30 Day Film Challenge: Day 05

(Missed this yesterday. Apologies!)

Day 05: A Film that Reminds You of Someone

Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)

The first time I saw Meet Me in St. Louis, I was very "so what?" about the whole movie. Some time later, I was at my grandma's house and this film was playing on TCM. She's a big Judy Garland fan so we decided to watch it. I don't know what it was about this viewing, perhaps it was seeing it with my grandma, but I fell in love with Meet Me in St. Louis after this. For that reason, I'll always associate this movie with my grandma.

30 Day Film Challenge: Day 03

Day 03: A Film You Watch to Feel Good

Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly, 1952)

One hundred minutes of pure, unadulterated joy. Great music, some of the most accomplished dance sequences ever captured on film and a gutsy, fearless comedic performance from Jean Hagen as the squeaky-voiced diva Lina Lamont. This is escapism at its best.

Kick-Ass Supporting Actressing

Within a span of a couple days a couple weeks ago, I saw three great examples of supporting actressing that completely blew me away. Let's take a gander at these lovely ladies, shall we?

Ann-Margret in Bye Bye Birdie

The strength of Ann-Margret's performance here doesn't so much rely on her ability as a great actress--which, although my scope of her filmography is severely limited, I doubt she ever was--as the fact that she has incredible amounts of screen presence. Director George Sidney saw something in little ole Ann-Margret and it shows that he is working incredibly hard to find out just what he can do to make her stand out a little bit more. But it's not as if Sidney is doing all this work while she remains oblivious; it's evident that Ann-Margret is trying just as hard to use her talents to her advantage. Whether she's singing in that now infamous rendition (thanks to Mad Men) of the title song or dancing her ass off during 'A Lot of Livin' to Do,' Ann-Margret has that certain "it" factor very few film actors have. The fact that she remains nothing less than helplessly watchable during a sequence where she simply struts around in front of a camera is a credit to whatever talents she possessed. Her acting is hardly Shakespeare worthy, but she embodies the youth of the time with a subtle intelligence that proves she knew what she was doing. When she (initially) stands up to her overly possessive performance who insists that she doesn't kiss Conrad Birdie, the famous rockstar she's won a contest to receive a kiss from on national TV, Ann-Margret is a shining example of a new breed of female teenager, one who won't let a man tell her what to do anymore. Any angle you look at her, Ann-Margret is a fascinating creature and her work here is something I can't shake weeks later.

Fay Bainter in The Children's Hour

Bainter's performance as the grandmother who gradually believes the lies her granddaughter is spreading about the two headmistresses of her school is one of the great, non-discussed supporting performances of the 1960s. While the film's headliners, which include Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and James Garner, are all generally miscast and emotionally aimless, Bainter is precise and on-the-nose everytime she appears on-screen. Her biggest and best scene comes very early in the movie in the famous moment where the granddaughter tells her grandmother what is "going on" at the school. She takes the scene in so many directions with a simple change of expression or intonation and she uses these wisely throughout the extended sequence. Bainter immediately disbelieves all of her granddaughter Mary's idle gossip but the wonderful thing about this early bit is that she's also completely bored and uninterested in what she's saying, as if she's heard all this before and doesn't have the energy to bother investing in it. Gradually, however, Mary's lies become more believable and Bainter has to struggle with whether or not she can actually believe the girl. She tries to cutoff the conversation, but something about the accusations draw her back in. And as she starts to believe Mary, Bainter backs off to the point where Mary appears to have all the power in the situation. She almost towers above her grandmother as the lies start to sink in and make sense. By the time Mary whispers in her ear about the relationship between the two headmistresses too indecent to be said aloud, Bainter is a goner and is believably sucked into Mary's web of deceit. Her work here in The Children's Hour may seem easy, but she is able to get a lot of emotion and intrigue out of a potentially tired "is she or isn't she lying?" plot without so much as breaking a sweat. Bainter is a true pro here in one of Oscar's finest Supporting Actress nominations.

Marion Cotillard in Inception

In a film (and genre) where acting is considered less important than impressive visual effects and action sequences, Marion Cotillard poo-poos that philosophy and decides to bring fire and passion to a project so sorely lacking any human emotion. Long after the "shoot 'em up" scenes are forgotten, I can still recall certain parts of Cotillard's performance that are just as potent and fascinating as the film's central mystery. My favorite scene is the one where Ellen Page has invaded Leonardo DiCaprio's dreams and has taken it upon herself to go down to the lowest level of his subconscious, ending up in a hotel room with broken vases and glasses strewn about the floor. Cotillard saunters over to Page in this strapless evening dress, towering over her with her hands on her hips. She proceeds to bitchily ask why the hell she's intruding, but the fascinating thing about this moment is the fact that she uses her sexuality as a way of intimidating Page's character. Cotillard is sexy as hell in this scene, but she's also on the verge of a violent outburst and the contrast is jarring to say the least. She walks a lot of fine lines in the movie, teetering on the edge of sanity as much as DiCaprio is, if not more. As what happened with the screening room scene in Nine, Cotillard's final scene in Inception provides the only emotional raison d'etre in the movie. Coming to terms with DiCaprio's explanation for what actually happened to her, she packs a real gutpunch in those few, terse minutes. This is, without a doubt, her most complete performance since La Vie en Rose a couple years ago and a sign that we haven't seen everything from Ms. Cotillard yet.

Bette, Sir Larry & Albert Tear Up the Stage, Valentino Lights the Screen and MGM Goes to Africa

Gypsy (Emile Ardolino, 1993): If I could wish for one Broadway show to receive the proper cinematic treatment, Gypsy would, without a doubt, be it. The show has been adapted twice--the 1962 version with Rosalind Russell and this one starring the one and only Bette Midler as Mama Rose--but neither have tapped into the epicness a really well-done film version could have. The 1962 adaptation was a generally pleasant experience thanks to director Mervyn LeRoy's invisible guiding hand, only slightly hindered by Russell's lack of vocal ability. With just a couple of changes, I thought for sure this 1993 version could vastly improve on it. That was my first mistake. Director Emile Ardolino is a complete slave to the stage version, barely attempting to even try and make this version of Gypsy film-appropriate; this could have been a filmed stage play and I wouldn't have noticed. The haphazard sets look like something straight out of a cheap high school production and could fall over and kill the actors on stage set with one good kick. The biggest disappointment, however, is Bette Midler's performance. True to form, she rips into the legendary score, belting out 'Rose's Turn' and 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' like the diva she is while adding an emotional depth that was lacking in Russell's performance. The real problem with Midler here is that she is outrageously over the top and stagy, almost to the point that I was afraid my TV wouldn't be able to contain her anymore. Bette is a naturally overbearing actress and has the tendency to over do her vocals and facial expressions, so she needs a director, even ones as middling as Garry Marshall or Kenny Ortega, to help her reign it in to fit within the film. Ardolino must have been in awe just to be directing a big star like Midler and too afraid of her to actually direct her. He ends up letting her run amok all over the film and she demolishes everything around her. Oh how I wish I was a studio executive right now and had the rights to this show. Just think the wonders that could be done to this show with a musical director who understands what makes a film musical different from the stage (think: Luhrmann, Rob Marshall, Adam Shankman, Kenny Ortega) and a film actress who can be both grandiose and larger than life without playing to the balcony like a stage ham (And, no, in my ideal version I would not cast a Broadway actress as Mama Rose. There are plenty of film actresses who can sing and act, thank you very much). Unfortunately, I don't know if I can trust Hollywood to correctly adapt such a tricky show; look how they fucked it up here. C

Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1946): Look, I've already admitted that I'm not a fan of Shakespeare and think he's highly overrated (Boo hiss, yeah, I know I'm a neanderthal. Whatever) so I'm not exactly a fair judge when it comes to adaptations of his work. Usually, however, I can get the gist of what the play is about when I see it actually performed instead of simply reading the damn thing (people who enjoy reading his plays seriously deserve some kind of medal for their bravery and intelligence). Olivier's version of the play, with its static camerawork and long, drawn out takes, made it even more indecipherable--if that's even possible. Half the time, it felt like I was watching a foreign language film without the subtitles; people would just talk and talk gibberish for five, six minutes and I would have no clue what happened. The opening scenes on the stage were much better than anything that followed. The actors may have been playing to the audience too much for my taste (and I get that they were supposed to) but there was a surprising playfulness and sense of humor that was sorely missing from the rest of the film. There's a moment when some advisor and his assistant are reading from some documents, advising the King about something (I really have no idea what about) and the assistant keeps mixing up the papers and getting them out of order, causing the advisor to fumble and stumble trying to get the facts straight. I'm not sure if this moment is in the text (I seem to remember very few stage directions in his stuff), but I loved Olivier's take on it. He's seems to be entertaining a very liberal notion that you can play around with Shakespeare's work and even make a stuffy history lesson more enjoyable. I just wish the rest of this film was that inspired. C-

Valentino (Ken Russell, 1977): Robert Osbourne, resident TCM host and purveyor of vast amounts of useless movie knowledge, introduced Ken Russell's grandiose biopic of the silent screen's tragic icon Rudolph Valentino as wildly inaccurate historically but reassured us that it was all for a larger, artistic purpose. I wasn't too fazed by this because earlier this year I had suffered through the clumsily inept and completely fictitious 1951 version of Valentino's life and nothing Russell could have concocted would be worse than that piece of dreck. True to Osbourne's word, Russell's Valentino isn't necessarily concerned with following Valentino's life from point A to point B. Rather, he seems more interested in discussing the intense fandom and celebrity mania surrounding movie stars. I find it fascinating that Russell decided to tackle this subject with a film set in 1920's Hollywood since it really could be considered the birth of our celebrity-obsessed media. There had been celebrities before, but never before had they been as readily available for public consumption as they had with the advent of the movies. Millions of people could see and fall in love with the same star at the same time and the hysteria surrounding these stars reached unheard of levels. Valentino depicts these stars responding to this madness in different ways, whether it's Nazimova living it up in diva fashion (Leslie Caron, of all actresses, absolutely nails this performance), playing to what her fans expect of her or Valentino himself, unsure of how to react to his sudden God-like status. Russell's film is absolutely beautiful to look at, preferring high art to realism in both sets and costumes. And, unlike with Tommy, the high class look fits much better in Valentino. Dancer Rudolph Nureyev stars as Valentino and although he's not a very good actor and adopts an accent reminiscent of Bellini ("Bellini, Bellini, you're not too skinny!") from Top Hat, he has the same kind of charisma that Valentino radiated from the screen (and it's not like Rudy himself was ever that great of an "actor" anyways). Russell's biopic may not be factual, but it's never dull and makes a greater point about celebrity and Valentino than any paint by numbers version of his life would have done. A-

Trader Horn (W.S. Van Dyke, 1931): For a film almost completely devoid of plot (a good chunk of the film is spent with the main characters pointing out animals along the savanna) and inherently racist (at one point, one of the white characters says to a white woman captured by the "savage" Africans: "Don't you understand? White people need to help each other!"), Trader Horn wasn't half bad. For the time period, the sound design was impressive, mixing animal sounds into the soundtrack to heighten the realism. I loved MGM's decision to shoot the film in Africa, lending the cinematography a naturalistic quality lacking from many of the films of the era (Hallelujah! aside). I find the most interesting thing about the movie is the way the characters are presented. Harry Carey's worldly, experienced explorer is really more of an antihero than the full-fledged action star you would expect. Duncan Renaldo (a dead ringer for James Marsden) plays the romantic juvenile lead and is not as shallow or insipid as you would expect from a 1930's studio film. There are some great shots of him simply looking around his environment, taking it all in and possibly wondering how in the hell he got there. Nothing in Trader Horn completely works as well as it should, but it's such a fascinating mess I couldn't help but be absorbed. B-

The Dresser (Peter Yates, 1983): What in the hell was this movie? A comedy without any laughs? A drama that doesn't make you feel anything? A head-to-head battle of veteran English actors that is more ham-handed and insipid than revelatory or exciting? It sure as hell beats me. I sat for two hours trying to dissect what was going on and nothing came to me. Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay star as Shakespearian actor and valet, respectively, preparing for a performance of King Lear after Finney has a mental breakdown and the aftermath of said performance. There is A LOT of talking going on in this movie but nothing ever seems to be said. Courtenay runs on and on about something and all I hear is "Blah blah blah I'm kinda gay" while Finney's lines all sound like "Blah blah blah I"m a self-important actor." The fact that this film earned Academy Award nominations by the score in 1983 is stunning while not so surprising all at the same time; I'm stunned that something so completely awful could be recognized for anything but not surprised since everything about the film (two respected British stars, World War II, Shakespeare, alcoholism, play-like structure) screams Oscar and their perspective on what qualifies as good filmmaking. D-

Rants on Were the World Mine

The darling of the gay film festival circuit last year, Tom Gustafson's Were the World Mine is a gay-themed, musical "re-imagining" of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. To say I hated this movie and completely don't understand how so many people, gay men in particular, find this wildly offensive, stupifyingly clichéd and transparent film to be interesting in any capacity would be a complete understatement. Just like every other film about a gay high schooler, the main character, Timothy (Tanner Cohen), plays a misunderstood loner in a private all-boys school who is harassed daily by most of the jocks. And I say most because, of course, there's the one über-attractive jock, Jonathon (Nathaniel David Becker), who doesn't pick on him that the main character automatically falls in love with (as we are shown in the main character's imaginary brief musical interlude where this character sings this high-pitched love ballad to him, sprawled out on top of a desk, wearing an open button down shirt with his twinky chest showing while a bunch of the other jocks do this excessively stylized ballet dance around him). Timothy also has an absent, unaccepting father and a mother who practically hates her son's homosexuality because it meant she had to leave her husband and go out and work (yeah, I don't know either), but he, of course, has his couple close friends that act as his surrogate family. Anything surprising or new yet? Didn't think so.

Timothy's eccentric, Mrs. Darbus-esque English teacher is putting on the annual school play--a Taymore-inspired musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream--which requires the participation of everyone in the class (boy, that sounds eerily reminscent of that kickass Gossip Girl episode where everyone had to act in the school's production of The Age of Innocence). Timothy gets the lead (shocking, I know), but finds it difficult to get the part just right, especially with all of the jock kids making fun of him in that not-so-subtle way that only happens in the movies. So, somehow, while practicing his lines one night, Timothy comes up with this magical potion that, when squirted in someone's face through this flower (kind of like in a porn when the guy shoots his load on someone else's face...although I wouldn't know about such things) turns the person gay and makes them fall immediately in love with the first person of the same sex they see. And, of course, since they are gay, they don't merely walk over to their desired love; oh no, that would be too easy and not gay enough. Instead, they have to glide over like a bunch of overeager ballerinas and start making out hardcore. Cut to the next scene where, in the background, instead of practicing the jocks are flitting about in a circle doing ballet moves in point shoes. Yes, I realize that this a movie with fantasy elements, but why is it that Gustafson feels the need to perpetuate the stereotype that because you're gay, you are artsy, can do ballet, must make out with someone within five minutes of meeting someone hot and are clingy and emotionally needy (there's a minor subplot where the macho, homophobic gym teacher gets sprayed with the potion and falls for the principal and ends up on his front porch, hoping he'll let him in and crying and blubbering like a rotten two year old). If you take out the musical numbers (which I must admit aren't too horrendous just overly theatrical and "pretty" for my taste), I really wouldn't have been surprised to hear that this film was made by one of the major studios with its backwards take on homosexuality, obvious story clichés, ridiculous wish fulfillment fantasy and ending I saw coming from a mile away. I wish I could say I'm surprised this is popular with so many of the "AfterElton" gays, but, then again, these are the same people who regularly think Latter Days and Big Eden are two of our community's greatest films. D

Don't Tell Mama...Dame Judi Dench is Sally Bowles!

In 1968, four years before Bob Fosse's drastically different film version hit the movie screens, Kander & Ebb's Cabaret was making its West End debut with the one and only Dame Judi Dench (before she was a Dame...it's tough for me to imagine a world in which she was just Judi Dench) in the lead role. Here's a number called "Don't Tell Mama" that was cut from the film version:

Don't forget that in the stage version, Sally is supposed to be a third-rate performer with very little talent, so that's why Dame Judi's singing is kinda off. Wasn't Dame Judi quite the looker back in the day (not that she doesn't turn heads today)? Meow! I really wish I could see this whole performance or, at the very least, hear the whole cast recording but I don't think there's a copy in existence. Such a shame because this feels like an essential performance in Dame Judi's career. And, as always, it looks like she completely nailed it.

Rants on High School Musical 3: Senior Year and American Teen

Good God, when did I become one of those critics? You know the kind...those who admit right in the open the many faults with a particular movie, which may include weak acting, a horrid script, bad direction or any other numerous problems, but still proclaim, "Well, golly gee, I can forgive all that shittiness because it was so much fun!" and then give it 3.5 stars out of 4. I made fun of them when they came out in droves to support Mamma Mia! and Meryl Streep's hammy-as-hell performance because it was "so much fun!" After High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Kenny Ortega, 2008), however, I just have to forget my critical duties for a few minutes and wildly announce to the world how much I love this film, flaws and all.

Let me get the problems out of the way: the plot, even by the anorexic standards of the first two, is thin. It's so thin, it's practically a poor, African child with starvation bloat. The only hint of conflict comes from Troy deciding whether or not he wants to do basketball at U of A with Chad or head off to Julliard on a music scholarship, and that's mostly an internal one (HSM3 actually makes Yankee Doodle Dandy, that beloved classic of non-conflict, look like a soap opera). Any musical number involving Troy and Gabriella singing to each other became an instant bore. Some of the lines were so incredibly gooey, so incredibly groan-worthy that I was afraid that my eyes would never return to their regular position after the amount time I spent rolling my eyes toward the end.

These are problems, however, that we've come to expect from the HSM movies and only add to its charm (or, if you're like me, its "so-bad-it's-good" factor). If nothing else, High School Musical 3: Senior Year improves upon many of the problems that plagued HSM2. Gone are the shoddy, tin-can vocals that absolutely ruined most of the songs because it was blatantly obvious that they were all fixed in a studio and the ridiculous, "let's gang up on Troy" plot contrivances that absolutely made no sense (I'll never get over that stupid "I don't care about my future, all I care about is what my friends think" line that fucking drove me crazy).

Most importantly, the music numbers actually seem well thought out and intricate instead of the boring, we-have-five-minutes-to-make-this-work steps that we saw in the first two. In fact, they're the best thing about HSM3 and one reason that I want to see this movie again right now (I think we all know the other two reasons). "Now or Never" seems to be, on first glance, just another retread of those other sports numbers like "Get'cha Head in the Game" and "I Don't Dance," but it's surprisingly well done, exciting even when it shouldn't be. The one part I mercilessly made fun of when I first saw the trailer--Gabriella shouting "TROYYYYYY!" in the middle of the big game--actually works a lot better than I ever thought possible. It is a surprisingly touching moment and, for once, I almost bought the romance between Troy and Gabriella (even if Vanessa Hudgens still can't act or sing worth a damn). "Scream," Troy's obligatory angst solo, starts off just as hilariously stupid as "Bet On It! (Bet On It!)" (I was half expecting him to see his reflection in one of those basketballs) but it grows on you and sucks you in like a black hole until you're entranced with every angsty movement Zac Efron delivers. It's a wild couple of minutes with Efron almost as ferocious and unrelenting as some of Marion Cotillard's most riveting on-stage moments in La Vie en Rose.

The best scene in the film, by a long shot, is the Sharpay and Ryan duet "I Want It All." The song is the best in the film and the accompanying musical number hits all the highs you would expect. The scope is enormous--a far cry from the ladder in "Bop to the Top"--and both Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Gabreel are both game to achieve director and choreographer Kenny Ortega's mad vision. I want to describe for you just how amazing this number is in glorious detail but the only way my jumbled brain can comprehend it is through adjectives like AMAZING, MAJOR, EPIC, FABULOUS, ORGASMIC. You need to see it to even comprehend its amazingness. Besides, what do you say about a musical number that incorporates Troy as a rabid, psychotic fan of Sharpay and Gabriella as Sharpay and Ryan's maid which provides the only time that Vanessa Hudgens has ever been of interest as an actor to me?

The acting was generally decent this time around--even Alyson Reed as Ms. Darbus had a couple of good moments--but the film belonged to two people: Zac Efron and Ashley Tisdale, natch. Efron, who showed early signs of amazingness in Hairspray, now completely owns every musical number (and most scenes) he is in. The aforementioned "Scream" number works so well because of his passion and comittment to the dance. There's a moment during the treehouse scene when, whether inadvertently or not, Zac stares directly into the camera for a few moments and, somehow, it turns out to be one of the most beautiful moments of the film. There's no doubt in my mind that the camera loves him much in the same way it loved Garbo, Dietrich and Monroe and only enhances his raw talent into something more.

I could go on for days about how much I loved La Tisdale here. She proves, without a doubt, that she is infinitely worthy of that Oscar nomination that I keep pushing for her. It's hard for me to root for a film that seems so insistent on pushing its most interesting character out of the limelight, but La Tisdale's effective performance makes me forget about that because she sparkles the entire film--from her divalicious entrance to her final curtain call--even when HSM3 keeps pushing for Troy and Gabriella to be the main focus. Relegated to the background, La Tisdale does her best work, rolling her eyes like she's been taking lessons from Michelle Pfeiffer and turning such minor quips as "Genius" when Ms. Darbus announces the name of the spring musical or her sarcastic "Yipee!" when the Wildcats decide to join the musical into perfect bon mots worthy of Margo Channing. It becomes especially apparent that she is a comedienne to be reckoned with whenever she shares a scene with her lowly assistant Tiara. The film tries to pass these two off as equals in some respects, but La Tisdale lets everyone know where its at; there's no way this newcomer bitch will ever be a match for her. Even when Tiara pulls an Eve Harrington and we think that Sharpay has finally been defeated definitively, she rises from the ashes like a phoenix to take her rightful place back. It's during that moment that we realize that La Tisdale's Sharpay is sort of like Scarlett O'Hara in that nothing will ever keep her down and we want to see her succeed, no matter how wicked her ways are. It's due to La Tisdale's epic performance that Sharpay stands out as more than just an annoying bitch stereotype and always comes out looking like the high priestess of the theatre that we've all seen in real life but that we can still, against all odds, still root for in the end.

Is High School Musical 3: Senior Year perfect? No, but that hardly matters when most of the film is such a glorious treat. Will the film leave me on such a big high when I see it again? Probably not, because then I'll probably notice many more flaws than on this go around. Who the hell cares, anyways? This is one great first impression. B

If High School Musical 3: Senior Year represent some kind of imaginary high school universe in which cliques don't exist and an obviously gay theatre kid who isn't ignored by the basketball team and the other jocks but is actually embraced by them for his talent, then American Teen (Nanette Burstein, 2008) is the anti-HSM, showing what high school is actually like (well, at least in my experience). Burstein shows us the cliques, which are obviously a part of any high school, but doesn't exploit them like in The Breakfast Club or countless other high school films. The jock, Colin, and the rest of the team doesn't beat up on poor marching band loner, Jake; they're under way too much pressure to get a scholarship and win the championship to put kids in lockers.

My favorite part of American Teen was the relationship between quirky Hannah and jock cutie Mitch. Unlike the relationship between Troy and Gabriella, Mitch and Hannah felt real and genuine- a couple I feel like I could know. Their wicked banter and electric chemistry on their first date excited me at all of the possibilities their relationship had. They obviously had fun together but, most importantly, I felt like they could learn so much from each other. There's this great scene where, on the bus to a basketball game, Mitch tells his teammates that Hannah showed him Brokeback Mountain the other day and that he liked it. He seems so proud of himself that he's done something out of his comfort zone but then his teammates take the usual potshots at him for liking that movie and Mitch is not so sure anymore. It's a shame that peer pressure is the reason for their inevitable split and it makes their heartbreaking ending all the more upsetting. But that's high school I guess; it's never easy or turns out the way we want to. Thank God American Teen is there to show us that and not just offer another easy, stereotypical answer. A-

An Interrupted American Medley in My Heart

Last night, I was catching up on some random Oscar nominees I had my mother tape for me (what a saint!) and one of the numerous DVD's was Interrupted Melody, the 1955 biopic that netted Eleanor Parker a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Over the past year or so, I've grown quite fond of this lovely, under appreciated actress. She's probably best known as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (I've blocked most things associated with that pile of dreck so I sadly can't remember her performance) but she also earned well-deserved Oscar nominations for the women-in-prison drama Caged and the underseen Detective Story and she also impressed me as the crippled girlfriend of Frank Sinatra's heroin addict in The Man With the Golden Arm. Unfortunately for Parker and for us, there's nothing much in Interrupted Melody to do. Parker plays "beloved" (I use that word in quotes because I sure as hell don't know who she is) opera star Marjorie Lawrence who, after a bought with polio that crippled her, made a grand comeback to the Metropolitan Opera House (but not until she overcame a crippling stage fright, of course). The film is one of the ridiculous star biopics of the 50's in which only one interesting thing happens to the person, so the writers spent the rest of the time making up crap and adding scenes to give the film some kind of flimsy dramatic structure. The first half of the film has one of the worst structures I've ever seen. Basically, the story go from Eleanor Parker being humble to Eleanor Parker singing in some random opera to Eleanor Parker crying on the phone while talking to her family in Australia to Eleanor Parker singing in another random opera to Eleanor Parker making out with Glenn Ford to Eleanor Parker singing in yet another random opera...I think you get the idea. The second half of the film, after she comes down with polio, is a tad bit better, but it's still as trite as any material of this nature can be. Poor Eleanor. She really tries her hardest and technically she's quite proficient. That scene where she's forced to crawl on the ground to turn on the record player was excruciating and Parker never oversold it or explicitly cried out for us to sympathize with her. Plus, like Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, her lip syncing was incredible. It may not seem like anything these days, but back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, when pretty actresses were forced to lip sync because their voices weren't up to par, most didn't give a shit and just mouthed the words. Not Parker. She obviously studied breath control and timing and, if you didn't know any better, you would think that that was her voice coming out of her mouth. But, unfortunately, Interrupted Melody doesn't give Parker any acting to do and she's just forced to go along with the cheap theatrics and ungodly amount of opera pieces.

During the second half of the film, however, I was constantly reminded of another Oscar nominated performance from the 1950's in a ridiculous star biopic about a "popular" singer who overcomes being a cripple (this time from a plane crash) and makes a grand comeback, performed by a largely forgotten, but still utterly amazing actress from the same era: Susan Hayward in With a Song in My Heart. The film is an utter piece of garbage, much like Interrupted Melody, and really plays into Hayward's worst tendencies as an actress (overly-stylized and hammy). The film does, however, have one A-MA-ZING moment right at the end that Interrupted Melody reminded me of. In the course of her comeback, Hayward performs for the troops during WWII and delivers this rousing patriotic medley that is absolutely shameless and Hayward is about as subtle as George Bush at a gay pride parade, but it gets me everytime I watch it. In fact, the first time I saw With a Song in My Heart (yes, I have unfortunately seen it more than once) I rewound this scene about 10-15 and watched it over and over again. It's so good that I almost don't mind Hayward's Best Actress nomination over Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain or Judy Holliday in The Marrying Kind. Almost. Here, have a look for yourself:

My Favorite Parts
1. Susan Hayward's very dramatic fist during the line "It's a great ole wonderful home sweet home."
2. The way Susan Hayward poses at the very end of the song about Chicago. So dramatic.
3. That really dramatic guy singing in the audience during "California, Here We Come"
4. "HOW ABOUT TEXAS?" "Well, how about it?" *cheeky smile* Oh Susan, you're such a ham, but I still love you.
5. That really weird guy clapping away in the audience and his stupid grin during the song about Virginia.
6. "For you...anything." I wish I had the chance to say that more often, with that same inflection, and people would know what the hell I was talking about.
7. The way How About Texas Guy interrupts the tender moment of Susan Hayward singing to that guy in the front row and her classic response: "Texas? Never heard of it!"
8. The Amazing Thelma Ritter joining in on "Deep In the Heart of Texas." What a lady.
9. The way everyone goes batshit crazy over "Dixie." It's a good song, I must admit, but unless you're from the South, I can't imagine going that insane over it (and I know all of them can't be from the South).