Cuando la mujer peca

Henry Fonda nearly quit the movies after getting a look at this thing, a backstage-Hollywood comedy-drama by Nunnally Johnson, loosely adapted from Romain Gary's novel "The Colors of the Day". Johnson also produced and directed the picture, and therefore deserves most of the blame for what's on the screen. Famous actor-director Fonda becomes smitten with struggling actress Leslie Caron after watching her do a screen-test and quickly turns her into a formidable star. It's at this point in the film where we see fake movie titles zig-zagging across the screen ("Between Heaven and Hell", "Mademoiselle X"), signifying success, and later get a preposterous scene of Fonda shouting down Caron's agents for their lack of direction (isn't he running the whole show?). Fonda compares his lovely discovery to Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, but we just don't see it. Leslie Caron is attractive here, but sullen and with a deep, monotonous voice. When she supposedly wins an Academy Award, we don't see that triumph either (the statue is super-imposed over a starry background--along with MORE zig-zagging movie titles!). Johnson obviously knows the world of show-biz inside-out, but here he gives us the outer-workings of the movie-making world without any of the inner-workings. Caron and Fonda wed, but she quickly tires of his one-track mind--she wants to be a newlywed forever--and runs off with an Air Force Major while in France. Fonda wants the handsome home wrecker dead and orders a hit on him, but changes his mind when he thinks his wife might be killed too, and so chases after the Mutt and Jeff team he's in-cahoots with while dressed as a harlequin clown. It's too silly for words. *1/2 from ****

The Man Who Understood Women was created by noted screenwriter Nunnally Johnson who had worked with Henry Fonda going back to Jesse James. On the basis of respect for his talent and his friendship with Johnson, Fonda got cast in the part of Hollywood wunderkind Willie Bauche, a man who it turned out did not understand women in the slightest or at least the woman whom he married and was responsible for her stardom, Leslie Caron.

Willie Bauche needed an actor with the flair of a John Barrymore to carry it off. In fact Fonda's character of Willie Bauche is a second cousin to Oscar Jaffe from Twentieth Century. Now Henry Fonda has been successful in comedy, but the fellow who utilized him best, Preston Sturges in The Lady Eve did not tamper with Fonda's basic All American serious character, he played Barbara Stanwyck and the rest of the cast off against it. What Barrymore or Orson Welles on whom the lead is allegedly based could have done we'll never know.

Speaking of Welles the character of Max Buda whom he played in The VIPs was exactly like what Fonda was trying to achieve in The Man Who Understood Women.

Fonda is a Welles like character who discovers young hopeful Leslie Caron, makes her a star and marries her. But he's all about himself and Caron's eyes start wandering and land on young army officer Cesare Danova while she and Fonda are on the French Riviera. Of course Fonda gets jealous and begins scheming all kinds of things that you have to watch The Man Who Understood Women to find out.

Leslie Caron was very hot at that point in her career having just come off the best film of 1958, Gigi. Still even I can't understand why she rated billing over Hollywood veteran Henry Fonda. I'm betting Fonda wasn't to thrilled with that either.

Besides working with Nunnally Johnson, Fonda got to work with Myron McCormick with whom he had gone to Princeton with and was part of the famous Triangle Players during their college days. McCormick plays his number two guy who tries to instill a little reality into Fonda's life, but is unable to.

The film actually begins quite promisingly. Nunnally Johnson who knew Hollywood as good as anyone has a great beginning with Fonda alerting producer Conrad Nagel to a new discovery in Caron, but doing it in such a way that Nagel thinks it's all his idea and that he's stealing someone from Fonda whom he can't stand, but who Fonda knows he can't stand. That was all very well done, if the film had kept up that quality it would be a classic today.

The Citadel film series book The Films Of Henry Fonda also says that there are a lot of inside Hollywood jokes, but said to say they stayed inside. One reason I looked forward to seeing it was that after some 50 years of tell all memoirs and second hand accounts, I figured that things a 1959 audience might not have gotten I would have. Well frankly I didn't so Nunnally's inside stuff stays inside.

After this one, Fonda stayed off the screen for three years coming back in a part in Advise And Consent that he was believable in. Far more than The Man Who Understood Women where he was probably the most miscast in his career.

When this film began, it looked like one of those films the stars and directors made simply to fulfill their contractual obligations.

However, despite Henry Fonda's occasional forays into sleepwalking his role (especially in his romantic scenes), the overall film was amusing, funny in places and occasionally clever.

It's light entertainment and clearly NEVER intended to rise above that threshold. The warm flame that illumined the production was Leslie Caron. This was a better performance in some ways (IMO) than "American In Paris." It was far more "real" and emotionally intimate than other ones she's done, and without it, this picture would have been a genuine yawner.

What the heck was this? The Bad and the Beautiful Goes on the Twentieth Century, I guess. Based on a novel by Romain Gary, Fonda plays Willie Bauche, a triple threat in the Orson Welles tradition whose films don't make any money, so he soon finds himself kicked out of the studio. While observing a screen test, he becomes interested in the actress doing the test, Ann Garantier (Leslie Caron) and decides to make her the biggest thing since Greta Garbo, manipulating his old boss at the studio to sign her. Ann and Willie fall in love and marry. On their wedding night, Willie becomes involved in some movie business and leaves the hotel. This turns Ann off, and the implication is that she doesn't sleep with him - and six months later, apparently, she's still not sleeping with him. His work always takes precedence over her, and she doesn't like it.

While on a trip to Paris, Ann meets a soldier, played by Cesare Danova, and runs away with him. He applies for discharge from his regiment and tells her that he's supposed to leave at the end of the week, but he's not going.

I've actually described the plot of this film in a much more exciting way than it was filmed. All I'll say is that Leslie Caron looked beautiful and had some beautiful clothes. Everyone is very low key and says their lines as if they're on their deathbed. Except for Fonda, they all sort of moan.

The lead role, Willie, is indeed a Welles type or the kind of producer played by Barrymore in Twentieth Century. Fonda was in comedies, but he was usually the straight man. This role called for a flamboyant, meglomaniacal performance. Fonda was a very internalized actor - I can't imagine anyone worse for this role. It's like having Cary Grant play Mahatma Gandhi.

A complete waste of time - your time, my time, and the actors' time.

Nunnally Johnson, one of the great talents of the movie business in the 1930s and 1940s eased up for several years, and then came back to write and direct this immobile lump of a motion picture..... not helped in the least, by the way, by the fact that the color has faded on the print shown this evening on Turner Classics Movie, going all pink.

Into this mess, he injected some very talented performers, particularly Henry Fonda, but then seems apparently to have directed everyone in a monotone, from megalomaniac Henry Fonda, who plays Leslie Caron's starmaker husband, to Myron McCormick, who plays his platitude-spouting assistant, to Cesare Danova, who plays her seducer. Caron gets to weep and screech a bit, but that's about the limit of emotions on display. Everyone speaks in long speeches all the time.

A thorough-going stinker. Avoid this one.