Reviews

The V.I.P.s feels a bit like the photographs of Cindy Sherman. Every frame is utterly staged, every background synthetic, every dramatic moment artificial. In planes, and airport lounges and hotel rooms, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton pose becomingly at canted angles. He wears a hunter red tie and scarf with his dark suit. She wears beige, then pink, then crisp black and white. There are very few windows. The camera lovingly, unhurriedly observes them. The V.I.P.s knows it is a film, a product, a Hollywood thing. It doesn't pretend to be more. The film is a mechanical glamour play set in a beautiful 1960s box. Like in a Christmas display, the characters and settings are pretty packages with nothing inside. Liz Taylor is the beautiful but neglected trophy wife with an endless supply of wonderful head adornments: velvet hats, fur hoods, sculpted hairdos. Richard Burton is the commanding business tycoon who learns to love his wife only when it may be too late. Louis Jourdan is the charming international gambler angling for her Liz's affection. Another triangle includes Rod Taylor as a struggling Australian tractor magnate and Maggie Smith as the staid, British secretary who loves him. These are the kind of characters who'll later show up in the television glamour-comedies of the 1970s (Love Boat, Fantasy Island), those shows where the contrived problems of the super-elite are exposed, wrestled with and neatly solved within the course of 50 minutes. The difference here is that The V.I.P.s doesn't play anything for guffaws or vaudeville. Instead it's a pseudo-elegant melodrama comprising sedate cinematography, uncluttered sets, and subdued performances. Even the comic relief characters , Margaret Rutherford as the absent- minded aristocrat and Orson Welles as the tax-evading film director, evoke a Hollywood-style dignity. Almost everyone gets what they want at the end. And we are reassured that those who don't will triumph later. Absolutely nothing is at stake. Watching the V.I.P.s is akin to riding in a Rolls Royce Phantom, washing down a Valium with thirty-year-old scotch --totally relaxing, totally removed. Yet there are a few intriguing cracks in the soothing facade. Burton gives his trophy wife a diamond bracelet for her coddled wrist; He later wounds that same wrist in an act he claims proves his passion. Orson Welles marries a vapid but gorgeous Italian actress, but repeatedly kisses his petite, male accountant on the lips. Not much is made of these moments. But they are subtly suggestive, as though the perplexing, inexorable nature of messy reality is stealing in.

Howard Hawks' "Ball of Fire" is a a sly urban updating of the Snow-White fairy tale, as well as an effervescent look at the fertile potential of clashing cultures. Stanwyck's "Sugarpuss" O'Shea is fast-talking and sexy, a showgirl who bewitches Gary Cooper's English professor with her invigorating vocabulary, as well as her dishy ankles. Cooper's Professor Bertram Potts is a young stuffed shirt, self-entombed in a fusty, academic cloister where he and 7 other reclusive intellectuals hammer away at writing an encyclopedia. Sugarpuss invades the hermitage with a bright, modern femininity; she is bold, playful, and self-possessed, reviving the inert libidos and general joie de vivre of the whole bashful fraternity. In one delightful scene, she instructs the clumsy, inexperienced older men in a bracing conga line. Foxy Stanwyck and an impressive crew of consummate character actors bring great humor and sweetness to the kind of scene that in other hands might become merely corny.

Though Sugarpuss rejuvenates the men with the energy of youth, she requires a different kind of rejuvenation. As the film reminds us, detached vitality is what make a shark a shark. The academic brotherhood may be stale and lonely, but they are open-hearted and loyal. Unlike Sugarpuss' calculating gangster boyfriend, played slickly by Dana Andrews, Professor Potts is tender and thoughtful. Most importantly, the young "Pottsy", as Sugarpuss calls him, is also trusting enough to look foolish. In Howard Hawks' films, making a fool of oneself is often linked to the experience of real love. Being guileless enough to be undone by genuine emotion is proof of valor. Both boyish and stiff, Cooper is pitch perfect here. As he falls for Sugarpuss, his face reveals all-- staid shyness competes with impassioned delight. We root for him.

But being sweet and genuine aren't enough. This is a film about essential combinations: passion and intellect, sweetness and vigor.It's not until Potts avers his PHYSICAL passion for Sugarpuss that her heart really gives over. Later he must engage in fisticuffs, surely the first of his life, with the smug gangster. Despite amusingly nerdy preparation(he studies a hardbound guide to pugilism), the actual battle awakens his animal instincts. His earlier effete intellectualism is now fully redeemed.

Hawks' film is unequivocal: Without lusty physical vigor, we're entombed. Without tender, intimate relationships, we may as well jump in the ocean and swim the clock round.

Two Notes:

1. This film is neither anti-intellectual NOR anti-working class. It fully admires street-smart vigor and creativity while also embracing the love of more formal learning. In our era, a film like this is a bracing reminder that a fertile exchange is possible (and improving for all involved.)

2. This is the kind of role that MAINSTREAM cinema used to provide actresses: smart, tough, edgy, sexy and eloquent.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It has smooth, stylish, black & white photography; a peppy but brooding jazz soundtrack and charismatic actors. It's a simplistic but compelling morality play in glamorous film noir clothing. Glenn Ford is sexy (in a vulnerable tough guy past his prime sort of way), Rita Hayworth is lovely and sympathetic, Elke Somer is adorable, Ricardo Montalban is stupid and greedy, Joseph Cotten is sleazy and everyone is degraded. The men suffer from their lack of faith in others; the women through their misguided dependence on virility (they count on men to provide emotional and worldly sustenance). It's worth seeing just for the glossy cinematography and the early 60's architecture and settings.It is not a film for those who venerate realism or seek a highly original screenplay, nevertheless it is far more slick, attractive and entertaining than a large percentage of current Hollywood film or television. Like a song sung by Amy Winehouse, you wouldn't use it to tell you how to live, but it sure feels good when you turn it up loud and surrender for a little while.