strong women acting well

Clash By Night: (1952. dir: Fritz Lang) The bad of it is that it's written by Clifford Odets; the good of it is that it's directed by Fritz Lang. Odets gives us one of his studies in drunkenness and misogyny and emotional crimes committed in the name of loneliness. Lang surprises us with breathtakingly unexpected shots, like when Robert Ryan stumbles into his close-up just as the wedding party roars up in the background.

Stanwyck is strong as an ox, the loveliest ox in the world. Ryan seems strangely miscast, as if he's having to geld himself in order to find his inner Odets. Then if you've ever had or raised a baby or been around one for longer than thirty seconds, the plot makes no sense because there's a cute little MacGuffin baby who exists solely as a plot device, rarely makes a sound and gets left on its own in an empty house for days and nights at a time while its parental units undergo their emotional turbulences. The good of it is that the baby seems adept at taking care of itself; the bad of it is that the ending of the film is heavily weakened by this absurdity. To compound the ho-hum factor of the ending, Stanwyck's connubial Hera instincts kick in very suddenly and inexplicably to dislodge a previously towering Aphrodite entelechy, and the final reconciliation scene is flat and unsatisfactory, reminding me of the ending of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Both authors wrote themselves into dead ends in which the only possible happy endings are imcompatible with their own cynical understandings of human nature.

Alongside Stanwyck there is the joy of watching the young Monroe before she'd been mewed up in her eventual Marilyn mould. In this one she plays a vivacious tomboy who likes to pick fights with her boyfriend so she can throw punches at him. She and Keith Andes as the boyfriend embody the anti-Odets health and vitality necessary for true happiness.



Don't Bother To Knock: (1952. dir: Roy Ward Baker) And speaking of Marilyn, anyone who thinks she couldn't act needs to see this low-key, small-cast little psychodrama. Richard Widmark is a playboy and a very young but already assured Anne Bancroft is the chanteuse who's broken with him not for lack of love but for lack of a foreseeable future. If that sounds cliche, you have to hear the way it's written: you've never heard it like this before. The script is a quiet dynamo. Monroe is a troubled girl recovering from a suicide attempt who gets a job babysitting and reverts back to more than a little crazy once she catches Widmark's eye. Although she's playing a sphinxlike character, and playing it well, there is never a moment when we do not know what she is feeling. Her choices are clear and plain, her grasp of the character complete. Each emotion barely touches her plastic features, grazing her face with its wings before it moves on to be followed by the mere suggestion of another. It's a lovely performance, and when the little girl is leaning out the window and Monroe says, "Don't fall," it's one of the scariest faces I've seen.




*WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD*

the Romantic Englishwoman: (1975. dir: Joseph Losey) When I was a kid I worshipped Glenda Jackson like a goddess; I'd have voted her into Parliament if I could've. This wasn't my favorite of her films, but I liked it, and I'm amazed, on watching it again, that it's not actually about the Glenda Jackson character at all. She's such a powerhouse actress that I only saw her, but it turns out the movie is really about the Michael Caine character, the cuckolded screenwriter who must fight through his baser instincts to play the noble husband, taking his wandering wife back and offering (although he never has to back it up) to try and rescue her doomed lover. It's a man's movie, for crying out loud. And all I remember are Jackson and the fantastically strong and wonderful Kate Nelligan in her three-scene role.

Helmut Berger as the young gigolo comes across more gay than androgynous, and there is no real electricity between Jackson and him. Oddly, it's not needed, as the important story is in her character finding her freedom, working through the boredom built into modern life, and she is so unfailingly intelligent that we know, even in moments when she seems fixated on him, that her obsession has little to do with any particular man, that he is a symbol, a barely tangible dream. That's why the last quarter of the film drops in quality, after the two run off together and try to form a life. At that point it becomes apparent that we are seeing the story as it is imagined in the mind of the screenwriter, who has no clue what his wife wants or is doing, really. When he steps in to save the day, it's ridiculous wish-fulfillment. By that time, the wife has become a non-character. And STILL she's brilliant to watch, because Jackson makes choices like nobody else ever has, and that's always riveting.