lopsided shape of the picture. It's so bulky Film and ravenous that it may have elbowed charcters out of the script and shouldered a dozen scenes out of the final cut. It's the kind of performance to which an actress's Mommie ego is obviously committed, where she puts everything she has on the line and dares the critics to hate her. The least you can say of Dearest Dunaway is that she totally inhabits the character. Her eyes appear unfocused and psychotic even in the rare moments when the character is in repose. As for "doing" Crawford, I found her expressions and mannerisms more arresting than the "un- canny" physical resemblance I was led to expect. Both actresses were endowed with Hal Crowther great cheekbones, but that's the extent of it. Drawing hr Gregory Vigrass Miss Dunaway is a beautiful woman and Beaten black and blue by her mother for dropping, no glamorous walk-ons, no Miss Crawford was a beautiful woman, but storing an expensive dress on a wire hanger, gratuitous Filmland lore. With the necessary when you put Crawford's makeup on the nine-year-old blond moppet surveys the exception of Louis B. Mayer—done to a Dunaway you've combined two beauties to wreckage of her beautiful room left in turn by —there's no create one hag. Dunaway has seldom looked Mommie's wake and voices the only possible attempt to cash in on any film legend besides less attractive. reaction: "Jesus Christ!" Miss Crawford's. For all the acting, the energy, and the The line was a calculated (and success- What he gives us is such a tight, narrow internal integrity of Dunaway's big scenes— ful) audience-pleaser, but it just about sums focus on Crawford and her daughter that the and "big" has an extended, Gotter- up my critical response to Mommie Dearest. close-ups quickly become claustrophobic. dammerung meaning here the thin material Like the bruised moppet, a very promising Joan and Christina exist in a vacuum. A begins to wear quickly during the second little actress named Mara Hobel, 1 was second child, a son, is invisible even when hour. Perry hasn't pandered to the curious impressed and appalled. Happily, Holly- he's on screen. The actress's lover, a studio but neither has he made any point that wood has aborted the launching of a lawyer (Steve Forrest), is bland and decent. would justify the film without them. Clearly poisonous new genre. There won't be dozens A terrified nanny scurries about in the can be included in that 95 of features based on the lascivious memoirs shadows. No friends or associates ever percent of the adult population that's unfit of Boris Karloff's mistress or the spiteful appear. There's no hint of how Joan to raise children. Her cruelty is particularly contentions of Lana Turner's maid. But the Crawford might appear to anyone else in disgusting because of the cloying sweetness prototype for the new gossip cinema didn't Hollywood. she affected for the celebrity press. The film go down with a strangled whisper. It The potentially rich background is so has some good moments with those ironies. rumbled, roared, exploded, and burst into bare that Perry seems to be dodging lawsuits, But, on balance, she was just a little worse flames. You could smell it burning a mile or staying off the toes of all living persons. than most parents, worse for her stubborn away. Joan Crawford and L. B. Mayer, both vindictiveness rather than for the emotional Mommie Dearest, the best-selling securely buried, are the only individuals who horror-shows that make such good reading. dismemberment of the late Joan Crawford could possibly take exception to Mommie Which of us hasn't gone through a few of by a disinherited daughter, was a film Dearest. those with Mom or Dad? project that promised to make money but Perry bets absolutely all his chips on Defending Joan Crawford, Faye Dun- bring very little credit—although possible 's carnivorous performance away unwittingly sawed off the branch she ostracism—to its director. Frank Perry, the and on the exhausting scenes where was sitting on. "If you saw a woman slapping filmmaker who took it on, is an artist of Crawford abuses and humiliates her daugh- her child in the street, you'd probably think considerable talent but of no distinctive style ter. He never loses our attention, but the the kid had been giving her a hard time," that would bring his name to anyone's lips suspense and audience involvement are in Faye told a reporter. "If you saw Joan when Hollywood's sensitive veterans are part the easy kind you can wring from stories Crawford slapping her child, you'd think: being discussed. about tortured puppies. You hear the 'That's Joan Crawford. My God, what a In the past, in films like , master's heavy tread, the music changes, monster she is.— Dunaway's right. If the Play It As It Lars, and Diary of a Mad close-ups on his boots and the club in his mother were anyone other than Joan Housewife, Perry has had success with hand, the puppy begins to whine— Crawford, no one would have made the psychological themes and strong emotion. The miracle is that neither little Hobel picture. Mommie Dearest indicates that he made a nor Diana Scarwid, who plays Christina as a In life and on the screen, Joan decision to stay within his known strengths. teen-ager, are reduced to props and Crawford was always the driven woman The film makes no pretense of being punching bags for the rampaging Dunaway. struggling to escape her humble origins. She Hollywood history. There's no name- At times the nine-year-old looks like a small always succeeded. Mommie Dearest, in boat adrift in a hurricane, but she holds her some ways as ambitious as she was, is less a Hal Crowther, critic, columnist, and screen- own. grand failure than a very loud one. It never writer, is editor of the Spectator, in Raleigh, By itself, Dunaway's performance as escapes its humble origins in gossip and North Carolina. Crawford could be responsible for the revenge. •

Winter 1981/82 37