Cat On a Hot Tin Roof

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF                             A                    

USA  (108 mi)  1958  d: Richard Brooks

How does one drowning man help another drowning man?          —Brick (Paul Newman)

A hugely powerful work, arguably Tennessee Williams’ best play, and his personal favorite, but the playwright disowned the film version, claiming it censored some of the original power by deleting the homosexual references in the lead character.  Paul Newman, the star, also noted his disappointment with the screen adaptation, which also revises the final act.  However, even with the author’s reservations, this is a stunning film, especially memorable by the iconic performances, where each meticulously created character is forever etched in our memories.  Burl Ives as Big Daddy, the wealthy owner of 28,000 acres of the most fertile land in Mississippi, is unforgettable as the gruff speaking, big-bellied patriarch who is led to believe he has a second chance at life, that he has a clean bill of health instead of the terminal cancer he feared.  This is spectacular news on his 65th birthday, where his family has gathered at his huge plantation to celebrate.  Judith Anderson is the matriarch Big Momma, continually shamed into second class status by the iron clad rule of her overbearing husband.  Elizabeth Taylor has never looked more glamorous than as Maggie the Cat, the beautiful wife of Brick (Paul Newman), the favored son and heir to the throne, a man drowning in his own sorrows, self-pity, and plenty of liquor, disgusted at the turn of his life and disgusted with Maggie, refusing to allow her anywhere near him, despite her attempts to entice him away from the bottle.  Equally memorable are the “no-necked monsters,” the endlessly annoying, spoiled, ill-bred children of Jack Carson as Goober, the dutiful and obedient son, and Madeleine Sherwood as his perpetually pregnant wife Mae, otherwise known as Sister Woman, one of the more contemptible characters to ever hit the screen, whose proficiency at backstabbing is second to none. 

Offscreen, Elizabeth Taylor was emotionally distraught and near paralyzed from the death of her husband, Michael Todd, who died in a plane accident shortly after the birth of their child, an event that held up shooting for several weeks.  Todd actually negotiated the part for his wife with MGM, where immersing herself in the role of Maggie the Cat is reported to have saved her career, receiving the second of 4 Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in four consecutive years, and if truth be told, it is a career-defining performance worthy of a star, one that defines her as an actress, typified by her sexual allure, smoldering passion, intelligence, combativeness, and simmering restraint.  Wearing a white slip or a white cocktail dress, she exudes glamour and elegant sensuality either way, offering an extraordinary sense of urgency and even desperation about life while her husband is steeped in impotency and despair (the gay subtext makes much more sense than what is implied here).  Newman, who hops around on a single crutch after breaking his ankle, goes through several bottles of whisky in one day, enough to knock most men off their feet, but barely seems phased by it as he’s plenty coherent when he needs to be, but has no interest in sharing in the family party festivities, especially the ridiculously aggravating moments from the trained-like-monkeys children.  But that doesn’t stop the party from coming to him, where eventually he and his father confront each other’s personal disgust with all the “lies and mendacity” that consume their lives.  Their knock-down, drag-out, man to man talk is one for the ages, and comprises the central themes of the film.  It is blisteringly intense and goes through several lengthy phases, exploring the dysfunctional family component each has learned to despise. 

Both father and son go through an achingly personal transformation confronting the skeletons in their closet, but Ives’s performance is off the charts, especially after he learns the truth that he’s really dying of cancer.  His Lear-like patriarchal prominence dwarfs the rest of the cast, even Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman at the peak of their beauty and power, as the death looming over his head is all that matters, everything else is secondary.  As Goober and his Iago-like wife fight for their piece of the inheritance, Brick only grows less and less interested, infuriated as much with himself as anything else, but also overwhelmed by the impending death of his father.  In a storm sequence, Big Daddy fades away into the basement where he’s alone with his Xanadu of life’s collectibles, all stockpiled, filling every inch of space, covered in cobwebs.  The man may as well be alone with his dreams as he watches them all disappear before his eyes.  When Brick joins him, after an initial disagreeable outburst of suppressed anger, the pace of the film slows, becoming quietly reflective, and as they seem to reconcile their differences, Ives reflects on his own life with a newfound clarity.  It’s the scene of the film, perhaps unsurpassed in the entire Williams’ repertoire, but ironically also a revision from the original play, yet beautifully written by Richard Brooks and James Poe and perfectly delivered, simply an unforgettable moment, where the background music of a lone harmonium can be heard underscoring the hauntingly dramatic poignancy.  Ives won a Best Supporting Actor that same year for his performance in William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), where he’s the patriarch of another dysfunctional western family, but his spellbinding performance here is nothing short of brilliant, easily the greatest performance in his lifetime.  Once more, just like on her last film Raintree County (1957), leave it to Elizabeth Taylor to bring down the curtain in dramatic style.     

Wuthering Heights (Arnold)

WUTHERING HEIGHTS                    B-                   

Great Britain  (129 mi)  2011  d:  Andrea Arnold

While revisionist works are always controversial, this one is a flawed misstep, reverential in tone as a visual essay of a literary work, where the words are lost in an incomprehensible mix of bad acting and mumbled sound recording.  Throughout this mostly wordless film, very few words can actually be understood, instead relegated to background noise, which seems to be by design as the director’s intent.  Arnold is known for using non-professional actors, but that appears to go awry in this version, as the actors are simply incapable of generating any interest towards any of the characters, all of whom are mere sketches of mostly unpleasant people.  The same criticism was levied against the original novel, that the story was unlikeable and the 18th century characters unpleasant.  While the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë was published in the mid-19th century, this film version feels more like the Middle Ages of Chaucer, especially since language is all but obscured, which heightens the graphic brutality on display, including continual mistreatment of animals, where people are seen as little more than wretched and contemptible people.  Within this setting, where nature abounds, they are literally surrounded by a near idyllic pastoral landscape of verdant rolling hills in the Yorkshire moors, a place where human evolution lags behind, as despite the pristine, Edenesque beauty, humans are little more than grotesque animals on the loose, matched by the constant presence of continually barking dogs.  The opening hour of this film is largely an abstract visual essay, a mosaic of constantly shifting patterns of darkness and light, where the stunning compositional beauty of the cinematography by Robbie Ryan is painterly, much like a Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) landscape, like “Landscape with a River and a Bay in the Background” (1,016 × 768 pixels), an English landscape style that pre-dates the Impressionists.  Shot in a boxed 1:33 aspect ratio literally saturated in a claustrophobic, arthouse style, everything layered in a sensuous glaze, the experimental style initially feels highly inventive, but after awhile the style itself grows repetitive, especially when the mind’s eye of a child grows into an adult and the surrounding world looks exactly the same, unchanging and still uncompromising.    

While there are at least 15 different versions of this story on film, making it one of the most popular movie adaptations of a novel, the most famous is the William Wyler version with Laurence Olivier from 1939, an overly stiff costume drama suffocating in Gothic period atmosphere, where reality is nowhere to be seen in that production.  Given Andrea Arnold’s penchant for social realism, she literally turns the genre form upside down and reshapes this into an experimental film, using handheld cameras and a pervasive use of the natural countryside, almost always engulfed in low-lying fog, not to mention endless wind and rain, becoming not just melancholy but overwhelmingly dreary.  Arnold makes a few significant alterations, changing class differences to racial inequity, casting Solomon Glave, a young black actor as Heathcliff, who is an abandoned boy, perhaps a runaway slave found roaming the streets of Liverpool, taken in by the Earnshaw family as part of their Christian duty and raised as one of their own, much to the utter contempt of eldest son Hindley (Lee Shaw), who continually makes abusive and disparaging racial taunts (“He ain’t my brother, he’s a nigger”), but is loved openly by the only daughter Catherine (Shannon Beer).  The two are seen forever roaming the hillsides together where their playfulness leads to budding sexual feelings.  When her father dies unexpectedly and Hindley takes over the farm, Heathcliff is immediately treated as a servant, banished to sleeping in the barn, unable to eat or socialize with the family.  The film is seen completely through the eyes of Heathcliff, often peering around the corners of buildings, behind a hedge, looking into a window, all in search for Catherine, where he becomes obsessed by her every move.  Hindley’s temper often gets the better of him, where he can be seen punching and kicking Heathcliffe, all for minor infractions, becoming more explicitly racial, calling him a “nigger” and a thief, giving him a brutal whipping, continually showing him his place, where he’s not one of the accepted family members.  Still, Heathcliff seems to hang around for a chance to see Catherine, though when he actually utters something, it feels crude, horribly insulting, and completely out of place.  When Catherine decides to marry a local boy, Edgar (Jonny Powell), a rich neighbor, Heathcliff quietly disappears in the pouring rain. 

A significant period of time passes, as Heathcliff (James Howson) has elevated his class status and returns a wealthy man, but Catherine is still married.  This doesn’t prevent continual visits, where they return to the open wild of the hilly countryside, also mixed in with flashback sequences of when they were younger.  For all practical purposes, Catherine (Kaya Scodelario) is the lady of the house now, complete with servants waiting on her, where her rendezvous visits out on the moors with Heathcliff have scandal written all over it.  Older actors assume their roles, but they fail to convey any of the sense of exuberance or naturalness of the younger actors, lacking deep affection or the brooding gravitas needed, where Heathcliff is more of a stalker than a lover, and despite his elevated class status, there is little that can be done, as she has married into wealth and a life of comfort and ease.  Danger, however, surrounds their every move, as no good can come of it.  The more Heathcliff insists on staying, the more their lives are doomed, destroying everyone around them.  Initially in his return, Heathcliff was driven purely by revenge to get back at Hindley, whose life has spiraled into drunken chaos and debt, a shell of his former self, hardly worth thinking about.  Purists will scoff at Heathcliffe’s use of profane gutter language, though mostly he says nothing, where at some point Catherine actually realizes, “You never have anything to say,” to which he responds, “That never bothered you before.”  Brontë followers will likely be offended by Arnold’s choice to make a near wordless film of a literary masterpiece, and if the spontaneity of young actors had succeeded, perhaps this might have been a boldly exciting, quasi punk experiment in power and passion.  But instead the audience feels cheated by the lackluster performances, feeling emotionally empty, where despite the overwhelming brilliance of the style, this is an overly bleak and completely unengaging adaptation, a missed opportunity, an unrelenting trek into abject misery and pain.  Often adding visual metaphors of birds stuck in cages, moth’s fluttering at a closed windowsill, or insects caught in a spider’s web, animals are as plentiful onscreen as humans, but with each species, we are unable to decipher interior ideas or emotions, where the complexity of the novel has been completely transformed into what becomes by the end an exhausting visual abstraction, a descent into human degradation.

Some Like It Hot

SOME LIKE IT HOT        A

USA  (120 mi)  1959  d:  Billy Wilder

After co-writing and directing what is arguably the seminal example of Film Noir with Double Indemnity (1944), Wilder returns more than a decade later with perhaps the best example of comic farce in American cinema, though Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) also comes to mind, listed as the funniest American movie ever made by the American Film Institute in 2000 AFI's 100 YEARS...100 LAUGHS, sitting alongside CASABLANCA (1942) as among the most quotable movies ever made.  Overlooked at the time by the sweeping popular success of William Wyler’s BEN HUR (1959), at the time the most lavishly expensive film ever made, a spectacle six years in the making, eventually winning 12 Academy Awards, while this film won a sole Oscar for costume design, notably those shimmering, form-fitting gowns worn by Marilyn Monroe who gives the most sexually appealing performance of her career, always the center of attention, even though she doesn’t show up for the first half hour of the film.  This was perhaps Monroe’s best chance at winning an Academy Award, as she carries the film, but she wasn’t nominated.  The eventual winner for Best Actress was Simone Signoret for ROOM AT THE TOP (1959).  What’s also unique here is that it doesn’t start out as a comedy, but is more of a realistic buddy picture between two jazz musician friends, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), somehow caught in a gangster picture, whose rapid fire, back and forth banter suggests an overfamiliarity, perhaps a model for Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE (1968), two guys used to being in one another’s company, which can get annoying after awhile as they continually complain about whatever’s bothering them.   Little do they know what lies ahead. 

In a wintry opening setup during Prohibition in 1929 where gangsters are delivering bootleg liquor to a speakeasy disguised as a funeral home, the two are playing raucous dance music in a jazz band for a Rockettes-style chorus line of dancers, where they escape arrest when the place is raided by the cops, beating a hasty retreat through the snowy windswept sidewalks of Chicago.  Hoping to land a job out of town, they wander into a garage where they witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, escaping once again to gunfire, as gangsters make it their business not to leave witnesses behind.  Frantic to the point where they’d do anything, they don disguises dressed as women and hop on a train to Miami with an all-girl band.  Both feel absolutely ridiculous at the idea and are having second thoughts until Monroe sashays by with her curves and her ukulele and boards the train, described by Lemmon as “like Jell-o on springs,” making them instant believers. 

Spending the rest of the movie on the run, it’s only when the two guys, dressed as girls, start to make fun of each other that the tone of the film changes, continually bordering on hilarious, adding the alluring sexual element of perhaps *the* leading sex symbol in Hollywood movie history, Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, the singer of the band, and there’s instant chemistry, along with plenty of conflict, as these guys are continually posing as something other than who they are, not to mention the unfinished business with the Chicago mob.  Jack Lemmon as Daphne takes to the role like it’s second nature, laughing giddily and making jokes with the girls, eliminating that invisible wall between the sexes.  Tony Curtis as Josephine, on the other hand, is used to being that good looking matinee idol, as he’s incredibly handsome as a man, but awkward, uptight, and utterly helpless as a girl.  

The two are inseparable, never leaving one another’s side, but Daphne freely ad libs about their absent history, suggesting they’ve been studying at a music conservatory, giving them a cultivated and highbrow side to their personalities that none of the other girls have, as they’re much more liberated and open minded.  When Josephine gets a load of Sugar sipping bourbon in the rest room, confessing how she’s always been a sucker for a saxophone player, running away from yet another one, his instinctual saxophone playing male mentality takes over but he’s stuck in a female body, where all he/she can offer is support and friendship.  Band practice is a frenzied riot, containing the first of three Monroe musical numbers, Marilyn Monroe - Running Wild on YouTube (3:36).  The closeness and intimacy of the music only serves to bring the girls closer together, which turns into a Marx Brothers vaudeville routine of pandemonium when word gets out that Daphne’s cubicle is serving liquor. 

Once they’re in Miami, all bets are off, as they’re free to go their separate ways, but Josephine as Joe has become hooked on Sugar’s sad dream to meet a millionaire on a yacht, inspired to fill those shoes through divine inspiration, if necessary, which requires devising a mad plan of action.  Since Daphne has been the object of an old geezer’s affection, none other than Joe E. Brown (a guy who grew up in vaudeville) as Osgood Fielding III playing a self-confessed millionaire who happens to own his own yacht, Josephine plots to inhabit his alias as well in an attempt to attract Sugar’s attention, sending Daphne and Osgood to a night on the town dancing the night away while he charmingly lures Sugar to his yacht.  Using a sophisticated Cary Grant accent and the pretense of owning millions, Curtis and Monroe engage in a spectacle of love at first sight, where romance is always the object of their affection.  The scene on the yacht is utterly spectacular, but it’s set up perfectly by another Monroe number, Marilyn Monroe - I Wanna Be Loved By You [HD] (2:53). 

Monroe’s dress couldn’t be more glamorous and seductive, backless and barely there covering her voluptuous curves, it literally cries out for sex.  Curtis, on the other hand, plays it coy, repressed and hurt by love, supposedly deeply damaged and pretending to be in a state of emotional freeze, just awaiting the spring thaw where the floodgates will be released.  The two couldn’t be more alluringly attractive, while at the same time, Osgood and Daphne spend the entire night in ultra dramatic fashion, dancing the tango to pulsating Latin rhythms, shaking maracas and carrying roses in their teeth.  By the time the night is over, Daphne’s about given up on being a man, thrilled by the unexpected rush of excitement, while Curtis is ready to throw his wig away for good, but instead they’re met by a mob convention in the hotel, causing them to bolt once again.  In despair, seemingly dumped once again, Monroe sings her final lament, I'm Through With Love/Marilyn Monroe (3:12), which finally touches the heart and soul of the man who has to eventually come clean in a rollicking conclusion that is so memorable that the final line is written on Wilder’s gravestone.

Rachel, Rachel

 

 

RACHEL, RACHEL          B+

USA  (101 mi)  1968  d: Paul Newman

 

One of the hard to find missing gems of the 60’s, a film that shows great insight into America’s greatest thespian marriage, where at the peak of his popularity, after making Hud (1963), HARPER (1966), HOMBRE (1967) and COOL HAND LUKE (1967), Paul Newman went behind the camera to direct his first film, a showpiece for his wife, easily the better half of the marriage on stage, Joanne Woodward, who simply nails this role as a lonely spinster in a small Southern town.  Adapted from a Canadian novel set in Manitoba outside Winnipeg, Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God, the film has the meticulous detail and feel of a short story set in the American South, where Rachel has done all the right things dedicating her life for others, teaching second graders, taking care of her elderly mother, and is seen as a model citizen, but for the life of her can’t find happiness.  Nothing changes in her rural environment, where the rhythm of life is pretty much the same as when she was a child, seen in flashbacks, played by the Newman’s own blond-haired daughter, Nell Potts, where by middle age it appears life is passing her by, looking after her invalid mother (Kate Harrington), realizing she’s not the person she imagines herself to be and feels inadequate in every way.  When a childhood friend wanders back into town, Nick (James Olson), the son of a farmer who never much cared for cows, he asks her out on a date which has reverberations, as we suspect it’s the first in perhaps decades.  All she’s had is best friend Calla, Estelle Parsons, a fellow teacher, an actress who just a year earlier won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and who perfectly matches Woodward in every frame.  Parsons is not over the top hysterical in this film, but bravely offers Woodward a kiss in a private moment, which speaks more to the acute loneliness of the individual than any sexual interest.  Be that as it may, it’s an astounding moment having profound impact into their friendship, which is perhaps the most carefully nuanced relationship in the film, as they are alike, like sisters. 

Much is made of the date sequence, where one’s first impression is to think of Nick as a cad, a callous hipster who simply plays it as it lays, never realizing until the moment at hand that she’s a virgin, and then, since the entire film is seen through her perspective, her inner narration, her flashbacks, he’s continually pulling back from anything more serious.  Her intensity is overwhelming, where her view of herself is undergoing a complete transformation, but he’s barely interested and tries to remove himself from the situation as much as possible.  After all, he barely knows her.  In hindsight, however, he doesn’t come across so poorly, as he’s just a guy that was passing through town and never had any intentions of staying or taking root.  She, on the other hand, can’t wait for the opportunity to seek more out of life and feels driven to demand more out of herself than to continue to accept the monotonous rhythm that has been her routine.  Woodward is brilliant as a woman in a state of flux, who is no surer of herself than she is of what matters in life.  All her life she’s lived in fear, fear of her father, mother, authority, God, where she’s continually sacrificed her own choices for the betterment of others.  Interestingly, her father was a mortician who ran a funeral home on the premises, but his work area was off limits, forbidden, keeping him emotionally off limits both as a child but continuing into adulthood, never allowing herself to express how she feels.  All bottled up inside, it’s like she’s led the life of a stranger who barely knows the world around her, even her own environment or her own body. 

A small slice of life film that today would be called an indie film, shot for $700,000 dollars, as the focus is on tiny details and the exquisite performances, one of Woodward’s best in her entire career, nominated for an Academy Award, but losing out to Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) and Katharine Hepburn (THE LION IN WINTER) in a tie for Best Actress.  Newman directs a quiet and introspective film, recognized as a 60’s film from his use of flashbacks, as they dominate the interior landscape, which was a quite trendy trademark of the times, especially prevalent in European films.  What’s unique is the shortness and lack of development of the flashback sequences, which always interrupt the present like a brief daydream, whimsical, colorful, following the actions of a curious and precocious young girl, leaving the audience wondering about that earlier childhood, which at times feels more interesting than her present life.  While we might like to learn more, the details are etched in the present, where to the sound of a ticking clock, we hear Rachel whispering to herself as her mother sits transfixed by the front window:  “She watches the street like a captain watches the sea, praying for a funeral to come by to cheer her up.”  Much of the dialogue is witty and quite literary, which gives the film a timeless feel.  Newman’s style is to continually enhance the interior state of mind, so that by the end, the ambiguity of the compliant past mixing with the stifling suffocation of the present becomes synonymous with the possibilities of her own future, where the final images, supposedly shot in Connecticut, but bearing a startling resemblance to Mendocino, California, offer a hauntingly poetic mirror reflection.