Late summer in New York is a beautiful time in the city. The July heat has mostly dispersed, although not before driving off the beach crowd to their shore-side homes. The traffic on the avenues has lessened, and while Times Square still throbs with tourists, the city can feel almost empty on a quiet Sunday morning. Even Film Gab is unusually quiet as Werth has taken his gargantuan trove of movie knowledge down south to visit friends, leaving this humble Gabber to ponder over silver screen explorations of the solitary life.
In Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Bridget (Renée Zellweger) would do just about anything not to be single. Based on Helen Fielding's runaway best seller, both the film and the book depict a woman in her thirties, slightly plump, clumsy, and besotted by romantic notions that obscure the fine qualities of her childhood acquaintance Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) in favor of the rogue sexiness of her boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). The film is full of pratfalls and cringeworthy embarrassments heaped on Bridget, but somehow Zellweger's bouyancy transforms her character's awkward strivings into something heroic. (At least the Acadamy thought so;
Zellweger nabbed a Best Actress nomination.) Of course her co-stars have a lot to do with the success of the picture: Grant deploys his matinee idol looks to make Daniel's toxic charm nearly irresistible, while Firth creates a character so bound up by honor that he appears priggish until Bridget discovers his heart of gold.
Cast Away (2000) is more properly a film about loneliness. Tom Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a FedEx executive so caught up in the rat race that he eschews both family and friends—including his long-suffering fiancée Kelly (Helen Hunt)—in favor of pursuing the corporate grind. A plane crash lands him on an uninhabited island where for four years he confronts the sequestered life he had always seemed to choose over the people he cared for most. Hanks does something miraculous here, quieting his comedic impulses and finding the circumspect dignity of a man who has achieved hermetic perfection. He even does double duty by creating a second character in his volleyball companion Wilson;
when the two face separation, it's as heartwrenching as even the most tragic Hollywood ending. Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and deservedly so. His performance, mostly without words and barely with co-stars, is a riveting tour-de-force.
While not properly a film, William Luce's dramatization of the life of Emily Dickinson, The Belle of Amherst (1976), was filmed for PBS, and even though star Julie Harris appears alone for the full length of the production, she populates the stage with an ensemble of over a dozen other characters in telling the life of this singular American poet. Directed nimbly by Charles S. Durbin (the primary helmer of TV's M*A*S*H and the Lesley Anne Warren version of Cinderella (1965)), the film escapes the ordinarily flat-footed interpretations of stage-to-screen by focusing primarily on Harris's luminous eyes ("like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves" as Dickinson would have it). Harris created her performance on Broadway under the direction of Charles Nelson Reilly (yes, that Charles Nelson Reilly), and while Luce's play is full of references to the since-discredited notion of Dickinson as the victim of a tragic romance,
Harris's Dickinson full of the fire and self-possession of an artist at the height of her powers. Still, she is "small, like the wren," giving a clear idea with her physical performance how a determined woman could elide the chauvinism of the 19th Century world.
Whatever your summer plans, we here at Film Gab hope you're having a blast, but still saving time to enjoy the pleasure of the silver screen. Join us again next week when Werth returns and I leave behind my solitary musings for more rollicking adventures of next week's Film Gab.
Werth: Happy post-Valentine's Day, Wise!
Wise: Happy post-Valentine's Day, Werth. Did you do anything romantic yesterday?
Werth: I was too busy being overwhelmed by all the romantic movies that are out right now: Josh Duhamel and some blond girl in Nicholas Sparks' latest romantic schlock Safe Haven; a teen witch falls in love with a human in Beautiful Creatures; even a zombie gets impaled by Cupid in the zom-rom-com Warm Bodies.
Wise: Better Russell Stovers than trying to eat your date's brains.
Werth: Romance and the silver screen have had a long affair—almost from the very beginning with the scandalous short The Kiss (1896). One of my favorite romantic comedies gave the genre a re-boot in 1959. Pillow Talk stars Doris Day as Jan Morrow, an interior decorator (they weren't desginers yet) who lives the single-girl life in New York City.
Wise: Sex and the studio-back-lot-version-of-the-city.
Werth: Complicating her nights out with handsy Phi Beta Kappa boys and marriage-proposing clients is the fact that she can't use her phone because the man she shares it with (they were called party lines, kids... and the phones had rotary dials) is too busy wooing chippies with mediocre love tunes.
Wise: Now there's an app for that.
Werth: But what Jan doesn't know is that her unwanted phone pal, Brad Allen (handsome as all get-out Rock Hudson) has, through a set of coinicidences that could only happen in a Fifties Romatic Comedy, found out who she is and decides to woo her by pretending to be a visiting Texas cowpoke.
With an accent that would make Hudson's character from Giant see red, Brad proceeds to sweep Jan off her feet to get back at her for putting a crimp in his bachelor lifestyle. What makes this film more intriguing than some of its corny predecessors is how it explores a freer sexuality while at the same time maintaining a sense of Fifties sexless decorum.
Split-screen scenes with Jan and Brad on the phone take place in bed and even the bathtub, the two seemingly touching sudsy feet across the telephone line.
Wise: FaceTime on the iPhone just isn't nearly as alluring.
Werth: Brad's swinging lifestyle—complete with living room switches that activate record players, mood lighting, extendable beds and a rape-tastic door lock—is smoothed out by the boyish charm that Hudson exudes.
His scene where he tries to make Jan think he is gay is so meta in its depiciton of a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man who's not really gay, that you can't help but sing "You Lied" along with Perry Blackwell. Day is pluckily prim as Jan, the sexuality she is smothering always ready to come flaming back to life for the right guy.
Expert character work from Tony Randall as a millionaire mama's boy and Thelma Ritter as Jan's drunk maid add to the fun in this flick that is tentatively turning the corner of the Eisenhower Fifties to the Swingin' Sixties.
Wise: Since then lots of films have aspired to the heights of the iconic Day/Hudson pairing, but one film aspired harder than most: Down With Love (2003) attempts to recreate the winking sexuality of its predecessors while also layering on its own winks to telegraph an even wink-ier level of camp
Werth: That's a lot of winking
Wise: Renée Zellweger stars as Barbara Novak, a single gal and successful author of the titular tome advising women to forget love and enjoy a single life unfettered by the prim mores of the past. Of course, this seditious talk brings the social and commercial life of New York to a grinding halt as women flee both their sweethearts and their Selectrics.
The only hope for the city is caddish magazine writer Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) who has a talent for the ladies and timely exposés. Disguising himself as a chaste astronaut, Catcher attempts to turn the tables on Barbara by driving her so wild with unfulfilled desire that she'll admit to wanting a husband more than a career.
Werth: I'd admit that to Ewan McGregor before the opening credits were through.
Wise: The film's designers beautifully recreate the color saturated look of idealized 60's New York, particularly in Barbara's costumes and Catcher's swank bachelor pad.
David Hyde Pierce turns up in the Tony Randall role as Catcher's fey and fumbling boss, and would have stolen the show had not the real Tony Randall appeared in cameo as Barbara's stentorian publisher.
The plot is jam-packed with the kind of plot twists, missed connections and mistaken identities that once made audiences cheer for the inevitable coupling of Doris and Rock, but something about the pairing of Zellweger and McGregor falls flat.
Zellweger's pout and determined squint seem a poor match to Day's pixie sharpness, and while McGregor fares better with his boyish charm, he lacks Hudson's broad-shouldered masculinity. Still, the film ends on a high note with the pair singing a swinging love duet that hints at the chemistry the two might have displayed in a film better suited to their charms.
Werth: I hope all this talk about romantic movies doesn't give you a love hangover.
Wise: Just a handful of leftover Sweethearts candy and a cup of joe and I'll be more than ready for next week's Film Gab.
