I should probably just turn this blog into a nightly movie review. Tonight's film was "Walk On The Wild Side" (1962) starring Laurence Harvey (aka "The Manchurian Candidate" himself), a young Jane Fonda and the beautiful & tragic Capucine. As with a couple of other recent films, I had seen snippets on TCM here at Pearl's, and so I once again searched the annals of our fabulous Los Angeles City Library collection (rivaling Netflix) and found and ordered it.
The movie opens, rather strangely and suggestively, with a black cat prowling across the screen. As the credits appear, it winds it's way along until another cat approaches, and a very close up catfight is photographed. Very strange indeed, and symbolic of what is about to transpire. Remember that this is 1962, the tail end of the era of Tennessee Williams. Laurence Harvey is a drifter on his way out of the flatlands of Texas. He meets the wily and wiry Jane Fonda literally in a concrete pipe on the side of the road, where he has decided to rest for the night. She is covered in dirt, but resourceful. It turns out that both are headed for New Orleans, and so they hop a train to get there. Jane tries to put the make on Larry, but he is having none of it, for he is headed to Nawlins to search for Capucine, his true love, who has disappeared three years past.
From there, the plot develops and develops into A Potboiler Extraordinaire. An important subplot intervenes right away when the two, having jumped off the train, stop at a diner on the Edge Of Town, run by Mexican-American Senorita Ann Baxter, the heart and soul of sincerity and very Catholic to boot. Jane Fonda quickly becomes jealous of Baxter's attention to the handsome Harvey, so she ends up stealing from Ann Baxter. Laurence Harvey discovers her deception and they split up. He stays on with Baxter, working at her diner, and young Jane heads for The Big Easy and is not heard from again until near the end of the film.
The rest of the movie belongs to Capucine. If you ever want to see A Great Beauty, just Google her. She was also a very good actress. I have only seen her in Fellini's trashy "Satyricon" and this film, in which she gives an excellent performance. Laurence Harvey is searching for her, and - with the saintly Ann Baxter's help - he ultimately finds her. But he is slow to catch on to what her life has become. She is a sculptor, but she lives in a "hotel" run by the controlling Barbara Stanwyck (great as always, though Evil Personified this time). Laurence Harvey manages against all odds to rekindle his romance with Capucine, and arranges to marry her. And that is when the forces of Stanwyck break loose against him, for she considers herself to own the lady.
Capucine had been coerced, in her naivete and in her absence from Laurence, into working for Barbara Stanwyck, as a prostitute. This is the center of the film, and all the themes that surround it converge on this core. Harvey is a very religious and moral man - and yet (in a triumph of screenwriting that would seem heroic today) - he is portrayed as a True Follower Of Christ, one who believes in absolute forgiveness. Love conquers all, and so he is determined to rescue the captive Capucine from the clutches of Stanwyck and her henchmen, who include her Legless Husband (don't ask), and a Handful Of Thugs who keep Her Girls in line.
The year was 1962, and so the themes of Sin and Sex and Persecution and Redemption were all being set out into the open for the first time. This was a hard core script for those days. The movie was directed by the excellent Hollywood Craftsman Edward Dymytrk, who specialised in Noirs but could do any style. Filmed in stylish black and white, with a moving camera to accentuate the action.
For me, the movie is all about Capucine. I am not, or was not all that familiar with her, though something about her Singular Name rang a bell. Before watching the movie, I knew I'd heard her name before, and had possibly seen her in another film. It turns out she was in a few of the "Pink Panther" movies with Peter Sellers, but that's not why I remembered her. I guess it was because I had seen her in "Satyricon", which is a notorious film by Fellini but not a great one.
At any rate, she is fantastic in "Walk On The Wild Side", and she should be remembered for it, because it is a very good movie, even if melodramatic. It was a "truth telling" moralistic movie from the Era Of Drama, and it was firmly against the exploitation of women, or more accurately, the enslavement of women right here in America. The performance by Capucine captures her predicament in all it's hopeless detail. She is in a situation she cannot get out of, though her love for Laurence Harvey holds right up to the end.
I knew I had heard her name before, and after the movie ended I did some Googling. Then I saw where I had heard of her. It wasn't from Fellini, though I have seen "Satyricon". It was because Capucine, one of the most beautiful women you would ever see, committed suicide in 1990. She jumped out a window of her hotel at 62 years old.
The story in the movie somewhat reflected her real life story. Both were terribly sad.
But I think she should be remembered, simply for being so good in this film, which is ultimately about Love and Forgiveness.
That's all for tonight.
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