La leyenda de Lylah Clare

I just caught this yesterday, home with the flu. It certainly reminded me of Vertigo. Kim Novak takes someone's breath away because she reminds someone mysteriously of Lylah. Kim agrees to take the lead in a movie about Lylah. She is then made into Lylah's image -- recorded for all time in a painting. The difference from Vertigo: in Vertigo you eventually find out Kim is acting in a con; in this movie, the viewer is left to wonder if Lylah's ghost is taking over Kim. In Vertigo, the lead male suffers from vertigo; in this movie, Kim Novak suffers from Vertigo.

When Kim's voice becomes Lylah, it's laughable. The whole movie is so bad, it's almost good.

I think the word to describe it is "unbelievable". Peter Finch is in it, an actor known for being rather picky. He was to win an Oscar for "Network" I wonder what this movie looked on paper. Robert Aldrich won his dues with films like "Attack", "The Big Knife" even "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" another camp fest but with a brain and a real intention. Here, everything is in top gear without ever really moving. In short, a mystery. Poor Kim Novak. Even her make-up doesn't make any sense. Pale lips. It's pointless for me to go on, you have to see it. I had the chance, thanks to Turner Classic Movies. Kim Novak's character seems to be possessed by the spirit of Lylah Clare, the doomed star she's suppose to to play in a preposterous movie about her life. When she is under the influence of the spirit, she laughs and talks with the grave tones of a hybrid, part Lotte Lenya part Mercedes MacCambridge. Outrageous! Peter Finch playing the director and one of the former Lylah's lovers creates a monster without nuances. His debate with the studio head, played loudly by Ernest Borgnine, about films vs movies seems to be Aldrich's major preoccupation. Valentina Cortese's costume designer is a very brief delight, Rosella Falk's lesbian is in unintentional hoot but the prize goes to Coral Browne, playing a columnist as if she were Catherine The Great and with a wooden leg. I swear I'm not joking. As yo may very well suspect, I think this is one of the worst films I've ever seen and yes, I had a lot of fun. That's why a 5 out of 10 seem fair to me.

Kim Novak was a real Movie Star with hits such as "Picnic" "Pal Joey" "Bell Book and Candle" "Man With The Golden Arm" " Middle Of The Night", "Strangers When We Meet" and Alfred Hitchcok's masterpiece "Vertigo". After leaving Columbia Kim was offered and passed on "Breakfast At Tiffany's", "Days Of Wine and Roses", "The Hustler" and one that was created especially for her "The Sandpiper" Kim Novak made a few films in a row: "Boys Night Out" at MGM with James Garner, Billy Wilder's "Kiss Me Stupid" with Dean Martin at UA, the very fine remake of "Of Human Bondage" at MGM and Terence Young's frisky "Moll Flanders" at Paramount and was filming "Day of the Arrow" with David Niven for MGM and Filmways and fell of a horse, was injured, and had to leave that picture. Kim Novak then off the screen for 3 years in the mid-60'searching for a great return project thought she found one in a major MGM production as star and title character in "The Legend of Lylah Clare" directed by Robert Aldrich who had just had a sensational hit in MGM's "The Dirty Dozen". The combination of Robert Adrich, the gloss of an MGM super production, and the box office bonanza known as Kim Novak and a superb cast should have produced a major hit movie which sadly was a major failure.

Kim Novak headlines a great cast of two Oscar winners Peter Finch and Ernest Borgnine and they are given great support by Coral Browne, George Kennedy, Valentina Cortese, etc. The first part of the movie is fine, very fine. "The Legend of Lylah Clare" falls apart at the end and believe Robert Aldrich dubbed Kim Novak in some of the latter scenes-against her knowledge- (how could this happen to a major star?) and the film ends weirdly with a dog commercial to this day mystifies me.

Kim Novak astoundingly beautiful and as one reviewer noted 'was as close to perfection in the looks department' and gowned by a great costumer Renie Conley gave it her all and is very fine in this film. Robert Aldrich who knew the Hollywood scene and had a great hit at WB in"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" fails here. (Aldrich would go on to make a worse movie than this if possible in "The Choirboys" which one sees wide eyed in astonishment on what Aldrich puts on the screen!)

"Legend of Lylah Clare" was supposed to be a great return project for Kim Novak and ended up being Kim Novak's finale as a superstar of the first rank.

Well yes, it's compelling viewing in spite of, everything. So overwrought it's jarring and at the center of it all, Kim Novak. The swan of Picnic. James Stewart's obsession in Vertigo. She appears in The Legend Of Lylah Clare, but she's not really in it. Distant, cold, awkward. Pale, almost white lipstick. She has a death scene for goodness sake! It reminded me of that death that Goldie Hawn plays again and again in "Death Becomes Her", she watches it on TV as her arch rival, Meryl Streep, brilliantly plays an actress without talent - dies again and again strangled by Michael Caine. Meryl's Madeline Ashton even licks her lips before her death - Well, Kim Novak's Elsa Campbell/Lylah Clare doesn't lick her lips but almost.Peter Finch is the leading man. Peter Finch! Howard Beale in "Network" His dialogue here is not by Paddy Chayefsky, no, not by a long shot. Hysterically funny I must admit, specially because of the seriousness of the delivery. Then, surprise surprise a few genuine delights, Coral Browne plays a columnist with a wooden leg, Rosella Falk, a talkative lesbian and the glorious Valentina Cortese plays a costume designer. As I'm writing about it I feel an urge to see it again to make sure I didn't imagine the whole thing.

Every once in a while Hollywood feels obligated to turn out cautionary tales to encourage young people in Iowa to stay at home instead of hopping a Greyhound to Los Angeles. People ignore them and keep on coming, but it's created a whole sub-genre of films. In a fairly short period of time we had this, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

The film starts very well: Kim Novak, wearing glasses, walks around Hollywood Boulevard early in the morning. She passes Mann's Chinese Theater, where THE DIRTY DOZEN (director Robert Aldrich's previous film) is playing. Kim plays Elsa, a reserved, somewhat bookish young woman, who resembles Lylah Clare, an actress who died in the late 1940's after marrying Lewis Zarkan, the director who shaped her screen persona and made her a superstar.

An agent has found Elsa and thinks she'd be perfect to play Lylah. Soon the movie spirals into silliness that's fun to watch but not very rewarding.

Elsa changes her last name from Brinkmann to Campbell and work begins to transform her personality so that she can play Lylah in a filmed biography. Imagine putting MY FAIR LADY and VERTIGO in a blender: you'll get some idea what the project is like.

Finally Elsa is ready for her debut to the Hollywood press, especially the much feared gossip columnist Molly Luther- a dynamite performance by Coral Brown, who played the lead in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE for Aldrich the same year.

Elsa descends the stair at Zarken's mansion, her hair and wardrobe perfect. She confronts Molly, and instead of submitting to Molly's questioning she suddenly starts speaking in a guttural voice with a thick German accent and humiliates Molly.

Bear in mind that the film comes from over forty years ago, and gossip columnists did wield tremendous power. Much goes into the buildup for the confrontation, it takes place, and........really, nothing. The story lurches on as if it never happens.

There are good performances here. Novak is looser and more relaxed in front of the camera than I remember ever seeing her. Ernest Borgnine as a hearty vulgarian studio chief, Rossella Falk as a drug addicted lesbian with a peripheral connection to the story (she seems to function with Zarken like a sidekick to a villain on an episode of Batman), and, of course, Coral Brown all gleefully overact so much I wondered if MGM wrote checks to them or vice versa.

The chickens all come home to roost in a circus scene that comes out of absolutely nowhere. There was no reference to any big top films with Lylah, but it does put the characters in place in a setting that possibly reminded someone at MGM of Fellini: the same mistake would be visited upon Robert Altman at the same studio when he made BREWSTER MCCLOUD two years later.

This film seems more antique than many others from the same time period. THE GRADUATE, BONNIE AND CLYDE, YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW and EASY RIDER feel so much looser, more organic, more like real life caught on film. This feels very much studio bound, and watching it you appreciate the scenes under the opening titles mentioned in the second paragraph for their naturalness.

Case in point: an important scene takes place at the Brown Derby restaurant. The place is packed. During the dialog scenes there's no background noise at all: no conversations, no sound of people moving, no clink of silverware and plate. No ambient noise at all. It's as if the characters had entered a soundproof recording studio and closed the door.

This film takes Robert Aldridge into a dimension he'd never touched on before. He'd made dramas like AUTUMN LEAVES and THE BIG KNIFE, action films like KISS ME DEADLY, TEN SECONDS TO HELL, THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, and THE DIRTY DOZEN. THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE just doesn't fit in his filmography. Like Mark Robson's VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, this seems to totter toward Camp.

Aldridge is one of the great directors of time, so this is definitely worth watching. And it's certainly not unwatchable: in fact, it's like watching a school bus go over a cliff- it's hard to tear your eyes away. You just can't help wondering if this was what Aldridge really intended it to be.