Something for the weekend (2): Le Jazz Hot

Rory loved this .... from VICTOR/VICTORIA, 1982. One of Julie's best numbers.

An '80s comedy frightmare: Partners

Another 'We see them so you don't have to" social service report:
PARTNERS, 1982. Sergeant Benson is the biggest ladies man on the force. Kerwin is a closeted gay man, works a desk job and keeps quiet about his personal life. When a double murder lands on Benson's desk he is forced to go undercover into the gay community in order to bring the killer to justice. Its a tough job for a macho cop - but fortunately he has got a partner. Benson and Kerwin team up to solve the crimes and find themselves doing things that were never included in their job description. Written by Francis Verber (LA CAGE AUX FOLLES), this hilarious fish-out-of-water comedy delivers equal parts thrills and laughs ..

as the blurb hopefully suggests. 

I had totally forgotten this 1982  so-called comedy ever existed, nobody - gay or straight - bothered with it at the time, and it quickly sank without trace; when I saw it was on dvd, I just had to check it out for myself. John Hurt later said he had no recollection of making it at all, which does not seem surprising, as he goes through it blankly on autopilot as the mousey gay Kerwin, maybe the dreariest gay who ever gayed. On a roll after defining roles in THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT, I CLAUDIUS, ALIEN, THE ELEPHANT MAN etc surely he, one of the busiest actors going, even now, could have declined this one - after capturing Quentin Crisp and that campy Caligula playing gay should not be a problem for him - perhaps he was shell-shocked at being in such piffle after all that high-quality stuff which was not making fun of gays, but he and Ryan O'Neal go through this like they are both suffering from extreme constipation - O'Neal does not just act being uncomfortable among the swishy gays, he seems very uncomfortable. He was fine for Bogdanovich (and is quite amusing in WHAT'S UP DOC? a decade earlier in 1971) and ideal for what Kubrick wanted in BARRY LYNDON, and I love Walter Hill's THE DRIVER, but he is a pill (and frankly seems past his prime) here - in fact they both seem too old for their roles.

Maybe it was intended as a comic version of CRUISING two years earlier, where Al Pacino also had to dress up in leathers and infiltrate "the gay community" who are treated like a race of aliens here .... of course they are all called "faggots" and made fun of - like the caftan wearing landlord (THE ROBE's screaming queen Jay Robinson - a very different Caligula from Hurt's), and the villain turns out to be Rick Jason! who is killing those male models on the magazine covers, as Ryan of course has to get his butt out and pose for the camera too, and Kenneth McMillan is their superior who puts them on the case. There is no real mystery in the plot, just how they thought this farrago was amusing or funny in the first place. The situation is milked for laughs as the two cops settle down in the boystown "gay community" with Kerwin happily cooking, wearing pink tracksuits and ironing Benson's underwear - and did I mention their cute pink little car? while Benson, looking for clues, has to date madly camp bar attendants, one of whom throws himself naked on him after a dip in the ocean ... how the audience (if there was one) must have screamed.

Do they wince now at how they refer to all the faggots and wonder at how gay life is different today? with its out and proud equality, which must have seemed unimaginable back in 1982 - just as Aids was starting to make inroads .... A tragic farce then, the Lower Trash with a vengance (up - or down - there with THE OSCAR, HARLOW, THE LOVE MACHINE, etc - as per Trash label reviews). I just had to see for myself how awful standards were then. THE BIRDCAGE for instance is genuinely funny about the gays, and I did not find it offensive at all, even if based on the same writer, Verber's LA CAGE AUX FOLLES ... Thankfully, PARTNERS limps to an end at 90 minutes, the ending though seems re-written as if hastily changed, we do not even see the injured Kerwin, who imagines he and Benson are going to set up home together ... what a laugh! 

Soon: back to the '70s and the very funny THE RITZ, a Richard Lester spectacular featuring the wonderful Googie Gomez, with Rita Moreno and Treat Williams.
Also Soon: Lauren Bacall, James Garner & Maureen Stapleton in the 1981 slasher thriller THE FAN - another 80s Trash Classic? 

1980, 1982 - not so very gay ...

NIJINSKY, 1980. The May 1980 "Films in Review" review begins: "In a decade or so NIJINSKY may be seen as the Eighties' first and most perfect example of opulent camp, though it clearly wasn't intended that way...." Now, a couple of decades further on, it is a fascinating look at how cinema depicted gays at the start of the 80s, which was before that AIDS crisis ...

The success of THE TURNING POINT in 1977 probably made it easier for this film to be made but it’s a shame it was not made later when gay relationships could be depicted more openly. Perhaps NIJINSKY needed a touch of the Ken Russells (see below), as it is the good taste of Herbert Ross and his producer wife Nora Kaye swamp the project, but it has some electric moments, mainly when George De La Pena dances the faun in “L’Apres Midi D’un Faune” or that first night premiere of Stravinsky’s “The Rites of Spring”. Ross’s film, scripted by Hugh Wheeler and lensed by Douglas Slocombe, tries to capture that exciting time, circa 1912, when the Russian Ballet Rousses, managed by flamboyant impresario Sergei Diagheliv, a self-confessed "monster", caused a sensation with their dances and costumes as they toured Europe, with their famous main dancer Vaslav Nijinsky also Diagheliv's lover. The hothouse atmosphere of the ballet group and all that artistic temperament keeps one engrossed. 

The casting is the thing here: Alan Bates is perfect as the autocratic impresario, with that silver streak in his hair, and nobody wears an astrakhan coat and top hat better. La Pena and Leslie Browne fare less well in the dramatic stakes, he as Nijinsky descending into madness as he cracks from the pressure of trying to be brilliant all the time, while she essays the cunning woman who was determined to get him away from Diaghilev when the lovers have a misunderstanding and part and the dancer impulsively marries her, He spent his last years in an asylum, not really covered here apart from a closing title.. 

Sterling support from Alan Badel as the effete Baron who finances ballet, Jeremy Irons (in his debut, below right) as petulant choreographer Fokine, Janet Suzman, Sian Phillips (barely seen), Colin Blakely, Ronald Pickup as Stravinsky. It all looks great too with great costumes and sets, an obviously expensive production, but this was made in 1980, when CRUISING was typical of how gays were represented in the cinema. Here our lovers kiss just once and through a handkerchief, as they are afraid of catching germs! Nijinksy also appears in VALENTINO, as played by English ballet star Anthony Dowell whom we see in a rather good scene dancing with Nureyev's Valentino! 

One line will make you laugh, as Diagheliv stops Nijinsky from eating chocolate: "Nobody loves a fat faun"! 

More period Alan Bates in 102 BOULEVARD HAUSSMANN, a 1991 BBC production, written by Alan Bennett where Alan is writer Marcel Proust, who in 1916 is leading a reclusive life in Paris. He hires a quartet of musicians and befriends one of them, a wounded serviceman, with Paul Rhys and Janet McTeer as his housekeeper. I missed this at the time, but the BBC has kindly repeated it this summer so I have the recording waiting for when I am in the mood! (Now if they would only repeat those Lee Remick and Dirk Bogarde productions I have been banging on about .... as per labels)!

Jeremy Irons in NIJINSKY

I won't ever see CRUISING, that other depiction of gay life in 1980, which caused such a furore at the time - 1982 was not much better - 20th Century Fox came up with MAKING LOVE, maybe a brave at the time look at a husband realising he is gay. But there was also PARTNERS - which I imagine not many saw at the time, I have a copy on the way to me though, so there will be a report on it before too long. John Hurt, riding high after THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT, ALIEN and THE ELEPHANT MAN plays the gay cop having to team up with very hetero Ryan ONeal as they pose as a gay couple to trap a gay killer, cue lots of "faggot" words - just like back in the 1970s with items like THE LOVE MACHINE .... it may be so bad its good or perhaps, more likely, just plain bad peurile Trash? 

Romy x 4

I counted I have 38 of the 62 films featuring Romy Schneider (1938-1982), one of the most prolific stars of the 60s and 70s in European and international cinema, who became a leading player in French cinema as well - particularly with those 5 Claude Sautet titles - see Romy label, for reviews and my other comments on her. Romy has always been a particular favourite of mine (along with those other Euopean ladies like Sophia, Monica, Anouk, Silvana..) ever since I saw those SISSI films as a child. What kitschfests they are now .... 
Being so busy she also made some duds - 1969's MY LOVER MY SON must be about the worst! The early '60s saw her becoming a prestige player in those international films like THE TRIAL, THE CARDINAL, THE VICTORS, BOCCACCIO 70, WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT etc. 
Above: PARIS MATCH's issue covering her death, which I still have, with 46 pages on her!
I have about 10 Romys yet to see, here's just 4 for now .... 2 late '50s ones (CHRISTINE with Delon) and AN ANGEL ON EARTH, plus the '73 THE LAST TRAIN (one of her 4 with Trintignant) and her last film in 1982: LE PASSANTE DE SANS SOUCI. 

CHRISTINE, 1958 - turns out to be a pleasant surprise and fits in with my recent viewing here - like LA RONDE it too is from a story by Arthur Schnitzler, which was also filmed as LIEBELEI by Max Ophuls in 1933, starring Magda Schneider, Romy's mother. The 1958 version looks great with that bright Technicolour as we are back again in 1906 Vienna with those costume balls, nights at the opera, horses and carriages carrying lovers to secret assignations, those dragoons in their blue and red uniforms and pretty girls in pretty dresses. Like the SISSI films it is all a bit kitsch, but this one has a bitter ending. Dragoons Alain Delon and pal Jean-Claude Brialy meet some new girls, but Delon has been carrying on an affair with mature woman Micheline Presle (so good in Losey's BLIND DATE in '59) who is the wife of his senior officer, who is getting suspicious ... 

after he meets nice girl Christine (whose father plays cello in the opera orchestra) he breaks off the affair with the Baroness, but by now her husband finds out and sets a trap for them, and challenges Delon to a duel - I won't reveal the ending, but it is very bittersweet .... one amusing moment is at the Opera as Christine giggles when we see the aged emperor Franz Joseph in attendance - she had of course by then finished playing his wife SISSI.

Romy is delightful here, but Delon in one of his first roles seems to merely go through the motions - it would take his next, PLEIN SOLEIL with Rene Clement and ROCCO with Visconti, to make him mature as an actor. Directed by Pierre Gaspard-Huit. This was Schneider's first French film and her voice was dubbed as her French was not yet good enough.

AN ANGEL ON EARTH (EIL ENGEL AUF ERDEN). Another early Schneider, this 1959 comedy is quite a rarity. Romy here is an airline hostess secretly in love with frequent flier Henri Vidal, who is about to marry his vacant and mean fiance Michele Mercier. Romy plays two roles - she is also Vidal's guardian angel who has to steer him in the right direction towards the hostess. It is an amusng comedy with nice locations, Vidal (who died that year aged 40 - see label) has young Jean-Paul Belmondo (before his big break in BREATHLESS) as his rather gormless sidekick.

THE TRAIN (or THELAST TRAIN). Not Frankenheimer’s 1965 train in France evading the Nazis, but another equally desperate French train, also evading the Nazis, in this rarely-seen 1973 French film by Pierre Granier-Deferre, from a Simenon tale. It is 1940 and the French are moving out of the way of advancing Germans, ordindary guy Jean-Louis Trintignant joins the train with his pregnant wife and daughter. They get a seat in first class, he is back at the rear in the cargo wagon, with other refugees including mystery woman Anna (Romy). They are gradually drawn together, while the others (including Regine, Anne Wiazemsky Nike Arrighi), drink, fight, play cards, and even engage in sex. They are strafed by enemy planes causing the deaths of some; the part of the train containing his family is sent in a different direction leaving our two leads alone together. 
This is an engrossing, slow-moving drama, with the two leads (one of 4 films they made together) stripped down to their emotional cores. Schneider in particular is very effective, in this her great era in French cinema. There is a coda that takes place 3 years later … It all looks just right with great period feel and Granier-Deferre paces it nicely. (He also did another Simenon I have been meaning to see: THE WIDOW COUDERC, with another great team in Signoret and Delon). 

LE PASSANTE DE SANS SOUCI, 1982. Knowing this was Romy's last film inevitably colours how we view it. It is a standard revenge story, from a story by Joseph Kessel, with lots of flashbacks, as successful businessman Max Baumstein (Michel Poccoli) explains why he shot the president he was visiting. Romy plays two roles, one in the present as Max's wife Lina, and the other as Elsa Weiner back in 1930s Germany ... who with her husband Michel (Helmut Griem) raised the young Jewish Max as if he were their own child. Events (the rise of the Nazis who wreck Michel's printing business), force Elsa and Max to move to Paris, where she sings in a nightclub and attracts the attention of Matthieu Carriere, one of the Nazis in waiting, while Michel is in a concentration camp .... eventually she does what she has to do to get Michel released, but there is no happy ending for them.
The adult Max tracks down Carriere, now that President he is visiting on behalf on his foundation. We see the court case and the aftermath. It is a rich, complex, involving story. Romy in the modern section does not have much to do, but interplays nicely with Piccoli a decade or so after their Claude Sautet hits (Romy label) - they must have done at least 5 films together. She shines as Elsa in the flashbacks, looking after the young Max, coping with drink and heartbreak (after the death of her own son).  I was in Paris in 1982 and posters for this were everywhere, nice to finally see it at last.

We will be reporting later on the supposedly gruesome THE INFERNAL TRIO (also with Piccoli in '74, FANTASMA D'AMORE (GHOST OF LOVE) with Marcello in '81 - which surprisingly never played in London and is only available in Italian; LE MOUTON ENRAGE also with Trintignant, plus THE LADY BANKER, WOMAN AT HER WINDOW, Sautet's MADO, Jean-Claude Brialy's UN AMOUR DE PLUIE with Nino Castelnuovo, and some more ... and I love going back to WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? and yes, SISSI ....

'30s classics: First a girl .... then Victor/Victoria

The British Film Institute (BFI) has a very interesting webpage on gay (or, as they say, queer) cinema ...

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-british-gay-films?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130614-queer-cinema&utm_content=20130614-queer-cinema+CID_470c016045417fea6cdd50482c758272&utm_source=cm&utm_term=Nighthawks%201978

They also have some fascinting lists: 10 Japanese gangster films / 10 films about childhood / 10 films set in the roaring twenties / 10 films set on the Mediterranean - which annoyingly includes THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY but not its original PLEIN SOLEIL ....  Here is their 10 British gay films:

BORDERLINE – 1930

FIRST A GIRL – 1935 

VICTIM – 1961

THE LEATHER BOYS – 1964 

SEBASTIANE – 1976

NIGHTHAWKS – 1978 

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE – 1985

YOUNG SOUL REBELS – 1991 

BEAUTIFUL THING – 1996

WEEKEND – 2011. - more on these at the BFI link above, with comment and photo on each.

I would also have to include: 

SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY 1971, MAURICE 1987, and those gay undercurrents in THE SERVANT, the mad camp of MODESTY BLAISE / Orton's ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE  and that '60s camp in HERE WE GO ROUND MULBERRY BUSH and SMASHING TIME... as well as ground-breaking (for their time) TV productions like THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES, THE HOUSE ON THE HILL (SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS - Gay interest label) and THE LINE OF BEAUTY, no, not VICIOUS! I will return to THE LEATHER BOYS soon, but had an enjoyable look at FIRST A GIRL yesterday. 

Here is what the BFI resident queer expert has to say:

One of the first spottings of the GBF (Gay Best Friend), a creature maligned and adored in equal measure. Here it’s  Sonnie Hale serving up sardonic asides and platonic friendship to Jessie Matthew's down-on-her-luck showgirl. Although made at a time when homosexuality was unmentionable on screen, Hale’s gestures and waspish delivery clearly code the character as not the marrying kind.

In this zingy comedy, based on the 1933 German film Viktor Und Viktoria, Matthews plays a woman who earns her coin pretending to be a man who masquerades as a female impersonator. Matthews is fantastic, but Hale matches her as her supportive mentor, himself a drag queen, who at last gets his moment in the spotlight in an unforgettable final number. The story was adapted again in 1982 as  VICTOR/VICTORIA starring Julie Andrews in the lead.

Well yes, its a delirious farrago with some marvellous dance sequences and so mid-1930s like Hitch's THE 39 STEPS and his early British films, with dancing to match Fred and Ginger or a Busby Berkeley spectacular. We first see Jessie toiling in the salon of dress designer Madame Serafina (Martita Hunt, nice to see her a decade before her Miss Havisham). The plot is nicely worked out, Sonnie Hale (actually married to Matthews then) scores too.  There is of course no mention of anything gay or queer in FIRST A GIRL, being a female impersonator seems a jolly good entertainment job for a chap to have - why, Hale even romances that knowing Princess whose boyfriend makes a play for our hero/heroine.

I have a memory of sometime in the '60s of being on the London underground and noticing a plumb middle-aged woman sitting down and realising it was Jessie Matthews who was well-known then too in her late middle-age as, being the trouper she was, for playing Mrs Dale in MRS DALE'S DIARY on the radio. She was one of the greatest British stars of the time, like Gracie Fields, and her career continued to 1980. Jessie Matthews: 1907-1981. The disk I watched also included some of I THANK YOU, a 1941 comedy featuring that other great British original Arthur Askey, who used to feature in my "Radio Fun" comics. Delicious.

Julie Andews too makes that androgynous quality of hers work perfectly for her turn as VICTOR VICTORIA in '82, with Robert Preston as usual firing on all cylinders as Toddy, her drag queen mentor.  Their scenes together are a joy, I particularly like the restaurant scene where the starving Victoria has the cockroach to put in the salad so she can get a free meal, particularly the moment when the snooty head waiter turns to Toddy and says "But there was no cockroach in YOUR salad"!. But after Julie's terrific "Le Jazz Hot" number it gets rather dull in the second half after James Garner has spied on her and knows she is a girl. It all seemed so much more innocent back in the 1930s and FIRST A GIRL. I would imagine though that director Victor Saville and those who made FIRST A GIRL would be surprised now to see their saucy musical comedy (which has no mention of anything gay) described as a great British gay film! 

A woman called Golda

Ingrid Bergman's final screen outing - the 1982 TV miniseries A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA remains a fascinating view now. Bergman was already ill with the cancer that killed her that year and here with no vanity at all she plays Golda Meir, the Russian-born, Wisconsin-raised woman who rose to become Israel's prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With a frightful wig and a false nose she is Golda to the life. There is also, curiously enough, a lot of humour in her portrayal. It is actually funny in parts seeing Ingrid as Golda scolding her ministers and rival heads of state as the complex story unravels.
 

Judy Davis too is of course excellent as the younger Golda (just like she was as Judy Garland...). The supporting cast includes Anne Jackson. Golda was the first female Prime Minister of the state of Israel and we see she is also stubborn, intelligent, and very human. Fascinating to contrast with how Mrs Thatcher is presented in that recent film that won another Oscar for Meryl.  Bergman won an Emmy for her role her,  posthumously. 

In her engaging memoirs Ingrid tells us that in the last scene as she advances towards the camera after telling the associated company that its late and its time to go home, she knew it was her last appearance before the camera, like she knew at the Theatre Royal in London when it was her last night in the theatre, after her last play there (WATERS OF THE MOON) closed. GOLDA along with Ingmar Bergman's AUTUMN SONATA allowed Ingrid to go out on a high, but then there is very litttle dross in her filmography. For those in search of a good mini-series A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA, directed by Alan Gibson, ticks all the boxes.

R.I.P: Some more obits & 1982

JOHN HOWARD DAVIES (1939-2011) - Oliver in David Lean's 1948 classic, when he was 9. He grew up though to produce (and direct) some of Britain's finest comedy classics during the golden age of television. FAWLTY TOWERS and the early MONTY PYTHONS for the BBC, (he directed the first 4 episodes). He produced THE GOOD LIFE for it's entire run, THE WORLD OF BEACHCOMBER in the early days of BBC2. He became Head of Comedy at BBC lauching series like YES MINISTER, NOT THE 9 O'CLOCK NEWS, ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES. It is a great legacy.

RICHARD PEARSON (1918-2011) Richard Pearson was one of the most distinctive English actors, on stage, television and cinema since the 1940s. He was the kind of actor on which the British theatre has always relied: utterly dependable and totally distinctive. He could always be counted on to play doctors, accountants, politicians, policemen and churchmen: anyone, in short, who seemed to embody professional solidity. Pearson always managed to invest these characters with an inner life and a look of wounded dignity.

I would have seen him on the stage as William Cecil opposite Eileen Atkins' Elizabeth I in Bolt's VIVAT REGINA in the 70s, and in the 80s he co-starred with Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack in the hit LETTICE AND LOVAGE. He also played in LOVE AMONG THE RUINS in '75 for Cukor with Katharine Hepburn and Olivier. Other films include CHARLIE BUBBLES, THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY and Polanski's PIRATES. It was a long enduring career - he was in the original production of Pinter's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY in '58 - and he had a good innings at 93.

STAN BARSTOW (1928-2011). Barstow was one of those new "kitchen sink" novelists who burst on the scene in the late 50s and early 60s, along with John Braine (ROOM AT THE TOP), Keith Waterhouse (BILLY LIAR), Shelagh Delaney (A TASTE OF HONEY) and Alan Sillitoe (SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING). Barstow's best known book A KIND OF LOVING was an enormous, likeable hit, its transends its period in it's timeless tale of a young couple falling into lust and then having to get married when she is pregnant - AND having to move in with her disapproving mother. John Schlesinger made a marvellous move from it in 1962, with great performances by Alan Bates, June Ritchie and Thora Hird. The book has always been in print, and is just one in Barstow's long career.



1982Re-reading "Sight and Sound"'s partwork "Chronicle of Cinema" which they gave away some years ago, it is fascinating reading the lists of who died in each year - 1982 would have been of particular interest for me - as it saw the departure of several of my favourites: Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly's fatal car crash and Romy Schneider's mysterious early death, as well as the suicides of Patrick Dewaere and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (or accidental overdose, like John Belushi), as well as the likes of stalwarts and vererans Celia Johnson, Kenneth More, Henry Fonda, Eleanor Powell, Jacques Tati, Isa Miranda [whom I have just discovered], Curt Jurgens, Alma Reville (Mrs Hitchcock), directors Charles Walters, Elio Petri, Valerio Zurlini, King Vidor - and that great comedian Arthur Askey!