Auntie Mame series – Christian Sauvé

Mame (1974)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-04-122023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Seeing the musical remake Mame only two weeks after seeing the original comedy Auntie Mame was clearly not at the 1974 film’s advantage. While the bones of the story have been transported, simplified, heightened, and set to song and dance, the result is far from being as satisfying as even the uneven original, and bring further credence to my assertion that nearly every musical made in the 1970s was terrible. I’ll admit that the story is a difficult one to tell—episodic, scattered across several years, not quite comic throughout—it challenges even the original film. But this adaptation makes it worse. Generations of reviewers have noted how much Lucille Ball is miscast here (critics were so scathing in their initial assessment that it was the last theatrical film that Ball ever made) so I’m not going to pile up. On the other hand, it’s always fun to see Robert Preston show up even in a momentary supporting role. Elsewhere, well, the comedy isn’t funny, the musical numbers feel laborious and the result is more puzzling than exhilarating. I’d like to say that my impressions of Mame would have been higher if I hadn’t just seen Auntie Mame, but I suspect that’s not true—even after acknowledging that it’s a lesser film, it’s obvious that it’s not much of a good one no matter if compared or not.

Movie Review

Auntie Mame (1958)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-03-282023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Late-1950s comedy Auntie Mame is a bit of an odd duck to me. Its helter-skelter structure and narrative certainly reflect its eventful origins—first a novel in 1955, then a play in 1956, followed by this film (and then later as a Broadway musical in 1966 that led to another movie in 1974—whew!) The key of Auntie Mame isn’t the plot, though: it’s an eccentric character study featuring Rosalind Russell in a powerhouse late-career performance. Compared to her, it’s fine if the rest of the film pales a bit. Still, the weirdness is often conscious and sometimes not. It feels harmlessly eccentric at first, with a young boy being taken in by a socialite aunt whose main talent appears to be giving lavish parties in her large apartment. But then it goes on to become darker (all the way to tackling prejudices), only to win viewers back by the time the finale rolls by. There’s a new thing every ten minutes which sounds exciting but often lends a disconnected feeling to the proceedings. In many ways, Auntie Mamie often feels like a different kind of film than it is—the multi-decade plot is more akin to serious family epic dramas, whereas the bright Cinerama cinematography and overall tone seem to belong to a musical even if it never bursts in song and dance—and then there’s the theatrical scene transitions. Fortunately, Russell is formidable as a formidable character (with Peggy Cass also having a short but likable turn), which helps to ground everything on a central focus. Eventually, her performance coheres to go beyond the “quirky character” to demonstrate the kindness and determination of the woman behind the eccentricities. But it does occur to me that Auntie Mame is the kind of film that may appreciate considerably on a second viewing, once you know what to expect.