La folle de Chaillot

Question: In 1943 what movie starred Katherine Hepburn, Katherine Cornell, and Harpo Marx?

ANSWER: STAGE DOOR CANTEEN

Question: In 1969 what movie starred Katherine Hepburn, Dame Edith Evans, and Danny Kaye?

ANSWER: THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT

Odd that Kate Hepburn should pop up in two unfair trivia questions, but it does happen. Actors do run into each other in all kinds of films, both good and bad, memorable and forgettable, and regular or short film (look at a comic short called THE STOLEN JOOLES which has most of the stars of Hollywood in the 1930s in it).

STAGE DOOR CANTEEN was done for patriotic morale boosting for our soldiers, and it celebrated the canteens used to entertain our men on furlough. So the making of that film had a reason that transcends it's current obscurity. I might add, as it is the only major movie that stage star Katherine Cornell popped up in for just a few minutes, it is worth it as a time capsule as such.

But THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT was based on a Giraudoux play about modern society endangered by the forces of power and greed. It is about the discovery that the city of light, Paris, is reposing on a huge, untapped oil field, and that various power figures without any soul (Yul Brynner, Charles Boyer, Paul Henried, Oscar Holmolka, Donald Pleasance) may be able to empty the city of it's neighborhoods, it's citizens, it's life and light, and replace it with derricks. Giraudoux made sure that the villains represent everything that he suspects. Brynner is the ultimate ruthless billionaire (he is upset when a waiter accidentally spills water on him). Boyer is a stock broker. Henried is a General. Homolka is the French head of the Communist Party (Giraudoux has no illusions about what a political label means - there are power mad people in all political parties). Pleasance is a prospector for oil. There is also John Gavin as a right wing religious demagogue.

Opposed to these villains are Kate Hepburn (the leading local social figure from the past - called "the madwoman of Chaillot") and her friends Giulietta Massina, Margaret Leighton, and Edith Evans (who is still trying to campaign in 1969 for Mr. Wilson's League of Nations). Also aiding Hepburn are the "rag picker" (Danny Kaye - in the best dramatic performance in a major motion picture in his career - also his only Oscar nomination), Richard Chamberlain, Gordon Heath, and Nanette Newman. Although Hepburn, Massina, Leighton, and Evans have social position, none have the political clout of the villains. So when they are made aware of the threat to their beloved Paris (and by extension western culture and morality) they hold a trial (in absentia) of the villains, and find these villains have to die.

This film is better for the brief vignettes of it's stars than for the total impact. Brynner's malevolent, general ruthlessness is one of his best acting jobs. So is Henried's almost comical criminal activity: he confesses to having arranged the murder of four promising young aides of his, because he suspected one of them (but not knowing which) of sleeping with his wife - it turned out his wife had been faithful after all (Brynner, Boyer, Homolka, and Gavin congratulate him on his luck!). Kaye has several great set pieces - a rag picker he wraps eloquent about the great, glory days of garbage in the past where each neighborhood's garbage had a special character all it's own (as opposed to the garbage of the modern homogenized neighborhoods of Paris, that those villains forced on the citizens). He is superb in the scene where he is the "defense" counsel for Brynner and his group - demoniacally showing what these people are really like while "defending" them. All those comic, scatterbrained, sequences in his movies built up to these scenes of poetry and passion.

Hepburn, of course, was great - that last sequence where she mistakes Chamberlain for the lost love of her youth, and mournfully laments his loss, is a highpoint in her career. She rarely had so poetic a scene of tragic delicacy.

But the story, oddly enough, for all we may approve of the hatred shown for the powerful who use and discard us, is not fully acceptable. Henried's general is too stupid (he almost launches a missile attack on Russia while talking to Hepburn). Brynner is so impossibly arrogant that a consortium of his fellow billionaires would probably ruin him to shut him up. But the acting is still so good that it one can forget these minor problems. Any film where Donald Pleasance uses his prominent proboscis by putting it into a drinking glass to smell for oil cannot be all bad. So I'll give it a "6", if not higher.

A fable of human and societal archetypes spanning the generations. But what wonderful surprises from Danny Kaye as the Ragpicker. His soliloquies during the trial demolish all the stereotypes of what he was capable of as an actor. Those moments, alone, are worth the fare. Kathryn Hepburn puts in a typically professional performance in a role she enjoyed. Donald Pleasance is marvelously malevolent as the Prospector. Yul Brynner is terrific in an atypical role - probably his best since "Invitation to a Gunfighter". If the story suffers from anything, it is overreach - too many characters of outlooks that are too similar wasted on name actors. John Gavin puts in a strange performance that could have been better filled by dozens of other actors.

A wonderful fable I happened to stumble across. The inimitable Katharine Hepburn as the title character conspires with other eccentrics to save Paris. Warm, funny, delightfully non-sequitur and deeply poignant, this film has messages about love, greed, happiness, fear, hope, dreams. . .life. Excellent performances by all, including some wonderful dramatic acting by Danny Kaye. I highly recommend this movie.

It all depends how you approach this film. DO NOT expect a linear plot line, either by story or history. Do not expect it to explain itself for, like 2001, it leaves more questions open than it answers. This is a truly odd duck of a film and once you open up to what it SAYS about life and liberty, you can appreciate it. I disliked it at first view a long time ago and for the obvious reasons - the plot is a pencil sketch of the first order. King Arthur whacking limbs off the Black Knight makes more sense. But scrap that and listen to what the actors are SAYING about life and liberty and THEN it makes sense, for this is an allegory of a film. The closest I can find elsewhere is OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR which uses allegory just as well. Danny Kaye is always a treat, but Hepburn is in glorious 1913 costumes and owns the show, and remember this is 1969. The same year as THE LION IN WINTER for an entirely different performance. So you have to junk many standard film rules aside and THEN you will find this a very good treat of film. Have it with good French Bordeaux and cheese too. Then go outside and see if you can smell a cafe in Paris serving their unique nuclear coffee. Who knows? You may wind up there too.

Jean Giraudoux who wrote The Madwoman Of Chaillot became a prominent French writer in the years between the two World Wars and died in 1944 a year before this play made its debut on the French stage. Those who were occupying France at the time Giroudoux died would not have wanted this item shown to be sure as it is an indictment against the greed and thoughtlessness of the modern age and the ruthless people in positions of power.

Katharine Hepburn plays the title role, a picturesque old woman who dresses in pre-World War I fashion as an outward manifestation of her rejection of the modern age. She would have looked out of place in 1944, in 1969 she and her fellow senior citizen rebels Edith Evans and Margaret Leighton look even more so. Right at the beginning of the film the age is established for us showing the student protests that rocked France in the late Sixties and we see Kate her best 1913 fashion just gliding through it all.

While she rejects the changing times, some power people who you would not think of at first as allies are meeting at a Paris café plotting to really upset her world in a way she can't escape from. Charles Boyer, Oscar Homolka, Donald Pleasance, Paul Henreid, John Gavin, and Yul Brynner who seems to be taking the lead in the group have discovered that Paris is sitting on a bed of shale with oil deposits that would rival the Middle East as a source. That would certainly make France a power to be reckoned with. In fact Paul Henreid who is a French general makes note of the fact that France has gone its own way politically which at the time Charles DeGaulle was doing, separating himself from America and that accursed island nation Great Britain.

Of course the site of oil derricks in and around those colorful parts of Paris that have their own legend separate and apart from the city as a whole is something that Kate can't permit. The scheme is brought to her attention by a number of the citizens who have overheard bits and pieces at the café and were shooed away. Yul Brynner took an especial delight in doing this.

Hepburn and her fellow mad women formulate a plan and try these people in abstentia. Parisian street character Danny Kaye, the ragpicker who is as far down the economic scale from the conspirators as you can get offers a great defense for them as lawyers do for their clients, but it's a done deal. And she's got an interesting fate in store for them.

When The Madwoman Of Chaillot made it to Broadway in 1949-50 and won a Tony Award for Martita Hunt playing the title role, theater goers then knew of the great Kettleman Hills oil strike which was close to Los Angeles city limits. There are still parts of the area where you can see functioning oil derricks even today. The image of a gusher coming out of a derrick next to Notre Dame or the Arc De Triomphe was really in the minds of theatergoers back then.

Hepburn does well in the part showing that maybe The Madwoman Of Chaillot and her mad friends really have a lot more sense than we might give them credit for. They may have rejected the 20th Century, but they rejected the mass wars that characterized it and the all consuming quest for domination and profits above all. There's still beauty in Kate's world and she'll fight to preserve it.

The Madwoman Of Chaillot might be a bit quirky for some tastes, but Katharine Hepburn's fans will love it.