DON'T LOOK NOW - #745

What surprised me the most when the film came to an end was how much I cared about the main characters of Don’t Look Now. In the final moments of Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 supernatural drama, a rapid montage of Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as the movie’s central couple quickly summarizes all that we have seen over the previous 109 or so minutes, and I was strangely moved. For a movie I didn’t really enjoy, I shouldn’t have had that much of a connection, but turns out, I did.

Credit is likely due to Sutherland and Christie, who excel as John and Laura, a British couple on a working holiday in Venice, where the memory of their recently drowned young daughter haunts them. As far as Laura is concerned, quite literally, too. After a clairvoyant blind woman tells her that she has seen the lost child in their midst, and that the girl is happy, Laura is both freed of her grief and newly obsessed with the loss. John, on the other hand, is weighed down further by this revelation--both from worrying over his wife’s alleged delusions and the warning from the psychic that Venice will harm him somehow.

And so it is that eventually we realize that this is a couple who is not really together, but moving in separate directions, divided by emotions that should otherwise bind them. Tragedy can have this effect, though. Grief is personal, and though the husband and wife are processing the same events, they do so from two different vantage points. John literally pulled his daughter’s body from the water, while Laura only witnessed the aftermath. And though they both wonder “what if?” in relation to their kids going out to play that day, John has the added regret of being the one who encouraged them to venture outside. Thus, it’s even more resonant when they hear of their young son having an accident back at school in England, which serves to pull them further apart, both literally and figuratively, and kick off Don’t Look Now’s final movement.

Roeg’s nimble visual touch serves him well here. The swift cutting he and editor Graeme Clifford (McCabe & Mrs. Miller [review]) employ to toggle between the two characters, as well as past and present, serves to keep the viewer disoriented, often almost like we are opening and closing one eye at a time, back and forth, getting two skewed versions of the same picture. Sutherland flourishes in this oddness, his congested delivery transforming his character’s sadness into a kind of wet, physical symptom he can’t dislodge. He is a man trapped in a narrative he can’t seize control of--which is ironic, since we are led to believe he is a little psychic, too, but yet he can’t sense his own impending doom.

Don’t Look Now is based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier, a favorite of Hitchcock, whose Rebecca [review], Jamaica Inn, and The Birds all draw from her source material. Unlike Hitchcock, though, Roeg doesn’t manage to extract much suspense out of the writer’s tale. Even as Roeg uses the criss-crossing Venice canals and roadways to get John lost, he doesn’t manage to create much sense of peril. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I actually wonder how much better Brian De Palma might have handled Allan Scott and Chris Bryant’s script. The mistaken-identity ending could only be more De Palma-esque if either Sutherland or Christie woke up in bed, having dreamt the whole thing. (Note: Composer Pino Donaggio also scored De Palma’s Dressed to Kill [review] and Blow Out, but his work here is often too erudite, and tends to detract rather than add, most notably the cheesy classicisms of orchestration during the infamous sex scene. Despite all the visible flesh, one must assume that Donaggio and Roeg don’t want us to find it even remotely erotic.)

Perhaps, though, I am looking at this all wrong, and not examining how Don’t Look Now appropriates the cumulative effects of grief. If we go back to my opening statement, despite not being particularly engrossed or engaged, I still somehow found myself having an emotional reaction at the finish, one of sadness and pity for a couple I had come to...not really identify with or like, but get used to? In his own weird way, Roeg managed my experience, massaging my sentiments, and got me exactly where he needed me to be. Now the question becomes whether I’ve become attached enough to want to revisit John and Laura and see if, knowing what I know now, feeling what I feel, Don’t Look Now plays any differently. It’s not something I’m compelled to do immediately, but maybe one day....

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - #836

Maybe I should start timing how long I procrastinate with a review when I’m writing about a movie I didn’t particularly care for. It’s been over an hour since I first fired up this document, and I’ve done many things, checked the laundry room a couple of times to see if the other tenants finally moved their clothes to the dryer, tried some of this Jameson Caskmates, cycled trough all for sides of DJ Shadow’s The Mountain Will Fall and moved on to Avalanches’ Wildflower.

In other words, I didn’t enjoy watching Beyond theValley of the Dolls very much. Even approaching it from the point of view of looking at it as a product of its time, trying to embrace the spirit of 1970 and the cultural changes that Russ Meyer’s movie both embraces and lampoons, it doesn’t quite work. The gag doesn’t land. I guess, as they say, maybe you had to be there.

Despite the disclaimer that opens Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, this film very much began as a sequel to the 1967 original [review], but when author Jacqueline Susann objected to the new take on it, she threatened to sue. And so the studio had the names changed of the returning characters and tacked on the title card. The lineage remains, however, as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls offers another melodramatic showbiz narrative, once again taking a lance to the Hollywood lifestyle, but this time focusing on an all-girl rock-and-roll trio. Lead singer Dolly Mac Namara (Playboy Playmate Dolly Read) goes to Los Angeles to visit her Aunt Susan (Phyllis Davis, playing the character that would have been Anne Welles), and she and her bandmates end up embroiled in the California party scene and in servitude to a shady record producer everyone calls Z-Man (John LaZar, who in his sideburns and hip haircut looks a bit like one of Jack Kirby’s supernatural characters; someone should have cast him in a Witch Boy movie). The narrative follows both the trajectory of Kelly’s band and the way she and the other girls sink into a life of booze, drugs, and sex, the act breaks signaled by yet another night of debauchery at Z-Man’s groovy pad.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls comes off as one big car-crash of divergent intentions. Hoping to cash in on the late-’60s counter-culture cinema as typified by Easy Rider [review], the studio heads handed sexploitation auteur Russ Meyer the keys to this kingdom. While he delivered all the kooky lingo and the hippies and psychedelics, his final product feels like one big wind-up, a parody of the fat cats’ perception of what these kinds of movies represented. Meyer basically takes the feel of the Roger Corman acid movies and puts them together with the campy tone of the 1966 Batman TV show, ending up with something closer to the Monkees, minus the earworms and laughs. What makes the whole thing really odd, though, is the underlying sincerity that drives the picture. For however much Beyond the Valley of the Dolls feels like a put-on, it also comes across as a film made with serious intent.

Perhaps this is down to the screenwriter, the famed film critic Roger Ebert, his first contribution to an actual fiction film (he didn’t do much more, but it was all with Meyer). I’d certainly credit him with the script’s ludicrous climax, in which every soap opera cliché is trotted out and tossed into a big pile, a grinning homage to all the sudsy love stories that came before it. You’d also expect to lay the blame on him for the mash-up of characters in Z-Man’s final party: a jungle man, a Nazi, King Arthur, and a pair of superheroes. (Cynthia Myers and Erica Gavin, playing the film’s lesbian couple, dress up as Robin and Catwoman, using the actual costumes from the aforementioned Batman series.) The film nerd is checking off a bunch of items in his bucket list (however much he denies it in his commentary track...but more on that later).

Yet, it’s also Ebert who takes credit for the ludicrous last act reveal about Z-Man, which--without giving too much away--employs a regular Brian De Palma trick years before De Palma ever would, and yet is totally of the times, given that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls came out the same year as that other X-rated multi-car pile-up, Myra Breckenridge. To hear the writer tell it himself, this was not an organic plot development, but a last-minute inspiration. Which, frankly, seems even more De Palma than De Palma, whose final-scene turns usually feel like a filmmaker without a conclusion copping out.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all bad. For those who indulge in Russ Meyer movies for the leering voyeurism they provide, you won’t be disappointed--there are plenty of bosomy women in various states of undress. That said, the surprise for me was the displays of technique. The plot may be bogged down by plodding staging and stiff acting, but the mis-en-scene is often agile and even Godardian. Editor Dorothy Spencer, who also worked on Valley of the Dolls as well as such classics as Stagecoach [review] and Foreign Correspondent [review], employs quick cuts to keep things moving, reducing some shots to just a few seconds. Look, for instance, at the scene where Kelly ditches her former boyfriend and manager Harris (David Gurian) to go home with gigolo actor Lance Rocke (Michael Blodgett), sending Harris into the arms of pornstar Ashley St. Ives (Edy Williams). Spencer cuts from one action to another before the first is even finished, jumping back and forth between the heartbreaker and the heartbroken. Even more impressive, though, is the slam-poetry montage of Los Angeles at the start of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and the intercutting of Harris and Ashley’s first sex scene with automobile hood ornaments, effectively connecting America’s obsession with flesh and chrome. In these moments, Meyer gets closer to realizing the more avant-garde aspects of Godard or Dennis Hopper than he maybe even realized.

Too bad these brief flashes of brilliance don’t make up for the rest. For me, the biggest sin is how bad the music is. I hate when movies about bands don’t deliver quality tunes. Put together by studio regulars rather than legitimate rock writers and producers, but also featuring the Sandpipers and the Strawberry Alarm Clock (appearing as themselves), the musical numbers performed by the onscreen bands are heavy and intensely dull, striking an inauthentic chord that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls never manages to escape. I suppose many will watch this cult film to laugh at its many faults and fumbles, but I’ve never subscribed to the so-bad-it’s-good school of moviegoing. There’s enough that’s genuinely good to negate the necessity for laughing at the missteps of others. Once transgressive and cutting-edge, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls now just strikes me as tame and misguided. Your mileage may vary.

To match the artwork of the Valley of the Dolls release, Criterion brought in multi-talented comics artist Jim Rugg to create a composition for their Beyond the Valley of the Dolls that riffs on the original imagery while utilizing the larger cast. Just about every major and minor character is crammed in there. You should check out Rugg’s own work, including the blacksploitation tribute Afrodisiac and his delightful action comic StreetAngel.

Criterion also loads the disc with extras, including a commentary with Roger Ebert that they had the foresight to record in 2003 (apparently there was a long negotiation for rights). Ebert gives much insight into how the movie was constructed, including admitting that it was pretty much made up as he typed. He shows a genuine reverence for Russ Meyer, and suggests that much of the exaggeration in the performances is down to Meyer’s love of silent film. Interestingly, Ebert never embraces nor addresses any notion of the movie being bad--on the contrary, just as I imagined he did during production, the scribe treats Beyond the Valley of the Dolls quite seriously. I find it funny that he questions the choices of the wardrobe people and set decorators as being too exaggerated, but never quite acknowledges the same thing in his writing. Actually, what’s really fascinating is how rarely Ebert even acknowledges he is the writer. He eventually confesses that Kelly, as the main character, is subject to the whims of the author--and then sort of coyly notes that he’s that author--but outside of the very beginning and the very end, he approaches it from a less invested stance. As commentaries go, it’s disappointing, because he’s essentially defending his movie from the position of a critic who likes the final product, not as someone who had a hand in bringing it together. Which may suggest something about why this movie hits with such a resounding thud a quarter century later: the writer only sees the humor in terms of specifics, but the reality is that it was played so broadly, it has turned into a cartoon as time’s marched on. When it comes to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Roger Ebert is not a credible witness.

But again, maybe you just had to be there.

Russ Meyer on set with John LaZar.

DRESSED TO KILL - #770

“That Brian De Palma documentary is bullshit if the director doesn't wake up at the end and realize he dreamed Brain De Palma.” - tweet I tweeted immediately after finishing Dressed to Kill

I want to say I have a love/hate relationship with Brian De Palma but it’s really more a like/hate relationship with a heavy emphasis on kind of not giving a fuck.

My mind is all over the place after finally watching Dressed to Kill, which I remember from its original release, but I was too young to see it. I also remember its opening scene from some random night on cable about 15 years ago, when for whatever reason I did not finish the film. Had I done so, I would probably not be reviewing it now. I coudn’t see it returning to my queue in anything under--well, it would take me over two years to watch every other Criterion currently available first, so let’s say 3 years.

We can even begin with that first scene. If you ever need an object lesson to illustrate the male gaze, it’s this: Angie Dickinson in a shower performing a masturbatory dance in hopes that her husband will notice. The audience for this routine isn’t really the husband, though, who continues shaving, blissfully unaware; it’s the movie-going public, here in our role as peeping tom. It’s also the ticket-buying audience 90 minutes later when Nancy Allen achieves orgasm at the mere touch of the water stream from the same showerhead; the same way De Palma tries to have his cake and eat it, too, by creating a grotesque approximation of the theatrical arena by arranging an unrealistic number of mental patients to watch his villain in the asylum. We have seen the voyeur, and they is us.

The best part, though, is how obvious it is that it’s not really Angie Dickinson’s body, a fact that horny men my father’s age never realized back in 1980 and probably vehemently deny now. De Palma is the king of the fake-out, and that is just the first of many in Dressed to Kill. Some of them are earned (the unexpected arrival in the film’s genuine climax is a pretty great twist); some of them are not (oh, hello, last three scenes).

For those not in the know, here is the basic plot: a bored wife (Dickinson) goes to the art museum and hooks up with a man who seduces her--via a visually clever chase amongst the paintings, no less--only to be murdered in the elevator after leaving his apartment. Liz (Allen), an escort working in the building, stumbles across the murder in progress, and when the police suspect her of the killing, she has to find the blonde woman in trench coat and sunglasses she saw in the elevator mirror--who also may or may not now be stalking Liz. Both helping and hindering Liz are the dead woman’s psychiatrist (Michael Kaine), her son (Keith Gordon), and the homicide detective assigned to the case (Dennis Franz). (The husband, it would seem, is useless throughout.)

As plots go, it’s not much, and really, it’s just a gender-bent Psycho. The whole film, really, is what if Alfred Hitchcock adapted Penthouse Forum. That the nerdy son--a De Palma stand-in who loves cameras and recording equipment--never even makes a move on Liz is kind of ludicrous. So I guess kudos to De Palma for not succumbing to that obvious happening.

It’s not all that De Palma gets right. One can always praise his technique. His use of split-screen, for instance, is both dazzling and efficient, bringing an added layer to the storytelling, juxtaposing two scenes while also linking them (in one scene, he has two characters watching the same expository Phil Donahue episode while otherwise going about their seemingly unconnected business). In these instances, and elsewhere, De Palma lets the action run large, and in the sequences leading up to the first murder, even lets them play without dialogue, enticing the viewer through lush orchestral music and leading us to focus on various details, some of which are clues and others which are red herrings. De Palma and director of photography Ralf Bode also know how to compose a shot so that the foreground and background have two different courses of action, artfully hipping the viewer to certain info about what the varying characters are doing. They also use carefully placed mirrors to create echoes and dualities, the reflective glass being both a storytelling clue and a de fact conscience, depending who is looking at themselves and how.

And if we’re being generous, De Palma seems sympathetic to the trans community, and is progressive for his time, even as he exploits being transsexual for the purposes of plot. It’s easy to see the dangerous clichés he falls into now that a couple of decades have passed, but consider that he never suggests his villain is evil because of being trans; that person’s identity is never denigrated, nor is their identity suggested to be a dangerous psychosis, they just happen to have homicidal tendencies. Dressed to Kill may be problematic, and carries baggage that De Palma wasn’t even likely aware of, but it never suggests that its villain is deviant or wrong just for accepting their own state of well-being, the murders are motivated by some other impulse. And it doesn’t seem sexual either, even if the overall symbology is that in both the case of Dickinson and Allen’s characters, it’s the sexually active women whose lives are threatened. Which, let’s be honest, is a whole other set of problems, and perhaps lends more weight to the notion that De Palma hasn’t really considered the implications of his choices all that much, he just likes blood and sex.

All the skill and good will aside, though, Dressed to Kill is a decent movie, but it’s not a very good one, and De Palma is a proficient filmmaker, but a hack storyteller. Dressed to Kill’s plot is thin, and many of its machinations are contrived to the point of straining disbelief. The narrative meanders, but it holds interest throughout, never entirely tipping its hand toward the solution of its plot ahead of the full reveal. De Palma tries to cover his ass with a denouement where many of the movie’s internal failings are explained, yet it feels like too little too late--especially when the auteur succumbs to the classic “one more shock” blunder. That event in itself is not a bad idea, but the negation of it in the very last scene is. This is De Palma’s m.o., and his regular employment of “then I woke up” endings is easily his worst trait. As it stands, the final scene in Dressed to Kill doesn’t give us one final thrill; on the contrary, it just seems like a director who didn’t really have an ending, so he tacked one on. Not quite the cop-out of some of his other work, like Femme Fatale, but cheap all the same.