The Great Movies III

Robert Aldrich (1918-83) was a master of Hollywood genres; his credits include Vera Cruz (1954), with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster; Kiss Me Deadly (1956), a Mickey Spillane classic; Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), which was intended to reunite Davis and Crawford before Crawford fell ill (one story) or was fired because she fought with Davis (possibly apocryphal); The Dirty Dozen (1967); The Longest Yard (1974); and the underrated Hustle (1975). None of them were art pictures, but most of them were popular, profitable, well crafted, and splendid examples of their genres. He was one of the first mainstream directors to insist on autonomy in selecting stories, actors, and editors.

Making What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? he possibly thought of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (r95o), which starred Gloria Swanson as an aging movie queen, living on in her mansion. He began with a novel by Henry Farrell, which moved its aging queens further down on the artistic and financial scale, and emphasized the violence over the pathos. He knew he was asking for trouble by pairing Davis and Crawford, but he guessed, correctly, that trouble would translate into a better film. And at the end of the day it was Davis who won the ancient battle, by upstaging Crawford, winning the nomination, and making the pseudo-sequel Charlotte. She may not have been a pretty sight mincing her way through an old-age version of "I've Written a Letter to Daddy," but she was a trouper, and no one who has seen the film will ever forget her.

An elaborate two-disc special edition DVD was released in 2006, including a documentary on Davis written by David Anson and narrated by Jodie Foster; a thirtyminute British talk show with Crawford; a documentary about their feud; footage of Aldrich directing and Davis performing a Chubby Checker twist version of the title song on a 1962 Andy Williams Show. There is a commentary track by Davis impersonator Charles Busch and John Epperson (Lypsinka).

n my drinking days, some of us would gather around noon on Saturdays at Oxford's Pub for what we called Drunch. We would commence with shots of creme de menthe and pint glasses of real Coke, in the hope that a combination of alcohol, sugar, and caffeine would restore us.' hen we would laugh until the tears ran down our faces about the hilarity of the dreadful things that had happened the night before. In doing this, I would often quote "We laugh, that we may not cry," although just now I have discovered that no one originally said that. I always thought it was Shakespeare. It was me.

I relate this story to explain why I identify with Withnail & 1(1987), which conveys the experience of being drunk so well that the only way I could improve upon it would be to stand behind you and hammer your head with two-pound bags of frozen peas. It is said that Bruce Robinson, the film's writer and director, based it largely on his friendship in the 196os with Vivian MacKerrell, a usually unemployed actor and full-time alcoholic. They shared lodgings and misery in London, where Robinson recalls being down to one light bulb and taking it with him from room to room. The critic Mark Morris, in an article titled "The Real Withnail," writes: "Robinson knew it had to end when MacKerrell returned from a trip home to Scotland armed with bottles of a drink-zoo percent proof, Robinson claims-that distillery workers made by sticking used whiskey filters into spin driers. Deranged by the drink, Robinson and MacKerrell, armed with a hammer and an artificial leg, smashed down one of the walls of their house. It still took another six months for Robinson and MacKerrell to work up the will go their separate ways."

In the film as in life, Withnail and "I" live in poverty and disarray and do not waste valuable drinking time by doing anything else. Since drink costs money, and Withnail (Richard E. Grant) can be quick to order "four quadruple whiskeys and a couple of pints," there is the presumption that he receives funds from his well-off homosexual uncle Montague Withnail (Richard Griffiths). It is to Uncle Monty that they appeal for the loan of his country cottage, when they are seized by the need for a change of scene. Perhaps they are seeking a geographical cure.

Robinson based the character of"I" on himself. Students of the film have learned from one glimpse of a telegram that the character's name is Marwood; it never appears in the dialogue. Marwood has within himself the seeds of sanity and prudence. He drinks heavily, but Withnail is consumed by an unslakable thirst. Withnail is also possessed by fury. He is angry at everyone and everything almost all the time, except when a brief window sometimes opens between his last hangover and his next binge. He drops the f-bomb as punctuation, and his face reveals bitter resentment. What does he resent? That the world and everyone in it, except possibly Marwood, have conspired to make his life miserable.