Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

(1953)

Marilyn Monroe reunites with Howard Hawks a year after her supporting role in Monkey Business, but this time sharing leading lady duties with Jane Russell. But it’s Russell’s show to command, really, as testified by her impersonation of Monroe’s Lorelei Lee during the courtroom climax. Complete with a second, vigorous, run-through of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend (Marilyn famously sings it the first time).

Neither star steps on the other’s toes, since they’re playing complete opposites; Russell, the deadpan, world-wise one in search of love, Monroe the airhead gold-digging bimbo. Monroe’s is like no character you’ve ever seen, both in manner and delivery, but you completely buy into her heightened, almost abstract performance (Fox allegedly wanted her voice dubbed, which goes some way to illustrate how out-there she seemed). It helps too that her suitors her are played by actors with great comic timing. The starlet reportedly drove Hawks to distraction with her demands for retakes (although not so much that he didn’t have plans for a third film together); while they may have been unnecessary, at least this is one of her performances that works, and is rightly celebrated.

Showgirls Lorelei and Dorothy Shaw (Russell) travel on a ship to Paris; Lorelei is spied upon by private detective Ernie Malone (Elliott Reed), under the employ of the rich parents of her fiancée Gus Esmond Jr (Tommy Noonan). Before long Lorelei, obsessed with diamonds, is flirting with wealthy mine-owner “Piggy” Beekman (Charles Coburn), while Malone has fallen for Dorothy.

The plot is wafer-thin, and it is punched-up accordingly with a series of show tunes of variable quality (the aforementioned Diamonds… being the highlight). But, with Howard Hawks at the helm, the result is never less than energetic; he also pulls of a couple of comedy coups. Both Charles Coburn and child actor George Winslow featured in Hawks’ previous picture, Monkey Business. Coburn is sublime as silly old fart Piggy, attempting to carry on with Lorelei while avoiding his wife’s scrutiny. Winslow, meanwhile, plays diminutive tycoon Henry Spofford III and all three appear in the funniest scene. Monroe, wedged in a porthole and draped in a blanket, has Winslow play her body while a bemused Piggy remarks on her tiny hands.

Reid’s a bit of a wet blanket as Russell’s love interest, and is consigned to playing straight man for most of the proceedings. His presence does at least advance the action, which is more of a means to get from song to song than any attempt at coherent narrative. Which is perhaps surprising, given that the property had already been a novel and a play by the time Hollywood came calling. Perhaps it’s just the fate of films set aboard ships (see also the Marx Brothers’ haphazard Monkey Business (no connection with Hawks’ film, other than title).

If it sounds like I’m damning what is generally regarded as a classic with faint praise, it’s rather the case that musicals have an uphill struggle to win me over in the first place. It takes really special entries in the genre to successfully combine songs with story, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is unable to reach that plateau. So, for fans of the genre, that I found it agreeable for the most part should be a fair indication of its virtues.

***1/2

Comments

We live in a twilight world.

Tenet (2020)
(SPOILERS) I’ve endured a fair few confusingly-executed action sequences in movies – more than enough, actually – but I don’t think I’ve previously had the odd experience of being on the edge of my seat during one while simultaneously failing to understand its objectives and how those objectives are being attempted. Which happened a few times during Tenet. If I stroll over to the Wiki page and read the plot synopsis, it is fairly explicable (fairly) but as a first dive into this Christopher Nolan film, I frequently found it, if not impenetrable, then most definitely opaque.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You can’t climb a ladder, no. But you can skip like a goat into a bar.

Juno and the Paycock (1930)
(SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s second sound feature. Such was the lustre of this technological advance that a wordy play was picked. By Sean O’Casey, upon whom Hitchcock based the prophet of doom at the end of The Birds. Juno and the Paycock, set in 1922 during the Irish Civil War, begins as a broad comedy of domestic manners, but by the end has descended into full-blown Greek (or Catholic) tragedy. As such, it’s an uneven but still watchable affair, even if Hitch does nothing to disguise its stage origins.

Anything can happen in Little Storping. Anything at all.

The Avengers 2.22: Murdersville
Brian Clemens' witty take on village life gone bad is one of the highlights of the fifth season. Inspired by Bad Day at Black Rock, one wonders how much Murdersville's premise of unsettling impulses lurking beneath an idyllic surface were set to influence both Straw Dogs and The Wicker Mana few years later (one could also suggest it premeditates the brand of backwoods horrors soon to be found in American cinema from the likes of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper).

The protocol actually says that most Tersies will say this has to be a dream.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)
(SPOILERS) The Wachowski siblings’ wildly patchy career continues apace. They bespoiled a great thing with The Matrix sequels (I liked the first, not the second), misfired with Speed Racer (bubble-gum visuals aside, hijinks and comedy ain’t their forte) and recently delivered the Marmite Sense8 for Netflix (I was somewhere in between on it). Their only slam-dunk since The Matrix put them on the movie map is Cloud Atlas, and even that’s a case of rising above its limitations (mostly prosthetic-based). Jupiter Ascending, their latest cinema outing and first stab at space opera, elevates their lesser works by default, however. It manages to be tone deaf in all the areas that count, and sadly fetches up at the bottom of their filmography pile.

This is a case where the roundly damning verdicts have sadly been largely on the ball. What’s most baffling about the picture is that, after a reasonably engaging set-up, it determinedly bores the pants off you. I haven’t enco…

James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.

Moonraker (1979)
Depending upon your disposition, and quite possibly age, Moonraker is either the Bond film that finally jumped the shark or the one that is most gloriously redolent of Roger Moore’s knowing take on the character. Many Bond aficionados will no doubt utter its name with thinly disguised contempt, just as they will extol with gravity how Timothy Dalton represented a masterful return to the core values of the series. If you regard For Your Eyes Only as a refreshing return to basics after the excesses of the previous two entries, and particularly the space opera grandstanding of this one, it’s probably fair to say you don’t much like Roger Moore’s take on Bond.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991)
(SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

My dear, sweet brother Numsie!

The Golden Child (1986)
Post-Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy could have filmed himself washing the dishes and it would have been a huge hit. Which might not have been a bad idea, since he chose to make this misconceived stinker.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Do you read Sutter Cane?

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
(SPOILERS) The concluding chapter of John Carpenter’s unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy (preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness) is also, sadly, his last great movie. Indeed, it stands apart in the qualitative wilderness that beset him during the ‘90s (not for want of output). Michael De Luca’s screenplay had been doing the rounds since the ‘80s, even turned down by Carpenter at one point, and it proves ideal fodder for the director, bringing out the best in him. Even cinematographer Gary K Kibbe seems inspired enough to rise to the occasion. It could do without the chugging rawk soundtrack, perhaps, but then, that was increasingly where Carpenter’s interests resided (as opposed to making decent movies).

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog