Lit from within

Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart in "The Philadelphia Story"

A SCENIC VIEW

I’ve never thought of Jimmy Stewart as much of a seducer. I guess that’s because he was never a sex symbol, and I don’t suspect he ever wanted to be. He was an actor who wanted to be good at conveying whatever the character called for. And in one of my favorite scenes in one of my top 10 favorite movies, Stewart pulls off a seduction the only way a real seduction takes place – with the help of a woman who wants to be seduced. In this case, it’s Katharine Hepburn, and the movie is “The Philadelphia Story.”

The words “sex symbol” never really fit Hepburn’s image either. But just like Stewart, Hepburn was terrific at her chosen profession, and when it came time to seduce or be seduced on camera, she could make you believe it. One of the things I love about this scene is how well-matched the characters are and how the seduction is born more out of mutual admiration than lust. It’s also born out of knowing what’s at the core of the other person even though they’ve only known each other for a day.

Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, a wealthy Philadelphia socialite on the weekend of her wedding to a nouveau riche entrepreneur named George Kittredge (played by John Howard).  The blessed occasion has been crashed by Tracy’s ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven – played by a never-more-charming or calculating Cary Grant. In a valiant yet self-serving effort to save Tracy’s family from a blackmail scheme, Dexter has made a deal with the publisher he works for that he will secure a big story about Tracy’s wedding for Spy magazine. Keep in mind that this was in the olden times when people – even celebrities – valued their privacy and thought the idea of any aspect of their personal lives being splashed all over a magazine was the height of poor taste and low class.

So Dexter has agreed to do the story only because the publisher threatens to run a story about the separation of Tracy’s parents. It seems her father has run off to have an affair with a younger woman. Dexter is also hoping his presence at the Lord home on Tracy’s wedding weekend will gum up the works for Tracy’s impending nuptials.

Jimmy Stewart plays Macaulay “Mike” Connor, the reporter writing the story under the guise of being an old friend of Tracy’s brother, who can’t make it to the wedding because he’s in South America or some such far and away place. He’s joined by photographer Liz Embry, played with sharp wit by Ruth Hussey. Well, thanks to how well Tracy knows her ex-husband, she’s able to figure out before she’s even met Mike and Liz that they’ve never met her brother and are simply there to get the dirt on her wedding. But once Dexter explains the reason for his attempted deception, she backs down and allows them to stay for the festivities.    

At first, Mike assumes Tracy is a spoiled little rich girl with mush for brains, and Tracy assumes Mike is a smug, elitist journalist with nothing but rudeness running through his veins. But they are quickly forced to come to terms with one another when they actually have a conversation. Mike discovers Tracy is in fact spoiled and rich, but she’s also very insightful and discerning. Tracy realizes that underneath Mike’s toughness he’s an eloquent novelist and not such a bad judge of character. More importantly, they discover that they are a lot alike. And after having one too many drinks at the festivities on the night before the wedding, they engage in highly entertaining banter in the backyard of the Lord estate.

I was delighted from the very start of the scene – Mike and Tracy shifting leisurely to the music atop a narrow rock wall. I marveled that they could balance considering how much alcohol they had consumed at the party. But they do and make it look effortless, and you can almost feel their champagne buzz through the screen. But the banter is the thing with this scene – as it is with the whole movie. They go at each other with sometimes playful but always-truthful jabs about class and culture. They reveal the best and worst about each other, while realizing their faults aren’t the end of the world, and they have some rather redeeming characteristics to make up for them. Their repartee is charming, funny and full of the romance that can only come from two people really seeing each other and admiring what they see. Sure, booze and flattery always have a way of ramping up romance as well, but having watched their relationship evolve, you know there is much more at work than just baser instincts between these two cerebral creatures. Director George Cukor was a man who knew how to bring out the best in his actors, but with actors like Hepburn and Stewart, he didn’t have to work that hard.

Unfortunately, I could not locate the entire scene online, but this excerpt from it captures the gist of it. It is only one of many great scenes in the film. I hope this glimpse will encourage you to check out the entire film, easily one of the best and funniest ever made.

'Like shoobop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom'

Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta as Sandy and Danny in "Grease"

Everyone knows summer is a great time for romance. The concept was first immortalized on the big screen for me thanks to one of the great culture-clash couples of cinema – Sandy and Danny in the 1978 musical “Grease,” one of the first movies I ever fell for. Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta are terrific playing two teenagers who become sweethearts over the summer but then have to face the realities of their different cultures when they end up at the same high school in the fall.

Set in the 1950s, Sandy is the sweet, wholesome girl next door, and Danny is a greaser – wild, leather-clad and way-too-cool for school. It’s all very “The Outsiders” with music and without the class overtones. Their troubles don’t stem from Danny being from the wrong side of the tracks, but from Danny having to project a tough, bad-boy image that doesn’t mesh with actually caring about a girl. He’s conflicted because he really does love Sandy, but he’s supposed to be about sex, not love. And Sandy has to decide if she’s going to maintain her standards and squeaky-clean image, or throw all that out of the window to be more like the type of girl she thinks could win Danny’s heart for good. Although set more than 50 years ago, these issues are just as common today – and not just for teenagers.

My friends and I saw “Grease” when we were little and had all the songs memorized – from the opening number, “Summer Nights,” to the closing tunes, “You’re the One that I Want” and “We Go Together” ("like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong"). I especially liked “Hopelessly Devoted to You” because I fancied myself a singer from a young age and was already attuned to my penchant for unrequited love songs. I also loved Stockard Channing’s rendition of “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” because it was so catty and clever.

If you haven’t seen “Grease” in a while or for some unfathomable reason have never seen it, late summer is a great time of year to be transported to that ‘50s era with great songs, classic performances and a timeless story about what could happen after a summer romance.

The tenuous correlation of Poirot and Hitchcock

David Suchet as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot for Masterpiece Mystery on PBS

Mysteries are wonderful because it is fascinating to see how people solve them. To determine what happened at a given place and time when you were not at that place at that time just by using deductive powers and whatever clues remain is amazing. And we are mesmerized by the exercise when it comes to crime solving. Why else are there so many best-selling books, top-rated TV shows and blockbuster movies devoted to whodunits, police procedurals and other thrillers?

In the last 100 years, two purveyors of mystery entertainment have stood out above the rest. They occupy two different mediums – writing and cinema, although there is some overlap for the writer. It’s the prolific writer Agatha Christie and the acclaimed filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock.

Apart from using different artistic means to share their genius, they also had a different modus operandi when it came to their stories. Christie, for the most part, trafficked in whodunits. While Hitchcock mostly revealed his killers upfront and took viewers through the paces of wondering how (or if) the killer or killers would be caught.

Public television’s Masterpiece Mystery! recently concluded its Poirot series based on Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Christie wrote 33 novels and numerous short stories about the fastidious super sleuth, and the PBS Poirot series produced adaptations of all 33 novels and some of the short stories over the last 25 years. One actor portrayed Poirot throughout the entire series – David Suchet. As an avid fan of Christies’ books who has read all of the Poirot novels, I think Suchet has done an admirable job of bringing Poirot to life – all his mannerisms and idiosyncrasies (and there are many). There were times when I was disappointed by the screenwriters’ choices, certain significant deviations from the books. But as a film fan, I’m used to literary adaptations being altered for various reasons, and I still enjoy the PBS adaptations very much – especially because of Suchet’s wonderful interpretation of one of my absolute favorite literary characters.

Robert Cummings (from left), Ray Milland and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder"

But as much respect as I have for Suchet’s work portraying Poirot, my favorite Suchet performance was when he played a very different detective in a movie remake of a Hitchcock film. It was his performance as a police detective named Mohamed Karaman in the 1998 thriller “A Perfect Murder,” a surprisingly good remake of Hitchcock’s 1954 “Dial M for Murder.”  It was surprising because, as film fans know, good remakes are hard to come by.

“A Perfect Murder” stars Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow as a ridiculously wealthy and seemingly happy married couple. She is having a steamy affair with Viggo Mortensen, so she’s no angel. Yet we favor her over her clearly money-obsessed, ruthless Wall Street tycoon husband – maybe because he’s a conniving killer vs. her being a conniving adulteress. Plus it’s hard not to root for young, attractive lovers to prevail over the older, fuddy-duddy, murderous husband. It was the same in Hitchcock’s original. Even though we learn of the wife’s affair with a mild-mannered novelist in the opening scene – played by Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings, it’s hard to like husband Ray Milland as soon as he reveals his plan to kill his wife, Kelly, in the following half-hour.

Suchet in "A Perfect Murder"

But back to Suchet. He’s wonderful as the detective in “A Perfect Murder” because he gives a quiet, insightful performance. It’s very different from his turn as Poirot because it is understated. Poirot is lovably boastful with many ticks and quirks to his personality that can be ostentatious. Detective Kamaran is clearly thoughtful, but you see the wheels turning in his mind without him having to say much. And the understanding between him and Paltrow as the wife/potential victim/suspect is lovely. They bond over language of all things. She is a U.N. translator and linguist who speaks many languages, including the detective’s native language of Arabic (I believe the character is Algerian), and she is able to convey her genuine interest in the detective’s private life concerns when she asks him about his sick child in his own language. These seemingly small nuances establish a connection that is important for the story.

In “Dial M for Murder,” the detective is played by the great character actor John Williams, who won a Tony award for his performance in the original Broadway stage production. It was quite a different part than the one in “A Perfect Murder,” of course, but both he and Suchet did the role of the detective proud in their respective efforts. Coincidentally (or maybe not), Williams gives what seems to be a nod to the great fictional detective Poirot at the end of "Dial M for Murder" when he combs his rather large mustache, which happens to be styled rather similarly to Poirot's famous mustache. 

So perhaps that's a direct connection between Poirot and Hitchcock. In any case, I salute Suchet at the end of his career as Poirot on television, and I hope that he continues to work portraying other detectives and more on the big and small screen. 

Because she is passionate

Orson Welles called her “the world’s greatest actress.” She worked with the likes of Welles, Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut, Wim Wenders and Michelangelo Antonioni – some of the finest directors of the 20th century. I am describing French actress Jeanne Moreau, and I'm doing this short spotlight in my "Because" series because she is passionate. I'm also doing it because, as part of its Summer Under the Stars film festival, Turner Classic Movies is devoting the entire day Friday, Aug. 8, to Moreau, and I had the pleasure of writing the intros for the primetime line-up.

Up first for the night at 8 p.m. is “The Trial” – the only one of the evening I haven’t seen. It was interesting to learn about how director Orson Welles came to make the movie in my research. It was the first film he’d done with complete autonomy since his epic directorial debut, “Citizen Kane.” And he only did it because it was on a list of films the producers were willing to finance. It is based on a Franz Kafka novel about bureaucracy, tyranny and persecution – as so many Kafka works are. Moreau has a small part as the mysterious neighbor of the protagonist, played by Anthony Perkins. She was able to get some advice out of Welles about her desire to direct films herself someday. He advised her to wait until the need to direct became more painful. She starred in a few more films for Welles and in 1976 made her directorial debut with “Lumiere.”   

Up next is one of my favorite Moreau films and one of her most famous roles – even though she’s only on the screen for a short time. It’s “Elevator to the Gallows” directed by Louis Malle. Malle is often credited with “discovering” Moreau because her career began to take off after “Elevator to the Gallows,” in which she plays a woman who has convinced her lover to kill her husband. [I give her an honorable mention for her performance on my list of cinema’s top femme fatales I posted recently.] But Malle denied the credit for Moreau’s cinematic ascendence – saying she was already a well-known stage and B-movie actress in France when he cast her in “Elevator.” There’s a killer score from Miles Davis that makes Moreau’s scenes wandering around the streets of Paris looking for her murderous lover make her seem like the coolest, yet most vulnerable femme fatale ever.

Moreau in "Jules and Jim"

The third film of the night is the one that made Moreau an international sensation – her seminal performance in a landmark French New Wave film – “Jules and Jim.” She plays the free-spirited, tempestuous Catherine, the central figure in a love triangle between her and two very different best friends – the shy Jules, played by Oskar Werner, and the outgoing Jim, played by Henri Serre. She captivates the audience as effectively as she captivates her two suitors. Director Francois Truffaut said in his biography, “In all my 20 years of cinema, the filming of ‘Jules and Jim,’ thanks to Jeanne Moreau, remains a luminous memory, the most luminous.” 

The fourth feature will be a provocative melodrama that sparked a landmark Supreme Court decision on obscenity – Louis Malle’s controversial “The Lovers.” Moreau plays a bored, wealthy wife and mother dealing with a massive mid-life crisis. She handles it as movie’s expect people to handle such milestones – embarking on a torrid affair with some random archeologist who helps her when her car breaks down. The extended sex scene they share was what caused all the uproar in 1959 when it was released, resulting in censorship bans in the U.S. (expected) and in several European countries (What!). When an Ohio theater manager was arrested for showing the film, the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the majority surprisingly decided the movie’s artistic merit outweighed any obscenity charge. By today’s standards, the movie probably would’ve gotten away with a PG-13 rating. There is some nudity, but at the time, just the shots of Moreau’s face experiencing such illicit pleasure were enough to send the upright, forthright squares into a tizzy. Of course, the controversy did nothing but make the movie more successful at the box office, but many critics were praising the film from the beginning – especially Moreau. The New York Times gushed, and I’m paraphrasing, that Moreau seemed to be living, not playing, the part.

Check out the movies tonight on TCM starting at 8 p.m. EDT. I’ll wrap this up with one my favorite quotes from Moreau, one of my favorite quotes ever –

“Like every human being, I have everything in me – the best and the worst.”
– Jeanne Moreau

More recommended Moreau

"La Notte" (1961) - Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

"Diary of a Chambermaid" (1964) - Director: Luis Buñuel