When I told my film scholar buddy Mike that I was going to watch ANATOMY OF A MURDER he got very excited. “You’ll love it,” he promised, “it’s the sexiest movie of the 1950s.” Mike is in the habit of calling every movie he sees the somethingest movie of something, but in this case, I think he may be right - viewers in 2004 will be shocked to find such a frank portrayal of sexuality, and particularly rape, in a movie some forty-five years old. What’s more, ANATOMY still works as well as it did back in the day, when it was a huge box office success for James Stewart and director Otto Preminger.

Stewart plays Paul Biegler, a former District Attorney from a sleepy Michigan town. After losing his position, Paul is resigned to spending most of his days fishing, and his nights discussing the law with the town drunk (Arthur O’Connell). Desperately broke, he reluctantly accepts the case of one Lt. Manion (a very young Ben Gazzara), a Veteran accused of a murder he openly admits he committed. After Manion’s wife Laura (Lee Remick) is raped by the owner of the town inn, Manion calmly loaded his pistol, went to the inn, and shot him five times. Manion doesn’t dispute any of it, he even turned himself into the police after the shooting. Can Paul get him off?

Though the trial that makes up the second half of the film is over Manion’s innocence, it includes a great deal of discussion of the details of his wife’s rape. Preminger is clearly delighted to be airing these issues on the screen, and he goes out of his way to have fun with the fact that plenty of people, on the screen and in the audience, were uncomfortable saying some of these words in 1958. When the issue of how to describe Mrs. Manion’s undergarments is placed before the court, Judge Weaver (Joseph N. Welch) brings the lawyers to the bench and asks how they wish to proceed. Are they really going to call these things “panties?” “I’ve never heard my wife call them anything else,” the current D.A. says. George C. Scott, playing an assistant prosecutor offers, “When I was overseas in the war...I learned a French word. I’m afraid it might be slightly suggestive.” The men are placed on screen in a lineup that calls to mind the Marx Brothers in the middle of a murder trial that resulted from a rape! No other option in sight, panties is deemed an acceptable word.

There is something to be said for the tactics used in movies like ANATOMY OF A MURDER, made back when you simply couldn’t come out and talk about the details of a rape. Subtlety and implication are great tools of the screenwriter - suggesting what happened in a way that causes the audience to think is potentially more engaging than just telling them in detail. There’s even something a bit sexy about it. And of course, when you do finally come out and really hit the audience over the head - like the way one witness calls someone a “bitch” in one pivotal scene late in the film - you can really shock people with the bait and switch. When was the last time you were shocked by the word bitch when it wasn’t coming out of the mouth of a child or clergyman? My jaw was on the floor when I heard it in ANATOMY OF A MURDER.

As a warning, I will note that ANATOMY is over two and a half hours long, and for audiences now used to a court case done from start to finish in the second half of a Law & Order episode, it may be a bit jarring to spend so much time in a courtroom. But all that screentime gives you the feeling of seeing the entire case, down to the last witness, objection, and rebuttal so that the case becomes more fluid and complete. Beyond being a sexy picture, ANATOMY is one that is consummately made in all areas, from acting, to writing, to the titles by Saul Bass. There are better films, more important ones, but few that are so flawlessly executed.

IF YOU LIKED ANATOMY OF A MURDER, CHECK OUT: THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976), with Ben Gazzara in another murderous role, as a strip club owner who is forced to kill a bookie to erase his gambling debts.

THE BAD

Last time, I discussed the differences between “bad” and “ugly.” This time I thought I’d delve a little deeper into my theories about watching film. After all, most of the movies I cover in this column are out and out bombs, the sort of horrendous misfire that comes along only once every couple of years. Far more common is the more insidious badness of mediocrity, which plagues something like one out of every two or three movies you’ll see in a theater this year. Every time you answer someone’s question about a movie you saw with “Oh, it was okay,” you’ve just watched something mediocre. It’s easy to talk about a GIGLI when it comes along, but what about the minor GIGLIs that are released every single Friday of the year? THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is such a film.

It’s a remake of the terrific 1963 Stanley Donen film CHARADE starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which I reviewed here back in 2002. In this version, Thandie Newton plays the Hepburn character, a woman named Regina who recently married a mysterious man named Charles (Stephen Dillane). She returns home from a holiday to find their apartment gutted and empty, and her husband murdered. Regina (in this version, she hates being called Reggie) is shocked to discover Charlie led many lives and had a secret; a fortune he and four others had stolen and hidden away and had yet to reclaim. The three surviving members of the gang think Regina has the money, though she’s no clue where it could be. The final piece of the puzzle is a kind stranger named Joshua Peters (Mark Wahlberg in the Grant role) who seems a little too glad to help Regina out of her troubles.

Aside from a few name changes (Grant’s character was named Peter Joshua), and an altered ending that allows for a cute parody of director Jonathan Demme’s SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, the two films are nearly identical in construction. But where CHARADE was (and remains) a dazzling comic thriller, as light on its feet as Donen’s frequent collaborator Gene Kelly, THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is arduous and plodding. Demme wanted to make the film so he could work in Paris and pay homage to his heroes of the French New Wave, so why does the movie feels so dour when it should be playful? Watching CHARLIE, I wondered if given the opportunity to remake one of the New Wave films he loved if he’d turn them down because you can’t improve on the perfection of something like BREATHLESS. I suspect he would.

Despite their age difference, Grant and Hepburn had great on-screen chemistry. Newton and Wahlberg aren’t bad, they just don’t fit together. They got a lot of flack for not measuring up to the stars of the original, but of course no one could measure up to the stars of the original. I like the idea of recasting the gang with a more international flavor, but couldn’t they have picked some actors with charisma? None of them do anything to erase the memories of James Coburn and George Kennedy in these roles. Still, the person who I was most frustrated with in this version was costume designer Catherine Leterrier, who sticks Wahlberg in a series of hideous hats that only make him look like a little boy playing dressup in his dad’s clothes. I can’t decide what looked worse: Wahlberg in a beret, or Wahlberg in a fedora. These hats were out of fashion when the first film was made! Why not just give him a trucker hat and make him look really silly?

I tried judging the film on its own merits, but even that is impossible. Universal Studios packaged CHARLIE with the original CHARADE, inviting unflattering comparisons when they should be dodging them. After slogging through CHARLIE I flipped the disc over and watched the original, and was charmed by it all over again. The side-by-side viewings really made me appreciate the nuances of Grant’s versatile performance, along with clever small touches like the nifty opening credits sequence. I suppose the idea of packaging the two together was a marketing move to offer the buyer a better value, but the result is a set in which the supplemental material blows the feature out of the water.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is a dull and dreary movie, and yes, quite mediocre. On the great curve of cinema it is right at the bottom, the sad depths between great bombs (like this week’s ugly film for example) and great classics (like ANATOMY OF A MURDER). And it’s made all the more worse by being a remake of one of the great entertainments of the 1960’s. Hollywood churns out far too many remakes as it is. They should have just forgotten about this one.

INSTEAD OF THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE, CHECK OUT: BREATHLESS (1960), for a taste of the real French New Wave.

THE UGLY

I just finished Joe Eszterhas’ gargantuan 750 page memoir Hollywood Animal, so it felt like the time was right to finally do an ugly review of his ‘90s jigglefest classic SHOWGIRLS. In its day, the film was notorious for being the first big-budget, major studio release with an NC-17 rating and for being a huge box office flop and critical disaster. The initial failure of the film is due to the fact that it’s simply not sexy. When you see SHOWGIRLS’ first naked woman, it’s possible to get excited. But after a few minutes you’ve seen so many topless women running around that it all fades into the nude equivalent of white noise.

SHOWGIRLS begins with a simple title card and a girl hitchhiking her way to Las Vegas. Her name is Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley), and within twenty seconds of being picked up she has pulled a switchblade on the driver and is screaming at him. Nomi, you see, is kind of emotionally unbalanced. After Nomi’s suitcase is stolen, Molly (Gina Abrams) finds her in a parking lot, cursing and beating the hell out of Molly’s car. Understandably concerned, Molly tries to calm Nomi down, who promptly vomits and runs out into oncoming traffic. So naturally, Molly asks Nomi to become her roommate. Would you trust this switchblade pulling, tantrum throwing, upchuck heaving maniac to sleep on your sofa? I didn’t think so.

We pick things up a few weeks later, and the film follows Nomi’s meteoric rise from stripper to topless Vegas showgirl to Queen of the Topless Vegas Showgirls and back again. All this despite the fact that Nomi dances like she’s having an epileptic seizure, and moves with the grace of a rabid dog. The movie is obsessed with dancing, both in action and in conception, and when people aren’t dancing they’re talking about dancing, specifically how good Nomi is at it. Unfortunately, the audience can see that Nomi is a terrible dancer, but everyone in the film seems totally oblivious to that fact. “She can dance, can’t she?” one observer muses to another. (You want to yell, ”She can?”)

When an aspiring dancer named James (Glenn Plummer) spots her in a club, he picks her up. After she compliments his dancing, he insults hers. “Then what am I doing?” she barks. (”You don’t want to know!”) Eventually, James decides Nomi is good, tracks her down, and tells her “You’ve got more natural talent when you dance than anybody I’ve ever seen!” (”James, go out more! She makes Clay Aiken look like Savion Glover!”) Nomi isn’t interested in James’ help and tells him “I don’t need anybody to teach me to dance!” (”Yeah, and I wear glasses because I think they make me look cool”). After she’s been picked to audition for the show “Goddess” one of the men of the casino tells Nomi, “When I saw you dance, I thought ‘Yes!’” (”Yes WHAT? Yes, that woman needs counseling? Yes, she is the worst dancer you’ve seen since Elaine on Seinfeld? Yes, you have no bananas today? WHAT?!?”). Not surprisingly, Nomi has sex in the same herky-jerky style and is complimented for that too. “You’re a fantastic f*ck!” one man raves. (”She is? Are you sure? Did we just see the same thing?”) Yes, Nomi is enthusiastic about dancing and sex, but enthusiasm does not equal skill. I’m enthusiastic about baseball but that doesn’t mean the Montreal Expos are going to let me play second base. Okay, well the Expos might, but a real professional team wouldn’t.

SHOWGIRLS is misguided and profoundly, deeply, and utterly stupid. I don’t know if Eszterhas or Verhoeven is to blame for this stuff, so let’s take them both to task. This is a movie where someone falls on stage and gets injured, and the show’s physical trainer tests the woman’s leg to see where it hurts. She gets to her knee and the dancer recoils in pain. “It’s her knee!” the trainer says as if she’s discovered the cure for cancer. In another scene, a woman shows Nomi an engagement ring and then happily heads off to the bar to get a drink. Her fiancee then tells Nomi, “We’re getting married.” Boy, it’s a good thing it doesn’t rain in Vegas, these jokers would have been staring at the sky the whole movie going “Look! It’s raining!”

The movie is so unintentionally funny this review could go on forever. All I can say is (as long as you are above the legal age required to see it) go rent this movie. You’ll howl at the terror of the dancing-routines-are-hard scene. You’ll gasp at the heartbreak and anguish of the your-nipples-aren’t-erect-enough-put-ice-on-them scene. You’ll cheer at the tenderness of the I-just-got-out-of-jail-give-me-a-Ring-Pop scene. You’ll shrug at the oddness of the children-in-the-dressing-room-offended-by-foul-language-but-not-by-rampant-nudity scene. You’ll squirm at the I’m-on-my-period-feel-free-to-check-for-yourself-if-you-don’t-believe-me scene. And the hilarity is only compounded by the version shown on basic cable television where digital bras are added on to people to keep the nudity down. In that version, women take off their bras to reveal they were wearing another identical bra underneath! Genius!

In his book, Eszterhas bemoans a Hollywood system where directors get credit if the film is a hit, but screenwriters are to blame if it’s a flop. He’s right in feeling that the blame or praise should be shared; but when it comes to SHOWGIRLS he’s very quick to blame everyone but himself. Reviewers were more interested in reviewing his income than the quality of his film. Verhoeven cast the movie wrong, directed it wrong. All true, but did the bad critics, the bad actors and bad director write lines like, “We do what we do in Vegas - we gamble!”? (Eszterhas admits early in the book, but not during the chapter on SHOWGIRLS, that Verhoeven did not change a word of his script). Did they call the movie “a deeply religious message” as Eszterhas did to the press? No, he’s just as guilty as the rest of them. Bless them all for their folly.

IF YOU LIKED SHOWGIRLS, CHECK OUT: COYOTE UGLY (2000), a movie easily dumber than SHOWGIRLS that equates feminine empowerment with wearing tight leather pants and dancing on bars.