Quando a Esposa Peca

How could an insider like Nunnally Johnson make a movie about Hollywood that's this boring and just plain bad?

Clearly Johnson knows movies, yet he manages to do just about everything wrong with "The Man Who Understood Women," starting with that title. Henry Fonda is disastrously miscast as a maverick, manipulative director, and Cesare Danova could have been replaced by his likeness in granite. Leslie Caron is adorable and she works hard, but "Ann Garantier" is an idea, not a character. As for the telescoped plot, I believe Aaron Spelling himself would have rejected it as too simplistic. There is the occasional witty line-- Johnson's forte is writing, after all-- but there's way too much dialog. Movies are a visual medium, not a verbose one, but Johnson's characters talk incessantly.

As it happens, a number of big films circa 1960 were about movie-making. This is by far the worst. Godard's half-baked "Contempt" is at least cinematic. "Two Weeks In Another Town" has energy, largely thanks to Edward G. Robinson and Claire Trevor. And then there's "8 1/2." Fellini's masterpiece and Johnson's dud are similarly long-- 135-140 minutes. But "8 ½" is exhilarating, revelatory, inventive, visually rich, and memorable; "The Man Who Understood Women" fails on all counts.

Johnson had a hand in writing more than 70 movies, producing more than 40, and directing 8. After seeing this and "Black Widow," I can only conclude that 8 was at least 2 too many.

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.

But that's about it. It's the reason I came here, to see who wrote the script. The tone of the dialog sounded vaguely familiar. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there were other unnamed doctors who tried to breathe life into this script. I also began to wonder if this was some cockamamie remake of A Star Is Born. It isn't, not that I think it would be better if that had been the case.

I'm also somewhat gratified to see that I'm not the only person who never saw the appeal of Leslie Caron. She's always just Leslie Caron; it doesn't matter what the role is.

My fellow reviewers are right. Don't bother with this. It's a European production/film trying to be American, and as a consequence, it's neither one nor the other. It's a disaster of a hybrid.

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.

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.