Movie Review: Meteor (1979)

Genre: Disaster Thriller  

Director: Ronald Neame  

Starring: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Henry Fonda, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard  

Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: A huge meteor is discovered hurtling towards Earth, with seven days to impact. Head of NASA Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden) recalls retired scientist Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery) to duty, and the US President (Henry Fonda) places Bradley in control of Hercules, a satellite-based nuclear missile system that can target the meteor. Bradley works with his Soviet counterpart Dubov (Brian Keith) to overcome Cold War tensions and add the Soviet Union's equivalent space missiles to the attack on the meteor. Bradley also tests a romance with Dubov's interpreter Tatiana Donskaya (Natalie Wood), while advance fragments of the meteor start to strike Earth.

What Works Well: The special effects (particularly the close-ups of the space-based missile systems) are sometime adequate, and the combined presence of Sean Connery, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Natalie Wood, and (briefly) Henry Fonda elevates the material. The imperative for the US and the USSR to pause the Cold War and join forces to save Earth is a good subtext.

What Does Not Work As Well: The repetitive scenes of a rock trundling through space are accompanied by a laughable music soundtrack that alternates between bewildering faux triumphalism and befuddling synth horror. Martin Landau as the obstructionist military commander marches into over-the-top territory, and when the special effects are bad, they are really bad: the avalanche in the Alps and the milkshake sewage in New York are particular lowlights. Sean Connery's clumsy attempts to woo Natalie Wood in the midst of an annihilation event are just cringey.

Key Quote:

Bradley (sarcastically trying to impress Tatiana about life in the United States): You'd like it here, you know. We've got everything. Power cuts, strikes, unemployment, race riots, and a terrific crime rate.

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Movie Review: Sex And The Single Girl (1964)

A romantic comedy, Sex And The Single Girl draws inspiration from the unfolding rearrangement of gender roles to search for incongruous love and subversive laughs.

Bob Weston (Tony Curtis) is the star writer for trashy tabloid magazine STOP. For his next assignment he sets out to sully the reputation of celebrity author and psychologist Dr. Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood). Just 23 years old, she gained fame for writing the bestseller Sex And The Single Girl, a must-read book empowering women to gain control of their careers and sexuality. Bob thinks she may be a virgin and actually knows nothing about relationships. 

Bob has a girlfriend Gretchen (Fran Jeffries) and frolics with his secretary Susan (Leslie Parrish), but he steals the persona of his next door neighbour Frank Broderick (Henry Fonda), a women's stockings salesperson always one argument away from divorcing his wife Sylvia (Lauren Bacall), and approaches Helen pretending to be in need of marital counselling. Soon Bob and Helen are really falling in love, jeopardizing his standing as the king of sleaze.

Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 book Sex And The Single Girl was one of the sparks that helped ignite the 1960s as the decade of women's liberation and new attitudes towards sex, and both her name and the book are borrowed to create a fictional romantic comedy. Joseph Hoffman wrote the bouncy script, and it's certainly a meandering effort featuring multiple mix-ups, trash journalism, pop psychology, and a battle of the sexes redrawn along new front lines. The numerous plot points are eventually all but abandoned in favour of good-natured farce.

None of it should really work, but in the hands of director Richard Quine and thanks to a wicked sense of humour willing to poke fun at all targets, Sex And The Single Girl somehow only gains momentum. The script never misses an opportunity to fire a sharp arrow, the popped balloons including the fields of psychology, gutter dwelling reporters, and penny-pinching corporate committees. On the margins Hoffman looks for laughs with an irreverent intervention by a waterfront hobo, a wacky trip to the zoo featuring role-reversal monkees, and an over-the-top representation of Broderick's stocking business. Plenty of references to Some Like It Hot confirm the film's heightened self-awareness.

A strong cast helps. Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood both exude confident sex appeal, and their duel sparkles. In supporting roles Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall as Bob's bickering neighbours are both miscast, but anyway bring depth to the battling Brodericks. Fran Jeffries gets to sing a couple of sultry numbers, Leslie Parrish is the secretary on the prowl, and Mel Ferrer appears as Rudy, Helen's dance-loving psychiatrist colleague. 

The final 30 minutes of Sex And The Single Girl are dedicated to an epic multiple car chase, Hoffman and Quine steering the plot towards a massively irrelevant but ridiculously enjoyable high speed drive to the airport, a couple of taxi drivers and one motorcycle cop getting in on the bonkers action. All the characters are involved and somehow contrive to swap cars and partners, with some pretzels thrown in for good measure. The sequence is a marvellous cinematic achievement, and while Sex And The Single Girl may not really care to know where the sex revolution is going, it swerves all over the highway trying to avoid finding out. 



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Movie Review: West Side Story (1961)

A groundbreaking musical, West Side Story is a spectacular story of love and violence, delivered with high energy performances, superb choreography and audacious staging.

Two gangs of teenagers vie for control of the streets on New York City's west side. Riff (Russ Tamblyn) leads the Jets, made up of American offspring of Polish immigrants. Bernardo (George Chakiris) leads the rival Sharks, who represent the recently arrived Puerto Rican community. Lieutenant Schrank (Simon Oakland) and Officer Krupke (William Bramley) struggle to keep a lid on the violence.

Riff decides to stage a once-and-for-all brawl to decide who rules the streets, and reaches out to Jets co-founder Tony (Richard Beymer) to help plan the clash. Although Tony is trying to leave gang life behind and now has a legitimate job at the drugstore owned by Doc (Ned Glass), he reluctantly agrees to support his friend.

At a gym dance on neutral territory attended by both gangs and their girlfriends, Tony meets and falls in love with Maria (Natalie Wood), Bernando's younger sister. Their relationship across gang lines is forbidden, but they push on regardless. Bernando's girlfriend Anita (Rita Moreno) is also Maria's best friend, and she is torn between supporting Maria's secret affair and staying loyal to her man. Maria pleads with Tony to put a stop to the violence, but as the big showdown approaches, there is plenty of ill intent on all sides.

Co-directed by Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins, West Side Story is the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, which in turn was inspired by Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet. The screen version was years ahead of its time for a cinematic musical, and set standards for staging visually dynamic group dance numbers, all the violence stylized into dancing, the story propelled by a succession of classic songs.

Working with cinematographer Daniel L. Fapp, Wise and Robbins continuously find innovative perspectives to capture the dance sequences. With sharp editing, the camera alternates between broad shots capturing the full troupe to fluid motion close-ups embedded within the dancers. The actors are captured from various perspectives, with Wise always finding reasons to look up, look down, or look beyond, and cleverly playing with lights, shadows and visual effects. The use of colour to distinguish the gangs is exemplary, the Jets decked out in lighter yellows and browns, their girls in bright pastels, while the Sharks and their women are all about dark purple, dark red and black.

The songs are generally short and pointed, and do enough to highlight the prevailing emotions without getting in the way. The highlights are many, and include the raucous America, encapsulating all that is good and bad about the immigrant dream; the trio of love ballads Maria, Tonight and Somewhere, and more fun interludes like Gee, Officer Krupke and I Feel Pretty. Wise keeps the action moving to various locations, and does an excellent job escaping stage trappings. The back lane fire escape becomes an iconic home for romance to blossom between Maria and Tony, the railings creating a cage of limitations not of their own making.

The film's themes are eternal and remain relevant, the "us" and "them" mentality mixing with the aimlessness of abandoned youth, and some of the lyrics starkly pointing to failures at home catapulting kids onto the street. No parents are ever seen in the film; they are an absentee presence, their flawed offspring littering the sidewalks and unequipped to navigate life without resorting to insults and assaults.

Natalie Wood does well as a Puerto Rican girl flowering into a woman and landing in the middle of gang warfare, Wood's sprightly innocence allowing her to overcome the ethnic mix-up in her casting. Rita Moreno is the other stand-out performer, bringing the most conflicted passion to the role of Anita. The men are more about the collective rather than the individual, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris lacking star quality as actors but therefore allowing the gangs to shine as central entities, as they should in a story about individuals only having courage when part of a faceless mob.

West Side Story is a stellar achievement, an unblinking look at a street-level romantic tragedy turned into one of Hollywood's all-time best musicals.

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Movie Review: Love With The Proper Stranger (1963)

A romantic comedy with plenty of drama, Love With The Proper Stranger tackles weighty themes of abortion and feminism through a simple story of two lonely souls being drawn together.

In New York City, Macy's pet department clerk Angie Rossini (Natalie Wood) tracks down self-absorbed but struggling musician Rocky Papasano (Steve McQueen) to let him know that she is pregnant with his baby. They only ever had a one night stand and Rocky doesn't really remember Angie, but he agrees to help her find a doctor and pay part of the fee. Rocky is a shiftless womanizer and leeching at the apartment of cabaret entertainer Barbie (Edie Adams). Angie is still living in a cramped apartment with her mother and brothers, and eldest brother Dominick (Herschel Bernardi) wants her to marry hopelessly clumsy restaurateur Anthony Columbo (Tom Bosley).

Angie finally decides that she has had enough of her over protective family and strikes out on her own, renting her own place. Rocky accompanies Angie to the abortion appointment, a trip that gets quickly complicated when first they realize that they are short on money, and then have to fend off Dominick, who is in hot pursuit. The adventure brings Rocky and Angie closer, but things are about to get a lot worse when they finally arrive at the derelict location where the pregnancy is scheduled to be terminated and meet the less than sympathetic "doctor".

Directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula, Love With The Proper Stranger is a small two-character study, told with plenty of heart. While some passages are slow and a few pauses are almost too pregnant with silence, Mulligan creates a deeply satisfying dynamic between two complex characters striking carving their own path in the world. The script by Arnold Schulman taps into several of the societal undercurrents about to rock the 1960s, and through the simple story of love blossoming between two rebels, the film finds an echo of a generation.

Despite coming from a strict, traditional and loud Italian family, Angie is transitioning into an independent and rebellious young woman, insisting on making her own decisions and dealing with the consequences. Sexually liberated, she is dismissively rejecting Columbo, and then plays with Rocky's emotions to test his true levels of commitment.

For the most part Rocky has already established his independence from his family and is dealing with life on his own terms. In one scene Rocky does visit his parents at the local park, and although they are thrilled to see him, he is already a stranger to them as well, just dropping in for an injection of cash. Rocky has no qualms about taking advantage of whoever is willing to help, with Barbie a particular victim, but he also cares enough about his responsibilities to help Angie when needed.

Love With The Proper Stranger invests a lot of time depicting the emotional and physical horrors of back-alley abortions. Schulman's script steps through the messy hushed process of finding a doctor, the scramble to find the money, making contact with an intermediary and then walking into the room for the procedure. Every step feels like an illicit mini-nightmare and Mulligan teases out the unsustainable dichotomy between Angie's emerging societal and sexual autonomy and her inability to control with dignity what happens to her own body.

Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen bring Angie and Rocky to life, and both deliver performances filled with the confidence of the young, but also capturing the awkwardness of two strangers forced into dealing with each other. Many of their scenes together include uneasy silences as they circle around a growing attraction that may be generated by the shared pregnancy adventure, or something much more life altering.

Love With The Proper Stranger is an appealing romance spiked with perceptive observations of a society in flux.

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Movie Review: The Ghost And Mrs. Muir (1947)

A fantasy romance set in England, The Ghost And Mrs. Muir is a charming love story between a lively young widow and the crusty ghost of a dead sea captain. The absurd premise works ridiculously well.

It's early in the 1900s, and one year on from the death of her husband Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney) is fed up living with her stifling in-laws in London. She packs up her daughter Anna (Natalie Wood) and housekeeper Martha (Edna Best) and heads to the coast. She tangles with real estate agent Mr. Coombe (Robert Coote) and insists on renting Gull Cottage, a long-abandoned estate known to be haunted. Lucy soon encounters the ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg (Rex Harrison), the former owner of the house. He tries to scare her away but she is unmoved, and they soon negotiate a co-existence deal: he will allow her to stay in the house as long as she allows him to peacefully haunt her bedroom (formerly his room) at will, and he stays away from scaring Anna.

Over the following weeks and months the Captain and Lucy get to know each other, he calls her Lucia and she learns about his love of the sea and his eventful, adventurous life. When she hits a financial crisis he inspires her to write a book about his life. But when Lucy meets the attractive Miles Fairley (George Sanders), a successful author of children's books, the relationship between the ghost and Mrs. Muir is further complicated.

Directed with a deft touch by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, The Ghost And Mrs. Muir is a whimsical tale of impossible love serving as inspiration for a life change. An adaptation of the novel by R. A. Dick, the film strikes all the right notes. Instead of slipping into contrived drama or overwrought emotions, the film draws inspiration from the gorgeous yet rugged setting and confidently strides in self assured directions, pushing boundaries wherever it can.

The two central characters offer genuine emotional depth, and elevate the film from romance to an inquisitive exploration of life's opportunities, gained and lost. Lucy Muir is a feisty heroine who stares down the scare tactics of a ghost and pushes back to create a mutually respectful relationship. The presence of a ghost is treated as a matter of fact, and the Captain never compromises his salty language and manly ideals, but still finds the space to graciously accommodate a woman in his estate and his heart.

Mankiewicz cleverly allows the film to play both as a romantic fantasy and a psychological case study. Of course the prolonged interaction with the ghost may just be a creation of Lucy's mind to focus her courage, as a young woman breaking all the social norms and setting off on her own in a conservative society. Whether present as a ghost or as merely a prevailing influence in the new surroundings, Captain Gregg serves as inspiration and motivation, prodding Lucy onwards to confront her fears, define her own life, achieve financial independence and dare to again interact with men.

Miles Fairly finally emerges as the first potential opportunity for Lucy to find a suitable real man, and the lessons learned from the Captain will serve her well in dealing with forthcoming emotional upheavals. Regardless of Fairly's attributes, Lucy now has a high standard to measure him against.

Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison allow the film to sparkle, creating a compelling couple and finding the strangest chemistry built on contrast, a combustible mix of stubbornness, honesty and admiration. He is supposed to be gruff, she is supposed to be fragile, but Tierney and Harrison delve into the complexities below the surface to find the independence that binds the characters.

George Sanders arrives relatively late and adds the heartfelt passion of an author who is perhaps too eager to add excitement to a life he perceives as dull. Edna Best is excellent as the housekeeper who is also a lifelong and trusted companion, while Natalie Wood in an early role is amiable as young Anna.

Bernard Herrman conjures up one of his most celebrated music scores to augment the romance, contributing enormous depth to the majestic setting of a seaside house witnessing a poignant love. The Ghost And Mrs. Muir then goes on to offer one of the all-time weepiest and most bittersweet endings, a triumph of the souls that lives on for the ages.

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Movie Review: This Property Is Condemned (1966)

A tale of southern desperation inspired by a Tennessee Williams one-act play, This Property Is Condemned simmers on steady heat but never quite sizzles.

The story unfolds as one long flashback from the perspective of a young woman called Willie (Mary Badham). It's the middle of the Great Depression in the small fictional town of Dodson, Mississippi, where the railroad provides the only employment. The mysterious, quiet and extremely handsome Owen Legate (Robert Redford) arrives in town and meets Willie, her older sister Alva (Natalie Wood), and their mother Hazel (Kate Reid), who operates a boarding house. Hazel has been abandoned by her husband, and tough railway man J.J. Nichols (Charles Bronson) pretends to be interested in filling the void while barely concealing his lust for Alva, the town's sex pot. Meanwhile, Hazel exploits Alva's sexuality to snare potential meal tickets, the latest being Mr. Johnson (John Harding).

Alva is attracted to Owen the moment she sees him, but he is initially not impressed with her fanciful imagination and the way she toys with men at the behest of her mother. But gradually their relationship develops into a romance, which gets complicated when Owen's motive for coming to Dodson is revealed. With Hazel growing increasingly desperate for Alva to show some love for Johnson, J.J. willing to risk everything for a chance to be with Alva, and Owen quickly becoming the most hated man in town, emotions reach a boiling point.

The second movie directed by Sydney Pollack, This Property Is Condemned is a talkative piece of Americana, steeped in the south at a time when desperation was every adult's middle name. There are no sympathetic characters in Dodson, and this both elevates and hampers the film. The men and women of the derelict railway town outdo each other in meanness and narcissism as they trample over each other to try and escape the economic quagmire, oblivious that their collective stampede is only succeeding in digging a deeper hole of desolation.

Hazel, J.J., Alva and Mr. Johnson really do deserve each other, and certainly don't deserve any better. It is questionable whether outsider Owen is an improvement over the townsfolk, and certainly his chosen profession denotes a cold heart, a comfort with others' agony and an inability to settle down. The cocktail of insensitive characters makes for trainwreck-style entertainment, ironic in the context of a railway town, and it's clear early on most of the residents of Dodson are unlikely to be clever enough to stumble onto happy endings.

The lack of any displayed empathy also means This Property Is Condemned remains a relatively detached exercise. It is difficult to care about Alva despite her miserable dilemmas: she is simply too self-obsessed and too far gone into her fantastical stories and flirtatious games to generate genuine warmth. And it's equally difficult to invest in the unlikely relationship between her and Owen, who never moves beyond the observant interloper. Hazel and J.J. are there to wallow in an ugly existence of their own making, their levels of desperation having long since pushed them to the darkest corners of selfishness.

A vivacious Natalie Wood brings Alva to full life as a woman who knows that she is too beautiful for her surroundings, and who is as trapped by her irresistible looks as she is by her depressed town. Mary Badham, of To Kill A Mockingbird fame, is excellent as the counterpoint younger sister, and the only character in the film young enough to not quite yet be consumed by the rampant despondency. Charles Bronson, Robert Redford and Kate Reid are good, but stick to variations on a single note. Robert Blake and Dabney Coleman have small roles.

The screenplay (co-written by Francis Ford Coppola) does pick up steam in the final third as the characters talk less and hurtle purposefully towards their fate, with Pollack making excellent use of a very wet New Orleans as the action moves to the big city. In the opening scene Hazel's boarding house is presented as abandoned, the building condemned. The movie works its way to an outcome of compounded misery, the result of an economic disaster and egotistical floundering.

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Movie Review: The Searchers (1956)

A visually spectacular and contextually challenging western, The Searchers is a grim saga of a years-long search for a white girl abducted by Comanche natives. It is also a journey through the lost soul of the man obsessed with finding her for all the wrong reasons.

Three years after the end of the Civil War, confederate soldier Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) unexpectedly returns to the secluded Texas home of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) and his family: wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), daughters Debbie and Lucy, and son Ben. But soon after arriving, Ethan leaves again to join a posse organized by the Reverend Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond) to chase after tribal cattle rustlers. It’s a ruse. With the posse away, the natives attack the household, killing Aaron, Martha and Ben, and abducting daughters Debbie and Lucy.

Ethan commits to finding the girls. He is joined by Lucy’s fiancé Brad Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.) and Debbie’s adopted brother Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter). Lucy is soon found dead, and Brad is blinded by rage and dies in a suicidal one-man assault. With Debbie still missing, the trail runs cold. Ethan and Martin will be searching for years, putting a strain on Martin’s relationship with sweetheart Laurie (Vera Miles), while Debbie (Natalie Wood) grows up as part of the Comanche tribe of Chief Scar (Henry Brandon).

One of the most commanding collaborations between director John Ford and star John Wayne, The Searchers is an inflection point in the history of the genre. The film introduces a central character of dubious moral standing and compromised ethics, the type of man much more likely to have tamed the west compared to the scrubbed white hat of the genre's mythology. Ethan Edwards is an unsavoury "hero" with a murky and less than stellar past. He drifts in and out of the lives of his family members with nary a thought for their feelings, and is either hostile or condescending to friend and foe alike.

Prone to extreme violence and harbouring deep-seated racist attitudes, his quest is not so much a rescue mission as an opportunity for revenge, and Ethan does not hide his motives. Most relaxed when he is inflicting maximum damage, he kills buffalo out of spite, continues to shoot at a group of natives in full retreat, and desecrates a dead corpse just to torture his soul.

The Searchers finally finds the darkest corner of Ethan's psyche when it becomes clear he may actually just rather destroy Debbie, his mind twisting the endless search into a mercy killing mission. To him, she has become one of them, and "living with the Comanche ain't living." Blinded by his racism, Ethan may believe the best way to rescue Debbie is to violently release her from the only adult world she has known.

And yet Ethan possesses the heroic attributes of courage, doggedness and willingness to act. And to add to the shifting psychological sands Ethan's motives may be a lot more personal than anyone is willing to discuss. There is an undercurrent of eerily silent tension between Ethan, Aaron and Martha, and the soft gestures and unspoken words between Ethan and Martha suggest intriguing possibilities about who exactly is Debbie's father.

In a courageous performance signalling the end of nostalgic idealism towards the era's manhood, Wayne plays Ethan with an honesty towards the material as a hunter and killer tolerated for resourceful toughness but little else.

Ford filmed The Searchers in Monument Valley, and the VistaVision colour cinematography by Winton C. Hoch is wondrous, with almost every frame a landscape masterpiece. With the rock formations and wide open vistas serving as a backdrop, Ford plays with silhouettes, framing and juxtaposes the small human scale with the magnificence of imposing terrain.

Stunning in its style, depth, and audacious willingness to seek new territory, The Searchers carves new horizons out of a bedrock of legend.

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The Movies Of Natalie Wood

All movies starring Natalie Wood and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

The Ghost And Mrs. Muir (1947)

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

The Searchers (1956)

Splendor In The Grass (1961)

West Side Story (1961)

Gypsy (1962)

Love With The Proper Stranger (1963)

Sex And The Single Girl (1964)

Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

This Property Is Condemned (1966)

The Candidate (1972, as herself)

Meteor (1979)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

A cautionary tale about Hollywood eating its young, Inside Daisy Clover has a limited message and takes forever to deliver it. A running time of over two hours strangles momentum as characters lurch from one overblown crisis to another, the childish innocence of the main character not helping to fill the central emotional void.

It's the 1930s, and fifteen year old Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) is from the wrong side of the California dream, a tomboy who loves to sing but is stuck forging star signatures and living with her eccentric mother (Ruth Gordon) in a dilapidated seaside mobile home. Daisy comes to the attention of arrogant Hollywood producer Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer), who sees enough potential and adopts her into his star-making machine, but also insists that her mother be committed to a mental institution.

The pressures of stardom both enthral and unbalance Daisy, and she soon falls under the spell of Wade Lewis (Robert Redford), another manufactured star in the Swan stable. Despite her young age a stuttering romance develops between Daisy and Wade under Swan's watchful eyes. But Daisy has plenty to learn, and the mental pressure mounts with revelations involving Wade's sexuality, her mother's forced incarceration, Swan's wife Melora (Katharine Bard), and Swan's malevolent intentions.

At 28 years old, Natalie Wood, who's own real life story had a few parallels with Daisy, does her best to play a starstruck 15 year old, but there is never any doubt that Daisy is portrayed by a much older actress interpreting what it meant to be young and poor in the Depression. Wood rolls her eyes, wrinkles her nose, and pulls-off some teenage tomboy mannerisms, but the performance represents capable acting at its most basic, and the lack of depth at the movie's core compromises any potential engagement.

The rest of the cast take their roles and run to extremes. Christopher Plummer is the obnoxiously self-obsessed studio head, and to him actors are money machines to be exploited until empty, at which point it's time to activate another machine. He does not fail to give Daisy the encouragement that she needs to launch into stardom, but is also quick to exploit and dispose of his stars as necessary.

Robert Redford wanders into the movie spouting mostly incomprehensible psychology, seduces Daisy, waltzes off again before re-emerging as one of Hollywood's first relatively sympathetic bisexual characters. Wade Lewis never sticks around long enough for his character to be anything other than an intermittent stir-stick. Meanwhile, it's not clear what the character of Melora Swan was really doing in the movie, other than to drive home the point that Hollywood is filled with concealed victims.

Ruth Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award (and won the Golden Globe) for her turn as Daisy's happily halfway-demented mother, and the accolades surely had a lot more to do with welcoming Gordon back to the screen after a 22 year absence than any genuine bedazzlement by a stock portrayal of an eccentric character.

Director Robert Mulligan pulls out one terrific scene, Daisy reaching a tipping point trying to dub over her own singing voice in a sound booth. But otherwise the movie offers little in the form of stylistic interest to tide over its interminable length. Inside Daisy Clover covers a mildly interesting two year period in a young starlet's life, and appears to last as long.

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Movie Review: Gypsy (1962)

A musical biography, Gypsy is all about Rose Hovick, the mother of celebrated stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, rather than the story of Gypsy herself. A tad self-indulgent, the film nevertheless hits many high notes.

It's the 1920s, and Rose (Rosalind Russell) is the prototypical stage mother, desperate for her young blonde daughter June to achieve success on the vaudeville circuit. Older daughter Louise is less talented and apparently not suitable for life as a star. Rose was never herself successful, but teams up with minor show business promoter Herbie Sommers (Karl Malden) and stops at nothing to place June in the middle of a tacky show that achieves modest success, with Louise very much on the sidelines.

June grows into a teenager but Rose, terrified of ever growing old, still treats her like a child. June reacts by suddenly getting married and fleeing her domineering mother. Rose is left with no choice but to turn all her attention to Louise (Natalie Wood). An unexpected detour into a cheap burlesque theatre in Kansas exposes Louise to the art of stripping: to her mother's horror, Louise stumbles upon something she is good at. She adopts the stage name of Gypsy Rose Lee and her career as an exotic dancer takes off.

Gypsy is 143 minutes long, and it's highly questionable whether there is enough story to fill two and half hours of screen time. Director Mervyn LeRoy, adapting the book based on the stage play inspired by a book, instead packs the movie with songs, most of them sung by Russell, and too many of them the same: the theme of never giving up, battling the odds, striving for success, and wanting it all is repeated in various guises. Once Rose's resolute persona is set, her songs, although generally short in duration, become predictable and teeter on tiresome.

But Rose is a such a powerful personality that the film gets away with it. The role model for any mother wanting to trample all over her children's lives to fill the void in her own, Rose is overbearing and relentless. She dupes her own father, drags her children across the country, insists on treating the teen-aged June like a baby, reacts to losing June by setting up Louise as a straight swap regardless of the gap in talent, leaves Herbie hanging for years without committing to him, and is finally resentful rather than happy when Louise achieves success. Rose's destructive blind ambition is such that any mother watching Gypsy would instantly feel better about herself.

Natalie Wood has relatively little to do but does it well. It is only in the final quarter of the film that the persona of Gypsy Rose Lee emerges from the wreckage of Louise's psyche, and Wood as Gypsy immediately brightens the movie. Finally a star in her own right and not because of her mother's incessant pushing, Gypsy shines on stage and quickly graduates from tacky to glamorous locales. That after all the years of struggle Rose sees nothing in Gypsy's success except her own left-behind agony is confirmation of her abject self-obsession.

As Herbie, Karl Malden has the thankless role of being drawn to Rose's thorny personality and holding out for the day when she will see in him more than just another stage enabler. Herbie is patient and resilient, and Rose takes full advantage.

LeRoy manages to sufficiently break Gypsy out of its stage confines, although it remains very much an artificial set-bound production. The glossy production design overpowers the attempts at recreating the grim reality of struggle on the second rate vaudeville tour scene.

Gypsy is a grand celebration of a larger than life mother, with destiny delivering a distorted realization of a dream. Yes, one of her daughters achieves stardom, but Rose never anticipated neither the art form nor the emptiness that remains when the success of others fails to conceal the failure of her own life.

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Movie Review: Splendor In The Grass (1961)

A strikingly frank exploration of sexual repression, Splendor In The Grass launched the career of Warren Beatty, revitalized the fortunes of Natalie Wood, and ushered in a new decade of dramatically increased sexual openness in both the movies and society.

The setting is Kansas in the late 1920s, just ahead of the stock market crash and the Great Depression. High school sweethearts Deanie Loomis (Wood) and Bud Stamper (Beatty) are planning their futures and barely able to restrain themselves from having sex. Bud is more than willing, but Deanie wants to wait: she comes from a relatively modest family, and although her parents are thrilled she is dating the high profile Bud, Deanie's frigid mother (Audrey Christie) is adamant good girls do not enjoy sex.

The Stampers are wealthy oil tycoons, and patriarch Ace Stamper (Pat Hingle) encourages Bud to seek sexual relations with other girls until he marries Deanie. Ace also has Bud's future all laid out for him, including sending him to Yale for an education Bud does not care for. The desires and intentions of the lovers and their parents will face severe tests.

Directed by Elia Kazan and written by William Inge, Splendor In The Grass features two memorable characters buffeted by the currents of destiny. Bud and Deanie start as two hopeful teens and transform over two hours to jaded adults, a journey filled with mounting desperation that life may indeed conspire to comprehensively sabotage true love's destiny.

Bud Stamper walks a tightrope between loving Deanie and lusting after her while alternating between respect and contempt for his father. Bud at least maintains most of his composure; his forlorn soul mate is less fortunate. Deanie's plight is an astonishing reminder that until early in the 20th century, female hysteria was a common diagnosis for women suffering through sexual dissatisfaction. She tries to repress raging sexual desire, conflicted between raw attraction for Bud and all the stop signs planted in her path by an icy cold mother. She emerges from her ordeal a tightly wired cage of suppression, a tense smile working overtime to beat down rage.

Inge pokes at the generational divide and hacks away at the wisdom of parents and adults. Deanie and Bud's downward spiral towards emotional misery is a direct result of respecting their parents wishes. Deanie's mother and Bud's father do all the overt damage, but by their lack of active intervention to provide a counterbalance, Deanie's father and Bud's mother contribute to the ruin by simple neglect. When Bud turns to a doctor for advice, he receives none. 

Wood is a revelation in a physically adventurous and mentally tortuous role, while the enigmatic Beatty's performance is remarkably assured for a young actor stepping into his first big screen role. Pat Hingle towers over every scene he is in, Ace Stamper the manifestation of caring annihilated by domination.

Splendor In The Grass is a powerful drama, tackling taboo subject matter with daring, sensitivity, and bravado.

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Movie Review: Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Rebel Without A Cause is one of the earliest serious teenage dramas, an examination of the seemingly insurmountable agony faced by young people in the face of clueless parents. It is also a gripping film, tightly directed by Nicholas Ray, who extracts enthralling, haunting, and career-defining performances from James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

Jim (Dean), Judy (Wood), and John, nicknamed Plato (Mineo) are deeply troubled Los Angeles teenagers: all three are suffering from severe conflicts with their parents. Jim's dad is spineless, and his mother domineering. Judy is getting no affection and a lot of verbal abuse from her father, and she is hanging out with "the kids", the local bully gang and their leader Buzz. Plato's parents are simply not there: he does not really know anything about his father, and his mother recently abandoned him, leaving him in the care of a housekeeper.

After an evening when their lives cross at the local police juvenile office, Plato befriends Jim and sees in him a replacement father figure. Jim is attracted to Judy, but she pretends to be more interested in fitting in with the kids while flirting with Buzz. Jim is soon on the wrong side of the kids and agrees to challenge Buzz in a chicken run: an illegal car race towards a sheer cliff, with the first to bail labelled a chicken. As Judy, Plato, and the rest of the local teenagers watch, the race ends in tragedy. Judy and Jim warm up to each other, but the bully boys want to silence Jim before he talks to the police about the illegal race.

Rebel Without A Cause features a memorable and dominant James Dean performance. Showing remarkable vulnerability and anguish, his portrayal of Jim Stark as a tormented teenager crying out for guidance is riveting. The movie piles the pressure on Jim: he get no help from his Dad; the local bullies turn against him; all of a sudden Jim is thrust into the role of Plato's surrogate Dad; and his first, seemingly innocuous mis-step as a father figure results in a calamity. The film at least offers some hope that with a woman believing in him, things could get better.

James Dean at 24 years old, Natalie Wood at 17 and Sal Mineo at 16 dominate Rebel Without A Cause, and enshrine their screen personas: Dean as the cool but troubled soul; Wood as the innocent but dangerous girl, and Mineo as the sad misfit. Their performances shine through the film, and into legend.

In one of movie history's cruel twists, all three suffered unexpected deaths. Dean perished in a head-on car crash later in 1955, the same year that Rebel was released, and just three films into his career. Mineo was murdered in a 1976 random stabbing. Wood accidentally drowned in 1981, after falling overboard from a yacht.

Rebel Without A Cause draws a straight, bold line between failed parenting, specifically failed fatherhood, and troubled teenagers. The film is not subtle about Jim's emancipated dad utterly failing to provide any guidance about becoming a man. Judy's father appears unable to deal with her as a woman rather than a child. And the void created by the absence of a father figure in Plato's life is the core of his journey into darkness. In the absence of a named cause, disillusionment stemming from emotional abandonment will have to do.

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