☆ ☆ ☆ 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 20th 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.
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