Before I kick off this week's Cinema Sunday, a quick word about TCM. Per a statement from Warner Bros. Discover, the erstwhile Turner Classic Movies will continue as before with classic movies presented ad free with a stable of hosts to introduce them.
This statement was made in the wake of deep cuts in the staff of TCM by WBD which made a lot of movie fans nervous.
Life ain't easy for a cable channel these days with declining cable subscribers and more people turning to streaming. And WBD has shown a ruthless efficiency in slashing budgets and projects. Were TCM's days numbered?
For now assurances from Warner Bros. Discovery are that the changes made are only the background and viewers will see no change in the programming.
TCM has opened my eyes to movies that I otherwise would not have seen. The first of the two films covered in today's post I would not have sought out but TCM put it on the schedule, host Dave Karger dared me to watch it and so I did.
For movie lovers, here's hoping WBD keeps it word and TCM continues to enjoy a long and entertaining life.
Today's Cinema Sunday picks up a couple of music themed movies that didn't quite make the cut of Movie Musical May. Both center on women who had to put up with all sorts of shit because the men around them wouldn't listen to them.
Our first movie is a 1965 drama called Inside Daisy Clover.
With a title like that, you might wonder, is this our first porno for Cinema Sunday?
No it's not and get your mind out of the gutter.
Anyway...
In 1936 Santa Monica, Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) is a tomboy, living with her eccentric mother in a ramshackle trailer. Dreaming of stardom, Daisy submits a recorded song to studio owner Raymond Swan.
Swan is impressed by what he sees and hears, a fresh faced ingenue he can mold and shape into his studio's next big star. He signs her to a five year contract and immediately gets to work on managing and controlling her life. He hides her mother away in a mental institution and creates a whole fabricated biography for his new star. The only thing that stays true is her name, Daisy Clover.
Daisy rebels against Swan's control by getting married to fellow actor Wade Lewis. Wade plays with Daisy until he gets bored and then abandons her for a new lover. Who may or may not be male.
Brokenhearted over Wade's betrayal, Daisy falls into an affair with her studio Svengali, Raymond Swan.
After the death of her mother and overcome with all of Swan's expectations of her, Daisy suffers a nervous breakdown.
There's a scene with Daisy in a sound booth looping dialogue and vocals for the musical Raymond Swan has her starring in. Daisy's watching herself on screen smiling and dancing while she has repeat the same lines over and over and over because Swan wants to get the looping exactly right and it's enough to drive anyone batshit crazy.
Unable to work, she spends her days in bed at her beach house where Raymond has had enough. While Daisy is totally shattered as a human being, Raymond still insists she returns to work, fulfill her contract and finish the damn movie.
After that, who gives a damn! Raymond Swan will find another young girl and turn her into his next big star.
Daisy Clover eventually gets out of bed... to kill herself by sticking her head in a gas oven. Which would work if not for the constant interruptions.
OK, fine! Daisy decides to live. She leaves the beach house and also leaves the gas on.
As she walks away on the beach, the house explodes.
A passing fisherman asks what happened and Daisy replies, “Someone declared war.”
And that's.... the end.
Man, Daisy Clover is treated like shit, ground up in the gears of the Hollywood star making machine. As Natalie Wood noted, "At every key moment of Daisy's life, she's alone!" Natalie Wood got her start as a child star and understands Daisy's pain.
A brief note about Wade Lewis, played by Robert Redford. Homosexuality was still prohibited in 1965 by the Hollywood Hays Code expressly. In the book the film was based on, Lewis is gay but apparently Redford reportedly insisted that his character have some interest in women. His bisexuality was only obliquely referenced in a few bits of dialogue. Despite these limitations, the film is generally recognized for one of the early depictions of a gay or bisexual character in American cinema who is not ashamed of his sexuality and does not commit suicide.
What saves this film is Natalie Wood's performance as Daisy Clover. Otherwise, Inside Daisy Clover feels a bit off, with campy musical numbers juxtaposed with Daisy's dark downward spiral. Is it an amusing satire of the worst excess of the Hollywood movie studio system or a disturbing portrait of a young women's descent into a mental health hell?
Now we go from one movie where a young woman goes through hell because the manipulative men in her life will not fucking listen to her to the story of a real life performer who had to put up with similar obstacles.
I Am Woman is a 2019 Australian biographical film about singer Helen Reddy starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey.
This is not something I would seek out but some damn cable channel or another was running it one Sunday afternoon and I can't begin to explain why I was compelled to watch this.
The film tracks Helen Reddy from her arrival in New York at age 24 with a 3 year old daughter, a suitcase, $230 and a dream of making a living as a singer.
In the 1970s, Helen Reddy became one of she the biggest superstars of her time, with eight number one US singles, her own hour-long TV show and an icon of the 1970s feminist movement.
There's a scene with a meeting with record executives hearing "I Am Woman" for the first time and not thinking it had any potential as a hit.
One executive (smarmily played by Chris Parnell) observes that the song is very much against men.
Well, no it isn't. "I Am Woman" is very much an anthem extolling the strengths and virtues of being a woman. Leave to a man to think that "pro-woman" means "anti-man".
There is at least one man who is listening to Helen and it's her husband and manager. The pair along with friends stage a stealth campaign to bolster "I Am Woman", working the phones to make requests to a variety of radio stations to push the single up the charts.
"I Am Woman" becomes the anthem of the feminist movement. The film shows excerpts from the news of both women seeking to bolster the rights of women and other strident conservative voices seeking to hold those women back.
The progress (and it's subsequent sad lack there of) of the Equal Rights Amendment is a running thread through the movie.
Unfortunately, by the 1980's, Helen's husband has spiraled into a major cocaine habit and by the next decade, she is flat broke.
She quits the music scene and falls into obscurity with a teaching job until she is reluctantly convinced to appear at a women's march to perform "I Am Woman" one more time.
I Am Woman follows the basic pattern of the superstar biopic: starts off young and with nothing, achieves some success against various obstacles, takes off really big but then some bad shit happens that brings the star down low but ends with a moment of triumph. It's a formula but it works and Tilda Cobham-Hervey deserves a lot of credit for making us care and empathize with Helen Reddy along her journey.
OK, that is that for this week's Cinema Sunday. I'll be back next week because I have seen a lot of movies and by golly, I'm gonna write about 'em all.
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