The Ritz (1976)

          Whether he was overseeing the exploits of the Beatles, Superman, or the Three Musketeers, director Richard Lester always demonstrated a special gift for complicated farce. That’s why he was an excellent choice to make a film of Terrence McNally’s madcap play The Ritz, about a heterosexual guy who avoids a hit man by hiding out in a New York City bathhouse. The question, of course, is whether the material merited a director of Lester’s talents. For some viewers, the answer might be yes. As a film, The Ritz is executed beautifully, with exuberant performances and vivacious staging. Many of the running gags are amusing, and certain sequences have a Marx Brothers-esque quality of fast-paced silliness.

          Plus, even though myriad stereotypes are presented, The Ritz offers one of the warmest portrayals of gay life in any mainstream ’70s movie—amid the horny predators and screaming queens are everyday people just looking for a good time. Obviously, one could question the choice of putting so many straight characters at the center of this story, since gays are largely relegated to supporting roles, but seeing as how homosexuals were still being portrayed as murderous deviants in Hollywood films at the time The Ritz was released, that’s nitpicking. Therefore, the truly relevant question is whether The Ritz works as pure entertainment. It does, but only periodically.

          After a quick prologue at a funeral, the story proper begins when portly businessman Gaetano Procio (Jack Weston) rents a room at the Ritz to avoid gunsels hired by his brother-in-law, Carmine Vespucci (Jerry Stiller). Clumsy and provincial, Gaetano manages to catch the eye of Chris (F. Murray Abraham), a would-be swinger; Claude (Paul B. Price), a fat fetishist; and Googie (Rita Moreno), a showgirl who is performing at the bathhouse. Each of these eccentric characters wants Gaetano for different reason. (Naturally, some of the reasons are based on misunderstandings.) Also thrown into the mix are a private detective, Michael (Treat Williams), and, eventually, crazy Carmine himself. To get a sense of the movie’s vibe, picture lots of running in and out of rooms, plenty of pretending, and voluminous amounts of screaming. Driving the humor is old-fashioned gay panic, because Gaetano spends most of the movie terrified he’ll be sodomized.

          Usually cast as a comic foil, Weston doesn’t bring much heat as a leading player, and he’s prone to silly mugging. Happily, the supporting cast is strong. Abraham, Price, and Williams attack their parts with gusto, while Moreno and Stiller frequently approach comic brilliance. When it’s really cooking, The Ritz employs not only the whole cast but also the whole eye-popping location of the bathhouse interior—for instance, the crazy finale involves cross-dressing, a floor show, gunplay, and a swimming pool.

The Ritz: FUNKY

Hair (1979)

          Seeing as how this disappointing film’s source material is, arguably, the quintessential counterculture musical, it’s impossible to say that making Hair was a wasted endeavor. After all, preserving the stage show’s energy on film, and spreading the stage show’s provocative messages to audiences who had not seen the musical in its original form, was both inevitable and worthwhile. The problem (or one of them, anyway) is that the translation process took too long. Once Hair hit cinemas, the milieu of the stage show—antiwar protests, hippies dropping acid and experimenting with free love, the Vietnam War claiming a sickening number of human lives—had slipped into history. As a result, Hair was already a museum piece even when it was new. Still, if one ignores the unfortunate nature of the film’s appearance within the public sphere, there’s a lot to enjoy in Hair, even though the film cannot be ranked among the most artistically successful stage-to-screen transpositions. The acting is heartfelt, the singing and dancing are powerful, director Milos Forman’s handling of material is imaginative and thoughtful, and the inherent humanism of the original stage show shines through. Thus, while the elements never cohere, something interesting happens in nearly every scene.

          That said, it’s tempting to castigate the filmmakers for making significant changes to the source material, such as altering characterizations and dropping songs (or pieces of songs). The movie’s story feels overly schematic, which, in turn, makes the final scenes come across as overly strident. Moreover, there’s a gigantic plot hole in the middle of the movie’s story, which makes the whole business of tinkering with success seem even more foolhardy in retrospect. In sum, had the filmmakers improved on the show, only purists would gripe, but that’s not the case here, because the movie’s narrative flaws are apparent to all viewers.

          In any event, the movie’s story revolves around Claude (John Savage), a straight-arrow Midwesterner who arrives in Manhattan on the way to an Army training camp. Claude meets a group of exuberant hippies, led by the charismatic George (Treat Williams), and Claude also becomes infatuated with a pretty New Yorker from upper-crust society, Sheila (Beverly D’Angelo). As the story progresses, Claude questions the legitimacy of the Vietnam War as he becomes entranced with the ideals and lifestyle of his new longhaired compatriots, but ironic tragedy eventually casts a dark cloud over the peace-and-love revelry. The movie bursts with extraordinary music, including the familiar hits “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” “Easy to be Hard,” and “Hair.” (The less said about “Good Morning Starshine,” the better.) Savage’s brand of twitchy sensitivity works fairly well, since he makes Claude seem uncomfortable in nearly every circumstance, but Williams easily steals the movie with his dark intensity, whether acting in straight dramatic scenes or singing in musical passages. Forman fills the screen with activity and color, employing dynamic choreography by Twyla Tharp, and the cast features such powerhouse singers as Nell Carter and Ellen Foley, so even if the leads sometimes underwhelm in terms of vocals, the overall musicality of the piece is impressive.

          Given its arrival in cinemas so long after the underlying subject matter was central in American life, it’s arguable whether Hair would have enjoyed greater impact if the filmmakers had delivered the stage show intact. Nonetheless, since so many of the changes are problematic, it’s important to remember that this movie is, ultimately, an adaptation rather than a direct recording. In other words, this Hair isn’t the Hair that captured the public’s imagination. For that, better to catch one of the stage show’s myriad revivals.

Hair: FUNKY

1941 (1979)

          After scoring two ginormous hits in the mid-’70s, director Steven Spielberg fumbled with his epic World War II comedy 1941, which was considered a major commercial and critical disappointment upon its initial release. The wildly ambitious (and wildly uneven) film has since gained more public favor thanks to wider exposure on television and video, and that’s all to the good—1941 isn’t a masterpiece, but it isn’t an outright disaster, either. In fact, the picture boasts some of Spielberg’s most audacious filmmaking, from expertly handled miniature effects to outrageously ornate crowd sequences, and it’s also filled with entertaining performances. The whole thing doesn’t hang together, and the film is far too long, but 1941 overflows with beautifully executed episodes.

          Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis in a madcap style that borrows from the Marx Brothers and Preston Struges, among others, 1941 tackles unique subject matter: the paranoia that gripped America’s West Coast immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the story, civilians and soldiers alike ramp up defensive efforts like placing armed lookouts in the Ferris wheel of the Santa Monica Pier and situating gigantic anti-aircraft guns on the lawns of beachside homes.
          The all-over-the-map script is stuffed with subplots and supporting characters, and some of the threads are more interesting than others. The business of a German U-boat commander (Christopher Lee) and his Japanese counterpart (Toshiro Mifune) incompetently searching for the California coast is very silly, despite the caliber of talent involved, but when the Axis duo captures and interrogates an American redneck (Slim Pickens), enjoyable lowbrow comedy ensues. A wartime romance between a fast-talking soldier (Tim Matheson) and a sexy military secretary (Nancy Allen) is amusing and spicy, especially during an elaborate seduction scene that takes place in a plane that’s still on the tarmac.
          The goofy stuff involving two Saturday Night Live comics is okay, with Dan Aykroyd playing the leader of a buffoonish tank crew and John Belushi mugging as Capt. “Wild” Bill Kelso, a pilot zooming around the West looking for targets. Some of the best material involves a patriotic family headed up by Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty), since this stuff slyly mixes domestic shtick with wartime high jinks. For sheer absurdity, however, it’s hard to beat the scenes with Robert Stack as a dopey general who cries watching the Walt Disney movie Dumbo.

          From start to finish, 1941 is unapologetically excessive, throwing explosions or hundreds of extras at the audience when simpler visuals would have sufficed, and things like narrative momentum and nuance get bludgeoned to death by the opulent production values. Still, the cast is filled with so many gifted actors (in addition to those already mentioned, look for John Candy, Eddie Deezen, Joe Flaherty, Murray Hamilton, Warren Oates, Wendie Jo Sperber, Treat Williams, and more) that even uninspired scenes are performed with consummate skill. The movie also looks amazing: Spielberg’s camerawork is intoxicatingly self-indulgent, since it feels like entire scenes were filmed simply to justify cool visuals, and peerless cinematographer William A. Fraker gives the whole thing a glamorous look. There’s even room for an energetic score by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams.
          1941 is a mess, but it’s also a true spectacle.

1941: FUNKY