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"No thrill in the world like launching a play," consequences fall to Rivette's L'Amour Fou. The Wizard of Broadway, in his mind "a Shakespeare and a Napoleon and a Grand Lama of Tibet all rolled into one," John Barrymore in his comic pinnacle. The Heart of Kentucky with a lingerie model for ingénue (Carole Lombard), hopeless until a splendid scream is pried out of her with a hatpin to the rump. (It's framed as a fond memento in the diva's ascent, the pearl-headed prick.) Parted ways, she heads to Hollywood as he flounders, the reunion takes place aboard the train from Chicago to New York. "The sorrows of life are the joys of art." Howard Hawks on theater and cinema, smacking every sumptuous gag by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Hiding from debtors, the maestro dons Southern-fried disguises and a putty nose, the latter which he stretches into a Pinocchio beak. "I never thought I should sink so low as to become an actor." The Great Profile in the Sagittarius pose, unafraid to mimic a camel in his search for histrionic beauty. Harmonizing with Barrymore's coruscating caricature are Lombard's quicksilver tantrums, the satiny blonde who leans back in the compartment seat to kick the air before her nemesis. "We're not people. We're lithographs." A racing tube filled with nuts, including the put-upon bookkeeper (Walter Connolly) and the assistant (Roscoe Karns) with bottomless hooch flask and bottomless supply of mythological references. The Oberammergau Players in The Passion Play, financed by the wizened proselytizer (Etienne Girardot) with a yen for doomsday stickers. Paint all over Galatea's poster and a kick to Svengali's ass, true love "in some Humpty Dumpty way." Such sublimity deserves its own name, "screwball comedy" will have to do. Hawks goes on to accelerate it, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday... With Ralph Forbes, Charles Lane, Dale Fuller, Edgar Kennedy, and Billie Seward. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |