Hollywoodland. Directed by Allen Coulter (no ree-lation to Ann, far as I can find). Starring Adrian Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Joe Spano (Remember him from Hill Street Blues? No? That’s why.), Burt Lancaster.
Spate of noirs coming at us just now. Black Dahlia in the wings, for instance. Touted as the great “unsolved” mysteries of that mid-Century past. I dunno. I woulda thought how three hundred thousand Chinese tippy-toed into Korea and nobody noticed or what Macarthur was doing on active duty at 73 or why Eisenhower ever got elected President of Columbia or who thought tailfins were a good idea on the ’57 Cadillac mighta been the real mysteries of the fifties? Anyhow… Remember what Marilyn said: “Big umphs, big umph umph… big deal!”
If we’re noir (variously pronounced, as in pinot noir, said “peanut nor” by wine sissies), then, we’re looking for the “defective detective,” a moral (sometimes physical) cripple, shambling through those shadowy, flaking alleys and up creaky tenement fire escapes, peeping in soot-fogged window glass at the sepia-hued vanity of our tarnished idols, the ones who with all the fame and beauty, with all the firm flesh they can nibble on, with all the wealth and talent, with all the acclaim and adulation still cannot find hope… only pleated trousers and those two-tone shoes, only garish cars and tinny music, only cigarette ash and broken glass, only solitude and despair. Ouch! “What he had woulda been enough for most people,” sighs George Reeves’ agent, as the once-handsome, gregarious Reeves begins to pack on the lard and cross over to the dark side of the boulevard. It’s Hollywoodland, what the sign said before it got abbreviated to “Hollywood,” that truncated syllable “-land” evaporating along with the studio system and the moguls and the glamo(u)r. The gutters of Babylon. Chinatown. The Two Jakes. Roman Polanski: defector director… urf urf! L.A. Confidential.
First question… and the last: Did George Reeves punch his own ticket? Did the porky former Superman surrender to desperation, ennui (a lot like “boredom,” only—you know—classy and what sensitive, that is important people get), angoisse (same stuff), Angst (ditto), and toedium vitae (Latin for “why that guy in the poem went home and put a bullet through his head”)? Did he get some help into that real noir? As world-weary gumshoe Louis Simo (Brodie, and I still can’t warm up to this guy’s vulpine face and stolid “understated” performances read: “narcosis”…)—who will ask all the wrong questions of all the wrong people in all the wrong venues—whispers alongside that bulky corpse in the L.A. morgue: “He beat himself up and then shot himself… twice?” Well, hell… in the face of an “unsolved” mystery like that there, we’re gonna need a good period movie chock full of B-list ac-toors tucked into 1950’s pleated trousers and two-toned shoes while wallowing around corners in immense 1950’s autos among 1950’s décor like really big teevee sets and bad lighting (hence noir) to sort this stuff all out for us dumbos. Then we can put it to rest and get back to the really crucial stuff like the flockin’ ozone layer and who did little Jon Benêt and just how fat is Katie.
The buzz here is that Ben Affleck, fading pretty-boy with fame and acclaim but not much talent, has fetched up with a creditable performance as a fading pretty-boy with fame and acclaim but not much talent. Might say he’s learnt to strrrrrrrrrrretch himself as an ac-toor. Urf urf! Fact is, though, that Ben is watchable and does get off a coupla good lines well. Might, howsomever, wanna rethink the guee-tar sequences—way too many of them—on account of—ouch!—awkward as trying to stuff Macarthur’s ego and Katie Couric’s butt (up which many of us to our horror have got a look …doubtful privilege one wonders how many television executives shared during her meat-eoric rise to stardom, yet another “unsolved” mystery, do you ask me, but that’s another story…) plus three hundred thousand Chinese along with Eisenhower’s vocabulary into the glove compartment of a tailfinned ’57 Cadillac).
I don’t think I’ll ruin it for you if I say right out that the mystery does not get “solved” in Hollywoodland. Instead we get an intercut string of plausible explanations as the director plays Rashomon (variously spelt; your guess how to pronounce) games foofooing around in time (“rashomon” is Japanese for “foofooing around in time”), but with some grace. And craft… Reeves had bit parts in two of the greatest flicks of the age, Gone With The Wind and From Here to Eternity, a portion of his heartbreak stemming from his brush with the bigtime and subsequent tumble back into cape and kapok (pecs): in one scene, they’ve patched Affleck into Reeves’ scene with Burt Lancaster of sacred memory, worth the price of admission right there. Last note: one of the subthemes documents the disappointment to us dumbo fifties urchins, shaken from naiveté (variously pronounced) to learn our hero Superman (“…strange visitor from another planet” back when that was about as strange as life got around here) mortal—and troubled—after which fall from the clouds we’ll be ready for our stint in Vietnam, Republic of South where three hundred thousand Chinese tippy-toed into and nobody noticed.