MURDER BY DEATH

Truman Capote

MURDER BY DEATH (aka Neil Simon's Murder By Death/1976). Director: Robert Moore.

"As a man you are barely passable, but as a woman you are a dog." -- Milo Perrier summing up the situation. 

A mysterious man invites variations of Sam Spade, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, Miss Marple. and Hercule Poirot to his home where he challenges them to solve a murder that will occur at midnight. The host is played by Truman Capote, and the detectives by James Coco (Milo Perrier); Peter Sellers (Sidney Wang); Elsa Lanchester (Jessica Marbles); David Niven and Maggie Smith (Dick and Dora Charleston); and Peter Falk (Sam Diamond). If there's one problem with this rather cute movie is that it's a complete farce, with no real plot (just a premise) and nothing much to hang the jokes on. As for the jokes, for every one that garners a laugh there's two that land with a thud. However, the performances are all wonderful, and there's expert support from Estelle Winwood (Miss Marbel's nurse, who now needs looking after herself); Richard Narita as Wang's son; Nancy Walker as the deaf-mute maid; James Cromwell [American Horror Story: Asylum] as Perrier's chauffeur; Eileen Brennan as Diamond's girlfriend; and especially Alec Guinness [The Swan] as the blind butler, Bensonmum. Truman Capote is no actor, but on an amateur level he isn't too terrible as Lionel Twain. On the other hand, Peter Sellers [The Wrong Box] is simply wonderful. Don't expect any coherency (even for a comedy) and you may have fun.

Verdict: Silly, hardly for all tastes, but beautifully-acted and zany. ***.

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1961). Director: Blake Edwards.

Paul Varjak (George Peppard) is an author being kept by the married Mrs. Fallenson (Patricia Neal). Paul meets his slightly kooky neighbor, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), who has no desire to talk about her past. Holly makes her living accepting gifts from men. Will these two hustlers triumph over their demons and find true love? Breakfast at Tiffany's is the kind of utterly artificial movie that only Hollywood could churn out, not dealing with reality on any particular level. Part of the problem, of course, is that the film is a complete bowdlerization of Truman Capote's novella, on which this was very loosely based. (In turn, Holly was inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles). Hollywood needed to "straighten" out the Paul character so a romance between the two main characters was fabricated. Hepburn's performance is more than adequate for this, but Holly never seems like a real person. Often through the movie Hepburn is self-consciously "cute" and seems over-rehearsed without a moment of spontaneity. Peppard [The Carpetbaggers] does the best he can with his own underwritten and dishonest role. Patricia Neal [Diplomatic Courier] adds a degree of class in the thankless role of the "cougar" (as we would say today) with a hankering for Paul. To say she is one-dimensional is a major understatement. Mickey Rooney is surprisingly good in his way as Holly's excitable upstairs neighbor, but others have also noted that he is an hysterical Japanese caricature. The movie does have some nice moments, such as an excellent scene between Holly and her ex-husband, Doc (Buddy Ebsen, who would star in The Beverly Hillbillies one year later), when they say farewell at a bus station. And cat fanciers will go "ahh" over the shot of Holly's poor cat sadly looking after her after she (temporarily) sets her free. Mercer and Mancini's "Moon River" is possibly the best thing about the movie.

Verdict: Bohemians strictly from Hollywood. **1/2.

CAPOTE

CAPOTE (2005). Director: Bennett Miller.

If you're looking for a biography of Truman Capote, look elsewhere. Although this does offer some insight into the writer -- but not much -- it focuses primarily on how he came to write the book for which he is most famous: In Cold Blood. If there is a problem with the movie -- among many -- it's that it seems to cut away from certain sequences just as they start to get interesting. Capote asks murderer Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) what his first impression of him is, but we never hear the answer (one can imagine!). Except for a brief bit when the subject of whether or not Capote has fallen in love with Smith (a real possibility) comes up, Dan Futterman's somewhat superficial script never really deals with his subject's sexuality, and indeed avoids delving into Capote's questionable objectivity and other matters. Oscar-winning Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a terrific performance, however, and for the most part the rest of the cast is excellent. The film can't avoid a dated quality, however. When In Cold Blood came out it was before the current obsession with and knowledge of serial killers and sociopaths, so Capote's attempt to humanize and sympathize with the callous cretins who slaughtered an entire family fall flat. In fact, the image that stays in the mind isn't of Perry Smith being hanged, but teenage Nancy Clutter being shot by him. The terrified girl's eyes are open; she's awake and knows what's about to happen to her. She undoubtedly heard the shots that took the lives of the rest of the family. And we're supposed to feel sorry for Smith? Bruce Greenwood is cast in the thankless role of Capote's friend Jack Dunphy. The character is so undefined as to be pointless. Catherine Keener is fine as Harper To Kill a Mockingbird Lee. Beautifully photographed by Adam Kimmel.

Verdict: Not at all what it could have been. **1/2.