I will never be too old to love Disneyland, the pioneering
theme park that opened in Anaheim, California just over seventy years ago, on
July 17, 1955. How well I remember my first visit when the park had been open less
than six months. I went with my best friend and her parents; her father liked
to set out at the crack of dawn, so we were there when the gates opened, and
had to leave—alas—long before all those magical lights came on.
The phrase “I’m Still Here” has many uses. It’s
the title of several songs: one of my favorites is from Stephen Sondheim’s Follies,
a salute to a theatrical trouper who’s lived through good times and bum times
and still refuses—at a ripe old age—to give up on her career dreams. It has
also been used to title several films. One, from 2010, is Casey Affleck’s
mockumentary starring Joaquin Phoenix as a version of himself who’s on the
brink of leaving acting in order to become a hip hop artist.
But surely the most powerful I’m Still Here is the 2024 film by a Brazilian master, Walter Salles. (Its original Portuguese title is Ainda Estou Aqui .) The film is a biographical tribute to an actual Brazilian woman who, circa 1970, faced the loss of her husband and her comfortable way of life to the authoritarian regime then in power. We open with a glimpse of Rubens Paiva and his family romping near their home. Rubens, a former federal deputy, has made a comfortable life for his large family. On one of Rio’s sun-kissed beaches they all pose for snapshots, toss around a beachball, and some of the kids make friends with a stray dog. Later they cross the road to their large, comfortable house, where a sumptuous meal awaits. As the materfamilias, the slim and effortlessly elegant Eunice Paiva oversees everything with gentle grace.
But from the start there are rumblings of more serious matters. One of the family’s teen daughters, returning from the movies with rambunctious friends, runs into a military checkpoint at which obedience to the powers-that-be is no joke. And soon thereafter, Rubens is picked up by the authorities to be questioned about his secret commitment to the outlawed pro-democracy movement. He is never seen or heard from again.
This leaves it to Eunice to maintain the household equilibrium while struggling to get news of her husband’s plight. This is made all the harder because she has never been clued in to Rubens’ clandestine political activities. At one point she is arrested herself, and held for twelve days under sordid conditions. Once she is released, it falls to her to comfort the youngest children while being clear-headed enough to plan for everyone’s immediate future.
A key concern, of course, is money. Eunice regretfully dismisses the loyal household help and sets about selling the family residence. The plan is to move to her home city, São Paulo, where family members still live. The surprise is how Eunice evolves over the course of the film. We discover, after a time jump, that in 1973 she enrolled in law school, graduating at age 47 and becoming—following the country’s return to democracy—an expert on civil rights law, nationally admired for championing indigenous people. The film takes us to the year 1996 and then 2014, tracking the life of this tenacious woman.
It's a remarkably multi-dimensional role, and Fernanda Torres is up to the challenge. The Rio de Janeiro-born daughter of two actors, she surprised many in Hollywood by taking home a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. When this year’s Oscar nominations were announced, she was include on a list of five nominees—including Mikey Madison, Demi Moore, and Cynthia Erivo—up for Best Actress. It’s rare indeed to be nominated for a foreign language film. The last Brazilian actress on this list was Torres’ own mother, Fernanda Montenegro, for Salles’ 1998 Central Station. (Now in her 90s, Montenegro played her daughter’s long-lived character in the very last scene of I'm Still Here.)
The strange, sad death of
Gene Hackman somehow led me to re-watch a movie that is joyous and full of
life. The Birdcage, which pokes genial fun at intolerance of all kinds,
seemed a good antidote for an era in which being different is often considered
a crime. How ironic that a man who died alone, cut off by circumstance from his
loving helpmeet and his pets, is one of the stars of a film whose theme song is
Sister Sledge’s exuberant “We Are Family.”
La Cage aux Folles started out in 1973 as a popular French stage farce. Five years later it became a French-language film, sometimes billed internationally as Birds of a Feather, that racked up international fans and awards (including three Oscar nominations) and later gave rise to two sequels. By 1983 it had been transformed into an English-language stage musical with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!) and a book by the always madcap Harvey Fierstein. It took until 1996 for an English-language film to surface. The Birdcage, as it was called, marked the reunion of one-time comedy duo Mike Nichols and Elaine May. He directed and she wrote the saucy screenplay for an adaptation that changed the film’s setting from Saint-Tropez to Miami’s South Beach but maintained its lively, lovable spirit.
Hackman plays a U.S. Senator with impeccable Conservative credentials. A co-founder of something called The Coalition for Moral Order, he’s a big believer in mom, apple pie, and conventional sexuality. What he doesn’t know is that his daughter’s intended was raised in a household headed by two gay men. To make matters worse, when he and his agreeable wife (Dianne Wiest) head down to Florida for a meet-the-parents visit, the press is in hot pursuit, because his close political crony has just been caught in a deeply humiliating scandal. (Sex with an underage prostitute? Check. And does she happen to be African-American? Check.)
With all this going on, long-time partners Armand (Robin Williams) and Albert (Nathan Lane) are redoing their home décor to suggest to their visitors that the family couldn’t be more conventional, and that they have nothing at all to do with the drag club on the ground floor. Armand, who dresses well and has a neat little mustache, feels he can certainly carry off a masquerade as a straight man. Albert, though, is a bit of a problem. Flamboyant and emotional, he wants to be present for the young lad he considers his son, but there’s no good way to conceal his sexuality. This is the rare film in which the always-vivid Robin Williams steps aside and lets someone else take center stage. Broadway darling Nathan Lane returns the favor by presenting a master class in role-playing. As the glamorous Starina, he headlines the shows at the Birdcage, but remaking himself for the approval of Hackman’s U.S. Senator turns out to be a lot more of a challenge. There’s a priceless scene in which Armand coaches him to ramp up his machismo, à la John Wayne, but of course this proves impossible. After a lot of chaos, some of it involving young Val’s long-absent birth mother (Christine Baranski) and a grotesquely swishy houseboy (Hank Azaria), Albert saves the day by suddenly appearing—in a powder-pink suit and pearls—as Val’s actual mother, a genteel and sensible sort who quickly wins over Hackman’s politician, since they seem to share similar values.
It's then that the press descends, for a slam-bang conclusion in which the now-united couples work to save Hackman’s reputation as a leader of the moral majority. Fun!
Today someone close to me got
rear-ended on an L.A. freeway. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but he’s now
mourning the damage to his late-model luxury car. And I can’t say I blame him.
A well-designed automobile can be a thing of beauty, and I can’t laugh off the
minor damage to a previously blemish-free chassis. All of which is making me
ponder the film I just re-watched this past weekend, the 1986 John Hughes
classic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Ferris Bueller is a comedy with appeal for the teenage kid in all of us. This story of a suburban high school senior (Matthew Broderick) who decides to go AWOLfrom his scholastic obligations makes the adult world seem pretty dreary indeed. His teachers are automatons, going through the motions of presenting facts to their thoroughly-bored charges. The school principal (buoyed up by his dim-witted secretary) is a beady-eyed prig whose personal vendetta against Ferris leads him into actions that are downright psychopathic. Ferris’s parents, well-meaning though they might be, are too caught up in their professional lives to really understand their rambunctious son, and too loving to ever suspect him of being the con artist he is. (They are, though, all too willing to suspect his highly volatile sister—Jennifer Grey—of making trouble.)
Ferris has never forgiven his sister for getting a car as a gift, when he himself “only” received a computer. But it’s his creative computer skills, along with his talent for mischief, that allows him to fake illness and then round up two friends for a thoroughly unauthorized daytrip to Chicago. Their vehicle of choice is a cherry-red low-mileage 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder belonging to the dad of his best buddy, Cameron. We never meet this father, but he seems to signify all that is wrong with American adulthood: his possessions apparently mean more to him than his son, who is as timid as Ferris is bold.
On their breakneck adventure to the big city, Ferris and the others bring their youthful exuberance to the world of grown-ups. They lunch in a swanky restaurant, have prime seats at a Chicago Cubs game, caper through the world-famous Art Institute, and wind up at a German-themed street parade where Ferris finds his way onto a float, leading the crowd in a chorus of “Twist and Shout.” Meanwhile, the fate of that Ferrari remains in question, because we in the audience know (as Ferris and his friends do not) that a couple of scruffy parking lot attendants are taking it joyriding, And, since Ferris’s idea that the odometer can be re-set if the car is run backward doesn’t actually work, Cameron arrives home in a state of panic. I will not go into the ultimate fate of the car, but it seems that his deep-rooted fear of his father is about to undergo a major metamorphosis.
What will happen to these young characters when they too arrive at adulthood? College is in their future, but none of them seems to have clear-cut goals, nor even any interests beyond having a good time. We know that all three are approaching a turning point, but where they’ll go from here is hardly obvious. Cameron may (or may not) be developing some courage. Sloane (the only girl of the trio) is clearly smitten, ready to go wherever Ferris may lead. As for Ferris himself, he’s too smart and too crafty to let the adult world cut him down to size. I see him as an early incarnation of a tech bro, the potential Elon Musk of his generation.
Motion picture buffs probably
know something about Carl Laemmle (1867-1939), the German-born Hollywood
producer who helped found and run Universal Studios. In 1915, he opened the world’s largest movie production
facility in what has come to be called Studio City, just over the Cahuenga Pass
from Hollywood, California. As a producer he was chiefly known for classic
silent and early sound horror flicks, among them Dracula and Frankenstein
(both 1931). As everybody’s “Uncle Carl,” he was later revered for saving scores
of family members and one-time Jewish neighbors from the Nazis by sponsoring
their emigration to the U.S.
There’s a venerable movie theatre on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Los Angeles that devotes one lobby wall to memorabilia from the life and career of Carl Laemmle. That’s not surprising, because the Royal is the flagship of the Laemmle theatre-chain, known throughout the L.A. area for presenting independent and foreign-language movies that might well be overlooked by big multiplexes where the Hollywood studios have box-office clout. (The official Laemmle Theatre motto is “Not afraid of subtitles.”) The Laemmle chain was founded in 1938 by Kurt and Max Laemmle, cousins of Carl and themselves immigrants from Germany. In the early 1970s, when my boss Roger Corman decided to distribute Ingmar Bergman’s extraordinary Cries and Whispers and Federico Fellini’s delightful Amarcord to American audiences, I remember Max and his son Robert showing up at a local screening-room to check out the films and help make plans for their local and national release. No question: these guys really loved films by European masters. Over the years they introduced to L.A. audiences such super-hits as La Cage aux Folles, as well as offbeat films by Martin Scorsese and other American talents.
The Laemmle chain is still very much an all-in-the-family venture, now headed by Robert’s son Greg. He has presided over the theatres in a difficult era, coping with the challenges posed by streaming and (yes!) the pandemic, a time when public venues like movie houses were closed for over a year. Probably to raise everyone’s spirits, Greg and company kept updating the Royal’s pandemic-era marquee, using actual movie titles to comment on the situation. Films that were supposedly “now playing” included Mask and Requiem for a Dream, while among the promised films that were “coming soon” was The Awakening.
Today Greg Laemmle, who just prior to the pandemic had seriously considered selling the theatre chain, continues to run it. Which means that art-film lovers across the L.A. megalopolis can still feast their eyes on foreign movies, quirky movies, and the occasional revival of a golden oldie. Following some pandemic-related adjustments, there are now seven locations throughout SoCal, including my beloved Monica Film Center, where the Laemmles annually screen Fiddler on the Roof on Christmas eve. (Costumes are encouraged, and everyone is invited to sing along.)
A fairly new feature of Laemmle World is a video podcast, “Inside the Arthouse,” which offers an insider’s perspective on today’s art cinema. It’s co-hosted by Greg Laemmle and veteran actor Raphael Sbarge, who has recently turned to directing. (His 2019 documentary, Foodways, was nominated for an Emmy.) Sbarge’s 2022 documentary, Only in Theaters, chronicles the story of the Laemmle Theater chain, with special attention to those tough pandemic years. For me there’s a quiet personal joke in Sbarge’s deep involvement with the Laemmle theatres. Back in 1993, he starred for Roger Corman in a gory but lucrative creature-feature, Carnosaur, which was explicitly designed (how well I remember!) to beat Spielberg’s Jurassic Park into theatres. That’s one Corman movie I suspect never played on a Laemmle screen.
Effervescent blonde Jean Arthur is best known for three Frank Capra films she made in the late 1930s: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Though she occasionally starred in dramas (and ended her career in a classic 1953 western, Shane), she was best known as the star of outrageous comedies. Of course I’ve seen her best-known films, but my local library has a nifty compilation of comic gems, Icons of Screwball Comedy (volume 1). I brought it home because I was interested in re-watching My Sister Eileen, starring Rosalind Russell and Janet Blair. But the two standouts of the collection both featured Arthur: 1935’s If You Could Only Cook and 1940’s Too Many Husbands.
If You Could Only Cook is a classic Depression-era film, in which a wealthy, pedigreed automobile designer—suddenly unemployed because of an idealistic stand at a board meeting—allows himself to be persuaded by Arthur’s out-of-work Joan Hawthorne that the two of them, posing as a married couple, should apply for a job as cook and butler for a pair of thugs (Leo Carrillo and his gravel-voiced enforcer, Lionel Stander) Fortunately, Joan really can cook –so much for that catchy title—but Herbert Marshall’s Jim needs to sneak home to his mansion to get on-the-job instructions from his own loyal retainer.
Since this is a Depression comedy, the wealthy don’t come off very well, but leading man Marshall seems much improved by the time he spends slumming. He and Arthur have some great comic scenes in which they must work out who’s going to sleep where, but ultimately he’s all too ready give up his stuffy fiancée and (of course!) make a life with the thoroughly middle-class Arthur. That’s after she’s packed off to jail following a good-hearted misunderstanding. (In 1930s flicks, there’s often a lot of jail time.)
By 1940, social issues were not quite so front-and-center. But the screwball trend persisted. In Too Many Husbands, Arthur is Vicky Lowndes, married to Melvyn Douglas’s businessman Henry Lowndes, since six months after her first husband, Bill Cardew (Fred MacMurray) disappeared at sea. The new marriage seems to be going swimmingly, though Vicky is perturbed when Henry removes the name of his presumably-dead best friend and business partner from the door of an office suite they once shared. But, wouldn’t you know? On the very day that the name disappears, Bill turns up. Not knowing about the change in his wife’s marital status, he of course figures that their connubial life will resume immediately.
Too Many Husbands sets up an impossible situation, and then waits to see how the characters will solve it. What’s interesting is that Arthur’s Vicky has no wish to choose between two worthy but very different men. There’s a moment midway through the film where we clearly see it in her face: this is going to be fun! In 1940, a ménage à trois was not something that could be publicly endorsed, but the final scene – Vicky dancing simultaneously with both men in a nightclub—hints that something of the sort is perhaps a possibility. (To be fair, there’s a Noel Coward play and pre-code movie, Design for Living, with a rather similar ending.)
Early in her career, Jean Arthur was advised to quit show business, because she just wasn’t sexy enough. Personally, I find her pert and adorable, a big improvement over the classic vamps who are trying so hard to get our attention. And she can cook too!
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.
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| "Hamlet" at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum |
