Stephen Schiff
“The makeup job, of course, is the real star of Mommie Dearest. And why not? Wasn't the makeup the centerpiece of The Phantom of the Opera and The Creature from the Black Lagoon?…. Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford … [is] a ghastly, wonderful, inhuman sight. Dunaway never looked like this before, and neither did Crawford. No one ever did. The Joan of Mommie Dearest is a pure movie creation, a Frankenstein's monster that hovers perilously between faces, between personas. There's something biologically askew here: a makeup man could create that face, but human genes and chromosomes couldn't. And the characterization is synthetic, too. It's a wild melange of visions, from the screenwriters…, from the director, from Dunaway and from Christina Crawford, and somewhere beneath all that, from Joan Crawford herself, whose memory still beams starry emanations from the grave.
“…. [I]t's Sunset Boulevard meets The Shining. Joan Crawford may well have been the gorgon her adopted daughter depicts. Certainly her performances in movies like Queen Bee and Harriet Craig and in her Grand Guignol-style horror pictures (Straight-Jacket, Berserk, and so forth) make it easy to imagine her stalking her Brentwood manse in a cold fury, ferreting out stains and dustballs, and hissing lines like, "I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dirt!" But that's the Joan Crawford that lovers of camp have long clasped to their bosoms. The ferocity, the selfishness, and the Nietzschean will to power--all these are part of her joke, her legend, her tragicomedy. And so in some essential way, seeing them on the screen--again--is not so much shocking as it is smirkily funny….
“…. If you haven't already, you soon will hear about the Wire Hanger Scene …. Why, the very idea [of wire hangers] throws Joan into a rage that makes Othello look like Mr. Greenjeans. Looming over Christina, her blood-red lipstick and her mustardy teet setting off her white mask, Joan pummels her daughter witht eh offending hanger and then whacks her a few more times for good measure with a can of Bon Ami. "Jesus Christ," whimpers little Tina, as Perry's camera jumps around excitedly, eager for a better view. Better views are always forthcoming…. [Schiff also cites the "Hair-Cutting Scene" and the "Choking Scene."] These scenes are so outlandish and so lurid--and Dunaway overacts so egregiously in them--that the audience may begin to take a sort of hilarious pleasure in the violence, the way one does watching a bloody but unbelievably stylized kung-fu or horror movie. When Joan finally dies and Christina views the open coffin, I half expected to see the movie-star's eyes fly open and her gnarled hand leap to her daughter's throat.
“…. Still, around the edges of the plot, one discerns another, more interesting story: the story of a woman intent on doing her job, and who knows that her job isn't to act, it's to be a star…. Mommie Dearest comes alive when it's most sympathetic to Joan Crawford, when it sees her not merely as Medusa in cold cream, but as a haunted professional trying to make her life work.
“Faye Dunaway is attracted to these female-gladiator roles. We've seen her undertake them in Network, Eyes of Laura Mars, and, on TV, Evita Peron. And because she sympathizes with her ambitious professionals, even when they turn out to be harpies (she says she admires Crawford), she gives them a lot of conviction. Certainly she's the only forceful presnce on the screen in Mommie Dearest….
“One's eyes keep returning to Dunaway, but not because this is anything like a good performance. It's a startling example of that shtick which has regrettably come to be known as "impressionism." As recently as 15 years ago, I don't think anyone would have made a movie like this one…. But in our celebrity-crazy culture, doing an "impression" strikes a lot of people as a statement, even if it has no real content; it's a reference to an individual who has turned into an icon and so has come to mean more than any individual can. Impressions have an almost obscene fascination. They are what drag shows are based on, and much of the old Saturday Night Live humor (remember John Belushi's eerie version of Joe Cocker?) And now we have Dunaway's version of Crawford. Lee C. Harman, the makeup man, and Kathryn Blondell, the hairstylist, have got it right--the crescent eyebrows, the flat '40s hairdo that looks so much like a graduation cap, the red, red lips. And Dunaway is impeccable, tensing her mouth around the corners, stiffening her shoulders, making her eyes wide and bright and piercing; her voice captures Crawford's dropped g's, the husky dips and peremptory arcs, and the surprising variations in speed. It's an accurate impression, but that's all it is; there's not much character in it. We can see that Dunaway wants to bring out the confusion between acting and real life in Crawford, but she's so busy with the look, the gestures, the walk, that she only compounds the confusion. There's a vagueness at the center of this performance. It's as if Dunaway really understood Crawford solely during the mad scenes--as if in some perverse way, she believed that in those frenzies of cruelty lay the essence, even the magnificence, of the movie-star's character. And, oddly, the rest of the film supports that view. If Joan Crawford isn't spinning in her grave, she's probably out hacking up more rose bushes.”
Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix,
when did this get printed? (LO little)
“…. [I]t's Sunset Boulevard meets The Shining. Joan Crawford may well have been the gorgon her adopted daughter depicts. Certainly her performances in movies like Queen Bee and Harriet Craig and in her Grand Guignol-style horror pictures (Straight-Jacket, Berserk, and so forth) make it easy to imagine her stalking her Brentwood manse in a cold fury, ferreting out stains and dustballs, and hissing lines like, "I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dirt!" But that's the Joan Crawford that lovers of camp have long clasped to their bosoms. The ferocity, the selfishness, and the Nietzschean will to power--all these are part of her joke, her legend, her tragicomedy. And so in some essential way, seeing them on the screen--again--is not so much shocking as it is smirkily funny….
“…. If you haven't already, you soon will hear about the Wire Hanger Scene …. Why, the very idea [of wire hangers] throws Joan into a rage that makes Othello look like Mr. Greenjeans. Looming over Christina, her blood-red lipstick and her mustardy teet setting off her white mask, Joan pummels her daughter witht eh offending hanger and then whacks her a few more times for good measure with a can of Bon Ami. "Jesus Christ," whimpers little Tina, as Perry's camera jumps around excitedly, eager for a better view. Better views are always forthcoming…. [Schiff also cites the "Hair-Cutting Scene" and the "Choking Scene."] These scenes are so outlandish and so lurid--and Dunaway overacts so egregiously in them--that the audience may begin to take a sort of hilarious pleasure in the violence, the way one does watching a bloody but unbelievably stylized kung-fu or horror movie. When Joan finally dies and Christina views the open coffin, I half expected to see the movie-star's eyes fly open and her gnarled hand leap to her daughter's throat.
“…. Still, around the edges of the plot, one discerns another, more interesting story: the story of a woman intent on doing her job, and who knows that her job isn't to act, it's to be a star…. Mommie Dearest comes alive when it's most sympathetic to Joan Crawford, when it sees her not merely as Medusa in cold cream, but as a haunted professional trying to make her life work.
“Faye Dunaway is attracted to these female-gladiator roles. We've seen her undertake them in Network, Eyes of Laura Mars, and, on TV, Evita Peron. And because she sympathizes with her ambitious professionals, even when they turn out to be harpies (she says she admires Crawford), she gives them a lot of conviction. Certainly she's the only forceful presnce on the screen in Mommie Dearest….
“One's eyes keep returning to Dunaway, but not because this is anything like a good performance. It's a startling example of that shtick which has regrettably come to be known as "impressionism." As recently as 15 years ago, I don't think anyone would have made a movie like this one…. But in our celebrity-crazy culture, doing an "impression" strikes a lot of people as a statement, even if it has no real content; it's a reference to an individual who has turned into an icon and so has come to mean more than any individual can. Impressions have an almost obscene fascination. They are what drag shows are based on, and much of the old Saturday Night Live humor (remember John Belushi's eerie version of Joe Cocker?) And now we have Dunaway's version of Crawford. Lee C. Harman, the makeup man, and Kathryn Blondell, the hairstylist, have got it right--the crescent eyebrows, the flat '40s hairdo that looks so much like a graduation cap, the red, red lips. And Dunaway is impeccable, tensing her mouth around the corners, stiffening her shoulders, making her eyes wide and bright and piercing; her voice captures Crawford's dropped g's, the husky dips and peremptory arcs, and the surprising variations in speed. It's an accurate impression, but that's all it is; there's not much character in it. We can see that Dunaway wants to bring out the confusion between acting and real life in Crawford, but she's so busy with the look, the gestures, the walk, that she only compounds the confusion. There's a vagueness at the center of this performance. It's as if Dunaway really understood Crawford solely during the mad scenes--as if in some perverse way, she believed that in those frenzies of cruelty lay the essence, even the magnificence, of the movie-star's character. And, oddly, the rest of the film supports that view. If Joan Crawford isn't spinning in her grave, she's probably out hacking up more rose bushes.”
Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix,
when did this get printed? (LO little)
posted by Intersections28 - David Gibson at
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