FILM REVIEW: LISTEN TO ME MARLON

Marlon Brando in Listen to Me Marlon.

Legendary

By Ed Rampell

Marlon Brando may have died in 2004 but he has not gone gently into Dylan Thomas’ good night. He’s back!

In the interests of full disclosure your humble scribe should let you know that Brando is his favorite actor. Having said that, Stevan Riley’s great new documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, about the stage and screen legend, is a must-see for viewers interested in film/theater history, the art of acting, celebrity activism and, of course Brando, the man and artist.

Riley had access to a hitherto previously unknown, privately held treasure trove of audiotapes the prolific Brando (an avid ham radio operator, By the way) accumulated over the years for various purposes, including: To prepare and research roles; self-hypnosis; recitations of Shakespeare monologues; etc. These wide-ranging ruminations reflect on: Growing up miserable in Nebraska, the son of alcoholics; Method Acting; Brando’s family; many of his movies; his romantic life; and this activist’s radical politics.

Riley’s documentary explores and expresses the actor’s inner and outer life through the audiotapes, spoken by Brando himself with that distinctive voice -- in effect Brando is posthumously narrating the film, literally having the last word. Of course, there are extensive still photos and clips -- not only from Marlon’s movies, but also of his Stanislavsky Method guru, Stella Adler. Some of those who worked with Brando, such as Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed 1973’s Last Tango in Paris, are also heard.

In archival and news footage we see Brando’s battles in court -- briefly with his ex-wife, Anna Kashfi and their custody clash over their son, Christian Brando and then, unfolding like a Shakespearean tragedy, what Brando called “the messenger of misery” arriving at his home: Christian’s shooting of his Tahitian half-sister Cheyenne’s Polynesian lover, Dag Drollet, at Marlon’s Mulholland Drive perch.

There are also home movies of Brando in happier days at Tahiti and Tetiaroa, the nearby atoll he bought as the reclusive star’s private getaway. Although the documentary, which is generally sympathetic to its subject (perhaps a condition of having access to the tapes and for making the film?), doesn’t go into it, the killing of Dag apparently prevented Brando for the last 15 years or so of his life from returning to French Polynesia, where he would have been under French jurisdiction and subject to questioning. By building a resort at Tetiaroa the oft-contradictory celebrity brought tourists to his supposed refuge. And Brando’s eco-obsession to transform Tetiaroa into an environmental paragon failed, marring the previously pristine paradise with abandoned rotting structures. (I know, I saw them there in the 1990s.)

Among the most absorbing of Marlon’s musings are his political views. The documenatry shows this son of alcoholics and an abusive father developed an inherent sense of identification with outsiders and the man who would play a Mafia chieftain in 1972’s The Godfather maintains he couldn’t stand to see the weak get pushed around. To his credit, in his finest moments Brando used his fame and fortune to support and shine a light on the oppressed. In Listen to Me Marlonthe actor and activist is seen in clips at civil rights events and at the funeral of “Little Bobby Hutton”, the teenaged Black Panther killed by Oakland police in a shootout which involved Eldridge Cleaver. Brando is shown standing beside Panther co-founder and chairman Bobby Seale. Martin Luther King also appears in a different clip.

Brando is better known for his stance on Native American issues, although he once rather pithily pointed out that when it comes to who’s more oppressed -- blacks, Indians, etc. - “it’s not an ouch contest.” Brando is heard recounting putting himself “on the line” during an armed land struggle at Kenosha, Wisconsin, pitting Natives against National Guardsmen, discussing being “four feet from death” as bullets whistled near him.

Of course, in what is arguably the Academy Awards ceremony’s greatest political moment, Brando sent traditionally-garbed Sacheen Little Feather to decline his Godfather Oscar, due to Hollywood’s disparaging treatment of America’s aboriginal people with decades of celluloid stereotypes. Part of this unforgettable moment, which raised the spirits of indigenous occupiers at Wounded Knee and finally gave some airtime to Native Americans, is in Listen to Me Marlon.

Intercut with clips from movies such as John Ford’s 1939 Drums Along the Mohawk, Listen to Me Marlon includes a bearded Brando denouncing Tinseltown’s depiction of Natives as “savages” during a 1970s appearance on Dick Cavett’s ABC-TV talk show, proclaiming: “Everything we are taught about the American Indian [by Hollywood] is wrong. There have been 400 treaties written by the United States, in good faith with the Indians, and every single one of them has been broken. We like to see ourselves as perhaps John Wayne sees us, that we are a country that stands for freedom, for rightness, for justice. It just simply doesn’t apply. And we were the most rapacious, aggressive, destructive, torturing, monstrous people who swept from one coast to the other, murdering and causing mayhem among the Indians.”

Listen to Me Marlon is a stellar, riveting biography. Riley previously directed the first cinema documentary on James Bond and the most lucrative film franchise ever, 2012’s Everything or Nothing, which Passion Pictures also co-produced. But what Brando aficionados may most appreciate is Marlon’s mulling over of acting and his stage and screen career. It’s fascinating to hear Brando reveal what he thought in order to unleash his pent-up explosive rage in A Streetcar Named Desire, which catapulted him to fame on Broadway and then Hollywood. It is an illuminating example of how the Stanislavsky Method works.

 

 

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FILM REVIEW: BICYCLING WITH MOLIERE

Serge (Fabrice Luchini) in Bicycling with Moliere. 

Circling the stage

By John Esther

A somewhat witty, certainly revealing, tale of clashing egos, the latest film by Philippe Le Guay – whose previous film was the lackluster The Woman on the 6^th Floor – two French actors get together to see it they can collaborate on Moliere’s The Misanthrope.

Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a successful actor with a wildly popular TV show about a surgeon who saves lives regardless of circumstances. Give the good doctor a plastic knife and he can save a young girl dying in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Already popular, rich and handsome Gauthier still wants a little more out of life. He wants something he can really sink his teeth into, like The Misanthrope, considered Moliere’s most demanding play for actors.

If he is going to pull it off, he will need the help of a fellow actor, Serge (Fabrice Luchini). For three years, Serge has led a hermetic life on the Ile de Ré, a posh area on France’s Atlantic Coast.

An expert on Moliere and a misanthrope in his own right, Serge would seem to be the perfect actor for the play’s protagonist, Alceste. But Gauthier wants to play Alceste, with Serge playing his Alceste's friend, Philinte, which is a smaller part.

Since Serge wants to play Alecste, too, the two of them agree to alternate rehearsing different roles. They may even do this for the play itself with the two alternating roles each week.

As the two rehearse over the next few days many conflicts arrive. Cellphones, bicycle accidents, a lover interest and bad plumbing interfere with the creative process. But what threatens any future production the most is the role of the egos of the actors. Every time progress is made, another setback comes along. On with the play, I say.

Certainly worth a view, Bicycling with Moliere has many charming warm moments about friendship, camaraderie and artistic and literary integrity in a world not to fond of that kind of thing; although France, in general, is significantly appreciative of great theater than the United States. You can bet far more French people, per capita, know a Moliere play more than Americans know one by Tennessee Williams or any American playwright for that matter. 

But the real strength of the play comes from watching the two experiencing the joys of working through a great piece of drama. How does one interpret a role, especially one from the 17^th century? How does one follow Moliere’s rhythm and still make it sound relevant to modern audiences...and other artistic/acting questions? While these can be great challenges to any actor, especially the more narcissistic ones, there are great joys to be found while playing with the play. Indeed, Bicycling with Moliere should not be missed by actors. 

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THEATER REVIEW: THE ROYAL FAMILY

A scene from The Royal Family.

Wise-eyed Geer

 

By Ed Rampell

 

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s 1927 The Royal Family is a love letter to the act of acting, and, in particular, to the actors and actresses who trod the boards and appear onscreen. Modeled after the Barrymore clan, The Royal Family'sCavendishes are the first family of America’s thespians. Greasepaint coursing through their blood they are theatrical in every sense of the term, as well as free spirits similar to the Sycamores in the anarchistic screwball comedy You Can’t Take It With You, which Kaufman co-wrote with Moss Hart for the stage in 1936 and with Robert Riskin for the screen in 1938 (co-starring a certain Lionel Barrymore, BTW).

 

Who better to incarnate this dynasty of performers than members of the House -- or, rather, amphitheater -- of Geer, a real life line of stage of screen artistes, descended from legendary, lanky Will Geer (1954’s The Salt of the Earth, 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson, and ultimately as America’s beloved über-grandpa from 1972-1978 on TV’s The Waltons)? Ellen Geer, the venerable Artistic Director of theWill Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, plays Fanny, the aging, ailing, grand dame of the thee-a-tuh and matriarch of the Cavendishes. Ellen’s sister, Melora Marshall -- a shape shifting actress known, among other things, for her gender bending roles (she portrays the male character Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, one of the other plays this troupe is presenting in repertory this summer) -- here plays Fanny’s daughter, actress Julie Cavendish. Willow Geer -- who, offstage, is Ellen’s actual daughter and Marshall’s niece -- portrays ingénue Gwen Cavendish, the onstage child of Julie at the beginning of her acting career.

 

The Geers’ in-law, Abby Craden, depicts Kitty Dean, who is dissed and disdained by the Cavendishes for committing the unforgivable, heinous crime of being a lousy actress. This presents an artistic challenge for Craden -- who has portrayed Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth in Theatricum Shakespearean productions and also appeared in numerous plays presented by the A Noise Within company -- because Craden actually is quite a good player.

 

The Royal Family's action takes place entirely in the Cavendishes’ sprawling home. Comebacks, romances, premieres and more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy are hatched on the premises in this madcap comedy and merry meditation on the nature of celebrity. The Cavendishes are fiendishly funny, hammy, scenery-chewing, attention seeking troupers, for whom the play’s the thing (along with the moolah, adulation, and gratification applause brings). If Fanny is patterned after Ethel Barrymore (who threatened to sue the playwrights and after Royal’sBroadway premiere “only nodded coolly to Kaufman when the two met at parties,” according to Howard Teichmann’s biography of the writer), then Tony Cavendish is clearly inspired by that matinee idol, John Barrymore.

 

The estimable Aaron Hendry’s two-fisted Tony steals ever single scene he’s in, like Winona Ryder let loose in Saks Fifth Avenue. Hendry, who also plays Petruchio this season in the Theatricum’s Taming of the Shrew, portrays his swashbuckling character with great panache, and is heaps of fun to watch in every scene he steals, dashing from brawls, paparazzi and lovers seeking to serve him legal papers for “breach of promise” lawsuits. Both playwrights knew Drew’s forebears, the Barrymores, but there is scant if any mention by Kaufman and Ferber of the carousing John Barrymore’s legendary, prodigious drinking. Their farce focuses on the foibles of actors by trade, and in particular on the few who attain stardom and are firmly fixed in the public eye.

 

The stage and screen credits of Kaufman, of course, include the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, as well as Dinner at Eight (with Ferber), Nothing Sacred, The Man Who Came to Dinner and other classics. Ferber, who likewise was a mid-Westerner with a German-Jewish and newspaper background, was also a novelist who wrote the books Show Boat, Giant and Cimarron, which were adapted for the screen. A film version of their The Royal Family was directed by George Cukor in 1930 and in 1977 there was a TV movie version. Given today’s snaparazzi and the TMZ, tabloid press with TMI about celebs, it would be a hoot to update this 86-year-old play.

 

In any case, Susan Angelo ably directs what is now a period piece, with a cast that includes Theatricum alum Alan Blumenfeld as Oscar Wolfe, a commercial theatrical producer who yet dreams of producing at least one play with redeeming artistic value. Tim Halligan drolly depicts the over-the-hill Herbert Dean who dreams of returning to the limelight. Andy Stokan and Bill Gunther both play the long suffering suitors of, respectively, Gwen and Julie, who have the impossible task of competing for their affections with the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd.

  

The Royal Family is delicious fun with the Geers in fine form and moving in high Geer. This is a rollicking, royal romp full of Bohemian bonhomie, an ode to those who have been bitten by the acting bug -- and to those of us who enjoy watching them prance about on- and offstage in their not-so-private lives.

 

 

The Royal Family runs through Sept. 28 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: 310-455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com.

 

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FILM REVIEW: AUGUSTINE

Augustine (Soko) in Augustine.

Let us play master & servant

By Don Simpson

Augustine (Soko) is working as a kitchen servant when she has a convulsive fit that sends her to Paris’ Salpêtrière psychiatric hospital with one eye stuck shut and half of her body paralyzed. Determined to get out of the hospital as soon as possible, Augustine attracts the attention of the chief neurologist -- Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (Vincent Lindon) -- when she has her next seizure. Charcot almost immediately identifies Augustine as his best chance to convince the Academy to provide him with more funding for Salpêtrière. After diagnosing Augustine with ovarian hysteria -- a catch-all diagnosis in 19th century France for women -- Charcot's best guess is that Augustine's hysteria is rooted in her brain. Augustine quickly becomes Charcot's pet patient because of her susceptibility to hypnosis. While hypnotized, Augustine's seizures can easily be triggered by Charcot...almost too easily. The theatricality of Charcot's presentations draws comparisons to Sarah Bernhardt's performances and evokes questions about the legitimacy of his research.

Strategically avoiding expository dialogue, writer-director Alice Winocour opts to let the audience contemplate the authenticity of Charcot's research and come to their own conclusions. We never know when the performance begins and when it ends, but skeptics of hypnotism will surmise fairly early on that Augustine is merely performing. Augustine is given plenty of motivations to do so. (Freud might suggest that Augustine is unconsciously trying to escape her job.) She is rewarded handsomely for her role as Charcot's prized subject with beautiful new dresses and a private room. Augustine knows that Charcot needs her for the continuance of his career; it is also obvious that Charcot craves Augustine sexually. Charcot is clearly trying to keep Augustine confined in Salpêtrière for as long as possible, and Augustine plays along with the charade for her own benefit. Although Augustine wants to be cured, that would most likely mean returning to a servant's position. It is in Augustine's best interest -- despite the tortuous Cronenbergian medical devices used on her -- to remain at Salpêtrière for as long as possible, but she also needs to maintain Charcot's undivided attention. The possibility that Charcot might discover another star patient is Augustine's greatest fear.

Augustine is able to make the best out of a horrible situation; she does so by identifying key ways to manipulate Charcot and turn the doctor-patient and male-female power dynamics upside-down. Augustine goes from being a servant to being served -- from  puppet to puppeteer; a repressed and tortured woman to becoming a person of power and influence. Most importantly, Augustine does this in 19th century France, when women are either wives or servants. The 19th century was an time when wealthy, old, white men made important decisions about women's health issues behind closed doors -- this is something that would never, ever happen in the 21st century... Right, America?

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DVD REVIEW: BEDWAYS

 Hans (Matthias Faust) and Marie (Lana Cooper) in Bedways.

Here we come

By Don Simpson

In a dilapidated and sparsely furnished Berlin apartment, an aspiring director named Nina (Miriam Mayet) and her two thespians -- Marie (Lana Cooper) and Hans (Matthias Faust) -- screen test for a yet-to-be-scripted film. The video project is is based upon a simple premise: Nina intends to capture authentic feelings, authentic love and authentic sex.

Nina attempts to maintain full directorial control by maniacally manipulating her actors as if they are puppets and she is pulling their strings. The borders between fiction and reality are promptly blurred as Marie and Hans try to decipher what their director really wants from them. According to Nina, Marie and Hans should not play themselves or anyone else -- but what does that mean?

The sexual histories between Nina and both of her subjects further complicates the on- and off-camera scenario. The project quickly evolves into a warped seduction in which Nina pushes everyone’s emotions, including her own, to the limit. Nina, Marie and Hans experience a titillating tilt-a-whirl of emotions and desires, a disorienting ride that thrives off of jealousy, grief and anger.

Can cinematic authenticity be faked? Do Marie and Hans really need to fall in love with each other in order for Nina’s film to succeed? Can two people fall in love in front of the unblinking kino eye and an authoritative voyeur?

Nina is not the only voyeur in the equation as German filmmaker RP Kahl often positions the camera statically at distance in order to form a voyeuristic perspective for the audience. The camera does occasionally venture in for a closer view of the sexual encounters as if to verify for the audience that the penetration is authentic -- like Nina, his onscreen avatar, Kahl is incredibly fascinated by cinematic realism.

By utilizing the film-within-a-film narrative format, Kahl creates a world in which it is practically impossible to decipher when the actors are acting for Nina and when we are witnessing the actors’ reality. In doing so, Kahl discusses how cinema blurs the identities of its actors and contemplates the relationship between their on- and off-screen persona.

Bedways is an experimental chamber piece that concentrates on three actors encased for the most part in one location. This incredibly intimate narrative technique is cleverly juxtaposed with the mental and spacial distancing of intimacy and sex. One of the more telling scenes -- that purposefully bookends Bedways -- is when we witness Hans and Nina masturbating in separate rooms while observing each other via monitors; eventually they reach their limits of torture, the separation becomes too much, and Nina commands for Hans to come to her.

A worthy attempt to merge the worlds of art house and erotic cinema (a la Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience; Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs; Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and Chloe; the films of Joe Swanberg; etc.), Bedways aptly blurs the definition of erotic cinema by giving us a well-crafted and incredibly dramatic film with some penetrating sex thrown in.

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