Here's To The Ladies Who Lunge Part Three: Why the Lady Lunged
Hi Everybody and welcome back to my continued riffs on producer, William Conrad and my obsession with a certain film of his!
So,
Where was I? Where was I?…Oh, yes!
An American Dream! A film adapted from Norman Mailer’s serialized novel of the same name. Please feel free to back pedal through a Vlog or two of mine for more background on both Mr. Conrad and my sudden obsession for his thickly sliced wedge of putrescent American Pie Pulp.
Both the film and the novel that it’s based on begin with a battle royal between a husband and wife complexly entangled for every detrimental reason imaginable.
What’s so very interesting at the heart of this melee is the confusion of their sexual role playing as they partner for a deadly last round in their wedding ring.
In reading Mailer’s prose, there’s a very evident sense of fear of the country’s machismo playing itself out. The mores of American culture is changing rapidly as sexual freedom is already beginning to threaten the country’s puritan foundation. What you see is not what it seems to be. The man at the center of this film adaptation of the novel is Stephen Rojack, played by actor, Stuart Whitman. And, we’re about to descend with him into a nightmare reflective of his own shallow and soulless ambitions.
Rojack’s wife Deborah poses a threatening answer—to his weakening machismo. He’s maybe a bit too comfortable inside of this his newfound feminine side and his choice to supplicate to her. Deborah, herself is trying to reason with some equally strange, newfound vein under her own skin. We’ve been told that she’s something like—the second wealthiest woman in the world. She’s supported her husband’s rise to success as a tremendous TV personality. And the masculine toxicity she suddenly wears is turning unpredictably violent. Rojack is far too weak to supply her insatiable demands. And, his wimpish willingness to be humiliated strengthens her to emasculate him further.
Finally, during an extraordinarily violent fight between them she takes her boredom to an uncertain and uncontrollable extreme. At this point, she’s pumping him full of every bilious truth she can target in his direction—using every humiliation she can muster up. Finally she struggles to lift a huge stone from the penthouse garden—lunges furiously at him and hurdles it at his head. Rojack, in a reawakening fit of rage, rushes her and inadvertently forces her on to the wall of the balcony where she quickly begins to lose her balance.
And, then there’s a precious, desperate moment between them. For only an instant—we see the love that’s still there between them. And we feel both sickened and saddened. She struggles for the safety of his hand. He must choose. He pauses…Too long. She loses her balance and plummets to the street—hits it hard—is quite graphically run over by a Mafioso kingpin’s car.
And, thus begins Rojack’s hellbound spiral. I kept thinking all through my reading the book and watching this film adaptation, that Mailer was struggling with his own male identity. This underworld he’s descending into is minus the promise of a Eurydice. There’s nothing either romantic or heroic for him to gain during this journey other than the self realization of his own narcissism and greed. The inhabitants of this underworld are a bit like the motorcyclists in Jean Cocteau’s Orphee. Just looking at them, you know that there’s a comeuppance awaiting him. You see—the mafia wants revenge on Rojack for the quagmire that’s been uncovered due to their Don’s car running over the wife he waited too long to save from her deadly fall…And, this my friends is the first twenty minutes of An American Dream.
And…
Just look at the insane threat portrayed by the film’s villainous coterie of mafioso types. They appear to be a stable of sexy, black suited gay men. Without giving too much away, you’re not quite sure how to define the lead’s demise once he walks inside the room where these men—pistols drawn—are poised and waiting for him with very lascivious looks on their faces. For Rojack’s part, there’s a look of surrender panning over his face as well as what looks like excitement heralding what’s to come—the little death married to the greatest death of all. Orgiastic gunfire ensues. We’re left in a lonely stairwell. There’s no salvation here. Only the plaintive and exceptionally beautiful score of Johnny Mandel’s. And, we’re exhausted.
Particularly due to Conrad’s control of the reins. Unlike so many contemporary films by prominent directors, An American Dream is relentlessly lean in its storytelling, permitting our subconscious to race within its fever dream pace. The film’s photography and direction never call attention to themselves. Director, Robert Gist—an actor himself—must be given a wealth of credit for his ability to stitch so many colorful extremities so seamlessly together and to do so with such great restraint. Although, Gist had directed several TV shows—as far as I’ve been able to research—this is his only motion picture. And if I might be permitted to speculate—as his relatively short marriage to actress Agnes Moorehead took place during her filming of The Conqueror; that notorious film I referred you to in an earlier Vlog—it’s quite possible that he and William Conrad—who played Moorehead’s son in the film—actually met on that desert bomb site location. Regardless, both he and Conrad meld as their visual flush rises here.
Generally, when a fever breaks, there’s a quick kind of shock reawakening us to the blessed familiarity of life we’ve missed for a spell. But, in Conrad and Gist’s underworld vision, we find ourselves abandoned with little to no oxygen. We’ve sunk a bit too low now. As I’ve mentioned previously, William Conrad’s body of film work produced in the mid 60s is already rife exploitation—some lighthearted and some sober. But, with An American Dream the operative adjective is delirious.
The L.A. smog and the mythic excesses the city represents have inoculated us temporarily with a giddy serum that’s proof positive of the power of this kind of trash. Garbage has a transformative purpose in nature. And, in a pinch, it also acts as a terrific smelling salt. Just take a whiff of what’s been at work inside of your compost container. You’ll note its power and how we’re all of us in some way connected to it.
I want to make note of A Time For Love, Johnny Mandel’s Oscar nominated song from this film. It lends an impressively melancholic and anchoring tone to the whole enterprise. The song in my opinion makes even greater use of a spiraling downward melodic line than Mandel’s Oscar winning song The Shadow of Your Smile from Vincent Minelli’s The Sandpiper—which in itself is trash classic produced in the kind of brush stroke flashes only MGM’s studio was capable of.
But, I digress—More on the takeaway that Norman Mailer, William Conrad and Robert Gist’s An American Dream has inspired Char-Len to produce…When I return here next time. Until then…
Be Well.
And, stay engaged.
