Liza Minnelli: A Star Was Born

The new documentary,  Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, made me curious about the movie career of one of Broadway’s favorite song-and-dance divas, Liza Minnelli. After all, Liza (still alive and kicking at age 78) is the daughter of two charter members of the Hollywood pantheon, director Vincente Minnelli and the incomparable Judy Garland. 

Liza made her first screen appearance as a babe in arms at the end of one of her mother’s musical films, The Good Old Summertime (1949). Her first credited role came in 1967’s Charlie Bubbles, as an ingenue opposite Albert Finney, who both starred and directed. But it was in 1969 when she truly made a splash: her role as a needy college co-ed in something called The Sterile Cuckoo led to her nomination for a Best Actress Oscar, along with such dramatic icons as Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days), Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), Jean Simmons (The Happy Ending) and ultimate winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). The following year she was featured as a disfigured young woman in another highly emotional dramedy, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. The death by overdose of forty-seven-year-old Judy Garland on June 22, 1969 had left Liza bereft just as she was entering young womanhood. Judy’s own youthful screen career had seen her frequently cast as a girl-next-door type, even though her huge singing voice contained paradoxical notes of what one critic has called “fragility and resilience.” For Liza, I would choose the word “waif.” Directors seemed to see in her someone who was hurting, but knew how to cover her grief with sheer pizzazz.

It all came together for Minnelli in 1972, when she snagged the female lead in the film version of Cabaret. Director/choreographer Bob Fosse knew how to capitalize on her combination of little-girl-lost pathos and brassy insouciance (as well as her musical skills and her long, long legs) to fill out the character of Sally Bowles. Sally, who first appeared in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, was portrayed as the top chanteuse at the city’s seedy Kit Kat Klub, at a time when Hitler and his thugs were taking over German life. It was the perfect melding of performer and role, and it won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1973.. (Also in 1972, Minnelli scored another triumph with her televised concert film, Liza with a Z.)  

Though after 1972, Minnelli’s continuing screen success would have seemed assured, she ran into a series of roadblocks. Projects that looked good on paper—like 1975’s Lucky Lady and 1977’s New York, New York—turned out to be expensive flops. Liza herself faced health crises (exacerbated by recreational drug use) and went through a pack of mostly unsuitable husbands and lovers. She craved motherhood, but it was not to be. 

It wasn’t until 1981 that she had another bona fide hit movie, 1981’s Arthur, in which she plays a scrappy waitress who unexpectedly becomes the love interest of a childish (and generally drunk) millionaire, portrayed with gusto by Dudley Moore. To be honest, I watched Arthur again recently, and found  much of it rather repugnant. To me there’s nothing particularly hilarious about a falling-down drunk, even if he generally means well. But the film won an Oscar for John Gielgud’s portrayal of a cranky but endearing butler. And Minnelli and Moore have some charming moments—notably when, upon first meeting, they instantly launch into spritely husband-and-wife banter to conceal the fact that she’s just been apprehended for shoplifting an expensive tie. The waif, it seems, also rises. 

 

A Colorful Take on “Carmen”

I’ve been wanting to write about Carmen Jones, and the death of Olga James at age 95 gives me a good (though sad) excuse. Though I saw this film only recently, I’ve been aware of it for many years. My parents, who prided themselves on being open-minded, admired the special flair of Black entertainers like Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey, and Harry Belafonte. Their passion for the whimsical 1943 all-Black fantasy-film, Cabin in the Sky (starring Ethel Waters and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson) transferred to me, and I love watching it to this day, regarding it as essential comfort-cinema. When Carmen Jones made its screen debut (following a hyper-successful Broadway run) in 1954, I was much too young to see it. But now that I have, I can understand my parents’ enthusiasm. This despite the fact that the two lead performers, both well-known professional singers with movie-star looks and credentials, were dubbed by more operatic voices.

Admittedly, the score of Carmen Jones is not an easy one to sing. It is, at base, Georges Bizet’s Carmen, transferred by lyricist and scenarist Oscar Hammerstein II from the streets and bull-rings of Spain to a small military town in North Carolina, midway through World War II. Carmen, still a seductive vixen, now works in a parachute factory; the  opera’s Don José has become the clean-cut “flyboy” Joe, who’s bound for officer candidate school. The glamorous toreador of the opera has turned into a champion prizefighter, Husky Miller, who whisks Carmen off to Chicago and decks her out in diamonds and furs. Though the language of the songs is contemporary, the score is still highly operatic in nature. I’m told it was a then-unknown Marilyn Horne who supplied star Dorothy Dandridge’s singing voice for the film. The handsome, good-natured Joe, who fails to resist Carmen’s seductive moves on him, is appealingly played by Belafonte, but he (or rather his vocal substitute) is hardly singing calypso .Naturally, there’s a tragic ending.

Before today I had never heard of Olga James, and was wholly unaware of her showbiz career. But a photo that accompanied her obituary in the Hollywood Reporter quickly brought her back to me. For the film version of Carmen Jones James was cast as Cindy Lou (think Micaëla), the sweet country girl whom Joe is planning to marry before Carmen gets her hooks into him. James, who hailed from a showbiz family, trained at Juilliard for a career in classical music, and so she was well equipped to sing arias like “My Joe” and the mournful “He Got His Self Another Woman.” She does so beautifully and poignantly; of all the tragedies in the story, hers is doubtless the saddest, because she does everything right but still loses out on love. (Interesting sidenote: James was married to jazz sax great Cannonball Adderley until his death at age 45.)   

The notion of a Hollywood musical with an all-Black cast is of course something out of a very different era. (Similarly, musicals in which the entire cast is white now seem hugely retrograde.) Though I’m hardly a fan of segregation on movie screens or anywhere else, I remain glad that talented Black performers of earlier eras got to show what they could do, and weren’t always stuck in supporting roles as cheery Pullman porters and feisty kitchen help. One other sidenote: African-American dancers who lived near Hollywood could count on occasional movie work in musicals like this one. In the film’s big dance scene, I love spotting Carmen de Lavallade, my very first dance teacher, and later a major star of the American dance world. 

 

Ripley: Believe Him or Not

A few months back, following the death of Alain Delon, I watched the 1960 French thriller, Purple Noon, which helped launch Delon’s career as a screen idol. It was a colorful flick about deception and mayhem, and boasted not one but two impressive twists at the end. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that this film was based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first in a string of five novels featuring a young American who’s adept at impersonating others, for his own personal gain. Much more recently, Netflix showcased Ripley, a eight-part miniseries based on Highsmith’s first Ripley novel. I watched the critically acclaimed series from start to finish, thrilling to its take on the Ripley character and on its spectacularly detailed black-and-white cinematography.

Though the Texas-born Highsmith spent her adult life in Europe, her story has always had an All-American hustler at its center, and of course Hollywood eventually provided us with an American take on her plot. The 1999 film written and directed by Anthony Minghella (known for his Oscar-winning The English Patient) starred a  youthful Matt Damon in the title role. Key supporting parts were played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cate Blanchett, with a very young Jude Law in the key supporting role of the wealthy, feckless Dickie, Ripley’s first victim. (It won him an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor.)

Though I confess I’ve never read the novel that started it all,  the contrast between the various screen versions has been fascinating. The French-language film much admired by Highsmith stands out for its gorgeous leading man, its spectacular Italian locales, and some nifty surprises that make a sequel unlikely. The TV miniseries apparently sticks far closer to the mood and plot of the original. I was fascinated by Andrew Scott’s playing of Ripley not as a charismatic rogue but as a sort of nonentity, a quiet con artist who succeeds because he seems to blend in everywhere he goes, with no one quite able to spot the fact that he’s dangerous. A snake in the grass, without question. 

Then there’s Minghella’s Hollywood version. The leading role is played by Matt Damon, clearly chosen in part for the youthful innocence of his looks. (I’ve read that Leonardo di Caprio was an earlier choice for the part.) Whereas the Tom Ripley of the TV miniseries is an experienced grifter, bilking the unwary whose medical bills he’s stolen, Damon’s Tom starts out looking like a clean-cut young man, a pianist sensitively accompanying a classical singer at a house concert. He doesn’t seem to be on the make until opportunity suddenly drops into his lap, giving him a trip from NYC to an Italian beach resort to persuade the scion of a wealthy American family to quit loafing around and come home. 

Damon’s Tom Ripley and Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf quickly bond over a passion for jazz. (The role of music in the film is an effective change from the miniseries, in which Dickie—though by no means talented—aspires to a career as an artist and Tom claims to share his interest in Caravaggio.)  As we see from the start, Damon’s Tom really does love music . . . and quickly comes to love the handsome, mercurial Dickie. Every bad thing his Tom does seems almost accidental; his most dastardly deeds stem from spur-of-the-moment decisions made in time of crisis. He’s played, in a low-key way, as a closeted homosexual, one whose self-loathing leads him in dangerous directions. We’re supposed to end up feeling sorry for the guy. I ask you: what’s the fun in that?

 

Over the Rainbow: “The Florida Project”

My enthusiasm for Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or- winning Anora led me to wonder about Baker’s earlier films. At fifty-three, he’s not exactly a boy wonder, but until now his work has mostly been seen on the indie circuit. Starting in 2000, he’s been writing, directing, and editing small films that explore the lives of marginalized Americans of all stripes. He seems to have particular sympathy for undocumented immigrants and sex workers, and has placed them at the center of many of his stories. He also relishes using non-actors in central roles that reflect their own shaky situation in life. 

Years ago, I couldn’t resist watching Tangerine (2015), after I found out how it was made. This Christmas-eve tale of a transgender sex worker who’s being cheated on by her lover/pimp was shot on the mean streets of Hollywood by Baker and his crew using (instead of conventional cameras) three iPhone smartphones. Remarkably, it worked. Though the story sounds impossibly grim, there are also moments of great poignancy and even humor in Tangerine. This, Baker’s fifth film, brought him major attention from critics’ groups like the Independent Spirt Awards. The Palm Springs Independent Film Festival, for one, named him a Director to Watch.

Baker’s sixth feature, The Florida Project (2017) was filmed more conventionally, and debuted in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival, It was the first of Baker’s films to feature a major Hollywood actor, Willem Dafoe, but the film’s real star is Brooklynn Prince, a veteran actress who began her career at age 2. She was about 7 when she starred in The Florida Project as Moonee, a plucky kid who lives with her mom in a cheap motel managed by Dafoe’s sympathetic but often frustrated landlord. 

Moonee’s mom Halley was played by first-timer Bria Vinaite. Halley is a well-tattooed ex-stripper who’ll try just about anything—including drug sales, larceny, and prostitution—to house and feed herself and her daughter. (Needless to say, there’s no dad around.) She’s an angry young woman with a talent for scrounging and a very foul mouth, but at the same time she’s a loving mom who, when in a rare good mood, can delight Moonee with offbeat adventures. 

The Florida Project, named for an early codeword for Disney World, wants us  to see life chiefly from Moonee’s youthful perspective. For her and the other kids who live in the seedy but colorful Magic Castle Motel, there’s always time for fun, especially in summer. They try spitting on cars from the motel’s second- floor walkway; they gawk at the lady who sunbathes topless near the motel pool; they start a small fire that nearly destroys an abandoned housing project. Adult supervision is almost nil, and Moonee’s future may be bleak.  But meanwhile she’s enjoying her freedom.

The slow, relaxed pace of the storytelling encourages us to revel in the gorgeous Florida landscape. The film—dazzling in its sunny cinematography--was shot in Kissimmee, a stone’s throw from Walt Disney World, and a would-be fantasy environment hangs over everything. Moonee’s motel ($38 a night) is a startling shade of lavender, and the nearby Futureland Motel, home of new buddy Jancey, is painted pink and turquoise. We’re on the outskirts of Disney’s sprawling theme park, but a good distance from the well-curated fantasy venue enjoyed by well-heeled tourists. In recompense, Moony and her friends enjoy brilliant sunsets, dramatic rainstorms, lush foliage, and exotic waterfowl. The film’s endling essentially slips into their romantic dreams.  Too bad they will one day have to grow up and discover the harsher, darker world their parents know. 

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Creeping Through a House, Darkly

Does Neil LaBute dislike women? A common complaint about this award-winning playwright and film director is that he’s a total misogynist who goes out of his way to vent hostility toward what used to be called “the fair sex.” I don’t agree with this assessment: yes, his view of humanity is dark indeed, but I don’t think (judging from what I know of his body of work) that he favors one gender over the other. His characters can be brutal—and sexuality can be the spark that ignites their rage against one another—but he’s an equal opportunity misanthrope. From what I’ve seen, on the screen and in theatres, he doesn’t like anybody very much.

This is not to say that LaBute is a brute in real life. He is married, he has children; for all I know he’s a reliable friend and neighbor. Formerly, during his college years at Brigham Young University, he apparently became (like several good friends of mine) a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Though I’ve corresponded briefly with Neil, I can’t pretend to have anything like a close connection with him. I gather, though, that the sunny optimism of the Mormons in my life doesn’t entirely mesh with his outlook, or with the thrust of his writing and directing career.  

I think what fascinates LaBute is dominance: the way people are prone to seek control over those around them. And, at times, the way the victims contribute to their own subjugation. Those who suffer most usually deserve what they get, either because they’re naïve or because they’re greedy for something to which they’re not really entitled. The latter possibility shows up in the 2022 film I’ve just seen, one that LaBute both wrote and directed. House of Darkness seems ominous from the beginning, when a car pulls up in front of a creepy mansion in the woods. It’s late at night, of course, and no one is around except for the car’s occupants. Hap (Justin Long) is an ultra-cool finance bro, full of quips and self-confidence. Mina (Kate Bosworth) looks angelic, with her filmy white dress and long golden tresses. They’ve just met at a bar in the city, quickly bonded, and he gladly agreed when she asked for a ride home. It’s absolutely clear what’s on his mind, and this is confirmed when (as she goes off to fix some drinks) he has a cellphone chat with the buddy he left behind. He’s gloating about his good fortune . . . but his high spirits don’t last long. 

LaBute likes chamber pieces, in which a very few actors (often in an enclosed space) carry the film. This aesthetic preference also makes good sense: it’s certainly much easier to finance and produce a movie with a small cast and a single location. About half of House of Darkness takes place in what seems to be a mating dance between Hap and Mina, but then several new arrivals appear, changing everything. Mina’s name should give us a clue, but the sudden emergence of someone named Lucy makes it obvious: LaBute is playing with the dramatis personae surrounding Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I love the fact that in LaBute’s film these are tantalizing women in charge of their own destinies. The classic cinematic view of Dracula comes to us by way of Bela Lugosi’s 1931 film portrayal. In the movies, he’s a sexy man who lures innocent young women to a fate worse than death. Here LaBute has fun flipping the script, but Hap deserves (almost) everything he gets. 

 

Liza Minnelli: Getting By With a Little Help from Her Friends

I have a faint recollection of seeing Liza Minnelli perform on television when she was a mere teenager. She was coltish, even gawky, and I suspected that she owed her spot on the tube to her legendary parents, singer/actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli. It’s certainly true that Liza has had, all her life, the twin advantages of money and connections. But the label of Poor Little Rich Girl truly fits her. She was all of twenty-three when her mother died of a barbiturate overdose. True to form, she jumped in to make the necessary arrangements, while also taking in hand her younger half-sister and half-brother.

Bruce David Klein’s new documentary, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, captures the now seventy-eight-year-old Minnelli in all her ebullient glory. We see her as she is now, still chain-smoking, still belting out that memorable cackle, still enjoying life to the fullest, and we also catch glimpses of her back when she was just starting out. Klein is a veteran TV writer, director, and producer whose work has explored a number of wildly assorted topics. I heard him speak at a screening presided over by my long-ago UCLA film critic buddy, Stephen Farber, and it was clear that Klein—like most of the world—had fallen under Liza’s spell. 

In crawling out from her mother’s shadow, Liza was blessed by a series of formative friendships. Always modest about her own accomplishments, she does credit herself with a talent for choosing mentors. Her godmother,  Kay Thompson, helped teach her to put pizzazz into her life. (Thompson, known for her “Think Pink” role in the film Funny Face, was also the author of the Eloise books about a precocious child who lives at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Minnelli herself is often considered one model for this supremely self-assured tyke.) The musical theatre team of John Kander and Fred Ebb were strong influences on her performance style, leading to her Oscar-winning performance in the film Cabaret as well as the much-lauded TV special, Liza with a Z. Bob Fosse served as her choreographer, finding unique ways to showcase her dance skills. When she needed to develop a personal style that distinguished her from her mother, Halston was on hand to create for her the glittery costumes that showed off her long dancer’s legs. (I learned from Klein that Liza, when on stage before a live audience, performs with such intensity that she tends to get sweaty. That’s why Halston turned to sequins to detract, with their sparkle, from her inevitable perspiration.)  

Though Liza’s circle of friends may seem glamorous, she doesn’t only hobnob with fellow celebrities, Much featured in the documentary are a retired dentist and his wife who’ve been close friends of Liza’s for decades. Over the years, she’s been closely connected with their children as well, and everyone who knows her speaks of her generosity. An example: when one Kander and Ebb musical, Chicago, was playing in its original Broadway run, star Gwen Verdon had to leave the production for several weeks to undergo surgery. There was a very real chance that her absence would cause the show to close. When she learned of the situation, Minnelli jetted in from Europe to play the Roxie Hart role, but insisted there be no big press release to tout her appearance. This was simply, in her mind, something she wanted to do to help friends who had always been there for her.  

Minnelli’s instruction  to documentarian Klein: “Don’t put in anything foolish.” What we see is the unvarnished Liza, not foolish at all. 

“Nickel Boys”: Style Over Substance

I was looking forward to seeing the cinematic adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed 2019 novel about two young Black men stuck in a brutal reform school in 1960s Florida. (The Nickel Academy is modeled on an actual Florida school, now thankfully closed, at which students—especially those of color –were long badly mistreated, sometimes sexually assaulted, and even murdered.) 

The story of Nickel Boys seemed an important one, and I was fascinated by reports that the film was shot entirely through what filmmakers call POV (or point of view), so that the world of young Elwood and Turner was shown exclusively through their eyes. In other words, the audience would see precisely what the characters themselves were seeing, as a way of drawing us into their lived experience. Movies have included this technique almost from the beginning: when the hero is gazing at a lovely vista, or a pretty girl, or a herd of bison, we briefly glimpse these things as though we shared his exact perspective. But, under the direction of RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys pushes this conceit a great deal further, telling virtually his entire story subjectively.

Clearly, Ross’s goal is to pull us in to the lives of two unfortunate young men by immersing us in the sights and sounds of what they experience. Critics have responded to his attempt with enthusiasm, nominating Nickel Boys for many awards. The Film Academy too was suitably impressed, placing the film among its ten nominees for Best Picture. I gather that—for whatever reason—the Directors Guild was less admiring. Ross was not among the five nominees for the Guild’s top award this year, nor was he chosen by the Academy’s directors branch as one of the five up for the Best Director Oscar. 

I saw Nickel Boys in the company of three other moviegoers. One had read the novel; two had not. Though I had not read Whitehead’s work, I did have a sense of what the novel was about and what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish. All of us came away frustrated, feeling that we’d been bombarded by visuals that didn’t always make sense, and that the basic storyline had eluded us. Yes, there were things to admire, particularly in Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s sympathetic portrayal of Elwood’s grandmother. And I see why it was an attractive challenge to show Elwood overwhelmed by the world around him, including televised shots of freedom riders and Martin Luther King’s soaring speeches. Mostly, though, I found myself constantly aware of the camera’s tricks, of how the film relied on mirrors and shiny surfaces to occasionally let us see the two Nickel Boys of the story rather than just hearing them speak. Frankly, it all made me a bit dizzy. 

There’s a major scene near the end, one that’s setting up what is going to be a key revelation. It takes place in a bar, and the two characters in conversation are both older now—and both survivors of the hellish Nickel Academy. They’re surprised (and not entirely glad) to recognize one another, though both seem to be painfully making their way in the outside world.  For reasons that come clear only later, one has his back to the camera throughout the entire conversation. Was I paying attention to what they were saying? Or to the emotion beneath their words? Well, I tried to. But I kept being distracted by struggling to figure out whose point of view we were sharing, through whose eyes we were seeing this. That’s what happens when a movie puts style ahead of substance.