The Wild Party (1975)

          It’s difficult to decide which aspect of The Wild Party is more bizarre—the idea that costume-drama specialists Merchant Ivory Productions could ever make anything justifying the adjective “wild,” or the idea that a Merchant Ivory film was distributed by drive-in suppliers American International Pictures. Adding to the overall strangeness of the piece is the subject matter. Set in 1920s Hollywood, the film concerns a debauched soiree thrown by an overweight silent-movie comedian. And yet The Wild Party is not based on the real-life scandal involving Fatty Arbuckle, an overweight silent-movie comedian who was accused of rape and murder. Why anyone thought it wise to film a story that sorta-kinda resembled the notorious Arbuckle case is beyond understanding. In fact, it’s challenging to discern the reasons why The Wild Party exists. Instead of being provocative and rough and sexy, the picture is chaste and genteel and tame. So even though it’s a handsomely produced film that offers a colorful window into the culture of 1920s Hollywood, the movie is mechanical and sterile. Without blood pumping the veins of something like this, what’s the point?

          Based on a narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March and written for the screen by Walter Marks (as opposed to Merchant Ivory’s usual scribe, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), The Wild Party revolves around Jolly Grimm (James Coco), a man out of time. Although the industry has shifted to sound films, Jolly has invested most of his money in a new silent production, set to be his comeback after a five-year screen absence. To make matters worse, Jolly has grown distant from his sexy live-in mistress, Queenie (Raquel Welch). The comedian throws a huge party so he can present his new movie to studio heads, but as soon as the screening gets underway, it becomes clear no one is interested. Concurrently, Queenie becomes infatuated with a handsome party guest, Dale (Perry King). Eventually, the bash devolves into drunkenness, sex, and tragedy.

          Tonally, The Wild Party is a mess. At the beginning, Jolly’s writer friend, James (David Dukes), delivers rhymed voiceover to introduce the various characters, and James even speaks to the camera periodically. As this half-hearted trope fades away, the movie segues into unnecessarily long musical numbers, such as when Queenie performs a novelty number called “Singapore Sally” for the party guests. By the time The Wild Party ends, the filmmakers strive for some sort of bittersweet lyricism. These varied narrative elements don’t gel any better than the performances. Coco is robust and even somewhat poignant, but Welch is as amateurish as ever, despite looking magnificent in her Marcel Wave hairdo and slinky dresses. Among the supporting cast, artificiality and stiffness reign, though B-movie actress Tiffany Bolling tries to invest her role of a forsaken woman with pathos.

The Wild Party: FUNKY

Savages (1972)

          According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, this bizarre Merchant-Ivory production was born when director James Ivory had the idea to flip the story of Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel’s 1962 movie The Exterminating Angel. In Buñuel’s picture, a posh dinner party devolves into primeval savagery, so in Ivory’s cinematic retort, a group of primitive people become gown- and tuxedo-wearing sophisticates. Presumably, the satirical intention was to suggest that the cutting remarks and sarcastic gestures of an upper-crust dinner party are as brutal as the violent rituals of wild tribes, but that message gets buried in a barrage of unrelenting weirdness.
           The movie opens with a ’30s-style title sequence, complete with cabaret singer Bobby Short crooning on the soundtrack. Then the movie shifts from color to black-and-white as the presentaton becomes that of a nature documentary observing a tribe called “The Mud People.” Silent-movie-style title cards offer explanatory and/or sardonic commentary, and there’s also a random trope featuring voiceover spoken in German. At one point, a croquet ball flies into the tribe’s encampment, so the Mud People follow the trail of the ball and find an abandoned country manor. Picking through jewelry and silverware, the Mud People mimic behaviors associated with the objects, at which point the film suddenly cuts to full color, and the actors playing the Mud People suddenly become bluebloods chit-chatting their way through a dinner party. (Familiar faces among the cast include ’70s starlet Susan Blakely, future B-movie regular Martin Kove, and a very young Sam Waterston.)
           Once the movie settles into its dinner-party groove, Savages becomes something like a dry run for Merchant-Ivory’s many later pictures about the troubles of the wealthy, with cascades of numbingly polite conversation about political differences and romantic intrigue. However, within the crisply articulated dialogue is a strong thread of lighthearted surrealism: Two of the partygoers are cross-dressers (see the above photo); characters periodically devolve into savagery by mounting each other in small rooms off the main hall; and the gang worships a shrine built around the croquet ball. Toward the end of the picture, the characters suddenly lose their sophistication (and their clothes), running back into the woods to become Mud People again.
            Obviously, none of this makes any sense, although particularly cerebral viewers could probably have a field day analyzing the anthropological and sociopolitical signifiers with which the movie is laden. Plus, the picture might appeal to cult-movie fans because the script was co-written by Michael O’Donoghue, the notorious National Lampoon/Saturday Night Live writer/performer known as Mr. Mike and loved/hated for his dark sketches; fans of his bone-dry humor might find traces of Mr. Mike insouciance somewhere in Savages. For most viewers, however, Savages will simply seem boring and weird, although the picture affirms Merchant-Ivory’s brave willingness to try new things.

Savages: FREAKY

Roseland (1977)

          Given their predilection for stuffy period stories, it’s always surprising to see how well the Merchant-Ivory team handled contemporary narratives. Freed from obligations to replicate the décor and mannerisms of yesteryear, director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala could focus on the simple business of documenting human behavior in all of its sad and beautiful dimensions, creating charmingly melancholy movies like Roseland. Set in the titular Manhattan dancehall, a mecca in the ’70s for aging New Yorkers eager to recapture the elegance of their younger years, Roseland comprises three featurettes with separate casts; the movie gracefully segues from one story to the next simply by cutting across the sprawling Roseland facility.

           In the first story, “The Waltz,” aging widow May (Teresa Wright) fixates on an unglamorous dance partner, Stan (Lou Jacobi), because whenever they waltz together, she sees visions of her younger self and her late husband in mirrors. “The Waltz” is a sweet fable about the strange ways people find happiness, and it delivers a warm message about the transformative power of dancefloor intimacy.
          The longest story, “The Hustle,” focuses on professional dancer Russel (Christopher Walken), who juggles unusual relationships with three women. His mother figure is his dance mentor, Cleo (Helen Gallagher), who probably wants to become lovers but doesn’t push her luck because she senses her affections are not reciprocated. His benefactor is Pauline (Joan Copeland), who treats Russel like a pet and plies him with compliments and gifts. Russel enjoys this murky status quo until he becomes involved with Marilyn (Geraldine Chaplin), a control freak who demands Russel give up his nebulous status as a boy toy and assume adult responsibilities. Jhabvala deftly sketches the myriad ways an intruder upsets the social order created by complex relationships, and she’s meticulous in her depiction of Russel as an opportunist who belives no one’s getting hurt by his choices, even though everyone involved is actually wounding everyone else on a daily basis. “The Hustle” is a smart, understated piece of work.
          Roseland closes with “The Peabody,” which has a lovely story and a grating lead character. Aging, delusional dancer Rosa (Lilia Skala) perceives herself as a once-and-future star, so she’s obsessed with winning the weekly Peabody contest because it’s the closest she can get to notoriety. Unfortunately, her regular partner just died, so Rosa tries to mold her enthusiastic but untalented new partner, Arthur (David Thomas), into a competitor. Meanwhile, she ignores the fact that he adores her, since Rosa considers him beneath her station. This dynamic is Merchant-Ivory class observation at its best, a kind of textured social anthropology that reveals how people are limited by the walls they accept or create.
          From start to finish, Roseland is brisk, romantic, soft-spoken, and tragic, and it’s easily the best movie Merchant-Ivory made in the ’70s.

Roseland: RIGHT ON

Bombay Talkie (1970)

          Before their company became synonymous with highbrow literary adaptations, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory collaborated on a long series of projects set in India. Many of these early projects explored clashes between European values and Indian mores, and a good example is Bombay Talkie, a drama about an English novelist’s torrid affair with an Indian movie star. Whereas some Merchant-Ivory pictures are so reserved they barely have a cinematic pulse, Bombay Talkie is comparatively lusty, so even though the story loses momentum in the middle, it’s one of Merchant-Ivory’s most passionate films.

          Things get off to an interesting start with the unusual title sequence (a group of people carries a sign bearing the movie’s name through a crowded city street), and with the visually exciting first scene. Novelist Lucia (Jennifer Kendal) gets a tour of a soundstage where heartthrob actor Vikram (Shashi Kapoor) is shooting a musical number set on a giant typewriter; watch closely for Merchant in a bit part as the producer who escorts Lucia into the room. Lucia swoons over the married Vikram, and she ignores the fact that the film’s screenwriter, Hari (Zia Mohyeddin), is smitten with her. Once Lucia and Vikram become lovers, poor Hari gets stuck in the emasculating role of conveying secret messages for them. Eventually, this three-way dynamic gets so intense that Lucia departs Bombay for a religious retreat, leading to an unconvincing sequence of Lucia seeking enlightenment. When the triangle reforms, Lucia’s capriciousness, Vikram’s machismo, and Hari’s volatility collide in tragedy.

          The characters’ inner lives are crisply defined in the script by Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, which presents a thorny style of romantic intrigue. And while some viewers may lose patience with Kendal’s shallow performance as a self-centered twit, Kapoor’s smooth turn as a cocksure heel is oddly ingratiating—his character is an illiterate beauty so accustomed to getting what he wants that he seems childlike when faced with disappointment. (FYI, Kapoor and Kendal were married in real life from 1958 to the time of Kendal’s death in 1984.) Moheyddin is dark and nuanced, fleshing out the cliché of the tortured writer, and he’s perfectly cast as an everyman who can’t compete with Kapoor’s blinding handsomeness. With its fraught mix of gender conflict, jealousy, and sex—and with insightful grace notes like a subplot about Lucia’s strained relationship with her teenaged daughter—Bombay Talkie presents a rich tapestry of human experience. The picture also features a startling but highly appropriate ending, which the leading actors play beautifully.

Bombay Talkie: GROOVY

The Europeans (1979)

          I’ve never forgotten a remark that Martin Scorsese made while addressing my class at NYU’s film school: Asked about Merchant-Ivory films, which were peaking in popularity at the time, Scorsese said the films reminded him of “Laura Ashley wallpaper.” Then and now, I couldn’t agree more. Even though the myriad literary adaptations created by director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawler Jhabvala are intelligent and tasteful, I find them so restrained as to induce catatonia. Case in point: the soft-spoken Henry James adaptation The Europeans, which set the somnambulistic template that Merchant-Ivory followed throughout ensuing decades.
          In the turgid drama, attractive actors play repressed upper-crust characters amidst gorgeous vintage clothing, location, and props. (There’s a reason a critic once characterized Merchant-Ivory pictures as “real estate porn.”) Lee Remick plays Eugenia Young, a spirited lady of leisure from the continent who shows up unannounced at the lush Massachusetts estate of her puritanical cousin, Mr. Wentworth. Eugenia and her brother, Felix, cause all sorts of tumult in the Wentworth household, because the patriarch’s adult offspring are fascinated by Eugenia’s seemingly liberated ways. And while that simple plot should be a springboard for effective culture-clash drama, the Merchant-Ivory team treats the material in a way that’s both painfully polite and painfully page-bound.
          Actors move slowly through static compositions, barely adjusting their facial expressions or vocal rhythms while speaking reams of perfectly grammatical dialogue, so the piece lacks almost any detectable excitement. In fact, Wentworth actually warns one of his daughters against getting excited, which makes sense for his character but explains why viewers craving stories about warm-blooded human beings should seek their cinematic fancy elsewhere. As Wentworth says, “We’re to be exposed to peculiar influences. We should employ a great deal of wisdom and self-control.”
          There’s no disputing the historical accuracy of that sentiment, but the dialogue demonstrates how little is done to translate James’ nuanced observations about class differences into actual dramatic conflict. Remick is solid, if a touch affected, and Lisa Eichhorn matches her spunk and luminosity, while Wesley Addy is effectively stern as Wentworth. Yet despite sincere acting and fine behind-the-camera craftsmanship, The Europeans is not a cause for (ahem) excitement.

The Europeans: FUNKY