At one point Jay Cocks' script borders on the self-congratulatory when Cole and Linda are shown viewing the earlier biopic starring Cary Grant with obvious displeasure. This remake, of course, is going to tell it like it is, and indeed the script of "De-Lovely" strains to account for the (frequently) flawed face of artistic genius. Linda tells Cole that his music stems from his talent, not his behavior, whereas Cole tries to explain that it's all part of the same inseparable package: without the excesses, the disloyalties, the self-indulgences he wouldn't be who he is, he wouldn't be arguably America's greatest songwriter. In the end, "De-Lovely" is self-descriptive: not a pretty picture--more Asbury Park than Granada, to paraphrase a Porter lyric.
Perhaps today's audiences need more proof that he really was a great songwriter. Or given the moral correctness of our times, perhaps audiences are incapable of empathizing with those given to self-indulgences. Or they may think they know all too well "the wages of sin." Or perhaps the acting of Kline and Judd overwhelms the script's good intentions. They, indeed, come across as two people who, as each understands, ask too much of one another. He gives her gifts, love, sporadic devotion; she gives him gifts, his vanity (i.e., useless legs), and undying devotion. In the end, and in the still of the night, Linda's devotion cuts through the darkness--a flickering memory but all that Cole has left before the screen goes black.
We believe the characters, their relationship, and their deep if tenuous loving relationship--perhaps too much. The film becomes a frequently luminous and tuneful soap opera about a main character who is more pathetic than tragic, about a self-destructive songwriter who self-destructs for obvious reasons, but in a deliberate, slow, very sad and depressing manner. Orson Welles had in essence a similar character and plot framework in "Citizen Kane," but he also had the directing "style" (which above all should be foremost in anything related to Cole Porter's music and life) and a "motivator" to make Kane's willful and self-ignorant destruction a mutually shared obsession, inviting us at every moment to become adventurer-detectives searching for the clues that will lead us to "Rosebud."
By contrast, "De-Lovely" wallows in pain and misery for the last 30 minutes, insulting us with a momentary deus ex machina ("Blow, Gabriel, Blow") that not even the characters seem to believe and then attempting to rescue everything with that flickering, potentially powerful, image that is the film's final moment. Too little, too late--and too soon, moreover, after we've endured the spectacle of our subject reduced to a pay-for-play "John," a victim of blackmail (triply so, because Linda is included, as is their relationship and mutual trust). The soundtrack plays "Love for Sale," but what we witness is a love that's far more than "slightly soiled."
The project needed to be rethought. Most of today's viewers are totally unsympathetic with the private lives of artists (one would think the writers would pay attention to politics) and, for that matter, unfamiliar with Porter's songs. The film would have done a great service had it opened viewers' hearts and minds to the "obsessions" (an apt term used in the film) of others, the personal mind-images and different objects of desire that motivate the passions of the artist in ways that move us all. (What's the gain in portraying Monty Wooley as a pimp? ) Or it would have done an equal service had it launched a whole new wave of interest in the music of Cole Porter. Sadly, it fails there, too, for reasons too numerous to mention. (As a musician, I have no answers for the film's complete re-harmonization of "Begin the Beguine." Was this an historically accurate albeit early, inferior attempt by Porter to write the song?)
This is a movie/DVD that few people will care too watch more than once. If you count yourself in that number, and if you're wondering why someone would bother to make a movie about Cole Porter, pick up any recording by Sinatra and Nelson Riddle with "I've Got You Under My Skin" ("Songs for Swinging Lovers" is a good start) or "Night and Day." If you tire of either song (virtually impossible), try the inspired, absolutely scintillating version of "In the Still of the Night" on the first disc of the recent "Sinatra-Vegas" box. And if that's not enough, there's plenty more from the same source, or from Ella Fitzgerald on the "Cole Porter Songbook." Or listen to Mabel Mercer explaining how it (in Porter songs, love is frequently an "it" or "thing") was "Just One of Those Things," or to Dinah Washington actually selling it on "Love for Sale," or to any singer who imparts to these timeless, immortal songs the life that is theirs, allowing them to become the magnificent obsessions that deserve to belong to yet another generation of listeners.
Perhaps today's audiences need more proof that he really was a great songwriter. Or given the moral correctness of our times, perhaps audiences are incapable of empathizing with those given to self-indulgences. Or they may think they know all too well "the wages of sin." Or perhaps the acting of Kline and Judd overwhelms the script's good intentions. They, indeed, come across as two people who, as each understands, ask too much of one another. He gives her gifts, love, sporadic devotion; she gives him gifts, his vanity (i.e., useless legs), and undying devotion. In the end, and in the still of the night, Linda's devotion cuts through the darkness--a flickering memory but all that Cole has left before the screen goes black.
We believe the characters, their relationship, and their deep if tenuous loving relationship--perhaps too much. The film becomes a frequently luminous and tuneful soap opera about a main character who is more pathetic than tragic, about a self-destructive songwriter who self-destructs for obvious reasons, but in a deliberate, slow, very sad and depressing manner. Orson Welles had in essence a similar character and plot framework in "Citizen Kane," but he also had the directing "style" (which above all should be foremost in anything related to Cole Porter's music and life) and a "motivator" to make Kane's willful and self-ignorant destruction a mutually shared obsession, inviting us at every moment to become adventurer-detectives searching for the clues that will lead us to "Rosebud."
By contrast, "De-Lovely" wallows in pain and misery for the last 30 minutes, insulting us with a momentary deus ex machina ("Blow, Gabriel, Blow") that not even the characters seem to believe and then attempting to rescue everything with that flickering, potentially powerful, image that is the film's final moment. Too little, too late--and too soon, moreover, after we've endured the spectacle of our subject reduced to a pay-for-play "John," a victim of blackmail (triply so, because Linda is included, as is their relationship and mutual trust). The soundtrack plays "Love for Sale," but what we witness is a love that's far more than "slightly soiled."
The project needed to be rethought. Most of today's viewers are totally unsympathetic with the private lives of artists (one would think the writers would pay attention to politics) and, for that matter, unfamiliar with Porter's songs. The film would have done a great service had it opened viewers' hearts and minds to the "obsessions" (an apt term used in the film) of others, the personal mind-images and different objects of desire that motivate the passions of the artist in ways that move us all. (What's the gain in portraying Monty Wooley as a pimp? ) Or it would have done an equal service had it launched a whole new wave of interest in the music of Cole Porter. Sadly, it fails there, too, for reasons too numerous to mention. (As a musician, I have no answers for the film's complete re-harmonization of "Begin the Beguine." Was this an historically accurate albeit early, inferior attempt by Porter to write the song?)
This is a movie/DVD that few people will care too watch more than once. If you count yourself in that number, and if you're wondering why someone would bother to make a movie about Cole Porter, pick up any recording by Sinatra and Nelson Riddle with "I've Got You Under My Skin" ("Songs for Swinging Lovers" is a good start) or "Night and Day." If you tire of either song (virtually impossible), try the inspired, absolutely scintillating version of "In the Still of the Night" on the first disc of the recent "Sinatra-Vegas" box. And if that's not enough, there's plenty more from the same source, or from Ella Fitzgerald on the "Cole Porter Songbook." Or listen to Mabel Mercer explaining how it (in Porter songs, love is frequently an "it" or "thing") was "Just One of Those Things," or to Dinah Washington actually selling it on "Love for Sale," or to any singer who imparts to these timeless, immortal songs the life that is theirs, allowing them to become the magnificent obsessions that deserve to belong to yet another generation of listeners.