Sleek, sharp-edged, sassy “What Price Hollywood?” We’re spared earnest “before” scenes: Mary (Constance Bennett) is an illusion-free waitress at The Brown Derby, and schemes to meet her future mentor Max. We’re also spared scenes of her raw talent, as she blows her screen test with an awful performance. The grotesque funeral in the two later versions, here is a wedding. It’s grotesquery squared, with the fans ripping Mary’s bouquet to bits, pulling her veil off, and Saxe, the studio head, delighted by the publicity. Also different is the signature farewell line: “Mary!” “What?” “Nothing. I just wanted to hear you again.”
All the essential elements of the myth appear in their proper place: the cute meeting, the prestissimo romance/career launch, the award ceremony humiliation, the failed sobering up, the final bow, the brave widow. Great, but Janet Gaynor is so annoying that the first 30 minutes are almost unbearable. But then Fredrick March, handsome and full of beans, arrives the save the day. But Lionel Stander (Libby) pretty much steals the picture, with his hyper-articulate bullfrog voice.
Has any classic musical ever had worse songs? The exception is “The Man Who Got Away,” which significantly occurs before Esther is discovered. Judy jams with her colleagues for the fun of it, rather than being imprisoned in idiotic “numbers”. There’s a distinct lack of interest in the original plot. It’s all there, of course, with scenes copied from 1937 down to the poses. But that’s for business that nobody could be bothered to think about. George Cukor’s chilly, movies-within-the movie artifice beautifully conflicts with Garland’s intense improvisational breakdowns. Speaking of breakdowns, there’s a whole disassociation between image and sound thing going on here (all those montages of still images, Maine’s marriage proposal, etc.)
Torture. For the first hour I thought it might be the quintessence of camp, but it goes on another hour and 19 minutes; it’s too boring to be camp. The best thing about it is Kris Kristofferson as sex object. I’m totally on board with this. It turns the story upside down: instead of tragedy, this is a story of triumph. Tears and heartbreak, but triumph nevertheless. It ends with an anthem – a medley of several anthems. The 1954 version pointedly ended with no song – even though Judy Garland was on hand, for whom a tear-soaked ballad was the air she breathed. Anyway, the songs are blackboard scratching terrible. “Evergreen”? Yikes! The banshee-screech of the ‘70s.
A remake of the 1976 version, but infinitely better. For one thing, both of the leads act rather than pose. Gaga is a convincing young woman overwhelmed by events, Cooper dials down his cuteness to portray a wreck. But once the tragedy kicks in, there’s an inevitable tediousness. We all know exactly what’s going to happen.
A well-composed Bucket List contains activities that, given dedication, time and resources, can really be realized by individual effort. Less good are activities dependent on others. The obstacles to walking the Great Wall of China are nothing compared to the obstacles to hearing all of Charles Ives’ orchestral works. One is possible, the other is not (so I've learned).
But miracles happen. Just before the holidays one occurred at Disney Hall when Michael Tilson Thomas visited to lead the Phil in Ives’ “Holidays” symphony.
It was different from the old Leonard Bernstein recording. That was manic and terrifying: the holidays seen in a nightmare. With MTT the extravagant pile-ups of incompatible musics playing simultaneously were not representations of the world gone mad.
Quite the contrary: those explosions of noise came as welcome blasts of activity. The first three Holidays (Washington’s Birthday, Decoration Day, 4th of July) start with dim, static gloomy fogs. Then, in each, the gloom is sundered by a thunderclap.
The pile-ups, cacophonous and blatant, are never too much. It’s possible to discern the parts. They’re finely made, subtly calibrated. Representations of chaos, not examples of it. MTT was in his glory with them.
The performance suggested that the real challenge here isn’t the pile-ups, but the quiet, static sections. The fogs require exquisite playing – like Morton Feldman.
It ends with a Thanksgiving far from Norman Rockwell, passing from gloom to a genuinely exuberant dance, and – after a grandiose introduction – the chorus declaiming, “O God, beneath Thy guiding hand / Our exiled fathers crossed the sea, / And when they trod the wintry strand, / With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee” with wobbly syncopation. Then it subsides, dis-integrates, and a chime chimes.
MTT was in a pedagogic mood, and before each section paused to recite Ives’ notes on the piece, and lead the chorus in some of the hymns and songs that Ives collaged. At first I was exasperated: just play the music! Sixty years ago Stravinsky commented that tune-identification was a waste of time. But it actually succeeded in giving these pieces the context that Ives would have expected. Not that they are by any means naïve evocations of The Good Old Days. Far from it. But that’s the background, and it’s important to feel it. That was what the music was about, for Ives, rather than compositional strategies.
Ives is not making bold gestures, but representing bold gestures. It’s all program music. Ives is making a representation of a scene, landscapes of 1870s Danbury, CT, recalled on the eve of the first World War.
The small scale, and unfussy – but careful – craftsmanship steer the Tim Burton bric-à-brac (tombstones, towers, ruins, grotesques, storm-tossed crags) safely clear of cliché.
Doodles, but ones that anticipate abstract expressionism, conceptual art (the signed rocks!) and Raymond Pettibon.
The extent of the work was a surprise, suggesting that this activity was more than an after hours amusement.
The silhouettes of towers emerging out of violet horizons were not just words for him.