Hollywoodland (R), directed
by Allen Coulter, is now playing at Culver Ridge 16, .
Little Theatres, Pittsford Cinemas,
Henrietta 18, Webster 12, Tinseltown, Greece
Ridge 12, Eastview 13.
The death of Superman
Aside from its ostensible subject — an examination of the
mysterious death of George Reeves, the first actor to portray Superman on
television — the new movie Hollywoodlanddeals with the motion picture industry
itself at a special time in its history. A film about Hollywood in the 1950s,
it follows the patterns of one of the great American popular genres, the
private eye flick, which flourished in that decade, to show a fictional
investigation of some actual events. The use of that form seems especially
appropriate for a movie about the business of the movies, Hollywood
studying Hollywood.
The picture constructs a complicated narrative around what
initially seems a relatively simple event, the actor’s suicide in 1959. Despite
his success playing the Man of Steel, the actor (played by Ben Affleck)
understandably felt humiliated when preview audiences so strongly identified
him with the role that they laughed at his appearance in From Here to Eternity, crushing his hope for a career beyond the
small screen. His messy personal life, which included a long, deteriorating
affair with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), the wife of a top studio
executive, and a turbulent relationship with a strident gold digger (Robin
Tunney), also apparently contributed to his depression and desperation.
The movie, however, suggests that the police, colluding with
the studio that employed Reeves, covered up the truth of the event, which may
have been a murder, a possibility that draws the attention of a private
detective, Louis Simo (Adrien
Brody). One of the seedier practitioners of a profession romanticized in the
cinema, Simo tries to hustle money from anyone
involved in the death, including the actor’s mother, but also feels a need to
investigate the case because of the anguish of his young son over the suicide
of his hero.
Simo examines the death with a
peculiar combination of guesswork, bluffing, and simple dishonesty,
intimidating frightened witnesses, conning the gullible, and digging himself
ever deeper into trouble of his own. He encounters stonewalling from the police
and suffers a beating from studio thugs, but in the best traditions of the
genre, doggedly pursues the truth behind conflicting stories and dubious
evidence.
The movie constantly interrupts his investigation with a
number of other stories, creating a complex narrative out of some relatively
simple materials. Intercutting many incidents from
the actor’s past along with the detective’s own memories, it keeps adding new
layers of meaning and new connections between the detective and the victim. As Simo keeps revisiting the scene of Reeves’ death and
discovering new bits of evidence, in a kind of internal Rashomon, he imagines and reimagines new scenarios to explain it, all equally
plausible, none completely satisfactory.
Casting Adrien Brody as a private
eye, of course, emphasizes the distance between his character and the familiar
tough, masculine, ironic figure embodied by actors like Humphrey Bogart and
Robert Mitchum. Thin, ill dressed, burdened with
melancholy and regret, he nevertheless attains a measure of reality and a kind
of sad sincerity throughout his investigation. He stumbles and fails at every
turn, but somehow manages to follow the right course and do the right thing in
the tradition of his more glamorous and memorable cinematic predecessors.
The behavior of Ben Affleck contrasts strongly with all the
other performances, including a fine job by Diane Lane. Soft and puffy, with a weak
voice and a set of most awkward mannerisms, he seems more the Man of Fluff than
the Man of Steel; whether that interpretation fits the character of Reeves
himself constitutes a matter for learned debate.
In its attention to the 1950s the picture also exhibits an
understanding of the temper of its time, when the industry faced some drastic
changes — the court-ordered dissolution of the old studio system, the fallout
from the days of the blacklist, and personified in George Reeves himself, the
competition with television. It also shows something of the ancient story of a
young man on the make who reaches a certain pinnacle through luck, pluck, and
sheer audacity, but finds that for a variety of reasons he can progress no
further. The last moments of George Reeves’ career, captured in an eight
millimeter home movie by his agent, suggest the terrible pathos of a mediocre
artist’s final failure.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.
