© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p34
19/06/2017 12:50 par tellurikwaves
© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p34
19/06/2017 12:50 par tellurikwaves
From John Doe
EDWARD DMYTRYK’S spectacularly lurid melodrama centering around a New Orleans cathouse begins, appropriately enough, with a sleek black feline on the prowl,slinking in step to Elmer Bernstein’s jazz score as the Saul Bass–designed titles list the star-glutted cast. Very loosely based on Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel of the same name, Walk on the Wild Side, set in the early 1930s, features one actress on the rise—Jane Fonda, in her second movie, plays juvie nympho Kitty Twist (the name continuing the cat fancy)—and a legend near the end of her film career. Fifty-four at the time of Walk on the Wild Side’s release in 1962, Barbara Stanwyck, as Jo, the dykey madam of the Doll House, would appear in only two more movies afterward (Roustabout and The Night Walker, both from 1964), though she stayed active on the small screen well into her seventies.
© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p33
19/06/2017 12:45 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p33
19/06/2017 12:45 par tellurikwaves
lecinemadreams.blogspot.(fin)
One would think a little bit of all that sexual democracy might have wound up on the screen, but no. At best, Walk on the Wild Side remains an entertaining but tame timepiece and cultural curio for those interested in seeing what kind of film Hollywood thought it was ready to tackle during the early days of the abandonment of the Motion Picture Production Code.
Copyright © Ken Anderson
© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p32
19/06/2017 05:59 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p32
19/06/2017 05:59 par tellurikwaves
The end result is a film that is a disappointment as both drama and love story, but a bonanza of unintentional humor and delicious badness. And you'd be hard pressed to find a more enjoyably watchable film. Easy on the eyes and no strain on the brain, your biggest concern will be stomach cramps from laughing aloud at the dialog.
Woefully tame and coy by today's standards, Walk on the Wild Side maintains its historical notoriety as one of the earliest major motion pictures to feature a lesbian character. As the years have passed, the film has revealed itself as a movie with a pretty high behind-the-scenes LGBT pedigree as well.
In addition to Laurence Harvey, Capucine, and Barbara Stanwyck all having been been mentioned in various celebrity memoirs as being gay or bisexual, Jane Fonda has written in her own autobiography about participating in bisexual three-ways with her husband Roger Vadim.
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19/06/2017 05:51 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p31
19/06/2017 05:51 par tellurikwaves
Walk on the Wild Side is, like the 1976 US/USSR collaboration that resulted in the dreadful musical mistake that was The Bluebird, a film whose backstory is infinitely more interesting than the motion picture released. Conflict-of-interest deals were behind much of Walk on the Wild Side's grab-bag casting (Laurence Harvey was being pushed by the wife of the head of Columbia Studios, while Capucine was being promoted by producer Charles K. Feldman).
The film was plagued by constant rewrites, deleted scenes (the internet is full of rumors regarding a curiously missing-in-action hairbrush spanking scene between Stanwyck and Capucine ... be still my heart), costly delays, and a cast that was often openly antagonistic to one another as well as to the director.
© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p30
19/06/2017 05:48 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p30
19/06/2017 05:48 par tellurikwaves
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Is there an axiom that says the cooler the opening credits sequence, the more likely one is apt to be let down with the film? Outside of the brilliant and stylish art-deco title sequence for Mame which got me all hyped-up only to then lead me down a path of soft-focus croaking; Saul Bass' snazzy, jazz-tinged title sequence for Walk on the Wild Side (assisted immeasurably by the Oscar-nominated Elmer Bernstein, Mack David theme music) sets one up for a film that never materializes.
© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p29
19/06/2017 05:42 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p29
19/06/2017 05:42 par tellurikwaves
Laurence Harvey has always been a favorite of mine (owing at least in part to my tendency to develop matinee crushes on birdlike, Tony Perkins types), but he really seems out of his element here. The thoroughly engaging (and sexy) energy he brought to I Am a Camera (1955), or 1959's Expresso Bongo is nowhere to be seen in his tediously virtuous Dove Linkhorn.
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19/06/2017 05:39 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p28
19/06/2017 05:39 par tellurikwaves
For me, Jane Fonda gives the film's liveliest performance. Liberated from the lacquered, overly-mature look adopted for The Chapman Report and Period of Adjustment (both 1962), Fonda is sexier and looser here. Perhaps a little too loose in her early scenes. There's something about "earthy" that brings forth the inner ham in actors. Fonda in her early scenes can't seem to keep her finishing school refinement from creeping into her overly-mannered interpretation of Kitty Twist, railway ragamuffin.
Parts of her performance have the feel of an over-coached acting school scene. But, unlike so me of her co stars, she's never a dull presence and really comes into her own in the sequences in the Doll House. She looks amazing as well. The cameraman obviously thought so too, for Fonda's shapely backside has arguably as many closeups as her face.
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19/06/2017 05:35 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p27
19/06/2017 05:35 par tellurikwaves
The strikingly beautiful Capucine may not be much of an actress, but she's not helped much by a script which calls for her to behave like a non-stop pill from the minute she's introduced. Male screenwriters unfamiliar with how women actually think are often guilty of writing about "beauty" as though it were an actual character trait rather than a physical attribute.
In the case of Hallie Gerard, so little of the character's much-talked-about passion, restlessness, or joy is conveyed that we're left to imagine she's fought over by Dove and Jo simply because she's so outrageously pretty. If the Hallie we now see is supposed to represent a broken woman whose life-force has been drained out of her by her having "fallen down the well," all the backstory we're left to imagine requires an actress substantially more skilled than what we're given. You get about as much emotionally out of Capucine as a walking/ talking entity as from one of her model photo shoots from the '50s.
© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p26
18/06/2017 20:07 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p26
18/06/2017 20:07 par tellurikwaves
Barbara Stanwyck was outed as lesbian in two substandard books: The Sewing Circle by Axel Madsen, and the pull-no-punches Hollywood Lesbians by Boze Hadleigh. If they're to be believed, Walk on the Wild Side was a film set with more closets than a Feydeau farce: a closeted leading man (Harvey); a closeted lesbian, possibly bisexual leading woman (Capucine), and a closeted lesbian co-star (Stanwyck).
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18/06/2017 20:05 par tellurikwaves
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© DR - WALK ON THE WILD SIDE de Edward Dmytryk (1962) p25
18/06/2017 20:05 par tellurikwaves
In this her first film since 1957's Forty Guns, the very private Stanwyck was yet another classic-era star forced to embrace the burgeoning era of movie permissiveness and take on a role she at one time might have considered unsavory.
Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons disapproved of Stanwyck taking on such a role, to which
Stanwyck is said to have responded "What do you want them to do, get a real madam and a real lesbian?"
On the bright side, at least she was playing a lesbian madam in a major motion picture, by 1964 Stanwyck would be following in Joan Crawford's B-movie footsteps and starring in a William Castle schlock thriller, The Night Walker.