In Praise of Women of a Certain Age: “Shirley Valentine” and “Something’s Gotta Give”

No spring chicken myself, I understand the appeal of those films in which ageing women go to extraordinary lengths to retain their youthful beauty. Way back in 1936, the opening scene of The Women was a fancy-schmancy health spa in which society matrons valiantly fought off wrinkles and turkey necks, at enormous expense.  In 1959, under the tutelage of Roger Corman, director Jack Hill went the horror route, using a Leo Gordon script. Their focus was on a female cosmetics executive so worried about preserving her beauty that she broke into a scientist’s lab and stole an experimental serum, made from the royal jelly of queen wasps, that promised to reverse the ageing process. (Naturally, it didn’t end well.) 

Just last year, a female writer/director, Coralie Fargeat, created a contemporary film in the same genre. The Substance. It featured a still-ravishing  Demi Moore so determined to look younger that she went through a horrific metamorphosis that ultimately destroyed her life. Age (and its ominous implications in Hollywood) is also at the center of Sunset Boulevard, once a cinematic classic starring Gloria Swanson and now a Broadway hit musical with the gorgeous but not exactly teen-aged Nicole Scherzinger (she’s 47) in the leading role.

 Given all this, it’s a pleasure to come across films in which a mature woman is hailed as a romantic figure, an actual love object. The only sad thing about these heroines is that they’re played by women who’ve recently left us. But oh, what a lovely light they shed on mature romance. Shirley Valentine is a delightful 1989 British film in which a middle-aged Liverpool housewife (the late Pauline Collins) is so taken for granted by her working-class husband and grown kids that she talks to the walls of her house—and directly to the film’s audience—about the good old days when she was filled to the brim with impish fun. By chance she’s invited by a friend who’s won a contest to join her for two weeks in Greece, and to Shirley’s own surprise she decides to go. On a sun-swept shore she revels in a new sense of freedom . . . even to the point of agreeing to a romantic sail with a handsome local who praises her spunk and her beauty The tryst turns out to have its disappointing side, but the upshot is that she discovers in herself a willingness to change the course of her life. Maybe she’ll resurrect her stale marriage, but on her own terms.

 Then there’s Something’s Gotta Give, a lively Nancy Meyers comedy from 2003, in which a sixty-plus-year-old Jack Nicholson plays Harry, a wealthy music exec who thrives on courting pretty women half his age. Through a series of complications involving his latest flame, Marin (Amanda Peet), he ends up having a mild heart attack at the beach cottage of her divorced mother, Erica (the late Diane Keaton), who’s an ultra-successful playwright. The upshot is that, when Marin returns to work in the city, Erica is stuck babysitting the recuperating Harry. At first they are constantly getting on each other’s nerves. But then, to their mutual surprise, they fall hard for one another, reveling in their mutual smarts and maturity.  And yes, their mutual sex drive. Still, Harry’s commitment-phobic, and the adorable Erica finds she has another admirer, the handsome and very young doctor played by Keanu Reeves. Not bad for a fifty-something-year-old who even carries off a very embarrassed but extremely funny nude scene. Nice indeed to think that a woman of Keaton’s years could be so desirable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brush Up Your Shakespeare: Hamlet Goes Hollywood

As an avid theatre-goer, I’ve noticed lately that major stage productions seem to be relying more and more on effects that can only be called cinematic. In the early years, the motion picture industry was clearly envious of the public prestige enjoyed by live theatre. Broadway plays and Broadway stars were quickly snatched up by Hollywood, and it’s remarkable how many movies of the Thirties and Forties (in particular) focus on stage-based plotlines. See, for instance, Busby Berkeley gems like Forty-Second Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade, all of which pretend to be about the staging of Broadway musical extravaganzas, although the numbers they contain (full of fancy overhead shots, for instance) could only have been made on a soundstage. 

 That was then. Now Broadway has discovered that playgoers willing to shell out the big bucks to see a show in person appreciate flashy cinematic touches. I recently saw the touring company of Harry  Potter and the Cursed Child, and was impressed by its many magical moments. This was skillfully handled stage magic, though (disappearances, transformations, pyrotechnic effects, and so on), and thus was thoroughly a part of theatrical tradition. But several award-winning shows on Broadway right now feel justified by their subject matter for introducing video in heavy doses to the stage production. I have to confess that I haven’t seen either one, so I can’t comment on how successful these experiments might be. Nonetheless . . .  

 Good Night, and Good Luck is an historical drama about the very public conflict between venerated newscaster Edward R. Murrow and the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy. George Clooney, who directed and co-wrote the 2005 film, makes his Broadway debut in the Edward R. Murrow role. Because the play has a great deal to say about news reporting and about the impact of television on the American public, it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that it culminates in a video montage of updated archival footage that includes the destruction of the World Trade Center and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.  

 More film-centric, of course, is the current revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicalized Sunset Boulevard, for which the talented but (I would argue) under-age Nicole Scherzinger just won an acting Tony. The 1950 movie drama about a fading film star, directed by Billy Wilder with a remarkable Gloria Swanson in the leading role, has naturally led to a stage production that is all about movies and movie-making. As the L.A. Times reviewer put it, in this production “the camera is undeniably king. The darkened stage, swathed in movie projector fog, seems like a studio set in which dreams are manufactured through live projections along with more traditional Hollywood means.”  Live camera feeds are used at times to follow the actors, and this Norma Desmond, up there on the stage, definitely gets her close-up.  

 Then there’s the new Hamlet, adapted and directed by Robert O’Hara, appearing now at L.A.’s Mark Taper Forum. For much of its length it is a somewhat traditional Shakespearean tragedy, though drastically cut and highlighting anything potentially raunchy. Then everything implodes into a behind-the-scenes noir with a gumshoe who’s a blend of Sam Spade and Benoit Blanc investigating who did what to whom, on behalf of the suits at the Elsinore Film Corporation. Why? I don’t rightly know. It’s fun to see the spilling out of secrets not in Shakespeare’s original text, and I liked some of the inevitable cinematic touches (like the appearance of Hamlet’s father’s ghost on a huge screen). But what does it add to Hamlet? Really, not much at all. 

 

                                    Nicole Scherzinger in Broadway's Sunset Boulevard

 

"Hamlet" at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum