Over the Threshold (2004)

D. Mike Culumbus
Colour


Nicole Kidman should not be allowed to do comedy.


It’s a fact that should be as clear as the flipping moon by now.


Obviously she’s an extremely good dramatic actress and clearly a very attractive woman (there are blind man in lost tribes of the Amazon who fancy Nicole), but to cast her in a comedy is always huge and regrettable mistake. It’s as if she doesn’t understand the concept of jokes or laughter or punchlines, even prat-falls are beyond her – there’s just something too delicate and restrained about Nicole for her to ever fall over in a funny way. Evidently she thinks she can do it, but that’s because she has watched other people be funny and imagines she can copy them. But there isn’t an amusing, witty or humorous sinew in her whole body, so she just ends up working her way through comic scripts in dead-eyed incomprehension – and that is not good for the health of any comedy project. (For another red headed actress similarly affected, see Moore, Julianne). By all means cast her in drama, let her do big emotional, tragic, scenes with swelling scores that make Oscar voters sit up and salivate like juicy prunes, but just keep her away from comedy. There are some people who can get laughs and there are some who really, really can’t. She is the latter.


Here’s an example, with Nicole playing against Hugh Grant in a culture clash comedy that was actually released in 2004 but feels like it’s been sat on a shelf since about 1958. Giving an early sketch of her white trash role from ‘The Paperboy’, but this time broader and less subtle, NIcole is a Kentucky waffle waitress who is wooed and married by visiting English aristocrat Grant. After the wedding she’s whisked back to England where fish out of water comedy ensues. It’s not a particularly original scenario for a film, is it? And believe me the script does it no favours by being half-baked, underwritten and about an eighth as funny as a 1980’s ITV sitcom.


So we have comedy yokels, sniffy aristocratic relatives, cheerful barmen, flirty antique dealers, a brassy would-be mistress for Grant, and – as counter-balance – a sleazy aristo interested in the delectable Nicole. The jokes are asthmatic and seemingly riddled with hay-fever in the English sunshine, so Grant does what he always does in these situations and starts to flail wildly in an attempt to make things funny just through a kind of polite mania. It results in him playing every scene slightly too loud in an attempt to bring life to them, but really he just sucks all the fun away in his desperation. Yet because Nicole just doesn’t understand comedy and doesn’t understand that this won’t work, she starts to imitate him, as if believing that since Grant does know about comedy this must be the way to do it. And so we have both of them horribly over the top, both of them waving their arms and bulging their eyes, until the two of them are caught in a despairing and terrible death spiral of unfunniness.


It’s terrible to watch, and on a blog where I’m supposed to be recommending obscure films I have to say that you should avoid this one like a virulent plague-zone. I just bring it forth as Exhibit A in why Nicole most absolutely, totally and certainly shouldn’t do comedy.

Honeymoon of Horrors (1945)

D. Jack van Dougel
B&W


‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ is a dark comedy of the type that you just feel Cary Grant wished he did more of. Obviously he knew his image and was fond of his image as it paid for him to be, well, Cary Grant, but there was always something about him that strained to be darker than that image. You can see it in the films he made with Alfred Hitchcock; you see it in the films he made with Howard Hawks. But this is one of those rare movies where he just really goes for it. From talking of the horrendous fate meted out to Archibald Leach in ‘His Girl Friday’, to murderous aunts in ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, to bloody honeymoons here: this, my friends, is the dark side of Cary Grant.


Upping the tempo of his normal screen persona, this is Grant as full-on frazzled. The most famous example of a frazzled Cary Grant is of course ‘North by Northwest’, but there he’s a proto James Bond, which you have to admit is pretty damn suave. ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’ though is an increasingly macabre comedy, where laughs and deaths are piled on top of each other in frantic and haphazard fashion, and Grant is frazzled to the max. At points he doesn’t even look like Cary Grant: his face is grubby, that normally pristine hair finds itself ruffled and spiked, and his eyes are well and truly bulging. This is a Cary Grant lost in a situation he can’t control, as a newly-wed husband who starts to believe that his wife is a mass murderer.


The fact that the wife is played by Joan Fontaine makes this a delicious spin on Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’. In that film Joan plays a newlywed who starts to be suspicious about the murderous intentions of her husband, Cary Grant, suspicions which build to a disappointing ending. Here it’s Joan Fontaine as the suspected murderess, but it still builds to a disappointing ending. It’s much like Karl Marx said: good Hollywood ideas repeat themselves, first as suspense and then as farce.


Starting out as what looks like a blissful Hollywood romance, the two drive to the beautiful country hotel they’re staying in for their honeymoon, all loved up and with dreams of their future. They check in with the charming receptionist, kiss as they go up to their hotel room and everything looks rosy. But there’s a guest in reception who seems to recognise Fontaine and greets her by another name, before long he’s dead, and not long after all the other guests start dropping like particularly diseased flies. Grant grows suspicious that his lovely bride is responsible, and investigates even when trying to throw the suspicions of others away from her.


If we’re honest Fontaine isn’t much of a comedienne, but her icy, implacable cool serves the film well. It’s left to Grant to do all the heavy lifting laughs-wise and this he achieves with a truly manic unhinged performance. Think of some wild, lost Abbott & Costello movie with Grant in the Costello role; or a Marx Brothers film where Grant has moments of impersonating both Groucho and Harpo – then you have an idea of the joy that lies within ‘Honeymoon of Horrors’.


The dark tone and clearly cynical world view mean it won’t be for everyone’s tastes, but Grant is brilliant and serves yet another reminder why we should never forget what a fantastic, wonderful, always impeccable actor he was.

Two Bouquets, Two Husbands , Only One Bride (1965)

D. Donald Howard
Colour


I got married yesterday!


There’s a fairly loud statement with which to begin a blog-post, but it’s true. I am now a married man.


The thing is though, that I’m writing this piece far in advance as I need a buffer to keep this blog chugging merrily along while I head off on honeymoon, so as I type this I’m not actually married at all. I’m writing in the past tense about things which haven’t actually happened yet. But all will be fine and by the time you read this I will be married and nursing my post-bash hangover with my gorgeous, young bride.


Anyway, this seems a perfect opportunity to look at some of the interesting wedding movies out there.


Why don’t we try this one on for size?


Kenneth Williams and Sid James both finding themselves married to Jayne Mansfield?


A preposterous idea, you say?


It happened on the big screen, my friend.


Kenneth Williams and Sid James were never a comedy double act, in fact they didn’t even really like each other that much (although that actually makes them sound a lot like most comedy double acts). But I can see how the American producers of this British production may have got the impression that they were a comedy double act. They offer a nice line in contrasts: James wiry, tough and wrinkled, against Williams’ smooth, slight figure; James’ crudeness against Williams’ fastidious prissiness; James’ dirty, salt of the earth cackle, against Williams head thrown back, nostrils flared, superior howl of laughter. This movie was an attempt to throw a budget behind them and make them a proper double act, and to really give it zing, faded glamour-puss Jayne Mansfield – the woman who practically coined the word ‘pneumatic’*  – was flown over from The States. Her name is obviously the big drawer on the poster, but it truly wasn’t really that big a deal, by this point she was well into the ‘will do anything for money’ phase of her career.


Mansfield is an American gold-digger who simultaneously marries Williams’ spoilt and effete aristocrat, and James’ scrap metal dealer made good. It’s then high farce of the doors slamming, compromising situations, rushed excuses and arms well and truly flailing kind, as she tries to keep them from finding out about each other. When they get suspicious that she’s just in this for their money, all it takes is the innocent wide eyes to Williams, and a sultry pose to James and they’re wrapped back around her little finger again. (I’m sure you can picture it: Williams gurning with excitement and amazement at his bride; James giving his biggest lascivious grin). The real problems come though when she realises she’s fallen in love with both of them.


This could have been a great bawdy 60s farce, but really it’s just not that funny. It relies on the chemistry of the leads to paper over the fact that there aren’t that many good lines, and then doesn’t put the leads together often enough to make it work. Anyone who has seen a later Carry On film will know how good James and Williams are at scraping thin samples of life off even the most stale and putrid material, so it’s galling that most of what we would loosely describe at the best lines go to Mansfield. Really, you don’t want Jayne Mansfield to be your main comic force, her talents rise and fall much more in decoration.


Maybe Williams/James could have become international stars in the Martin/Lewis mould, but it seems odd to think of them in Bel-Air, sipping cocktails and winning honorary Oscars. Theirs is a lot more pleasant, down at heal glamour. This film went nowhere (earning less and being substantially poorer in quality than the same year’s ‘Carry on Cowboy’). They may have been disappointed, but I’m glad things went this way, as they were always a better fit for a nice pair of slippers and a pint of stout at the BBC and Thames TV.



* It was either her or Aldous Huxley, I always get those two mixed up.

The Story of Jean Carter (1957)

D. John W. Harries
Colour


Whenever one is trying to give a harrowing story a sense of gloss, a sign that the redemptive arc will swing into action at some point, the focus should be soft. A Hollywood actress may die of cancer on the big screen, but there’s no way the audience can actually be shown the ravages of the big C. A starlet may find herself on junk in this year’s weepie, but she’ll be a still sexy junkie. And your Oscar winner to be may succumb to consumption in the period epic, but she’ll still look lovely. That’s fine, it’s understandable. This is the dream factory after all, the selling of a fantasy, and fantasies should be pleasant.


It does mean though that as the years move on and films become (somewhat) more accepting of the realities of life, then those movies shot in soft focus in the fifties/sixties now look fluffy dreams of the imagination, like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ with a brain tumour.


Here we get Marilyn Monroe at the eponymous Jean Carter. Outwardly happy, with a doting husband (Richard Widmark) and a young son, Jean is having problems. A back ache from a childhood injury means she is popping too many pills; a supportive network of friends allows her to palm off her son so she can drink to hide her misery; she is compulsively stealing from local stores; and what’s more she is considering an affair with her handsome young neighbour, George Peppard. It’s hard being Jean Carter. Eventually the dam bursts and she has a wild breakdown, ending up in a sanatorium. There are tears and cries for forgiveness, but eventually her addictions are taken in hand, her would-be lover is revealed to be a cad and her husband forgives her, leading to a happy family hug.


So, what’s interesting about this film? What differentiates it from other sub-Douglas Sirk knock offs? Well, the direction is workmanlike and most of the actors are clearly thinking of nothing but their paycheques. Widmark phones in his performance from a whole other state or maybe even a different country, to be fair though, his entire character is pitched on the wide spectrum between ‘supportive’ and ‘reliable’, so it’s not like he has much to work with. Peppard fails to smoulder in a role which calls for youthful sexuality. Yes he has a certain cock-suredness, but he seems totally in love with himself. It’s very odd for a man to appear in love scenes with Marilyn Monroe and look like he’d rather engage in a bout of onanism with someone he really fancies.


No, the reason to check out this film the next time it appears on Channel 4 on a wet Wednesday afternoon is the leading lady, as Marilyn Monroe is surprisingly good as the drunken, pill-popping, kleptomaniac, depressive, would-be adulterer. Okay, she is never allowed to look particularly bad, or particularly drunk, or particularly smashed out of her gord on pills – but her eyes do capture the sadness of her character. There’s an element that she is still Marilyn Monroe, but to use a hackneyed phrase, it’s a Marilyn Monroe we haven’t seen before – wearing stolen garments which will be returned to the stores by the end.

French Leave (1967)

D. Blake Edwards
Colour


Ah, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The great fun of men in spats pretending to be girls in flapper dresses; gaping at Marilyn Monroe as she wiggles her way down a train platform; “Nobody’s perfect!” Seriously, who doesn’t love ‘Some Like It Hot’? As close to perfect as any film made by humans is going to get! But it’s curious how some films live long in the memory while others just fade away (this blog of course exists for films that fade away). For instance, for all the high praise lavished upon the Paul Newman and Robert Redford pairing, it’s forgotten that Redford has actually made more movies with Jane Fonda (go on, I bet you can’t name more than one). Similarly the great chemistry of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon was actually spread across three films. There was the magnificent and utterly unimpeachable ‘Some Like It Hot’, there was the really underwhelming and disappointing ‘The Great Race’ and then there was ‘French Leave’ – which sits more at ‘The Great Race’ end of the spectrum, but – given current events - is really worth taking another peek at.


Here’s the set up. On a promotional trip to France, married Hollywood star Tony Curtis encounters Italian sex kitten Claudia Cardinale and begins to pursue her for an affair. At much the same time, married French President Jack Lemmon (with a truly shocking accent, making Inspector Clouseau sound like he’s authentic to every tortured syllable) is introduced to Cardinale at a party and also tries to seduce her. The two men become aware of each other’s attentions and attempt to thwart each other at every turn, the grandeur of the French presidency put into conflict with the largesse of Hollywood as each vies to make Cardinale his bit on the side.


That’s right, they don’t want the gorgeous, delightful, pouting Claudia Cardinale to be their girlfriend or their wife – each man want hers to be his illicit mistress. The first time I saw this film it made me feel a bit “Uck!” This loud and brash farce where married men try to capture a woman to serve their sexual needs away from their wives, just felt like part of the swinging sixties we were happy to discard. The gender politics could be politely described as antediluvian. But looking at Francois Holland’s travails in the last few weeks has made me revisit ‘French Leave’. It seems that even today – even if you’re the socialist new broom there to clean up the system – it’s the done thing for French Presidents to keep mistresses. Mitterrand of course had his, there were always rumours about Chirac and now Holland finds himself an international scandal. (Not necessarily a national one though, the French press and the French public seem really accepting of this kind of thing. They just give a Gallic shrug and go back to their coffee and baguettes. Imagine, as a comparison, if this was David Cameron with a mistress and Sam Cameron in hospital after an overdose of sleeping pills. The tabloids would sing loud and ebullient praises to the god of mammon from the rooftops, and even Nick Robinson would tear out his remaining hair in excitement). On the other side of the coin nobody thinks movie stars are unimpeachable. It’s downright naïve to believe that Hollywood types don’t have affairs. And so suddenly this film, which I initially dismissed as a sexist relic of a less enlightened time, feels like it could be a free-wheeling docu-drama of NOW where the names have been changed to protect the guilty.


And if I’m honest it’s not that bad. I like Jack Lemmon a lot, but find he mugs too much in broad comedy (and I hate his over the top accent here, but I also hate his equally over the top accent in ‘The Great Race’). I like Tony Curtis a lot, but the laziness in his performance evident here would soon kill his big screen career. And in common with all straight men, I like Claudia Cardinale a lot and will not hear a word against her. So two thirds of the performances could be better, but Blake Edwards does execute the farce quite well. The old money of Versailles against the nouveau riche of Bel Air has good comic potential and everything gets bigger and bigger (if not necessarily that much funnier). It’s a very 1960s movie, which does have a few genuine laughs and has more to say about the morals and peccadillos of certain people today that I initially – in my prudish British way – realised.

My Wife's Affair (1961)

Director: Randal MacDougall
Colour

Here’s a film which no doubt had the studio salivating at the dollar signs of controversy: the sex + the scandal = the sales. And yet, even before the swinging sixties really got going, it’s noticeable how little fuss ‘My Wife’s Affair’ caused. Yes, the catholic church condemned it, but back then the Catholic church condemned everything (even ‘Bambi’ was probably flagged up for notice), but the rest of the world carried on with its business as if nothing happened.

Wife Joan Collins comes home one evening and announces to her husband, George Peppard, that she wants an affair. They argue, make up, argue again, but she refuses to relent on her decision. She is bored and stifled by her marriage – she still loves George, but just wants some thrills. This then is a full-on assault on the idea of marriage and the 1961 American ideal of what womankind should be: no longer is she promising to obey, no longer is she promising to even be faithful. And for a while the film revels in the neon decadence of this. Joan’s life becomes one of singles’ bars, casual pick-ups and wild times with young and dangerous friends. Meanwhile George looks maudlin, sulkily drinks a bit too much whisky and eventually takes solace in the arms of an accommodating secretary, the supposedly dowdy Tuesday Weld. But of course even in a Hollywood studio film desperate to scandalise, the old orders can’t be completely shattered. By the end, as this is a film which in reality wants more to titillate than challenge, the order of the happy American couple and the happy American family are reset. Yes there’s a divorce, but Joan is a broken woman existing in whatever purgatory is reserved for wanton sluts, while George and Tuesday are happily married and living in domestic bliss expecting their first child. All is right in the moral universe again.

(It’s over fifty years later and such has been the change in values, that now the woman’s adventures would probably be a lot more graphic, including threesomes and lesbian trysts; while the dull, ditched, reliable husband consoled himself by having comic chats with his more raucous buddies. She may end up okay, but he’d definitely emerge something of a winner. Such is progress).

So a year after the Lady Chatterley trial, why didn’t ‘My Wife’s Affair’ start any fires? Probably because it never catches fire itself. Peppard is a block of finely sculptured ice throughout. I’m not sure what he’s aiming for in his performance, perhaps it’s a solid yet bruised masculinity (or perhaps it’s how good he’d look as an ornate wedding decoration), but it comes across as unyielding and frigid. Those blue eyes don’t look capable of being excited by passion or exciting anyone else, in fact they seem frozen to the point of rigor mortis. And that unyielding coldness is never going to be smouldered by Joan Collins' fitful sparks of sexuality, which like a damp match doesn't ignite no matter how many times it's struck against the side of the box. Collins is the poster girl for a certain type of English actress (see also Hurley, Liz), one with the beautiful face and gorgeous figure to be a sex symbol, and yet on screen she cannot actually radiate sex appeal. Here she poses, she pouts, she picks up and stares admiringly at a copy of Playboy at one point, and yet she never catches fire. What this film needs is a seductress, a siren – what it gets is an overly self-confident little girl who’s been allowed in her mother’s dressing up box. It’s no wonder she only made it big as a middle aged bitch, rather than a young sexpot – middle aged bitch suits her talents a lot more.

‘My Wife’s Affair’ should have scandalised at the time, but didn’t – and now just feels so dated and conservative. It’s a film that wants to be sexy, yet ends up staring at the viewer like a cold, damp fish with a miserable headache.