Pretty Things

Liz Goldwyn's new documentary on burlesque is a facile account of the golden years of striptease. To give the director some credit, the interviews with the performers are fascinating. However, Goldwyn's contribution to the topic was disappointing. Her commentary and her performances are so pitiful and shallow it is hard to believe anyone gave her money to complete this documentary. Many of the strippers came from troubled backgrounds and went into stripping because they needed the money. Liz Goldwyn's point of view seems to typify upper-class privilege. One of the strippers reminiscences in the film about how one of the Astors gave her 20 dollars and asked her to ring him up sometime- an obvious sordid appeal for cheap sex. The stripper was naturally offended by his effrontery. I don't believe Goldwyn's depiction is any less exploitative and self-indulgent than Astor's crass attempt at attention and sexual thrill. Lastly I believe Goldwyn never was able to stay focused on the topic of the documentary. Instead I was left with the feeling that Goldwyn was exploring her own obsessions rather exploring the history of Burlesque in America.

1. Too much time spent showing these classic fantasy girls in their caftan and muu muu dotage. They should have been properly introduced, then given voice overs while showing much more old footage and stills. If I want to look at grannies, I'll go to Palm Springs.

2. Classic film student error: making the movie all about the interviewer and her opinions, instead of the subjects. LG has some dance moves, she has the stems, and she could pass for Capucine if she bothered to make an effort. Hint: make up, hair down to shoulder length, and chic clothes. But spare us the awkward rehearsals en pointe, the undergrad feminism, and the ending. And let's face it, without implants LG is out of her league here.

3. Great movie moment: Zorita hands LG a tiny G string and gives her a look that speaks volumes about what she really thinks.

4. Bottom line: less cheese, more cheesecake, please. BC

What could have been a fascinating look at burlesque queens from the 40's and 50's turns into a vanity production for the untalented, but obviously well-connected Liz Goldwyn. The subject matter is rich, but Goldwyn oddly chooses to focus on her own pursuit of the art of stripping rather than the experiences of these women. Just as the interviews with the former strippers start getting interesting, Goldwyn forces the audience to watch her clumsy and awkward renditions of the bump and grind. The camera work is bizarre. In a scene where she interviews two former vaudevillians, Goldwyn keeps the camera centered on the trash can placed between the two actors.

She also imposes her agenda and her own feelings about stripping on the gals that actually made a living at it. Goldwyn insists that burlesque is a glamorous art form without listening to a word of what the interviewees are saying. Not only do they tell her that stripping was not glamorous, the majority of the women hated it. They loathed being treated like trash. The most beautiful of the pack, Sherry Britton, responds to Goldwyn's insistence that Britton was such a "confident" young woman by telling her, "that's what you think about me, but it isn't the truth." It seems that Goldwyn's purpose for making the doc is self-serving: She wants an act and needs her subjects to give her their old costumes. Even the music is narcissistic. Instead of scoring the piece with the brassy sounds of the old strip clubs, Goldwyn records and sings her own rendition of "Big Spender". She never gets to the heart of who these ladies are or how they survived once burlesque was over and old age and sagging muscle tone settled in.

It left me wondering if HBO owed the Goldwyn family a favor.

I was quite eager to see what had been described as a "documentary" on the burlesque strippers of the second quarter (or so) of the last century. I worked as a live musician behind strippers in the mid 1960s, when the women I worked behind were already an anachronism. Older than I was by 10 or sometimes 20 years, they had an "act" (or a "shtick") with props and a narrative of sorts; they didn't disrobe completely; and there was no possibility of confusing the experience of watching their show with being a non-medical presence at a gynecological examination. They were also (to generalize, certainly) wilder than hell, full of life, and committed to a philosophy of behavioral laissez-faire which was truly mind-expanding to my young suburban self. Nevertheless, I am quite disappointed with the film.

OK, what is this film? First of all, to the degree that it explores the director's (and - should we also call her the female lead?) discomfort with her own sexuality, with her stammering, over-controlled and nearly inarticulate vocabulary of movement, and with her search for a new (and appropriated) vocabulary of movement which she hopes to be self-empowering, it may well be some sort of autobiographical essay, but exactly to that degree, it's not documentary. (By the way, watching her attempt to perfect some bumps, grinds, and shimmies while "en point" in ballet toe shoes is an example of the brittleness of her self-conception, and provides apparently unconscious self-parody. For a person who spends as much time as she does looking at herself in the mirror, she sees remarkably little, and nothing to laugh at.)

Also, in an effort to mold the expression of the strippers (yes, oldish women, but in the context of this film, first and foremost strippers) to cleave to a puerile combination of partly-chewed and regurgitated academic feminist theory and the psycho-babble of sex and power, she robs from the strippers the often formidable authenticity and power of their statements. They lay it out bare (as it were) and she hurries to wrap it up in something that's not so scary. Several times the strippers quite obviously are suffering her as an annoying, uncomprehending tourist to their world. At one point, one of the strippers says "Oh come on, now - you're not THAT naive!" Unfortunately, I think that the stripper may have been incorrect.

Given the inherent interest of the topic (to me, at any rate), and the rich color and authenticity of the old strippers in the film, it saddens me that I think the movie such a dog, but dog it is. A producer with a commitment to excise the egregiously self-indulgent and narcissistic strains from the movie would have resulted in a much stronger work. As it stands, you'll learn more about female burlesque (if not about stripping) from watching old Lucy reruns.

And it would have been a fascinating and engrossing documentary, if only Ms Goldwyn stayed out of the picture! I understand this is a movie about her coming of age- she has a long way to go!- but these women were very interesting subjects on their own, and it just seems such a lost opportunity. Instead of all this footage of Goldwyn prancing around, singing - cringe!- and toying with her "sexuality" (not that I sense any) why not show more archival footage of Zorita and co and let us hear more of their stories? In any case, this is Liz Goldwyn's movie and she can do whatever she chooses, but I feel this would have been a really great film with more reality and less of Goldwyn fantasies.