Every 70s Movie: julie andrews

Showing posts with label julie andrews. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

1980 Week: Little Miss Marker

Envision The Sting (1973) without the zing, and you get an idea of what to expect from Little Miss Marker, a crime-themed comedy set in the Depression. Based on a vintage Damon Runyon story and written and directed by Hollywood vet Walter Bernstein, the movie wants desperately to recapture the effervescence of classic screwball comedies. It doesn’t. But thanks to star power and slick production values, the movie is watchable, provided your tolerance for schmaltz is high. Little Miss Marker is one of myriad movies featuring the perpetually crusty Walter Matthau as a cynical loner softened by the experience of becoming the surrogate parent to a sweet child. Adding to the movie’s sugar level is the presence of leading lady Julie Andrews. While her screen coupling with Matthau stretches credibility, her innate dignity elevates the whole production. Matthau plays “Sorrowful” Jones, a pitiless bookie forever at odds with local gangster Blackie (Tony Curtis), whom Jones has known since childhood. One day, a client who doesn’t have the cash to pay off a bet leaves his six-year-old daughter, “The Kid” (Sara Stimson), as collateral. When the girl’s father fails to return on schedule, Jones takes the Kid home as a means of protecting his investment.

Limp comedy stems from the farcical situation of Jones trying to play homemaker. Later, once Jones learns that the Kid’s father has died, he resists turning her over to authorities, ostensibly because doing so would require Jones to explain his criminal enterprise. In reality, of course, he’s fallen for the kid and wants to protect her from the big, bad world. Complicating matters is Blackie’s scheme to open a new gambling joint, with money borrowed from Jones, and to fix a horse race involving a thoroughbred owned by society dame Amanda (Andrews). Figuring out where all this stuff is headed doesn’t require much imagination. When Runyon wrote the original story in 1932, the narrative might have seemed fresh and fun. Nearly 50 years later, the cocktail lost its fizz. Had Bernstein presented Little Miss Marker with a frenetic pace and different casting (namely, someone with more sass than Andrews), he might have put the thing over. Instead, he made something passable bordering on tedious. Stll, one can do worse than watching so many talented actors—the cast also includes Brian Dennehy, Lee Grant, Kenneth McMillan, and Bob Newhart—strut their stuff.

Little Miss Marker: FUNKY

Friday, February 20, 2015

The Tamarind Seed (1974)

After making a huge splash in the ’60s, thanks to Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965), actress Julie Andrews mostly sat out the ’70s, appearing in just three movies that decade—all of which were directed by her husband, Blake Edwards. Interestingly, each of these pictures attempts to inject overt sexuality into Andrews’ wholesome image. Darling Lili (1970) overreaches by casting Andrews as a World War I femme fatale, and 1o (1979) boldly features Andrews as an aging beauty whose lover is tempted by a much younger woman. The role Andrews plays in The Tamarind Seed falls between these extremes, and the middle ground suits her talents well.

Adapted by Edwards from a novel by Evelyn Anthony, The Tamarind Seed concerns average Englishwoman Judith Farrow (Andrews), who works as a secretary for an office of British Intelligence. While on vacation in the Caribbean, Judith is approached by suave Russian Feodor Sverdiov (Omar Sharif), who expresses romantic interest. Suspicious that he’s playing her for access to sensitive government information, Judith resists Feodor’s advances—only to have Feodor blithely admit that he was in fact tasked with seducing her. The twist, he says, is that he’s grown genuinely fond of her and wants to pursue a relationship despite the complications. Surprising herself, Judith accepts the overture and tries to make things work, even as spymasters from the UK and the USSR monitor the couple’s courtship as if it’s an ongoing international incident.

Although the movie is ultimately a bit of a muddle, since Edwards can’t fully decide whether the film is a romance with an espionage backdrop or a spy story with a romantic backdrop, The Tamarind Seed has many virtues. The production is as lush as that of a 007 movie, right down to the participation of Bond regulars John Barry (composer) and Maurice Binder (title-sequence designer). Andrews gives a more credible turn as a cynical grown-up than you might expect, and it’s a startling to see Mary Poppins strolling around in a bikini. Sharif does his usual smug-stud routine, casually issuing such insulting lines as, “You don’t know how charming it is to meet an intelligent woman who does stupid things.”

Better still, Edwards populates the supporting cast with fine actors including Dan O’Herlihy and Anthony Quayle, who do what they can to energize confusing subplots about double-crosses and moles and, surprisingly, an intelligence operative trying to keep his homosexuality secret. Quayle’s character sums up the whole distrustful milieu with a pithy monologue: “My line of business has taught me three things—no one’s to be trusted, nothing is to be believed, and anyone is capable of doing anything.”

The Tamarind Seed gets mired in lots of repetitive material, from long scenes of Andrews and Sharif debating politics in exotic locations to quick vignettes during which high-ranking officials capriciously decide the fates of their underlings. It’s all quite sophisticated, but also sterile and, particularly in the realm of dialogue, pretentious. The movie is more rewarding than it is frustrating, but it’s a close call.

The Tamarind Seed: FUNKY

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

“10” (1979)

It’s not difficult to identify some of the reasons why writer-director Blake Edwards’ sex comedy “10” struck a nerve during its highly successful initial release. The story of a middle-aged man who can’t stand the fact that young swingers are having wild sex while he’s stuck in a frosty monogamous relationship, the picture spoke to a whole generation of squares who felt like they were missing out on the erotic perks of the counterculture.

And then there was the Bo factor. Although she had appeared in a couple of minor films previously, sun-kissed starlet Bo Derek made a huge splash with “10,” instantly becoming one of the most iconic sex symbols of the ’70s. The key image, featured in ads and posters everywhere, depicts the actress jogging along a beach in long-lensed soft focus, her cornrow-braided hair bouncing around her apple-cheeked face, and the rest of her, well, just plain bouncing. Epitomizing a certain fantasy ideal of California sexiness, she was the perfect object for the fixation of dirty old men circa 1979, and her casting is a major part of why the movie works as well as it does—which, it must be said, is not all that well.

The problem isn’t so much the story, standard wayward-male stuff about Hollywood songwriter George Webber (Dudley Moore) skipping out on his lady to chase after a dream girl; the problem is Edwards’ execution. Instead of focusing on his forte of intricate physical comedy, Edwards tries to make a statement on American manhood that’s about as deep as a Playboy editorial, and nothing drags comedy down like shallow social commentary. Thus, the slapstick bits are often very funny—as when Moore tries to walk across a beach toward Derek but keeps hopping up and down like a dolt because the sand is too hot for his delicate tootsies—but the talking bits are tedious.

Scenes of George arguing sexual politics with his Broadway-star girlfriend, Samantha (Julie Andrews), are pretentious and, now, quite dated. Even worse are the conversations between George and Jenny (Derek), who comes across not as a real character but as Edwards’ judgmental idea of an airheaded free spirit. To be fair, Edwards is just as harsh in depicting George, but that raises another question—if we’re not rooting for George to have a sexual adventure or rooting for Jenny to steer clear of a horndog, whose story are we following? Given that the picture meanders through a needlessly long running time, and given that the takeaway is a trite love-conquers-lust message, it seems Edwards never quite answered that question.

Still, there are things to enjoy, and not just the ogling shots of Derek (which, in the context of the movie, seem appropriate instead of gratuitous). Robert Webber is funny and touching as George’s (gay) lyricist, working through his own difficulties with a decades-younger love interest; Dee Wallace is affecting as a lonely woman whose near-miss romantic encounter with George reaffirms her self-loathing; and Brian Dennehy dishes out 100-proof wisdom as a beach-resort bartender. A handful of comedy pros show up for enjoyable bit parts, with Max Showalter standing out as a reverend who wants George to hear the little romantic ditty he’s composed.

These strong elements underline the frustrating thing about “10”—in many ways, Edwards was at the top of his game when he made the picture, but his grasping attempts at “significance” merely reveal the limits of his talent for cultural observation.

“10”: FUNKY

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Darling Lili (1970)

Exactly the sort of glamorously vapid fakery the New Hollywood had to kill, this bloated musical adventure is a misfire on nearly every level, notwithstanding the lush production values that inflated the picture’s budget to a reported $25 million, an astronomical sum for the late ’60s/early ’70s. Inspired by the legendary World War I spy Mata Hari, this original story by Blake Edwards and William Peter Blatty (Edwards also produced and directed) is an awkward hodgepodge of aerial combat, international intrigue, musical numbers, romance, and slapstick.

In World War I-era France, British singer Lili Smith (Julie Andrews) is a popular entertainer but also, secretly, a spy for the German army. Her handler (Jeremy Kemp) assigns Lili to seduce an Allied pilot (Rock Hudson) in order to pry military secrets from him. The plot weaves an uninteresting web of deceit, jealousy, and misunderstandings as Lili falls in love with her target, endangering them both.

Listing everything that’s wrong with Darling Lili would consume most of the Internet’s available bandwith, so let’s stick to the major issues: Lili’s characterization doesn’t make any sense (she’s a virginal saint at one moment, a brazen saboteur the next); it’s unclear whether viewers are expected to root for the Germans or the Allies; the interminable musical numbers and the exciting low-altitude dogfights feel like pieces of two different movies stitched together; the sudden tonal shifts from broad comedy to intimate drama don’t work; composer Henry Mancini’s music is unbearably treacly; and the two leading actors are atrocious.

Andrews presumably took the role in an effort to shake off her goody-two-shoes image, but she’s way too cheerful, polite, and wide-eyed to play a woman of intrigue. The sequence in which she does a tame striptease (inspired by a sexy performer whom she believes has caught her lover’s eye) is actually uncomfortable to watch because Andrews seems desperate to prove she can be naughty. Hudson, a likeable personality but never any great shakes as an actor, looks tired throughout the picture, as if they idea of playing one more light-comedy romantic scene makes him sick, so his lack of enthusiasm drains energy from the whole film.

However, most of the blame for this mess falls to Edwards, who seems intoxicated not only by all of the big-budget toys at his disposal but also by his leading lady—he married Andrews after shooting this picture, and they were together until he died in 2010. It’s pleasant to report that making Darling Lili was a rewarding experience, because actually watching the movie is not.

Darling Lili: LAME