Beheld Holds the Pilgrims in an Unforgiving Light

 

BEHELD (2021)

By TaraShea Nesbit

Penguin, 266 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

If you need a reminder that historical figures seldom wear halos, Beheld will rattle you back on track. This slim volume by TaraShea Nesbit is fictional, but rings true.

 

Since 1971, when historian John Demos tried to rescue the Pilgrims and Puritans a bit from the perception that they were bigoted, other scholars have demonstrated that Plymouth Colony or the Massachusetts Bay settlements were commonwealths in name only. The latter is certainly Nesbit's view. Her tale begins in The Netherlands, where William Bradford's followers had fled after leaving the Church of England.* The beautiful Dorothy, who is in an arranged marriage to the Rev. Bradford,  and plain-faced Alice are best friends. Against her wishes, Dorothy boarded The Mayflower to help build a Separatist colony in North America. Dorothy drowns when the ship made landfall in today's Provincetown and the question is whether it was a suicide or a homicide. Three years later, Bradford sends for Alice to be his new wife, also against her desire.

 

In 1620, The Mayflower sailed on to a spot dubbed Plymouth for the English port from which boats left the Old World for the New. At some point during the journey, the Rev. Bradford is said to have penned “The Mayflower Compact,” a treatise on how settlers were to live together in their new home. Whether he read this document to those aboard The Mayflower is shrouded in myth. (If you care, there's no truth whatsoever to Plymouth Rock as the final landfall site. The legend of Plymouth Rock emerged 121 years after the fact.) What we do know is that the persecuted Pilgrims turned the tables on anyone who didn't share their views: non-church members, newer arrivals, indentured servants, and Wampanoag natives. (You can add the First Thanksgiving to a list of events that are more legend than fact.) Today there's a statue in Plymouth to intrepid Pilgrim women, but Nesbit's Alice Bradford might have laughed at it.

 

 

 

Nesbit tells her tale through alternating viewpoints from Dorothy, Alice, John Billington, his wife Eleanor, and John Newcomen, the last who became the Colony's first murder victim. The Billingtons wanted more and appropriated fields that had been promised to and cleared by Newcomen. That really happened. Billington took advantage of shifting political alliances, toadied up to Myles Standish, and literally got away with murder. Nesbit alternates points of view, but hers is mainly a story about women told in their voices. Very little is flattering to the Pilgrims. Plymouth is a place where a 13-year-old girl is raped, self-righteousness reigns, and women are pawns in games devised by men. The crucial question is how women negotiated their status. Eleanor does so by hitching her fate to that of her ambitious husband; Alice through bursts of defiance and outspokenness. Nesbit speculates about Alice's character but it certainly couldn't have been easy being a stepmother to Dorothy's two sons or the wife of a stern minister.

 

I reiterate that this is a novel, not the work of a professional historian, but Nesbit's extrapolations fit within a society marked by vengefulness, discontent, and hypocrisy. As we observe with distressing regularity today, much can be justified by those who are convinced they are doing God's will. Nesbit writes in concise language and constructs a plausible emotional world for women in a new land that nonetheless governed through old-style patriarchy. Nor was Nesbit fanciful in imagining a precarious world in which casual cruelty was an element of life itself. Plymouth Colony was certainly a better place to be than Jamestown, which was far more violent and starvation ran rampant. Still, Plymouth was no utopia for men or women. As I used to say on a regular basis in the classroom, history is messier than myth. You could subtitle Nesbit's novel Pride and Sanctimony.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Quick primer: Pilgrims and Puritans would not be interchangeable until 1691, when the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay absorbed Plymouth in the aftermath of wars against Natives (King Philip's War). The Pilgrims felt the Church of England was so corrupt they “separated” themselves from it and were anathema in a world in which the ruler (the king) determined the religion of England and its colonies. Those in Massachusetts Bay (Boston, Salem and beyond) agreed the Church of England was debased but did not withdraw from it; they hoped to purify it from within, hence “Puritans.”

 

Get Carter a Violent Late Noir

 

GET CARTER (1971)

Directed by Mike Hodges

MGM-EMI, 112 minutes, R (violence, sex, language)

★★★

 

 

 

I recently opened my morning paper and saw that British director/writer Mike Hodges had died. Most of his films and TV productions were forgettable. Many critics, though, consider his directorial debut and script writing for Get Carter to have been his signature piece. It was the last film made by MGM’s U.K. Borehamwood division.

 

Michael Caine stars as Jack Carter. Caine later gained a reputation as a guy who doesn’t need to read a script before accepting a part, but back in 1971 he was considered a first-rate actor. His Jack Carter is a chilling portrait of a mobster with zero sense of remorse or humanity. He is a key figure in the Fletcher family London syndicate, but the death of his brother Frank sends him back to Newcastle, where he got his start in all things tawdry.

 

Jack isn’t buying the tale that Frank died in a drunk driving accident and, though the Fletchers warn Jack not to cause trouble with Newcastle boss Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne) and even send two toughs to dissuade him, Jack is intent upon avenging Frank’s murder. Jack didn’t even particularly like his brother but it’s a family thing, ‘ya know. He does have some fondness for Frank’s daughter, Doreen (Petra Markham), whom he initially sees as an innocent.

 

It would be safe to say there are no innocents in this film. It was made in 1971, when the censorship and code cuffs had come off of moviemaking. Like numerous films in the early 1970s, Get Carter is violent, titillating nudity was still shocking, and few directors felt the need to inject redeeming social value into a film. That’s why most of the characters are as amoral as Jack.

 

Jack got his start in Newcastle, but he’s been away for a while and local thugs have moved on. It’s thus uncertain which (if any) of Jack’s former associates is feeding him information about his brother and which are setting him up. Jack has a way of dealing with double-crossers, though. Jack doubles down on his quest for revenge when he views a porno film with Doreen having it off with one of those former associates. It hardly matters that he’s having sex with Glenda (Geraldine Moffat) at the time–she a rescuer or maybe another double-crosser. Jack takes no chances and stuffs her in the boot of his car before heading out to check new leads.

 

He will chase clues that take him to Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley), another connected guy whose front is an amusement park business. Every move confirms Jack’s intuition that everyone is out to get Carter. He’s used to it; after all, he was sleeping with Anna (Britt Ekland), the girlfriend on one of his London bosses. All roads lead back to Kinnear, or is Kinnear and the Fletchers? It doesn’t matter. Like I said, Jack has a way of dealing with double-crossers that does not involve sending them advance happy birthday wishes.

Caine is convincing in his role, so much so that if he had rung the front doorbell after it came out, you’d probably run to the backdoor. This is a collateral damage film that drew parallels to Blaxploitation films, the likes of which were seldom over until most of the characters were bumped off. Happy ending? Ummm… no!

 

Aside from Caine’s performance, why watch such a movie? Another reason is that it’s often seen as a late film noir film. That’s true if we mean that it’s gritty and dark. It might be what some noir films would have been had there been no censorship during their heyday. Get Carter’s visual style is also classic 1970s in that it favored odd camera angles and a narrative structure that was more episodic than linear. The latter could also be a reason not to see it if that’s not you cup of bourbon. The pacing does make Get Carter seem dated, as does a script that requires viewers to figure out who’s who on their own.

 

In my estimation, though it’s a period piece, it’s worth trying. You won’t like the characters, but you’re not supposed to. I wouldn’t call Get Carter a masterpiece, Mr. Hodges’ death notwithstanding, but it’s often thrilling and drives home the point that crime seldom pays. Mostly it’s nice to see Michael Caine act instead of going through the motions.

 

 

Rob Weir   

January 2023 Music Reviews: Julian Taylor, Lodestar, Voyagers, Fenya Rai, Ivy Ryann, Etc.

 

It’s time for another cleanout. You’re welcome for eliminating most of the Clonevilles, those sound-alikes who think their road to Nashville is to sound like everyone else trying to make it there. These days I only review them I find something of interest in their work.

 

I only needed a few tracks to once again sing the praises of Julian Taylor. His latest, Beyond the Reservoir is a departure. The vibe of “Wide Awake” reminded me of something Garnet Rogers might have done if the lyrics were darker and we replaced Taylor’s smoothness with Garnet’s booming power. They’re both Canadian, though. (Taylor is of First Nations and Carib descent.) Beyond the Reservoir finds Taylor shifting from his earlier folk approach to something more rootsy and soulful. ”Opening the Sky” unfolds as if he’s going full troubadour, but he turns up the juice and immerses himself in an electric mix. Check him out in his coolest goes-down- easy mode on his official video of "Seeds." To invoke one of my favorite descriptors, he’s the real deal.

 

Lodestar Trio consists of Britain’s Max Baillie on violin, Norway’s Olva Laksengård on the hardanger fiddle, and Sweden’s Erik Rydvall on the nyckelharpa. That alone intrigues as all three instruments look like violins, but the second has internal strings that resonate harmonically, the third has a row of keys to alter the pitch, and each has a unique sound. Their recording From Bach to Folk indicates their aim, though the title is slightly deceptive as the music is more drawing room than town hall. Rearranged cello suites and Baroque arrangements dominate with forays into “folk” tunes as interpreted by the bewigged set. They arrange Couperin’s “Les Barricades Mystérieuses” for their instruments, a melody originally written for harpsichord, and give similar treatments to Bach, my favorite being a musette that found old Johann doing his crossover bit 270 years ago. For the record, their take on “Deliverance” has nothing to do with the film of the same name. The closest they get to “folk” as we think of that term today is a couple of Norwegian traditionals. Here’s one.

 

 A much better-defined crossover album comes from the trio Voyagers. Their album Chasing the Light combines the talents of Yocomba Sissoko, a Malian singer and kora player; Edith Letner on alto and soprano saxophone; and guitarist Banning Eyre. The last name might sound familiar; Eyre is former print media music critic who produces NPR’s Afropop program, and is the founder of Lion Song Records. Chasing the Light shines with talents of all three and puts the “world” back into world music. There aren’t a lot of tracks available online but “Today is a New Day” gives you an idea of what I mean. “Solole” will give you a taste of Sissoko’s gentle vocals and you can hear more tracks on Bandcamp. I love the way Voyagers meld the hypnotic grooves of West African music with the exuberance of modified klezmer music and Eyre’s grounding guitar. This album and Taylor’s are my favorites for January.

 

Fenya Rai is a deliberately rough-edged, irreverent group of Catalan band of musical outlaws that befits this rebellious region of Spain. If you like things silky smooth, you probably won’t like songs like “les rondes del vi",” but the raucous accordion-driven "Pastor Cabrer” might put you in mind of a Cajun party that got out of hand! "baixeu al carrer” is another of the 11 tracks on Placa Major. Truth be told, the entire album is like these three. I enjoyed the insouciance of making a record that makes no effort to use studio mixes to smooth out its ragged edges. I suspect, though, that non-Catalan speakers–that includes me–will find that a little goes a long way. 

 

Ivy Ryann grew up in a fundamentalist Virginian family. Her A Nonaggressive Extreme Violation of Boundaries holds promise, despite glitches. “Driveway Prayers” is only tangentially linked to her background; it’s mostly about finding understanding and safe places. Her most “extreme violation of boundaries” is a cover of the Johnny Cash standard “Walk the Line,” which she slows down and plays on the piano. It won’t make you forget Cash, but it’s a bold try. “The Weight” is an original, not the song popularized by The Band. She offers two versions of it, one with electric backing and another with an orchestral take. In order to soar, Ryann needs to emote more clearly and can the sonic drone and shapeless instrumental of songs like “In Wanting.” It’s always a good idea to fledge before you try to fly.  

 

 

Mixed Feelings:

 

The three didn’t set me on fire, but they might light yours.

 

Teddy Grossman is a white guy who loves old-style soul music. “Leave It on the Line” comes complete with soulful backup singers. “What I Owe” is a bit less raucous but is cut from similar cloth, with some mouth harp tossed in. He even tickles the ivories on “Soon Come,” his album title track. I confess that the LA-based Grossman isn’t the kind of stuff I’ve listened to since the days of Bill Withers–too much high octane singing–but he’s very good at what he does.

 

 

Gotta be honest about The Deer’s Cry. Heal the Heart was billed as a blend of Celtic, Americana, and world music. My ears would say it’s a mash of Christian, New Age, and Japanese-style vocals. Harper/vocalist Karen Ballew anchors a quartet that includes a bass player, a banjo artist, and a percussionist. Ballew’s vocals are so high they strike me as strident, but I’m fine if you think they’re different in a good way. Try “I Want to Get Through to You” and “I See His Blood Upon the Rose.”

 

 

Rachel McIntyre Smith has room for growth. I think there’s a good voice in the development, but her songs left me waiting to see where she lands not where she is. I liked her fiddler, but that’s probably not where she wanted me to land. Try “First Love” or “High School Reunion.” I’m willing to believe I just have no desire to relive either of these things.

 

Rob Weir

Leif Enger's Off-beat Novel

 

SO BRAVE, YOUNG, AND HANDSOME (2008)

By Leif Enger

Thorndike Press, 286 pages

★★★★

 

 

 

What an odd and delightful book! So Brave, Young, and Handsome came out in 2008, when author Leif Enger was still working for Minnesota Public Radio. It often reads like a young adult novel, though it's not one—more like what you might get if you crossed YA wonderment with a Lake Woebegone tale, Huckleberry Finn, and a gentle send up of a Zane Grey Western.

 

It is set in 1915, a time in which automobiles and horses coexist, though the latter are more reliable. Monte Becket, his wife Susannah, and their son Redstart live along the Cannon River, a for-real tributary of the Mississippi in southeastern Minnesota. Monte penned a Western novel, Martin Bligh, that caught fire and his publisher is clamoring for more. Alas, Monte is having trouble capturing lightening in a jar a second time. Susannah retains faith in him, but Monte trashes draft after draft rejected by editors who want another Martin Bligh.

 

As such stories go, a mysterious stranger comes into their lives, a boat builder going by the handle of Glendon Hale. He lives in a converted barn downstream, but becomes a frequent dinner guest at the Becket household and a man Monte considers his friend. Glendon has traveled and his tales also delight young Redstart. One day, though, Glendon announces he is leaving, ostensibly to travel to Mexico to apologize to Blue, the love he left behind six years earlier. When he asks Monte if he'd like to come along, Susannah encourages him to go for a few weeks, thinking it might help him get over writer's block.

 

That's one way of looking at it. Their journey begins on water, but is abandoned when their small rowboat is nearly wiped out on the Mississippi by some rogues. Or are they pursuers? Surprise! Glendon is a wanted man with more aliases than a Russian spy. A man named Charlie Siringo is after Glendon, though he's also a cad, an ex-Pinkerton Detective who is a self-appointed freelance bounty hunter. Monte considers hightailing it back to Susannah, but he's such a milquetoast that you can convince him to do anything. Wouldn't wish to offend, after all, even if it means he has to come up with his own aliases, eat stolen food, and tell a few fibs.

 

A madcap journey unfolds in which one oddball character after another appears. There is, for instance, Glendon's friend Darlys De Foe, a sharp shooter with failing eyesight; Hood Roberts, a youngster who sells Monte a Packard and wants to ride along to a circus in Oklahoma; and Ern Swilling, an actor who will break his neck and wonder why he is seeing in back of himself. Is anyone on the up an up? Nope.

 

So Brave, Young, and Handsome is a series of comic misadventures, several of them tinged with tragedy. The latter, though, don't sting because the novel reads like a fable. Of what? Good question. It is surely the passing of one way of life with another having a difficult time being born. Sometimes it seems to be about redemption, though the lesson fails to take more often than it does. Plus, even if you were to assign some moral to it, the novel's tone is too offbeat for your judgment to stand up under cross examination. It's ultimately about how Monte finds his mojo but mainly it's a wacky road trip that ends in California. Glendon will seek out Blue–her name is actually Arãnado–but this isn't a hearts-and-coronets kid of book; it's too quirky for such things. Will Glendon reform and find peace? The book is too idiosyncratic for that as well.

 

Enger's book is also a fable in that normal logic is suspended. There's even a character who simply refuses to die. Yes, what we have here is a book in which the best odds lie with the improbable. Huckleberry Finn, of course, was Mark Twain's reworking of The Odyssey and you might recall from whenever you last read any of it, that lots of spurious things occurred in it. (If you don't remember, think the Coen Brothers' take, O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

 

I laughed aloud many times during my reading of So Brave, Young, and Handsome. I was late to the party, but they saved me a slice of the icebox cake. In all honesty, I'm still not sure whether or not I should be ashamed of myself for liking this book so much.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

Undine: Myth or a Gal Wronged?

UNDINE (2020)

Directed by Christian Petzold

Bettina Böler, 90 minutes, Not-rated (brief nudity, sex)

In German/French with subtitles

★★★ ½ 

 

 

 If you'd like to try a film unlike the usual fare, the German film Undine will answer and then some. But read my comments first or you might be lost.

 

Undine is the main character. The is significant. An undine (or ondine) is a mythological creature that morphed into numerous folk tales. Insofar as can be determined, the ancient Greek alchemist/philosopher Paracelsus gave us the first complete view. He thought the world was composed of earth, water, air, and fire, each of which had groupings of elemental spirits misunderstood by humans. Undines were river nymphs—Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid was based upon them—that lived for a very long time. They were ultimately doomed, however, because they lack souls. The way out was to marry mortals, which conferred souls but shortened their lives. The kicker was that undines bonded for life. Do not cross one; if she says she will kill you if you leave her, be very afraid!

 

We meet Undine Wibeau (Paula Beer) as an architecture and urban development expert lecturing at a Berlin museum. She is in a troubled relationship with Johannes (Jacob Matschenz), a married man, who tells her that he's breaking off their affair. Undine coldly informs Johannes that she will kill him, a threat he dismisses as histrionic. That seems to be the case, as shortly thereafter she meets Christoph (Franz Rogowski). He is attracted to her and convinces her to have coffee with him. Ironically, that scene involves the explosion of a giant fish tank, an event that actually happened in Berlin in 2022. A floor full of glass, water, and dead fish gets them booted from the cafe, but they begin a relationship. Christoph is an underwater welding expert and a klutz, but he is a sweet man very much in love with Undine. He is currently repairing damaged joints on a dam on the short but deep Lingese River, which he and his diving team partner Monika (Maryam Zaree) have done before. He has several times spotted a giant catfish that he dubs “Big Gunther.”

 

Undine falls for Christoph, though when Johannes tells Undine he wants her back, what's gal to do? Undine is slow-paced, but quite a lot happens. Some of it seems head-scratching but it helps to remember that this is a place where folklore and filmmaking intersect. That is to say, some things stand as metaphors rather than depictions of reality. It's a clever ruse of the part of director Christian Petzold. If you think about it, all movies are artifice, so why not blend the expected and the fanciful? Likewise, why impose normal logic or explain everything? Is Undine an actual undine, or just an angry young woman with an odd name looking for love in the wrong place?

 

This is a film whose tension derives from its relationships and the circumstances of its characters. That's another way of saying that it holds viewers in a psychological grip rather than milking cheap thrills from action sequences. Once you give up the need for the narrative to make literal sense, you can concentrate on the performances. None are better than Beer in the title role. She is one of those actors whom the camera loves, riveting and magnetic. Each year the Berlin Film Festival doles out awards for outstanding work. Its highest honor is called the Golden Bear Grand Jury prize for the best film. Undine did not win the Golden Bear, but Paula Beer received a Silver Bear as best actress. You need not speak a word of German to understand why she won.

 

 Petzold made a unique and provocative film. Don't be surprised if your first reaction is that you didn’t like or get Undine. It is the sort of project that needs to settle in and it will. You will find it rattling around in your head days after you've seen it and some (but not all) things will come into sharper focus. Perhaps the film didn't need to be quite as enigmatic as it was, but it’s not necessary to decode each frame of Undine. Any spin you put on the movie is fine. It's certainly not a cookie cutter project and of that we can be grateful.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Mercury Pictures Presents Too Ambitious but a Good Read

 

 

MERCURY PICTURES PRESENTS (2022)

By Anthony Marra

Hogarth/Penguin Random House, 408 pages.

★★★★  

 

 

 

I adored Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra, though it is what I call half of an epic. By that I mean it should have been either twice as long or have jettisoned half of its plot lines because there’s too much going on to be contained in 400 pages.

 

It is a film about a Hollywood studio, though not Paramount, MGM, Universal, or Twentieth Century Fox. The 1930s into the 1950s is often interpreted as a Hollywood golden age. From the standpoint of movie quality that is perhaps true, but there were obstacles to be considered such as the impact of two world wars and a little thing called the Great Depression. It wasn't so glamorous to work in the movies either. Only stars and big companies came through those years intact, and not even they were unscathed.

 

Mercury Pictures Presents is about a second-tier studio that didn't have surefire box office stars. (One suspects that RKO was one of Marra's inspirations; it often leaned upon Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre repertory company for acting talent.) Even in its heyday Mercury was a cut-rate concern. It was owned by two eccentric brothers, Art and Ned Feldman, who simultaneously love and despise each other; lately they opt for the latter option and engage in tit for tat games. Mercury maintains a staff that ranges from disgruntled to trapped. Its best talent is Eddie Lu, who would like to do Chekhov, but as a Chinese American he is relegated to portraying Yellow Peril types such as an evil Chinaman or a Japanese villain. Maria Legana is a resident alien and Eddie's illicit lover.* She also has a couple of maddening Italian aunts who don't understand why she's not married and continues to work in the office of Mercury Pictures. Add to the wild menagerie of characters several displaced Europeans working for bargain basement wages, a major character who literally isn't who he is, and an American gangster who runs afoul of Italian mobsters. This is merely the short list of the strange characters in a novel that mixes drama, humor, acerbic dialogue, scheming, heartbreak, delusions, and sweetness and (mostly) gets away with it.

 

Mercury Pictures once did moderately well. Its current fate, though, isn't on the screen, but on a battlefield pitting Artie against Ned. In the good old days, “Artie” took care of movie making in California, and Ned stayed in New York City to write checks and keep the books. Recently, though, Ned has come to California with the intention of wrecking Mercury Pictures in a grab-the-money-and-go maneuver. Should the studio fortunes pick up, Plan B is to push Artie out of the business. 

 

To be fair, Artie is an oddball. He keeps a rack of toupees to fit every occasion and has names for each: the Heavyweight, the Casanova, the Edison, the Mephistopheles, and so forth. Were it not for the command-by-fake-obedience acumen of Maria, Mercury Pictures wouldn't be worth a roll of used celluloid. She's so valuable that even Ned will try to blackmail her rather than let her take another job. Rest assured; she’s not the only one being extorted. 

 

All of this alone would have been literary gold, but Marra adds other layers. Much of the novel's action takes place in Italy, both during Mussolini's rise to power and again during World War Two. These sections involve everything from assumed identities, a stolen car, an ever-patient Italian American mother, an accidental cameraman who wants to emulate Robert Capa, and falsehoods that become truths in surprising ways. 

 

Marra adds even other subplots, including the construction of detailed sets to be destroyed for less than noble purposes, movie razzle dazzle, an FBI investigation, an Italian policeman, and a story about Louis Harrington, a black GI whose tale parallels that of Dorie Miller, but without Miller's heroic ending.** As you can probably tell, there are so many irons in the fire that some of them seem tacked on. Frankly, some of the novel is a mess, though credit goes to Marra that he pulls out of such moments with less damage than is done to Mercury Pictures. 

 

Luckily, Marra's novel has memorable characters, inspired silliness, labyrinthine backstabbing plotting, and shifting winds that make an enjoyable read even if you get lost. If you do , my best advice is to take the lead from Vincent, he who would be Robert Capa. He made an analogy to between one of Capo's photos and Mercury Pictures: “The less you saw, the better it looked.”

 

Rob Weir

 

* Illicit because the laws in many parts of the country forbade interracial relationships.

** Miller was a black ship’s cook who manned an anti-aircraft gun during Pearl Harbor when its white gunner was killed.

Funny Face is a Dinosaur!

 

FUNNY FACE (1957)

Directed by Stanley Donen

Paramount, 103 minutes, Not-rated.

★

 

 

 

Audrey Hepburn was an icon and Fred Astaire one of the smoothest dancers and leading men in Hollywood history. Despite that, some films wear like iron and others are pieces of disintegrating tulle from bygone costume failures. Funny Face is one of the latter.

 

This musical comedy began life as a 1927 Broadway play and that's about the time that Astaire was young enough to have been involved in such a project. When it was turned into a movie 30 years later, Astaire was 57-years-old, which made his romance with 28-year-old Audrey Hepburn so creepy that not even dollops of Paris and Hollywood magic could gloss it. Nor were Ira and George Gershwin at the top of their game when they reworked songs from the show and wrote new ones for the film. Only “How Long Has This Been Going On” had much of a shelf life and it only after later being re-tailored as a smoky torch ballad. (“S'Wonderful” was popular for about half a season.) Watching Funny Face now embodies the British term naff, meaning insipid.

 

I grant that it had wonderful set design. The story revolves around Quality Magazine, a fashion rag along the lines of Harper's Bazaar or Vogue. It is simultaneously an advertisement and a lampoon of such publications. Editor Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) is a stand-in for Diana Vreeland and Dick Avery (Astaire) of photographer Richard Avedon. Maggie is bored by the magazine's new issue, the setup for the opening musical number “Think Pink” in which she successfully convinces American women that pink is the only color they should wear (though she hates it). Thompson's romp in the high-contrast minimalist office is visually stunning.

 

Still, Maggie thinks the magazine needs intellectual heft but her models, including Marion (Dovima, one of several actual models in the film), are airheads who wouldn't know Plato from Play-Doh. She dispatches Dick to scout locations for a makeover and he and his pink-clad female crew commandeer a Greenwich Village philosophy bookstore. They rearrange books, and make a mess over the feeble protests of mousy clerk Jo Stockton (Hepburn). Jo is appalled by the vacuousness of the fashion world and is devoted to an empathicalism worldview, especially as espoused by French thinker Professor Flostre. (It's basically empathy draped in mumbo jumbo.) Jo's life is disrupted again when Dick convinces Maggie that Jo's “funny face” is exactly what Quality needs.

 

How do you convince a beatnik intellectual like Jo to become a supermodel? A trip to Paris, of course. The magazine wants her to debut the new line of French designer Paul Duval (Robert Flemyng [sic]) but Jo relishes a chance to hang out in smoky cafes and perhaps meet Flostre. Add musical numbers, a burgeoning romance between Jo and Dick, contrivances that keep them apart, fashion runway scenes, and the illusion that Jo and Dick are ill-suited, and that's Funny Face in a nutshell. It's A Star in Born in 1950s couture blended with a bit of Romeo and Juliet.

 

Astaire was past his prime in 1957. His dancing seemed limp and lifeless, even when he pulled cool moves with an umbrella. His acting was equally flat. The less said about Hepburn's spasmodic cafe moves the better. (If you think Maynard G. Krebs on the Dobie Gillis sitcom demeaned the Beats, it's reverential by contrast.) Hepburn was, of course, cute as a button-festooned rabbit, but her dancing also invites the descriptor naff.

 

In its day, Funny Face got good reviews, with only the London Times having the courage to dismiss it as fluffy nonsense. Audrey Hepburn became a beloved screen star, which helps explain why Funny Face is often accorded “classic” status. Don’t be fooled; this fashion-driven antique is like finding an old snapshot of yourself attired in clothing you'd deny ever having worn. Aside from eye-candy sets, one of its few pleasures is watching Kay Thompson connive, throw fits, and dance. If her name sounds familiar, she was also the author of the children's book series Eloise.

 

At the risk of offending anyone in a May-December relationship, the wooing of Hepburn by Astaire is more than distressing; it's thoroughly unconvincing and could have only been made during that part of the 1950s in which a woman “needed” a man and anyone who showed interest would do. Hepburn falls for Astaire after one kiss, her first we are led to believe. Because, of course, who would want to kiss Hepburn? (Take a number!) Funny Face is an artifact from the past best left in a film vault.

 

Rob Weir