Having recently watched "You Were Never Lovelier" with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, it's interesting to notice how she was largely shot and directed throughout her career.
Her dancing in "Lovelier" was fun and fine in "The Shorty George," where she's relaxed and clearly having a ball -- and appears to be keeping up with Astaire. "Appears" is the operative word. Astaire (who choreographed) carefully kept their routines within Hayworth's range, never challenging her beyond her capacities. But Hayworth completely lacked Ginger Rogers' lithe body fluidity and on screen electricity.
Hayworth was stunningly beautiful, of course. But even in "Lovelier" there are moments when, not carefully lit, the forehead lines that were so apparent in later years (unless also carefully lit) were already apparent and fleetingly distracting.
More to the point was how she was directed and photographed in "Lovelier." She actually has very few lines. What she does have are usually brief and delivered in a relatively quick take before cutting away.
She never makes emotional transitions in a scene. Rather, the camera cuts to a new angle when she's called on to register a different emotion. The primary goal at all times is to maintain her seemingly flawless facial beauty. Fine in a fluff piece like "Lovelier."
Cut to "Separate Tables" 16 years later.
Hayworth is still beautiful if more "mature." AGAIN she is never shown making an emotional transition in one shot: cutaways are instead employed. The technique (to disguise her limited acting abilities) is particularly jarring in her dramatic scene in her bedroom with Burt Lancaster. On closer inspection, she "poses" from cut to cut rather than displaying her character's emotional arcs.
Sure, she was supposed to be an aging model, all self-possessed poise. But not in that dramatic scene.
Still, it's a fascinating lesson in how skilled film making disguises limited range. (For a heartbreaking account of the making of her last film, read Frank Langella's "Dropped Names.")
Terence Rattigan's play was forced to disguise the homosexual "scandal" of the Major's (David Niven) being arrested for soliciting men in dark movie houses, though the implication is fairly clear.
Knowing the repression of homosexuality at that time makes Niven's performance even more involving; especially once the scandal is revealed to the boarders at the Beauregard.
Niven's amazing performance (in only 16 minutes of screen time) is disarmingly deep. He goes from an almost comical figure to an exposed fraud with a dark secret since childhood, to a lost late-middle-aged man with no future, to the final hope of redemption.
Niven shows all his character's subtle emotional transitions in sustained takes (unlike Hayworth).
Deborah Kerr is fine and completely convincing, as always.
Burt Lancaster gives another version of Burt Lancaster in not his finest hour. "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Rose Tattoo," "Come Back, Little Sheba," "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" -- even "Trapeze" -- are better records of his talents. But he's always believable.
The remaining cast, especially the nuanced Wendy Hiller, are terrific.
Still, it's Hayworth's impression -- not her character's -- who lingers as something not quite real, not untalented, but unrealized and somewhat vacant. It's not her mental deterioration. It was there on screen from the beginning. She tried gamely throughout her career, and looked magnificent thanks to careful costuming, lighting and cinematography. But even with careful cutaway direction she seems little more than a paper doll -- and finally, tragically, just as fragile.
Her dancing in "Lovelier" was fun and fine in "The Shorty George," where she's relaxed and clearly having a ball -- and appears to be keeping up with Astaire. "Appears" is the operative word. Astaire (who choreographed) carefully kept their routines within Hayworth's range, never challenging her beyond her capacities. But Hayworth completely lacked Ginger Rogers' lithe body fluidity and on screen electricity.
Hayworth was stunningly beautiful, of course. But even in "Lovelier" there are moments when, not carefully lit, the forehead lines that were so apparent in later years (unless also carefully lit) were already apparent and fleetingly distracting.
More to the point was how she was directed and photographed in "Lovelier." She actually has very few lines. What she does have are usually brief and delivered in a relatively quick take before cutting away.
She never makes emotional transitions in a scene. Rather, the camera cuts to a new angle when she's called on to register a different emotion. The primary goal at all times is to maintain her seemingly flawless facial beauty. Fine in a fluff piece like "Lovelier."
Cut to "Separate Tables" 16 years later.
Hayworth is still beautiful if more "mature." AGAIN she is never shown making an emotional transition in one shot: cutaways are instead employed. The technique (to disguise her limited acting abilities) is particularly jarring in her dramatic scene in her bedroom with Burt Lancaster. On closer inspection, she "poses" from cut to cut rather than displaying her character's emotional arcs.
Sure, she was supposed to be an aging model, all self-possessed poise. But not in that dramatic scene.
Still, it's a fascinating lesson in how skilled film making disguises limited range. (For a heartbreaking account of the making of her last film, read Frank Langella's "Dropped Names.")
Terence Rattigan's play was forced to disguise the homosexual "scandal" of the Major's (David Niven) being arrested for soliciting men in dark movie houses, though the implication is fairly clear.
Knowing the repression of homosexuality at that time makes Niven's performance even more involving; especially once the scandal is revealed to the boarders at the Beauregard.
Niven's amazing performance (in only 16 minutes of screen time) is disarmingly deep. He goes from an almost comical figure to an exposed fraud with a dark secret since childhood, to a lost late-middle-aged man with no future, to the final hope of redemption.
Niven shows all his character's subtle emotional transitions in sustained takes (unlike Hayworth).
Deborah Kerr is fine and completely convincing, as always.
Burt Lancaster gives another version of Burt Lancaster in not his finest hour. "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Rose Tattoo," "Come Back, Little Sheba," "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" -- even "Trapeze" -- are better records of his talents. But he's always believable.
The remaining cast, especially the nuanced Wendy Hiller, are terrific.
Still, it's Hayworth's impression -- not her character's -- who lingers as something not quite real, not untalented, but unrealized and somewhat vacant. It's not her mental deterioration. It was there on screen from the beginning. She tried gamely throughout her career, and looked magnificent thanks to careful costuming, lighting and cinematography. But even with careful cutaway direction she seems little more than a paper doll -- and finally, tragically, just as fragile.