Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
((Biographical drama -- Color/B&W))
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Dorothy Parker ... Jennifer Jason Leigh
Charles MacArthur ... Matthew Broderick Robert Benchley ... Campbell Scott
Alan Campbell ... Peter Gallagher
Gertrude Benchley ... Jennifer Beals
Eddie Parker ... Andrew McCarthy
Horatio Byrd ... Wallace Shawn
Jane Grant ... Martha Plimpton
Harold Ross ... Sam Robards
Edna Ferber ... Lili Taylor
Deems Taylor ... James LeGros
Paula Hunt ... Gwyneth Paltrow
Robert Sherwood ... Nick Cassavetes
George S. Kaufman ... David Thornton
Mary Kennedy Taylor ... Heather Graham
Alexander Woollcott ... Tom McGowan
Franklin P. Adams ... Chip Zien
Heywood Broun ... Gary Basaraba
Ruth Hale ... Jane Adams
Roger Spalding ... Stephen Baldwin
Marc Connelly ... Matt Malloy
Neysa McMein ... Rebecca Miller
John Peter Toohey ...Jake Johannsen
Mary Brandon Sherwood ... Amelia Campbell
Donald Ogden Stewart ... David Gow
Beatrice Kaufman ... Leni Parker
Harpo Marx ... J.M. Henry
Fred Hunter ... Stanley Tucci
Joanie Gerard ... Mina Badie
Alvan Barach ... Randy Lowell
Will Rogers ... Keith Carradine
Like the director's other films, this beautifully made period piece will not be an easy sell, but strong notices and a push to revive interest in Parker among students and the sophisticated public could give it a fighting chance. Miramax owns foreign rights.
Parker was one of the first American female writers to develop a critical voice that was respected equally with those of her illustrious male colleagues among Gotham literati, and a wit who arguably outshone them all. She left behind a legacy of often lacerating theater and literary reviews, tart poetry and numerous screenplays (including the original 1937 "A Star Is Born") that still makes compelling reading, which is why "The Portable Dorothy Parker" has never been out of print since it was first published in 1944.
But there has always been a sense of unrealized potential. It is the contrast between the sadness and disappointment of Parker's personal and creative life, and the exhilaration of important friendships and glittering social swirl, that gives this film its poignance.
Screenplay by Rudolph and journalist Randy Sue Coburn begins with Parker (Leigh) in Hollywood in 1937. Drenched in weariness and evident self-loathing for having sold out (many of her old cohorts would do the same), she is prompted by a young admirer to reflect on the "colorful" days beginning 18 years before, when American cultural life was defined by a relatively small group of artists and writers (quite a few of them critics) in New York City.
And colorful they were, Parker admits, although many other details of her life spoke of messiness and desperation. Returning from the war, her husband, Eddie (Andrew McCarthy), reveals himself to be a morphine addict, and hardly Dorothy's match upstairs. At Vanity Fair, she and other writers, including Robert Benchley (Campbell Scott), wear their salaries around their necks to protest measly wages, and she is fired.
Against the backdrop of the Jazz Age, and Mark Isham's suitably jazzy score, the ever-changing crowd lunches, drinks, hangs out and vacations together -- and sports its share of romantic complications. Separated from Eddie, Dorothy launches into a passionate affair with rakish newspaperman Charles MacArthur (Matthew Broderick), but it ends badly for her when he can't curb his appetite for actresses even after they're engaged.
At the heart of the picture, however, is the intense but carefully platonic friendship between Mrs. Parker and Mr. Benchley, as they nearly always call each other. Their lovely intimacy lends the film an emotional purity that stands in relief to Parker's unsatisfactory other relationships.
All this is fine as far as it goes, but the picture ends very abruptly, almost as if a third act were missing. The frequently returned-to framing device of the older Parker shows her viciously putting down her second husband, Alan Campbell (Peter Gallagher), and eventually turning into the lonely old lush she always feared becoming.
But the proper connection is never made between her declining condition in New York in the late 1920s and her subsequent Hollywood career. Viewers unfamiliar with Parker are given virtually nothing to work with as far as Campbell and the later years are concerned, and there is a yawning gap in the story that only becomes apparent when the film announces that it is over.
This is frustrating, since a great deal of what is onscreen is intelligent and involving. Like most films about famous personalities ("The Moderns" included), this one suffers from the awkward introduction of too many big names -- there's Harpo Marx running around a lawn party. Oh, here's George S. Kaufman, Say howdy to Will Rogers, You know F. Scott, don't you?, What should Harold Ross call his new magazine? -- but Rudolph handles this nearly impossible problem in generally acceptable fashion.
Anchoring it all is Leigh's superb performance. With her arch, artificial-sounding accent (patterned after recordings of Parker's own voice), she takes a little getting used to, and some of the readings are sufficiently indistinct that some tweaking or even re-looping could be called for to make her dialogue completely comprehensible.
But the actress gets stronger as Parker grows older, and her delivery of the writer's acid remarks is stinging but natural. Praised to the skies by critics in recent years, Leigh here hits her career summit thus far.
Scott, who is not as pudgy as editor and drama critic Robert Benchley was, turns in a sensationally delicate and nuanced characterization of a man primarily defined by Old World reticence and self-control but whose wackiness and abandon seep through the cracks.
Offbeat casting of Broderick as the heartbreaker MacArthur works well, and Wallace Shawn steals a few moments as the creative waiter who comes up with the "round table." A lively lineup of mostly young thesps fills out the long and illustrious cast of characters.
Shot in Montreal, pic is a real treat visually. Jan Kiesser's outstanding widescreen lensing alternates between intense black-and-white for the framing story and lustrous color for the principal sequences. Francois Seguin's highly resourceful production design, careful location work and notably natural, uncliched costumes by John Hay and Renee April all contribute to an indelible sense of time and place.
Camera (color; Panavision widescreen), Jan Kiesser; editor, Suzy Elmiger; music, Mark Isham; production design, Francois Seguin; art direction, James Fox; set decoration, Frances Calder; costume design, John Hay, Renee April; sound (Dolby), Richard Nichol; associate producer, James McLindon; assistant director, Nicholls. Reviewed at the Aidikoff Screening Room, Beverly Hills, May 6, 1994. (In Cannes Film Festival -- competing.) Running time: 123 min.
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