Next Lobotomy Room Film Club ... Desire (1936) on 15 February 2024

“Marlene Dietrich, with her pencil-line arched eyebrows, as the most elegantly amusing international jewel thief ever. She steals a pearl necklace in Paris and speeds toward Spain; on her way she has a series of encounters with Gary Cooper, a motor engineer from Detroit who is on holiday. Produced by Ernst Lubitsch, for Paramount, and directed by Frank Borzage, this is a polished light comedy in the "continental" style - a sophisticated romantic trifle, with Dietrich more chic and modern than in her von Sternberg pictures. When she eyes Cooper, she's so captivating, you almost feel sorry for him; there's an image of her standing against French doors that is simply peerlessly sexy. But you can also see why this European sophisticate longs for the American innocent. Cooper is a bit coy and rambunctious in his Americanness but wearing narrow-tailored suits and with his hair sleek he's the ideal Art Deco hero. And he's great when he leans close to Dietrich and says, dreamily, "All I know about you is you stole my car and I'm insane about you." When he's being threatened by her crooked associate (John Halliday), who remarks, tauntingly, "One mustn't underestimate America - it's a big country," he bends forward and says, "Six foot three."”

/ Pauline Kael’s review of Desire (1936) /

Considering the February film club almost coincides with Valentine’s Day and to prove that even Lobotomy Room can occasionally raise the tone, on 15 February we whisk you away to The Spanish Riviera for sumptuous 1936 romantic screwball comedy Desire! Gary Cooper stars as Tom Bradley, a naïve American automotive engineer who becomes entangled with Marlene Dietrich’s enigmatic Madeleine Beaupré – described by Pauline Kael as “the most elegantly amusing jewel thief ever.” Directed by Frank Borzage, with lavish costumes by Travis Banton and songs by Frederick Hollander (who wrote all of Dietrich’s best musical numbers – including “Falling in Love Again”) and featuring the two leads at the height of their considerable beauty, Desire is an Art Deco gem of a movie! Join us to wallow in sheer glamour over cocktails in the splendour of Fontaine’s in Dalston.

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Facebook event page.

Some fun facts about Desire: it was originally meant to be directed by Ernst Lubitsch – and entitled The Pearl Necklace! Marlene Dietrich stars as a glamorous and amoral jewel thief who - due to wacky screwball hijinks - becomes entangled with unworldly vacationing American-in-Paris automobile engineer Gary Cooper. Desire reunites Dietrich and Cooper for the first time since their triumphant pairing in Morocco in 1930 (which was Dietrich's Hollywood debut). As Dietrich’s definitive biographer Steven Bach asserts, “Cooper was not just her first American leading man, but her best.” Decide for yourself on 15 February! 

/ Below: find someone who looks at you with the same delight as Marlene Dietrich contemplating these pearls! /

Trailer:

Reflections on ... Mae West: Dirty Blonde (2020)

 

/ Mae West in 1928 when she was appearing in her play Diamond Lil (which she later adapted for the screen as She Done Him Wrong (1933)) / 

Recently watched: the 2020 documentary Mae West: Dirty Blonde, a breezy, stylish and concise (only 52-minutes) valentine to cinema’s high empress of sex. Among the hipper than usual talking heads:  Dita Von Teese, Lady Bunny, Natasha Lyonne, Candace Bergen, gossip columnist Rona Barrett, Sex and the City’s Mario Cantone and the late Andre Leon Talley (who disappoints by lamely suggesting West foreshadowed “women who dare to be sexy” like Cher, Madonna, Rhianna and Beyonce. Let’s be grateful he didn’t include a Kardashian), plus film historians Jeanine Basinger and Molly Haskell. (And Bette Midler is an executive producer). 

/ Portrait of  Mae West by George Hoyningen-Huene, 1933 /

As Dirty Blonde underlines, West was already 40 years old when she made her film debut in Night After Night (1932). By the time she arrived in Hollywood the Brooklyn-born daughter of a bare-knuckle prizefighter and corset model turned vaudeville performer turned censor-baiting playwright (one review of West’s scandalous 1926 play Sex wails that it’s “a monstrosity plucked from garbage can, destined for sewer!”) had already amassed over three decades of show biz experience. This gave West the confidence to demand creative autonomy from Paramount, and her first starring vehicle She Done Him Wrong (1933) was such a smash it saved the studio from the brink of bankruptcy.

/ Mae West when she appeared on The Red Skelton Show on 1 March 1960 /

You can’t help but get the impression directors Sally Rosenthal and Julia Marchesi (understandably) yearn to hail the tough, independent West as a protofeminist, but she resists that interpretation. (They include audio of West explaining to an interviewer she’s always preferred male company and finds other women hard to relate to).

/ West with young male starlet Tom Selleck in 1970 when they both appeared in the film Myra Breckenridge /

Highlights: Dirty Blonde nicely scrutinizes the complicated depiction of Black maids in West’s 1930s films. While Talley notes that they are kindred spirits and co-conspirators who joke with West and have romantic lives of their own, someone else argues these characters speak in a “Hollywood version of Black vernacular” and Mel Watkins asserts there’s nothing to indicate West supported the civil rights movement in the sixties. But then West fought to have Duke Ellington cast in Belle of the Nineties (1934) and – although not mentioned – it’s widely understood West enjoyed interracial sex relationships long before they were deemed acceptable. And the doc also makes you reappraise West’s reviled later films Myra Breckenridge (1970) and Sextette (1978), asking the viewer why we are so horrified by West still flaunting her sexual appetites into old age. As Basinger claims, “There’s a wonderful courage and defiance” to West’s sheer stubbornness in taking what she had in the 1930s and trying to make it work in the 1970s.  Finally, Dirty Blonde frames West’s long-term relationship with bodybuilder Paul Novak as the great love of her life. (Novak met West when he was one of the oiled muscle men in her Las Vegas revue in the early 1950s and stayed loyal right up to her death in 1980). I watched Dirty Blonde on the streaming platform NOW TV. 

/ Mae West and Paul Novak in the early 1950s / 

Reflections on ... Cleopatra (1934)

/ Henry Wilcoxon and Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra (1934) /

Recently watched: Cleopatra (1934). Apologies to Elizabeth Taylor, but Claudette Colbert is cinema’s authoritative Queen of the Nile. Visionary director Cecil B DeMille’s lushly opulent and risqué account of the life and loves of Cleopatra VII is infinitely superior to the bloated 1963 version starring Liz’n’Dick. For one thing, DeMille tells his story in 105-minutes – a model of concision compared to the sixties version, which is a ponderous, mind-numbing four hours and twenty minutes long! The 1934 interpretation also offers the most sumptuously Art Deco of screen Cleopatras. (Which makes sense, considering the Art Deco aesthetic was at least partially inspired by ancient Egyptian imagery). 

The Motion Picture Production Code came into effect during production, so the eroticism DeMille was able to sneak past the censors is impressive. (We see exposed female nipples in the opening credits!). DeMille was the undisputed maestro of kinky pagan spectacle, and here proceedings reach a bonkers climax when Cleopatra initiates Marc Antony into Egyptian-style hedonism on her gilded barge. Accompanied by mounds of jewels and goblets of wine, the duo feast on skewers of “reed birds” while languorously reclining. Cleopatra presents a lavish production number to seduce Antony, incorporating legions of homoerotic baby-oiled gladiators, slave boys in loincloths and semi-naked female concubines waving peacock feathers. The pageantry grows ever more crazed. Girls dressed as leopards cavort, crawl on all fours and then somersault through flaming hoops while a muscular male “lion tamer” in ass-baring bondage gear cracks a whip. Finally, Cleopatra gives the signal that she and Antony wish to make love, and her battalion of underlings swing into action. Giant billowing silk curtains unfurl to give the couple privacy. Temple dancers ritualistically perform. Flower petals rain from the sky. The camera pulls back to reveal the galley slaves rowing the barge to the beat of a drum. The segment is a fever dream of orgiastic depravity and a pinnacle of Golden Age Hollywood camp nirvana! 

Colbert makes for a coolly calculating and seductive Cleopatra. (Those butterfly wing-shaped brows really cast a spell!). Her slinky and revealing ensembles (heavy on gold lamé and exposed flesh) are by costumier Travis Banton, the genius who also dressed Paramount’s other divas like Marlene Dietrich and Mae West at the time. His creations all seem to focus attention on Colbert’s boobs, and weirdly anticipate the wild looks Bob Mackie would create for Cher in the seventies. Bear in mind Colbert made It Happened One Night, Imitation of Life and Cleopatra all in the same year. She was effortlessly, stylishly confident in screwball comedies, melodramas and historical epics. So why doesn’t Colbert get the kind of acclaim for this range in the way her peers like Davis, Crawford and Stanwyck routinely do? 

Anyway, as Marc Antony rugged British leading man Henry Wilcoxon matches Colbert for pulchritude and sex appeal (those shortie togas showcase his powerfully muscled thighs beautifully). Which reminds me of an anecdote in Boyd McDonald’s essential 1985 volume of essays Cruising the Movies. McDonald offers an account shared by a sailor friend who was once picked-up by Wilcoxon. The actor gave him a lift from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which involved an overnight hotel stopover. Apparently, Wilcoxon “expressed himself in “animal groans”” and “dropped him at the gardenia-scented Biltmore, sore-assed but satisfied.”

Reflections on ... Paid in Full (1950)

Recently watched: Paid in Full (1950). Tagline: “The story of a woman’s bitter victory.” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

Paid in Full opens on a note of panicked urgency, instantly plunging the viewer into the action. A pregnant woman in agonizing labour and on the verge of collapse manages to drive herself to the hospital on a stormy night. We learn that she’s Jane Langley (portrayed by magnetic film noir queen Lizabeth Scott). Due to life-threatening medical complications, Jane must undergo an emergency cesarean, but the dilemma is stark: either mother or baby will survive – but not both! Jane is asked for the father’s identity so the hospital can contact him, which prompts a flashback to explain just how we got to this crisis point. 

The luminous Scott alternated between bad girl (Dead Reckoning (1947), Too Late for Tears (1949)) and good girl (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Desert Fury (1947), Pitfall (1948)) roles with equal conviction. But calling the supremely virtuous, long-suffering Jane Langley “good” barely beings to cover it! Jane, you see, is hiding a painful secret (actually, multiple painful secrets – but that doesn’t become apparent until later). Her mother died tragically after giving birth to Jane’s little sister Nancy (foreshadowing alert!). Dutifully stepping into the maternal role, Jane raised Nancy herself. As adults, Jane is a clothing designer and Nancy (Diana Lynn) is a model who sashays around a department store showroom flourishing her sister’s creations. Jane is secretly, unrequitedly in love with Nancy’s fiancé, dashing advertising executive Bill Prentice (blandly handsome Robert Cummings. He’s like a walking ad for Brylcreem). In fact, Bill is so oblivious he rehearses his marriage proposal spiel on Jane! Stoically swallowing her heartbreak, Jane wishes the couple well. Did I mention that toxic Nancy is a spoiled rotten, selfish little bee-yatch? (Kudos to Lynn, who imbues Nancy with an almost Gloria Grahame-like surly petulance. Jane’s unwavering devotion to the undeserving Nancy has echoes of the Joan Crawford / Ann Blythe dynamic in Mildred Pearce (1945)).  

Paid in Full positions Nancy as the glamorous, sexually irresistible-to-men sister, whereas unlucky-in-love, married-to-her-career, always-the-bridesmaid singleton Jane is meant to be comparatively plain. But this is relative! Paid in Full is, after all, a golden age Hollywood production, and Jane is portrayed by the impossibly sultry Scott (Oh! That raspy voice!), who is exquisitely costumed (by Edith Head) and coiffed throughout. (In fact, the willowy Scott better resembles a fashion model than Lynn. Like her contemporary Lauren Bacall, Scott’s entryway into films was via modelling). The ever-sardonic Eve Arden offers comic relief as Tommy Thompson, Jane’s wise-cracking gal pal and work colleague. But Tommy also serves as a warning to Jane. As Bill cautions, Tommy “waited too long to get married. Now she’s too eager.” 

/ This smiling threesome is wildly unrepresentative of Paid in Full /

Mid-century melodramas routinely romanticized the notion of a woman’s noble self-sacrifice. Paid in Full stretches this to the point of lunacy. The film begins as an absorbing if conventional romantic triangle.  After a shocking and hideous tragedy occurs towards the end, the tone of Paid in Full goes full-tilt nuts, with Jane tipping into complete martyrdom and masochism. (The full significance of the title gradually becomes horribly apparent!). As a social document of its era, Paid in Full offers some fascinatingly archaic attitudes towards conceptions of matrimony, motherhood, fertility and “spinsterhood.” Watch the film here: 

 

Reflections on ... The Dark Mirror (1946)

Recently watched: The Dark Mirror (1946). Tagline: “Twins! One who loves … and one who loves to kill!” 

A nice way to remember the great Olivia de Havilland (who died last month aged 104): the BBC recently screened the 1946 psychological thriller The Dark Mirror in tribute (it might still be on the iPlayer – check! It’s also viewable on YouTube). The Dark Mirror is a real potboiler (albeit artfully directed by film noir maestro Robert Siodmak), hardly one of the Golden Age Hollywood star’s most prestigious films and I’m probably alone here, but this is my favourite performance by de Havilland. 

Or should I say “performances”? She portrays identical twins Terry and Ruth Collins who are suspected of murder. Inevitably, one sister is good and one evil. (This was a popular scenario at the time. De Havilland’s friend and peer Bette Davis starred in not one but two variations of this theme). Terry and Ruth aren’t just identical twins: even as adults, they also always wear identical outfits and coiffures. (No one comments on how dysfunctional this is). Helpfully, their choices in accessories occasionally distinguishes the sisters. They sometimes wear necklaces that spell-out “Terry” or “Ruth” (anticipating the “Carrie” one Sarah Jessica Parker used to wear on Sex in the City) or brooches in the shape of “R” or “T”.  But of course, this jewelry can be used to mislead! 

Anyway, de Havilland specialized in playing virtuous women so it’s fascinating when (as the psycho killer twin) she uses her familiar purring honeyed tones to gaslight, manipulate and spread malice, and to see her serenely beautiful face twisted in rage. She’s so good it makes you wish de Havilland played unsympathetic roles more often. She wouldn’t get another opportunity again until Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte in 1964.

Reflections on ... Lizabeth Scott in Dark City (1950)

Recently watched: Dark City (1950). I will always drop everything to watch a movie starring smoky-eyed, husky-voiced Lizabeth Scott (1922–2015) – one of the most haunting and memorable actresses of the forties and fifties and a perennial favourite of mine.  

But in Dark City (a minor but taut and suspenseful film noir crime drama), Scott’s role as Fran Garland, the long-suffering and neglected love interest of Charlton Heston, is unrewarding. On the plus side, since she’s playing a nightclub chanteuse, Scott gets to wear a series of sensational painted-on sequinned gowns (by Edith Head) and throatily warble some torch songs (although it’s not her own voice - she’s dubbed by a professional singer. Scott frequently played nightclub singers and one of the great mysteries of her career is that Paramount executives never permitted her to do her own singing onscreen – even though she was a stylish and alluring singer in her own right and released an album in 1957). 

But mostly Scott is required to be masochistically devoted to Heston and give him pleading, dewy-eyed looks. After juicy and challenging parts in superior films like Pitfall (1948) and Too Late for Tears (1949), Dark City must have felt anti-climactic for Scott. Eventually you want to grab Fran by the shoulders, shake her hard and say, “He’s just not that into you!”

Reflections on ... Cindy Sherman Exhibit at Sprüth Magers

“In the large-scale colour portraits, the artist imagines herself as a cast of 'grandes dames' from the Golden Age of 1920s Hollywood cinema. Differing from Sherman’s earlier series, these actresses are presented outside of the filmic narrative, posing instead for what seem to be formal publicity shots. Despite their elaborate garb, coiffed hairdos and painted faces, the leading ladies are clearly in their twilight years, and the grave stoicism of their expressions gives way to instances of poignant vulnerability: fine lines emerge through caked-on make-up, and sinewy, aged hands seem at odds with the smooth polish of their owners’ faces. The actresses pose against digitally manipulated backgrounds that are suggestive of the film sets and backdrops of yesteryear. Skyscrapers, a busy café scene, manicured gardens and a classical landscape all feature within the series. One photograph created earlier this year, displays four actresses in different coloured tulle costumes. Seated together, they reference the historic popularity of sister acts in the entertainment industry.” 

From Sprüth Magers’ catalogue

“Some play with scarves to hide their wrinkles, others rely on a brave, haughty or mysterious expression. All could quite clearly carry off once more whatever roles they played on the silver screen until age edged them out of the system. But in each case there are a hundred more nuances, of doubt, pride, suffering, foolishness, survival, courage, learned from the life and irrepressible even in these supposed publicity shots for films that will never be made.” 

From The Guardian’s review

I visited the new Cindy Sherman exhibit at Sprüth Magers’ gallery in Mayfair on Saturday 7 July. In it, the masterful American artist and photographer completely transforms herself into a series of powdered and bewigged veteran show biz divas of a certain age in eerie, powerful and riveting self-portraits. The focus is on liver-spotted hands clutching chiffon and the whole arsenal of artifice: plucked-out eyebrows, scarlet lips painted into a cupid’s bow. The vibe is very ruined glamour, Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, decaying Hollywood Mansions, Sunset Boulevard / Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 

Looking at them, you can’t help but associate the photos with the doomed flapper Clara Bow, Mary Pickford’s reclusive alcoholic later years, or the botched face lift of Hedy Lamar. The show is about aging, but also about haughty defiance (or denial) towards aging, and a commitment to glamour at all costs despite aging. (And the show is inevitably about the aging of Sherman herself, who is now 64. Those unretouched liver-spotted hands belong to her!). The exhibit is free and runs until 1 September 2018.

Further reading:read my scene report from John Water's 2015 exhibit Beverley Hills John at Sprüth Magers here.

Reflections on ... Lauren Bacall in Young Man with a Horn (1950)

Recently watched: Young Man with a Horn (1950).  Directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, Mildred Pierce), it covers the rise and fall of an idealistic, uncompromising young jazz trumpeter Rick Martin (Kirk Douglas) in the hard-bitten, dog-eat-dog neon jungle of New York’s nightlife. Doris Day co-stars as Jo, the wholesome and sympathetic big band singer who’s in love with Rick. If he only he could see she’s perfect for him! The dramatic black and white film noir photography is spectacular and it gets wildly, pleasurably overwrought as it progresses, encompassing alcoholism, nervous breakdowns and pneumonia. Note: your enjoyment of Young Man with a Horn will depend on how much you can tolerate watching Douglas mime playing trumpet in the frequent musical sequences.

BUT mid-way through the film Lauren Bacall – that smoky-eyed Siamese cat-in-human form – rocks-up as Amy North, Douglas’ frosty, frigid rich bitch socialite wife and blows everything apart. Perennially wreathed in cigarette smoke and meant to represent the polar opposite of Doris Day, Bacall’s sleek and soignée appearance belies a roiling, wildly dysfunctional (possibly mentally ill) interior.  Amy is cultured and worldly, sexually ambivalent, independent, speaks Latin and is studying to be a psychiatrist: in the context of the film, her intellect is depicted as off-putting and unappealing. Worst of all – she admits she doesn’t actually like jazz! There are hints of repressed lesbianism: Rick and Amy are seen to sleep in separate single beds, and she’s subtly coded as queer recognizable to contemporary 1950 audiences in the way that characters played by, say, Peter Lorre or Sydney Greenstreet would also have been understood as gay. As Ian Scott Todd writes in his blog Primal Scenes:

“Amy is neurotic, withholding, passive-aggressive, and anal-retentive, to name only four of her "symptoms."  All of the other familiar lesbian signifiers are here, too, in her elegant but mannish suits, her stand-offish demeanor, and the sophisticated décor of her apartment.  Bacall’s Amy North is what Halberstam might classify as a predatory dyke: calculating, urbane, aloof.  She matches her interior space, with its hard, sleek, coldly elegant surfaces, off-set by touches of the bizarre, such as a pet cockatoo to which she refers—ominously—as her “best friend” … Amy is an example of the predatory dyke as femme fatale, trapped within the gilded cage of her own sexual “perversity,” someone to run away from, preferably into the arms of a “real” woman.  And yet, like all femme fatales, Amy’s dangerous sexuality makes her infinitely more attractive than the blandly chipper Jo, whose normality is, indeed, terrible.” 

Towards the end, Amy casually tells Rick, “I’ve met a girl – an artist. We might go to Paris together.” Here Bacall suddenly anticipates Cate Blanchet in Carol (2015). “You’re a sick girl, Amy!” Rick finally shouts as their marriage unravels. “I’m sick of you trying to touch me!” she screams.

The ostensibly unsympathetic but compelling and complex Amy represents the late Bacall’s strangest, most intense performance and she steals the film from Douglas and Day. I don’t recall her ever being asked about Young Man with a Horn in any interviews. I’d love to know how Curtiz and Bacall conceived and discussed the part. Did Bacall even know her character was meant to be gay? In any case, her portrayal should be included as at least a footnote in any discussion about LGBTQ representation in Golden Age Hollywood cinema.