Opening Night

OPENING NIGHT           A      
USA  (144 mi)  1977  d:  John Cassavetes 

[Opening Night] is the other side of A Woman Under the Influence, about a woman on her own, with no responsibility to anyone but herself, with a need to come together with other women. [Myrtle] is alone and in desperate fear of losing the vulnerability she feels she needs as an actress. [She is] a woman unable any longer to be regarded as young: Sex is no longer a viable weapon. You never see her as a stupendous actress. As a matter of fact, her greatest thrill was comfort, as it is for most actresses. Give me a play I can go into every night and can feel I have some awareness of who I am, what I am. [She didn't] want to expose myself in [certain] areas. So when she faints and screams on the stage, it's because it's so impossible to be told you are this boring character, you are aging and you are just like her. I would be unable to go on to the stage feeling that I'm nothing. I think that most actors would, and that's really what the picture is about. Although she resists [facing them,] Myrtle must finally accept and resolve the dilemmas which lie not only at the core of the play she is doing, but which [reflect] the basic realities of her own existence, from which she has heretofore fled, aided by alcohol, men, professional indulgence – and fantasy! The character is left in conflict, but she fights the terrifying battle to recapture hope. And wins! In and out of life the theme of the play haunts the actress until she kills the young girl in herself. 

—John Cassavetes

Perhaps the gutsiest film about theater ever made, right alongside Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT (1952) or Desplechin’s ESTHER KHAN (2000), and though filmed in 1977, it was not released commercially until 1991, two years after Cassavetes’ death, as until then, incredulously enough, no theatrical distributor expressed an interest.  A film about the making of a theatrical play, both onscreen and off, with Gena Rowlands starring as Myrtle Gordon in the play A Second Woman written by the 65-year old Joan Blondell as Sarah Goode, which concerns a woman at the moment in her life when she realizes she has lost her youth, and the second woman takes over.  The part of the writer was originally conceived with Bettie Davis in mind, both screen legends from the 30’s, where the film was originally about the writer, where the integrity of the story came by showing an actress standing up to her.  Davis would have brought a much tougher dimension to the role, adding her own sense of theatricality as well.  Rowlands plays a still vibrant middle-aged star in her forties who has difficulty coming to terms with Blondell’s age, so avoids it at all costs, continually haunted by the ghost of a teenage girl (Laura Johnson), one of her fans whose accidental death she tragically witnessed one night, fantasizing a younger version of herself.  Perhaps inspired by ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), purportedly one of Cassavetes’ favorite films, a movie that might be called a woman’s picture, as it delves into different phases of a woman’s life and career, examining the various motivations, where Cassavetes turns the adoring fan of the Hollywood picture into a disturbing hallucination that haunts the actress, while also similarly staging out of town, tryout rehearsals of the play in New Haven, Connecticut as it nears its premiere in New York on Broadway.  One of her onstage actors is Cassavetes himself as Maurice Aarons, who interestingly plays a version of himself had he not married Gena Rowlands, a charming actor onstage who is something if a cynical womanizer offstage, largely making his way on his own, much as he did before he met Ms. Rowlands.  A word about the giant photographs of aging women on the set, a similar device was used by Woody Allen in Stardust Memories (1980), who used a giant, wall-sized photograph in his apartment that continually kept changing pictures, depending on his changing moods.  Also, the introductory still photos shown in the opening credits are used to brilliant effect, opening credits montage Opening Night YouTube (1:11), where Cassavetes, as he did in Faces (1968), uses close ups of blown-up photographs to exude sensuality to the character, while also using a cavernous penthouse apartment to reflect the immensity of Myrtle’s isolation and loneliness.     

Using the theatrical device of a play within a play, what’s curiously interesting about the film is there’s more time spent together onscreen between Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands than anything previously seen in a Cassavetes film, where they appear to relish each moment shared with the audience, becoming a sheer, unadulterated joy to watch, where through various rehearsals there’s a continuous stream of looks at scenes within the play, and each time it’s played just a bit differently, where their performances are not so much acted as captured in a time capsule retaining all its original vibrancy, where their characters are so effortlessly and absolutely real.  Rowlands gives an enthralling performance, perhaps especially significant because she absolutely defies the part she’s been given, even though it’s been written especially for her.  Part of it appears like a melodramatic soap opera as she wanders into an earlier part of her life, almost like a ghost, but the scenes onstage playing ex-lovers with Myrtle and Maurice are unmistakably more significant, as it appears they’re talking about their own lives, where the film continuously blurs the line between performance and real life.  Part of the genius of the film is this rare glimpse of intimacy into their real lives, yet it’s always shown with a flair for theatricality, where the underlying emotions grow more abstract by negotiating this strange and somewhat illusory boundary world that exists between reality and the imagination.  Art impacts life, where Cassavetes and his real life wife have achieved a work of astonishing emotional depth that may be unique in all of cinema.  Cassavetes has indicated “I won’t make shorthand films, because I don’t want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths,” where the beauty of this film is creating a work of art that explores the mystery of the personality and the often unfathomably complex motivations of artists.     

Myrtle, however, has found herself in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis, where an early tragic encounter with a young fan continues to haunt her for the rest of the film, as she’s literally visited by the young woman’s ghost who’s not at all happy with the outcome, yet Myrtle attempts to channel some of her own character through her youth, but her warmth and affection for the young woman is received with anger and disgust, turning brutally ugly on occasion, where the two are literally fighting spirits, creating a whirlwind of emotions that continually swirl around the theatrical production.  Countering this maelstrom of dramatic force is the play’s director, none other than Ben Gazarra as Manny, as suave and debonair as ever, who continually coddles his actress, believing she is one of the great actresses of our time, and perhaps an ex-lover as well, but he constantly pushes her to accept Sarah’s play, which he feels offers brilliant insights into a woman aging.  Manny, Sarah, and a kindly producer David, Paul Stewart, the butler in CITIZEN KANE (1941), form a kind of troika of theatrical convention, like the drama police, as they continually urge Myrtle to accept the provisions of the play, while she continually experiments with the role, often changing the lines altogether, telling Sarah “age is depressing, age is dull,” claiming “I’m looking for a way to play this part where age doesn’t make any difference,” which deeply offends the author by changing the intent of her play, who believes all the emotions are clearly evident on the written pages, where “all you need to do is say the lines clearly and with a degree of feeling.”  But therein lies the problem for Myrtle, because if she’s accepted as an “older woman,” she’ll never receive any other lead casting roles for the rest of her career, relegated to the world of older secondary character performers.  For men, like Maurice or Manny, they typically deal with the questions of aging in full denial by having an affair, but Myrtle has to reach inside herself to find something else. 

More than anything, the film is about personal transformation, where theater simply offers an artistic vehicle for personal expression.  Myrtle’s defiance to accept a role as written because she feels it’s constrictive and suffocating leads to major disagreements and confrontations with the consistently inflexible theater management, continually altering the format of the play, inventing new lines, literally fighting for her life by turning to the audience in live dress rehearsals and exclaiming, “We must never forget this is only a play.”  Exacerbating the fears is heavy alcohol use, where in the middle of the night before the play opens, Myrtle desperately turns to Maurice, her co-star and ex-lover for comfort, exactly as Judy Garland used to call Cassavetes in the middle of the night looking for reassurance during the filming of A Child Is Waiting (1963), where Myrtle encourages him to try a radically new approach to the play, “Let’s dump it upside down and see if we can’t find something human in it,” an approach the real life Cassavetes would find inspired, but Maurice rejects her, telling her “You’re not a woman to me anymore.  You’re a professional,” telling her “I have a small part. It’s unsympathetic.  The audience doesn’t like me.  I can’t afford to be in love with you.”  By morning, however, she becomes traumatized, where her inner demons take over, and she mutilates herself viciously in front of the playwright, who by this point she despises, believing this may put her own demons to rest, telling her, “I will do anything, anything, to give my character authenticity on stage.”  Myrtle is late for the opening, then arrives dead drunk, yet she is cruelly pushed by Manny to perform anyway, refusing to allow anyone to help her, forcing her to literally crawl her way to her dressing room.  Unbelievably, still careening off walls, she stumbles to her backstage position, receiving the encouraging words from Cassavetes stalwart John Finnegan, “I’ve seen a lot of drunks in my day, but I’ve never seen anybody as drunk as you and still be able to walk.  You’re fantastic!”    

Leaning against walls, and with the help from everyone involved who often carry her from one location to the next, she goes onstage, where she then proceeds to change all the lines of the play, totally improvising with co-star Maurice, leaving characters alone onstage as she disappears unexpectedly, then completely reinvents the dialogue when she returns.  Despite her state of extreme inebriation, she remains a sympathetic figure, actually reversing the roles, with Maurice playing her aging character while she flirts with everyone in sight, showing signs of Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, even the Marx Brothers, some of which is brilliant, other times failing miserably.  Breathing life into an otherwise failed literary misadventure (despite those giant feathers in Joan Blondell’s lavishly ostentatious hats!), this is a film that is not afraid to fail, and is about the fear and pain of performing, heightening the anxiety and the insecurity of the star to the limit, somewhat similar to the exaggerated theatricality of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), but stretched and expanded here, juggling on stage and off stage actions, becoming a free-wheeling comedic improvisational farce, Opening Night (1977) - Stage play with the leg trick  YouTube (4:28), like something out of a hilariously inventive vaudeville routine with actors addressing the audience directly with personal asides, “I am not me!...There’s someone posing here as us!”  While it’s always important to recall that Rowlands is really channeling her husband, becoming his alter-ego for both his methods and his madness, OPENING NIGHT shows what happens both on the stage and behind the scenes, capturing the persona of all persons involved in the theater, large and small, where this is a brilliant, in-depth look at the world of performance, art, and the extraordinarily fragile connections between the performers and the audience.  Of interest, the ending was allegedly recut as the preview audience stood up and cheered at what they saw on stage, not the bewildered effect Cassavetes was looking for. 

In this outtake from a 1978 television interview (which was never broadcast), Cassavetes discusses his film Opening Night for a while, and builds into a terrific rant on movies and movie audiences.  This is a great example of Cassavetes’ way with words, his dislike of people who live only for the approval of others, and his anger at the low popularity of his later films (especially Opening Night and Killing of a Chinese Bookie):  John Cassavetes - "Television Sucks!"  YouTube (8:08).

The Great Gabbo

THE GREAT GABBO             B           
USA  (92 mi)  1929  director:  James Cruze, von Stroheim uncredited

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the privilege to appear before you in what I might call, with all due modesty, the greatest ventriloquism exhibition of all times.                        

—The Great Gabbo (Erich von Stroheim)

Shot in the era of early talkies, when the studios were under pressure to crank out talking pictures before they even learned how to use the cumbersome equipment, and while the result is a highly uneven film, it’s notable on several counts.  First, it’s a time capsule look at the Vaudeville era, where the charm of these old musical numbers are priceless, choreographed in an odd hybrid of styles, all of which predate Busby Berkeley, but heavily costumed dancers fill every inch of the frame, using a sense of constant motion in order to dazzle the audiences back in the 20’s.  Just as a note of comparison, this film was released the same year as the very first Marx Brothers movie, THE COCOANUTS (1929), where both feature plenty of overblown musical numbers that include both amateurish and near operatic singing voices.  Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay, adapted from his 1928 short story The Rival Dummy, described as “a macabre adventure into the strange workings of an unbalanced mind.”  But the real showpiece of this film is the slow psychological deterioration of a world class ventriloquist, The Great Gabbo, played by the legendary director Erich von Stroheim.  The eccentric nature of his performance is simply off the charts, yet his aristocratic mannerisms, so prevalent in THE GRAND ILLUSION (1937), are fully developed here, wearing a white Tuxedo with white gloves, with honorary medals stuck to his chest, not to mention his customary cigarette and eye monocle.  His distinct pronunciation of every Hecht word lends credibility to his view of himself as a legendary star, even early in his career when he’s playing in dives.  Betty Compson, the director’s wife, though they divorced a year later, is Mary, the faithful girlfriend with the shrill, high pitched voice that makes her sound dumber than she really is.  But she can’t compete with the real love of Gabbo’s life, his dummy Otto.  Though Mary is considered a second rate performer, her career is thwarted by slavishly taking care of Gabbo and Otto. 

As a director, Stroheim was known for his extravagance and painfully slow working methods, where studio executives often had to step in before shooting was finished due to cost overruns, where his career as a director was all but finished when he was prematurely fired working with Gloria Swanson in QUEEN KELLY (1928), which forced him to return to acting.  As a scene constructionist, however, Stroheim was far more sophisticated than many of his contemporaries, using magnificent crane shots, often blending subjective points of view, using surrealistic flourishes, including Technicolor shots.  When this film was initially released, certain sequences were color tinted, where the title sequence indicates “Color sequences by Multicolor.”  Unfortunately, Multicolor went out of business and all color tints have been lost, so the only available version is not what the director originally intended, though we do get a hint of Gabbo performing his routine through a spectrum of colors here in this overly faded version, The Great Gabbo: Erich von Stroheim's Astonishing Yodel  YouTube (2:33).  Gabbo is a world class egomaniac, where he tyrannically orders Mary around, complaining about each and every thing she does, where if it’s not done perfectly, she’ll hear about it, which eventually drives her away, as Gabbo believes she’ll amount to nothing without his star status.  “If you're as great as you think you are, then why aren’t you in a real theater?” she quips before walking out on him.  Gabbo’s act is pretty impressive, even to the point of absurdity, as he can eat a five course meal, drink an entire glass of water, smoke a cigarette, and even swallow a scarf as he is performing the voice of the dummy, who even occasionally breaks out into song, all seemingly impossible, which of course is the basis of his legendary stature as the world’s greatest.  As a publicity stunt, he eats in the same classy restaurant with Otto, both receiving world class service, literally holding the audience in the room spellbound by the audacity of his nerve, seen here, The Great Gabbo - 1929 - by request  YouTube (15:27), where he cleverly reunites with Mary after a two year absence, leading to a Rockettes-style musical number “Every Now and Then,” featuring Frank (Donald Douglas) and Babe (Marjorie Kane), another high-pitched, Betty Boop/Shirley Temple sounding singer.

There is unfortunately not enough Stroheim in the film, both in front and behind the camera, as the overly conventional main story continually finds its way to the theatrical stage, where separately Mary and Gabbo have both become big name stars, and the director delights in shooting big production numbers, mostly from a distance with almost no camera movement, where the peculiar nature of many of these musical numbers only adds to the odd delight of the film. There is the great Art Deco style and grand theatricality of I'm In Love With You (1929)  YouTube (6:47), starring the duo team of Mary and Frank (Donald Douglas), though by the end the chorus isn’t even dancing, but simply walking in formation, or That New Step (1929) YouTube (2:59), again featuring Babe, where the German Expressionist sets seem directly stolen from the stage of THE CABINET OF DR, CALIGARI (1920).  Perhaps most amusing is the bewilderingly spectacular and oftentime hilarious spider-and-fly set design of Caught in the Web of Love (1929)  YouTube (6:57), featuring Mary and Frank, eventually taking a turn into what eventually became the Mickey Hargitay/Jayne Mansfield body sculpture nightclub act.  And while these strange set pieces are charmingly memorable, none of the other stock characters hold a candle to the diabolical flourish of Stroheim’s performance, where at one point he goes into unsubtitled German with his dresser, which appears to be his way of showing flattery, but in an instant he’s turned on the dresser as well with more wicked insults and verbal abuse.  But when things don’t go as planned, Gabbo has socially isolated himself from all others, who he snears at with haughty contempt, leaving him only the dummy for companionship.  Locked in the dual worlds inside his own head, his mind deteriorates until he grows delirious, as if trapped with no escape, where mixed surreal images are superimposed on top of one another to create a delusional state of madness, The Finale - The Great Gabbo 1929. YouTube (7:29).  Gabbo’s ruthless nature is startlingly exposed, suddenly tempered with a childlike vulnerability, where his comeuppance is poignantly sad, where by the end we finally see the man (child) behind the mask. 

Movie 43

MOVIE 43                  C+                   
USA   (90 mi)  2013  d:  Bob and Peter Farrelly           Official site       co-directors:  Elizabeth Banks, Steven Brill, Steve Carr, Rusty Cundieff, James Duffy, Griffin Dunne, Patrik Forsberg, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Brett Ratner, Jonathan van Tullekin

America has always had a love affair with stupid comedy, from an assortment of cartoons to The Three Stooges or Laurel & Hardy, slapstick and physical comedy that emerged out of turn of the century burlesque and vaudeville comedy acts, to the hapless shtick of the elaborately choreographed Jerry Lewis movies of the 50’s and 60’s, the star-studded vehicle of IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD (1963) where audiences could watch celebrities behave like idiots, to the more fast-paced, visual and sight gag oriented satirical comedy of AIRPLANE! (1980), to the moronic buddy movie of DUMB AND DUMBER (1994) written and directed by the Farrelly brothers, who have never been afraid to use toilet humor.  The Farrelly brothers have their hand all over this project, which began a decade and a half ago with their producer Charlie Wessler, who came up with the idea of several short films using three pairs of directors, South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Airplane’s David and Jerry Zucker, and Peter and Bob Farrelly.  The studios, however, wouldn’t back the idea of R-rated movies targeted to teenagers, where Wessler pitched his idea to various studios, but no one understood what he was trying to do until four years ago when Peter Farrelly and producer John Penotti took their idea, along with the script for about 60 short skits to Relativity Films, which gave them the green light.  Certainly one of the most amazing feats of the film is collecting so many big name actors, from Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman to Halle Berry, Chloë Grace Moretz, Gerard Butler, Greg Kinnear, Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Anna Farris, Chris Pratt, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Justin Long, Dennis Quaid, Common, Jason Sudeikis, Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, Kate Bosworth, Josh Duhamel, and Naomi Watts.  This year’s Academy Award host Seth MacFarlane plays a small part, while both Jackman and Watts are up for Academy Award nominations this year in other films.  As Peter Farrelly appropriately notes about Jackman, “You're not gonna see him at our premiere, he's got things to do.”  Most were attracted to the idea of working outside their comfort zone, also the idea they were only in small sketches, requiring short shooting schedules, also the idea they would not have to promote the film afterwards, something most actors hate to do.   

So working for scale, actors mostly donated their time for this film, knowing only their own scenes, not any of the other scaled down 16 vignettes that comprise the film.  In order to accommodate all the actors, some of whom were having second thoughts, like the South Park team, Colin Farrell, and George Clooney, who reportedly told them to “Fuck Off,” 'Movie 43': Peter Farrelly on His All-Star Cast, and Why Clooney Told Them to 'F**k Off', shooting took place only when actors were available, waiting an entire year for Richard Gere, offering the convenience of moving the entire production team closer to the actor, so the filming of the whole movie took several years.  While this film has tanked at the box office in only the first week, receiving some of the worst reviews of the year, where Richard Roeper in The Chicago Sun-Times wrote There's awful and THEN there's 'Movie 43', while Peter Howell from The Toronto Star is calling it Movie 43 review: The worst film ever gets zero stars.  David Edelstein from New York magazine asks, “Was someone holding Kate Winslet's children hostage?” Edelstein on Movie 43: Were These Actors Blackmailed to Appear in This Raunchy Fiasco?, while finally Peter Farrelly took to Twitter to defend his gross-out comedy dubbed the ‘Citizen Kane of awful’ Movie 43 director tells press to 'lighten up' after his film is savaged ..., suggesting “To the critics: Movie 43 is not the end of the world. It’s just a $6-million movie where we tried to do something different. Now back off,” adding: “To the critics: You always complain that Hollywood never gives you new stuff, and then when you get it, you flip out. Lighten up.”  Hyperbole aside, the jokes range from stupid sight gags to crudely infantile and from extremely risqué to borderline offensive gross-out humor.  Perhaps in its original conception, the movie was prefaced with the idea that several teenagers are fooling a younger kid into believing there’s a banned, black market movie out there somewhere on the Web called Movie 43, so their search to track it down leads to these randomly discovered skits, none having any relation to any others, most shot by different directors, though the Farrelly’s may have shot 3 or 4 sequences.  The opening segment with Jackman and Winslet is a classic and sets the tone for lowbar comedy, as the bar doesn’t get much lower than this—still, it’s hilarious throughout and is easily one of the better sketches, as both are superb in handling the misdirection and perfect timing.  According to Time Out Chicago critic Ben Kenigsberg, Movie 43 | Movie review - Film - Time Out Chicago, “Hugh Jackman garners far more sympathy than he does as Jean Valjean.”

Most of the rest are uneven and hit or miss, with some stronger than others, but many of these ideas are *out there,* pushing the boundaries of bad taste to the point of being off-the-charts unacceptable.  Certainly there is foul humor, profane language, and there is crude violence, but there are also some excellent special effects, especially with Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant in a blind date that veers into the surreal.  With this film along with Cloud Atlas (2012), Berry has become somewhat of a standout star in what are otherwise abysmal movie failures.  One of the few actors willing to comment on the horrible trauma of making this movie, Merchant commented, “I had to spend two days looking at Halle Berry. It was a living hell.”  Most of the sketches are framed with the idea of a desperately insane Dennis Quaid refusing to accept rejection while pitching his zany stories to a studio hack Greg Kinnear at gunpoint, apparently the only way to get his attention, a rather apt metaphor for the picture itself.  While the film is deserving of its R-rating, at its absolute worst, it is fixated on infantile fart jokes and toilet humor, an overly gross genre that in itself has always captured a certain niche in American society, but it likely turns off many, many more.  Gabe Toro of the Playlist The Playlist [Gabe Toro] has interestingly observed “characters begin to react in increasingly inexplicable ways as the narrative falls away, walking in and out of the short without rhyme or reason, until a fourth-wall breakdown in the narrative, a tactic that feels less like a comedy skit, and more like a distant, dopey relative of Dennis Hopper’s THE LAST MOVIE (1971).”  Still, it’s impressive to see so many familiar faces, even if what they’re up to is foolishly inane, where the haphazard style never feels connected to an overall whole, but thankfully, each skit is short enough that even if it doesn’t work, new faces are sure to show up in the next segment offering a completely different direction.  The film is not timid, nor does it hide its lowbrow intent, where it basically provides exactly what it sets out to accomplish, feeling somewhat experimental without a cohesive narrative, where it instead comes across like a live stand up comedy act, where often, the more outrageous you delve into the world of the bizarre, the better.  The bold tone of experimentation and outrageousness of the film does work, such as the drop dead hilarious use of a sickly perverted, X-rated, animated cat, but overall, it’s so brazenly offensive that it’s often more stupid than funny, still, nowhere near the worst ever, and actually inspired in parts.  

The Illusionist

THE ILLUSIONIST                                            B+                   

France  Great Britain  (90 mi)  2010  d:  Sylvain Chomet 

Rather than pay homage to Jacques Tati like Sylvain Chomet’s last film, this one is adapted from an actual Tati screenplay that features an animated version of the legendary character Monsieur Hulot himself, which creates something of a controversy as it perhaps mis-identifies which missing daughter he was attempting to recognize, as the story closely resembles Tati’s relationship with his own daughter that he neglected (Sophie Tatischeff), no doubt due to his obsession with his career, but also points to his firstborn, an illegitimate daughter (Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel) born 4 years earlier outside his marriage, a girl he all but abandoned, as she was raised in an orphanage.  In 1955 when Tati wrote the script, Helga would be age 13, and Sophie, 9, though he continued to tinker with the script for another four years.  The script was actually handed to the director by Sophie in 2000, two years before she died, and the film is dedicated to her, which the family of Helga feels is a major oversight.  (See: The secret of Jacques Tati - Roger Ebert's Journal and also from The Guardian:  Jacques Tati's lost film reveals family's pain and The Telegraph:  Jacques Tati's ode to his illegitimate daughter - Telegraph)  Set in the late 1950’s, he’s known as the great magician Tatischeff, carrying around in his pocket a circus poster showing him doing his act which he diplays at various theaters around town where he performs to an ever dwindling audience that is becoming non-existent.  His music hall act is charmingly adorable, where he pulls a rabbit that bites out of a hat, an animal that prefers to poke its head out prematurely, and performs all sorts of miracles, but few are interested anymore, replaced by a hilarious sequence of British rock ‘n’ rollers who refuse to leave the stage, performing an endless series of narcissistic encores until the house empties afterwords with the exception of an elderly woman and her bespectacled, ice-cream eating young son who keeps checking his watch. 

What’s marvelous about this film is how it’s perceived through multiple layers, one of which includes extended Miyazaki-like travel sequences, always accompanied by a sublime musical score which was written by the director himself, moving from the spectacular Paris venues to obscure Scottish pubs during the rainy season, eventually settling for awhile in Edinburgh, as Tatischeff spends his life on the road searching for new venues that will hire him, many with the help of his fellow performers who keep offering him their business cards.  Another layer is the presence of a stowaway, a young girl who attaches herself to the great magician like a father figure.  Though they stay together at a run down hotel, this girl has a life of her own, following her curiosity, spending her days roaming through the city.  One of the more wonderful sequences is when she makes soup, which Tatischeff belatedly discovers is rabbit soup, where he looks around frantically for his missing rabbit.  But in this scene she generously feeds other vaudevillians staying in the hotel as well, some close to starvation, as it is filled with performers who are at poverty’s edge and are later seen facing even more dire circumstances. 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this film is the autobiographical aspect, as Tati himself considered the material too personal, thinking himself a failure both as a performer and as a father, yet that’s precisely what makes such an intimate work so endearing, where at one point Tatischeff cleverly sneaks into a theater that is playing MON ONCLE (1958) where, as an animated figure, he’s stupefied at seeing himself in real life.  The magician’s act is always performed with the utmost professionalism and grace, even when he’s forced to become a department store live window mannequin, selling women’s perfume and brassieres, making them appear and disappear.  In the same way, Tatischeff refuses to disappoint the young girl, who is convinced that as a magician he can make anything appear out of thin air, where her fascination is based on her gullibility and naiveté.  But the harsh reality is that time is passing by these charming vaudeville acts and money is hard to come by, especially when his act closes as quickly as it begins, so he spends more time away from her in search of work.  There’s an underlying pathos in every scene, all near wordless, as the dark tone and bleak existence in the world is never sugar coated.  In fact, much of this resembles early Chaplin when his Little Tramp is desperately searching for work or for a bite to eat.  By the end of the film Tatischeff has sadly become obsolete, perhaps even to the girl who is discovering her own life and her own independence.