Barb Lien-Cooper
Movie Reviews: Alfie/All About Eve/All That Jazz
Barb Lien-Cooper
Alfie (1966)
Michael Caine, Shelly Winters, Jane Asher
I remember Jude Law's girlfriend saying that one of the reasons that the remake of Alfie was softened up was that Michael Caine wasn't a very sympathetic anti-hero, which made the original movie hard for her to watch. She's right, of course, which is why the original Alfie is such fascinating viewing. Michael Caine's performance is as compelling as it is uncomfortable for viewers to experience. Alfie is definitely the picture that made an excellent actor into a star. There is nothing incomplete or left out in his performance. It is unflinching, horrifying, and quite hilarious in a hideous way. He is totally unafraid to make his anti-hero downright villainous at times, all while justifying his actions in a way that makes for total understanding of the character. The only person Alfie fools in the end is himself, only he doesn't know it...yet. Perhaps when he's older and gray he will remember what they said (to quote Ray Davies' song "Dandy"), "that two girls are too many, three's a crowd, and four, you're dead."
If you don't already know about Alfie, the plot goes something like this: Alfie is a man about town who seemingly drifts from one situation to another in life because he refuses to make any commitments, whether they be to jobs or to women. Always wanting his freedom, Alfie plays around with married women, single women, women with boyfriends...women, women, women. While aggressively heterosexual, Alfie doesn't actually seem to like or respect females very much. He often calls a likely lass "it" instead of "she," for instance. He is amoral, faithless, and just plain not-very-likable. He preys on women who have low self-esteem, women in bad situations, and so forth. He betrays friends, acquaintances, girlfriends... everybody, really. Yet, in a stunning case of what can only be seen as drama's version of instant karma, he never seems to come out the winner in his life. He loses a baby son who he's actually quite fond of because he can't show the mother of the child the most basic of courtesies. And that's just for starters.
Alfie is someone who knows women's weaknesses, as well as how to fool husbands, and how to pick up any chickie he wants. The problem is, even when a relationship seems halfway like a keeper, he almost intentionally blows it. He can't keep a female for very long, then wonders why he's lonely.
So, why on earth do I like this film?
I like this film because of the performances, as well as the always sharp script. I also like how it encapsulates 1966 in a perfect moment, by focusing on an attitude and an arrogance in a certain type of human being. We get more of the "real" 1960s from this small but excellent film than we do from perhaps more important movies of the era ( e.g. Easy Rider, to name one).
I also like this film because it doesn't pull punches. It tells us to take or leave this man as he is, as he's at least true to himself and his somewhat messed-up value system. Alfie comes from an era where an anti-hero doesn't have to play to the audience's sympathies. And the movie only benefits from it. We're in an era of film-making nowadays where a great film had to be remade in a way that the lead character be lovable, softer, more sweet-natured than in the original. And which do you think makes a better film---the one with the working class bastard or the one that looks like it was filmed as a fashion travelogue for a character with no edge to him?
As an added bonus: The jazz soundtrack to the original Alfie is really hip. AND Cher sings one of my favorite Burt Bacharach songs at the end at the end of the 1966 version.
All About Eve (1950)
Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders
For a classic, All About Eve is far from perfect. It's often campy, over the top, stagy (not the worst thing to say about a movie about theatre), the script is slightly less intelligent than it thinks it is (okay, it did win an Oscar, but still) and...
Screw it, it's still a classic. And deservedly so.
All About Eve is about a young actress named Eve (an excellent Anne Baxter) who manipulates her way to the top of the theatre circuit. Along the way, she steps over those who befriended her, she lies like a rug, she has an affair with a theatre professional whose wife showed Eve nothing but kindness, and she does so with the sweetest grin and a husky but breathy voice that oozes false sincerity that is almost sexy to hear.
Of course, you've probably already heard about how great Bette Davis is as the aging actress, Margo Channing. Margo is the role that saved dear Bette's career, after all. And Bette acts as if her professional life depends on it. As an actress, Better Davis is a powerhouse that can light up a city.
Yet, strangely enough, my sympathies have always been with Eve. The script does everything it can to make us see Eve as a little upstart, not half as deserving of the spotlight as good old Margo. Eve is definitely the villainess, here, seemingly using guts to substitute for actually "deserving" theatre's highest honors. Yet, there is something about Anne Baxter's performance that always makes me question whether that's really so. Everything in the movie makes theatre out to be a cut throat business, yet when a young woman actually gets out the shiv to cut some throats, she's the person to blame? I always wonder how Margo made her way up into the higher levels of theatre if not the same way as Eve? There's a lot more parallels to the film's two stars than at first glance.
While a classic, portions of All About Eve do not age well. One of the more jarring bits to modern ears is to hear Margo talk about how she'd rather be a wife and not be alone than to doggedly pursue her career any more. But, you have to realize that All About Eve is a product of an era where being a wife was the noblest profession. And who knows? Maybe Margo actually has gone as far as she can go as an actress. There is such a thing as retiring with dignity.
There are tons of performances that I could tell you about, but I'll be here all day if I do. However, I'd be amiss if I didn't give a shout out to the always unctuously entertaining George Sanders as the theatre critic, cum Greek chorus. He's really the only man in the film that can hold his own against the marvelously bitchy women onscreen. In spite of Bette Davis getting the "bumpy ride speech", I've always thought Sanders got the best lines in the film. Or maybe it's just how deliciously icy his voice sounds when he says his lines.
All That Jazz (1979)
Roy Scheider
You can say a lot of bad things about All That Jazz. You can say that director Bob Fosse's foray into his own personal mythos is incredibly self-indulgent. You can say that it's overly long. You can say that it's dated. You can say that the "Bye Bye Love" dance number at the end needs trimming.
But, be that as it may, it's still brave, compelling film-making all these years later.
The plot: Broadway musical director Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider as a thinly veiled Bob Fosse) is a womanizer, a druggie, and a thorough bastard. He hurts his ex-wife, his child, his girlfriend, and most people he meets along the way. For all his faults, he's also amazingly talented and innovative, just like Fosse was in real life. Unfortunately, he's also got a bum ticker. As he indulges his way through the days, as he works himself to death for very unappreciative backers of his shows, he starts wondering if death isn't what he's been looking for all of his life.
I don't know where to start with the praise here. Maybe I should talk about the dynamo Roy Scheider is in the role of Gideon. You used to see Scheider in a lot of the best films of the 1970's (Klute, The French Connection, etc.), but All That Jazz is where he really shines most brightly. He is loathsome in the most delightful way possible. When he's on screen, it's impossible not to pay attention to him. While never trying to be likable, there's something about the way he plays the character that makes you forgive him for all his faults (just like his loved ones do) because he's born to be creative. His one love, besides "easeful death" (played by a luscious Jessica Lange), is the arts.
Next, praise has to be given to Bob Fosse's script. It is as sharper than an ungrateful child. I've rarely seen a blacker black comedy, to say the least. The work brims with intelligence and life, which is ironic considering how much this movie is about approaching death.
Bob Fosse's direction is also marvelous.
It's odd that I'm so into this movie, in a way. I'm not a fan of Bob Fosse's other movies. Sweet Charity is a mess. Lenny left me cold. I couldn't sit through more than five minutes of Cabaret. I'm not even that much into his choreography. But, All That Jazz is different, for some reason. I think it's because of the ambitions of the film to really examine what makes a great creator and a terrible human being tick. I find works about creative people being creative (and the creative process in general) to be fascinating, I guess. Maybe I also like All That Jazz because it's so unflinching in its autobiographical fictions. How many creators do you know who would (or could) make a film showing how rotten they are as people, but how great they are as artists?
I call All That Jazz a rare "musical for people who hate musicals". Oh, there are others, of course---Singing in the Rain, On the Town, An American in Paris. But All That Jazz is one of the few that makes a musical into a real drama, then turns around and crushes you with black humor.
You have to be a certain type of adventurous person to like this film. You have to be interested in the creative process, you have to like a hard to like lead character, and you have to be totally willing to take this film for the insane near acid trip it is. I won't tell you that you'll have fun watching this film.
But it will probably keep you watching until the last frame.
