José Ferrer

  • I Accuse! (1958)

    I Accuse! (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) The Dreyfuss affair is one of those all-time classic scandals, blending treason, false accusations, antisemitism and (later on) public embarrassment for the French government, its military, the exile of a well-known writer and much more. It lasted roughly twelve years from 1894 to 1906 and led to several films, including the 1937 Academy Award-winning The Life of Émile Zola, and the somewhat lesser-known film I Accuse! two decades later. There are a few differences between the two — the 1958 film is presented in colour, focuses far more on Dreyfuss than Zola, and stars José Ferrer rather than Paul Muni. Simply changing the performer does a lot — while Muni’s specialty was being a chameleon as per the requirements of his role, Ferrer (a Francophile who also played such icons as Cyrano de Bergerac and Toulouse-Lautrec) is a far more distinctive presence: a star rather than a character actor. He also, significantly, directed the film from a script by Gore Vidal. This (plus the incorporation of new information about the case that was not available in the 1930s) gives I Accuse! a sufficient distance from the previous film to make it a worthwhile watch. It is, admittedly, a bit detached and overlong at times — Vidal’s cerebral screenplay plus Ferrer’s journeyman direction doesn’t quite ignite the material. But it’s still watchable without trouble, even if a more definitive recounting of the entire scandal, free from Production Code restraints and lingering national embarrassment, still awaits.

  • Moulin Rouge (1952)

    Moulin Rouge (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) There is a particular charm to the way Hollywood used to make biopics – a mixture of caricature, big stars in famous people’s roles, mannered filmmaking and some very specific idea of what a “prestige” picture could be. So it is that in Moulin Rouge, we head to late 19th-century Paris to learn about the life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as played by José Ferrer. The attraction to the topic should be obvious: Toulouse-Lautrec was a genius and a tortured man – physically stunted due to a childhood accident, unlucky in love, spectacularly alcoholic and perpetually living close to poverty. He incarnated much of what many people imagine when they think about troubled artists in the 1890s. For 178cm Ferrer, taking on the role of 152cm Toulouse-Lautrec meant undergoing a physical transformation and making good use of unusual filmmaking techniques such as trenches, fake knees and body doubles. Then there’s the visual attraction of the topic: It would have been unthinkable, even in the 1950s, to shoot Moulin Rouge in anything but colour. The musical numbers are, of course, very can-can: I strongly suspect that most of what we think of as being the aesthetics of the Moulin Rouge (or that period), including the 2001 version of Moulin Rouge!, can be traced back to this film. Absinthe shows up (naturally), as do dark stockings and garter pants. The character of Toulouse-Lautrec perfectly fits the colourful, seedy, exhilarating world created here: Director John Huston knew what he was doing, and the result is a film that deserved its Academy Award nominations. Ferrer is quite good, and there are other known names, such as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the cast. The 2001 Moulin Rouge! (which doesn’t share much than the title and the setting) is one of my favourite movies of all time, but this 1952 title is perfectly likable in its own way.

  • Deep in My Heart (1954)

    Deep in My Heart (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) Sigmund Romberg is largely forgotten these days, but once upon showbiz history, he was considered famous enough as a Broadway composer of successful operettas to warrant a full-length MGM musical about his life. Deep in My Heart, in assembling a jukebox of his most famous hits loosely arranged in-between fanciful sketches about the composer’s life, wasn’t even an outlier but the latest in a subgenre that tackled other composers’ work. (I have a specific fondness for Till the Clouds Roll By, but more for Lena Horne than Jerome Kern.) The advantage of a revue-style structure is that beyond the main biographical cast (featuring no less than José Ferrer, Merle Oberon, Walter Pidgeon and Paul Henreid), you can bring in very special guest stars in specific musical numbers. This is where Deep in My Heart may be most interesting, because the mid-1950s MGM roster was stacked with great bit performers. Here we get Gene Kelly in a fun vaudeville dancing duet with his brother Fred (Fred’s only screen credit despite an accomplished dancing career). We get Cyd Charisse (dubbed, but spectacular), Ann Miller looking terrific as the “It” girl, Ferrer dancing romantically with his then-new wife Rosemary Clooney, and a few other distinctive numbers as shows-within-the-show. Ferrer’s performance is occasionally terrific: at one point, he gets a breathless showcase with a one-man-show presentation of an upcoming show; at others, he speaks magnificent French dialogue. Alas, those individual performer highlights are really what Deep in my Heart is about—the film itself is fairly unremarkable and classical in matters of execution. Director Stanley Donen’s heart was obviously in the musical numbers more than the rest of the film, and who can fault him? Working with stars to deliver their standalone numbers ensures that the film is still worth a look today for fans of mid-century musicals.

  • Dune (1984)

    Dune (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second or Third Viewing, On Blu Ray, September 2019) At least two generations of Science Fiction fans have now commented at length on David Lynch’s Dune, and it’s easy to take cheap shots at the result. As an adaptation to one of the most widely read, widely known best-selling SF novels of all time, this is a film that sets itself up for failure: There’s no way a mere two-hours-and-seventeen-minute film could do justice to a densely packed 500-page novel that launched a mythology that barely fits on a single shelf. That holds even true considering how inwardly focused the novel can be, with complex conspiracies, duelling factions, sweeping galactic events and subtleties on top of subtleties. In fact, considering the nature of the source material, I’d say that Lynch’s version does quite well with what it brings to the screen. The special effects are not particularly good by today’s standards (and there are a lot of them), but the set design and costumes remain effective, and the sheer ambition of the film does create some amount of sympathy. Of course, I’m not exactly looking at Dune without a healthy dose of nostalgic wonder—I watched the film once or twice as a teenager and I credit it with what was necessary to read the novel. (It’s a great novel, one of my favourites, but it’s not a bad idea to have pictures in your mind to understand who’s who and what’s what.)  If the film seems a bit crazy and over-the-top as a middle-aged adult, it’s a good kind of crazy and over-the-top. Even when it doesn’t quite succeed, when it looks silly, when it clearly bites off more than it can chew, it’s still wonderfully ambitious. The cast is an amazing mixture of generations of actors (I mean: super-young Virginia Madsen alongside super-old José Ferrer, with various pop-culture icons such as Sting, Patrick Stewart, Sean Young, Kyle MacLachlan and Linda Hunt? That’s wild.) That remains interesting even when the film gets caught up in the mechanics of the plot and gadgets it shows on-screen. Dune escapes the question of whether it’s good or bad—it’s a good thing that it exists, flaws and all.