Plaza Suite (1971) & California Suite (1978)

          During the ’70s, it seemed as if playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon was an industry rather an individual—every year except 1978, he unveiled a new play, and from 1970 to 1979 no fewer than 11 features were released with Simon credited as writer. When the man slept is a mystery. In fact, he even managed to crank out a quasi-sequel to one of his own hits. Plaza Suite premiered on Broadway in 1968 before hitting the big screen in 1971, and its follow-up, California Suite, debuted onstage in 1976 before becoming a movie in 1978. Neither project represents the apex of Simon’s artistry, but both are rewarding. The title of Plaza Suite is a pun, because the film comprises a “suite” of three mini-plays, each of which takes place within the same suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

          In order of appearance, the vignettes concern a middle-aged couple breaking up when the husband’s infidelity is revealed; a tacky Hollywood producer inviting his childhood sweetheart, now married, to his room for a tryst; and another middle-aged couple going crazy when their adult daughter won’t leave the suite’s bathroom even though guests are waiting downstairs to watch her get married. The first sequence is a bittersweet dance, the second is bedroom farce with a touch of pathos, and the third is an explosion of silly slapstick. Plaza Suite grows more entertaining as it spirals toward its conclusion, finally achieving comedic liftoff during the third sequence, which is by far the most fully realized.

          Walter Matthau somewhat improbably plays the lead roles in all three sequences, and he’s terrific—chilly as the adulterous husband, smarmy as the producer, enraged as the would-be father of the bride. His primary costars are a poignant Maureen Stapleton in the first sequence, a delicately funny Barbara Harris in the second, and an entertainingly frazzled Lee Grant in the third. Plaza Suite drags a bit, and it’s tough to get revved up for each new sequence, but the fun stuff outweighs everything else.

          California Suite wisely takes a different approach—although the play of California Suite featured four separate stories, in the style of Plaza Suite, the film version cross-cuts to create momentum. And while Matthau is back (in a new role), California Suite benefits from a larger cast and more use of exterior locations. The film is primarily set in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but Simon (who wrote the screenplays for both adaptations) includes many places beyond the hotel. One thread of the story involves a New York career woman (Jane Fonda) bickering with her estranged screenwriter husband (Alan Alda) over custody of their daughter. Another thread concerns a British actress  (Maggie Smith) in town for the Oscars, accompanied by her husband (Michael Caine), a gay man she wed in order to avoid gaining a reputation as a spinster. The silliest thread involves a Philadelphia businessman (Matthau) trying to keep his wife (Elaine May) from discovering the prostitute in their room. And the final thread depicts the deteriorating friendship between two Chicago doctors (Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor), who bicker their way through a catastrophe-filled vacation.

          Smith won an Oscar for California Suite, and her storyline benefits from the way Caine and Smith expertly volley bitchy dialogue. The Alda/Fonda scenes are more pedestrian, and they’re also the most stage-bound pieces of the movie; still, both actors attack their roles with vigor. Matthau’s vignettes are quite funny, with lots of goofy business about trying to hide the hooker behind curtains, under beds, and so forth. Plus, as they did in A New Leaf (1971), May and Matthau form a smooth comedy duo. Only the Cosby/Pryor scenes really underwhelm, not by any fault of the actors but because both men have such distinctive standup personas that it seems limiting to confine them within the light-comedy parameters of Simon’s style. Unlike its predecessor, California Suite eventually sputters—the funniest scenes occur well before the end.

          As a final note, it’s interesting to look at both pictures and see how two very different filmmakers approached the challenge of delivering Simon’s work to the screen. For Plaza Suite, Arthur Hiller simply added close-ups and camera movement to accentuate the rhythms of the stage production, and for California Suite, Herbert Ross took a more holistic path toward realizing the work as cinema. Yet in both cases, of course, Simon’s wordplay is king.

Plaza Suite: GROOVY

California Suite: GROOVY

Murder by Death (1976)

          Because Murder by Death is a silly riff on vintage detective stories, it’s tempting to think the picture was intended to mimic Mel Brooks’ crowd-pleasing style of throwback spoofery, although it’s just as possible the film merely rode a mid-’70s boom in nostalgic crime films. Whatever the motivation for making the picture, the result is the same—Murder by Death is goofy but uninspired, a harmless romp that never quite achieves liftoff. Fans of detective stories will, of course, get more out of the picture than anyone else, because the film’s characters are gentle caricatures of famous literary sleuths. Casual viewers might simply enjoy the star power of the cast and the occasional glimpses of screenwriter Neil Simon’s signature wit. But, alas, this is a minor effort for everyone involved.

          The plot isn’t really worth describing, since it’s just a perfunctory contrivance, but the gist is that a mysterious millionaire named Lionel Twain (played by author/TV personality Truman Capote) invites a coterie of detectives to his estate and challenges them to investigate a murder that will take place during the detectives’ visit. Whoever solves the crime will get $1 million. The detectives include Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith), based on Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man movies; Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), based on Maltese Falcon hero Sam Spade; Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), based on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple character; Milo Perrier (James Coco), based on Christie’s Hercule Poiroit; and Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers), based on Charlie Chan.

          Obviously, any film that attempts to put these diverse characters together isn’t striving for consistency or credibility—the Spade-esque character emanates from hard-boiled fiction, for instance, whereas the Thin Man types emerge from a bubbly light-comedy milieu. Rather, Simon and producer Ray Stark (abetted by undistinguished director Robert Moore) concentrate on stringing sight gags and verbal zingers together. Unfortunately, none of the humor is memorable, and the actors give such cartoonish performances that Murder by Death feels juvenile. Falk probably comes off the best, since his version of Sam Spade is fairly close to his Columbo role from TV, and Falk’s rat-a-tat interplay with his secretary, Tess (Eileen Brennan), has some energy. In sum, Murder by Death is exactly as clever and funny as its title, which is to say not very.

Murder by Death: FUNKY

Travels With My Aunt (1972)

          Based on a whimsical novel by the revered British author Graham Greene, this offbeat comedy was originally conceived as a Katharine Hepburn vehicle. Director George Cukor, a studio-era giant who helmed several of Hepburn’s classic films, enlisted the iconic actress’ participation, but MGM nixed Hepburn partly because she was too old to convincingly play her character in flashbacks. The star was replaced by Maggie Smith, who interprets the lead role so broadly that the character becomes surrealistic. This otherworldly flavor is exacerbated by Cukor’s use of over-the-top costuming and production design. Smith’s character comes across like a refugee from glamorous MGM productions of the ’30s, all flowing dresses and opulent headgear, making her an extreme anachronism within the otherwise realistic milieu of the movie. Obviously, Cukor envisioned an arch culture-clash comedy, and the effect probably works for some viewers. To these eyes, however, the movie is merely garish and shrill.

          The story begins at a funeral, when uptight British banker Henry Pulling (Alec McCowen) oversees his mother’s cremation. During the service, he’s distracted by the wailings of a strange-looking redhead in flamboyant clothing, Augusta Bertram (Smith). She introduces herself as Henry’s long-lost aunt, and then she pulls him into her eccentric world. Augusta lives with pot-smoking African psychic Wordsworth (Louis Gossett Jr.), but she’s romantically linked to a string of European men with whom she shared adventures in the past. One of her ex-lovers has been kidnapped, so Augusta agrees to transport stolen goods as a means of raising cash for ransom. This odyssey is intercut with flashbacks depicting Augusta in her glory days as the mistress for various wealthy men. Emboldened by Augusta’s freethinking ways, Henry enjoys a chaste tryst with American hippie chick Tooley (Cindy Williams), who travels on the famed Orient Express at the same time as Augusta and Henry.

          Travels With My Aunt goes on rather windily through myriad episodes, some of which are amusing but none of which is remotely believable. And since the movie never reaches laugh-out-loud levels of absurdity, it ends up feeling quite pointless. One problem is Smith’s over-the-top acting, and another is McCowen’s bloodlessly competent performance: The movie cries out for a brilliant comic foil, like Dudley Moore or Gene Wilder, but Smith’s energy is not returned in kind. However, Cukor’s stylization is the most distracting aspect of the picture, because all the directorial flourishes in the world can’t obscure the film’s lack of substance. Improbably, the picture received several major nominations, though its only significant win was an Oscar for Anthony Powell’s costumes. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Travels With My Aunt: FUNKY

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973)

          Best known for the Oscar-winning adapted screenplays of Julia (1977) and Ordinary People (1980), Alvin Sargent has spent his career writing stories about troubled characters. Some of these stories hit a perfect target of idiosyncratic sensitivity, and some of them, well, don’t. An example of the latter circumstance is Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, the tale of an emotionally disturbed American youth and an uptight middle-aged Englishwoman who fall in love while traveling through Spain. The story is reasonable enough, since we discover why each character has fled home and why each character feels sufficiently adrift to latch onto an unlikely paramour, but the execution is awkward.

          As directed by the venerable Alan J. Pakula, who specialized in heavy drama, Love and Pain has an oppressive seriousness that inhibits Sargent’s attempts to blend comic and dramatic elements. Pakula anchors shots in deep shadows that create distractingly ominous portent, and his handling of performances is almost too sensitive: Pakula lets Bottoms and Smith go so deep into their characters’ traumas that viewers are more likely to be frightened for these people than to root for them. It doesn’t help that vignettes in Sargent’s script range from generic to silly.

          On the generic end of things are many aimless scenes of the couple walking around historical sites, and on the silly end is the sequence in which the guests encounter a strange duke (Don Jaime de Mora y Aragón), who literally rescues Smith on horseback after she suffers a fall. Sargent also occasionally succumbs to hippie-era psychobabble, like this speech delivered by Bottoms: “We’re free, we’re coming alive, we’re talking to each other—what do you want to go back to crying in the dark for?” Complicating matters further, the picture features dissonant moments of lowbrow physical comedy, like the bit of Smith tripping on her panties while fleeing an interrupted sexual liaison.

          Ultimately, Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing is an extremely odd movie, with a jumble of erratic tonalities and fleetingly touching performances; though the picture has such admirable intentions and genuine feeling that it can’t be dismissed, it’s an aesthetic hodgepodge.

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing: FUNKY