Hardly Working (Jerry Lewis, 1980)
So, Jerry hadn't released a film since 1970's
Which Way to the Front, and hadn't made a film since the notorious, and litigation ridden,
The Day the Clown Cried (1974). Much of the late 60s and 70s was dominated by pain-killer addiction, and well, with the exception of the Muscular Dystrophy telethon, this period of his life was not a happy one for him. Considering a comeback, Lewis was contacted by a Florida businessman with a script and $3 million. The result, after a few bumps, was the film
Hardly Working.
The story's simple enough: the circus closes down, and Bo (Jerry Lewis) moves in with his sister, taking job after job with little success. The clowning comes too naturally to Bo, and his constant accidental pratfallery means that his stay at any one job is quite brief. There's the gas station (where he meets his romantic interest), the city glass and mirror factory, a bar tender at a strip club, a (gulp) Benihana chef, a DJ at a disco, and then, finally, the post office. At the post office, we find out that Frank, his boss, is the father of Claire, his romantic interest. This leads to a conflict that propels the final act, and ends with Bo out of work, but happy.
That there is the crux of the film. Here is a man who was happy clowning, but is now forced into the humiliating position of having to get by doing menial, dreary jobs. At the circus he was loved. He was a natural. He had a home. Now he is castigated and humiliated by his bosses and the public for the very reasons he was once special. The pathos of Lewis looking at his reflection as he takes off his clown makeup at the circus is an image that quite clearly mirrors the famous scene of Keaton and Chaplin in
Limelight, another film about old clowns, the passing of time and changing of tastes. Lewis is consciously aligning himself with his forebears, and like the great comedians in
Limelight, we are viewing Lewis through the prism of all that he has done before, and the limits that the future will have for him. Yes, we're viewing it in this way, and the thing is, so is Lewis.
The movie literally starts with a two-minute montage of all the highlights of Lewis' career, and when I first started watching, I thought it was just part of the previews of VHS-rip, but no, apparently it was actually a part of the cinema release of this film. Odd, but also pretty explicit, and sadly defiant. It's also the problem with the film. There's the anger, the defiance, but also the sloppiness, the reliance on past tricks and rather one-dimensional set-ups. There's none of that cinematic inventiveness and curiosity that marks out his best films. Just drabness (and drabness in a colour Jerry Lewis film fills me with such sadness), with the occasional flash of vigour. Still, conceptually, I'm not going to give up on this film, as the deeper themes and undercurrents really do intrigue me (this is a cinematic giant coming to grips with his situation!); but the reality of the actual film-that-you-are-watching leaves me hanging.
Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
Then we come to the end of the 70s with De Palma, probably in the middle of his purple patch (starting with
Sisters in 1973, and ending with
Body Double in 1984) giving us his take on Antonioni, Hitchcock and Coppola with
Blow Out.
We get the death of a presidential candidate in a car crash, recorded by Jack (John Travolta) a film sound effects guy, who jumps into the creek to pull Sally (Nancy Allen) from the submerged vehicle. What looks like a blown tyre and accident turns out to be an assassination, and we get a spiralling sequence of events as Jack tries to put together the pieces (sound, film taken by blackmailer Dennis Franz) and convince people that he's not a nut-job. All the while, in the background, a real nut-job, the man responsible for the blow out at the beginning, Burke (John Lithgow) is busy tying up the loose ends by destroying the evidence and killing people.
Along the way we get the usual De Palma touches: split screens, sound and film equipment porn, high, high shots, Hitchcockian visual exposition, lovely depth of field (Vilmos Zsigmond, we thank you) and lighting, reds and greens dominating the screen, and his fascination with the minutiae of action. Always fun, always cinematic, he is definitely a child of pure cinema, with reality very rarely getting in the way of a stunning shot, or snazzy editing sequence. That's Brian, though.
Much of it lacks the sheer berserker energy of his late 70s efforts, and he seems more intent on getting inside the Jack and Sally characters, and making them breathe, or at least locate them in some sort of reality. It works with Sally, as Allen brings real pathos and a touching naivete to her, and Travolta is fine, but he just can't pull off the obsessive, tragic aspect to really whallop you in the aftermath of the finale.
That's fine though, because De Palma goes for broke. The undercurrent of anti-establishment disillusionment (I loved the hissing of Jack's erased sound tapes earlier on, and the twirling of the camera as in disbelief at this Nixonian moment) and end-regime atmosphere spews forth in the finale, with a sound-wired pursuit through Philadelphia and the Liberty Day celebrations. The enormous US flag backdrop dominates the screen at the height of the action, followed by the bitterness of the fireworks. It's a thing to behold, and almost makes you forget the surface sheen, and his lack of psychological acuity compared to the filmmakers he's copying. Almost.
&&&&&&&&&
Verdict: this kills me, it really does. Watching
Blow Out there are times when you are certain there is no way this can lose, but writing about it peels away the veneer, leaving me unsure. Watching
Hardly Working can be a chore, but when you sit down, think and write about what it actually is, the film suddenly grows in your estimation. This sh*t is tuff. So, I'll man up, gird my loins, and move
Hardly Working forward. Someone can kill it off, but not me. Not tonight. (Can't believe I'm CINECASTing doing this!)