Il caso Myra Breckinridge

If you go into this exercise in wretched excess expecting a profound viewing experience, you'll be very upset. Part "Blazing Saddles", part "Love American Style", and part "Candy", this film is a tasteless melange of all that was mediocre about late 1960s filmmaking-- cheesy Bachrach-like score, campy costumes, inept acting, and everyone in search of a plot! That having been said, like a train wreck, it's hard to look away. Although most of the production values in this sleaze-fest are abyssmal, there are occasionally clever comic bits of archival footage inserted for (unsubtle) comic affect. Instead of sitttin' wondrin' why, babe, did they cast Raquel Welch, John Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, and egad, Rex Reed; enjoy the lovely cameo appearance by a young mustache-less Tom Selleck, and annoyingly under-the-top performance by 75 y.o. Mae West. This is what to watch when you've grown tired of singing along with "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"!

I read "Myra Breckinridge" in 1969 when I was riding a bus from St. Louis to San Antonio, and I fell in love with everything about the book. I saw the movie when it first came out (even though I was not, legally, old enough) and had a blast. This film (I do NOT use that term loosely) had so much going on and not going on between pretty people and not so pretty people who were acting badly and beautifully while doing evil and funny and disgusting and sweet things to each other in the most vicious and caring ways possible, I was overwhelmed by it all. It had more to say in its heaving breast about the cruel and elevated ways in which man treats his fellow man than every Oscar-winning picture since...and all while telling its story in the most absurd and drug-inducing manner possible.

But what adds even more to the meaning of the film is how it destroyed the career of not just its director (who probably deserved it) but also ruined any chance of a career for Roger Herren solely because he played a character who was raped by a woman. Men can play rapists and women can be raped and gang raped and even play lesbians, and they receive Oscars for their performances and no one thinks the worst of them. But let a man get sodomized and suddenly everyone questions his masculinity and ability to relate to the opposite sex. And THAT is where MYRA BRECKINRIDGE stands tall.

Yes, the movie is a smash-up of styles and insane casting choices and baldly ludicrous dialogue and unintentionally funny acting, but so were more recent idiot movies like THE ROCK and TITANIC and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, and look how successful they became...and how quickly they will be forgotten. At least MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, the movie (maybe even moreso than the book), worked as a slap in the face of America's sexual dysfunction and hypocrisy...and I believe THAT is what bothers so many people about it. And that is why it remains a movie worth watching,

Quite how this became Hollywood's most famously reviled and ridiculed creation is almost as mysterious as how such a bizarre film was ever made in the first place.

It's the story of a gay film critic knocked unconscious in a car accident who then dreams he has undergone a sex-change operation and been recreated in Raquel Welch's image. I managed to work that much out after two viewings, the first wondering what the hell I was seeing and the second spotting the few clues to the "plotline" that exist between the scenes of insane camp and bizarre sexual acts.

Somehow, through all the confusion and early '70s delirium, I found myself enjoying it. It is a ridiculous mess, but where else are you going to see the legendary John Huston receiving a brutal Swedish massage and Raquel Welch in glorious widescreen, Technicolor Panavision wearing a strap-on and cowgirl outfit ensemble? Not in Legally Blonde, I know that much.

MYRA BRECKINGRIDGE (4 outta 5 stars) Considering that this is historically considered one of the "worst" movies ever made, I didn't expect I was going to enjoy it... though I was curious to see how bad a train wreck it was going to be. Well, I was simply amazed at how well-done the movie actually is! To be honest, the movie is not for everyone... and I don't even know if I could actually recommend it to casual movie viewers in good conscience... but if you are a fan of truly bizarre and outrageous movies... this one is a must-see. Raquel Welch gives the best performance of her career... really! She never got many decent film roles but in this one she actually got to show that she was more than just a huge, heaving bosom. (Nonetheless, I also maintain that she probably never looked more attractive in a motion picture than she does in this one.) This movie really is a mess in certain respects but there is so much going on and most of it is so entertaining that I didn't mind the incoherence at all. The use of vintage movie clips to "comment" on what's going on in the storyline is brilliant. (The later HBO series "Dream On" also used this technique but I think this movie did it much better.) Rex Reed is perfectly cast as Myron, a gay man who decides on having a sex change (though Reed vehemently insisted throughout filming that he *wasn't* playing a gay man... uh, okay, Rex). Well, Rex turns into Raquel Welch and that's when the fun begins... he/she embarks on a quest to make men and women re-think the roles that society has imposed on them (I think that's sorta kinda supposed to be the point but it does get muddled a lot of the time). Mae West shows up for no real purpose... 76 years old and belting out her most outrageous sexual innuendos ever. (One of the recipients, a young Tom Selleck.) I never really cared much for Mae West in her prime... and was amazed how not-bad she was here! (I also am a bit reluctant to admit that I have been humming the Shirley Temple ditty that opens and closes this movie non-stop since hearing it.) John Huston probably gives one of his worst performances ever... but he's STILL worth watching... now THAT is star power! There are many classic scenes in this movie that will have you shaking your head in disbelief... could you imagine a Hollywood movie *today* that would have a buxom beauty wearing an American flag bikini, strapping on a dildo and using it on an unwilling male? I think not. Only in the 60's, baby!

Seldom seen since theatrical release in 1970, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE has become a byword for cinematic debacles of legendary proportions. Now at last on DVD in an unexpectedly handsome package, it is as unlikely to win wide audiences today as it was when first released.

Gore Vidal's 1968 bestseller was a darkly satirical statement. Most filmmakers felt that the novel's story, structure, and overall tone would not translate to film, and industry insiders were surprised when 20th Century Fox not only acquired the rights but also hired Vidal to adapt his novel to the screen. But studio executives soon had cold feet: Vidal's adaptations were repeatedly rejected and novice writer-director Michael Sarne was brought in to bring the film to the screen.

Studio executives hoped that Sarne would tap into the youth market they saw as a target for the film, but Sarne proved even more out of synch with the material than the executives themselves. Rewrite upon rewrite followed. The cast, sensing disaster, became increasingly combative. In her DVD commentary, star Raquel Welch says that she seldom had any idea of what Myra's motives were from scene to scene or even within any single scene itself, and that each person involved seemed to be making an entirely different film. In the accompanying "Back Story" documentary, Rex Reed says that MYRA BRECKINRIDGE was a film made by a bunch of people who hid in their dressing rooms while waiting for their lawyers to return their calls.

The accuracy of these comments are demonstrated by the film itself. The basics of Vidal's story are there, but not only has the story been shorn of all broader implications, it seems to have no point in and of itself. Everything runs off in multiple directions, nothing connects, and numerous scenes undercut whatever logic previous scenes might have had. And while director Sarne repeatedly states in his commentary that he wanted to make the film as pure farce, the only laughs generated are accidental.

Chief among these accidents is Mae West. It is true that West is unexpectedly well preserved in appearance and that she had lost none of her way with a one-liner--but there is no getting around the fact that she is in her seventies, and her conviction that she is the still the sexiest trick in shoe leather is extremely unsettling, to say the least. But worse, really, is the fact that West is outside her era. Her efforts to translate herself into a hip and happening persona results in one of the most embarrassing self-caricatures ever seen on film.

The remaining cast is largely wasted. Raquel Welch, a significantly underestimated actress, plays the title role of Myra very much like a Barbie doll on steroids; non-actor Rex Reed is unexpectedly effective in the role of Myron, but the entire role is essentially without point. Only John Huston and cameo players John Carradine, Jim Backus, William Hopper, and Andy Devine emerge relatively unscathed. Yes, it really is the debacle everyone involved in the film feared it would be: fast when it should be slow, slow when it should be fast, relentlessly unfunny from start to finish. It is true that director Sarne does have the occasional inspired idea--as in his use of film clips of everyone from Shirley Temple to Judy Garland to create counterpoint to the action--but by and large, whenever Sarne was presented with a choice of how to do something he seems to have made the wrong one.

The how and why of that is made clear in Sarne's audio commentary. Sarne did not like the novel or, for that matter, the subject matter in general. He did not want to write the screenplay, but he needed the money; he emphatically did not want to direct the film, but he need the money. He makes it very clear that he disliked author Gore Vidal and Rex Reed (at one point he flatly states that Reed "is not a nice person"), and to this day he considers that Vidal and Reed worked in tandem to sabotage the film because he refused to play into their 'homosexual agenda'--which, when you come right down to it, seems to have been their desire that Sarne actually film Vidal's novel rather than his own weirdly imagined take-off on it.

Although he spends a fair amount of commentary time stating that the film is widely liked by the gay community, Sarne never quite seems to understand that the appeal of the film for a gay audience arises from his ridiculously inaccurate depiction of homosexual people. When taken in tandem with the film itself, Sarne emerges as more than a little homophobic--and quite frankly the single worst choice of writers and directors that could have been made for this project.

In addition to the Sarne and Welch commentaries and the making-of documentary, the DVD release includes several trailers and two versions of the film: a "theatrical release" version and a "restored" version. The only difference between the two is that the final scene in the "restored" version has been printed to black and white. The edits made before the film went into general release have not been restored, but the documentary details what they were. The widescreen transfers of both are remarkably good and the sound is quite fine. But to end where I began, this is indeed a film that will most interest film historians, movie buffs, and cult movie fans. I give it three out of five stars for their sake alone, but everyone else should pass it by.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer