This depressingly dull, largely incoherent musical derives, by way of a stage musical, from one of Ingmar Bergman’s beauties: Smiles on a Summer Night (1955), a Shakespearean comedy that submits romance to mortality’s clock as couples change partners during a weekend visit to the country. To judge from the film, Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics are uninspired, however, except for the one famous killer-song, “Send in the Clowns.”
Len Cariou (en route to becoming Broadway’s Sweeney Todd), Diana Rigg, Hermione Gingold: these and other members of the cast are atrocious. But the principal cause of the film’s lifelessness is stage director Harold Prince, who hasn’t a clue what to do. His efforts have resulted in a film that is scarcely better than Mame (Gene Saks, 1974).
Is there any reason to see the film, then? Well, yes: Elizabeth Taylor. As a stage actress who brushes against the ache of her mortal awareness, Taylor is luscious (yet again she is beautiful beyond belief), elegant, sharp, witty, subtle. I have read that her singing is dubbed; but how can this be? Perhaps someone else supplies a few high notes, but Taylor’s “singing” voice is inimically hers. Taylor doesn’t really sing; she talk-sings: another reason why I doubt that she was extensively dubbed. Indeed, she struggles through “Send in the Clowns” (no Judy Collins, she), carefully sculpting and shading the gorgeous song in short phrases, a few notes at a time. The overall effect is mesmerizing and melancholy—and haunting.
For the record, I have named Eva Dahlbeck 1955’s best actress for her performance in this role in Bergman’s film.
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THE STARFISH (Man Ray, 1928)
April 28, 2010Everything is ambiguous in Dadaist-to-Surrealist Man Ray’s— Emmanuel Radnitzky’s—L’étoile de mer, whose very title finds the star of the sky in the “star” of the sea. Accompanied by a poem by Robert Desnos, Ray’s silent masterpiece revolves around a man and a beautiful woman as they walk outdoors or otherwise unite. As its object, she embodies his desire—and the eternal mystery of this desire. But she is a tease. When we watch them as a seeming couple mount the stairs to her room, watch her undress and lie down in bed, we assume that he will follow; we assume that he also assumes this. No; the title card reads “Adieu.” Obediently, he takes his leave. Or is it he who has said “Adieu” to cover his embarrassed disappointment? Or to tease her? In life’s dance of desire, someone has to lead, someone has to follow. When they earlier seemed to be walking together, was one in fact leading the other?
Much of the time images are distorted, out of focus. (Ray, who cinematographed, had smeared his camera lens with vaseline.*) At other times, images are supernally clear. Dream and waking, possibly—or do both sets of images belong to dreams, the latter belonging to a fever dream whose “distortion” is its brilliant clarity?
A starfish is encased in a glass jar; another, mysteriously, thrillingly alive in its vast sea-home, is as erotic as the rip in a paper curtain that invites us in.
“And if you find on this Earth a woman of sincere love.” We expect a main clause to complete this title, but it never does, unless it is this, a couple of title-pages later: “You do not dream.”
But you do. All desire is dreamt, even as it is lived.
* Oswald Morris attributed his Oscar for photographing Fiddler on the Roof (1971) to his having smeared the camera lens with vaseline.
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MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.
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