Few if any have pursued movie stardom as tenaciously but to so little effect as pop singer Madonna. Here she took her (apparently) final stab at it, remaking a grossly misogynistic Italian art classic–it’s OK, it was made by a woman!–while once again all but destroying the film career of whoever her husband was at the time. Guy Ritchie, meet Sean Penn.
Age, a chain of cinematic clunkers that would give Marley’s Ghost pause and this one last giant bomb finally forced Ms. Ciccone to accept that her dreams of moviedom were being Swept Away.
#1 by Supersonic Man on September 1, 2014 - 11:48 pm
Quote
Also of interest: Todd In The Shadows is doing a series called Cinemadonna in which he looks at every movie she’s made. He’s covered the first four or so by now.
#2 by kbegg on September 2, 2014 - 9:09 am
Quote
That poor guy! Love his One Hit Wonderland reviews though. I will definitely check those out. Thanks!
#3 by Supersonic Man on September 2, 2014 - 12:50 am
Quote
On the original Swept Away, I don’t think I’d agree with your reading of the story as simple Communist polemic. Having seen it without awareness of the director’s ideology, I thought it read quite naturally as a look at how class separation is poisonous at both ends, leaving nobody a hero as long as they’re in an us-vs-them mentality, each in different ways feeling entitled to take what the other has.
However, that said, at the age I was then, I hadn’t been much exposed to misogynist thought patterns. I took the ugliness of the protagonist’s brutal behavior at face value and assumed he was meant to be seen as a brute. Now I see that the story is, from a misogynist perspective, an attractive fantasy. But even from that perspective, the moral becomes “in the end your fantasy won’t work in the real world”.
Now I haven’t seen it recently enough to be able to dispute any of the small things you point to as indicating that the director is totally on the brute’s side, but from what I remember of it, the film didn’t seem to put up any resistance to being understood from a very different perspective than that. I could also say that, if, as you speculate, the movie were hypothetically made by a clinical Kubrick type instead of by a communist, I don’t think the end result would necessarily be much different from what we saw.
I am definitely not trying to recommend the film — even back then I thought that it was not only very nasty, but overrated as art. And I’m sure I’d like it even less now. But I do think it’s worthy of some scrutiny and study from different angles, because the message isn’t necessarily all that simple or cut-and-dried.
#4 by kbegg on September 2, 2014 - 9:13 am
Quote
Obviously opinions vary, and I’m certainly not conversant with Ms. Wertmuller’s work, so I may be off on her intentions. That remains my read of the film, though. I think the injury thing supports my view, though. Raffaella never bears a mark of abuse although being repeatedly slugged in the face, while Gennarino bears evident damage from his brief fight with his wife.
I will say, I found the whole ‘romance’ aspect more repulsive than the film’s political leanings. And it looks better than Madonna’s remake, if only because it seems to be taking a stand of some sort.
#5 by Supersonic Man on September 2, 2014 - 7:42 pm
Quote
Agreed – I actually did watch the Madonna version a few years ago, hoping for some bad-movie metahumor, but it was so vapid and empty that I had to read a good way into your review before I was sure whether I’d watched it or not. Wertmuller’s film, whatever you think of it, is not forgettable.
#6 by ronald on September 2, 2014 - 9:27 am
Quote
Although I’ve never seen nor particularly want to see any of Madonna’s movies, I admire her determination. Plenty of people would’ve been satisfied with the fame and wealth that she earned as a singer and spent the rest of their lives doing nothing but living in luxury, but having caught one dream, she chased some more. Good for her.
No matter how bad a movie is, even one as bad as this one seems to be, you’re the one who chooses to watch it. Nobody’s making you do it. The movie didn’t go looking for you.
I (a non-communist, btw) decline to comment on the equation of communism in general with dictatorships that identify themselves as communist. I’m not learned enough to come up with anything that the reviewer hasn’t heard before.
#7 by kbegg on September 2, 2014 - 9:35 am
Quote
You watch bad films to learn about film in a larger sense. That doesn’t mean they aren’t bad. And Madonna’s films are often dreadful in a manner that doesn’t allow for the sorts of excuses that low budget filmmakers have. She has had talented coworkers, decamillion dollar budgets, decent shooting schedules and the full support of major studios behind her. Then there’s the fact that she’s seldom shown any talent as an actress. Chasing a dream is fine, but you should be self-reflective enough to know when you suck.
As for communism, well, it is the most murderous ideology in the history of mankind. That’s just a factual statement. So I will admit I feel bewildered that people continue to support/advocate it. By which I certainly don’t mean you.
#8 by Supersonic Man on September 2, 2014 - 7:47 pm
Quote
The reason people don’t denigrate communism despite all the murder done in its name is simple: there are lots of perfectly valid ways to be communist without any violence at all. All you have to do is live in a commune.
#9 by Jen S 1.0 on September 4, 2014 - 1:57 pm
Quote
I wish I could remember who said it, but one of my favorite recent quotes was “A desire to perform is not, in and of itself, indicative of talent.”
Madonna is incredibly talented at what she does–performing. She’s created, indeed was a pioneer of, the modern, wholly media-driven celebrity, and she had the naked (often literally) ambition to just keep driving and driving towards the entire planet knowing who she is out of sheer determination. It may not be an admirable talent but it’s a rare one.
However, that, no matter how impressive, does not convey acting talent, any more then it would magically produce a working knowledge of physics or the ability to construct a car from scratch. It’s very hard for somebody who is both crazy ambitious and crazy successful to realize some skill sets will never be theirs, especially since the sheer force of the juggernaut they’ve set in motion keeps producing some kind of results in the form of more attention.
Also, is it just me, or doe she look exactly like Tori Spelling in that shot? It’s really distracting, they could be twins.
#10 by ronald on September 2, 2014 - 9:52 am
Quote
I’m sure that any number of actors who, supposedly, “suck” (even when they’re doing their best, that is; I’m sure that even the best of the best actors “suck” every now and then) are well aware of it. As long as people keep choosing to pay to watch their movies, I’m not sure why they should care. “The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” — Henry van Dyke (about whom I know almost nothing except that he said the quote that I remembered and to which the internet has allowed me to attach his name; thanks, internet)
#11 by kbegg on September 2, 2014 - 10:48 am
Quote
Because she never worked on her craft, she just wanted to be a “movie star” even though she didn’t have the chops to ever be one. She kept insisting that she star in movies, rather than taking smaller roles and working on her acting. At best she learned to underplay a bit more, but as she has no screen charisma, this leaves a big void on the screen. And the point is, people *didn’t* chose to watch her movies. She kept making ’em anyway.
And you can put scare quotes around “suck” if you wish, but there are good actors and bad ones. Meryl Streep is a terrific actress, Madonna is a horrible one.
#12 by ronald on September 2, 2014 - 11:41 am
Quote
>>>Because she never worked on her craft, she just wanted to be a “movie star” even though she didn’t have the chops to ever be one. She kept insisting that she star in movies, rather than taking smaller roles and working on her acting.
Unto all of which I say, so what? She used her money and influence to get what she wanted no matter how many people told her that she “shouldn’t” have it, no matter whether or not she “deserved” it. That’s what money and influence is FOR. It’s capitalism at its finest. Money can indeed buy happiness, just like, deep down, we always knew it could. Kudos to Madonna. I say this in sincerity, she’s an inspiration to us all. 🙂
Obviously I don’t understand your perspective and you don’t understand mine. You’re not going to convince me of anything and I’m not going to convince you of anything (even if I had any interest in doing so, which I don’t). And that’s okay.
#13 by kbegg on September 2, 2014 - 12:54 pm
Quote
It is indeed. I will note, however, that I have every right to criticize her movies as she has to make them. And she so has, and I have as well.
To be clear, though, Madonna making movies is *bad* capitalism because she has lost the studios that invested in her a massive amount of money. But yes, it was bad capitalism for those who bankrolled her, not for her. She got to make movies and collect sizable paychecks along the way. But the real point is, she could never get what she really wanted because she didn’t have what it takes to get it. She wanted to be a popular movie star. That wish was never going to come true.
Even so, one can genuinely, if cold-bloodedly, admire her pitiless game in getting the movies made in the first place.
#14 by Camassia on September 2, 2014 - 5:16 pm
Quote
It’s been a few years since I saw the original (and I’ve never seen the remake), but I wonder if this is one of those cases of a filmmaker’s head making one movie and heart (or loins) making another one. If you just told me the basic events of the movie and that it was made by a female Marxist, I think I’d assume that the point is that Gennarino’s going all dominant and alpha-maley is just perpetuating social inequality, because inasmuch as she’s attracted to that, she’s just going to jump ship as soon as he becomes an underling again. And in fact, the larger context of the John P. Lovell piece that you quoted assumes that: “Wertmuller uses sexual violence to emphasize the probability that merely overthrowing the ruling class, only to replace the old guard with a few new faces (while maintaining the same authority design), will result in nothing more than a failed revolt.”
That would be logical, but you’re dead right that aesthetically, everything is just too romantic and idealized. There are a couple of pretty people in swimsuits on a scenic island where punches don’t make bruises and unprotected sex doesn’t make anyone even think about pregnancy. In other words, it’s the same universe as soft porn. Which is a really weird place to try to make a political statement.
#15 by JASON FARRELL on September 3, 2014 - 5:06 pm
Quote
i think the fact that Madonna never tried to jump into the horror/SF/fantasy areas of cinema is indicative of the fact that she saw herself as not only an actress, but a serious actress-in-waiting, a Jane Fonda who moved from bubblehead to arthouse. All those kicks at the box office cat, and she never makes one horror flick or stars as the evil queen in anything? She has this weird career that, due to her other “artistic activities,” she does not have to worry about the popularity of her projects and she act out her fantasy of being a Seventies soul-actor, even though she doesn’t have anywhere near the chops to be same…
#16 by Mark on September 4, 2014 - 12:34 pm
Quote
I agree with Supersonic Man. Italian communists really have next to nothing in common with their Soviet (or Cuban or Asian) couterparts, they just never bothered to make an official change into social democrats as happened in pretty much every other Western country. Wertmuller being a communist in Italy is basically the same as her being a Labour party member (or supporter) in the UK (at least in the 60s and 70s)and I believe unless one already expects a Communist polemic, the film doesn’t realy suggest such a reading (nor did I feel at any point that the protagonist was supposed to be a sympathetic figure).
#17 by kbegg on September 4, 2014 - 12:58 pm
Quote
All the rest of that aside, the protagonist clearly *was* meant to be a sympathetic figure. The entire film is based on that. He is ‘betrayed’ in love by Raffaella, and his forced, emasculating return to his wife is played as tragic.
I admit I just don’t get why people push the idea there are different flavors of communists. Communist itself should carry the same, unyielding charge of repulsion that Nazi does. Maybe a worse one, since communism left tens of millions more corpses in its wake, and a longer, more widespread history of repression.
#18 by Supersonic Man on September 4, 2014 - 2:04 pm
Quote
When an Italian film has mixed or confused tones, I just roll with it. I’ve come to expect that they aren’t to be held to the standard of tonal consistency that you’d expect from Hollywood. Which is in itself an artificial convention that may not translate well from one culture to another. In fact, “tone” itself probably depends more than we realize on context-sensitive cultural cues.
Nonviolent Nazism is a contradiction, but nonviolent Communism isn’t. Since classical violent communism is now almost universally seen as discredited, the odds of any given Communist being of the violent type are now very low and getting lower all the time. Many of us have known communistic people who would never hurt anyone. I did, just once many years ago, meet a violent-type Communist who thought that the members of the “vanguard” was entitled to take power over everyone else after the revolution. I bet most folks around me have never knowingly met one.
To find someone with such a mean turn of mind is in itself nothing special: it’s not hard to turn up the occasional believer of any ideology who takes it in a violent direction, whether it be southern baptism or scientology or astrology. (I once met a young lady who was filled with anticipation for the coming apocalyptic catastrophe which would cleanse the earth of all non-believers in astrology.)
There’s another reason why many people have to resist the automatic equation of communism with violence, which may not have the most objectively honest basis but is still necessary to pursue. That is the problem of red-baiters. When any suggested policy that tilts just a little to the left, such as Obamacare, gets derided as partaking of Communism, the implication that this ties it to mass murder cannot be let stand, nor will it be believed by anyone the least bit skeptical. As long as there are blowhards trying to Godwin anything a little bit socialistic by painting it red, the attempt to equate red to automatically bad is going to immediately alienate at least half of the citizenry, maybe two thirds.
#19 by kbegg on September 4, 2014 - 2:20 pm
Quote
The job of such blowhards is made easier by the attempts to rescue communism. 100,000,000 corpses in, what, 60 or 70 years? I’d say the problem is the reds, not the red-baiters. There wasn’t a single village in the Soviet Union where obscure apparatchiks didn’t cause magnitudes of personal suffering beyond anything Joe McCarthy did. Not to say anything good about McCarthy.
If someone really wishes to save socialism, they should repudiate communism as hard and as often as possible. At what point is the practical reality of a political philosophy so horrific that it must be entirely abandoned? I’d say we reached that point long ago.
Obamacare is not communism, but it is an awful, awful policy. It was only ever going to do three things:
1) Make healthcare worse.
2) Make healthcare more expensive.
3) Reduce freedom.
Those results were entirely evident before the bill was passed, and sure enough, those three things are happening and will continue to build as time goes along.
I’m pretty conservative, and I haven’t head anyone on my side equate Obamacare to communism. It does sum up why we loath socialism, however.
#20 by Camassia on September 4, 2014 - 1:28 pm
Quote
I also wonder if Americans are missing something by not being in tune with Italian ethnic politics. The two main characters are pretty much stereotypes of the blond, wealthy, refined northerner and the dark, poor, crude southerner. Perhaps a really honest American remake would have made him black. It would have been just as absurdly offensive, but at least most Americans would recognize the stereotypes being played with, and also probably wouldn’t root for the love story in as unconflicted a way as most of the film’s positive reviews do.
#21 by BSample on September 4, 2014 - 4:17 pm
Quote
I’d just like to add one more Madonna flop I didn’t see mentioned in the review: Filth and Wisdom, directed and co-written by Ms. Blond Ambition in 2008. In fact, as I learned from Roger Ebert, her directorial debut. A quick look at IMDb confirms that it was, like her previous cinematic achievements, a massive hit. Her talents as a director obviously match her acting skills. I wonder if her books for children are any good.
#22 by kbegg on September 5, 2014 - 11:25 am
Quote
Thanks! Missed that one in that she didn’t act in it. The film made $22,406 at the US Box office (has anyone allowed to keep making movies had so many films that failed to hit $50,000 at the box office?), and even worldwide made but $322,222. Wow!
#23 by ronald on September 5, 2014 - 7:19 am
Quote
KBEGG: I admit I just don’t get why people push the idea there are different flavors of communists.
Uh, because there apparently are? Or are you implying that the commentators that have directly stated that this is the case are…misinformed?
#24 by kbegg on September 5, 2014 - 11:13 am
Quote
Since this isn’t a site for political debate, and as I don’t wish to annoy my fellows, I invite anyone wishing to continue this sort of dialogue over to Jabootu. Thanks!
#25 by ronald on September 5, 2014 - 11:40 am
Quote
Ah, the very sort of answer that I anticipated. Thanks.
No more to be said here, I guess.
#26 by kbegg on September 5, 2014 - 11:42 am
Quote
I’m not dodging it, I’m saying we should take it elsewhere.
#27 by Supersonic Man on September 5, 2014 - 10:01 pm
Quote
I agree this isn’t the place and apologize for stirring the pot as much as I did.
#28 by ronald on September 5, 2014 - 9:12 am
Quote
BSAMPLE: I wonder if [Madonna’s] books for children are any good.
(checking)
Well, there’s only so much to be gleaned from Wikipedia and Amazon (Amazon doesn’t let you read the *entire* books, only a few pages), but just at a glance, they look at least average to me.
Regarding the political discussion here, I thought about trying to make some point to someone somewhere about something by offering this quote from the late politician Frank Hague —
“We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, ‘That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.’ You never heard a real American talk in that manner.”
— but then I saw that he was a Democrat and that kind of spoiled the effect, whatever it was going to be. I also saw that Eugene “while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free” Debs wasn’t a communist, as I had thought, he was a *socialist*, so any comment on how odd it was that a man like that was a supporter of “the most murderous ideology in the history of mankind” was immediately rendered inapplicable. The other remarks that occurred to me would have been mean-spirited — shame on me for thinking of them — so I guess I have nothing to offer. Sorry about that. Still, this early in the morning and I’ve already learned so much. 🙂