I finally got around to viewing "The Departed" (2006) which I may or may not discuss again in due course. Suffice to say for the moment that I actually preferred it to the Hong Kong original (less confusing) and that, like many film buffs, I am of course pleased that Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar. It's just a shame that this movie wasn't quite top-notch Scorsese to merit it.
However since I am usually at my happiest revisiting old movies, today's comments are reserved for the above semi-classic pic. Based on a stage play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, its transition to the screen was masterful and it was indeed nominated both for best picture and best director -- neither of which it won. The nominal female leads in a large cast were Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, but it was supporting player Anthea Leeds who was Oscar-nominated. She didn't win and actually retired from films three years later and is probably little-remembered today for her brave performance.
The action takes place in a theatrical boarding house for young women, where hopefuls await their big break and spend their time bitching at life in a somewhat good-natured way. It was fun to see early appearances from Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, and Eve Arden amongst them, as well as a late appearance from character actress Constance Collier as a washed-up ham turned coach. Leeds plays an actress with one successful role behind her, who is unable to find more work, and when the role she covets is virtually given to Hepburn's newcomer, she gives up all hope. Hepburn, looking remarkably fresh and feisty, plays an heiress with a yen for the stage and has only been given the part when her father anonymously backs the production in the hope that she will fail. She is indeed pretty pathetic (good acting here) during the rehearsals.
The unthinking producer who holds so many fates in his careless hands is played by Adolphe Menjou, who I have some difficulty taking seriously with his French-farce looks, and his butler is played by the inimitable Franklin Pangborn who always leaves me smiling, even in the smallest of roles. Rogers also gives a stellar performance as the wise-cracking chorine who rooms with Hepburn and who takes up with Menjou only to spite slightly older Gail Patrick; she is far better than she was in some of her later so-called "dramatic" roles. While this film is not quite in the same class as "The Women" two years on (which had a completely all female cast), the ensemble playing of so many fresh-faced actresses is something of a treat here, aided by a more than literate script.
19 Oct: Don't ask me where this entry reappeared from -- it's been AWOL for some days now!!!
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