Episode 37 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn plays another aristocrat in an odd little movie that makes no sense.
1969 was a really weird year for Kate. At age 62, she’d achieved commercial and critical success unlike any she’d experienced before. The Lion in Winter and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner had not only earned Katharine Hepburn back-to-back Oscars, but also made her one of the top grossing stars of 1968. But as the 60s blossomed into the 70s, Kate took two very strange steps: an allegory, and a musical. Limitations be damned, she was Kate the Great, and she hadn’t had a flop in 15 years. That was about to change.
The Madwoman of Chaillot works as a curio, but not as a film. Based on a postwar French allegory, “updated” to include topical issues such as student riots and atomic power, the resulting movie is one Be In short of a bad 60s cliche. The cast is a veritable Who’s Who of Old Hollywood, New Hollywood, and Cinecitta: Katharine Hepburn is joined by Yul Brynner, Richard Chamberlain, Dame Edith Evans, Donald Pleasence, John Gavin, Danny Kaye, and Fellini muse Giulietta Masina, as well as two of Kate’s former leading men: Charles Boyer and Paul Henreid. This is great news for anyone playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but unfortunately does not improve the quality of the film.
"That's the way we became the Chaillot Bunch!"
The difficulty with attempting to put over a film that tackles war, student riots, corporate greed, communism, oil drilling, corrupt government, and religion is that allegory is not well-suited to film. Jean Giraudoux’s original 1945 play paints its characters in broad stereotypes--The General, The Prospector, The Chairman, etc--against a fantastical background of “underground” Paris. Absurdist morality plays like this thrive in undefined spaces, which allow them to feel both universal and incongruous. However, film is by its nature grounded in reality. The audience expects what it sees to be, if not true to life, at least true to the world of the story. (For example, Ents in The Hobbit may be computer generated, but they fit in Middle Earth.) That isn’t to say that allegory can’t ever be filmed, but The Madwoman of Chaillot is not the movie that proves the exception to the rule.
Director Bryan Forbes (of The Stepford Wives fame) lacks much needed consistency in bringing the play to film. At times deadly serious, then suddenly fanciful, Forbes’ overarching vision is cluttered, both literally and figuratively. Both of his cinematographers, filming on location in Paris, overburden the first half of the movie with zooms, lens filters, and camera tricks, then suddenly abandon them. The sudden dodges into unreality never gel with the more quotidian setting on the streets of Paris. The result is that the large caricatures feel even more out of place, and the tone slips into heavy-handed schlock. This may be partially because Forbes was new to the project; John Huston had been slated to direct, but walked off the project two weeks before filming started.
Possibly in protest for losing her original director, Kate gives her laziest performance in over a decade. She falls back on old mannered habits and failing to connect meaningfully with either her costars or the script. (The sole exception is a brief comic scene with Dame Edith Evans.) The Countess should be a character of benevolent bedlam, but Kate plays her with unimaginative forthrightness. Unsurprisingly with so much ringing false, both for Kate and the film, The Madwoman of Chaillot was a commercial and critical failure; ending a four-film Oscar nomination streak.
No matter! Kate could try for a Tony next with Coco. Katharine Hepburn could not sing, so her decision to star in this Alan J. Lerner show is an impressive mix of chutzpah and hubris. Below is her performance at the 1970 Tony Awards (the longest in the show’s history).
Kate did not win the Tony, but she learned something else valuable. Audiences didn’t care that she couldn’t sing. Kate described their reaction as love coming “over the footlights.” After three decades, fresh from a new defeat, this improbable musical was the first time Katharine Hepburn finally felt the public was on her side.
Which do you prefer, the madwoman or “Mademoiselle?”
Previous Week: The Lion in Winter (1967) - In which if there’s only one Katharine Hepburn film you see, make it this one.
Next Week: The Trojan Women (1971) - In which even Katharine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave cannot save a 3,000 year old stinker.