I, Dalio (2015)/Debra Paget, For Example (2016)/Our Stars (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

I, Dalio (2015)/Debra Paget, For Example (2016)/Our Stars (2015) – M. Rappaport

You may remember video essayist Mark Rappaport from his ‘90s features, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992) or From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), in which he used film clips to investigate a certain thesis (for example, that Hudson’s films often hinted that he was gay) or to review an artist’s work as a way of gathering insight into the culture as a whole (as he does with Seberg).  Well, Rappaport has been very active again lately (in his 70s) creating a series of short essays, that use an actor as a starting place for a certain premise and then digress all over the place.  Of the three that I watched last night (each about 30 minutes long), I, Dalio (2015), focussing on French Jewish character actor Marcel Dalio, was the best.  Rappaport’s premise is that Dalio’s Jewishness meant that he was channelled into outcast roles (such as stool pigeon, hoodlum, etc.) in France before WWII but then when he fled to the US during the war he was typecast instead as French and was granted more positive roles (such as Frenchy in To Have and Have Not (1944) or the head croupier in Rick’s Café in Casablanca, 1942).  Returning back to France after the war meant a return to villainous parts – until he was old enough to be typecast simply as “old”.  Only the great director Jean Renoir had Dalio explicitly play Jewish roles in both The Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), where his Jewishness is openly discussed and reflected upon (just before the war).  So, Rappaport’s point is that identity is a function of context and the career of Dalio is a case in point.  The premise of Our Stars (2015) is that Hollywood pairings of stars that worked during their first cinematic incarnation cannot work again years later because they can only demonstrate that the stars have aged and that their chemistry has dissipated.  He uses Gregory Peck & Jennifer Jones, Barbara Stanwyck and both Gary Cooper and Fred MacMurray, and Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster to illustrate the point.  Debra Paget, For Example (2016) seeks to use the 20^th Century-Fox contract actress of the 1950s as an example of the careers of those on the second rung who never crashed through to stardom.  Neither of these latter two films seemed as rich or deep as I, Dalio but they were still never less than entertaining, with well chosen “knowing” clips and digressions that were sometimes more interesting than the main focus.  Rappaport narrates each essay himself or instead uses actors who pretend to be the central protagonists, speaking in first person about what they might have been thinking. Of course, it’s all a fiction (or a blend of fact and fiction) but thought-provoking if film is your thing.