Very well photographed, well-acted pseudo-historical film marks Bogdanovich's return from the Showtime desert. Here he tells the near legendary tale of Thomas Ince's fatal weekend on W.R. Hearst's luxury boat (in the company of other film luminaries including Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies). Speculation has always run along the lines that Heart accidentally killed Ince (with whom he was apparently considering a defection for Cosmo pictures from MGM, probably an Ince pipedream or a diversionary tactic by Hearst to get more leverage on Mayer and Loew), mistaking him for Chaplin, who was also aboard and was rumored to be Marion Davies' lover. What makes the film good is not the fact that it makes these dubious speculations explicit, but rather its dry and somewhat corrosive portrayal of power relationships and the crushed dreams of lost power. I do agree with the previous comments that the direction was a little bit too even-toned, not accentuating certain scenes.
Review of The Cat's Meow
