|
We
enter Hollywoodland the way Superman
would. First we’re in the clouds, then
we come swooping down into the driveway
of a pleasant L.A. house, where police
are gathering.
It’s
June of 1959, and in the upstairs
bedroom is George Reeves, the actor who
played the Man of Steel on television,
dead of a gunshot wound to the head. But
this, alas, is not a job for Superman.
The riddle at the heart of the matter
can’t be leapt in a single bound.
The death of Reeves was quickly ruled a
suicide by the LAPD, but there were
oddities to the case from the
start—other shots fired in the room, a
lag in the reporting of the events by
Reeves’ girlfriend and guests, and a
baroque assortment of shady characters
in his life—and the actor’s mother hired
a detective to probe deeper.
Hollywoodland cuts between a
fictionalized version of this
investigation and flashbacks of the
unhappy career of Reeves, played by Ben
Affleck in the best, most complex
performance he’s given.
His Reeves is a charming, amusing fellow
with just enough vain pomposity to make
him ungracious about the source of his
fame.
The Adventures of Superman was a
very-low-budget, hugely successful
syndicated affair that ran from 1952-58
and was rerun endlessly thereafter (I
watched it all the time as a kid in the
‘70s).
The production values were tacky and
writing was hopelessly inane and
repetitive, but the show had humane
‘50s-liberal values, and the cast made
it endearing, especially Reeves with his
low-key geniality.
But it wasn’t the sort of success he
wanted. He’d been a journeyman Hollywood
hunk since the late ‘30s—he played one
of the Tarleton boys at the beginning of
Gone With the Wind, had a promising turn
in So Proudly We Hail, appeared with
Marlene Dietrich in Rancho Notorious—but
never became a star until he put on the
red cape.
And he couldn’t cover up that iconic
identity as easily as Clark Kent.
Despondency over typecasting, coupled
with alcoholism and money trouble, were
supposed to have been his motive for
suicide.
The detective, here called Louis Simo
and played by Adrien Brody with
no-nonsense intelligence and a certain
seedy glamour, initially stirs up the
closed investigation merely to milk
Reeves’ stricken mother (Lois Smith) of
a few much-needed bucks.
But when he learns that Reeves had
earned the enmity of MGM hotshot Eddie
Mannix (Bob Hoskins), the husband of his
sugar-mommy mistress Toni Mannix (Diane
Lane), Louis starts to wonder if he
really was murdered.
Wondering is about as far as the movie
gets us, though.
Directed by Allen Coulter from a script
by Paul Bernbaum, Hollywoodland is
well-crafted and full of fine scenes,
but it feels overlong and slow. Partly
this may be due to the constant, clichéd
saxophone droning on the soundtrack,
which is supposed to evoke a noir flavor
but which has an unfortunate lulling
effect after a while.
The big problem, though, is that there's
no very good way to generate suspense,
since we know what happens to Reeves
from the start, and since after a while
we begin to realize that the movie isn't
really going to be able to tell us how
or why it happened.
The acting makes the picture worthwhile,
however. Brody and Affleck are both
startling and touching, but the best
work is by beautiful, heartbreaking
Diane Lane, who reveals Toni to us the
first time we hear her desperate,
too-loud laugh.
The supporting players—especially
Hoskins, Smith, Robin Tunney, Jeffery
DeMunn and Joe Spano—are excellent as
well.
Though Bernbaum’s dialogue is laced with
ironic wit, the overall effect of
Hollywoodland is one of sadness, because
the best it allows us to hope for is
that the gumshoe will prove that Reeves
was murdered in his bed.
That’s less bleak to imagine than the
prospect of this likable man giving up
on life because he didn’t have Clark
Gable’s career.
|
