#paul groesse

[sesiondemadrugada]

Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965).

[dweemeister]

Lili (1953)

There is something whimsical about certain old Hollywood Studio System movies that makes it unimaginable that such films of that type would ever be greenlighted by studio executives today. One of those films is Charles Walters’ Lili, adapted from Paul Gallico’s 1950 short story “The Man Who Hated People”. Lili is a peculiar film that defies categorization – it is neither a pure drama or comedy, and it also lightly draws upon on elements from fantasy films and musicals. Given a turn towards mature themes in American cinema in the 1960s and 70s and long-standing cultural attitudes towards lighthearted fantasy, Lili might be insufferable to some. For those willing to give it a chance and allowing it to whisk them from anything resembling reality, Leslie Caron’s starring performance – two years following a triumphant screen debut opposite Gene Kelly in An American in Paris – elevates the flimsy material.

Sixteen-year-old Lili Daurier (Caron) is an orphaned country girl wandering post-WWII France, seeking a close friend to her recently-deceased father as she hopes to find employment. That friend has recently died, and his successor harasses Lili. She is rescued by a traveling carnival magician named Marc (Jean-Pierre Aumont). Lili becomes infatuated with Marc, as he secures her a job as a carnival waitress. But instead of waiting tables, Lili – who has never experienced magic tricks before – neglects her duties as she is transfixed with Marc’s dinnertime show. Lili is sacked as a result, with Marc displaying little sympathy for her naïveté. Told to home, Lili instead attempts suicide but not before the carnival’s puppeteer Paul (Mel Ferrer, who voices the puppets but does not control their movements) strikes conversation through his puppets. Lili obviously has never heard of or experienced a puppet show either, as she treats Paul’s cast of puppet characters as if they were real. Their interactions draw a crowd, thanks to Lili’s earnestness and belief that these puppets are her friends. Paul and his partner Jacquot (Kurt Kasznar) offer Lili a job of being part of the show. She accepts, and several of heartfelt conversations between girl and puppets follow.

A special type of performance is required for this film, and Caron’s acting is the appropriate mixture to make this amalgam of fantasy, musical, and drama work. Like numerous actors that might act in front of Big Bird or Kermit, Caron must treat the puppet characters as if they were real (the script demands it, in addition to the magic needed to make Lili work). With no Muppets or Sesame Street in the 1950s to act as a thespian precedent, Caron – as well as the puppeteers – drew from a then-popular television program named Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. From there, Caron and puppeteers Walton and O’Rourke (a famous cabaret puppeteer act) and George Latshaw must be attuned to the other’s nuances in physicality and personality. Never annoying nor cloying, Caron is simply in her element here. A few years prior, Caron was a teenage ballerina in a Paris troupe when she was noticed by an admiring Gene Kelly. With Kelly’s lobbying of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) executives, Caron became an MGM contractee before production on An American in Paris  – Lili would be her fifth film with MGM and her second major starring role. Her appearance as the titular Gigi would be five years away.

The screenplay, written by Helen Deutsch, allows for some rather intimate exchanges of dialogue between Lili and the puppets as the puppets display their sensitivity to her anxieties and sources of joyfulness. This combination of excellent acting and puppetry as well as attentive screenwriting delivers Lili past sugary mediocrity.

For outside of the several puppet show scenes, Lili is overflowing with lackadaisical performances and a romance between Caron and Ferrer’s character that is never fully realized and is, frankly, a tinge unbelievable and creepy if one thinks too hard about it. Outside of Caron’s central performance, the remainder of the supporting cast feels wasted – whether they are playing caricatures (Zsa Zsa Gabor, like in so many of the films she starred in, is a peculiar afterthought) or are just there (Mel Ferrer, despite being billed second, dials in an undemanding, charisma-bereft turn that gets sucked into the mire of the story despite his obvious possessiveness... would his character just fucking smile for once?). When leaving the interactions between Caron and the puppets, Lili becomes a film without sturdy supports, with very little amid the meritorious production design from the team of Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B. Willis, and Arthur Krams. The film’s carnival tentpoles are on the verge of snapping at the slightest application of subplot stress.

A lushly-composed score by Polish-American Bronislau Kaper is rooted in the lone original song appearing in Lili. That song is “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” (Kaper wrote the melody, which sounds rather German for a film set in France; Deutsch with the lyrics), which appears in the first encounter between Lili and the puppets. It appears immediately after Lili’s most despairing episode – a song with heartbreaking lyrics becoming a source of immense uplift. “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo” will never appear on a list on the most memorable musical moments from that musical factory known as MGM (okay, it was featured in 1976′s That’s Entertainment, Part II and it was a minor commercial hit that did better in continental Europe than America), but Kaper and Deutsch’s song embodies that MGM musical mentality to near-perfection. Sing though your head and heart might be in agony, these films espoused. Smile and put on the show because that’s what movie stars are meant to do.

Those who have seen La La Land (2016) and have seen next to zero MGM musicals may recognize a narrative device employed at Lili’s conclusion. Despite the fact Lili is not a pure musical, the sloppy narrative is concluded with an abstract sequence where Lili’s imagination and most internal thoughts are expressed through dance. This concluding scene is not as technically accomplished as other such sequences, instead appearing perfunctory.

It’s as if Charles Walters – a director with an established track record of solid musicals including Good News (1947), Easter Parade (1948), and Summer Stock (1950) – could not decide on what exactly he wished this film to be. The structure and the parameters for a worthwhile musical, maybe even a fantasy or light romance, is there. But Walters and Deutsch never commit to a direction, and Lili – even providing for Caron’s magnificent acting and the emotional fragility she brings to her character – suffers from that indecision. But that indecision is not enough to prevent me from ever recommending Lili to anyone. Its deficiencies make it fascinating to watch, returning viewers briefly to a time of prolonged innocence, when the world outside one’s doorstep was never anything but enthralling.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating.

[theoscarchallenge]

I very rarely say this, but I think I prefer the more recent version of Pride and Prejudice (from 2005). Although this version is by no means a bad one, it just didn’t get to me as much. It received the Oscar for Best Art Direction B/W for Cedric Gibbons and Paul Groesse.

[byneddiedingo]

Athena (Richard Thorpe, 1954)

Cast: Jane Powell, Edmund Purdom, Debbie Reynolds, Vic Damone, Louis Calhern, Evelyn Varden, Linda Christian, Ray Collins, Carl Benton Reid, Howard Wendell, Henry Nakamura, Steve Reeves, Kathleen Freeman, Richard DuBois. Screenplay: William Ludwig, Leonard Spiegelgass. Cinematography: Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse. Film editing: Gene Ruggiero. 

Athena is one of the forgotten musicals of MGM's glory days in the 1940s and '50s -- I don't think it even has a clip in those That's Entertainment compilations of the 1970s. Not that it much deserves to be remembered. It has the pretty Jane Powell and the perky Debbie Reynolds, but its leading men are second-rank. Edmund Purdom had been bumped into prominence by the studio when Mario Lanza quit or was fired from The Student Prince (Richard Thorpe, 1954), appearing on screen to lipsync the songs Lanza had already recorded. The same year, he was pressed into service to replace Marlon Brando, who had quit the filming of The Egyptian (Michael Curtiz). But his career faded after Athena -- perhaps because he had no real screen presence; he was just another handsome face. The second lead, Vic Damone, similarly lacked charisma, though he had a fine voice and good vocal technique. The script had promise as a screwball comedy: A young lawyer who plans to run for Congress falls in love with one of the daughters in a family of health nuts who believe that she is fated for him on the basis of numerological and astrological compatibility. But director Richard Thorpe, one of MGM's workhorse directors, known for coming in under budget and on time, had no particular interest in the material. Moreover, the songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane are bland and unmemorable -- with the exception of “The Girl Next Door,” a reworking of their song “The Boy Next Door,” from Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944). Otherwise, the film is remembered as one of the first movies to feature Steve Reeves, who plays a rival for Athena's affections; his appearance in the movie brought him to the attention of Italian director Pietro Francisci, who cast him in the title role of Hercules (1958), launching his career in sword-and-sandal movies. 

[sesiondemadrugada]

Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965).

[sesiondemadrugada]

Little Women (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949).