For many years, "Auntie Mame" was *that* movie the AFI list buff I was couldn't ignore: 94th entry in AFI's Top Laughs and 93th quote: "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death", that's all I had to heighten my expectations of a comedy with an inspirational life message, featuring one of these happy-go-lucky and flamboyant characters who'd made better life therapists than experts in the flesh. Now if I can think of better candidates as classic comedies, I admit Rosalind Russell is a spectacle by herself, giving a tremendous and rightfully Oscar-nominated performance.
The film opens with its best gag: the reading of a will made by Mr. Edwin Dennis, a wealthy businessman, putting his sole heir Patrick under the care of his aunt Mame. It starts with straight, sane and sound, reading and then the voice-over goes all hysterical at the mention of the woman's usual shenanigans, to which Edwin insists they shall never interfere with his son's education, with which he entrusted the conservative Dwight Babcock, a trustee of the Knickerbocker Bank. Doubting this will would have any effect in the next years given his healthy condition, Mr. Dennis signs on what will be his penultimate day on Earth. News headlines reveal his death the day after and that made me think: if the film can make me laugh without any characters present, that's quite promising.
The reading is also narratively efficient as it sets up the exuberant personality of Mame Dennis or Auntie Mame and puts the viewer in the right mindset before the plot takes off. Still, there's not much plot in Morton DaCosta film which is a succession of vignette-like episodes spanning 18 years from 1928 to 1946, with only one mention of the 1929 crash and a mere allusion to World War II that the older Patrick Dennis miraculously dodged. But I guess any movie lover from the 2020s would find elements of enjoyment most notably the peculiar but so appealing personality of Auntie Mame, a flamboyant and exuberant spinster who brings a vibrant energy in every scene she in, which means all the film.
Her first scene sets the tone: she's a party-giving socialite, a thrill-seeker with a unique talent to surround herself with the weirdest personalities: a man running a nudist school, an orthodox archbishop, a constantly giggling Japanese butler (Yuki Shimoda) and so and so. But she passes the first test of character when she welcomes the young orphaned Patrick (Jan Dizlmick) with the kind of reassuring warmth and gentleness many of us who had an eccentric aunt can relate to; and while Rosalind Russell, with her unmistakable raspy voice and her larger-than-life personality; provides all the spices that makes the story digestible, the film benefits from strong supporting players like Vera (Coral Browne) a friend who's made a habit of passing out before any party ends and there's the big Fred Clark as the conservative banker and comic-relief antagonist.
Mame's antics might get on some viewers' nerves, this is why one should remember the time of its release, a darling for costume comedy-dramas and stage adaptations (it was the year of "The Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Gigi"). If anything, "Auntie Mame" is an extravaganza trip with a clothesline-plot on which to hang slightly disjointed episodes: Mame being broke after the crash, Mame as an actress, as a toy seller, as a wannabe Southern belle and lousy cavalier in the one action sequence, Mame as the wife of a smitten Southern played by Forrest Tucker, Mame as a globe-trotter, a merry widow etc. Etc.
The story can be regarded as a studio excuse for a superproduction with lavish award-baity costumes and set designs. Indeed, the fashion changes, so does the decoration of the apartment where the living room and the stairs are the most permanent elements, these changes in style (but not in colore) highlight the one unmovable force: Mame. And the conflict comes from the very fact that Patrick changes, becoming a stuffy adult (Roger Smith) since Mame's marriage allowed Babcock to strengthen his influence and push the boy into courting one of these rich vain college girls, Gloria (Joanna Barnes) who's so caricatural you'd wonder what he found in her.
It's a miracle that the film avoids confusion with all the things going on and the inclusion of late characters: Robin Hughes as a writer helping Mame to write an autobiography and an awkward secretary named Agnes Gooch played by Peggy Cass. The film oscillates between some serious and light moments, there is black comedy and attempts at seriousness, but one shouldn't overthink it and consider that it's just a stage turned into a film. The attempts to recreate the Egyptian setting and Indian have the obsolete charms of old silent films, there' even a scene with Paris in the backdrop and you can clearly see the immobile cars. Less than flaws, these are artistic licenses giving the film its theatrical touch, just like this way DaCosta ends each scene with a fade out but leaving a little spotlight on Russell's face.
Indeed this is a film that asks us to embrace the histrionic and joyful spirit of Mame, I doubt this would work as efficiently as Edward Everett Tanner's book, which I haven't read but from the readers' comments, struck me as a real eye-opener and life-changer. At the end, "Auntie Mame" is a product of its time and I guess the best thing it does is reminding of the comedic potential of Rosalind Russell who gives the performance of a lifetime. I just saw her in a "What's My Line" clip from 1953, and it's got to be one of the funniest mystery guest segment sever so she was definitely fit for the role because she can be funny without trying hard, and also genuinely warm and nice.
So there are directors' films, producers' films, "Auntie Mame" is definitely what we can call an actress' film, and her name was Rosalind Russell.
