Laura (1944)
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nfaust1 — 14 years ago(June 11, 2011 10:17 PM)
Preminger's 1971 SUCH GOOD FRIENDS has just been released on DVD and I must say, watching it was a revelation. Considered by most, even those who champion Preminger, to be a misfire, seeing it now, years after its release and all the bad press it got, I found it a startling and personal film, brilliantly acted and terribly moving.
It was obviously shot on a low budget, and indeed some of the film seems at first uneven. But if one is able to look past all that, you find a radical, tough as nails look at the fragile reality of one's life, punched over and over again when the illusions that one filters what's false and disappointing are stripped away.
Preminger's jackhammer style, the way he reveals his main character's life has often been critically assessed as failed comedy. I don't see it like that. I see an angry, bitter look at all that is false in this world Preminger puts on the screen. His film making style does not allow us to feel for the main character the way we ordinarily would in a movie that merely sides with Dyan Cannon. Instead, we view her constantly in the center of so many silly, mundane, self centered characters, swirling around, while the main focus remains entirely on the life or death event that anchors the entire story. We are placed in Julie's shoes and we understand and ultimately empathize with her as the shifts of emotion emerge when the truth slowly and clearly comes to the surface.
Watching the film, there are moments when characters talk to Julie that felt as if Preminger was speaking directly to his audience, to me, if you will; his celebrated directorial discretion intact, but uncannily clear and personal. When the liver specialist, played by a non actor, frankly levels with Julie about the kind of care her husband has received in the hospital, it's clearly a character's stance placed within the narrative, speaking to us from the heart of the film's director. Yes, Elaine May perhaps wrote the lines, and they were perhaps meant to be funny, but Preminger's choice of actor removes the safety net that comedy would allow and makes us hear what's being said just as Julie must hear it. There is no safety net, there is nothing funny about it.
I think SUCH GOOD FRIENDS is an undeniable masterpiece.