hyson

I have an insatiable schwarm for Barbara Stanwyck. I love the way she looks, the way she speaks, her whole presence on screen. But one of my favorite things about her is that she consistently played women who, unlike the female leads in many of the films of her time, go toe to toe with their men in wit and resourcefulness. As a rule, a man playing opposite Stanwyck spends most of the film looking utterly gobsmacked -- or, as one played by Henry Fonda once put it, "cockeyed." She proved that even in the 1940's a woman could be warm and lovable, as well as sexy, without having to repent of having been a card sharper, a gangster's moll, a shoplifter, or a burlesque striptease artist.

That's why I was so surprised to see My Reputation, in which Stanwyck plays a woman who has been sheltered all her life, and is not only conventional but meek and timid. I was also delighted to find that she does it quite well, keeping her voice soft and her smile restrained, and not overdoing the crying scenes, of which there are several.

The film is also worthwhile for the look it offers at old money in the Chicago suburbs in the 1940's. The Stanwyck character's mother is a dragon, but not all bad; the members of the elite little social circle range from ill-natured prigs to good-natured bores to genuine friends. Most fascinating of all are the central character's two sons, ages twelve and fourteen. They are far more convincing and likable than a lot of child characters in classic Hollywood films, and in keeping with their upbringing and milieu, they are more innocent but also far, far more socially poised than children that age tend to be today.

As enjoyable as this film is, however, it does have one serious false note -- spoilers coming -- and that's the love story. Yes, this is another one of those films which is billed as a love story in which the object of the central character's affections is, well, unlovable. They start him off as one of those conceited, swaggering alpha males whose version of sex appeal is to tell the woman -- since she can't apparently be expected to figure it out for herself -- what's wrong with her, when she wants to be kissed, and why he knows what's best for her better than she does (think Clark Gable in It Happened One Night or Robert Mitchum in The Grass is Greener). As tiresome as that is, when My Reputation's male lead finally starts being a little more gentle and respectful towards Stanwyck's character, it's not that much of an improvement. At that point he's merely a rather ordinary man with a regrettable mustache. The viewer is left wondering what she sees in him, especially since a supporting character named Frank -- a family friend as well as her financial adviser in her widowhood -- moons after her the whole time, thinks the world of her, and, from some angles, bears a resemblance to George Clooney.

This may not be Barbara Stanwyck's best film, but it's pleasant to watch, and no weepier than it needs to be.

I'm giving this movie two stars instead of zero because Rosalind Russell is beautifully cast, but it hasn't got a lot else going for it. It can be added to the very long list of films based on books which strip the original of every quality that made it a story worth telling to begin with. It's not only a rotten adaptation, it's a pretty dim excuse for a movie in its own right.

Patrick Dennis's novel *Auntie Mame: an Irreverent Escapade* is not only hysterically funny, it is also very sweet and touching. But -- and this is what the movie missed -- it never gets drippy or sentimental. In the book, Mame has a lot of good points, but she's also really rather wicked. Her relationship with her nephew is largely based on bribery, blackmail, and deceit, even though they really do love each other. They just express it in unconventional ways.

For some reason the film makers decided to portray Gloria as unattractive -- beautiful, but insufferable -- making you wonder why Patrick fell for her to begin with. They also leave out his dalliance with a gold-digging prostitute while in college. I guess including that would have made him look like he had a sleazy side, which wouldn't fit with what the movie was going for.

The movie also ends up making very little sense as a narrative, because it greatly compresses the plot, which should take place over the course of over twenty years, down to about nine years. The film begins, as it should, right before the 1929 crash, but since they rush everything else, it ends well before the war, instead of several years after. So Patrick is only about nineteen when he gets together with Pegeen. Plus, he and Pegeen fall for each other right away, instead of hating each other on sight, then grudgingly growing to like each other after a while. Pegeen's frank disapproval of Mame is also left out.

Naturally films based on books need to do some streamlining and cutting and leaving out, but that's supposed to make the storyline hold together better, not make it fall utterly to pieces. And in this case, the film makers also cheated themselves and their audience out of the chance to dramatize some of the book's most entertaining plot situations.

A complete list of things the film makers changed, left out, or watered down would be far too long for an IMDb review. But to my mind, the movie's chief sin is that all the lovable wickedness, all the depth, all the pathos, and all the personality has been removed from Vera, Pegeen, Brian, Agnes, and especially Mame and Patrick themselves. The political aspects have also been pretty much nixed.

A great deal of effort went into sanitizing Mame and making her merely eccentric, rather than immoral. For instance, she doesn't actually have an affair with Brain -- instead, he hits on her and she heroically wards him off. And Brian turns out to have married Agnes when he runs away with her. Please.

As for Patrick, they portray him as basically a sweet kid who at one point commits the forgivable transgression of dating a debutante. He's a far cry from the wise, perceptive, fallible, smarmy-yet-urbane narrator of the novel.

Over all, this is Patrick Dennis's novel after having been chopped up with an axe and soaked in disinfectant. As other reviewers have noted, the film is dated. The novel, with its sophisticated and irreverent elegance, is timeless.

As an adaptation of Anthony Trollope's brilliant Palliser series, I fail to see how this production could have been any worse. What appears to have happened (this is pure speculation) is that someone unfamiliar with Trollope's work hired novelist Simon Raven to write the series, and Raven decided that Trollope didn't know how to tell his own stories and that he -- Raven -- would tell better ones using the same character names.

For those who have read the books, here is a partial list of reasons why you should steer very clear of this regrettable "adaptation" (spoilers ahead). The following appalling things happen in the TV series: Phineas Finn is sleeping with Mary Flood Jones, and marries her only because she gets pregnant.

The love between Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Dumbello is based entirely on their mutual interest in decimal coinage.

Lady Glencora gets a big long death scene.

Dolly Longstaffe is a friend of Lady Glencora's.

The elder Duke of Omnium is a dirty old man who pinches his nurse.

Burgo Fitzgerald is ugly, and for some bizarre reason, he and his aunt appear to be on the verge of going to bed together.

Almost all of the casting is way off the mark.

All of that delicious, true-to-life dialog, that is a large part of the fun of reading Trollope and that adapts so well to the screen, has been eliminated, and replaced with glib pseudo-witticisms and cheap innuendos.

All of the novels' thoughtful and searching treatment of character has been drained away and replaced with a lot of utterly uninteresting people in drably sensational situations. The plots have been altered and the emotional interest removed entirely.

This is a very, very incomplete list of things Raven changed -- not one of them for the better. Raven also added no end of scenes of stupid hijinks which not only are not in any of the books, but are not engaging in any way themselves.

All told, this production is a shabby and disrespectful treatment of some truly great novels, and has little merit as anything else. I was excited when I first found out that the Pallisers had been adapted for the screen as a miniseries. I figured, with such great material to work with, how bad can it be? The answer is, *astoundingly* bad. If you admire Trollope even dimly, stay very far away from this utter stinkbomb. If you want to see a Trollope novel adapted to the screen with both fidelity and artistic competence, see Masterpiece Theatre's recent production of *He Knew He Was Right*.