomplished something comparable - in terms of romantic sentiment and comic use of language - to the music of Mozart. But in his last completed film, CLUNY BROWN (1946), he finishes off the comedy of Anglo-American (and Victorian)manners by returning home to its cultural source, Merry Ole England. This lovely, easy-going satire about the propriety of British "plumbing" is so gentle and deft in its ridicule that it is as much a salute to the country's eccentricity as it is a swipe at its silly stuffiness. Working with another great screenwriter, this time it is the more flagrantly absurdist,poetically digressive, Samuel Hoffenstein (LOVE ME TONIGHT (1932), LAURA (1944) ETC.), Cluny Brown is beyond obvious "touches" and is instead a steady succession of impeccable grace notes so clean and pellucidly clear as to rival the perfection of Bunuel's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOSIE (1972). Charles Boyer, as Belinski, is not just a quintessentialized version of Boyer's familiar charm and usual persuasiveness; he is a stand-in for Lubitsch himself. When he tells Cluny at the train station to, "Get in," he is the director play-acting the most romantically momentous scene of his career. After "removing the strain of the drain," the first time, Jennifer Jones, as Cluny Brown, feels, with a revived intensity, "that Persian cat feeling coming on. Meow, meow." We don't need to understand (as we once did with Lubitsch) the meaning of the innuendo for "pipes" when we have before us the sexual soul of this divine creature served up to us, hilariously, on a silver tray.

Hawks had the same comedic gift of exposing the personalities of his actors in the most gloriously charming light.

Lubitsch does the same in CLUNY BROWN and the end result brings tears of gratitude to the viewer's eyes.

Rating: 9 1/2 out of 10. (the missing .5% adds to the charm)

Since its unceremonious critical reception in 1967, this movie has been on the rise in cult interest, but still relegated to "guilty pleasure," "good-bad movie" status by mainstream minds. (It's ranked lower than that in some quarters but this tiny cadre is dwindling and becoming increasingly irrelevant.)

Few would disagree, however, that, on its own terms, REFLECTIONS provides for compulsive viewing.

I continue to return to it over and over again, and I know that my obsessiveness, my addictive fascination with the spell it consistently casts is not based on the kinky sensationalism of the material because the key to the picture's uniqueness is that the outré elements are PLAYED DOWN; treated like regularly irregular movements of a clock making its appointed rounds. Only twice does Huston's direction stumble: oversupplying Brando's ride on the horse, Firebird, with too much music and subjective camera angles and, at the coda, where he couldn't resist pulling lightening and thunder from out of Hollywood's old Gothic studio closet.

Otherwise, the ensemble and aura sustained throughout this strangely underrated Carson McCullers story are theatrically mesmerizing. The Surreal, the cinema and the Gothic share natural affinities; letting them come together and ignite doesn't take much effort as long as the actors pick up on the first cords scored at the beginning, and the director's nerve holds firm to the end.

Still not a masterpiece but every time I take another look, it creeps closer to that artistic benchmark.

Rating: 8.5 and climbing

For those in the need to know -

FILM NOIR is not plot specific. It is not a reality, it is an atmosphere, a mood contingent on two key attitudes. None of this can be adequately understood without comparative examples. Ulmer's DETOUR (1946) is classic noir; at one time this was the ultimate "maudit" masterpiece, however, it is now a title protected by the Library of Congress. Thus, it has lost a portion of disreputable lustre essential to a genre that wears its lousiness with pride. Arthur D. Ripley's THE CHASE has this quality to such an extravagant degree that, believe or not, chances of it ever being included in the National Registry are slim and none.

Adapted from Cornell Woolrich by the reliably untrustworthy Philip Yordan (a man who, on occasion, "ghosted" his own work), he, along with Ripley and cameraman, Franz Planer, create a midnight milieu of such troubling uncertainty that the combined talents of Bunuel, Borges and David Lynch, with all their superior intelligence and skill, could not hope to approximate it.

The other key attitude determining film noir is toward women. The movie, CAUGHT (1949), by the great Max Ophuls and photographed in gorgeously gloomy b/w by Lee Garmes has a character played in it by Robert Ryan (at his most horrific). He is clearly impersonating a demonic version of Howard Hughes, a man attempting to keep his young beautiful wife played by Barbara Bel Geddes under lock and key. CAUGHT has film noir elements but is not noir because the story is told largely from the woman's vantage point. In authentic noir, women are totally objectified as either femme fatales or caged angels in gilded cages, strict personifications of male dread or fervent desire.

Michele Morgan falls into the second category in THE CHASE. Steve Cochran, who plays her well-heeled gangster husband, Eddie Roman, is probably based on Howard Hughes too but because THE CHASE IS film noir at its rattiest, he dominates the proceedings far more thoroughly than the better actor of the two, Ryan does in CAUGHT.

THE CHASE contains a notorious knife-throwing dream sequence in Havana, shot in almost pitch darkness by Planer, that is pure blotto. But is it possible that the dreamer of the dream himself, "Love That Bob"'s, Robert Cummings is blotto too? Who knows in a movie as seriously deranged as this one? Perhaps Cochran's megalomaniacal Roman (who controls the speed of the film from the backseat of his car) WILLS Cummings' Chuck Scott into being in order to vicariously act out the personal "fear is a wish" fantasy of rescuing his bride from the clutches of his own overtly cruel nature? Scott is a MALE fantasy, as much as Robert Mitchum, in real (not reel) life was, for Hughes, a he-man projection of making happy all the beautiful women Hughes unsuccessfully bedded and sought to control.

You see nothing really exists in THE CHASE. Only Peter Lorre's attitude as the henchman, Gino, MIGHT exist. He doesn't really die in the film's climactic crash because he never actually lived in the first place.Only his spirit lives, for Lorre embodied the spirit of noir at the very beginning in M (produced by the same man, Nebenzal, who spawned THE CHASE) and, in the context of wet dreams as sinister and romantically sleazy as this one, bears witness to FILM NOIR's one abiding truth - that Satan never sleeps.

Grades. Execution: 6

Dream Quotient: 10

Bonus Points: Michel Michelet's abominably marvelous film score:.5

Grand composite rating: 8.5

Was this review useful to you?

Undeniably amusing Gothic farrago by Williams (with Vidal) that has none of the artistry or comic seriousness of BABY DOLL but in the way it lectures moralistically against its most ardent sentiments, an ingenious corrupt entertainment nonetheless. Gist of the mysterious back-story is that a decadent homosexual poet manque called (what else?) Sebastian, ends up, ironically, like Christ, being consumed, as host, by his own congregation. Ostensible moral is: Don't get caught playing Magdalen to this type of fella because you're likely to have holes bored into your brain to protect the naive world from the scandal of it all. Of course, the play is actually venerating what it appears to be hysterically warning against. Almost deserves to get an honest "guilty pleasure" recommendation but Mankiewicz's direction is too vulgar by half (especially in the snake pit scenes at the hospital site and the flashback of the cacophonous cannibal party at the end.)

Montgomery Clift looks severely ill-disposed as the terminally dim-witted Dr. Cuckoowitz (er, that's Cukrowicz) but Hepburn's skillful dragon lady turn as Aunt Vi and Taylor's pulchritude at its then luscious peak sustain one's low-grade fever interest until the finish.

Grade - My usual cop-out rating of 6.5

* Williams' plays were never really very well served by their directors in screen translation - from the best (Kazan with BABY DOLL in 1956) to the worst (LAST OF THE MOBILE HOT SHOTS by Lumet in 1970, from the most critically acclaimed - A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in 1951 (Kazan again) to the most brutally drubbed (Losey and BOOM in 1968) Only Lumet's low-key handling of ORPHEUS DESCENDING (THE FUGITIVE KIND (1959)) makes the material seem more interesting than it is but even that surprisingly intelligent production with good performances by Brando, Magnani and Victor Jory can't redeem the squawkish melodramatic absurdity of the playwright's original ending.

To go down in history as a "period piece" is not the career goal of a director or an actor (or anybody else for that matter), but sometimes, as a kind of (the French call it a "pis aller"), it yields a poignant reward. THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES came out about a year before the murder of President John F. Kennedy and was there any filmmaker more keyed into the ethos of "Camelot" than Blake Edwards - or more adversely affected by its devastating fall-out? THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES stars the lovely Lee Remick (beloved by everyone who knew her and who was tragically cut down at age 55) and, of course, features Jack Lemmoon in his bravest performance as a decent but spiritually shallow p.r. man who hooks himself and his beautiful bride on the booze, destroys her life and nearly wrecks his own.

Lemmon was never so affecting again, or as successful at combining his character's desire to please with the self-loathing that bubbles up whenever that need is neurotically imposed.

But WINE AND ROSES fell short of an artistic breakthrough for Edwards and soon afterwards came the tragic end of Camelot.

In retrospect, it was too brittle to last (Edwards's original vision that is): the vinyl, black and white look (going back to the PETER GUNN days), the lovely, sticky, but not too sticky Mancini melody(ies), the delusionally sophisticated patter between handsome men and women (flirty but respectful), the aspirational materialistic chic of it all.

We took it for granted. We were encouraged to feel confident and scoff at our quality of life. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves as a people, as a nation. But now it is gone the days of wine and roses, and some of us, who are in our 50s, who watch it today can't help but mourn the fact that those fragile, easy to feel superior to, days are no more.

Rating as a movie: 6.5

as period piece artifact: priceless

How does one rate epic marathons of this ilk? If you grade them straight up, no more than a 6.5 because the love story gets in the way of the history lesson and the obligation of all that history invariably scuddles the dramatic intent of the love story. However, in comparison to a turkey of the same stripe, DR. ZHIVAGO, REDS looks occasionally like a world-beater, with some real moxy and teeth, especially whenever Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill shows up to shed a sharp, baleful light on the fairly impossible marriage between Jack Reed and Louise Bryant- which is the ostensible "raison d'etre" of the movie.

Beatty deserves a portion of respect bringing home a movie that is probably in large measure the picture he envisioned in the first place. But ultimately, considering such controversial subject matter, the movie is, surprisingly, a pretty tame affair. Beatty, like most Method actors, loves (loved) to play the wronged, overly idealistic, noble sufferer. Also, the ultra-committed feminist. Frankly, it's always been a bit of a dodge, a womanizer's pose - and don't you know it. Beatty completists can point to THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS. STONE and ALL FALL DOWN as notable exceptions, but for the most part, starting with SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, to LILITH, later on, THE PARALAX VIEW and of course, his own productions: BONNIE AND CLYDE, SHAMPOO and REDS, it was always the same story. (Even when he innocently punches a door in understandable anger, we are not spared the long reaction shot of him in bed writhing from the cruel indignity of that dang, iliberal, unfeeling door. Only in McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, does a strong director intervene to insist on a different, contrasting tone to take hold at the end of the proceedings. Altman was right to have Julie Christie's tough doxy oblivious in her opium haze as Warren dutifully did his dying act in all that obligingly, lovely photo-processed snow. (REDS makes up for the coldness of McCABE's finale by having Diane Keaton's Bryant kneeling devotedly at Beatty/Reed's bedside for the final shot.

Oh, by the way, Warren still hates McCABE for a host of sundry, and rather petty reasons.

Was this review useful to you?

Isn't it nice to discover what second-rate (or is it third rate?) actors have to say about their betters? According to Richard Anderson - and I believe this was right after Welles had just finished directing the masterpiece, TOUCH OF EVIL and some years before his last great film, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT), Anderson said Orson Welles appeared on the set to be a "burnt out case," clearly "passed it." Forget about whether or not he gives an accurate rendering of the Clarence Darrow role (called Jonothan Wilk in the Meyer Levin screenplay), his glorified cameo certainly provides COMPULSION, with its only spark of true wit or auspiciousness. He also, for good or for ill, makes the defense attorney role exclusively his own. It seems that the part is all Welles but, paradoxically, Welles doing a fascinating version of the great theologian-author G.K. Chesterton in the context of the famous agnostic trial attorney, Darrow. Spectacles figure prominently in this telling of the story - the script's best dramatic plot gimmick. They evoke not only one of the most famous personal trademarks of the creator of the amateur detective, Father Brown, but they are also reminiscent of the "owl eye" specs which haunt the dream landscape of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age novel, THE GREAT GATSBY, the glasses of the mythical Dr. T J. Eckleburg, the entity who gazes down upon East and West Egg Harbor and sees all.

I assume Levin knew of Leopold's Catholic conversion in prison. This explains the reason for the ironic, theological exchange between Welles and Dean Stockwell in the last scene. (In real life, Leopold tried to put a stop to the making of the film believing it to be an invasion of privacy. He was paroled from prison shortly before the movie went into production.)

It is interesting to note that the the screenplay misrepresents Darrow's original argument against capital punishment. When he pleaded for mercy for his clients upon the court, his basic alibi was that it wasn't money that corrupted these teenage boys' morals but their innocently literal interpretation of Nietzsche which was recommended reading in the philosophy department at the University of Chicago. He sort of made the OPPOSITE point about "freedom of thought" one year later during the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925.

Final Scorecard: Welles 3, Levin 2, Fleisher 1, Anderson .5 =ing a total of 6.5

Was this review useful to you?

what constitutes a Don Siegel movie? When good, mostly misanthropic mayhem executed with maximum no-fuss efficiency and graphic force. The gamut runs from the sci-fi hysteria of the original, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, to the kinkily erotic, hot-house cat and mouse of THE BEGUILED (Siegel and Eastwood's most atypical picture) and of course, the shocking vigilante classic, DIRTY HARRY. All display the director's editing prowess. MADIGAN is the one Siegel film for my money with a modicum of heart and it climaxes with his most moving action sequence. His montage technique does right by the Duke at the end of THE SHOOTIST as well, but there's a big difference between the outsider anguish of Richard Widmark's hard luck cop and the challenge to do justice to an American icon in the person of John Wayne. MADIGAN is carved with an edge to it, THE SHOOTIST feels like it's painted by the numbers. The construction is plainly theatrical with one "two-hander" scene following upon the other with deliberate metronomc precision. The story covers the last week or so in the life of a gunman, J.B. Books, who, in order to avoid the agony of dying from cancer, sets up a gun battle against three formidable enemies that will either crown his legend or end his life - or hopefully, do both. There's no doubt about THE SHOOTIST having about it the aura of a death watch relating directly to the actor's actual state of health. But Siegel takes too easy advantage of this.

The best episode in the movie is where Wayne prevails upon the priggish widow played by Betty Bacall to step out with him for a Sunday buggy ride on a brisk "fall spring" afternoon. What's touching here is that the scene is not only revealing of Books' character, but it betrays the essence of Wayne the man's nature as well; for contrary to popular misconception, his persona was not in the mold of the Gary Cooper strong silent type. Wayne, the American movie myth was, in fact, a talker, a sardonic, compelling amusing talker representing a unique compound of personal stoicism and a compulsive need for the company of others. This is the key element that distinguishes him from other tough guys. He NEEDED us as much as we needed him. And he inveighed upon us to join him. Bacall is the audience's stand-in in this particular scene. The direction is unobjectionable except when one imagines what Sam Peckinpah would have done with it. With Wayne, or, if not him, with, say, Brian Keith.

Wayne was a strong charismatic character but (like all of us), he had his insecurities too. As he got older, he got mellower in some ways, but he wanted to persuade, cajole, lay down the law and get people to take everyone of his on the set suggestions seriously. During RIO LOBO, Howard Hawks, the master psychologist, let him go, making him think he was running the show more than he actually was. Somehow, I don't think on the set of THE SHOOTIST, Siegel was quite so shrewd or so gracefully accommodating. The movie is a proper, respectful enough tribute to a towering Hollywood monument, but the coolness I felt on watching it again last night cannot be explained entirely from the air-conditioning.

My grade 6.5

Was this review useful to you?

Just watched this movie again last night. Thirteen yrs ago this picture received - across the board - the best set of reviews of ANY movie ever released in the history of Warner Brothers.

Today, it doesn't deserve that kind of hype. The list of reservations runs remarkably deep in hindsight. The script feels rushed and underdeveloped at key plot points (What does it represent, three novels boiled into one screenplay?) The romantic (triangle) subplot comprised of Russell Crowe, Kim Bassinger and Guy Pearce is grotesquely handled (compare it to the languorous sparring of Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell in the underrated "guilty pleasure," TEQUILA SUNRISE) Bassinger's performance is arguably the lamest one to ever be awarded a supporting Oscar. The love scenes between her and Crowe are written in the form of a fervent adolescent's sincerest wet dream. Psychological explanations are purest pulp. The mise-en-scene, which I thought was a tad overrated even at the time, now looks to be exclusively the work of the production research department. Visually, its actually pretty flat, playing like a solid cable series with some key episodes missing. Yet having said that much, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL benefits mightily from having a spectacular, cunningly sinister villain in James Cromwell. He is as good as one's memory of him. The climax of the picture, where his wickedness appears well-nigh omnipotent (Noah Cross with a badge)and, in classic melodramatic fashion, one fears for the lives of the two righteous detectives who are out to crack the case - yes, this last section still holds up and delivers the goods.

So in retrospect, I remain charitable and credit it a 7 out of 10 because so few melodramas have heart these days and this far-fetched conspiracy tale does reflect the convictions of its author, James Ellroy - even if what those convictions add up to is less than meets the eye.

Was this review useful to you?

Making satires about Southern California ethos is like launching a beach ball into the Pacific, or better yet, tripping Michael Dunn. This has always been true. Also true is the Latin saying, "Degustibus non disputatum est" which is to say that some of the most fiendishly aggressive egs. of California comedy, THE DAY OF THE LOCUST, THE LOVED ONE (not the book which is comic genius but definitely the wretched movie) and THE LONG GOODBYE (Altman's overrated film is an intentional parody of Chandler) are not funny at all, whereas the old Frank Gilroy-Gene Barry TV show, BURKE'S LAW, James Garner's classic P.I. program, THE ROCKFORD FILES and this wild George Axelrod cult item are. There's no accounting for what some of us find (or do not find) laugh-worthy, but to expand upon the insightful comments already made regarding the picture's deliberately intrusive style - beginning with opening credits of crew shooting scenes that turn up later, visible boom mikes, and subliminal flash cuts of Tuesday Weld's eventual fate as Hollywood starlet - there is something affectionately complicitous about these choices. They provide the film with the degree of innocent unpredictability and silliness to protect it from the charge of pretentiousness. The same goes for the infectiously inane, repetitive theme song. (It's only with the final speech - similar to the one delivered by Sinatra which concludes THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE - that Axelrod turns pooh-faced on his audience.)

It's tone is deadly and not serious at the same-time, a paradox which fits the depraved atmosphere aptly. Everything that transpires in LORD LOVE A DUCK is substitute behavior for making whoopee, whether it be eating, drinking, dancing, driving, attempting murder, talking spiritualistic rot and/or simply "sampling" sweaters.

All Hollywood self-send-ups have odd-ball casts. But the ensemble of McDowell, Weld, Albright, Korman, West, Showalter and Ruth Gordon et. al. is the wackiest still on record because they're all gifted second-echelon performers who, quite plausibly, might have been touchy neighbors in real life at the time the movie was being made. They possess an incongruously intimate chemistry in this zany environment.

One other point of interest. Only two yrs. later, the adorable Miss Weld was to play a toxic destroyer again, this time in a movie written by Lorenzo Semple called PRETTY POISON. In it, she plays opposite Tony Perkins; the rapport between them is a little different, but Perkins, like McDowell, falls in love with her too. The result is once again devastating - as a matter of fact for the Perkins character it is far worse. PRETTY POISON is a darker, subtler, more compact, easier to defend picture than the Dobie Gillis on acid antics of LORD LOVE A DUCK, but in terms of knowing how to make best use of Tuesday, Axelrod got there first.

Was this review useful to you?