Spoilers herein.
There's a remarkably intelligent film hidden in here. I love watching old Welles films and trying to imagine the parts that the studios hacked out. And so here. The original idea was to have a deeply self-aware film, moreso than `The Player.' It was to have leveraged the shift inherent in a film musical : at some times, the audience is invited to see the story as representative of life, and at other times as representative of a show. Brooks puts tons of this stuff in `The Simpsons' and one can see the notion in his other TeeVee projects as well.
But as I gather, this was actually supposed to be intelligent. Prince at this point was into self-referential songs and apparently increased the folding of an already baroque structure of who's looking at who. But (as with Welles), the studio financiers thought the paying audience was too dumb for all that, so brought in script doctor Elaine May (She of `Ishtar,' but nonetheless famously valuable as an invisible fixer).
She straightened this film out so that a moron could understand it. Now it is not about the film business, but an ordinary sop about a dad discovering his precocious daughter. But you can see the joints where clever stuff might have been and the notion that parenting is a performance.
They have kept one memorable Nolte moment. He is preparing to transform to a role. Watch how he changes, and also plays the meta-actor managing that change, and at the same time plays Nolte creating all three. It is his finest moment on film. I wonder if we will ever see the original version?
Ted's Rating -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.
There's a remarkably intelligent film hidden in here. I love watching old Welles films and trying to imagine the parts that the studios hacked out. And so here. The original idea was to have a deeply self-aware film, moreso than `The Player.' It was to have leveraged the shift inherent in a film musical : at some times, the audience is invited to see the story as representative of life, and at other times as representative of a show. Brooks puts tons of this stuff in `The Simpsons' and one can see the notion in his other TeeVee projects as well.
But as I gather, this was actually supposed to be intelligent. Prince at this point was into self-referential songs and apparently increased the folding of an already baroque structure of who's looking at who. But (as with Welles), the studio financiers thought the paying audience was too dumb for all that, so brought in script doctor Elaine May (She of `Ishtar,' but nonetheless famously valuable as an invisible fixer).
She straightened this film out so that a moron could understand it. Now it is not about the film business, but an ordinary sop about a dad discovering his precocious daughter. But you can see the joints where clever stuff might have been and the notion that parenting is a performance.
They have kept one memorable Nolte moment. He is preparing to transform to a role. Watch how he changes, and also plays the meta-actor managing that change, and at the same time plays Nolte creating all three. It is his finest moment on film. I wonder if we will ever see the original version?
Ted's Rating -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.