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Some writings on cinema by Michal Oleszczyk

On Herbert Marshall

„You’re strong, he’s weak”, says Marlene Dietrich to Cary Grant in Josef Von Sternberg’s “Blonde Venus” (1932), ‘the weak’ implied being Herbert Marshall. Pairing Marshall and Grant (sparse as the latter’s presence is in here) was a brilliant piece of casting, bringing together two most sexy male voices in all cinema (had Sternbeg had Roger Livesey and Orson Welles on the set, Marlene could do without singing).

It’s hard to think of two more different characters than cuckold husband in “Blonde Venus” and suave thief ‘Gaston Monescu’ that Marshall plays in Lubitsch masterpiece, “Trouble in Paradise” (1932). Both movies were released the same year and both brilliantly made us believe opposing things (Marshall’s ‘weakness’ mentioned by Dietrich in “Venus”, and his obvious strength as Manescu in “Trouble”). Why is, then, that Marshall’s appeal in both movies seems so much alike...?

He was a great frowner and a great brow-raiser, for one thing. I counted: there are at least four long horizontal lines boldly crossing his forehead and coming brilliantly alive each time Marshall’s character is becoming agitated, or moved, or concerned. The inward tips of his eyebrows point upwards, which stands in striking contrast to Dietrich “V” brows (complete with daring mascara) in “Venus”.

Come to think of it, Marshall’s forehead and his voice are the only things really alive about him, and that I believe is the key to his enormous appeal: even when devastated, he seems composed. What’s more: he’s composed even while devastating others, a characteristic that comes to the surface only once in “Venus” (“Johnny, do you want to say good-bye to your mother...?” – forever!), but is fundamental in Manescu’s getting in and out of complicated “Trouble...”.

I think Sternberg realized what dynamo Marshall’s forehead was (only Walter Matthau’s seems to match it in later cinema) – and that’s probably why the in most difficult scene between him and Dietrich he has a hat covering his head and shadowing his eyes. The contrast of his composure and hidden passion burning on a low boil somewhere deep in his body (when Grant confronts him, he breaths in an out with such effort that his chest moving seems almost an artifact, but the rage is so real) – that’s what makes him fascinating to me.

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On Rock Hudson & Doris Day movies

„Lover Come Back” (1961), Delbert Mann’s movie starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson, is probably the purest example of how this screen-couple did or did not work good together. According to dialogue, she’s “undersexed” and he’s “oversexed” – and thus the stress is being put, as always with them, on sex. In many ways “Lover Come Back” is Michael Gordon’s “Pillow Talk” (1959) re-made (Stanley Shapiro co-wrote the screenplays for both movies), and watching the two in sequence tells you a lot about Day/Hudson chemistry, if there was such a thing (for my money, the biggest fun of their movies is watching no chemistry at all, just two liquids in separate test-tubes).

Hudson’s and Day’s characters in those movies have one thing in common: sex isn’t an issue to any of them. Rock has plenty of it, Day has none of it – and they both seem perfectly happy with their separate arrangements. It isn’t until the latter clash that the problems arise.

In both films Hudson mocks Day’s being single (with the exact same line: “It figures”, uttered after Day admits she’s on her own), and Day’s resents him getting laid a lot. In both (now that’s telling!) Day compares sex to illness (in “Talk…” to mumps, in “Lover…” to a cold) and claims that even if she is – as a human – susceptible to it, she can also “get over it” at will. The joke is that she can’t, but the way joke is played underscores Day’s power to choose who she’s involved with. It’s Rock who wins her over, and he does it in both cases by being corny to the marrow – and she’s totally into it.

In “Pillow Talk” he acquires Texan accent to add a ‘corn-fed-boy’ luster to himself, which would make, say, Irene Dunne shrink for him after first two “y’all”’s. That’s what makes Day heroine so utterly different from Dunne’s: in both “Pillow Talk” and “The Awful Truth” a provincial accent is being played for audience’s laughs (Ralph Bellamy’s Dan being an Oklahoma-grown boy), but in “Pillow Talk” it’s only the audience who’s laughing. Day buys it, as she buys Hudson’s impersonation of a male-virgin in “Lover...” – which in the world of 30s comedy would be laughed up to the roof.

The big problem with Doris Day’s screen presence is that she’s in total control of her body. That makes a contrast with Hudson – him being the burly type, and her being barely a type at all. Her femininity is more hinted at than actually performed or felt. In “Pillow Talk” Rock holds her tight near the fire-place and says how wonderful it is to discover that she can be so much “out of control”, but it takes one look at her – white turtle-neck still on, hair untouched – to disclaim it. Day is comfortable with her body, but only because – in a way – there’s nothing to get comfortable with. Her body doesn’t play tricks or make surprises (no hiccups, no tripping, no bruises). In the very first scene of “Pillow Talk” she scrutinizes her own leg and a cheek, as if trying to check whether any hair was audacious enough to grow out of her.

Hudson’s being gay (our off-screen knowledge of it, of course) wonderfully fits Day’s blandness. Double entendres are abundant and I would love to read an article on to what extent Hudson was amused, and to what pissed off at lines as “I’m not a real man” in “Lover...”. Although there is no male counterpart to Day as a valid sexual possibility for Hudson, Tony Randall still nags him in “Lover...” about “that obsession you have with girls” and invites him to a cabin-weekend (“just the two of us”).

I really admire Day because of her voice and her strength, but I think it’s a pity she wasn’t used in other ways then a tongue-in-cheek sex symbol (tongue being in the cheek only because no one would believe she actually enjoyed sex). I always thought she would be great at being foul-mouthed, and her Ruth Etting in Vidor’s “Love Me or Leave Me” remains my favorite, just because one can see that Day knew what suffering was and that’s why she felt good as Etting (although she didn’t look anything like her).

As a couple, they were ahead of their times. With such marvelous potential for subversion (her so strong, him so gay), they could do so much more than participate in fixing the long-decayed facade of Hollywood’s 1950/1960s hypocrisy.

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On “Love in the Afternoon”

In Billy Wilder’s „Love in the Afternoon” (1957), lighting is a thing of beauty. It’s probably one of the most shining examples of how sophisticated mainstream Hollywood used to get, while all the time serving interests of its stars. Gary Cooper plays the “much-older-guy” part here, and he really looks old, so Wilder and d.p. William C. Mellor splash him with blackness of shadows very generously. At one point he has his face turned towards the camera and it’s all black; he looks almost ghoulish.

Contrary to the unimaginative trick Scorsese and Ballhaus pulled off in the opening scenes of “The Departed”, where Nicholson is simply “covered up” with a blanket of shadow (pretty much like William Alland’s ‘Thompson’ in “Citizen Kane”, but perfunctory instead of provocative) – Wilder and Mellor don’t hesitate to include full portraits of Cooper in broad daylight as well. It isn’t that they’re trying to trick us or deceive us, much less lie about Cooper’s age. It’s simply that they brilliantly convey Audrey Hepburn’s heroine’s sense of Cooper as a flickering, multi-faceted presence. He’s both old and young, both sexually potent and declining. In most of theirs scenes together she is showered with light, while he’s emerging from the darkness. Youth meets death, blossom meets an old tree – and both parties know how different a world they inhabit from another’s.

Mellor’s most spectacular work was “Bad Day at Black Rock”, but “Love in the Afternoon” may be his most subtle.

* * *

On Preston Sturges

Ever noticed how brilliant Preston Sturges was in crowding his frame with a multitude of portraits?

There’s a lot to say about using crowd in the movies – Fritz Lang and D.W. Griffith would be the first to testify, along with Carné of “Les Enfants du paradis” – but what Sturges gave us wasn’t a crowd exactly. His frame is full of people, but for the most time each of them has a face of their own. I recently re-watched all his DVD-available movies and was struck by the careful way he and his regular D.P.-s devised frame compositions that offered so many living portraits at once.

Consider the scene in the surgical amphitheatre in “The Great Moment” (1944): many a director would play the set decoration against the people in it, making their figures look locked into this weird and perverse structure, designed to enable witnessing pain, and guts, and death. Sturges, as it were, makes us see faces, lots of them (most obviously in a shot of elderly professor addressing his students about doctor Morton’s not showing up). Watching that scene I couldn’t stop thinking about Rembradt’s “The Anatomy Lecture of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” (1632), with seven unforgettable faces of Tulp’s students: each different, with their gazes at cross purposes (literally, symbolically and also in terms of the painting’s mere composition).

Now Sturges was all about that same very effect. There are brilliant shots in “Hail the Conquering Hero”, in which one face seems literally to grow of another person’s neck, and yet another piles on the group of different ones. Consider the first speech of the mayor of Oaksbridge: faces seem almost lined up for us to shift our eyes from one to another – mayor’s, his son’s , Eddie Bracken’s, his sweetheart’s, and everyone else’s in the frame, whether a character or not.

Sturges’ frame rarely – if ever! – opens up. His California (in “Hail...”) is no place of open spaces, as Diane Jacobs brilliantly noticed in her “Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges”. Even when on location, we don’t get to see much of the world at large. The single sequence that covers most space in its mise-en-scene may be the bum stealing from the hero in “Sullivan’s Travels” and getting killed by a train, but even than the space is blacked out (it’s nighttime) and our eyes don’t get to breathe, so to speak. (The chase sequence in this movie treats space as a mere backdrop to the funny car and even funnier land yacht.)

Preston loved the crowd, he relished at his packed-to-the-roof restaurant, and he consequently made his frame crammed, not with an excess of junk and props, but human faces. One of the pleasure of watching his movies is to let your eye wander freely and discover the richness of expressions, of beauty, of individuality that he offered us.

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