Party Girl sits somewhat
nicely in between Nicholas Ray’s classic middle period and his late religious
epics – capturing, one could say (and don’t the auteurists love to fit a
narrative to a filmography) the style of the former and the languorousness of
the latter. Or so the auteur theory, or the politiques des auteurs if you
prefer, would have you believe. Watching Party Girl, it is difficult not
to think of Cahiers’ critics’ influential treatise, especially since you are
probably watching Party Girl because of the cachet they bestowed on
Ray’s cinema, amongst others.
Despite the title, the film is
primarily focussed on the morality of a gangster lawyer Thomas Farrell (Robert
Taylor). He meets and develops a relationship with nightclub dancer Vicki Gaye
(Cyd Charisse), who castigates him for his moral prostitution, mirroring
his criticisms of her own lifestyle, after seeing him lie in court to save the
skin of gangster Louis Canetto (John Ireland). They all work for the violent
and unhinged Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb) and the law is closing in.
Party Girl begins well –
excepting the dance number, which, like all the numbers in the film, feels too
lazily integrated – with a bawdy, gaudy dressing room scene that seems like
something out of Kenneth Anger for some reason. Farrell looks a little
Anger-esque in a few scenes in which he seems to have been heavily made up.
After that, there are a few nice touches that would remind fans of the seething
tensions and explosive emotions of In A Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar and
Bigger Than Life and Rebel Without A Cause (though, and it tears
me apart to say this, it is becoming increasingly challenging to be emotionally
invested in a film that has one scene much too similar to Tommy Wiseau’s The
Room for comfort). A depressed Rico emptying a gun into a picture of his
beloved Jean Harlow after finding out that she has just got married, and then
immediately feeling chipper is one such moment. Another is a weird moment in
which Farrell stares at a sleeping Vicki for a little too long and a little too
hungrily before shaking his head and going away.
So, Party Girl begins
looking like Kenneth Anger, morphs into a murky morality play that Douglas Sirk
would have made a good melodrama out of, with occasional moments of violence
that seem to point forward to Scorsese or Tarantino – a long speech about a
metal pool cue preceding a battering seems particularly like the latter, so
boring there and yet so shockingly unexpected here. But the film soon grows
dull – the morals become simplistic, the plotting routine and the climax
disappointing. Several pointless scenes follow Farrell and Vicki discussing and
re-discussing the stakes, interspersed with gangster killings, which recall the
endings of The Godfather films. There is a long stretch of the film in
which Farrell and Vicki are waiting for Rico to make his next move, while Rico
seems happy to wait and see what they are up too. So, everyone discusses the
stakes again instead. Farrell eventually comes up with a plan that should get
him killed immediately, but somehow doesn’t. And, in the end, Ray, or his
writers (those hardworking creatures that the politiques liked to forget about
unless they needed someone to blame) dispatch Cobb in the most ridiculous and
lazy fashion, giving the gangster his comeuppance without trampling all over
the newly – and so easily – found morality of our heroes. And then you remember
that the film was called Party Girl, an odd title since the film only
rarely pays attention to Vicki – and never in preference to Farrell.
In the end, Party Girl has
some nice moments, but not nearly enough to sustain its running time. Nicholas
Ray deserves his reputation, especially for the four films mentioned above
(plus They Live By Night), but it does not shine through all of his
films (see also Knock On Any Door). But where does that leave that old
politiques des auteurs? There are better, or should that be worse, examples of
films that have unjustly received attention, if not acclaim, thanks to a
director’s previous track record. But it is difficult to sit through something
like Party Girl, especially if you have a sense of expectation, and not
feel that the politiques des auteurs hasn’t in some way negatively effected how
we watch, or choose to watch, films. Indeed, giving Howard Hawks or John Ford
or, indeed, Nicholas Ray more attention over a filmmaker like, say, Michael Bay
(for whom cinema is a business enterprise and the viewer is the sucker) is an
argument for this necessary evil, and a good one. But it leaves you with a list
of films – in the case of John Ford, there is well over a hundred – that have
the prestige but not the quality to struggle through. Meanwhile a film like,
and here I’m being embarrassingly honest, Twilight or Die Hard With A
Vengeance or Hostel or non-canonical works from canonical directors
like Donovan’s Reef, How To Steal A Million or Man’s Favourite
Sport? for me, hold more interest (in terms of gender, politics, economics
or just plain entertainment). Better, anyway, than Hitchcock’s Number 17
or Ford’s The Rising of the Moon or Sirk’s Lured or Ray’s Party
Girl, with significantly less good feelings and over examination. Equally, The
Gunfighter is as powerful a revisionist Western as any of those by Robert
Altman, but without imparting a reputation of revisionism on its director Henry
King.
So is there an alternative to the politiques des
auteurs or are we stuck with it? Or does it even matter anymore? These are
probably not questions that anyone is still debating these days, beyond
specialist circles where the latest Malick is either formal perfection or
self-parody. But to sit through a film like Party Girl is a stark
reminder of its still-present effect.
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