Molly Haskell
"We had faces then," said Gloria Swanson in . . . Sunset Boulevard. She was referring to silent film actresses, but she might have been talking about 'thirties and 'forties stars as well. In fact, Jill Clayburgh made a similar point in An Unmarried Woman…. They not only had faces: they had cameramen, lighting technicians, courturiers, and directors who loved every plane of those bodies and lavished their considerable art in displaying these women at their ideal best….
“Today's actresses may have more glaring flaws than Claudette Colbert's right profile, but who's around to cover for them?… Directors, freed from bondage to studios, stars, and stories, are… bent on self-expression. Their serious projects take the form of autobiographical journeys, or searches for the sort of fleeting improvisational truth that precludes careful construction of plot, character, and image. And women themselves are more apt to demand authenticity over artifice…
“At its worst, the cult of non-glamour has led to a cinema in which women are either absent altogether or subjected to harsh lighting and angles that leave them defenseless….
“But, at their best, harmonious pairings of director and star produce results that are extraordinary--unexpected, challenging, modern, and liberated in the best sense. In the right hands, the hands-off policy can be an act of loving generosity: we seem to be seeing actresses not as goddesses, fixed forever in youthful quasi-virginity, but as women growing up and old, changing before our eyes.
“Diane Keaton's collaboration with Woody Allen, one of the cinema's most fruitful rapports, has produced moments as charged as anything in the pampered past. Take Keaton's first entrance in Manhattan. Allen and girl friend Mariel Hemingway are at a gallery opening when Allen's buddy, Michael Murphy, spots them and comes over, expanding the group to three. Then, almost without our noticing, the beautiful black-and-white widescreen composition becomes four as Keaton slides up and joins them. That the entrance of this woman, about whom we have heard so much and are intensely curious, should be "unannounced," i.e., by the traditional cut, has the paradoxical effect of making her more mysterious. Her totality precedes her face, and the close-up, when in finally does come, is overwhelming, as thrilling as Garbo's most rapturously romantic tête-à-tête with the camera.
“Keaton's frazzled reserve, her agitated insecurity are the latter-day antitheses of Garbo's yielding. If the old stars found a seamless persona and kept it, Keaton is all seams, all contradictions. One minute, she looks seventeen; the next, a tired forty-five. Voluble, hans in her skinny-jeans pocket, she is lithe as a panther, only to become as frumpy as a washerwoman, as defensively unkempt as a schoolgirl studying for exams on a Saturday night.
“Along with Keaton, Allen creates in Manhattan a gallery of women as engaging and lovingly observed as the remarkable women of Allen's idol, Ingmar Bergman. Most appealing of all is Mariel Hemingway's big, solid, flat-chested teenager….
“Unlike Bergman's women, Allen's are no Earth Mothers or sensualists but American to the roots of their anxieties. If Allen intrudes upon his creations, and gives himself all the best lines as the star of the show, he also turns his riducule upon himself rather than upon the women, thus allowing them to be beautiful. In a roundabout way, his own taste is confirmed, as audiences, admiring these women, think, "Oh, what taste Woody Allen has!"
“As she evolves under Woody Allen's lustful, and loving, gaze, Keaton's image becomes more complex. She is the shiksa, the Midwestern WASP turned urban feminist, seen through the eyes of an overanalyzed Jewish intellectual. In the Alan Parker/Bo Goldman Shoot the Moon, she is less anxious, more at peace with herself as homemaker. The Keaton that Warren Beatty takes up with in Reds, is closer to the Keaton of Manhattan . . . or even Interiors: Louise Bryant less as the great beauty and heartbreaker than as a nervy--and nervous--bluestocking, desperate to break the mold and be taken seriously….”
“Paul Mazursky is another New York director drawn to the shiksa… But unlike Woody Allen, Mazursky identifies with his women, sees them from the inside. As a result, he gets an inward glow from Ellen Burstyn in Harry and Tonto and from [Jill] Clayburgh unlike anything Allen gets from his women….”
Molly Haskell
Vogue, date?, 285, 349
[should get more, perhaps]
“Today's actresses may have more glaring flaws than Claudette Colbert's right profile, but who's around to cover for them?… Directors, freed from bondage to studios, stars, and stories, are… bent on self-expression. Their serious projects take the form of autobiographical journeys, or searches for the sort of fleeting improvisational truth that precludes careful construction of plot, character, and image. And women themselves are more apt to demand authenticity over artifice…
“At its worst, the cult of non-glamour has led to a cinema in which women are either absent altogether or subjected to harsh lighting and angles that leave them defenseless….
“But, at their best, harmonious pairings of director and star produce results that are extraordinary--unexpected, challenging, modern, and liberated in the best sense. In the right hands, the hands-off policy can be an act of loving generosity: we seem to be seeing actresses not as goddesses, fixed forever in youthful quasi-virginity, but as women growing up and old, changing before our eyes.
“Diane Keaton's collaboration with Woody Allen, one of the cinema's most fruitful rapports, has produced moments as charged as anything in the pampered past. Take Keaton's first entrance in Manhattan. Allen and girl friend Mariel Hemingway are at a gallery opening when Allen's buddy, Michael Murphy, spots them and comes over, expanding the group to three. Then, almost without our noticing, the beautiful black-and-white widescreen composition becomes four as Keaton slides up and joins them. That the entrance of this woman, about whom we have heard so much and are intensely curious, should be "unannounced," i.e., by the traditional cut, has the paradoxical effect of making her more mysterious. Her totality precedes her face, and the close-up, when in finally does come, is overwhelming, as thrilling as Garbo's most rapturously romantic tête-à-tête with the camera.
“Keaton's frazzled reserve, her agitated insecurity are the latter-day antitheses of Garbo's yielding. If the old stars found a seamless persona and kept it, Keaton is all seams, all contradictions. One minute, she looks seventeen; the next, a tired forty-five. Voluble, hans in her skinny-jeans pocket, she is lithe as a panther, only to become as frumpy as a washerwoman, as defensively unkempt as a schoolgirl studying for exams on a Saturday night.
“Along with Keaton, Allen creates in Manhattan a gallery of women as engaging and lovingly observed as the remarkable women of Allen's idol, Ingmar Bergman. Most appealing of all is Mariel Hemingway's big, solid, flat-chested teenager….
“Unlike Bergman's women, Allen's are no Earth Mothers or sensualists but American to the roots of their anxieties. If Allen intrudes upon his creations, and gives himself all the best lines as the star of the show, he also turns his riducule upon himself rather than upon the women, thus allowing them to be beautiful. In a roundabout way, his own taste is confirmed, as audiences, admiring these women, think, "Oh, what taste Woody Allen has!"
“As she evolves under Woody Allen's lustful, and loving, gaze, Keaton's image becomes more complex. She is the shiksa, the Midwestern WASP turned urban feminist, seen through the eyes of an overanalyzed Jewish intellectual. In the Alan Parker/Bo Goldman Shoot the Moon, she is less anxious, more at peace with herself as homemaker. The Keaton that Warren Beatty takes up with in Reds, is closer to the Keaton of Manhattan . . . or even Interiors: Louise Bryant less as the great beauty and heartbreaker than as a nervy--and nervous--bluestocking, desperate to break the mold and be taken seriously….”
“Paul Mazursky is another New York director drawn to the shiksa… But unlike Woody Allen, Mazursky identifies with his women, sees them from the inside. As a result, he gets an inward glow from Ellen Burstyn in Harry and Tonto and from [Jill] Clayburgh unlike anything Allen gets from his women….”
Molly Haskell
Vogue, date?, 285, 349
[should get more, perhaps]
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