And we still got the requisite pointless montage (on horror films) and the laughable dance piece.  Whenever the telecast has tried to be a variety show, it has spelled disaster.  This has been the case every single time I’ve watched the Oscars (and I’ve seen 40 of them).  It was dumb when they used to “dance” the costume nominees, and it was dumb last night, watching wonderful dancers interpret THE HURT LOCKER.  Can you say “kitsch”? 

As a concept, I like having five stars come out to talk about the nominees, but it did bring the show to a screeching halt.  If the Best Actor and Actress presentations were separated by an hour or so, then it wouldn’t feel so numbing.  And did you notice how many presenters said “And the winner is…,” rather than the kinder-gentler “And the Oscar goes to…”?  Was this accidental?  I’m fine with the use of “winner,” which is more honest.  Are we supposed to pretend that nobody won or lost?  But the tackiest bit of the night was the orchestra launching into “I Am Woman” following Bigelow’s speech.  The Oscars have caught up to the 70s!

Meryl Streep has been nominated in the Best Actress category 13 times and won only once (SOPHIE’S CHOICE).  Katharine Hepburn was nominated 12 times and won four Oscars.  For all the praise and accolades heaped upon Streep, she is starting to look overlooked, even ignored (at least each year at Oscar time).  Yes, she also has three supporting nominations and one win in that category (KRAMER VS. KRAMER), but Streep hasn’t heard her name called out at the Oscars since 1983.    

I actually had a better time last night than in most years, simply because I agreed with more of the choices than I usually do.  The ten Best Picture nominees seemed to do what they were supposed to do, broadening Oscar’s reach for the TV audience.  And it surely was a blessing not to have full performances of the nominated songs.  After all, the song category is the one hanging on by a thread in terms of relevance, so why give it more time than any other?  Now if we can just get Meryl that third Oscar, all will be right in the world, at least in the skewed, magical, and addictive world in which Oscar rules.

If I had to pick my favorite Niven film, I’d go with BACHELOR MOTHER (1939), one of the comic gems of the great screwball-comedy era.  Directed by Garson Kanin and starring Ginger Rogers (with whom Niven made three films), BACHELOR MOTHER is a modestly mounted romantic comedy yet a worthy member of Hollywood’s classic output of 1939.  Rogers is at the peak of her stardom, truly one of the Golden Age’s top comediennes, and Niven partnered her delightfully.  It appears to be a case of Niven getting a role only after Cary Grant had proved unavailable, but who cares?  Niven makes the most of his Grant-like chance and he is irresistibly winning and deftly amusing.  His debonair persona is the perfect counterpoint to Rogers’ working-girl appeal, creating a bond similar to the one she had developed with Fred Astaire.  Rogers works in the toy department of a store owned by Niven’s father (Charles Coburn, great as always).  When she comes to the aid of a doorstep foundling, everyone believes that the baby is hers, no matter how hard she tries to explain the truth, eventually leading to suspicions that Niven, the boss’ son, is the father.  The film is one of the more beguiling of dream-factory Cinderella comedies, made with an unforced charm and sustained cleverness, containing at least one major and quite hilarious comic sequence of the period, the nightclub scene in which the two stars successfully pass Rogers off as Niven’s non-English-speaking Swedish date.  This sparkling comedy was horridly remade for Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher in 1956 as BUNDLE OF JOY.  Imagine Eddie Fisher stepping in for David Niven!

The bad news is that BACHELOR MOTHER is not available on DVD, but the good news is that TCM is showing it on March 24th at 9:45P.M.  Alert your DVR!

Grayson made her screen debut in the typical fashion of many a young and attractive MGM hopeful:  she was showcased opposite Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy picture, just as Lana Turner had done before her and as Esther Williams was about to do.  Grayson graduated from ANDY HARDY’S PRIVATE SECRETARY (1941) to Abbott and Costello’s RIO RITA (1942) and then got the full MGM push in the Technicolor A-list musical THOUSANDS CHEER (1943), co-starring another relative newcomer, Gene Kelly, though the movie seems more intent on pushing Grayson than Kelly.  Unfortunately, her side of the plot puts her in Shirley Temple territory, trying to reunite her separated parents.  The only reason to recall THOUSANDS CHEER is Lena Horne’s sublime “Honeysuckle Rose,” which has nothing to do with the nonsense surrounding it.  But the director, George Sidney, and both of his stars were reteamed on a little something called ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945), which properly focuses more on Kelly than Grayson, and more on Kelly’s teamwork with Frank Sinatra than on his romance with Grayson (who is cast here as a film extra hoping for her big break in the movies).  Though Grayson perhaps has as much musical screen time as the fellas–who are irresistibly cast as sailors on leave–she can’t quite compete with Kelly’s innovative dance sequences or Sinatra’s aching ballads.  (But how many mortals could?)  Ridiculously long at 139 minutes, ANCHORS AWEIGH is trite and uneven yet sporadically magical and transporting.  And it solidified Grayson as a top leading lady of the MGM musical, as well as the successor to the studio’s recently retired (in 1942) soprano Jeanette MacDonald, whose superstardom Grayson never quite equaled, especially as the movie musical moved further away from operetta-type material.  If the 1940s kept Grayson busy on those two films with Kelly and three films with Sinatra, the other two being IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN (1947) and THE KISSING BANDIT (1948), then the second half of her stardom allied her with two other male co-stars, two men who suited her more comfortably than the staggeringly gifted Gene and Frank.

THAT MIDNIGHT KISS (1949) and THE TOAST OF NEW ORLEANS (1950) were the two musicals that introduced tenor Mario Lanza to the screen, giving Grayson a handsome leading man with whom she could share operatic duets.  But Grayson was clearly put in the secondary position, lending her back-seat support to MGM’s big push on Lanza’s behalf.  In THAT MIDNIGHT KISS, it’s Ethel Barrymore, as Grayson’s grandmother, who steals the show (without moving a muscle, or singing a note).  Though THE TOAST OF NEW ORLEANS introduced “Be My Love,” one of the songs most associated with Grayson, the film is one of her worst.  (How did poor David Niven end up in this, playing second fiddle to both stars?)  Though mired in excruciating happy-peasant comedy, the film did give the stars a shot at MADAME BUTTERFLY at the climax.  Talk about a bizarre mix of high and low culture, which I guess might have been interpreted at the time as “something for everyone!”

The two roles for which Grayson is most remembered are two of the parts she played in her three vehicles with baritone Howard Keel, the leading man who suited her best of all.  Their vocal renditions of “Make Believe” in SHOW BOAT and ”Wunderbar” in KISS ME KATE (1953) are probably the two high points of her career.  (ANCHORS AWEIGH director George Sidney also directed SHOW BOAT and KISS ME KATE, making him the man who made Grayson’s three most enduring musical pictures.)  Grayson was far better suited to the ingenue simplicity of her Magnolia in SHOW BOAT than she was to the more theatrically demanding and sophisticated requirements of playing stage star Lilli Vanessi in KISS ME KATE, but she nonetheless became the Magnolia and Lilli that most of us grew up with.  (In KATE, she is seen as both a blonde and a redhead but not as a brunette.)  The middle teaming of Grayson and Keel is the thoroughly lackluster LOVELY TO LOOK AT (1952). 

Grayson and Keel were briefly the 1950s answer to Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, just as Marge and Gower Champion were momentarily spoken of in the same breath as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  Grayson’s voice and personality never quite had the warmth of her fellow MGM soprano Jane Powell, nor did she have MacDonald’s idol-of-millions level of popularity, but she made her contribution to the movie musical at a key moment in its history.  It was a wunderbar decade for Grayson, and will I ever hear “Make Believe” without thinking first of her?

She was a lovely blonde leading lady of the 1930s, then the raven-haired beauty of four Fritz Lang melodramas of the 1940s, making her a key femme fatale of film noir, with THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944), opposite Edward G. Robinson, the best of her films for Lang.  At 40, she moved into the 1950s as the epitome of the upper-middle-class American housewife in FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950) and its 1951 sequel FATHER’S LITTLE DIVIDEND.  And in the 1960s, she thrived on the small screen in the one-of-a-kind horror soap DARK SHADOWS.

Bennett had first shown glimmers of talent in Raoul Walsh’s snappy, wisecracking comedy ME AND MY GAL (1932), opposite Spencer Tracy, her future FATHER OF THE BRIDE husband.  She showed a likably deadpan approach to comedy.  In LITTLE WOMEN (1933), a massive hit and an instant classic, she was Amy, and director George Cukor got some lovely and charming moments from her, though hers is the least accomplished performance among the “women.”  A breakthrough for Bennett came in PRIVATE WORLDS (1935), a rarely seen drama I was lucky enough to catch a few years ago at a screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  The stars of the film are Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer, and it has been called the first major Hollywood film set in a mental institution, a decade and a half before THE SNAKE PIT (1948).  Directed by the estimable Gregory La Cava, PRIVATE WORLDS is an admirable drama remarkably free of easy answers, and it’s further striking for its feminist streak, with Colbert as a great psychiatrist, the equal of her male colleagues.  (The film never resorts to putting her in her “place.”)  Boyer plays the new boss, and he has a low opinion of female doctors.  He eventually comes around.  The film is unfortunately loaded with soapy plot turns, including the arrival of Boyer’s murderous sister Helen Vinson, who begins an affair with doctor Joel McCrea, married to a fragile Bennett.

Colbert received an Oscar nomination, a year after winning the award for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT.  With her characteristic ease, warmth, and intelligence, she is radiant.  Boyer fares less well in a sketchier role, but McCrea is as wonderfully natural as always, even though the script undermines him by turning him into a heel.  (Colbert and McCrea, cast as pals and peers here, would take their obvious rapport and turn it into pure gold when they starred in Preston Sturges’ comic wonder THE PALM BEACH STORY seven years later.)  The surprise here is Bennett, in one of her best performances, tender and sympathetic, showing new confidence in her acting ability and making a strong and touching impression.  She plays a woman who feels she is nothing without her husband, and she handles this aspect of the character with restraint and delicacy.     

La Cava uses overlapping dialogue and spontaneous-feeling injections of humor, just as he would so famously in his STAGE DOOR two years later.  The most memorable and startling sequence is Bennett’s breakdown while a storm rages outside.  The visual and aural elements put you inside her mind as she mentally disintegrates and falls down a staircase. 

Despite its flaws, PRIVATE WORLDS is ambitious and affecting and made with great care.  It may be uneven and abbreviated, but it’s a movie that keeps you rooting for it.  I hope there will be more opportunities for it to be seen.  Its invisibility is a crime, especially considering the major artists involved.  And it contains what is probably the best performance ever given by the blonde Joan Bennett, long before she became a dark temptress or raised Elizabeth Taylor or trafficked in vampires.

There was some talk, mostly before the picture was released, about the supposed homoerotic undercurrent between Robert Downey, Jr.’s Holmes and Law’s Watson, but I couldn’t detect anything of that nature in their relationship, and not just because each fellow has a female love interest.  There simply isn’t enough chemistry between the stars, on any level.  You can get much more of a gay subtext in the old Holmes pictures starring Basil Rathbone, with Nigel Bruce his comic-relief  Watson.  I recently caught up with five pictures in this series and found them, minor as they are, to be quite enjoyable.  It surely was a more innocent time at the movies (in the late 30s to the mid 40s) when Holmes and Watson could be so inseparable without raising an eyebrow, particularly since they are both unmarried and apparently not even dating women.  

THE SPIDER WOMAN (1944) begins with Rathbone and Bruce on vacation together, on a fishing trip in Scotland.  Are these guys ever apart?  They even vacation together?  The “gayest” film in the series has to be THE HOUSE OF FEAR (1945), not just because of the usual Holmes-Watson chumminess or the fact that they resemble an old married couple.  (Rathbone tells Bruce, “You snored like a pig!”)  The plot hinges on seven older-men bachelors all staying at a Scottish mansion overhanging a cliff.  They call themselves “The Good Comrades” (I guess “Boys in the Band” was taken).  They are the beneficiaries of each others’ insurance policies.  Aubrey Mather, as the owner of the mansion and also a member of the club, gives one of the nellier performances of the era.  In true TEN LITTLE INDIANS fashion, the fellows are picked off one by one, with Holmes and Watson moving in to solve the case.  Of course, the gay overtones are primarily accidental and unintentional (except in Mather’s case), what with everyone seeming so clueless on that score, not to mention sexless.  Rathbone calls Bruce “my dear friend and colleague,” but Holmes may have fainted if anyone had told him that maybe his and Watson’s devotion to each other meant that they were partners of a kind we now call life partners.

Mitchell was in Hollywood for the tail-end of the movie musical’s golden age and he did manage to appear in two films that most musical lovers have seen countless times.  In the fabulous Fred Astaire classic THE BAND WAGON (1953), Mitchell plays a snooty choreographer, the mentor to ballerina Cyd Charisse.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t really get to dance here, merely rehearse with the two stars.  In OKLAHOMA!, Mitchell is Dream Curly, dancing Agnes DeMille’s iconic choreography in her beautiful dream ballet.  But Mitchell’s finest musical moment on film comes in DEEP IN MY HEART (1954), actually one of the worst of the MGM musicals, a biopic about Sigmund Romberg with a horrifying performance by Jose Ferrer (as Romberg).  But the movie features a dance duet performed by Mitchell and Cyd Charisse, to the tune “One Alone” from THE DESERT SONG.  It is probably Charisse’s best romantic dance (aside from her work with Astaire and Gene Kelly), a sexy, hypnotic, and physically demanding number, and a real showcase for Mitchell’s talent, presence, and dark handsomesness.  The sequence should be a classic (and probably would be if not marooned in that awful movie).

When I finished my book SCREEN SAVERS, which covers 40 underrated movies of the 20th century, I noticed that Mitchell just happened to be in three of the films, not one of them a musical.  Odder still was the fact that he didn’t make many non-musical pictures.  Mitchell plays disparate supporting roles in this trio, all from MGM.  In BORDER INCIDENT (1949), Anthony Mann’s terrific docudrama noir, Mitchell is a Mexican farm worker (with a good Mexican accent), sharing a strong rapport with Ricardo Montalban, the film’s star, who plays a Mexican undercover agent.  Even better is Mann’s western DEVIL’S DOORWAY (1950), a deeply moving film containing the best performance Robert Taylor ever gave.  Taylor plays an Indian, as does Mitchell, in a no-win situation with westward-moving homesteaders and anti-Indian land laws.  The movie packs quite a punch and will someday, finally, be recognized as a classic. 

The third Mitchell movie in SCREEN SAVERS is Jacques Tourneur’s beautiful STARS IN MY CROWN (1950), an honest heartwarmer about small-town American life in the latter part of the 19th century.  The star is wonderful Joel McCrea at his best, simple and effortless and unerringly believable.  He plays the plain-speaking parson, and Mitchell, in his best role, is the new doctor in town (son of the old doctor, who is soon to be deceased).  For a while, Mitchell’s character, a citified gentleman, doesn’t want to be stuck in this nowhere burg.  Good things happen (he finds love with schoolteacher Amanda Blake) and bad things happen (an outbreak of typhoid fever).  At odds with McCrea’s character for much of the film, Mitchell gives a remarkably fine performance.  His conversion from stuck-up outsider to committed community member is vividly drawn and plausibly timed. 

So, if you think of Mitchell only as that fellow lifting Dream Laurey, or sharing the small screen with Susan Lucci, then it’s time to check out his black-and-white trio of outstanding dramas and give him his due as a solid big-screen actor.

In her years in the British film industry, beginning as a teenager, Simmons made several notable films, including GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1946), BLACK NARCISSUS (1947), and HAMLET (1948).  Though she made a lovely and fragile Ophelia opposite Laurence Olivier, and received her first Oscar nomination (as supporting actress) for this Best Picture winner, it was in the Dickens piece, David Lean’s masterful adaptation, where she shined brightest.  Her radiant, self-possessed Estella makes such a strong impression that the film never quite recovers once Valerie Hobson assumes the role in adulthood.  Another treasure of Simmons’ British period is the sleeper SO LONG AT THE FAIR (1950), a terrific period thriller anchored by her relentless fortitude in solving the mystery of her brother’s disappearance.  With her raven hair and prominent eyes, Simmons often evoked Vivien Leigh, and she would have been eminently believable if she had ever been cast as Leigh’s kid sister.

In Hollywood, Simmons starred opposite Robert Mitchum in ANGEL FACE (1952), a knockout film noir from director Otto Preminger, a film in which she staked her claim as one of the essential femmes fatale of the genre.  She is cool and complicated, emotionally disturbed in a frighteningly plausible way.  It was THE ROBE (1953), Fox’s CinemaScope sensation, that made her a box-office name.  Despite the film’s popularity, it is by no measure a good movie, though Simmons gives the film its only genuine emotion, in a role subservient to Richard Burton.  As Elizabeth I in YOUNG BESS (1953), alongside real-life husband Stewart Granger, Simmons is a commanding presence, as well as a bewitching redhead.  In THE ACTRESS (1953), George Cukor’s film of Ruth Gordon’s early stagestruck days, Simmons is positively incandescent, consumed with her dream of going on the stage.  She also gets to act with the great Spencer Tracy, and their father-daughter bond is a joy to behold.

Her two films with Marlon Brando, DESIREE (1954) and GUYS AND DOLLS (1955), were both enormous financial successes, if not first-rate movies.  DESIREE is nothing more than a soapy costume picture, even relegating Brando’s Napoleon to the sidelines, but GUYS AND DOLLS, though nowhere near as good as it could have been, showcased Simmons as a fearless musical-comedy actress, charmingly delivering “If I Were a Bell” with an infectious glee.  THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), from director William Wyler, combined box-office muscle with all-around excellence, and Simmons, opposite Gregory Peck, continued to display effortless versatility.  After all, here was this English rose perfectly at ease in a mega-western, as if she truly belonged there.

But the peak performance from Jean Simmons came in ELMER GANTRY (1960), from writer-director Richard Brooks, the man who became Simmons’ second husband.  This Sinclair Lewis tale of religion, sex, and hucksterism won considerable praise (and Oscars) for Burt Lancaster (deservedly) and Shirley Jones (undeservedly), but Simmons is its magic ingredient.  As a true-believing revival-meeting evangelist, she is full of surprises.  She is a natural preacher, all aglow and truly inspired, but never holier-than-thou.  Ambitious but worn out, strong but moody, she is also surprisingly sexual, not to mention honest and smart.  In short, she is a real person, a multi-dimensional and genuinely soulful creation.  Whereas Shirley Jones’ laughably bad performance as a hooker is faux-sexy, Simmons wipes her off the screen with a palpable eroticism.  The Academy’s failure to nominate Simmons for ELMER GANTRY goes down as one that organization’s supreme embarrassments, especially unforgivable in the year that Elizabeth Taylor was named Best Actress for BUTTERFIELD 8.

Simmons never again got an opportunity as good as ELMER GANTRY.  THE GRASS IS GREENER (1961) is a disappointingly slight and unmemorable comedy, but it is worth mentioning because in this film Simmons manages to steal the show from the likes of Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, and Robert Mitchum, with her witty high-style performance.  She got that second Oscar nomination for another film with husband Brooks, THE HAPPY ENDING (1969), a shallow drama unworthy of Simmons’ depths.

If she was somehow always in the shadow of other actresses, not just Vivien Leigh but also Deborah Kerr and Audrey Hepburn, may we now please give her her due.  If you aren’t already a Simmons admirer, then a triple bill of ANGEL FACE, THE ACTRESS, and ELMER GANTRY ought to do the trick.

The extraordinary BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN will, for many years to come, be the last word in the sad-gay-man genre, and nothing about A SINGLE MAN comes close to its impact.  BROKEBACK is not only a great “gay” movie, but it gave the community a classic Hollywood love story to call its own, one to stand alongside the likes of CASABLANCA or THE WAY WE WERE.  In the years since BROKEBACK, the biggest gay movie has been MILK, which did offer a strong and inspiring gay protagonist, but one who is martyred, in a film set in the 70s.  It is important to have our stories told, our history acknowledged, and our heroes celebrated, but movies like MILK simply aren’t enough anymore.  

The recent gay films have contained some phenomenal performances, with Heath Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar and Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk two of the finest of the just-ended decade.  Both can hold their place beside Peter Finch in the British SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY (1971), the first truly great performance in the sad-gay-man genre.  Finch plays a successful doctor in the film, which still gets bonus points for being a contemporary drama about a gay life.  One of the reasons so many gay men (including myself) love the little English film BEAUTIFUL THING (1996), which I write about in my book SCREEN SAVERS, is that it turns the usual coming-out yarn into an exhilarating first-love story, leaving you on an emotional high, as well as a feeling of empowerment.  

Set in 1962 Los Angeles and featuring a British main character played by Colin Firth, A SINGLE MAN is awfully reminiscent of GODS AND MONSTERS (1998), in which Ian McKellen plays aging gay film director James Whale.  A SINGLE MAN is set five years after GODS, but they end up in roughly the same place, with the older gay Brit finding himself in his home with a hot young male in nothing but a towel.  McKellen and Firth are also both on the verge of suicide.  In other words, I’ve seen A SINGLE MAN before, on many levels, another movie about a sad and gentle gay man suffering in silence.  The 1964 Christopher Isherwood novel on which it is based was a groundbreaker in its matter-of-fact treatment of a gay life, but we’re not in 1964 anymore.

A SINGLE MAN is actually not helped by Firth’s fine performance.  Firth has long been a master of minimalism and understatement, but this role plays too much to his strengths, actually depriving the performance of any surprises.  If someone like Hugh Grant had played this character, a college professor, the film might have had more of a charge of the unexpected, rather than being merely another chance to admire Firth’s clenched emotions and impeccable repression.  His casting is simply too ideal.  And I don’t feel that director Tom Ford has added anything to the piece by injecting a NIGHT MOTHER device of Firth’s planned suicide, adding more melodrama than depth.  I would much rather see the character continue to deal with his grief over the death of his longtime partner (Matthew Goode) than choose to opt out. 

Am I too jaded to be wondering why Firth doesn’t have sex with the gorgeous, intelligent, and sensitive Spanish hustler that he has already given money to?  If you are planning to kill yourself later that evening, why not go out with a literal bang?  Would that have made us take less seriously Firth’s honorable angst?  We know he still feels lust because of his earlier gaze on those shirtless athletes, so, again, why not?  Equally confusing is the moment when Firth’s best friend (Julianne Moore) refers to his great love as a “substitution,” angering him only briefly.  I’m sorry, but that comment–your best friend calling your 16-year gay relationship a substitution for a “normal” relationship–justifies grabbing one’s coat and slamming the door.  Again, his manners trump logic.  

A SINGLE MAN has touching moments and is made with obvious care, and Firth’s admirable performance will get him an Oscar nomination.  But I imagined Firth’s entire performance before I saw the movie, and I was dead-on.  What I am ready for is the movie in which Firth and Hugh Grant get married, or the one in which George Clooney and Brad Pitt adopt kids, or the drama about Sean Penn and Johnny Depp getting involved in the battle for marriage equality, or the triangular romantic comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, and Jake Gyllenhaal.  Please let’s broaden the spectrum of what constitutes a gay-themed movie.  Who will have the guts to take the next step?

The original Broadway production soared on Tommy Tune’s breathtaking stage pictures and ceaseless cleverness, and the recent inferior revival was salvaged by the considerable magnetism of Antonio Banderas.  Which brings me to another reason why NINE fails:  Daniel Day-Lewis.  Even the critics who have hated this movie have been kind to its star.  Day-Lewis is too highly regarded to get picked on, but it’s only fair to report when he is bad, and he’s bad in NINE.  He may be a great actor, but he lacks what a movie musical needs, a star personality.  It’s not that Guido is supposed to be a stud, but he does require the charisma to have so many women whirling through his life.  Early reports that Javier Bardem was going to star as Guido were encouraging because Bardem has exactly what NINE needs.  Without a star of that kind of vitality, a modern-day Marcello Mastroianni, the film has no center.  Day-Lewis is a charmless shell here, and with a bad Italian accent.     

Now to the bevy of women:  Kate Hudson, as a reporter, is stuck with a new awful song (“Cinema Italiano”) and the tackiest production number;  Sophia Loren, as Guido’s mama, wafts through like a legend, but it was hardly worth her trouble;  Nicole Kidman is statuesque and toneless in her solo;  Judi Dench at least has a dry humor as Guido’s costume designer;  Penelope Cruz can do no wrong lately, and she comes off as both delicious and touching as Guido’s mistress.  My favorite performance here is Marion Cotillard’s as Guido’s wife.  Her ballad, “My Husband Makes Movies,” is the only musical scene that offers anything personal or affecting.  Amid much frenzy, Cotillard takes her time and delivers a lovely, intimate performance.  For the most part, though, Marshall strands his illustrious band of talented ladies.   

CHICAGO clicked with the public partially because it was so thematically fresh, expressing the lust for fame familiar to audiences in a world of reality-TV and a 24-hour news cycle.  NINE comes off as nothing more than the whinings of a self-absorbed artist.  Though I had been moved by the show in 1982 (I even saw it twice), and adore Fellini’s film, this NINE seems so unnecessary, so useless and meandering.  It may be relatively short but feels interminably long.  And has Italy ever been photographed this way, as if the sun never comes out?

I thought Rob Marshall was the guy we had been waiting for, someone to make a string of classy and dazzling movie musicals, but NINE makes it look as though he has already run out of inspiration.

Producer David O. Selznick (her second husband) was as committed to Jones’ stardom as William Randolph Hearst had been to Marion Davies’ career, or as Irving Thalberg had been the force behind Norma Shearer’s first-lady-of-MGM status.  If GONE WITH THE WIND had come down the pike just five years later, there is no question that Selznick would have cast Jones as Scarlett O’Hara.  (Though beautiful, sexy, and bewitching, Jones was no Vivien Leigh in the acting or personality departments.)  She won her Oscar for her first major film, THE SONG OF BERNADETTE (1943), which holds up surprisingly well, thanks to its superb production values and impressive black-and-white photography, as well as Henry King’s mostly restrained direction and an outstanding supporting cast led by the great Gladys Cooper (just as mean to Jones as she had been to Bette Davis in NOW, VOYAGER).  Despite too many holy choruses, the film is absorbing, even moving, and more complicated than expected, considering it’s about the making of a saint.  Yet Jones’ acting is hardly award-worthy.  She is well cast and properly subdued, transmitting an innocent radiance and a plausibly limited intelligence.  However, it’s a long movie and Jones is fairly one-note, tedious in her childlike sweetness and unspoiled nature.  Of course, there’s only so far you can go when playing a saint. 

BERNADETTE was the start of her string of successes, followed by the WWII homefront saga SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944), the amnesia romance LOVE LETTERS (1945), the charming comedy CLUNY BROWN (1946), and the torrid western DUEL IN THE SUN (1946).  But PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, a major failure at the box office, is the one that stays with me, and the picture that shows Jones off best.  Never before had she glowed with such magnetic star power or acted with such affecting sensitivity.  JENNIE is one of the 40 films I write about in my book SCREEN SAVERS, and it remains one of my favorite love stories and fantasy films.  Assisted by an expert Joseph Cotten, as the artist who paints her portrait, Jones ages beautifully, from youngster to teen to smoldering young woman.  Hers is a mesmerizing transition from girlishness to sensuality.  Cotten is the film’s anchor and its central character, but Jones provides the magic, endowing the film with its considerable power to haunt.  This exquisite time-travel movie offers no explanations, just the wonder of two fated souls colliding blissfully.  JENNIE was the fourth and final teaming of Jones and Cotten, after SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, LOVE LETTERS, and DUEL IN THE SUN, making them one of the more significant teams of the 1940s.