2007: I'm Not There

I'm Not There (Haynes, 2007) 9/10

American singer Bob Dylan is a mysterious figure. A man of countless contradictions, a projector of multiple personalities. In a career spanning almost half a century, Dylan has been a pop culture icon reviled and eulogized in equal measure. A slippery iconoclast, whom the world wanted to provide numerous answers to its problems, but in return only received countless questions about their voice of a generation.

The world could never catch up with Dylan. Thus, it's only fair that any biographical representation of Dylan's life should not try to encapsulate his essence in a standardized narrative with positivist arcs and ultimate redemption. In his unconventional 2007 Dylan biopic I'm Not There, American director Todd Haynes does neither. Rather, than straddling onto a traditional linear tale of ascension and descent, Haynes understands the bewildering nature of his subject does not call for either. Consequently, I'm Not There does not feature a sanitized composite character, as its principal figurehead.

Haynes' Dylan- like the man himself- is a multifarious creature: unwilling to be compartmentalized into the conventions of the genre. In I'm Not There, Haynes utilizes six different actors to present six different sides of Dylan: outlaw, poet, prophet, fake, star of electricity, international rock star. The result is a Fellini-esque cornucopia of surreal imagery and shifting identities; a myriad of popular images with all their positive and negative attributes nakedly exposed. It is a rare cinematic homage incorporating abrasive, sinister and curmudgeonly characteristics with honesty and without fear of reprehension.

Shot in both monochrome and Technicolor, I'm Not There is an episodic blend of documentary, art cinema and psychedelia encapsulating Dylan in all his fluctuations, illogical meanderings and chaotic bluster. The name Bob Dylan is never mentioned throughout the proceedings, despite Dylan having authorized the project and its use of his music. Flitting between the various tropes of Dylan, Haynes makes little attempt to neatly connect them together. Both aspects are neither a hinderance. Instead Haynes' parallel universe becomes a dynamic microcosm, allowing for the various inflections to have their own objective space to fully develop.

For those familiar with Dylan, the connections and allusions are clearly apparent in this amalgamation of half-truths and quasi-fictions. There is Dylan the liar, portrayed by Marcus Carl Franklin in the film as a young Woody Guthrie obsessed African-American adolescent, who begins creating his own mythology at a young age; Ben Whishaw stars as the mumbling teenager fixated by French poet Arthur Rimbaud; Christian Bale appears in a dual role as Jack Rollins, the folk icon and later as Paster John, the folk singer who converts to evangelical Christianity in the Seventies.

Although Heath Ledger plays an actor who once played the Dylanesque Jack Rollins in a film, his character represents Dylan during the Blood On The Tracks period through his failed marriage to Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); standing in for Dylan's own fractious break-up with his wife Sara. Cate Blanchett appears in her celebrated turn as Jude Quinn, the snarling, drug-addled carbon-copy of Don't Look Back era Dylan; while Richard Gere plays a variation of the older Dylan through the offbeat Billy The Kid, who resides in a world where the pastoral and the childlike grotesque meet.

At the core of Haynes' inventive art film is the elusive search for truth, both biographical and personal. Dylan's status as a walking cultural enigma has been the source of his attractiveness for scholars, writers and journalists for almost half a century. I'm Not There is not a direct portrait of Dylan, but it plainly expresses his dualistic emergence and suffering at the hands of truth. While Dylan's manipulation of facts enabled him to escalate the development of his own mythology through dislocating truth, the film also acutely puts forth the mental and emotional anguish caused by press galleons who engage in public inquisitions about his lyrics and the defeatist attitudes that cripple his marriage.

As with Dylan's own lyrics, Haynes opens up Dylan's life to interpretation. At times Haynes' film is introspective, poignant and crushing, while at others flamboyantly original, detached and vague. Like with his earlier study of musical personalities Velvet Goldmine, Haynes smartly posits the film with the cultural template of its era. In I'm Not There gives several playful winks to the films of the 60's and 70's, particularly Federico Fellini (with two sequences heavily borrowing from the opening of 8½), Godard and Altman, as well as an ironic interpretation of PBS documentaries. By utilizing such artistic sources in tandem with period footage, Haynes gives his non-chronological film, a necessary grounding through which his flirtatious imagery can riff on Dylan's legend at will. In doing so, Haynes creates a kaleidoscopic prism through which his swirling array of colourful ideas can be harnessed into a uniform cultural document.

Blessed with a series of strong performances, I'm Not There is a fantastic, original interpretation of both the varied platitudes of Bob Dylan, but also of the possibilities within the biographical genre. Structured around a series of vignettes, I'm Not There is a definitive example that style can continue to successfully exist in contemporary American cinema. Although the film is perhaps too leisurely paced at times, it does tap into is source material with verve and a critical eye. While the assorted images do not always neatly conform to one another, they do project a collective examination of truth, socio-cultural attitudes and individual chaos. In doing so, Haynes creates an idiosyncratic aesthetic gem, which in spite of its rough edges sparkles throughout.

* I'm Not There is available on DVD through Alliance Atlantis Home Video

Other Todd Haynes films reviewed:
Velvet Goldmine (1998) 8/10

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1956: Run For The Sun

Run For The Sun (Roy Boulting, 1956) 5/10

Anthologized in 1924, Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game has been the source material for countless films. Elements of Connell's work can be found in such diverse material as Cornell Wilde's The Naked Prey (1966) to 1977's Bond film Octopussy. Its premise is simple: man, the hunter, also becomes the hunted.

Inspired by the big-game hunting safaris enjoyed by affluent European and American travellers in the late 19th century, Connell inverted the scenario by twisting the rules of the game. Rather than having man hunting wild beasts in exotic locales, Connell wrapped his original story around the plight of a shipwrecked man, who becomes hunted by a savage and sinister Cossack.

In doing so, Connell created a work that twisted the colonial paradigm of the era, infusing it with the unfettered savagery and bleak humanity, Connell and his peers witnessed during the First World War. Hollywood first picked up on Connell's story in 1932 with its first official adaptation by Irving Pichel and Ernest Schoedsack for RKO. Thirteen years later at the end of the Second World War, RKO released a remake helmed by Robert Wise at RKO entitled Game of Death. Poorly received, Wise's work altered the hunter's background from a Cossack to a exiled Nazi. It is this strand that the second official remake of the story, 1956's Run For The Sun, undertakes as its focal point.

Released in 1956 by MGM, Run For The Sun was the lone American film made by British director Roy Boulting. Set in Mexico, the film centers on Mike Latimer (Richard Widmark), a reclusive Hemingway-esque writer living an anonymous existence in the fishing village of San Marcos. His short-lived exile is soon interrupted by tabloid journalist Katy (Jane Greer). Claiming to be a tourist stranded in the village waiting for friends, Katy strikes up a relationship with Mike, who is oblivious to both her profession and purpose. After prodding and probing him for answers about his failed relationships and inconsistent output, she takes his offer of a flight in his private plane back to Mexico City.

Swerving off-course, the plane crashes into the dense Mexican jungle. Far from civilization, the pair are relieved to find a group of European settlers, Browne a British plantation owner (Trevor Howard) and van Anders a Dutch archeologist (Peter van Eyck), operating a small farm in the thick forested region. Despite the gracious hospitality afforded to them, the pair are soon perturbed by the antics of their hosts. Rifts emerge due to the web of clandestine pasts and concealed identities in the tropical heat. Mike, in particular, begins to suspect the origins and war-time practices of the plantation proprietors; conversely Katy's less nefarious designs also come to the forefront. Fearing for their safety, the couple quickly mend their differences, as they head east toward the beach: racing for the sun in the name of survival.

Heavy on action, Run For The Sun is a brisk B picture on an A-budget. Obstinately a film about closeted personal histories, Run For The Sun is a visually flavourful romp; a Saturday matinee classic that probably would have easily entertained many a twelve year old boy in 1956. Secretive pasts swirl at the forefront of the film's exotic settings. The revelation of the characters respective backgrounds throughout the film, brings a sense of uneasiness to each individual. This restlessness emerges because has much to lose in the process of disclosure.

The unearthing of Mike's reclusive home disrupts the alcoholic, self-pity he has drowned in, since the failures of his last book and his last relationship. In leaving its destructive, but comfortable climes, Mike puts himself in a position to be emotionally hurt once again. By having her professional credentials revealed to the intensely private Mike, Katy knows she will likely lose not only Mike's trust, but also their blossoming relationship. Certainly the pair of Browne and van Anders have the most to lose in this ordeal. By having their treacherous Nazi origins unmasked, the duo open themselves up to lose everything: their money, their obscurity and possibly their lives.

In response to this threat, Browne and van Anders engage in hunting the American couple for sport: an act that typifies the physical and psychological cruelty Browne and van Anders represent and regularly enact on the local indigenous tribes. Yet, the manner through which director Roy Boulting explores their dilemma is primarily muted. For much of its ninety-nine minute running-time, Run For The Sun feels shorn of character development and insight.

At the expense of narrative, action is placed at a premium: yielding a nimble production that darts along, but fails to maximize its own potential. As a result, much of the film's suspense is blunted, as speed takes preference. Characters suss out each other's intentions far too easily. For example, the manner through which Boulting and screenwriter Dudley Nichols explore the wartime relationship between Widmark's Mike and Trevor Howard's Browne is particularly underwhelming. Greer's descent from independent career woman to middling damsel in distress is also astonishingly poor in lieu of the materials' potential.

Nevertheless in spite of its flaws, Run For The Sun is an entertaining, if not particularly memorable film. While Widmark plays his role by the numbers, Trevor Howard delivers a scintillatingly sinister effort as the Nietzsche espousing "hunter" Browne. Yet, perhaps the film's greatest star is cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, whose cinematography is the film's greatest reward, adding a humid frenzy to the classy MGM production values.

* Run For The Sun is available on R2 DVD through Optimum Home Video

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1942: Mrs. Miniver

Mrs. Miniver (Wyler, 1942) 6/10

"This is the People's War. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it then. Fight it with all that is in us and may God defend the Right" (Vicar)

During the Second World War, American cinema played a crucial wartime role. At the front, motion pictures were used to entertain the troops; at home, films became important tools in providing information, influencing public debate and assuaging the masses. Perhaps no other film of this era did more to affect the general public than William Wyler's 1942 classic Mrs. Miniver.

Heralded by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as being "more important to the war than the combined work of six divisions," Mrs. Miniver was both a monumental commercial and critical success: a polished archetype of 1940's MGM high drama that raked in over five million dollars and collected the Academy Award for Best Picture. Adapted from the short stories of English novelist Jan Struther, Wyler's inspirational melodrama focused on the war-time struggles of the film's titular "middle-class" heroine Kay Miniver played by Greer Garson.

Set during the first two years of the war, the film examines the changes affecting the Miniver household and their rural southwest England community. Prior to the war, the Minivers are portrayed as a typical, hard-working English "middle-class" family. The family patriarch Clem (Walter Pidgeon) is a successful architect, whilst their eldest son Vincent (Richard Ney) attends Oxford. Whenever the couple are not spending their "little money" on extravagant purchases behind each other's back, they are raising their two younger children: one of whom takes piano lessons, the other who is perpetually holding a kitten.

The onset of the war however threatens to destroy this bucolic splendor within the Miniver household. Whilst the conflict hampers Vincent's impulsive romantic pursuits of Carol (Teresa Wright), the socially conscious granddaughter of the town's lone aristocrat Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty), it also deeply changes the community and its rigid class identities. This is most sharply evident in the conflict between the haughty Lady Beldon and Mr. Ballad (Henry Travers), the town's working-class stationmaster.

For over three decades Lady Beldon has won the grand prize at an annual flower show hosted on her property. When the meek Mr. Travers decides to enter his own rose into the competition, his audacious act is seen by Lady Beldon as a swipe against her rank in the community: threatening to jeopardize her status. Furthermore his decision to name the flower after Mrs.Miniver, rather than a lady of the gentry causes a stir throughout the town. These ideas soon become relics of the past. Within a matter of weeks, the war's arrival brings with it a minimization of class boundaries. The caste-like walls, previously unchecked only in the town's local pub, are torn down in the name of sacrifice and communal spirit.

The attempt to project the dissolution of class lines in Britain was one of the key driving forces in the film's production. At the behest of the American Office of War Information, MGM were asked to create a film that not only stressed the importance of communal togetherness during the war, but also projected a new image of Britain to American audiences detached from traditional Hollywood conceptions of Britain as a stuffy, anachronistic society. Wyler's film was meant to create a more democratic idea of Britain that could allow American audiences to sympathize with the plight of the British.

In its presentation, the film's contemplation of the British class system is severely flawed. In MGM's glamorized depiction of British "bourgeois" life, the Miniver family manages to maintain a spacious house located on the banks of the Thames equipped with a motorboat, two live-in servants and a luxury automobile. The Minivers and their fellow townspeople are deemed to be ordinary, everyday figures through this logic; despite the fact they- The Minivers- are clearly more privileged than their middle-class background suggests.

The village's working-class are easily identifiable through their colloquial accents and speech, yet are routinely characterized as almost childlike citizens who look up to the more adult and responsible bourgeois and aristocratic members of the community. There is little mention of the economic strife and class-orientated politics that affected Britain at the time. Rather this is a sanitized and wholly idealized image of Britain that continued to feed into popular, weatherworn images of people enjoying cups of tea or a rousing pint of bitter at the quaint local pub. Mrs. Miniver's Britain is a conservative one of stiff upper-lips and upper-crusts.

Nevertheless, by projecting an image of quotidian activities and individuals, Wyler's film managed to transcend international cultural boundaries. The film became important because it stressed the ideas of sacrifice, duty, solidarity and harmony. In this way it is easy to see both why U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked for the film to be rush-released and why the film itself became so popular. In an era when propaganda and jingoistic war films tended to focus on the battle front, Mrs. Miniver turned its lens toward the rarely analyzed home front. There despite their economic superficialities, the Miniver's struggles and strife became easily identifiable and therefore offered comfort and empathy to millions of viewers. The film's brilliant and rousing final speech delivered by the local Priest (Henry Wilcoxon) is a magnificent piece of inspirational screenwriting.

The film also provided a blueprint for how the citizen soldier should operate during war time. Although the film fails to address the true historical realities, which would have likely have seen both Clem and Kay Miniver holding voluntary positions to assist local war-time organizations, it does offer a moral layout of how they should act socially and politically. In Mrs. Miniver, dissension on the home front is non-existent. Everyone unquestionably acts without exception. Non-conformity or fear is invisible. Not only does everyone in Wyler's film participate in the war effort to the best of their abilities- forfeiting relationships and economic progress in the process,-but they further defy the war's horror by continuing to engage in regular activities. Thus, the film became an important political tool in providing an example of good conduct and citizenship for viewers, as well as emotional support and encouragement for millions of viewers.

Since its initial release in 1942, Wyler's film has lessened in stature. Its idealized view of British society appears dated and weather-worn. The film's soapy melodramatic narrative that once appeared honest and realistic, today appears long, contrived and ponderously slow. The film's glossy patriotism that once aroused and inspired audiences in particular feels naive and calculated. For the majority of Mrs. Miniver, the film's leading performances including Greer Garson's Oscar-winning effort as the title character loom as synthetic archetypes of cool, calm and collected citizenship.

With her expansive eyes and unflappable serenity, Garson's Miniver rarely comes across as genuine. As a result, the film's infamous scene in which Mrs. Miniver single-handedly combats the Nazi threat appears especially ludicrous. Walter Pidgeon's portrayal as Clem is stiff and nondescript. Despite appearing in several films together, Garson and Pidgeon lack any believable chemistry in Wyler's film. The only genuine romantic chemistry in the film awkwardly belongs to Garson and Richard Ney, who woodenly plays her garrulous son Vincent. Ironically, the pair dated during filming and were later married. Only Teresa Wright, as the fresh-faced Carol, Henry Wilcoxon as the motivational cleric and Henry Travers as the shy flower enthusiast seem to have injected any genuine spark and humanity into their performances.

Despite its slick, outmoded approach, there are still moments when Mrs. Miniver's polished artifice still manages to kindle something more than sentiment. Joseph Ruttenberg's cinematography, particularly in the film's climatic coda in the village church is especially rewarding. Packaging the film around a series of set-pieces, Wyler managed to extract some of the film's best performances during these segments. Scenes including those during an air raid and the film's finale added an element of authenticity and intrigue often absent in the film's fabricated projections.

Nevertheless, through its images and essence Mrs. Miniver became an important and immensely popular film, which spawned a far-less successful sequel, 1950's The Miniver Story. Four years after directing Mrs. Miniver, Wyler would helm a far more authentic and less idealistic conceptulization of the home front with his 1946 Academy Award winning film The Best Years of Our Lives.

* Mrs Miniver is available on DVD through Warner Home Video

Other William Wyler films reviewed:
The Letter (1940) 7/10

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1956: Baby Doll

Baby Doll (Kazan, 1956) 7/10

"Excuse me, Mr. Vacarro, but I wouldn't dream of eatin' a nut that a man had cracked in his mouth." (Baby Doll)

Sitting on the floor of a rotting Southern mansion, Archie Lee Meighen (Karl Malden) once more grabs his tools and heads upstairs to a vacant room. Fending off a scrawny dog, Archie Lee peeps through a frayed array of torn drywall toward a small hole opened up to the room next door.

Through the cracks, Archie Lee manages to catch a glimpse of the opposing room's lodger: a blonde girl laying in a gaudy bronzed cradle sucking her thumb. Excited by what he sees, Archie once more tries to flesh out the hole. But to no avail. The girl has awoken and has chastised him for his voyeurism.

But Archie Lee is no "Peeping Tom." Rather, the decrepit house happens to be his own and the girl happens to be his nineteen year old wife known as Baby Doll (Carroll Baker). And thus begins the sleazy, suggestive world of Elia Kazan's ultra-controversial Baby Doll: one of the most notorious American films of the Fifties. Based on a screenplay by eminent American playwright Tennessee Williams, Baby Doll is a bizarre offbeat black comedy that encapsulates Williams' central themes of youth, sexuality, decaying Southern society and combustible figures into a story of revenge.

Set in the Deep South, Baby Doll centers on the sexual and marital friction between Arthur Lee and the film's title character. Although twice her age, the balding and high-strung Arthur Lee secured Baby Doll's hand-in-marriage through a series of unfilled promises to her dying father. While Arthur Lee promises Baby Doll the world, all he can offer her is a run-down mansion and an antiquated cotton-gin. Unable to pay the bills due to the success of a rival gin-owner, the house lies void of furniture, aside from Baby Doll's miniscule bed. The bed itself has seen no movement between the couple, as Arthur Lee promised not to consummate the marriage, until Baby Doll turned twenty.

Embarrassed by their overt poverty, Baby Doll plans to renege on her end of the bargain just days before her birthday. Despite lacking in intelligence and qualifications, Baby Doll yearns to get a job. But when Arthur witnesses Baby Doll try to acquire a secretarial position by flirting with a local dentist, the jealous Arthur looks for a desperate solution to his problems. His answer is to set fire to the gin of his rival, an ancestral Sicilian named Vacarro (Eli Wallach). Incensed by Arthur's late-night act of arson, Vacarro enacts his Old Testament view of "justice" to avenge his loss; by seducing Arthur's wife.

Released in 1956, Baby Doll sparked a firestorm of criticism from religious and political leaders for its suggestive imagery, double-edged wordplay and raw sensuality. Much of this censure arrived before the film reached theatres by way of the film's racy poster adapted from the film's now infamous still of Baby Doll laying in her bed. Severely boycotted and banned by theatre distributors upon its release, the film was famously derided by Time magazine as "possibly the dirtiest American motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited." The Catholic Legion of Decency declared viewing the film was a sin.

Much of the film's controversy certainly stems from the divergent psychological worlds that Arthur Lee and Baby Doll reside in. Arthur Lee simply wants sex; Baby Doll refuses partially because she is not "ready for marriage." Her childlike world is solidified through living in a rotting house strewn with discarded Coke bottles, a hobbyhorse and her infamous bed. Her ambivalence is reinforced through her lack of education after she stopped at the fourth grade.

When Vacarro tries to seduce her on a swing and in an abandoned car on the Meighen property, Baby Doll appears reluctant not only because Vacarro's movements appear strange and uncomfortable, but also because she enjoys to participate in children's games, rather than engage in adult activities. Yet, the sensuality of these scenes is underscored by a suggestiveness, rather than an explicitness. Boris Kaufmen's camera never reveals where Vacarro's hands go, nor does it show anything more than Baby Doll singing to Vacarro as he lays in her bed.

For much of Kazan's film, the narrative strongly interjects between carnality and comedy. The decaying Southern mansion Arthur has purchased typifies much of the film's darkly comedic stance toward the South and Southerners. Arthur dreams of rebuilding the house merge with an ethos of restoring Southern glory, which contrasts with the reality that the region's cotton industry is now operated by the "foreigner" Vacarro, whose high-tech gin represents the modernity yokels like Arthur appear to reject. This is all evident in Vacarro's repeated praise for his Sicilian roots in that ancient civilization. The clean, progressive approach Vacarro adopts in his business plans or method of seduction sharply differentiates from Arthur's messy emotional imbalances and a house filled with trash Arthur that is unwilling to pay to have removed.

Surprisingly a comedy thematically centered upon Southern decay and repressed desires, the controversy surrounding Baby Doll has often strayed viewers away from its actual premise and approach. Directed by Elia Kazan with a bawdy eye, Baby Doll manages to eroticize some of the most pathetic and squalid surroundings captured on celluloid. While its lusty content has been dimmed by the passages of time, Baby Doll is still an interesting, flavorful film, which only threatens to fall apart in its frantic darkly screwball final third. Nevertheless, its flaws are amended by superb performances from the film's stars Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach.

* Baby Doll is released on DVD by Warner Home Video and is also available in their excellent Tennessee Williams Film Collection

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1961: The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (Quintero, 1961) 6/10

Throughout the his illustrious career, the American playwright Tennessee Williams produced numerous plays and poems, but only a single novel:The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Adapted for the screen in 1961, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone marked the return of Vivien Leigh to films after a six-year absence.

In her second-to-last project, Vivien Leigh plays Karen Stone: an aging New York stage actress, who flees to Rome with her ailing husband after receiving poor reviews as Rosalynde in Shakespeare's As You Like It. On their journey to Italy, tragedy strikes when Karen's frail husband abruptly dies onboard a Transatlantic flight. Unwilling to resurrect her career and unable to face her critics, Karen decides to reside permanently in Rome.

After a year hidden away in her spacious apartment, Karen is introduced to the manipulative Contessa (Lotta Lenya) in a bid to end her solitary life. Adorned in gaudy clothing, the Contessa is in actuality an upper-class pimp who operates a niche market; offering young men to lonely middle-aged women amongst Rome's wealthy American expatriates and native noblesse. Desperate to count the prosperous Mrs. Stone as a valued client, the Contessa pushes the selfish Paolo (Warren Beatty) on her. But when the proud former actresses senses fail to be initally aroused, Paolo and the Contessa begin to hatch their own schemes with volatile results.

Partially shot on location, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is a flawed film, albeit one with a stimulating array of sub-texts. As with other Williams compositions, themes such as sexuality and youth play an integral role. From the film's first shot of Mrs. Stone's Roman enclave, illicit sex is found in abundance. Located adjacent to a series of notorious piazze, Mrs. Stone's living quarters are principally positioned at the epicentre for prostitution in Rome. Subsequently, when the Contessa champions the view from Karen's balcony, one wonders if she is referring to the historical sites or the physical sights below.

With her supercilious air and exultant manner, Mrs. Stone certainly represents one of Tennessee Williams chief thematic maxims as the moralistic individual who indulges in a covert lifestyle. Nevertheless, the presentation of this aspect of Mrs. Stone's life is particularly mystifying in Quintero's film. There is little inclination either through Gavin Lambert's script or Leigh's body language in the film's opening stages to explicating Karen's motivations or her erotic impulses. Rather, for the vast majority of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, Karen appears to be desperately seeking companionship of a platonic kind, which she can sadly only accrue through Beatty's local gigolo.

As demonstrated through her repeated glances in her mirror, Karen is beginning to feel her age. With his flirtatious gestures, Paolo certainly provides an element of flattery. Yet, throughout The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone there is little evidence that Karen really desires this type of intimacy. In one scene, Karen is described by a friend as a person eager to avoid love. The mere fact she has successfully holed up in her apartment for a year with scant social contact seems to suggest her character is content in her independence and introversion. Furthermore, the fact Karen has not explicitly ventured down to the piazze below to pick-up men indicates her lack of overt interest in sex. Thus, making her converted opinion of Paolo even more enigmatic.

Unlike Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, which also features a relationship between an aging former star and an obnoxious young man, Quintero's film does not propagate the idea that his female protagonist is either saddened by her plight or desiring a younger lover. Rather, the film makes repeated assertions that Karen is not a forgotten figure in New York and that she has intentionally chosen to avoid her former friends and associates.

While the emotional stimuli and physical cravings of its characters are questionable, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone does offer some compelling sideshows. Like Federico Fellini's masterpiece La Dolce Vita released a year earlier, Quintero's film explores the seedy and decadent Roman underworld of the affluent. Additionally, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone does address celebrity culture, although not nearly to the extent analyzed in La Dolce Vita.

Arguably the most interesting aspect of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is the film's overall darkness. The maliciousness of its characters coupled with the film's sub-plot involving a stalker demonstrate a misanthropic outlook rarely addressed in American cinema during this period. The film's ambiguous finale is in particular especially bleak in its resolution.

Released in 1961, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone proved to be a critical and commercial disaster. Consequently, it became the only film ever assigned to experimental theater director Jose Quintero. Despite a subtle effort by Vivien Leigh and Lotta Lenya's twisted turn as the Contessa, most of the film's criticisms were directly attuned toward Warren Beatty's awkward performance as Paolo: a fact aggrandized by his errant faux Italian accent. Ever since its initial release, Beatty has somewhat unfairly continued to be earmarked as the film's achilles heel.

In actuality The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is a film broken by its slow, suggestive script emphasizing scintillating sin, over plot and character development. The result is arguably the weakest of Hollywood's Tennessee Williams cycle during the Fifties and Sixties. Nevertheless with its dark moral corners, Herbert Smith's luscious art direction and Franz Waxman's fluid cinematography, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone does at times propose to be something more than a flat jaded tale of forlorn romance.

*The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is released on DVD by Warner Home Video and is also available in their excellent Tennessee Williams Film Collection box set

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque