Several Times Women from celluloid world and me!

Several Times Women from Celluloid World and Me!

As I said earlier, I am a movie buff and I was impressed by great number of female folks of the cinema world. To start with it will be Hollywood. 

 I was in my early teens and watched these films - ‘Woman Times Seven’(Sette Volte Donna in Italian), which was Italian/French/American co-production anthology film of seven different episodes, directed by Vittorio De Sica, all starring Shirley MacLaine, most of them based on aspects of adultery. It was during my college days. I think, it was at ‘New Empire Theatre’. ‘Woman Times Seven’ was a very short film and hence another film, ‘Boccaccio 70’ was also screened along with WTS, which featured Anita Ekberg.

The seven episodes were titled Funeral Procession, Amateur Night’,  Super Simone, At the Opera, Suicides, and Snow. It was star studded film featuring Shiley MacLaine in all the 7 episodes  with Peter Sellers, Michael Caine, Lex Barker, Adrienne Corri, Vittorio Gassman and Anita Ekberg. In the episode -  Snow Anita Ekberg, I think, had a very small role. In that episode two friends meet for lunch on a winter afternoon. They notice a handsome but seedy-looking man (Michael Caine) who appears to be following them. Claudie (Anita Ekberg) suggests the two leave the restaurant and go their separate ways to see which one of them he follows. As Paris is hit by a sudden blizzard, Jeanne realises that the man is following her.

 Both these films impacted me greatly, in a positive way of course, a smooth transition for my innocent mind from Adolescence to Adulthood.

 But I was simply fascinated by ‘Boccaccio 70’ (an omnibus film telling four different tales and each story directed by four different directors, common theme being satire of Puritanism and of morality). No, not fascinated by the entire film but by one of the four stories (Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio- The Temptation of Dr. Antonio) in which there was this beautiful, tall, voluptuous, big – breasted, giant of a woman in the film (Anita Ekberg), I was in my teens, remember?   There is this character, an elderly citizen who is fed up with too much immorality in the form of indecent content in print. He goes about in his mission raising his objections wherever and whenever he has issues with something immoral in society, filing complaints after complaints with the authorities.

 One fine morning as looks out of his bedroom window he horrified to find a huge hoarding that has come up in the park below. It shows a huge Anita Ekberg lying provocatively beside a milk bottle. It’s a billboard of Anita Ekberg advertising "Drink more milk". He doesn’t know how that billboard will go on to change his life. A billboard of Anita Ekberg provocatively selling milk gives a prudish crusader for public decency more than he can handle. 

 He goes one authority to the other to have it removed, but to no avail. Throughout the film, children are heard singing the jingle "Bevete più latte, bevete più latte!" (Drink more milk! The movie was thankfully sub-titled in English. ) The image begins to haunt him with hallucinations. Down comes, the whole towering Anita, some fifteen times his height – out of that giant poster – alive and all her tantalizing self. She comes near him and lifts the tiny little Dr. Antonio in her palm. Puts him between her breasts. And at one point, his umbrella falls between her breasts.

 Then she appears as a temptress and Dr. Antonio as St. George to spear the dragon – he is pursued and captured by the buxom Swedish star in a deserted Rome (Rome and deserted? Unimaginable, isn’t it?)

 Can you imagine his struggle getting out? There was nothing more hysterical than watching Anita Ekberg thus! This was the first time that I was watching Anita Ekberg.

Coming back to Woman Times 7 (which actually gave the title for this very article) had Shirley MacLaine in all the seven episodes (or 7 mini –stories). In the first Funeral Procession, a widow, Paulette (Shirley MacLaine ) is leading a walking funeral procession behind the hearse containing the remains of her late husband. She is joined by her family doctor (Peter Sellers). He explains to her how she should look at   positives in life , leave her tragedy behind her and move on.  He propositions her by offering his hand and Paulette gladly accepts it and both hand in hand walk away, quietly leaving the procession.  The mourners continue without her.  Vittorio De Sicahad a cameo as one of the mourners.

In Amateur Night, Maria Teresa (Shirley MacLaine) is surprised at finding her husband ( Rossano Brazzi) in bed with her best friend.  Shocked wife vows to have sex with the first man she sees as revenge. She meets a flourish of strumpets (prostitutes), who help her accomplish her goal.

 In Two Against One, a Scotsman (Clinton Greyn) and an Italian (Vittorio Gassman) are invited to the room of a translator who reads ‘T. S. Eliot’ in the nude. Linda (Shirley MacLaine)  has a photo of her lover (Marlon Brando) on a table

In Super Simone, Shirley MacLaine plays Simone. Ignored by her bestselling author husband (Lex Barker), who is only interested in his fictional female creation Simone, a neglected wife turns her visions of herself as Simone into reality. Her shocked husband invites a psychiatrist (Robert Morley) to a dinner to examine her for mental illness, but the husband, guest, and housekeeper  (Jessie Robins) insist that the guest is a lawyer.

 In At the Opera a fashion queen is horrified when her archrival Mme Lisari (Andrienne Corri) has been photographed in what her husband ( Patrick Wymark)) had promised was an exclusive creation for her alone. When asking her archrival not to wear it encourages her to do the opposite, the head of research and development in her husband's fashion house suggests planting a bomb in her archrival's car. Louis Alexandre Raimon has a cameo as himself.  Eve (Shirley) is the rich consort of a captain of industry, so bent on making it big.

 In Suicides, two lovers, Fred (Alan Arkin) and Maria Teresa (Shirley MacLaine), feeling rejected by the world, decide on committing suicide in their small hotel room dressed for the wedding they will never have. Just as they are contemplating how to go about it, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. Fred, “Who is it?” “House Keeping, Sir.” As Fred gets up to open the door, Maria pulls him back, whispering something in his ears. “There is no need to clean and everything i s in order over here”, he says. They continue to discuss the mode to end their life. “We’ll poison ourselves”, suggests Maria. “It’s not manly way, instead ….” Again there is a knock on the door. This time it is the ‘Room Service’, has come with ‘Champagne bottle’ they had ordered and forgotten about it completely. Fred give him 100$ bill and waits for the change. Maria again whispers in his ears, something like why would they want the change after their death, so clumsily tells him, “Keep the change.” Again they are back on their mission once again. “Let’s jump from that window then or use my father’s gun”, she says. However, Fred is afraid of pills, doesn't want to mess up his tuxedo  by jumping out of the window, and doesn't trust to use his father's pistol on him in case she only wounds him, or kills him and changes her mind (all this we understand from his loud thinking that he does.) They go on arguing with each other.  Suddenly, she has urgent urge to pee. Isn’t she in the toilet for quite some time? Has she drowned herself in the bath tub? No, she can’t do this and die without him. Fred bangs on the toilet door, calling her desperately several times. He forces open the door.  She find her nowhere in the toilet but the door leading to the fire escape ladder is open. The camera zooms below and we see her on the last rung of the ladder…. The end!

In Snow,two friends meet for lunch on a winter afternoon. They notice a handsome but seedy-looking man (Michael Caine) who appears to be following them. Claudie (Anita Ekberg) suggests the two leave the restaurant and go their separate ways to see which one of them he follows. As Paris is hit by a sudden blizzard, Jeanne (Shirley MacLaine) realises that the man is following her.

Of these seven, all but the two had almost faded from my mind. The two - Funeral Procession and Suicides have been firmly itched on my mind like an intricate design on a glass ware.

 Though it was for the first time and the only time I had seen Anita Ekberg, I have watched many of Shirley MacLaine movies much before Woman Times 7, like My Geisha,  Gambit,  What a Way to Go, Irma la Douce, may be not in that chronological order. But I think, it was her …. And you would was what a way to start… yes it was her ‘What a Way to Go’.

A dream-like pre- credit  sequence (As you know  in film production, the pre-credit is the section of the film which is shown before the opening or closing credits are shown., Louisa May Foster (Shirley MacLaine),  dressed as a black-clad widow, descends a pink staircase in a pink mansion. As she reaches the bottom, she is followed by pall-bearers carrying a pink coffin. As they round the bend in the staircase, the pallbearers drop the coffin, which slides down the stairs, leading into the opening titles. –

WHAT A WAY TO GO!

INTRODUCING :  Shirley MacLaine as louisa

STARRING: BOB CUMMINGS AS PSYCHIATRIST

                                                 DEAN MARTIN AS LEONARD CRAWLEY

                    Margaret Dumont as louisa’s mother

                                                 Dick van dyke as edgar hopper   

                   Paul newman as larry flint

                                                 Robert mitchum as rod Anderson  jr

                   Gene Kelly as pinky benson

We see Louisa trying to give away more than $200 million to the U.S. government Internal Revenue Service, which believes it as a joke for April Fools’ Day.  Louisa ends up sobbing on the couch of an unstable psychiatrist and tries to explain her motivation for giving away all that money, leading into a series of flashbacks combined with occasional fantasies from Louisa's point of view.

 In the first flashback, we meet Louisa as a young, idealistic girl of thirteen (and mind she did look that age). With her mother’s fixation for money, Louisa is pushed to marry Leonard Crawley, the richest man in town. Louisa instead chooses Edgar Hopper, an old school friend who, inspired by Henry David Thoreau [Perhaps if you do not know, Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American Essayist, Poet, Philosopher, Abolitionist, Naturalist, Development critic, Yogi and Historian.] lives a simple life. They marry and are poor but happy, shown through a silent film spoof with the underlying motif that "Love Conquers All." Their life is idyllic until Hopper, hurt and angry by Crawley's ridiculing how they live, decides to aim for success. Neglecting Louisa in order to provide a better life for her, he builds his small store into a tremendous empire, running Crawley out of business. But in so doing, Hopper literally works himself to death.

Now a millionaire, Louisa vows never to marry again. She travels to Paris, where she meets Larry Flint, an avant-garde artist who is driving a taxi. Louisa falls in love with Flint, and they marry, living an idyllic life and bohemian lifestyle, shown through a foreign-film spoof. Flint invents a machine which converts sounds into paint on canvas. One day, Louisa plays classical music, and it produces a beautiful painting which Flint sells (his first significant sale). Buoyed by success, he creates more and more paintings, becoming hugely successful. Obsessed now, he builds larger machines to do the painting. Flint relentlessly produces art until, one night the machines turn on their creator and beat him to death.

Even richer but more depressed, Louisa decides to return to the United States. She misses her flight, but meets Rod Anderson Jr., a well-known business tycoon. He offers her a lift on his jet. At first, she finds him cold and calculating, but Louisa sees his softer side on the flight. They are married shortly after landing, and they live a lush and idyllic life, depicted through a fantasy sequence spoofing the glamorous big-budget films of the 1950s. Fearful of losing him like her first two husbands if he threw himself back into his work, Louisa convinces Rod to sell everything and retire to a small farm. After sharing a jug with a few locals, an inebriated Rod mistakenly attempts to milk a bull, which kicks him through the wall of the barn, leaving Louisa a widow again.

Now fantastically wealthy, Louisa wanders the country. In a small town café, she meets Pinky Benson, a performer who does corny musical numbers in clown makeup and costume. Management is happy with him because Pinky's habitually routine act never distracts the customers from eating and drinking. Once again, Louisa falls in love and gets married. They live an idyllic life on Pinky's run-down houseboat, depicted through a film sequence spoofing big Hollywood musicals. On her husband's birthday, Louisa suggests that Pinky perform without make-up to save time. Never noticed before, Pinky is suddenly discovered by the customers. Virtually overnight, he becomes a Hollywood star. He neglects Louisa in pursuit of fame while ‘Variety’ headlines proclaim, ‘August 7, 1963- Benson Boffo Bistro Balladeer’, ‘ October 2, 1963 - Benson Broadway B.O. Bonanza’ and ‘ January29, 1964 - Pinky Quick Click in Pix with Slick Flicks’.  He has become darling of his fans. Everything in Pinky's life is pink. They are sitting in their car after the premiere of one of his films. Adoring public surrounds their car, they want to touch him, hug him and he wants to oblige them. He can’t hear Louisa’s pleading him not to go. Louisa foresees it all and starts sobbing loudly. He is trampled to death. All that we see    is his red coloured, yellow dotted crumpled tie. (And it is his funeral that we see in the opening pre – credit scene).

After listening to her story, the psychiatrist proposes to Louisa, but she  turns him down, after which he falls and is knocked unconscious. In comes the janitor, who Louisa recognizes as Leonard Crawley. He is  no longer the wealthy man he used to be. Leonard and Louisa marry.   They are now living a poor but idyllic life on a farm with their four children. We see Leonard on his tractor. Suddenly he cries in delight, “How lucky am I! I have struck ‘Oil’!” But distraught Louisa calls out,“Oh, not again!” She is thinking that her curse has struck again. A representative from sanitation department comes running to inform them that Leonard has punctured their drainage pipeline. They are still poor but happy. The End!

These women from the celluloid world, is like a cluster, a kaleidoscope in my brain and each piece had its own beauty - Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor,  Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Geraldiene Chaplin, Nancy Kwan, Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren Doris Day, and like in a  kaleidoscope there is no first or the last. I can not my put on who is my most favourite among them. Nevertheless, I shall conclude this article with Shirley MacLaine, who is one of my favourites, her Irma la Douce. 

In the opening pre – credit scene of Irma la Douce (Irma - the sweet), we see a street full of prostitutes.  All of them have lined up for the prospective client. 

There is now a client in a long over – coat, black hat. He starts observing each of them closely. He comes near a prostitute, who has a dog in her hand. She is our Irma (Shirley MacLaine).The camera focuses on her. This client approaches her. Whispers something to her, she nods and gestures him to follow her. 

Up they go the stairs of Hotel Casanova. The camera focuses on the hotel building going up and up to a widow of a room some floors above, while the credits are being shown on the screen. We see light lit in the room. Then Curtains are drawn and light in the room goes out. The credit displaying is paused.  We enter the room and find our client settling his account with Irma. While he is at it Irma takes advantage of his emotions to shell out more money.  And credit display continues, paused for a while for another client. Irma again plays the emotion – card to extract more money.  The‘hide and seek’ of credit display and the scenes with Irma and her clients continues. She smartly empties wallet of the American fella. “That’s all have”, he says.  “My house was destroyed in a bomb attack and the pilot happened to be an America” and the American fella asks her, “Do you take ‘Travellers’ cheque.” The credit display continues. The scene opens with early morning activities. You get glimpses of the market and soon go to a popular hangout tavern for prostitutes and their pimps and meet Chez Moustache. The Chief Inspector –In – Charge and the other police have been aware of the prostitution, but tolerate it in exchange for bribes. 

All is well until…  

In walks Nestor Patou (Jack Lemmon), an honest cop, who after being transferred from the park Bois de Boulogne  to a more urban neighborhood in Paris, finds a street full of prostitutes working at the Hotel Casanova and proceeds to raid the place. 

 The hilarious scene at the time of the raid!

 Still more hilarious , riot inside the police van! Poor fellow!

The police inspector, who is Nestor's superior, and the other policemen, The inspector, a client of the prostitutes himself, fires Nestor, who is accidentally framed for bribery.

 Oh no! Dollar bills hidden under your hat? Poor chap!

Kicked off the force and humiliated, Nestor finds himself drawn to the very neighborhood that ended his career with the Paris police. Returning to Chez Moustache, own on his luck, Nestor befriends Irma . He also reluctantly accepts, as a confidant, the proprietor of Chez Moustache, a man known only as Moustache,  a seemingly ordinary barkeeper, tells of a story of his prior life, claiming to have been, among other things, an attorney, a colonel, and a doctor, ending with the repeated line, "But that's another story". 

After Nestor defends Irma against her abusive pimp, Hippolyte, Nestor moves in with her, and he soon finds himself as Irma's new pimp.

The entire fight sequence has shot in hilarious manner -  the way tinny Nestor over powers after getting pulped by the huge
Hippolyte -  finding a snooker ball accidentally and putting the same  Hippolyte's opened mouth.

Jealous of the thought of Irma being with other men, Nestor comes up with a plan to stop Irma's prostitution. But he soon finds out that it is not all that it is cracked up to be. Using a disguise, he invents an alter-ego, "Lord X", a British lord, who "becomes" Irma's sole client. Nestor's plans to keep Irma off the streets soon backfire, and she becomes suspicious, since Nestor must work long and hard to earn the cash "Lord X" pays Irma. When Irma decides to leave Paris with the fictitious Lord X, Nestor decides to end the charade. Unaware he is being tailed by Hippolyte, he finds a secluded stretch along the river Seinem and tosses his disguise into it. Hippolyte, not having seen Nestor change his clothes, sees "Lord X"'s clothes floating in the water, and concludes Nestor murdered him. Before Nestor is arrested, Moustache advises him not to reveal that Lord X was a fabrication. He tells him, "The jails are full of innocent people because they told the truth." Nestor admits to having killed Lord X, but only because of his love for Irma.

Hauled off to jail, but with Irma in love with him, Nestor is sentenced to 15 years' hard labor. Learning that Irma is pregnant, Nestor escapes from prison, with Moustache's help, and returns to Irma. He narrowly avoids being recaptured when the police search for him in Irma's apartment, but donning his old uniform, Nestor simply blends in with the other police. With the help of Hippolyte, Nestor arranges for the police to search for him along the Seine from which, dressed as Lord X, he emerges. 

Knowing he cannot be re-arrested for a murder the police now know did not occur, Nestor rushes to the church, where he plans to marry Irma. As she walks down the aisle, she begins to experience contractions, and they continue during the wedding ceremony. Nestor and Irma barely make it through the ceremony before she goes into labor and delivers their baby. While Nestor and everyone else is occupied with Irma, Moustache notices one of the guests sitting alone at the front of the church. Rising from his seat, and walking past Moustache, the guest is none other than Lord X! A clearly baffled Moustache looks at Lord X, and then at the audience. "But that's another story", he says.

Plagiarism is no big deal. It was prevalent 'yesterday' and is still prevalent 'today'. Plagiarism is rampant in our society in a big way. It is like a poisonous weed and its tentacles have spread far and wide, affecting people from all walks of life. We have these 'copy-cats' in the world of cinema as well. However, those who are involved in it think nothing about it. Some even boast that their work is the original, at least in the initial period, until they are exposed. Later on they do confess, may be after they mature or because of 'Copy -Right' or 'Royalty' issues that could crop up or when they are already sued. But it only when big shots are involved, there is hue and cry.

1974 film ‘Manoranjan’, which is perhaps the only Hindi movie, where prostitution was presented as a ‘fun’ activity, without moralizing and the lead female character, Nisha (Zeenat Aman) sleeps with men other the hero (Sanjeev Kumar) and it was no issue. This film, though considered as a revolution in our films,needless to say, was a copy cat of Irma la Douce. The English movie was far superior in all aspects.

 But ‘that’s another story’, the line repeated on several occasions by Chez Moustache. 

                                               Vinay Trilokekar