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

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

That’s what people call necromancer’s weather.

The Changes (1975) This adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novel trilogy carries a degree of cult nostalgia cachet due to it being one of those more “adult” 1970s children’s serials (see also The Children of the Stones , The Owl Service ). I was too young to see it on its initial screening – or at any rate, too young to remember it – but it’s easy to see why it lingered in the minds of those who did. Well, the first episode, anyway. Not for nothing is The Changes seen as a precursor to The Survivors in the rural apocalypse sub-genre – see also the decidedly nastier No Blade of Grass – as following a fairly gripping opener, it drifts off into the realm of plodding travelogue.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog