ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1970) Paramount Home Video
No Broadway to Hollywood hybrid musical is more aggravatingly,
enervating anemic than Vincente Minnelli’s On a Clear Day You Can See
Forever (1970) – begun in high spirits by Minnelli (who hadn’t made a musical
in 10 years, and hadn’t even worked in pictures in 6), with a certifiable box
office titan – Barbra Streisand – as his muse. On stage, the score by Burton Lane
and Alan Jay Lerner was as mesmeric and handsome as anything yet written, its
two epicurean ballads, ‘Come Back to Me’ and the title song, perennially
pleasing and covered by recording artists of varying pedigree since its debut
in 1965. Regrettably, Lerner’s book – very loosely based on John L. Balderston’s
1926 novel, Berkeley Square, was a jeremiad to psychoanalysis in which a
doctor becomes his own worst patient – made impatient and fallible by his
unanticipated romantic yearning for a dotty denizen of desire – the clairvoyant
chain-smoker, Daisy Gamble (Barbara Harris on the stage, Barbra Streisand in this
movie). Through repeated indulgences in the then fashionable custom of
hypnotherapy, the good doctor, Marc Chabot (played with leaden resolve by Yves Montand)
becomes enamored with the girl’s reincarnated former self – Lady Melinda
Winifred Waine Tentrees – who cavorts rhapsodically, suggestively to caress her
heaving cleavage, hand-stitched into some truly stunning Cecil Beaton costumes,
showing off Streisand’s unusually ample assets situated just south of her voice
box.
The Broadway production of On A Clear Day You Can
See Forever debuted at the Mark Hellinger Theater on October 17, 1965. It
barely lasted until June 11, 1966. Three previews and three Tony’s did not
improve its outlook – either with the critics or audiences, who kept it afloat
for 280 performances. Considered as both ‘strained and muddled’ with ‘cumbersome’
production numbers sandwiched into its featherweight plot, despite its tepid
and brief Broadway run, Paramount had great faith that, with the right cast, On
a Clear Day You Can See Forever could be a rousing big-screen road show a
la the custom, ilk and box office cache of a Gigi (1958) or My Fair
Lady (1964). They ought to have known better, already having spent profligately
on another Lerner show – Paint Your Wagon (1969) to emerge disastrously
the year before. Had ‘Clear Day’ come on the heels of either
Lerner and Loewe spectacular, at least the mood and timing might have been
right – or rather, enough to salvage the program. Alas, almost from the moment
the Panavision screen opened to its full aperture, On a Clear Day You Can
See Forever became disenchanted with even the basic precepts of the hybrid
musical; Minnelli’s sumptuous retreats into Regency England where – rather transparently
– his métier and interests lay. Too bad our story is set primarily in
present-day, New York (reconstituted almost entirely from California locations
and Paramount sets), the lilt and sway of the Lerner/Burton score not enough to
lull an audience on the ether of its nostalgia. The real problem with ‘Clear
Day’ is it sets up our level of expectation for another high-gloss,
escapist musical fantasy to celebrate Streisand’s formidable gifts as a singer,
but eventually settles on just another cheap excuse for strapping on the
conventions of the musical mélange to a highly problematic and convoluted story
– not to end, optimistically, with a flourish of hearts and flowers.
Streisand is, of course, in very fine form – extolling
every last drop of pathos from the songs – one of the irrefutable unique
musical stylists of all time, with an intuitive verve for finding truthful
poignancy in a lyric. As a performer, Streisand has never been anything less
than genuine, her larger-than-life persona, reaching out from the screen with
long, tenacious and three-dimensional bursts of energy that not only lasso the
back of the house with her infectious blend of Yiddish slick and chanteuse-emoting
soul, but absolutely, to command our attention from her first appearance to its
last. When she is briefly on the fringes of a scene, the artistic vacuum her
absence creates is enough to anchor even the ardent daydreamer to his chair
with a reminder this is only a movie – and not a very good one at that! The
problem here is Daisy Gamble is already a girl two sizes too big for her own
britches, and, adding la Streisand to the mix, an artist never to be contained
by the movies, she not only dominates, but imposingly towers with Daisy’s
unattractive hang-ups. Are we meant to find Daisy’s five-pack-a-day nicotine
addiction or E.S.P. charming? While Streisand does absolutely everything to compel
us to love her alter ego, the trick of such blind adoration is never entirely
licked. It isn’t Streisand’s fault either, as the object of her affections, Dr.
Marc Chabot is played by Yves Montand – who oddly enough, typifies the stuffy
academic alright, but fails to ignite any genuine passion in his on-screen
chemistry with Streisand. This is antiseptic at best, and wooden to a fault at
its absolute worst.
When first they meet – painfully ‘cute’ – the
professor and his muse are mutually engaged by his treatment of hypnosis, meant
to cure her smoking habit. Instead, his efforts regress the girl to the early
19th century, where Daisy is revealed to be the reincarnation of a courtesan
inside the Prince Regent's court. Through a transferal of guilt, Daisy’s alter
ego woos the good doctor into a projection of her own sexual fantasies, conversely
to transpose his desire for Melinda onto Daisy instead. All this existential love-making
must have greatly appealed, at least thematically, to Minnelli, previously to
have exorcised such lithe and ethereal leitmotifs as a mortal naïve fallen romantically
for an angel in Yolanda and the Thief (1945). Unlike Yolanda,
the action in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is split between two
competing – rather than converging – timelines. Worse, Lerner’s screenplay is heavily laden
with the kinds of rapid-fire repartee for which Streisand can easily run circles
around, but also deprives the story of its more severe and elementally romantic
elements. Asked by Dr. Chabot if she enjoys ‘painting’, Streisand’s ditzy dame
swats back, “I don't know. I’ve gotten so used to wallpaper.” In and of
themselves, the lines are razor-sharp and delivered with Streisand’s inimitably
playful and laissez faire charisma. Alas, the screenplay often artificially
plies the audience with such zingers as a sort of highly structured, and even
more obvious foreplay to introduce another song. As such, On A Clear Day quickly
devolves into a sort of wistful, but jejune hodgepodge of misappropriated clichés
and conventions, with Streisand’s knee-knocking knob, less of an innocent, and
more of a manipulative and highly mannered, if slightly mumbling mensch.
Minnelli is as seemingly hampered by Paramount’s
last-minute budget-slashing, effectively to transform his initially planned ‘road
show’ spectacular into barely two-hours of Vaudevillian hokum and hypnotherapy
hoopla. Worse, production designer, John DeCuir, generally known for his
elephantiasis, herein goes small, with genuinely unprepossessing sets that box
Minnelli’s creative camera eye and stifle his usual genius for generating
interesting screen compositions. Dr. Chabot’s office and apartment, where much
of the present-day action takes place, is musty, angular and drab; Minnelli,
relying on a thoroughly conventional series of reverse shots with actors’ heads
framed in center medium close-up, but with a lot of empty, dead and
slightly-out-of-focus space to the left and right. The moments that tease us
with inferences something truly unique and fascinating might be cresting on the
horizon all involve Minnelli’s wholehearted investment in the picture’s many
flashbacks shot at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion. Minnelli's passion for art and
décor transforms these into visual feasts of Regency period England – Streisand’s
schizoid Daisy, set apart from this fashion-plate pastiche to Beau Brummel-ed aristocracy
in a stunningly handsome white crystal and silver décolletage; an absolute triumph
of Cecil Beaton’s costuming.
Alas, now it is Streisand’s dame du jour who seems
modestly out of sorts – clutching a fluted crystal chalice of champagne with
long Dresden fingernails, seductively to sip from the sparkling glass shot
through heavy gauze, before modestly caressing her Empire-waisted and bound
together cleavage with a ‘come hither’ stare – meant to illustrate Melinda’s
temptress quality, but coming across more as the ‘camp’ vamp. As Minnelli’s
camera swirls around the mind-bogglingly beautiful banquet hall, laid out for a
feast, completed by a Chippendale dining table to stretch into infinity, and,
Streisand’s ‘internal’ voice, magnificently trilling ‘Love with All the
Trimmings’, Minnelli’s love-in with 19th century nirvana reaches
its orgasmic crescendo – the likes of which none of the other songs ever manage
to recapture – not the beautifully staged ‘duet’ between Streisand and
Streisand – ‘Go to Sleep’, nor, ‘What Did I Have That I Don't Have
Now?’, nor even the one standout afforded Yves Montand, ‘Come Back to Me’
– Minnelli’s belated valentine to Manhattan, captured mostly in overhead
helicopter pans and passes over the city at dusk. As we lose two of the Broadway show’s biggest
ensemble numbers in this screen translation (‘Wait Till We’re Sixty-Five’
and ‘ESP’ – the latter, originally conceived by Minnelli as a psychedelic
swirl to illustrate, if only to himself, he had somehow managed to embrace the ‘youth quake’
of sixties’ counterculture, progressing with the times), the parceled off
infrequency of remaining songs – and total absence of any choreographed dancing
to accommodate these bigger, splashier moments, already punctuated by the score
– leave both the melodrama and comedy deprived of the very reason to see the
movie – because it is a musical!
The men in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever lack
range, even in their ineffectiveness. Yves Montand’s Chabot is decidedly
playing Bud Abbott to Streisand’s Lou Costello, mostly to feed Streisand her
next smarmy quip, delivered in such fractured Yiddish it occasionally requires subtitles
to make sense, or ever-so-slightly to offer Daisy the subtlest push in the
direction of another song. Mercifully, we are spared Jack Nicholson’s big
screen debut as the peddler of ‘Who Is There Among Us Who Knows’ – an ineffectual
ballad for which Nicholson’s thin vocals survived the original soundtrack album
but not Minnelli’s last-minute editing to pare down his part as Daisy’s
guitar-strumming suitor, Tad Pringle. Hence, the show belongs to Streisand,
gingerly guided by Minnelli – the two, hitting things off famously, their symbiosis
only to enliven her performance. What is inconceivable here is playwright, Alan
Jay Lerner’s complete mangling of the book, its stifling and obsessive
derailments into largely self-indulgent vignettes. Relying on the songs to
create depth of character, Lerner otherwise plays a game of connect the dots,
occasionally to veer into the stratosphere, just long enough to make us forget
there seems to be no point to this story; the finale – leaving Daisy and Chabot
right back where they started - isolated and unhappily ever after in their
respective relationships. If, as the title suggests, on any given ‘clear day’
one can see forever, then the horizon line by which Lerner and Minnelli have
concoct their storytelling is constantly relocating its destination point just
a little further off into the distance to delay its highly uncertain last act.
One cannot blame the picture’s failure entirely on their shortsighted hope
Streisand’s magical talents as singer/comedienne alone would pull the
proverbial rabbit out of its hat. Indeed, while not a mega hit at the box
office, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever did respectable enough
business, earning $14 million against its $10 million budget.
Reputation is working against On A Clear Day You
Can See Forever. All of the viable reasons dictating ‘star salaries’ are
wrapped up in the enigma that is Barbra Streisand. But beyond her, there
really is not much of a show here. More recently embraced for its cult standing
as a ‘failure’ than a discounted ‘diamond in the rough’, the movie never falls
into place as one would anticipate every movie from a master showman like Vincente
Minnelli should. Rumors abound, Minnelli actually shot six Lerner/Lane songs
and hours of dialogue never to find its way into the final cut, resulting in another
studio-botched slapdash effort to unearth the proverbial ‘silk purse’ from this
sow’s ear. To be sure, much of the second act seems like a series of skits
loosely strung together with only the thread-barest of incentives to carry the audience
from one moment to the next – a song, strategically ‘inserted’ whenever
Minnelli paints himself into a narrative corner. Lerner’s slight and wobbly
framework is anchored by Streisand’s dynamism as a performer. But even she
cannot carry the whole show. Daisy, clearly a nicotine-addicted kook is at the
mercy of a psychiatrist not altogether operating with the most altruistic
intentions. And Chabot’s regression therapy only seems to further complicate
what is essentially a fairly straight-forward ‘he said/she told’ comedy of
errors, predictably to end to neither’s romantic satisfaction. Chabot’s
fascination with Daisy’s 19th century doppelgänger, Melinda incurs a
snag when Daisy - as herself - begins to develop affections for him.
The movie presents la Streisand with what is,
arguably, her most accomplished derivative of that carefully crafted screen persona
already exposed to perfection in both Funny Girl (1968) and Hello
Dolly! (1969). Mostly due to Harry Stradling’s sumptuous cinematography and
Cecil Beaton’s luscious period attire that, as elaborate and absurdly crafted,
never wears the star, but rather, the other way around, somehow to typify
Regency chic while scarcely adhering to it. Alas, the real ‘wet noodle’ of On
A Clear Day You Can See Forever is Yves Montand – taking milquetoast and
mediocrity to a whole new dimension, with his phony and phonetic air of
self-deprecation. This fails to gel, even as an even-keeled counterpoint to
Streisand’s flighty and fabulous flirt. Further emasculated in the editing process
are performances from such heavy hitters as Bob Newhart (dry college president,
Dr. Mason Hume), Larry Blyden (Daisy’s edgy fiancé, Warren Pratt), John
Richardson (as Sir Robert Tentrees), the roué who ruins Melinda, and, the aforementioned
Jack Nicholson.
As curious is Minnelli’s irreconcilably stagnant
interpretation of the score. Lest we forget, Minnelli cut his teeth on some of
MGM’s finest musical offerings from the 1940’s and 50’s. Yet, herein, he seems to do nothing – or very
little – with the wonderful Lerner/Lane songs, many of which are shot flat, the
camera remaining at a respectful distance from Streisand as she performs, as
though, for a more cheaply made television special than big musical show. What
salvages these depressingly literal showcases are, of course, Streisand’s
intonations that dig deep from within a lyric or musical refrain, pulling out
all the stops during the show-stoppers, and, subtly to invoke the inner turmoil
and angst of our superficially silly heroine. The trick here, and one not
entirely achieved, is to be had in the fanciful exploration of one peculiar woman’s
reincarnation as an even more eccentric diva from another bygone era. Getting
to the heart of this reawakening is the ‘voice of reason’ – or rather, the stuffy
self-important academic, for whom all such explorations are as bloodless and
purely scientific deconstructions of myth into fact. Lacking here; Chabot’s
skepticism. As Montand’s professor, attired in a suit with a sweater, the
infallible costuming of an ‘intellectual’, begins to have his own affections
tested, he steps beyond the perennial safety net of theoretical concept into
the organic bases of love.
Meanwhile, Daisy is under Pratt’s scrutiny to conform
to the dullness of the everyday – a trend that, at least in his movies, Minnelli
usually bucked. Daisy’s desire to attain ‘normalcy’ is countermanded by her
alter ego, Melinda’s risqué yearning to cast convention - and a boring husband -
aside for passion’s sake. Ultimately, Minnelli makes a judgment call here about
a woman of easy virtue – this one, paying for the indiscretion of cruel, calculating
sin with her life. Even before this ominous epitaph, Minnelli invokes a sort of
dank and unsympathetic moan to passion – a dim view of an even more dimly lit perversion
to possess the unattainable, and, in an age where sexual liberation was never
to be tolerated in women. These flashbacks are Minnelli’s tour de force,
filling the amphitheater of his own design in bright and bedazzled crystal
chandeliers and flickering candelabras – open-air carriages and a penultimate
trial with our heroine appropriately attired in flaming crimson. Minnelli
communicates desire with penetrating stares, the caress and fondle of a crystal
chalice and even more telling, subtle sigh. To spare Daisy a similar
indignation, though hardly under similar circumstances, Montand’s Chabot
invokes a psychic incantation – ‘Come Back to Me’ – Minnelli’s one full
flourish of visualized spectacle in the present-day.
Ironically, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever suffers
similarly as a Streisand solo in which virtually none of the other players has any
presence – or presence of mind, for that matter – to try and keep up with her scattershot
sexpot. That Streisand’s Daisy dwarfs her conservative fiancée is forgivable. That she all but eclipses the nominal hero, Marc
Chabot, is not. Streisand, even at her ditzy best, is a consort for a king, or,
at the very least, any man who does not mind playing second fiddle to her
queenly needs. Regrettably, the only sway Chabot exudes over Daisy is during
her hypnotherapy sessions – and, even then, not so much to control, as
micromanagement of the particulars that bewitch him. As before too long the
therapist becomes the patient, Daisy’s 19th century social climber
is reduced to poverty and death. This affords Chabot the meager influence to
bring Daisy back from the brink before she can relive her previous lifetime yet
again. The star-crossed trajectory of Daisy and Chabot’s ill-fated/ill-timed love
affair leaves the middle act of On A Clear Day You Can See Forever
curiously unbalanced and awkward. Escalating the concurrency of the past and
present, Minnelli races against chance, fate and the movie’s own dwindling run
time to bring both narratives to a conclusion. But the whole thing just seems
rushed and/or clumsily assembled to fit into Paramount’s prearranged time
constraints; Minnelli, not unlike the cobbler, meant to shoe-horn a 4-hr. extravaganza
culled from his own inspirations and aspirations, unceremoniously squeezed into
a 2-hr. movie.
As Streisand is at the apex of her career, one can
easily be fooled into believing a great movie is about to unfold. Alas, no;
Minnelli, not Streisand, is the great disappointment here. Instead of a robust
fantasy/spectacle, Minnelli gives us streamlined fluff, tricked out in
Streisand’s formidable talents that – alone – are meant to pad out the heart as
they invigorate the mind. And Streisand – while exceptional – is not enough to
make us forget the rest of the characters who populate this picture are drab,
dire and dull cohorts, hardly of her vintage skillset or go-getter’s convictions.
Originally, composer, Richard Rodgers had been slated to work with Lerner on
the show. He might have been able to do something with the story. And, if only
Frank Sinatra or Louis Jourdan – both considered for the role of Marc Chabot –
had chomped at the bit, the chemistry necessary to take this woozy-headed
wonderment to the next level might have clicked as it should instead of being
clunked together as though from outtakes or previews of coming attractions we
never get to see. Too much of a good thing is still too much. But in On A
Clear Day’s case, too little can be just as lethal. The score is too big
for this story, or, conversely, the story – too complex for the nimble
trappings of a big and bloated Hollywood hybrid musical. Whatever its
shortcomings, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is a letdown – not for
its abstractions or even its omissions, but for all the virtues it has, yet
squanders along the way, hoping against hope to make us love it in spite of its
shortcomings.
On A Clear Day You Can See Forever arrives on
Blu-ray via Paramount’s short-lived MOD Blu-ray program and in a hi-def transfer
that can only be described as an embarrassment. Not only is the print master
used in this effort (or lack thereof) derived from sincerely flawed elements,
but age-related artifacts are everywhere. Dirt, scratches, tears, flecks,
speckling – it’s all here, warts and all, and, very ugly to boot. Film grain
toggles between a homogenized thin characteristic, and inserts that are thick
and excessively grainy. Dupes and opticals are the worst. Edge enhancement is frequently present, and
color balancing is suspect. Flesh tones are egregiously off. At times, Yves Montand
looks as though he has stayed too long in the sun, sporting an unhealthy purple/pink
tone. Contrast appears slightly blown out. Fine detail is frequently wanting. There is also some intermittent built-in image
flicker. Point blank – not impressed. On the plus side: a solid 5.1 DTS audio
that shows off Streisand’s songs to their very best. Dialogue can still sound
strident in spots. There are noticeable sync issues when the movie transitions
from dialogue to song and vice versa. These oddities are not revealed in the
original Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, also included and very nicely cleaned up.
Bottom line: On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is hardly a classic – of
the Streisand ilk or otherwise. The Blu-ray is a mess and, if possible, even more
of a defeating experience than the movie. Not good news from ‘the mountain’.
Please, good folks at Paramount – spend more time remastering movies before you
slap them to disc. Not recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2
VIDEO/AUDIO
2.5
EXTRAS
0
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