Shirley MacLaine

  • Some Came Running (1958)

    Some Came Running (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) For a rather low-key drama, it’s interesting to see how often Some Came Running comes up in classic film discussions. The facts are that this is a film directed by Vincente Minelli and adapted from a doorstop best-selling novel, that it starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, that good chunks of it were shot on location in a small middle-America town and that it was an example of widescreen colour cinematography at a time when Hollywood dramas usually went for black-and-white Academy ratio. That last factor does help explain the film’s longevity, as it remains more accessible on modern widescreen colour displays than many of its contemporaries. The story is small-potato stuff, as a writer-turned-veteran (Sinatra) returns to his hometown after a long absence, with a loose woman (MacLaine) in tow, and reunites with his brother (Arthur Kennedy), later befriending a likable gambler (Martin). While the original novel is reportedly 1,200 pages long, this stripped-down adaptation fits everything in slightly more than two hours and seems almost lackadaisical in its drive to the ending. But a host of reasons explain why the film stuck in the popular imagination. For one thing, it got five Academy Award nominations (including MacLaine’s first). It was the first screen pairing of Sinatra and Martin, prefiguring the Brat Pack series of movies they’d do together. Its location shooting comes complete with wild tales of fans mobbing Sinatra, wild nights of partying with Martin, and made such an impression that you can still tour Madison, Indiana to see the shooting locations. Minelli’s widescreen colour direction was much admired among fellow directors. None of this really improves the middle-of-the-road impression left by Some Came Running, but sometimes it’s instructive to realize why a film endures… especially if it doesn’t have to do with its quality.

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, August 2021) It’s almost a subgenre of American cinema: the small-town drama –usually adapted from a novel– in which a prodigal son returns after some time spent away, usually in the military or in a big city that has changed him forever, and how he realizes he can’t come back home. (On the flip side, you have the Hallmark romantic Christmas comedy in which the prodigal daughter returns home, rekindles a past romance with a local hunk, and realizes she can stay home forever.)  Some Came Running is both exemplary and distinctive in how it clearly plays with the building blocks of the genre, but brings a few unusual things along – such as having Shirley MacLaine as a floozy accompanying the protagonist, or how the protagonist rolls up the military aspect, the writerly aspect and the spent-time-in-a-big-city aspect into one character. Frank Sinatra is quite good in the lead role, with a smaller-than-expected part for fellow rat-packer Tony Martin. The small-town aspect is convincingly portrayed (TCM has a lovely companion piece detailing the mayhem caused when Sinatra and Martin stopped into Madison, Indiana for a few weeks of shooting), but the film itself often feels like a collage of elements not necessarily fitting together: by the time even local gangsters get involved, it’s as if the narrative has grown bored with the whole “can’t come home again” theme and reached for more exciting genre elements as trick shots. Some Came Running is watchable without being particularly memorable, but then again, it’s in good company in its subgenre.

  • Sweet Charity (1969)

    Sweet Charity (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) I hope no one ever asks me to write a book about Hollywood musicals, because one of the middle chapters will be called, “How Bob Fosse destroyed the musical and yes, it’s all his fault.” I exaggerate slightly for comic effect, but not by much: Fosse was the leading director of musicals during the 1970s’s New Hollywood (probably the worst decade for musicals) and nearly everything I’ve seen from him I have disliked. [September 2020: I take that back! Lenny and Star 80 are decent, while All that Jazz is a really good musical.] His approach made musicals grow up, but in retrospect that was a terrible idea. Sweet Charity is a case in point, bringing together many things that I dislike. Fosse adapted his own Broadway show based on Nights of Cabiria (a film I dislike) having cast Shirley Maclaine (an actress I dislike) and wallowing in a dark cabaret style (an approach I dislike) to end with a bittersweet ending (another choice I dislike, so we’re not doing well here). I’ll grant that Maclaine is a lookalike for Giulietta Masina (further dislike), but otherwise, eh, why even bother. While the film manages a few comic moments and hums the familiar tune of “Hey, Big Spender,” it’s remarkably unfunny as a comedy, tinged with freeze-frame melancholy as it follows a girl with few stable prospects in a big city designed to eat such people alive. (One welcome exception: the wonderfully weird and high-energy number featuring Sammy Davis Jr.) Even the ending, which initially seems destined for a bright and colourful happy finale, ends up pulling the rug under the protagonist’s feet. (I can’t help thinking that for classical musical fans, this is a cruel case of “this is why you can’t have nice things” and no, I don’t care if it follows the original stage musical.) The dark and moody cinematography of the film is very New Hollywood, a now-dated style which isn’t a good match for the exuberant joie de vivre of the classic (and timeless) Hollywood musical. I don’t exactly dislike the film (especially on a curve, as there are Fosse movies that I actually hate, starting with Cabaret) but in many ways Sweet Charity is just close enough to the glory days of the Hollywood musical (I mean—it was released the same year as the far more enjoyable Hello, Dolly!) to feel like a grotesque perversion of the form. It flopped in 1969, and I don’t think it’s any more likable today.

  • Rumor Has It… (2005)

    Rumor Has It… (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2020) If you’re willing to concede that Rumor Has It has more to do with the way people behave in Hollywood films than in real life, then it’s not quite as terrible is it looks in the first place. Ill-conceived from the start as a “sequel” of sorts to The Graduate, it sets itself up for failure early on, as it clearly doesn’t have what it takes to fulfill its ambitions, nor the guts to actually do anything truly transgressive. Instead, director Rob Reiner (working from a script by Ted Griffin, the first director of the film, fired early in the production) plays everything like a frothy meaningless romantic comedy. It’s a dumb comedy with puppet-like characters in many ways—the premise simply isn’t believable, and the characters seldom behave like real people. This is not necessarily a bad thing in the world of romantic comedies—but it is here, as the characters go for wild speculations rather than anything like realistic conclusions. (i.e.: if someone is born barely nine months after their parent’s wedding, do you speculate about honeymoon whoopee or leap to the conclusion that the mom had an affair?) If Rumor has It has a quality, it’s probably a cast with several familiar names—But it has its limits. Kevin Costner was still in the phase where he could convincingly play older romantic leads, but Jennifer Anniston is unusually bland in the lead role. Supporting characters include Richard Jenkins, Mark Ruffalo, Christopher MacDonald, Mena Suvari and a rather good late-career turn from Shirley MacLaine—who does give Costner a scene worth a look. Alas, the rest of Rumor Has It is a disappointment. It’s not as funny as it thinks it is and it’s afraid to be eccentric while playing with eccentric elements: By the time it ends, the lead couple is so exasperating that the climactic reunion feels like a bad idea.

  • Gambit (1966)

    Gambit (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Part of my curiosity about Gambit was comparing it with the little-seen, somewhat-dismissed 2012 Coen Brothers remake. As it turns out…, those might as well be two different films. There are a few decades’ worth of filmmaking differences between the two, obviously, but also a complete change of setting (the remake takes place in England—the original in Hong Kong) and, frankly, almost the entire plot as I remember it. So, anyone who thinks that seeing the remake is good enough will get plenty of surprises with this original. The opening half-hour of the film is immediately interesting, as a caper unfolds… and then the rest of the film doubles back on the opening act to extend and subvert it. Michael Caine is up to his very high 1960s standards here (albeit a bit more clownish than usual), while Shirley MacLaine, never my favourite actress, is surprisingly entertaining. There are enough twists and turns here to make Gambit a pleasant heist romantic comedy, and one with a great period atmosphere (admittedly bordering on orientalism) by twenty-first century standards. It’s well worth seeing, even by the cinephiles who are familiar with the remake… because it’s really not the same film at all.

  • Irma la Douce (1963)

    Irma la Douce (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) Some Billy Wilder fans will probably be upset to see that I rank the writer-director’s Irma la Douce as second-tier Wilder—but in a long storied career like his, even a second-tier film can be quite respectable. The point being that I’ve seen all of his first-tier films by now, so what’s left is the rest. And while you can call Irma la Douce a good film, there’s no way you can call it a great one: its staggering length, at 147 minutes, runs against its lighthearted romantic comedy genre and gives far too many opportunities for the film to wander. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine return from Wilder’s The Apartment as, respectively, a former policeman and a prostitute in the disreputable Parisian neighbourhood of Les Halles, where he hatches a devious plan to get her out of the prostitution racket. The lies and impersonations required for his scheme soon escalate, and power much of the film’s last half. All of this is shot in bright colourful tones, with green clothing being strongly associated with Irma. Lemmon is dependably funny, but considering that I don’t like MacLaine all that much, it’s a significant disappointment to learn that the project was originally meant to be for Marilyn Monroe. Adapted from a French stage musical (which explains some of the length without excusing it), Irma la Douce is a reasonably entertaining film, but it does overstay its welcome in ways that Wilder’s top movies don’t.

  • Guarding Tess (1994)

    Guarding Tess (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2018) There’s a whole slew of apolitical politics-adjacent American movies out there, and Guarding Tess has one of the strangest hooks of them all—Nicolas Cage as a Secret Service agent assigned to an exasperating detail as he’s in charge of protecting a widowed First Lady living in a small town. She (played by Shirley MacLaine) often considers her security detail undistinguishable from her serving staff. You can imagine the rest, including a third-act thriller that runs at odds with the generally comic tone of the film up to that point. Of course the secret agent and former first lady will make up and learn lessons about each other—that’s not the point of the film. What Guarding Tess has in abundance is Cage playing off MacLaine, pokes at the reality of a Secret Service team assigned to what they consider to be a dead-end posting, and the minutia of such an arrangement. There’s a real genre twist thirty minutes before the end of the movie as the former first lady is kidnapped, buried underground and then Nicolas Cage has to shoot a toe off a suspect for him to confess the crime. Somehow this ended up in a comedy, but it feels a bit more natural in the movie than described like this. (After all, what would be the point of a security detail if there wasn’t a threat to their client at some point?) I still liked it, but Guarding Tess is almost the very definition of a movie that you shouldn’t watch if there’s anything more pressing to do.

  • Postcards from the Edge (1990)

    Postcards from the Edge (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2018) There’s quite a bit of metafictional context about Postcards from the Edge that make it a fascinating movie for those steeped in Hollywood history. For one thing, it’s not just a movie about a Hollywood actress with addiction issues trying to get back on the right path despite the domineering influence of her mother—it’s also adapted from an autobiographical novel from Carrie Fisher that many saw as a roman-à-clef about her relationship with her own mother Debbie Reynolds. (Fisher herself maintained that it was a novel for a reason, but there are substantial differences between the inward-driven, stylistically experimental novel and the far more conventional film whose script she adapted herself.) Taking all of this rich material and giving it to seasoned actors’ director Mike Nichols seems like a natural fit, even more so when he’s able to count on an impressive gallery of capable actors, staring with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine in the central mother/daughter roles. I don’t particularly like MacLaine in general, but she’s quite good here and Streep has seldom been as funny as in this role. The Hollywood satire circa 1990 is likely to remain more interesting than the familiar dramatic material, but there’s enough here for everyone—including musical numbers. Postcards from the Edge is almost a piece of Hollywood history the more you know about the business and the history, but it’s strong enough to be interesting even to casual viewers.

  • Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

    Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2018) There’s nothing particularly fancy in Two Mules for Sister Sara than a by-the-numbers Western adventure featuring Clint Eastwood, Shirley MacLaine, Mexican rebels and French antagonists. But the details are what matters, and especially the interplay between two actors in fine form. Peak-era Clint Eastwood more or less reprises his man-with-no-name role as a capable loner who comes across a woman being assaulted by bandits. Compelled to help her by her nun’s habit, they then both go on various adventures that end with the defeat of the invading French forces. I’m not a big fan of MacLaine, but she’s pugnacious and likable here as a two-fisted nun. The film does a nice job at pacing its adventures, and features one spectacular train derailment to keep things interesting. Most of Two Mules for Sister Sara has been seen elsewhere, but it’s executed so well that it feels fresh again.

  • The Apartment (1960)

    The Apartment (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, January 2018) For late-twentieth century cinephiles such as myself, Jack Lemmon is first the eponymous Grumpy Old Man, or the miserable salesman of Glengarry Glenn Ross. But this late-career Lemmon is the last act in a long list of roles, and films such as The Apartment (alongside Some Like it Hot and The Odd Couple) do suggest that young Lemmon was the best Lemmon. He’s certainly charming in The Apartment, playing a young man who has struck a most unusual arrangement with his superiors at work: His apartment made available for dalliances, in exchange for professional advancement. The film does begin in firmly comic mode, as the protagonist juggles the schedules of four executives with his own desire to sleep, and then to court an elevator attendant played by Shirley MacLaine. The first half of The Apartment plays as a proto-Mad Men, capped off by a sequence in which Lemmon dons a dapper hat and strolls out like a true New York City professional with a bright future. The look at this slice of 1960 NYC living is terrific and if the film had stopped there, it would have been already worth a look. But there’s a lot of murk under the premise of the film and The Apartment soon heads deeper in those troubled waters, shifting from suggestive comedy to much bleaker romantic drama as the protagonist ends up in romantic conflict with one of his superiors, and then in even darker territory with a suicide attempt that changes everything. Director Billy Wilder had an illustrious career, and the way he shifts adeptly between three subgenres in a single film is a great example of what he could do with difficult material. The Apartment is still unsettling today—less so than upon its release, but it still defies sensibilities. The film’s second half is a great deal less fun than the first, but it does give much of the film’s enduring power.

  • Terms of Endearment (1983)

    Terms of Endearment (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2017) Get your hankies out, because Terms of Endearment is here to make you sob as hard as you can. The story of a relationship between a mother and her daughter spanning decades, this is the kind of slice-of-life movie where mundane details add up to epochal drama. The weight of the passing years heighten the sweep of the drama, but it’s not all wall-to-wall dourness as the film does reach for comedy under writer/director James L. Brooks. Some of the film’s most memorable moments are very funny, although they do take on a more sombre quality knowing how the film ends. Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger both turn in best-of-career performances as the mother/daughter duo, with Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, Danny Devito and John Lightgow all delivering good supporting roles along the way. It’s a kind of A-list picture that big studios don’t make anymore (although you’ll find similar material in independent films) and while it still works today, it’s a kind of movie made for a specific audience—I didn’t respond all that deeply to it, but I suspect that’s because I fall outside its target demographic.

  • In Her Shoes (2005)

    In Her Shoes (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2015)  One of the advantages of going back in time and catching moderately-popular movies from a decade ago is that they can help fills a few gaps along the way.  If I had seen In Her Shoes back in 2005, then Cameron Diaz’s similar turn in 2011’s Bad Teacher may not have been so surprising.  It also helps answer the question “What has Curtis Hanson done since L.A. Confidential?” and “Does Toni Colette look better with or without glasses?” (Answer: “With”, but then again I’m always answering that.)  Otherwise, the most noteworthy thing about In Her Shoes is getting further proof that a romantic melodrama adapted from a book often feels far less formulaic than similar original screenplays.  There’s an added depth and complexity to the story that comes straight from the novel, along with a number of literary devices that for some reason seem more common in adapted screenplays.  (Reading a synopsis of the novel does help in finding out that the screenplay isn’t above some compression and simplification, but that’s how these things go.)  Balancing heartfelt sentiment about long-lost family relationship with sibling rivalry and more straightforward romantic subplots, In Her Shoes doesn’t seem like much, but it lands its emotional beat honestly, takes an expansive left turn past its first act and features a few good performances by Diaz, Colette and acting-her-age Shirley MacLaine.  Hanson’s direction gets the point across effectively, and if the film does feel a bit too long at times, it definitely ends well enough.

  • Bernie (2011)

    Bernie (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2014) Truth is often stranger than fiction, so it’s no surprise to see Bernie work extra-hard at blurring the line between the two in telling us an unusual story of crime and punishment in small-town East Texas.  Blending interviews with real people with fictional re-creation of the events, Bernie is the story of a likable man who ends up shooting a disliked widow.  The public reaction in the community is such that in planning the trial, the District Attorney ends up requesting another venue in order to ensure that his client won’t be pre-emptively acquitted by the jury.  Of course, the fun of the story is in the details, and the way writer/director Richard Linklater ends up presenting this true story through a blend of testimonials and scripted scenes.  Jack Black has a good role as the titular Bernie, earning himself a spot outside the annoyance zone in which his last few roles have landed.  Bernie also features two smaller but showy roles for Shirley McClaine (as the hated widow) and Matthew McConaughey (as the ambitious District Attorney, and another link in the rebirth of his career)  While Bernie isn’t a laugh-a-minute comedy, it’s an often-affectionate look at a small Texan community and the weirdness of true life crime.

  • Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

    Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2011) Remakes should seek to improve on their originals, and the best way to do that is to remake something that failed to fully deliver on its promises.  So it is that if the 2001 remake Ocean’s Eleven is quite a bit better than its original 1960 incarnation, it’s in no small part due to how flawed the first film was.  The idea of robbing several Las Vegas casinos at once is good, but the limits of circa-1960 filmmaking and the indulgences of the film’s production combine to ensure that the film never fully takes off.  Part of the problem is seeing a fifty-year-old film: expectations have risen dramatically in expecting a film to reflect reality, and watching Ocean’s 11 now is a reminder about soundstage filming, languid pacing, unconvincing blocking and non-naturalistic dialogue: The film feels fake even without getting into the very different reality of 1960. Never mind the fashions: how about the casual racism and sexism?  Adding to the film’s very distinctive nature is the nature of the production itself, mixing musical numbers with then-celebrity cameos, often to puzzling effect such as when Shirley MacClaine stops the film cold for two minutes’ worth of drunken lushness, or when Sammy Davis Jr. allows himself a tune or two.  Still, even a flawed Ocean’s 11 is worth watching: “E-O-Eleven” sticks in mind, the time-warp effect is fascinating (from 1960, keep in mind that World War Two was less than fifteen years distant –shorter than the Gulf War is to 2011), the coolness of the characters still works and if the film itself feels artificial and interminable, some individual moments stand out.  The remake is sufficiently different (and better) that it doesn’t spoil the original.  The “Danny Ocean box-set” DVD comes with a welcome assortment of extra features, including an audio commentary.