Well, that was a week. Do you need a hug? I need a hug.
I don’t need to tell you about the losses the film world suffered this week. Robin Williams was a performer we may never see the like of again: equally at home whether the part called for gentle understatement or manic, motor-mouthed energy. Later on in his career, movie marketers were fond of taking the “you’ve never seen Robin Williams like THIS before!” angle to advertise his darker, chilling performances in “One Hour Photo,” “Insomnia,” or “World’s Greatest Dad,” but the truth was you could have said that for any of his films, from the very beginning. He was trained at Juilliard and he was never interested in staying in that “Mork and Mindy” box. I will probably always think of him as funny first, because I belong to that generation for whom his performances in “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Aladdin” DEFINED comedy; but I hope to never forget that he was so much more.
The passing of Lauren Bacall may be less painfully tragic, but it’s still no overstatement to say that a piece of film history is gone now. Even if it has been years since Bacall had much of an impact on screen (Lars Von Trier’s “Dogville” was probably her last appearance of note), she kept working throughout those many decades, because how could you ever stop making movies when you had a presence like that? When you get right down to it there is a very small percentage of actors that are truly indelible, and Bacall was one of them.
So this week we’re expanding our rundown slightly, so that we can pay fair tribute to both these beloved performers. RIP, Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall. We loved you and we miss you already.
– Ethan
“To Have and Have Not” (1944)
Cast: Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael, Sheldon Leonard, Dolores Moran
Available to rent or purchase from Amazon Instant and iTunes, on disc from Netflix
When Lauren Bacall made her Hollywood debut in “To Have and Have Not,” she couldn’t have known that it would become the most important film of her career. It’s where she and Humphrey Bogart met and fell in love, and it’s the movie that belongs to that famous whistling line (you know how, don’t you?). Adapted from an Ernest Hemingway novel, the movie in many ways reprises “Casablanca” (made two years earlier): it’s set in an exotic French colonial location during the Second World War and stars Bogart as our world-weary hero. Then enters Lauren Bacall, playing Marie (“Slim”), a thief and femme fatale, and it becomes very different movie. In an era when women were there to be saved by men, Bacall stood apart. Ingrid Bergman may have let Bogie put her on that plane, but Bacall, only 19 at the time, held her own against her future husband and presented a woman equal to any man—tough, smart, and in control. Bacall complained later in life that she was never judged without Bogart, and while the legend of their romance remains too great to overlook, it’s not hard to see why she was annoyed. Slim certainly would have been.
– Elaine
“Written on the Wind” (1956)
Cast: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith
Available on disc from Netflix
In many ways, Bacall was built for melodrama – she was just too powerful, too fiery a screen presence to play it cool. That probably made it inevitable that she should work with Douglas Sirk, the king of over-the-top Hollywood weepies, but almost perverse that she should take on the role of Lucy Moore, the relatively non-flashy part of the company secretary who gets caught up in the oil-rich Hadley family’s maelstrom of self-destruction. But even in his more subtle roles, Sirk didn’t need subtlety – he needed actors whose very looks could stand up against his over-saturated, over-stuffed visuals. Every frame of a Sirk film is the cover of a romance novel, every scene an exaggerated and subversive spin on Hollywood artifice – and who better to lead such a wild jumble than Bacall, the magazine-cover model girl who came up through the studio system.
– Ethan
“Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993)
Cast: Robin Williams, Sally Field, Pierce Brosnan, Matthew Lawrence, Lisa Jakub, Harvey Fierstein, Polly Holliday, Mara Wilson, Robert Prosky
Available to rent or purchase from Amazon Instant and iTunes, on disc from Netflix
While “Dead Poets Society” holds a special place in my heart, that film’s appeal lies not only in Robin Williams’ performance, but in the ensemble, the power of poetry, and the promise of youth. “Mrs. Doubtfire,” however, belongs entirely to Robin Williams. In one of his most fondly remembered roles, he doubles as Daniel Hillard, a talented voice actor but hapless father, and as Mrs. Iphigenia Doubtfire, a Scottish super nanny who is really Hillard in disguise. Capitalizing on his skill set, Hillard devises Mrs. Doubtfire as a ruse to spend time with his children and win back his wife after she files for divorce. It’s the perfect character for Williams’ brilliant voice acting, witty improvisation, and joyous energy. (In fact, Williams improvised so much during filming that there were PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 cuts of the movie.) If nothing else will be remembered, the makeover scene, during which Mrs. Doubtfire is born, remains a tour de force in acting. Williams goes through countless characters, complete with different faces, hairstyles, voices, and accents in the space of minutes. From Barbara Streisand to a terrifying Spanish woman to the matchmaker in “Yentl,” Williams’ shape-shifting is a performance for the ages.
– Elaine
“The Birdcage” (1996)
Cast: Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart, Hank Azaria, Christine Baranski
Available streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, for rent or purchase from Amazon Instant and iTunes
I’ll try and refrain from the many, many puns that have been made over the years about how the brilliance of Robin Williams’ performance in “The Birdcage” is his willingness to “play it straight” to Nathan Lane (dammit, I still did it). It’s an oversimplification of what he’s doing here, in any case. It’s not like Williams isn’t funny, or fast, or flamboyant in this movie – he’s all of those things, but in flashes, wrapped up in moments of heartbreaking tenderness, disappointment and resiliency. In other words, he feels like a very real person, in the middle of what is often a zany, cartoonish take on the clash between the free-wheeling denizens of Miami and Gene Hackman’s ultra-right-wing conservative congressman. There’s a little of everything in Williams’ performance: the rapid-fire improv, the perfect one-liner timing, the quiet sadness, the bent-but-not-broken spirit. Oh, and the movie is just flat-out hilarious in general, too.
– Ethan
The Best Films of Our Lives 