the strange fascination of The Seventh Victim

Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys,
so does ancient sin cling to the low places,
the depressions in the world consciousness.
   - Dr. Louis Judd, The Anatomy of Atavism
    [also attr. Sigmund Freud]
 
To offset its then precarious financial position, in 1942 RKO Pictures brought in Val Lewton to head a small production unit specializing in horror films. The limitations placed on the productions were: low budget, tight schedule, pre-selected titles, and running time not longer than 75 minutes. Within these parameters Lewton was given a large amount of creative freedom, especially if the movies delivered, i.e. made money. And they did. The result was a series of poetically beautiful and haunting films, nine in all, most of them running little more than an hour. Released from 1942 to 1946, the films are: Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, The Seventh Victim, The Ghost Ship, Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead, and Bedlam, and they delight film historians and devotees to this day.  

    And yes, I confess to being very much a fan of the Val Lewton oeuvre, and share the growing consensus that the first four films (Cat People, Zombie, Leopard Man and Victim) are the best. The remaining five are respectable, even exemplary works, especially when considered against the standard B movie fare being cranked out at the time. But with their emphasis on story and character over mood and atmosphere, the five later entries lacked the visual poetry and philosophical underpinnings of the previous four. Anyhow, and with a nod to Cat People and Zombie as arguably the best of all the Lewton films, I come back to The Seventh Victim and its seemingly inexhaustible font of riches. So much so that, upon repeated viewings, I have the sneaking suspicion that, in its modest way Seventh Victim may indeed be Lewton’s ultimate masterpiece in the sense that it's the most perfect realization of his dark aesthetic vision.

    One of the many delights of Victim is that it’s a film that can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Feminist, behaviorist, romanticist, Freudian, metaphysical, and of course purely cinematic takes have gushed forth over time. In many respects it’s a profoundly disturbing film – dreamlike, enigmatic, witty, highbrow, absurdist and frightening – it revels in the subterranean realms of both our conscious and unconscious experience. One could go on and on; commentators have gone on and on.

    Many issues arise within the film’s deceptively brief 71 minutes, and most of said issues remain unresolved. Moreover, despite its satanic backdrop, The Seventh Victim is the first Val Lewton film that’s not about the supernatural. Both the previous Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie contained more or less overt supernatural elements, and even Leopard Man, a hybrid mystery/horror film, flirts with the magical by way of its prescient fortune teller, who incidentally is not a gypsy but a very blonde Anglo (Isabel Jewell). Curiously, she uses the standard four-suit fifty-two card deck for her readings instead of the traditional Tarot cards. In any case, Seventh Victim relies on a dark overlay of nihilistic despair and no exit fatalism, conveyed in very human terms through its picaresque characters and, even more so, the noirish visuals that stunningly suggest the nighttime menace of a large urban metropolis.

    While it’s somewhat cliché to give top honors to the film’s chiaroscuro look and in particular the stellar work done by ace cameraman Nicholas Musuraca, subsequent viewings of The Seventh Victim, all the Lewton thrillers for that matter, reveal other, unsung heroes, in particular Roy Webb’s low keyed scores, the always literate, usually literary, scripts, and the invariably spot-on casts.

    Like The Leopard Man which immediately preceded it, The Seventh Victim has its share of abrupt transitions and awkward cuts. Its labyrinthine universe also includes complex characters, bizarre plot twists, and several plot dead ends. Consequently it’s difficult to say who the protagonist, hero, heroine, or villain, really is.

    In the first third of the film the clear lead is Mary (Kim Hunter). In the middle third she gives way to the three male leads, Jason, Gregory and Dr. Judd [1], who ultimately pass the baton to Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), and only rightly so. She’s the emotional and spiritual glue that holds the film together, and her disappearance is what sets everything in motion by way of Mary’s quest, all the while the devil worshippers lurking in deep background. Indeed the Satanic cult that goes by the name of the Palladists might be seen as the true star of the film’s final third [2]. And it’s their inclusion that makes Seventh Victim the existential masterpiece that it is. To wit, would this film possibly have the same resonance had Jacqueline fallen in with drug smugglers or Nazi spies instead of Satan worshippers?

    As was often the case in Lewton’s films, it’s the supporting actors and bit players in Seventh Victim who steal the show, the possible exception being Jean Brooks in the performance of a career as our doomed heroine Jacqueline [3]. Best among the men is Ben Bard as the creepily earnest first Satanist Mr. Brun. Kudos are also due to Lou Lubin as a nervous private detective. Among the women the other standout is Lewton favorite Elizabeth Russell, who appears onscreen for just a few minutes as the terminally ill Mimi, but even so outdoes her famous turn as the cat woman in Cat People. Interesting that mystery woman Jean Brooks plays a character the diametric opposite of what she essayed in Leopard Man, the film that immediately preceded Seventh Victim. There she portrayed itinerant nightclub singer turned amateur sleuth Kiki Walker, who is eminently sane, practical, healthy (both physically and emotionally), almost a proto-feminist character. She also has a conventional romantic friendship with her manager Jerry Manning (Dennis O’Keefe). A greater contrast to the somnambulant, death obsessed Jacqueline would be difficult to imagine, and yes, it’s no surprise that Jacqueline is the far more interesting character.

    The film’s Sapphic undercurrent has been much discussed elsewhere so we’ll not dwell on it here, except to offer a few observations [4]. To be sure, there are subtextual elements to be found in at least one prior Lewton work, Cat People [5]. But in Victim the coded references are now brought out into the open, albeit in a plausibly deniable way (this was the early Forties, after all). Thus, and with the debatable exception of Dr. Judd, Jacqueline’s most significant relationships, both emotional and (implied) physical, are with women, not men. And this includes her sister Mary. Indeed, if we interpret the the clues subtextually, there are decided suggestions of lesbian incest between Jacqueline and Mary. In this context the coven of Greenwich Village devil worshippers might be seen as proxies for a group that needed to be cloistered and remain in the closet. Interestingly, this same idea was revived a decade and a half later in the film Bell, Book, and Candle, in which a nest of witches who reside in Greenwich Village is forced to keep their existence under wraps out of fear of discovery and resultant persecution.

   As for the members who comprise the Palladists, they are an uneasy mix of the ordinary and the colorful. They gravitate to darkness and Satanic majesty and as such need to remain underground, while ‘normal’ folks like Mary, Jason and Gregory can carry on their lives openly, bathed as they are in the light of truth and virtue. Characters like Jacqueline and Dr. Judd hover in between the two worlds, floating trance-like in a murky netherworld and unable to commit to one side or the other.

   Be that as it may, most of the Palladists are well-spoken, even cultivated, and all have a touch of the ambiguous. There’s the brusque, vaguely masculine Mrs. Redi. Then we have the shapely blonde who breathlessly exclaims to Mary that she and Jacqueline “were intimate.” This same claim might be made by Frances (Isabel Jewell), so obviously besmitten as she is with Jacqueline. Although the lady at the party is quite a bit taller and fleshier than the petite Frances, it’s easy to confuse the two women. Fascinating that the unnamed blonde lady (who also has an eye for Dr. Judd) doesn’t reappear in the film, and, like the others present at this soireé, she may or may not be a member of the devil worship cult. True to Lewtonian form, the relationships and connections in The Seventh Victim are sketchy at best: more is implied than actually spelled out.

   There’s also the exotic hostess Mrs. Cortez [6], provocatively dressed in outfits that suggest designer nightgowns; and finally the elegantly sinister head devil worshipper Mr. Brun. Rounding out the mix are two thugs named Leo and Dirk and a mysterious satanic hit man. By the way, Mr. Brun becomes progressively less appealing as the story unfolds. Unable to browbeat Jacqueline into drinking poison-laced wine as punishment for her supposed betrayal, he literally strong arms her into leaving the apartment, to fend for herself amid the city’s dark streets.

   With no disrespect to journeyman director Mark Robson, who did a fine job on the film, Seventh Victim might well be considered Jacques Tourneur’s fourth Lewton film in everything but credit only. He directed the first three Lewtons, and Tourneur-like vignettes and set pieces are everywhere in Victim [8], even if they lack the French master’s final touch of elegance. But ultimately it’s the long shadow of Val Lewton that hovers over The Seventh Victim. The auteur producer was a status often aspired to throughout the history of the movies but rarely attained. Few achieved it so profoundly or completely as Val Lewton.

  
   [1] Dr. Judd is played by Tom Conway, thus an immediate connection to Cat People since Dr. Judd appears in that film as well (also played by Conway). But the connections don’t end there: of all the Lewton horror films Seventh Victim is most akin to Cat People both in style and content. Indeed it's not too much of a stretch to see Cat People and Victim as equal parts of the same movie. Both deal with dark, quintessentially Lewtonian themes and subjects (death, fate, loneliness, suspense, shadows, neurosis, psychoanalysis, desperate women, ineffectual men, and dark streets). Moreover, both take pace in Greenwich Village. Most significant, both main characters are sexually ambiguous outcasts who struggle, ultimately unsuccessfully, to fit into a world of conventional normalcy, and do so in a ‘normal’ way. Then there's those two, near identical, dark fur coats that both Irena and Jacqueline wear.
    [2] The Palladists’ ritualized meetings seem to consist mainly of afternoon teas and cocktail parties, all held at Mrs. Cortez’s spacious apartment. The one exception is the Jacqueline death watch in which the atmosphere takes on a literally deadly seriousness.
    [3] Jean Brooks came by her insight into the character of Jacqueline honestly. Born in 1915 in Houston, Texas, she appeared as a supporting player in B pictures in the late 30s and early 40s. RKO picked her up in 1942, and she starred in six Falcon pictures with Tom Conway in addition to three Lewton films. But she struggled with alcoholism, and there were incidents of public drunkenness and disheveled appearance. In 1946 RKO dropped her from their roster. Her last movie was the (post)World War II potboiler Women in the Night. The folks who made this film must have been impressed by the Jacqueline character - and Jean Brooks's inimitable take on the role - as she retains much the same black-drenched look and mysterious persona. The same sexual inclinations, too: yes, it's strongly implied that she has a lesbian relationship with Frau Thaler (Bernadene Hayes), who bears a striking resemblance to Jacqueline's love interest Frances in Victim. Interesting that Women in the Night came out in 1948, only five years after Victim, and already the Jacqueline look - and personality - as embodied in the form of Jean Brooks, was beginning to attain cult status.
      In any case, by the end of the decade her relatively brief career as a film actress was over. In the 1950s she disappeared from public life, eventually moving to San Francisco, where she worked in the classified department at the Examiner newspaper. She died of complications from alcoholism and malnutrition on Nov 25, 1963, at Kaiser Hospital in Richmond, California, at the age of forty-seven, largely forgotten.   
   [4] The overtones appear as early as the first scene, in which we meet Miss Loughwood, headmistress of the Catholic school Mary attends, and her assistant Miss Gilchrist. We don’t see these two characters again, but their cozy relationship anticipates much of what follows vis-à-vis the film’s female characters. Miss Gilchrist takes Mary aside and tells her to have courage, that one must have courage to live in the world. Some commentators read this as a coded subtextual message.  
   [5] William Mann, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969, Viking, pp. 208-09.
   [6] There’s the two Satanists Mrs. Cortez and Mrs. Redi, but no Mr. Redi or Mr. Cortez. Both Mrs. Redi and Mrs. Cortez are middle aged, thus the husbands are probably too old to be away fighting the war. Do the husbands not approve? Do they even know? Are the two ladies widowed? Divorced?
    Several commentators mistakenly identify Mrs. Redi as being played by Evelyn Brent, a sensible error since Miss Brent’s name appears high in the credits and Mrs. Redi is an important character in Seventh Victim. Actually Mrs. Redi is played, brilliantly so, by Mary Newton, who goes uncredited while Evelyn Brent takes the fairly peripheral character of Mrs. Cortez.
   The credits for the Lewton films have always been a little dodgy: sometimes actors who play major characters aren’t credited at all and conversely some performers who receive high billing play roles of relative unimportance. An example is Jack Holt, who gets a high billing (fourth?) in Cat People yet contributes what’s little more than a glorified cameo. Similarly, in I Walked with a Zombie, James Ellison gets top billing yet Tom Conway, Frances Dee and, arguably, Edith Barrett play more significant characters. Moreover, Ellison more or less disappears for the middle third of the film. Also in Zombie, Jenny Le Gon is given conspicuous (if low) billing in the credits even though she appears for at most a couple of minutes as a voodoo ceremonial dancer. The other dancers receive no credits, and neither do other, more substantial, characters, such as the coachman (Clinton Roseman) or the voodoo priest (Jieno Moxzer). It seems name recognition and star power rather than actual importance in the story carried the day with the folks in top management, and even a purist like Lewton couldn’t change that reality.
   [7] Judd is a study in contradictions. Apparently killed in Cat People by Irena in her panther form, he’s inexplicably reincarnated in Victim. At first he retains a vaguely sinister air, a carryover from the prior film perhaps. But as the film progresses, his good qualities are gradually revealed. Curiously, his lecherousness, which was his downfall in Cat People, isn’t a factor in Victim. His relationship with the Satanists is tenuous at best. We encounter him at one of their parties, where he seems in congenial mood, not so surprising as he’s more or less treated as their guest of honor. But later in the film he gives them quite a dressing down, improbably reciting passages from the Lord’s Prayer as he delivers a brief moralistic rant on the folly of their Satanic ways.
   [8] Not so coincidentally, Robson served as editor on the first three, Tourneur-helmed, Lewton films, thus an immediate and direct window into the Tourneur style. Robson also edited the atmospheric thriller Journey Into Fear (1943), directed by Orson Welles protégé Norman Foster. The film has a subtle but undeniable Lewtonesque vibe.

nothing ever happens: Grand Hotel (1932)

  Grand Hotel [videorecording (DVD)]. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer; Loew's  Inc.; directed by Edmund Goulding. Special edition. Turner Entertainment Co.; Warner Home Video, 2005. Based on the novel by Vicki Baum. DVD release of the 1932 motion picture. Special features: documentary "Checking Out: Grand Hotel"; Hollywood premiere; "Just a Word of Warning" theatre announcement; vintage musical short: "Nothing Ever Happens"; theatrical trailers: Grand Hotel (1932) and Weekend at the Waldorf (1945).  
  Photography, William Daniels; film editor, Blanche Sewell; recording director, Douglas Shearer; art director, Cedric Gibbons; costumes, Adrian. Performers: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt. Summary: the glitz and glitter of Berlin's Grand Hotel comes alive with this story of love and betrayal.

Were I to single out one movie that epitomizes the glamour of Golden Age Hollywood, with all attendant positives and negatives, I would choose Grand Hotel, and as support, note the gala world premiere, a snippet of which is included in present package, as the zenith of Hollywood stage management with resultant near hysterical response from the throngs of ecstatic fans. Indeed, the near riot that ensues at the premiere seems to anticipate the apocalyptic ending to Nathanael West’s far less romantic, much darker novel Day of the Locust.

  In any case, let us begin with a mild criticism. Like the well-heeled guests at the titular establishment, Grand Hotel comes perilously close to overstaying its welcome. The movie might well have been trimmed by ten minutes or so and little of substance lost. But such a quibble amongst a proverbial embarrassment of riches: like the grand hotel itself the film has a high gloss, well-tended (even by MGM standards) look. Make no mistake, Grand Hotel is beautifully filmed and lit, with the incredible moderne set worthy of a special mention in itself. Much praise is also due to the smoothly balanced script that deftly integrates the various stories, all held together by Edmund Goulding’s brisk, non-showy directorial hand. Goulding may be the true unsung hero of GH, but his direction tends to be overshadowed, albeit deservingly, by the legendary cast and their unforgettable performances.

   Of course the big draw in GH is the, then novel, all-star cast. All the leads are fine, though I’m not so fond of Wallace Beery or Lionel Barrymore, the characters or the performances. For me Lionel was at his worst when he chewed the scenery too much, which he tends to do here. And much as I’m a fan of Joan Crawford, I can’t agree with the mostly rave reviews of her take on the little stenographer. Sure, she holds her own against the heavyweight talent around her and looks great in those Adrian designed suits, but that’s about it. Otherwise there’s nothing special about the character or the performance.

    But ultimately this is Greta Garbo’s movie, perhaps her finest hour. For all your Kate Hepburns, Bogarts, Marilyns, and Chaplins, my choice as the greatest movie star of all time would have to be Garbo, probably because of her very mystery and her status as the most reclusive major film star ever. And with no disrespect to Camille, Ninotchka and her other great essays, I’d say this is her most purely Garboesque role, for the simple reason that she’s playing herself: insecure, unpredictable, shy, but basically a good soul with a big, and vulnerable, heart. And yes, this is the movie where she says her signature line, debatably the most famous quote by a star in film history: ‘I want to be alone.’

    Barrymore also shines in a very John Barrymore type of role, a shady noble who’s fallen on hard times. A thief he is, a criminal to be sure, but always the gentleman. He does his best to make a living scraping by as a member of the nouveau poor, but in a well-turned sort of way, with strong helpings of elan and panache. No surprise he gets plenty of the great profile views.

    In their scenes together both Barrymore and Garbo play it natural and understated, with limited overly-emphatic gestures and vocal mannerisms so typical of the times. They are a true joy to watch and savor, their pairing all the more special in that this was the only film they did together. Still, even while toning down his more hammy theatrical instincts, the wily Barrymore couldn’t resist stealing a few scenes: only John Barrymore could upstage Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford while underplaying his role.

   Included on the present DVD is a respectable collection of bonus features, including the aforementioned gala world premiere at (where else?) Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I confess I would have preferred a commentary track since GH has so many resonances historic and otherwise. (Update: there’s commentary on the more recent [2013] Blu-Ray version: hooray!).   

   

I want to be alone!

As for the other bonus features, best of all, and almost as good as the original, is the slightly surreal parody, “Nothing Ever Happens,” a newly discovered 1933 Vitaphone short (18 min.), produced by Warner Brothers, and directed by Roy Mack with a group of highly skilled if little known actors. They camp it up mightily with their delectable lampooning of Garbo, the two Barrymores, Beery and Crawford. Indeed, the five principals in the parody, who bear striking resemblances to the originals, are so good they may be more spot-on than their more celebrated colleagues (but don't tell anyone I said so!).
 
    Moreover, and true to its pre-Code pedigree, Grand Hotel gets away with a lot of suggestion and innuendo. However, "Nothing Ever Happens" pushes the envelope even further, though it takes repeated viewings to catch all the spicy entendres, double and otherwise. NEH also boasts some, eminently echt-Warner Bros., dance numbers that would do Busby Berkeley proud.

   

Summary: Grand Hotel is a wonderful treat, an all-time classic served up in grand style. It's true catnip for fans of Old School movie-making at its best.

        

   

brief candles: Maria Callas (1923-1977)

   Maria by Callas [videorecording (DVD)]. Sony Pictures Classics release; Elephant Doc, Petit Dragon and Unbeldi Productions present; a film by Tom Volf. Originally released as a motion picture in 2017.  Wide screen (16x9, 1.78:1). Special features: Q&A with director Tom Volf; trailers. Editing, Janice Jones; archive colorization, Samuel Francois-Steiniger; reader, Joyce DiDonato.
    Summary: A portrait of one of history's most extraordinarily talented women. Told through private letters, unpublished memoirs, performances and TV interviews, the film is the first to tell the life story of the legendary Greek-American opera singer completely in her own words with never-before-seen footage.

   Hamlet told us the play’s the thing, but when we turn our attentions to classical music, the composer is king. Not a perfect analogy perhaps, but the point is thus: that musical performers, no matter how gifted, might rightly be dubbed the art form’s second-tier talents. However … there are exceptions, and a handful of strictly performing musicians are deserving of the epithet genius, and on this very short and select list certainly belongs Maria Callas.

   One of the characteristics of genius is that it breaks new ground, allowing us to see – and hear – the world in different, more exciting ways. And indeed while Callas is, deservingly so, given a large amount of credit for the revival of interest in the bel canto repertoire, her influence on opera extended in ways far outside the purely musical.

   She was a great actress in an era when acting ability wasn’t the big draw, reminding us that the singer must look, and act, the part [1]. Moreover, she always insisted on high standards of production. For Callas, an opera would only work if it was conceived and presented as a total theatrical experience. But the sword cut both ways, with ironic results. In the past half century or so, better and more innovative productions have led to the primacy of the stage director, along with the subsequent demotion of singers and conductors.

   There was also Callas the pop culture phenomenon. The always immaculately coiffed and dressed diva came to embody the cult of glamour and celebrity as it blossomed in the post World War II years, though in fairness she’s probably a reflection of this trend, rather than causal factor.

 

   In any case the documentary Maria by Callas alternates between Callas the woman and Callas the artist, and sometimes we’re not sure where one ends and the other begins. There are lots of readings from her diary and personal correspondence, as well as interviews, plus of course arias (happily, presented in their entirety). Also rare video footage, much in, albeit sometimes colorized, color. Not so surprising, we learn that Callas was a complex woman: relentlessly pursued by pesky reporters and photographers, she suffered their unwanted attentions with grace and patience, most of the time anyway. On the other hand, for such an intensely private person, she was an eminently available interview subject.

   The chronology of Maria by Callas is a little vague. It jumps around a lot, and, most regrettable, there’s very little of her early years when she essayed even Wagner, and by all accounts, very well. The heaviness of those these years didn’t confine itself to repertoire; it’s said Callas shed up to eighty pounds to attain her svelte, echt-Fifties look (some sources say it was closer to sixty pounds).

   Musically a couple of numbers stand out: a soulful, lyric “Casta Diva” from a gala Paris performance, and even more so, the “Habanera” from Carmen (not sure of the venue here), in which she’s arguably more secure technically than almost anything else on the DVD. Her performance gives us a tantalizing glimpse of how strong a singer and how electric a performer Maria Callas really was. Her mezzo-like vocal timbre and fiery temperament seemed ready made for the role. Besides, she seems to be having just a plain good time singing the part, and it’s our loss she never performed Carmen onstage.

   Callas wasn’t an intellectual, but there’s a cerebral sheen to her answers to interviewers’ questions as she walks a fine line between the candid and the guarded, brilliantly so. And then there’s the accent, mid-Atlantic and always with a touch of the exotic. There’s one incident when Callas actually loses her cool. Predictably it’s when she goes into a tirade against Metropolitan Opera general manager Rudolf Bing over what she feels are the Met’s poor productions. Here we get a glimpse of La Callas at her tempestuous best, or is it worst? In either case, it only tends to humanize her and make her all the more attractive.

   Criticisms of Maria by Callas for its rather sketchy, patchy structure and relentlessly pro-Callas tone, especially the stacked deck, first-person only narration, are well taken. Thus I’ll defer to others to opine whether this is the best Callas documentary out there. But considered on its own merits, it’s a unique historical artifact for the rare footage, musical excerpts and best of all, Maria Callas on La Callas in her own words.

   Opera fans are an opinionated lot. Passions run high, and nothing gets an enthusiast’s back up like discussions of the ‘best’ singers, and no opera diva of the Twentieth Century ever inspired passions in the same way that Maria Callas did. Criticized, even vilified during her peak years in the mid and late Fifties, nonetheless even in her own lifetime the pendulum swung back and within a few years the Callas comeback was complete, as witnessed by the ecstatic reception of her return to the Met to sing Tosca, as well as the enthusiastic crowds during her final tour with tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano.

   Her posthumous reputation only increases and her legend continues to grow: today La Callas the musician and cultural phenomenon occupies a unique niche as quasi-divinity for devotees and even casual fans (not for nothing that she’s often referred to as La Divina). The documentary Maria by Callas is a unique and fitting tribute to its eminently worthy subject, and moreover serves to remind us that indeed Maria has gotten in the last word.

  [1] Callas was such a natural as an actress that we're the poorer that she only appeared in one feature film, Medea (1970).
 

Callas as Medea

the sad pleasures of Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge [videorecording (DVD)]. Romulus presents; screenplay by AnthonyVeiller and John Huston; directed by John Huston. Santa Monica, CA: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Home Entertainment, 2004. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1952. From the novel by Pierre La Mure. Director of photography, Oswald Morris; music, George Auric; editor, Ralph Kemplen. Performers: Jose Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Suzanne Flon, Claude Nollier, Katherine Kath, Muriel Smith, Mary Claire, Colette Marchand.

Cinematic treatments of the lives of composers and writers seem predestined to fail. To be fair, there are exceptions. Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is pretty darn good, and so is, in its wacky way, Amadeus. Still, posterity has been kinder to films about painters: we have Rembrandt, The Moon and Sixpence, Lust for Life, Girl with the Pearl Earring, the two Frida movies [1], Edvard Munch, Hilma, Modigliani, Pollock, Mr. Turner, to cite only the more obvious exemplars.
   
Maybe it’s the very visual nature of painting that translates better to the big screen. But that doesn’t explain the success of films that concentrate more on the life, and not necessarily the work, of the artist. Perhaps we have a clue in one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s acidy quips, delivered with characteristic brio by José Ferrer: “One should never meet a person whose work one admires; what they do is always so much better than what they are.” Hear, hear.

And while there’s certainly something to the notion that the great artist as failed human being makes for a more interesting story than a virtuous artist, that doesn’t necessarily explain why painterly movies turn out so well – there have been plenty of examples of life failures among composers, poets and novelists. Maybe it’s all just a happy accident. Then again it could be that the above films stick pretty close to the biographical facts, while composer and writer biographies usually play fast and loose with the truth, sometimes grotesquely so (Song to Remember, anyone?).

In any case, the film Moulin Rouge, released in 1952 and directed by the redoubtable John Huston, is the proverbial embarrassment of cinematic riches, chief among them setting and milieu. Confession: I’ve always liked movies set in Paris. There are so many good ones that I won’t even begin to list them. I’m especially fond of those that capture the special magic – or in some cases darkness and sordidness (there’s both in MR) – of that at once most magical and mysterious yet tantalizingly dangerous of cities.

Truth be told, the reality of Paris ca. 1890, especially the Montmartre and -like quarters, was probably a lot earthier and rougher than even Moulin Rouge suggests. However, given the restrictions of the Production Code of the time, the film gets away with quite a bit [2].

Thus while Moulin Rouge may not be completely accurate on all the biographical details, there’s a core of truth to it, a spiritual and emotional truth, if you like. Thus, MR occupies a special niche because it transcends a conventional biopic and emphasizes the sense of place, and era. The Parisian belle epoch of the 1890s, conveyed through the film’s glorious Technicolor palette - sometimes garish, sometimes romantic, sometimes subdued - is presented in full-on cinematic glory. I can’t think of any other movie that recreates a time, and locale, quite so well.

Another overlooked plus is George Auric’s by turns raucous and haunting score. Two examples: when Toulouse-Lautrec longingly spies on Myriamme (Suzanne Flon) from the street below as she opens her window at night, presumably to prepare for bed, the music underscores his loneliness and emotional attachment to her. And in the very next scene, in which Toulouse waxes ecstatic over the Venus de Milo, Myriamme in tow, the music is, curiously, tinged with a dark undercurrent as if to suggest something isn’t quite right, and indeed something is very much not right with the relationship, if one might call it such.

For a film so awash in vibrant colors and exuberant movement, this is one of the saddest movies I know. We sense Toulouse-Lautrec’s – rarely shown – physical and psychic pain; we sense it perhaps because it is not shown, suggested rather than revealed in Ferrer’s nicely underplayed performance. When Toulouse’s bitter angst bubbles to the surface it’s done so by way of the zingy one-liners he delivers. Then he retreats just as quickly. Listen fast: the accented, rapid-fire dialogue, frequently spoken sotto voce, is sometimes difficult to make out. 

Henri’s two significant romantic connections in the film are with the volatile streetwalker Marie (Colette Marchand) and the supremely elegant haute couture model Myriamme. Both relationships are doomed to failure and the breakups are painful to watch, in no small part because Toulouse in turn rejects both women, perhaps for different reasons, but rejects them nonetheless. In a sense Marie and Myriamme might be considered doubles: they bear a vague physical resemblance, and even their names are similar. And each in her own way appeals to the dual sides of Toulouse’s complicated psychic makeup.

Otherwise Henri instinctively feels most comfortable with, and is drawn to, society’s outcasts and marginalized characters: streetwalkers, derelict alcoholics, saloonkeepers, disreputable entertainers (both current and washed-up), to whom he shows a kindness and generosity of spirit, if selectively dispensed. At the same time he’s perfectly at home amongst more polished folks, Jane Avril (Zsa Zsa Gabor) and her crowd in particular. But in these upper crust friendships one senses an edgy unease as Toulouse keeps the folks at arm’s length via his pungent witticisms and philosophical musings.

Interestingly, the Toulouse-Lautrec as portrayed in the film doesn’t get on so well with his fellow artists. Moreover, given his testy disposition, it’s no surprise that he has little patience with the public relations and business aspects of the art world; he whimsically gives away masterworks as gifts and shows up drunk at openings, where he insults the guests.

The cast of Moulin Rouge is well nigh perfect; I can’t think of any weak links. Ferrer is wonderful of course, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, terrible lip synching to the tune “It’s April Again” and all, is compelling when she’s actually given a chance to speak her lines, i.e. to act. As the icily smoldering Myriamme, Suzanne Flon conveys a frustrated calm tinged with romantic longing. But pride of place must go to relative newcomer Colette Marchand, who plays the high-strung grifter Marie with a suitably mercurial touch. In this admittedly fictional account Marie was the love of Toulouse-Lautrec‘s life [3], and this makes their eventual disintegration as a couple all the more painful. From her initial appearance Marchand steals every scene she’s in, displaying a range of emotions from off-handed coquettishness to knife-edged nervous desperation expressed through her angry diatribes. That such a young actress could hold her own against the formidable Ferrer is quite an accomplishment.

But – and with no disrespect to other elements of the production – the real star of the film is its set decoration and opulent production design (costumes, too!), all of which miraculously recreate the joie de vivre Paris of the late 1890s. If one sequence stands out for me it’s the bravura first fifteen minutes or so at the club, with the smoky atmosphere, Offenbach music, and those shrieking can-can dancers, so authentic looking they might have been plucked out of history a half century prior.

One sliver of criticism in the otherwise praiseworthy DVD release: the lack of bonus features. A film like Moulin Rouge, with so many confluences historical, aesthetic and cinematic, indeed would seem to scream out for a bevy of bonus extras. Perhaps Criterion will someday release an all-the-trimmings package. This minor quibble notwithstanding, Moulin Rouge is for me that rare cinematic double pleasure: my favorite movie about Paris and my favorite artist biography.

[1] I refer here to the well-known Frida (2002) and the earlier, much less familiar but arguably superior Frida: Naturaleza Viva (1983), with Ofelia Medina in the title role.

[2] For an unvarnished treatment of the darker side of the City of Light, focusing on criminals, the lower classes, and various other outcasts, eccentrics, and unsavory characters, see Luc Sante’s The Other Paris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

[3] Research indicates that Marie Charlet was a real person, who modeled for Toulouse-Lautrec. Thus the portrayal of  ‘Marie’ in Moulin Rouge is at least partially accurate, as there’s a scene where she does some modeling for the artist, the result being the haunting portrait that Myriamme eventually purchases and finds so fascinating. On the other hand, there’s no evidence to suggest that the real Marie Charlet was the great love of Toulous’s life. That distinction may well belong to model, painter and artist’s muse Suzanne Valadon, who, curiously, doesn’t appear in Moulin Rouge.
   As for the historical equivalent of the incredibly elegant Myriamme, information is scant. Biographers glimpse a ‘Myriame Hayem,’ a marginal character who modeled for Toulouse for a time and by all accounts was closer in spirit and personality to the Marie character of the film. Otherwise the ‘Myriamme Hayam’ in Moulin Rouge seems to be a composite of society types and well-to-do patrons the kind of which Toulouse met during his peak years in Paris.

Further reading

Julia Bloch Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec: a Life, Viking, 1994.

Emile Schaub Koch, Psychanalyse d'une Peintre Moderne, L'Édition Littéraire Internationale, 1935.

Gerstle Mack, Toulouse-Lautrec, Knopf, 1938.
David Sweetman, Explosive Acts: Toulouse-Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, Félix Fénéon and the Art & Anarchy of the Fin de Siècle, Simon & Schuster, 1999.

a surrealist masterpiece (?) : Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

  
 

   Plan 9 from outer space. [videorecording (DVD)]. Chatsworth, CA: Image Entertainment, 2000. Producer, director, writer, Edward D. Wood, Jr. Originally released as a motion picture in 1959. Director of photography, William C. Thompson; editor, Edward D. Wood., Jr.; music supervisor, Gordon Zahler. With: documentary, Flying saucers over Hollywood: the Plan 9 companion.
   Performers: Bela Lugosi, Gregory Walcott, Vampira, Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks, Paul Marco, Norma McCarty Wood, Dudley Manlove, Bunny Breckenridge, Criswell, Lyle Talbot. Summary: Plan 9 follows the alien-led zombie invasion as the aliens attempt, for the 9th time, to take over Earth.

   "Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future." 

 
    "The inspector is dead  – and somebody's responsible!"

 

 Can you prove it didn’t happen?

     

     Plan 9 From Outer Space may or may not be the worst movie of all time, but the case might  be made that its enduring classic status is due in part because so many things are right with it: atmosphere, colorful characters, good casting, humor. Say what you will about Plan 9, it's seldom dull, and not conspicuously inferior to comparable low budget fare of the era. Mostly, and for all its technical flaws, it's just a wonderfully entertaining movie and a showcase for some headliners of the day. Moreover, it's a revealing window into 1950s sensibilities.

    Plan 9’s production history and subsequent evolution from little known curiosity to its anointing as the worst film ever has been much discussed online and elsewhere, thus I’ll skip over these aspects and get right to it: is Plan 9 a masterpiece? Well, perhaps. I’m tempted to say one of the reasons Plan 9 is held in such affection is not because it’s so bad but because it’s so good. At the very least, I agree with the sentiment these days that Plan 9 is anything but the worst movie ever made. Even its bad qualities have a certain method to the madness.

     I am not an expert on surreal films, so I can’t speak with any authority, academic or otherwise. However – the jarring cuts, jumps from day to night and back again, stock footage, and not-so-special special effects, to say nothing of the creepy graveyard scenes, can only be described as surrealistic [1]. Indeed, Plan 9 has such a bizarre incongruity we have to wonder what kind of intelligence created it.

     Moreover, there’s Plan 9’s (unintentional?) subversive elements, thus the connection to surrealism and its related movements – dada, pop, beat, expressionistic, absurdist, underground, lowbrow. These are almost by definition questioning, contrarian, shocking, anti-establishment, outrageous, bizarre, and Plan 9 ticks all the boxes.


Albuquerque's a nine o'clock town

     The great irony is that Ed Wood probably never heard of surrealism in films and was totally serious in the art-for-art’s sake earnestness he brought to his work. That doesn't lessen our enjoyment of the film; it adds to it. The very appeal of a camp classic is that it doesn’t set out to be, well, campy. As has been pointed out by devotees more devoted and better informed than I, had Wood intended to make a parody or comedy, or worse, possessed the financial resources for a bloated extravaganza, Plan 9 wouldn’t have anything close to the same magic. It’s the sheer nobility and good intentions of Wood and his collaborators, not the slipshod, dodgy content of the product, that make Plan 9 and his other films so compelling.

     And though it’s not been written up so much in the literature, one of the plot threads – aliens resurrect dead humans to scare the bejeezus out of stupid earthlings – obviously anticipates the contestably surreal and much more highly regarded Night of the Living Dead of a decade later. There are even hints of Plan 9 in the cult horror classic Carnival of Souls, a film with its own surreal elements. Lest we give Plan 9 too much credit, it works both ways: there are definite antecedents in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

One of the great existential injustices is that Wood never profited from Plan 9; he sold the rights to his landlord to pay for back rent he owed. The ultimate insult was Wood’s untimely death in 1978 at the age of 54, so he couldn’t even enjoy the classic status the film would attain only a couple of years later.

     But perhaps there is some divine justice, albeit ironic and long overdue, in this universe of ours, and it seems Ed Wood, schlockmeister supreme, the worst director of all time, has gotten in the last word, appropriately enough, from beyond the grave. Much beloved by fans and even some critics, Wood is today guaranteed cinema immortality, and thus, the reputation of Plan 9 only continues to … increase over time. [2]

     As the most unlikely of auteurs, Ed Wood serves as an inspiration for us lesser lights and would-be auteurs, regardless of artistic medium, who have the drive to create something beautiful but lack the necessary talent to do so, at least in a conventional way. But then again, whatever Ed Wood may have been, it certainly wasn’t conventional.

    For Ed Wood was, yes, a genius, even if his genius was the kind that limited itself to the B picture, exploitation film, and surrealist fantasy. Wood's sui generis talent was born out of, and thrived, if that is the word, in the peculiar environment that was 1950s America. Such was the unique alchemy of Wood's vision that it couldn't transfer to different eras and contexts, though others have tried. 

    Even if the manifestation of his genius wasn't in the elegance of the final product but rather the creative ebullience and energy that allowed him near miracles of efficiency, i.e. to produce something of value from (practically) nothing, it does not diminish its accomplishment. In a word, there will never be another Ed Wood.

    [1] I’ve not seen Wood’s other opus maximus, Glen or Glenda, only snippets of it, but I understand it has its share of surreal touches as well. And recently I had the good fortune to catch Jail Bait, Wood's only venture into film noir. It's actually pretty good, in a Woodian sort of way. 

     [2] Update 6 Dec 2025. I just caught Wood's Bride of the Monster on the Harvey's Festival of Fear tv program, and with no disrespect to Plan 9's many delights, I now anoint Bride to be Wood's 'masterpiece,' as it has the most polished look of all his films. I've read that Bride was much better financed than Wood's other efforts, and it shows in the final product. Indeed its production values are comparable to other 1950s B movies that had a reasonably sufficient budget.