One of the tentpoles of my New Sanity is the watching of old movies on my Kindle. Saints be praised! When my mother gave me the device I put it aside, mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to get it hooked to the WiFi. Now I am addicted. With Amazon Prime, I can watch dozens of free movies and so I watch something nearly every night. For the last couple of nights I got into two old Shirley MacLaine movies that I had never heard of. So let me digress now.
I like early Shirley MacLaine; as an actress she was unique and daring and physical. She could dance. She had the face of an Irish angel. She was quirky and hip in the 60s and 70s. So many of her early films were about “bad” girls with hearts of gold, and she wasn’t too prudish to play them to the hilt. She was usually a cheerful whore. In Irma La Douce she was a Parisian prostitute; in the original Sweet Charity her character was also a prostitute, though in the film she is cleaned up as a taxi dancer; in The Apartment, she is a secretary driven to suicide by an affair with her married boss; in Some Came Running she is a ditz from the wrong side of the tracks; in Two For The Seesaw, which I plan on seeing soon, she is a Greenwich Village kook who jumps from one affair to the next. These characters came at a time when America was struggling with the conservative values of the ‘50s and being confronted by the free love/woman’s liberation movements of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. And Shirley didn’t look like the personification of a fallen woman, she was light and bright and cute as a button and that’s why American accepted her. I know Shirley’s mid-period films like The Turning Point and Madame Sousatzka and of course Terms of Endearment, but what happened to all her earlier stuff? Why isn’t it on cable more often?
Anyway, I just watched two films of hers from the 1960s. The first: Vittorio De Sica’s Woman Times Seven, shot mostly in Paris with an international cast. The film has not fared well with critics and seems to be misunderstood. I had never heard of it; it was marketed as a film about seven adulterous women, but that is an overstatement. In its way, the film is about the longings and secret desires of women still trapped in a repressive, male-dominated culture. Shirley MacLaine is astonishing in this film, which finds her playing seven completely different characters in a series of vignettes. Some complain that the stories don’t go far enough and have very little payoff, but I think as a viewer you have to reach a bit further to understand the nuances of what De Sica is presenting here. It’s all about Shirley’s characterizations, in little snapshots -- it’s not about long complicated, well-developed plots. What I also loved about the film is that it’s Shirley in her prime. She looks amazing, the clothes are all classically prim Pierre Cardin, the jewels are fantastic Van Cleef & Arpels, her makeup is exquisite, and Paris is shot in wide angles so you really get a sense of the city from a past era.
In the first segment, Shirley is Paulette, a grieving widow, rich and seemingly inconsolable as she walks in her husband’s funeral cortege with a huge crowd of mourners. She is being escorted by her husband’s associate, Peter Sellers, who can’t resist trying to seduce her in this most inopportune moment. The kicker is that this black-veiled widow ain’t too distraught to consider a weekend with a man who owns a couple of farms and a sports car. It’s just a delicious peek into the weakness of a serial gold digger who needs to set up her next Situation as soon as possible.
In the next segment, Shirley is a perky wife who returns early from a trip to Italy and catches her husband, Rossano Brazzi, in bed with her best friend. After a glorious freakout in which she smashes every plate and vase in the joint over his cowering head – in one ongoing take -- she runs into the night vowing to bed the first man she comes across. (Shirley’s characters do quite a bit of high-heeled running in this film!) After regretting her decision as she dodges freaks and vagrants, “Maria Teresa” hoofs it into a park where a troupe of understanding prostitutes is on the stroll. These ladies counsel the tearful wife on how to put the horns on hubby and even offer up their johns so she can do the deed. It’s an incredibly funny scene and so uniquely European; the stuff these streetwalkers say about men is hilarious. Faced with a naked freak in a car, Maria Teresa loses her nerve and gets a courtesy lift home from a pumped-up pimp. Her husband, suspecting the driver of being the lover, insults him and gets a smash in the nose that puts him on his ass. And in that moment, Shirley becomes the solicitous wife yet again, as all is forgiven and she runs to his aid. This is where it ends – we don’t know how they will resolve his infidelity, and that’s why people don’t like the flick. But I just see it as evidence of the complicated nature of love and the complicated nature of women. How many of us love people who do us wrong? How many of us forgive over and over, because love can’t be turned off like a faucet? There’s no logic in love!
In another segment, Shirley is an icy, all-business translator at some international conference. In her severe blue uniform, “Linda” speaks Japanese and Hindi and Italian like a machine. Men are drooling at her feet and propositioning her, but she turns them away. Two men in particular, an Italian and a Scot, won’t be dissuaded, even as she explains that she is an intellectual who enjoys art and poetry and, uh, artistic nudity. Eventually the competing suitors come to her flat for a drink, where she tries to engage them in a scholarly reading of TS Eliot’s “Lovesong for Alfred J. Prufrock” while buck naked. It seems she wants to keep things on an intellectual level, but when the two swains scuffle over which one will stay and get the prize, we see that this is exactly what turns her on. Their competition and flattery actually causes her to climax right as she’s standing in front of them (the camera focuses on her gasping face). As the segment closes out, we see the high standards, mind games, and icy veneer crumble as Linda willingly prepares to swan dive into the threesome pool. This segment is about a woman owning her sexuality, and also about the seductive power of intellectualism. This character is going to get what she needs from her ménage a trois and turn them out of bed in the morning without a second thought, because she’s All That. Go Shirley.
There’s another vignette about a mousy woman married to a handsome romance writer. Her husband is so caught up in the wild adventures of his heroine, Simone, that he completely overlooks the needs of his wife. He doesn’t notice “Edith” at all, and forgets their anniversary. Desperate for attention, Edith begins to dress wildly, sing, roller skate, stage elaborate dinners, and dance for hubby, who thinks she’s gone mad. He summons a shrink to dinner, having him masquerade as a lawyer, but when wifey figures out that she’s being summed up for a mental evaluation, she climbs out the window and across rooftops with hubby and doctor in pursuit. When they catch her, her plaintive crying rends the heart. “I’m not crazy,” she sobs, “I’m in LOVE.” Shirley is such a good actress you just want to shed buckets of tears for this poor soul who is willing to do anything to out-Simone the fictional Simone her husband is so enamored by. On a deeper level this is about the power of male fantasies and how often they have nothing to do with flesh and blood women; even today’s porn has many men addicted to impossible and inappropriate standards of beauty and sexual behavior. The uncomfortable truth of this vignette is that there is nothing this wife can ever do to regain her husband’s sexual attention, and her attempts are just pathetic and sad. She’s not noble. She’s a fool, and she knows it.
One of the less successful stories pairs Shirley with Alan Arkin. She’s Marie, a shrill, dark-haired harpie trapped in a loveless marriage and he’s a mousy nothing who married a rich older woman he can no longer stand. They are lovers who have come to a seedy Paris hotel to publically declare their love and execute a double suicide pact. It’s their politicized “goodbye cruel world” act, but they bicker over how to do it and what they should say in their audio-taped suicide statement. As they seem to come to terms about how to end it all, each secretly tries to back out and succeeds, with Shirley breaking the bathroom window and hoofing it down the spiral fire escape. Not sure about the meaning behind this one, but I will say this: It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.
As “Eve,” Shirley is the pampered, shallow, abusive and demanding wife of a business magnate. With long blonde curls and dripping with diamonds and fur, Eve has a catastrophic meltdown when she finds out that another Parisian socialite will be wearing the exact same gown she plans to wear to the opera that night. She tries to tear the designer a new asshole for promising her that it was an exclusive design; she calls the woman and asks that she wear another gown, but the woman refuses; she then forces her high-powered husband to call and threaten the other woman’s husband with financial and social ruin – to which the other husband laughs. Eve is not giving up, and with the help of one of her husband’s underlings concocts a diabolical scheme: to have a small bomb planted in her rival’s limousine. A bomb? Yes. Not murder, just inconvenience is her goal. Eve gets herself glammed up: hair piled high with double tiaras, diamonds at her ears, one-shoulder gown of gorgeous white silk with silver paillettes and ostrich feather and chiffon overlay, silver body glitter and silver eye shadow. She ignores her screaming toddler and overwhelmed nanny, and heads off with her husband to witness the car bomb explosion before gloatingly heading to the opera. She floats into the opera house as all eyes follow her grand entrance. She is smugly satisfied until she looks across the balconies and spots …. A matron wearing The Same Gown!!!! This is too much for her, and she bolts from her box just as the conductor is ramping up the intro to Carmen. Eve is undone, and in tears of rage and frustration she goes tearing back down the opera house steps as her husband pursues her. She pauses for breath behind a guard, as if he is but a marble pillar, and spies her rival and her husband belatedly arriving. They are both covered in soot. His tuxedo is torn. Her gorgeous gown is besmirched and bedraggled. The husband has to right the mile-high beehive hairdo from sliding off the wife’s head. The sight sends Eve – whose face is smeared with the mascara of the tears she just shed – into gales of helpless laughter as the segment ends. Despite all her efforts, she still has no control. But she still got to see her rival bested, even if both of them end up trumped by the Matron in the Same Gown.
The final vignette is bittersweet. Two girlfriends walk the street after lunch hand in hand, in the European way, dressed to the nines. Tall, dark Claudie (Anita Ekberg) is in leopard and mink, and Marie (Shirley, in a soft blonde ‘do) is in rose beige cashmere and tan leather. They have just had a day of shopping and notice that they are being followed by a tall fellow who looks a bit out of place. It’s Michael Caine, who never utters a word in this cameo. The ladies stop and start and cross the street to make sure he is following them, which he is. Claudie thinks he is a potential lover for one of them, though both ladies are married. Claudie suggests that when they walk out of the café, they both go in different directions to see which one of them he follows. They do, and when Marie goes right, Caine goes right after her. It suddenly begins to snow, and when she can’t find a taxi, Marie finds herself lingering in front of a shop window looking at the reflection to see if Caine is there. The shop owner mistakes her attention for interest in his wares. He sells her a drill, and with the package in hand, Marie skips through the snow and onto a bus. When Caine leaps onto the bus, the two find themselves face to face, exchanging nervous but flirty glances. Marie hops off the bus and runs into her building, with a male neighbor complimenting her on the pep in her step. She glances over her shoulder to see Caine lingering across the street. Upstairs, she gazes into the snow and watches Caine as he tries to sit on a snow covered park bench. The look on her face is longing, interest. She is soon interrupted and interrogated by her French husband as to why she is so late. She explains that she had lunch and went shopping with her friend, and stopped to buy him a present. The husband asks what he is supposed to do with a drill, and she says she doesn’t know, she just wanted to get him something. HE inquires about what she’s looking at, and she says, Something about the snow just excites me. Just then the phone rings and Marie answers; she thinks it’s going to be Claudie checking to see what happened, but it’s for her husband. He takes the phone and listens covertly. “It’s just as she said,” monsieur says, sotto voce. “Shopping with a girlfriend, coffee, the drill. Yes. Thank you.” We see a shot of Caine in a phone booth and realize that he is a detective that the husband has hired. The husband is visibly relieved and moves behind Marie as she gazes out of the window at a departing Caine. Monsieur then gives a lovely speech about how much he loves her, how much she means to him, and if she thought enough to buy him a drill he will gladly put holes in every wall in their house. It’s a beautiful speech, and he delivers it with intermittent kisses to her neck, but as her attention never shifts from the window we know that the idea of a strange man following her with sex on his mind just set her little world on fire. And she has no idea that her fantasy is an emissary of her husband’s mistrust.
Whew – can’t believe I spent so much time writing about Woman Times Seven. But I loved it. It’s certainly quirky and unusual, and it’s the most Shirley MacLaine you can get in one film. It really made me think – and it made me laugh, too.
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