382 - The Rose, United States, 1979. Dir. Mark Rydell.

Wednesday, January 17,  2018

382 - The Rose, United States, 1979.  Dir. Mark Rydell.

I can sum up this movie in one letter.

M.

No, I do not mean the M that stands for Morder!  Which is translated as murderer.  And is the title of one of the great classic crime thrillers of all time, Fritz Lang's M (1933).

http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/043-m-1931-germany-dir-ftiz-lang.html

No, I mean M as in The Divine Miss M.

Bette Midler.

Bette Midler, the force of nature without whom why would you bother to make this film?

And yet not any version of Bette Midler that you may know.

This film is not about popular love ballads ("Wind Beneath My Wings," "From a Distance"); it is not about Broadway showtunes (Gypsy, "Everything's Coming Up Roses," Hello Dolly, "Hello Dolly"); and it is not about American standards (Andrews Sisters, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," Rosemary Clooney, "Slow Boat to China").

(By the way, a few days ago Bette Midler finished one of her greatest runs on Broadway, in Hello Dolly, a performance to standing-room-only sellout crowds, which won her another Tony (giving her Tonys 43 years apart), and which grossed more than any other show after Hamilton.  https://www.billboard.com/video/2017-tony-awards-bette-midler-acceptance-speech-7825799)

This film is about rock.  And Bette Midler rocks.

Bette Midler was named for Bette Davis, even though they pronounce their names differently.

And do not think that she is one of those singers who traded her fame for roles in the movies.  No, Bette Midler is an actress.  She trained in drama.  She studied theater in school and got her start in Off-Off Broadway.  She starred on Broadway opposite Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, taking over the role of Tzeitel from Joanna Merlin, who originated it.  Then she starred in a rock opera.  Not Godspell.  Not Jesus Christ, Superstar.  But another one.  Salvation.

So she already had strong acting chops and rock chops by the time she made this film.  She also already owned a Grammy, a Tony, and an Emmy, and this role would get her nominated for an Oscar.

This is the kind of film where it appears that you can just turn on the camera and let the performer perform.  But that is the opposite of what happened.

Director Mark Rydell crafted the film with passion and precision.

When you see a black limousine drive around on a tarmac and a big private four-prop airplane approach is from the other side, both parking against a painted stone pastel wall, you can see the hand of a craftsman intentionally at work.

And when towards the end you see a helicopter fly in the star to the stadium, you see how hard the director and editor worked to earn this moment of brilliant dramatic irony--the fans believing the helicopter to be the ultimate expression of privilege and glamour, the audience realizing it was the only way to get the troubled singer to the concert.

Rydell originally went to 20th Century Fox and insisted that Bette Midler be the star.  But they were unfamiliar with her and demanded that he cast a movie star and dub the voice.  After all, that is how things were done.

For example--

Have you ever heard of Marni Nixon?  She is the person who really sang the songs for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.  When you watch those movies, it is Marni Nixon's voice you hear singing and not the actresses.  If you know the flap about Julie Andrews not getting the role in My Fair Lady when she originated it on Broadway, you can understand why folks were so angry and gave her the Oscar for Mary Poppins without even nominating Audrey Hepburn for an Oscar for My Fair Lady.  Julie Andrews would have done her own singing!  But in Hepburn's defense, she wanted Andrews to get the role and was told that Andrews would not even if Hepburn turned it down.  So Hepburn worked diligently to prepare the music and was not told until later that her voice would be dubbed.  When she found out, she walked off the set.  Only to return later and apologize.  So Audrey Hepburn had little to do with how all of that transpired.

But that is how it was done.  You do not let an actress sing, and you certainly do not let her sing live.  So Mark Rydell left the project.

A few years later, the project was still sitting on the shelf.  A few directors came and left, and by now 20th Century Fox knew who Bette Midler was. So they brought Mark Rydell back and let him cast her.

He put together a band consisting of the finest musicians he could find, and they spent three months on a stage creating an act, an album, and a touring show.  By the time they filmed the movie it was a real band.

Then he brought on board the legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

Zsigmond would be tasked with gelling windows of skyscrapers to look out in the background, and lighting entire theaters for concert footage so that the camera can point in any direction, including the stage, the audience, and into the stage lights.

Nothing was prerecorded in a sound studio.  Everything was recorded live in real time, singer, musicians, audience, audio and visual.

They used nine film cameras at the concerts so that they could capture every angle.  When Zsigmond put out the word that he needed camera operators, he did not just get camera operators.  He got full-on cinematographers, some of the finest in the world.

Consider this list.  Bobby Byrne.  Conrad L. Hall.  Jan Kiesser.  Laszlo Kovacs.  Steve Lydecker.  Michael D. Margulies.  David Myers.  Owen Roizman.  Haskell Wexler.

Can you imagine that?  All those cinematographers working together to film one concert?  That has got to be unique in the history of film. 

Conrad Hall was nominated for 10 Oscars and won 3, for Road to Perdition (2003), American Beauty (2000), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970).

Haskell Wexler was nominated for 5 Oscars and won 2, for Bound for Glory (1977) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1967).

Rydell brought in six THOUSAND extras to fill the theater, and he told them not to act excited about Bette Midler unless she made them excited.  The onus was on her to move the crowd.

She did.

She performed a song.  She spoke to the audience.  She performed again.

Bruce Vilanch wrote her speech, and Toni Basil did her choreography.  And she delivers both as if she is making them up spontaneously, as if they are coming from the depths of the earth. 

From the moment she steps on stage she ignites the building.  She is told not to say something and she immediately addresses the crowd and says it.  She turns them on.  She moves like a rock star, engaging the lead guitarist, engaging individuals, engaging the crowd.  When she gets to her second song, "When a Man Loves a Woman," Rydell wisely leaves the camera in a close-up so that we can see her speaking from the depths, addressing what she just spoke about, and delivering the performance of a lifetime.  Everything is really happening.  Nothing is added later.

Rose's success has created for herself a kind of prison.  She is beholden to her manager Rudge and the twenty-nine other people who work for her.  She is responsible for their livelihoods.  She is beholden to the demands of the critics, to the aggressiveness of the press, and to the expectations of the fans.  Yet she is physically exhausted and emotionally drained.  She longs to take a break and get some rest.

Immediately after the concert her complaint is demonstrated when she is whisked away in a helicopter without even being allowed to change clothes.  She is flown from New York City to Long Island to the infield of a racecar track where a country band had performed earlier in the evening.  There she meets the great Billy Ray, played by the great Harry Dean Stanton.  She enters like a tornado, as she always does, and flirts with a band member before meeting Billy Ray.  She adores him.  She honors him.  She has always loved his music, and she recorded one of his songs on her recent album and played it tonight.

He does not share her sentiments.  She believed she was brought here to look at other songs in his catalog and discuss recording them.  However, he does not approve of her.  He looks down on her, sees her as loose, believes that she does not understand his music, and resents her flirting with the young man who turns out to be his son.  Billy Ray scolds her.  Humiliates her.  Asks her never to play his music again.  She leaves devastated.  And what is going on inside Bette Midler is real.

Why did her manager not stand up for her?  Why did he not defend her?  He defends himself.  Tells her how much he believes in her.  Why did he not say that to Billy Ray?  Why did he let Billy Ray treat her like that?

In her despondency she runs into a waiting limousine, which turns out to be waiting for Billy Ray, and throws cash at the chauffeur until he is willing to take her instead.  They embark on an adventure.  He is already a fan.  She wants him to love her.

When they go to a diner and are rejected for being hippies it is hard to understand in 2018.  The film was made in 1979 and set in 1969.  They are somewhere driving back from Long Island to Manhattan, and there is a diner where the hostility against hippies is so great that not one person in the diner accepts her.  Was there great hostility between Long Island and Manhattan back then?  Was there that great a hostility against hippies?  To the extent that not only does no one appreciate her music or her celebrity, but also no one approves of her right to eat in peace as a human being?

It is not even clear to me that she is a hippie.  She is wearing jeans and a flowy top.  She looks like a regular person.

Nevertheless, the film shows both her struggles and triumphs as a rock star who is loved deeply in some circles and rejected in others.  She is loved by the drag queens and loved by her fans.  She is used by her entourage and rejected by members of the public.  She wants to be loved by her hometown, to go home and give a great concert where the people who knew her growing up can see what she has become.  And she wants to be loved by a man.  A faithful man.

And here is where Bette Midler grabs the hearts of the viewers and sums up the human condition.  She may as well have a sign on her body that reads, "Somebody love me!"

As the film progresses to where we expect it to go, Rydell brilliantly has her first step up on stage and sing a ballad the lyrics of which express precisely what she is going through at this moment.  She is at her low point.  Her people do not even know if she can perform.  They want to take her to the hospital.  But she grabs the mic, draws energy from the audience, and delivers again.

And in this moment, she gets what she needs.  All these people love her.  All these people love her.

When the movie ended the way I expected, I first wished they had come up with something else.  Then I discovered that it was inspired by real life.  By a real person.

Janis Joplin.

And Paul Rothchild was there for both.  Rothchild produced Janis Joplin and he produced this movie's music and soundtrack.  Janis Joplin was Pearl and Bette Midler was The Rose, and Rothchild produced both albums.

Bette Midler plays every color on the palette.  She lives a life in a day, a dozen lives in one lifetime.  And has the energy of ten thousand suns.

Then there is that quiet phone call from the phone booth to her parents.

In the end she is the lost and lonely little girl.

Who wants to be loved.

This is one of the finest performances I have seen.