Absolutely marvelous --- absolutely true. K.
On Oct 2, 2010, at 6:25 PM, Freeman Fisher wrote: > Now this is savvy writing, and a beautiful appreciation. > > Marvelous Invention of Movie Make-Believe > By A. O. SCOTT > What is a movie star? It may be more appropriate to phrase the question in > the past tense, as an acknowledgment that the old breed is dying out and also > as a valedictory tribute to one of its finest specimens. Because whatever the > definition — a great performer; a larger-than-life personality; a sex symbol > — the picture next to the dictionary entry might as well be ofTony Curtis in > his prime, with his dark eyes, full lips and lush head of hair. > > Mr. Curtis, who died late Wednesday, was among the purest and most authentic > examples of what a movie star in postwar Hollywood could be. Which is also to > say, of course, that he was fundamentally — brazenly — impure and > inauthentic, an artificial, hybrid creature synthesized out of ambition, good > looks and canny publicity. Tony Curtis was a marvelous invention, right down > to the name, which replaced Bernard Schwartz, the one he was born with. > Somewhere in the afterlife, Mr. Schwartz is surely hobnobbing with the likes > of Roy Harold Scherer Jr. , Norma Jean Baker and Archibald Leach, his peers, > co-stars and role models better known as Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe and Cary > Grant. > > The legend is that one of Grant’s movies inspired the young Bernard Schwartz, > who came up rough in a poor section of the Bronx, to join the Navy and, after > service in World War II, to try his hand at acting. That story is an apt > illustration of the paradoxical power of movie make-believe and the twofold > imitation it can inspire: you dream of being both the character and the > person behind the character. Cary Grant commanded a submarine in “Destination > Tokyo,” and Cary Grant was also, whatever else he happened to be doing > (espionage, paleontology, journalism) Cary Grant. He could pretend to be just > about anything without letting go of the essential, irreducible fact of his > personality. > > And in a different register — with a little more erotic fire, a rougher > finish and broader vowels — Tony Curtis managed a similar feat. Among the > big-ticket commercial genres of his era were westerns and sword-and-sandal > epics, and he appeared in a bunch of those, “Winchester ’73” and “Spartacus” > among them, with enough of the Bronx still in his voice and manner to provide > a memorable spark of incongruity. > > He was not a methodizer, burrowing deep into each role to find its hidden, > essential psychological truth, but his art was deep and his professionalism > thorough. He was capable of intensity when it was called for, but his best, > most characteristic work always carried an element of play. > > His Sidney Falco, the fast-moving press agent in “Sweet Smell of Success,” is > certainly a player, though not exactly the master of the game. He hustles > through the picture with aggression, slick dishonesty and just enough heart > to make his ultimate moral awakening credible and moving. Sidney, a New York > press agent in the thrall of J. J. Hunsecker, an imperious, black-hearted > gossip columnist played by Burt Lancaster, is one of the fastest talkers in > movies, a bundle of bravura and anxiety. > > Sidney is ethically adaptable, even sleazy, but with an underlying niceness > that subverts the film’s relentless and florid cynicism. “I’d hate to take a > bite out of you,” Hunsecker says. “You’re a cookie full of arsenic.” It’s a > tangy line in a movie that is full of them, but the audience knows that it > isn’t quite accurate — a matter of projection more than insight on > Hunsecker’s part. Sidney’s sweetness may be curdled by the sour, pressured > atmosphere of life in Manhattan, but he is hardly poisonous. He is > untrustworthy, hypocritical and self-deluding, but also, underneath it all, > somehow sincere. > > And that kind of doubleness was Mr. Curtis’s calling card. He was able to > retain a guileless, handsome-is-as-handsome-does innocence even in situations > that embroiled him in all kinds of interesting ambiguities. There is a famous > scene in “Spartacus” — deleted in 1960 and restored three decades later — in > which Mr. Curtis and Laurence Olivier discuss the gustatory merits of oysters > and snails. All the insinuation comes from Olivier and Anthony Hopkins (who > dubbed his voice for the 1991 restoration), but the scene’s teasing sexual > power resides in Mr. Curtis’s literal-minded response to innuendo-laden > questions. He makes it all seem so dirty by insisting on being so clean. > > Nowhere is this capacity for ambiguity, sexual and otherwise, more splendidly > evident than in “Some Like it Hot,” a comedy now more than 50 years old that > does everything but show its age. In it, Mr. Curtis and Jack Lemmon blithely > plunge into a whirlpool of double entendres and gender puzzles, and navigate > it while tossing off bons mots by the bushel. And of course doing quite a bit > of that in drag, embodying contrasting but equally hyperbolic versions of > womanhood. > > Mr. Curtis’s Joe is a more natural woman, his mastery of feminine wiles more > instinctive, based on a surer intuition into the real thing. This may be > because Joe is — as the six-times-married, many-times-lucky Mr. Curtis was — > a tireless ladies man. In their coming-out scene, on a train platform, Mr. > Lemmon stumbles and flails in his skirt and heels, while Mr. Curtis, his > mouth drawn into a comely pout, takes small, dainty steps, keeping his feet > close together to increase the lateral sway of his derrière — which the > camera can’t resist checking out. > > But that cross-dressing — by which Joe becomes “Josephine” — is only a > warm-up for Mr. Curtis’s real tour-de-force of drag impersonation, in which > Joe turns up in spectacles and yachting garb as “Shell Oil Jr.,” a rich swell > who is someone’s idea of Cary Grant. The idea is that, by undertaking this > travesty of class, he will seduce Sugar Kane Kowalcyk, the fetching ukulele > virtuoso played by Marilyn Monroe. > > The comedy that results is almost indescribably rich, to some degree because > of the layers of imposture involved. Within the movie, the man pretending to > be a woman is now pretending to be a different man, one whose notionally > heterosexual libido is so deeply buried that even the strenuous efforts of > Marilyn Monroe herself can barely awaken it. And yet the purpose of this > double disguise is to coax Sugar into falling for the man he really is, the > regular Joe. > > Who could object to being tricked in this way? The audience, knowing more > than Sugar does, is rendered dizzy by the vertiginous spectacle of one movie > star so shamelessly “doing” another. It’s not, technically, a first-rate > impression. The accent is wobbly, and nobody is really fooled. But that is > the point. Archibald Leach had already fooled the world — Bernard Schwartz > included — into believing in someone called Cary Grant. To pay tribute to > that achievement while also mocking it and duplicating it: only Tony Curtis > could have done that. > > “Some like it hot,” he says, while still in the Shell Oil Jr./Cary Grant > role. “I prefer classical music.” Could anyone else be so completely fake and > yet so genuine? > > Of course Tony Curtis liked it hot. Tony Curtis was hot. He was also classic, > in the sense that he belonged to a class of which he was the only and > definitive member. > > Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com > ___________________________________________________________________ > How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List > > Send a message addressed to: [email protected] > In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L > > The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
