MADAME X: Blu-ray (Universal-International, 1966) Kino Lorber
The tear-tracks
run deep and moist in producer, Ross Hunter’s soapy melodrama, Madame X (1966), directed by David Lowell Rich. The property, based
on a relatively obscure 1908 play by French writer, Alexandre Bisson, first
found its legs as a viable movie melodrama in 1928, starring Ruth Chatterton.
From here, the machinations of the self-sacrificing mother-figure would be
endlessly revived, most famously by first lady of the American theater, Helen
Hayes, for MGM’s 1931 tear-jerker, The
Sin of Madelon Claudet (actually, rooted in Edward Knoblock’s similarly
themed play, Lullaby). Hunter’s
reboot sticks closely to the original movie, but downplays the sin, while ramping
up the syrup, mostly to good effect, if ever-so-slightly truncating the backstory
by which this shop girl of no social standing, Holly Parker (reincarnated by a
slightly over-the-hill, Lana Turner) finds momentary happiness in the arms of wealthy
heir-apparent, Clayton Anderson (John Forsythe), much to the chagrin of his
steely-eyed mother, Estelle (Constance Bennett). Lana Turner’s career, post Peyton Place (1957) was awash in some
very good soap operas, including 1959’s Imitation
of Life (another remake), 1960’s Portrait
in Black, and, 1961’s By Love
Possessed. Madame X is Turner’s
swan song to these sorrowful women whose substance is obscured by their lack of
blue-blooded/blue-book social standing in the register of life. And, despite
Turner’s age (at 45, she is a little long-in-the-tooth to be playing the
winsome ingenue of child-bearing years), she manages, rather skillfully to wring
genuine blubber from the audience in her penultimate death scene, briefly
reunited with the adult son she was forced to give up decades before; then, to
spare her unknowing, though no less enterprising and ambitious husband the
shame of a public scandal.
Madame X hails from a certain epoch and cultural mindset in
American movie-making that implicitly demands sin be countermanded by a
punishment as exacting as the crime. In the case of women, merely a heated
glance of desire for a man other than her husband was considered sufficient
enough to illicit panged emotional consternation. How Gilbert and Sullivan can
one get? So, Holly Parker falls on very hard times; ostracized by her family,
threatened with incarceration, to live obscurely with the tortured anvil of regret
precariously dangling overhead (this, to deny her even faint happiness with any
other man), and ultimately to succumb to the self-inflicted vices of strong
drink and prostitution, intent on destroying herself before Mother Nature can.
How very Shakespearean, indeed! Ross
Hunter (born Martin Terry Fuss) in the mid-1960’s, did for producing what Douglas
Sirk had for directing in the mid-1950’s; create a milieu of featherweight and
frothy melodramas, substituting glamour in lieu of the advancing strain in cinema
for reality. There was nothing in Hunter’s early life to suggest he would one
day become the purveyor of such uber-sophisticated three-hanky weepies. He
might have gone on as a B-grade actor, featured in semi-successful low-grade
musicals, if not for a perilous battle with penicillin poisoning that stalled
his acting career. Re-working his way through the ranks, first, as a dialogue
coach, then, associate producer, and finally, his own man, given the
opportunity to prove his mettle at Universal-International; by the mid-fifties,
Hunter’s apprenticeship included working for Sirk on Take Me To Town (1953), a middling western that nevertheless
brought him to the attention of its star, Ann Sheridan.
As producer,
Hunter broke out with 1954’s remake of 1935’s Magnificent Obsession, with Sirk in the director’s chair, and, 1957’s
Tammy and the Bachelor – resounding hits,
followed up by a pair of outstanding efforts: Pillow Talk - Doris Day’s biggest money-maker to date, and, Imitation of Life (both made and released
in 1959). At $6.4 million, Imitation’s
take-home was rivaled only by Pillow
Talk; both picture’s tying for 4th highest box office gross of
the year, putting Hunter on very solid ground with his bosses. While Hunter’s reputation with audiences
exponentially grew along with their admiration for his work, his movies were
outrightly discounted by the critics who viewed them as melodramatic mush,
over-the-top tripe, made for and by dummies. Hunter remained unapologetic for this. “I gave the public what they wanted,” he
reasoned, “A chance to dream, live
vicariously, and to see beautiful women, jewels, gorgeous clothes and melodrama.”
And, if this fifties’ trend had not proven the soundness in his method, the
madness continued well into the sixties with offerings like Portrait in Black, and Midnight Lace (both in 1960). In some
ways, Madame X catches both Hunter
and Lana Turner’s careers on the down swing. Despite signing a lucrative 7-year
contract with Universal in 1964, the movies that would immediately follow it never
recaptured Hunter’s glory days as the pied-piping peddler of frabjous froth.
Fresh from his
success, playing the deranged uncle to a missing girl in Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Keir Dullea was chosen for the
pivotal role of Holly’s adult son, Clay Jr. (Ted Quinn, as a boy). With his
arresting blue eyes filling with tears, Dullea lends a delicious sense of
conflicted loss to the pivotal highlight of the picture: Clay’s defense of Holly
on a charge of murder, all the while not knowing she is his mother. “I knew I needed one scene the public would
remember,” Ross Hunter recalls, “Now
we have a mother and child relationship that should be seen by parents and
children alike…and I believe that, for the first time since The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana is
giving a really great performance.” Indeed, Turner’s range, outside the
realm of sexpot and sweater girl was limited. In hindsight, Turner always
tended to be at her best on the screen when cast as an emotionally damaged,
slightly wistful heroine, melding her obvious charms onto some tragically
unshakable characters. Her best performances to date had been sporadic; 1941’s Ziegfeld Girl, in which she played the
ill-stricken chorine, Sheila Regan; 1946’s The
Postman Always Rings Twice, where she smoldered sadistic sex appeal, albeit
with a fragile Achilles heel; 1948’s The
Three Musketeers, as the deliciously devious Lady De Winter, 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful – as Georgia,
the impressionable movie queen, and, 1957’s Peyton Place, where she assumed what would otherwise have been
considered ‘the un-glamorous part’ of Constance McKenzie – a working single
mother with an adult daughter.
The real problem
with Turner’s later career, is that it repeatedly tried to cast her as this perpetually
young and majestic sexpot and/or ingenue. Marginally, Madame X suffers from Turner’s miscasting as the younger Holly. Turner,
no stranger to hard living and partying with the wrong kind of men (Turner
would have – and did – call them ‘exciting’),
looked her 45-years, despite make-up artists, Bud Westmore and Del Armstrong’s
best efforts to ‘turn back the clock’.
As such, the men in Holly’s life must reflect a certain vintage already as bygone
as the dinosaurs by 1966; John Forsythe, in a role originally pigeon-holed for
Gig Young (whose agent asked for too much money to partake), as the ambitious
statesman, Clayton Anderson, and, Ricardo Montalban, well past his prime as the
Latin Lothario, herein laughably playing the WASP, Phil Benton, on whose
misfortune the delicate balance of Holly’s own welfare seismically shifts. Forsythe,
who would achieve ever-lasting success much later, as the dashing oil tycoon,
Blake Carrington on the runaway smash hit soap opera, Dynasty (1981-89) is tepidly charming herein; his strength, at
least at this point in his career, his nondescript ability to blend into the
scenery as the unknowing and devoted husband, who believes his mother when she
lies and tells him Holly was accidentally drowned at sea – a ruse, predicated
on blackmail to get this perceived social climber gone from the Anderson’s ancestral
family digs. As for Montalban, he is about as WASP-ish as Cesar Romero – a miscalculation
we are happily rid of early on. In his red velvet, lounge lizard smoking
jacket, Montalban oozes a sort of disreputable and smarmy sex appeal that any
woman of easy virtue could admire. Aside: at one point, I almost expected
Montalban to break out with a fractured rendition of ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ – the Oscar-winning ditty he actually warbles
in 1949’s Neptune’s Daughter to seduce
a slightly inebriated Esther Williams.
Too bad for
Holly, she is not one of those gals. She has merely been using Phil as a
substitute to placate her need for affection – denied by Clay, who is too busy
building up his portfolio of international credits to remain at his wife’s side
for more than an afternoon or two. He even cuts short his Christmas holidays to
take on a diplomatic post in North Africa. Dejected and bored with her position
as lady to the manor wed, Holly drowns her sorrows in innocuous ‘dates’ with
Phil and occasional fund-raising exercises with her new ‘best’ friend, Mimsie (the
ever-elegant Virginia Grey, in a thankless part). Eventually, Phil makes his
intentions known. He wants Holly to ditch Clay and move in with him. Holly,
however, is deeply wounded by the inference she is ‘that kind’ of woman, who could abandon her son and the man whom,
in fact, she continues to love, merely to satisfy her curiosities for how the
other half lives and loves. After a particularly nasty row, Phil strikes Holly.
The pair struggle at the top of the stairs; Holly, accidentally pushing Phil to
his death on the landing below. Holly panics. A knock at the front door from
the detective Estelle hired to keep tabs on her daughter-in-law, forces Holly
to flee to the relative safety of the Anderson’s estate.
Only there, Estelle
is waiting like a venomous spider to strike. She informs Holly of her primal
doubts about the marriage; how she never embraced Holly as anything better than
a common shop girl who happened to hit pay dirt in Clayton’s arms. Estelle
offers Holly only two options; either, she faces the music in a court of law,
for which she will surely lose all credibility and bring abject shame upon the
family, or, even more fancifully, she will fake her own death – presumably drowned
while vacationing with Estelle on the family yacht. Estelle has already forged
a passport with an alternate identity, bought plane tickets to Denmark for her
midnight getaway, and, promised Holly a handsome stipend in perpetuity, to be
administered, even in the event of Estelle’s natural death, by the family’s
attorney, sworn to secrecy. Thinking
only of Clay, his political ambitions, and, what a trial would do to their son,
Holly agrees to disappear from everyone’s life. Alas, in Denmark she is
surrounded by chronic reminders of the husband and son she gave up in America.
Suffering a nervous breakdown and collapse in the snow, Holly is rescued by renown
pianist and composer, Christian Torben (John Van Dreelen) who, apart from
offering her food, shelter and a place to recuperate from a particularly
virulent bout of pneumonia, afterward offers Holly his hand in marriage.
Unable to bring
herself to explain the reasons why she can never love again, Holly forsakes
Christian’s kindness and vanishes without a trace. From this point on, Holly’s
life is plagued by a horrendous downward spiral. She discovers Absinthe, the
highly toxic, anise-flavored spirit and quickly becomes a raging addict. Her
looks suffer and she turns to prostitution to pay the bills. Bouncing around,
from Rotterdam to Buenos Aries, Holly’s real identity is eventually unearthed
in Mexico City by Dan Sullivan (Burgess Meredith) – an unscrupulous con artist.
Unable to convince Holly to play along
with his get-rich-quick scheme, Dan nevertheless plots to blackmail the
Andersons by revealing Holly’s whereabouts. Unable to convince Dan to remain
silent, Holly instead seizes Dan’s gun and shoots him dead. Surrendering to the
police, Holly gives no identity and, appearing to experience some sort of
grief-stricken catatonia. She is labeled in the press as ‘Madame X’. Enterprising
young attorney, Clayton Anderson Jr. takes up the case with a zealous resolve
to exonerate Holly. Unaware she is his mother Clay Jr. is nevertheless
compelled with uncanny drive to judiciously fight for his client. At home, Clay
Jr. tells his father about the mysterious woman. In reply, Clay and Estelle
attend the trial the next afternoon.
As prosecuting
attorney, Michael Spalding (Warren Stevens) gears up for his venomous
condemnation of the infamous Madame X, Clay Jr. achieves his objectives by
appealing to the jury’s sense of fair play over moral turpitude. Madame X was not
the instigator of this crime, but the intended victim of a horrible deviant
whose rap sheet is as long as the long arm of the law. It was not murder. It
was self-defense. At this point, Holly speaks up – tearfully declaring her life
utterly worthless and fit only for the executioner’s chair. Her impassioned
plea for death ends with her collapse. Ravaged by years of abuse, she is already
dying. Despite her startling physical decay, Clay Sr. suddenly realizes Madame
X is his ex-wife. Taken to her jail cell, and attended by a kindly physician
(Frank Maxwell), Clay Jr. begs Holly to fight for her life, for the life of the
adult son she has never known, although he still does not realize the man in
question is him. Without divulging too much, Holly gingerly brushes aside a
shock of Clay Jr.’s hair, and tenderly grazes his cheek with her gloved hand.
She sincerely thanks Clay Jr. for his efforts at trial and informs him that he
is a man whom any woman would be proud to call her son. With these last words,
Holly succumbs to heart failure. Attended by his father, a tearful Clay explains
his bizarre attraction to this woman, and Clay Sr. – without revealing the
truth – nods sympathetically his understanding.
In these final
moments, Madame X reveals its
genuinely affecting ‘lump-in-the-throat’ denouement. Lana Turner, in full
age-ravaged make-up, never overplays her hand. Ironically, an immediate
parallel can be drawn between this moment in the picture and the fated finale to
1941’s Ziegfeld Girl’s Sheila Regan –
a chorine, who climbed her way to the top of her profession, fell from grace
with a spate of disreputable lovers, and, finally into an alcoholic bender,
from which, even after sobering up, her heart fails. Sheila, descends a grand
staircase in the theater, with remembrances of her halcyon days as a Ziegfeld
girl in top form, suddenly to collapse with a look of wounded pride writ large
across her face, discovered and comforted by former fiancée, Gilbert Young
(James Stewart) and ex-Ziegfeld girl, Sandra Kolter (Hedy Lamarr). Nearly 26 years separate these two
performances by Turner. And yet, the parallels in the arc of suffrage each
character endures are uncanny. Madame X also benefits from Frank
Skinner’s syrupy score, full of Rachmaninoff-inspired piano concertos and
orchestral flourishes befitting such epic melodrama. The production values here
could scarcely be better, shooting at 10236 Charing Cross Road in Holmby Hills,
and Greystone Park for the Anderson mansion, with further work achieved on
sound stages and back lot facades at Universal Studios. Incidentally, 10236
Charing Cross Road would later garner a more infamous reputation as – wait for
it – the Playboy Mansion!
Jean Holloway’s
screenplay is a bit uneven, as is David Lowell Rich’s direction. Rich really
does skirt the preliminary stuff, using a series of TV-inspired dissolves and
swipes to expedite the story from the moment Clayton brings home his new bride,
to the minute when Holly tearfully, and rather cryptically, bids her husband
goodbye by telephone before faking her own death; the back story shoe-horned
into a scant 27 minutes of screen time. I suppose Rich is anxious to get to the
real meat of this tale. But we really do lose something regarding Holly and
Clay – lives presumably lived serenely – for at least five years before this
cruel bait and switch. It is enough for Lana Turner to wear some wonderful Jean
Louis gowns during these opening scenes – one amazing frock trotted out after
the next – and furs, and, diamonds. And Turner, a clothes horse if ever one
existed – proves, as though it were required, why her hourglass figure was so
desirable to so many men for so many good years (a lot of mileage there). Alas,
Turner’s face is hard – or rather, has not held up quite as confidently as her
body. She looks disproportionately strained and careworn in her early scenes
where she is supposed to be the ‘young’ newlywed. And for this, we must, perhaps, blame the
pall of murder than clung to Turner’s own reputation after her lover, Mafioso,
Johnny Stompanato was found with a kitchen knife in his belly; the crime, forever-after
attributed to Turner’s dazed and confused daughter from a previous marriage,
Cheryl Crane. There are, in fact, a good
many parallels between Holly Parker’s fast lifestyle and the bittersweet
recollections Turner herself had accumulated in life by 1966. In hindsight, Turner is channeling these truths
to infuse her fictional counterpart with a raw emotional core. Fifty plus years
later, Madame X remains the
benefactor of Turner’s own tragedies and triumphs. The picture’s success is
well-deserved. Turner gives one of a handful of truly outstanding performances,
likely to be remembered for a very long while, yet to come.
Madame X arrives on Blu-ray via Universal’s alliance with Kino
Lorber. It should be pointed out Brit-based, Panamint Cinema had this one in
hi-def nearly three years ago, in a region B locked 1080p offering. This Region
‘A’ derivative looks virtually identical to that disc. Technically, it’s a shade
darker with marginally ‘warmer’ skin tones. It also exhibits the same
age-related damage – sporadic, but present. There are a handful of shots to
appear as though bathed in a milky wash; colors suddenly wan, contrast weak,
and, with a decided loss of fine details and film grain. Uncertain exactly what
is going on here. Perhaps, a dupe negative or second-generation print master to
compensate for missing frames?!? Most of Madame
X will surely not disappoint and that is a blessing, considering how
slap-dash Uni has been of late with its deep catalog releases via third-party distributors.
We get a 2.0 DTS mono. It’s passable, but only just. Dialogue is predictably
tinny and Skinner’s score lacking bass tonality. Kino has splurged on a new
audio commentary from Lee Gambin and Eloise Ross – rich in history and analysis,
and, well worth the price of admission. The
only other extra are badly worn trailers for this movie and other product Kino
is distributing. Bottom line: Madame X
is a great tear-jerker with a heartrending finale. Enjoy, but bring plenty of Kleenex.
Highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
1
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