Inside Daisy Clover

Brassy, singing tomboy near Hollywood in the 1930s gets a screen test and is soon thrust into the crazy spotlight of Tinsel Town. Ham-handed soaper intends to paint show business as cool, decadent and uncaring, but director Robert Mulligan is unable to set an appropriate tone, and his bad guys are enigmatic shadies who conspire in whispers. This combined with Natalie Wood's raucous rendering of a 15-year-old results in some problems. Still, the look and atmosphere of the film are really extraordinary, and Christopher Plummer gives off sparks of neurotic heat as the head of the movie studio. Robert Redford is a good screen match for Natalie, although his love-interest role is steeped in the hypothetical; Wood herself runs hot and cold, though she has some very strong early moments. The pacing might've stood some picking up, and the movie is much too long, but it looks stylish and has a lot of talent behind it. **1/2 from ****

A rather strange film upon revisit. For those who have loved Aldrich's LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE and BAREFOOT CONTESSA--This one is for you. Granted Natalie Wood is playing young when the actress was in her late 20's--but her legend is alive and well in this film. Plummer is amazing, as is the actress who plays his manic depressive wife. The film is beautifully shot in and around LA, and the Kurt Weill'ish musical score by Previn is superb. A decidedly campy look inside the film studios of the Forties, but intriguing, interestingly acted, superbly scored, photographed, and one of those strange films in which the leading lady who died tragically offers many amazing moments to remember. The film was horribly reviewed when it was first released--but time and the personal stories, both successful and tragic, of many of its actors, give the film a certain fascination in 2002. Unfortunately it has not yet been released on DVD--but it must be seen in wide screen and not in the pan and scan version available on VHS. Gavin Lambert did the screenplay based on his own novel. . .and it works.

This movie often seems surrealistic, sometimes comic, sometimes despairing and it has musical numbers which come from another dimension entirely--they are a mix of Busby Berkeley and 1960s design. The film seems like an eccentric comedy at first with 15 year-old tomboy Daisy (Natalie Wood) and her wacky mother (Ruth Gordon) both competing over who can chew scenery faster. Suddenly, she's plucked by sinister studio head Christopher Plummer and turned into a star. The studios of the time were certainly often sinister, but I found the dispatch of Ma Clover to the mental institution a bit of a stretch. The film has other implausible moments plus a tone of anachronism as the songs, by Andre and Dory Previn, are 1960s Broadway in style. Many scenes of loneliness and isolation--a strangely deserted Santa Monica pier,an empty desert motel, a studio that always seems empty, even the sound stages seem empty. You rarely see the bustle you expect in a film set at a studio or in Hollywood. This is an odd, fascinating, 1/2 successful film.

Inside Daisy Clover is not just any movie about a wanna-be-star that has her dream come true and in the process witnesses the changes and corruption that bring her to the top. It is a movie about the movie industry itself. Actually it is the BEST movie that Hollywood has ever made about itself. Natalie Wood stars as the 15-year-old child star and manages to pull it through. She is a lot older and we all know, but there are times when just a look or a smile of hers can be nothing but as close to childhood as an adult actress could ever get. On the other hand we have Robert Redford, the young careless and unsteady lover that lifts everyone he meets to the sky and then dumps them to the ground leaving in his passage something more than pain: the realization that what is inevitable will happen and we all know it from the beginning. Somehow we wish it were different but it isn't and the end offers the only solution that could close such a movie without destroying its unique feeling. Redford's role is undoubtedly the greatest of his career. He is so young, strong and handsome that no one can resist him. And yet, there is a lot more hidden beneath his nice facade than anyone could ever think possible. Somehow he is a tortured character that finds content in hurting others but still he does it in such a way that you can't but admire him. Even the most fanatic feminist can try to persuade me he isn't the most charming - and at the same time cryptic - character even written for the big screen but the truth remains the same: like Michael Caine in Alfie we'd love to hate him but we can't! I must say the end is not exactly as dark as I would have expected it given the fact that we all know Daisy's path goes only downhill from the moment she meets Wade (Redford) but the queer thing (and what makes it a little unbelievable and lame) is that she manages to survive in such a random way that even the viewer wouldn't want her to. But that's the beauty of it all!

Last night I had the pleasure of watching my third Natalie Wood film of the week, and it was 1965's "Inside Daisy Clover," which I had never seen before. In this one, Natalie lives with her senile mother (Ruth Gordon, in her first picture since the '40s) in a little shack on Angel Beach, California. She sends a recording of herself singing to studio head Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer...yes, in the same year that he appeared in "The Sound of Music"...quite a year for him), who sees something in her and turns her, practically overnight, into "America's Valentine," and a movie sensation. Daisy soon starts to realize that the Hollywood life has its perils and pitfalls, and eventually marries another popular star, Wade Lewis (the ridiculously, almost angelically handsome Robert Redford), who turns out to be gay, or at least wildly bi. A nervous breakdown of sorts and a run-in with the satanic Swan lead to a suicide attempt for poor Daisy, before she sees the light. Anyway, this film is not as great as I was hoping it would be, but is still pretty darn good. Like 1963's "Love With the Proper Stranger"--another Natalie film, and one that I watched the other day--it was directed by Robert Mulligan, but is not as fine as that earlier film. And it is not as fine, I thought, as the film that Natalie and Redford appeared in the following year, "This Property Is Condemned." Still, as I say, it does have much to offer. The promotional film that introduces Daisy is a wowser, filled with amazing special FX (especially for the mid-'30s), although the song that Daisy sings in it hardly sounds as if it comes from that era; it almost sounds like a 1960s Vegas lounge act kind of number. As would be expected, Natalie and the other performers are all aces. Almost forgot to mention that Roddy McDowall is in here also, playing Swan's unctuous assistant. All in all, great fun, if nothing classic, but so good to see Natalie once again proving the critics wrong. The gal really COULD act!