Does Anybody Know #2
…if there’s any way to get a copy of Preston Sturges’ last film, THE DIARIES OF MAJOR THOMPSON, also known as THE FRENCH THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE?
Described as “almost defiantly unfunny” by one critic, this seems to have been a somewhat blighted project. Sturges, with what Rene Clair identified as “turn-of-the-century schoolboy French,” had to direct this film in two languages. His supposedly bilingual stars, Jack Buchanan (Scottish musical comedian, best known today for THE BANDWAGON) and Martine Carol, were in reality so incompetent in their respective second languages that they couldn’t understand one another and would miss their cues. Buchanan was also in the early stages of the spinal cancer that would kill him, which might well have cut down on his propensity for being adorably hilarious.
Come to think of it, why the hell do I want to see this film? Because it’s Sturges, and I love him. Also because all the other late-period Sturges films with shaky reputations have turned out to be well worth seeing. On first viewing, UNFAITHFULLY YOURS struck me as two-thirds masterpiece and one-third turkey. Now I’m convinced it’s a truly great comedy, and even the “bad” bits seem more like some unusual kind of brilliance. The hideously protracted, repetitious, agonizingly unfunny slapstick finale perfectly captures the experience of jealousy at work in the human mind. And THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND, whose own co-scenarist thought it the worst film ever made, actually has plenty of funny stuff in it. So I have to give this one a chance.
If I get the chance.
March 10, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I’ve always wanted to see this myself. Sturges career has invariably been described as One Long Decline. Obviously the trio of masterpieces he made in 1941 can’t be topped. (Just like the trio of masterpieces Ken Russell made in 1971.) But filmmakers can only control so much of the industry in which they work.
Glad you’ve rediscovered Unfaithfully Yours. It’s had its fans over the years and “Nobody handles Handel the way you handle Handel!” has passed into the language. But it should be better known. Likewise The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, especially for Harold Lloyd’s big speech to his great love.
I must take another look at The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend as a first impression found Sturges out of tune with Betty Grable’s iconographic authority. But I may well be wrong.
And I’m always up for defending the critically lambasted Martine Carroll. Pseudo-fans of Ophuls claim Danielle Darrieux would have been a much better Lola Montes — only going to show they don’t understand the film one bit.
March 10, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Well, Ophuls himself is said to have wanted Darrieux, but he makes Carol work in the role, indeed he makes her BECOME it in a way DD probably couldn’t have.
I was forgetting Diddlebock, yes, another underrated classic, not as great as Sullivan’s or Palm Beach, certainly, but chock-full of incredible stuff, and clearly the product of no mind but Sturges’.
I don’t think Sturges quite gels with Grable either, and it hurts the film, and there are some tiresome moments, but some beautiful stuff too. The opening scene is an eye-popper, with Grable as a tiny child of about 2 practicing with her handgun, under the watchful eye of her grandpa.
March 10, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Carol was a bigger star thn Darrieux at the time because of <i.Caroline Cherie and other films in which she was the Greta Scacchi of her day. Ophusl makes a big joke out of this when Lola rips her dress open and he cuts to the Kings servants looking for a needle and thread to sew it up.
For Ophuls the film was entirely contemporary in that it was inspired by the then-recent travails of Judy Garland and Edith Piaf.
March 10, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Also, Lola is famous for being famous, a modern phenomenon, and Martine C evokes this more than the super-talented DD.