The Grasshopper (1970) While it never hangs together as a coherent effort, movies like this exemplify why cinema buffs still celebrate the 1970's as a golden era for groundbreaking, memorable films......
Because when you scroll through the 70's films, it looks like anybody would take shot at making any film.....not matter how unlikely, odd, ridiculous, or just plain nuts.......
So here's a film that aspired to be an Americanized version of 'new cinema' European movies that served up unflinching, cold-eyed views of less than sympathetic characters.....and unafraid to hand out abrupt, downbeat endings for them.
In true 1970's upside-down-ness, "The Grasshopper" came from a three writer-directors who spent a lifetime crafting comedies.......Jerry Paris (the film's director) and its writers Gary Marshall (yes, that Gary Marshall) and Jerry Belson.
In this story of a restless young girl who quests for a happily-ever-after in all the wrong places and with all the wrong men, Paris, Marshall and Belson couldn't resist peppering their movie with one line gags and funny bits they couldn't fit into their various other sitcoms and movies.
And yet they still want us to pay serious attention to the never ending plights of Christine Adams (Jacqueline Bisset) who leaves her Canadian small town to hopefully marry her boyhood boytoy, a Los Angeles bank teller who's struggling to climb up the corporate ladder.
Our enterprising comedy triumvirate no doubt scored a casting coup in securing Bisset, enjoying her reign as Hollywood's "It" Girl after starring as Steve McQueen's girlfriend in the 1968 blockbuster "Bullitt".
Oh yes, Bisset was drop dead gorgeous and your eyes went nowhere else whenever she appeared on film.
And that's basically all she brought to the party.......as an actress, she had little or no range.....other than to stand there and be drop dead gorgeous. Which nobody minded all that much.
Marshall and Belson's script asks us to believe that Christine possesses an anarchic penchant for sudden goofy pranks, but there's nothing in Bisset's unexceptional, monotone delivery that make these bursts of mischief plausible. (This role desperately required an actress with some devilment in her eyes and soul....and some real acting chops as well....Tuesday Weld would've been perfect)
Since the bank teller/boytoy dream falls apart, Christine lands in Las Vegas and a job as a showgirl. And in Vegas she navigates her way through a host of crude, cruel men, dripping with insincerity as they salivate over her at the same time.
Christine's brief doomed love affair and marriage with gentle hearted ex NFL star Tommy Marcott (Jim Brown) provides the heart of the story.. And here's where film stays a little ahead of its time......in its telling depiction of the couple's suffering through bigotry and objectification. In Vegas, a town fueled by money and flesh, Christine and Tommy find themselves either sneered at by racists or pawed over and prized like pieces of meat, Things don't go well.......
From there, the plot bounces through Christine's fling as a potential trophy wife for an aging CEO (a wasted Joseph Cotton) and a rock-bottom turn as a hooker for her failed rock musician boyfriend turned pimp.
Paris, Marshall and Belson obviously still wanted some big yoks and what they'd consider a striking, up-to-the-minute ironic, not to mention cinematic fade-out They serve up a final, pointless, anarchic act of defiance for Christine......her vivid declaration of "who cares".......and a perfect example of how many 1970's movies frequently closed out this way.....after an arresting, pretentious, unresolved climax, came the inevitable freeze frame.
The comedy boys went back to what they do best....Bisset went to more roles displaying her stunning beauty. And 20 years later in 1990, Gary Marshall in the midst of a long successful directing career, made "Pretty Woman", in which he found Julia Roberts, the kind of live wire, talented actress who could energize a comedy-drama and make both those genres work simultaneously.
To put it bluntly, the kind of actress that "The Grasshopper" so desperately needed but didn't get, making it at best, a moderately interesting piece of 70's nostalgia. 2 stars (**)
No comments:
Post a Comment