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| Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) and her adopted children: The perfect family... at least, when on camera. |
Release Date: Sept. 16, 1981. Running Time: 129 minutes. Screenplay: Robert Getchell, Tracy Hotchne, Frank Perry, Frank Yablans. Based on the book by Christina Crawford. Producer: Frank Yablans. Director: Frank Perry.
THE PLOT:
At the tail end of the 1930s, screen star Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) is struggling with her first career slump. As she discusses her frustrations with boyfriend Greg Savitt (Steve Forrest), she announces that she wants a baby. A series of miscarriages during her marriage to actor Franchot Tone has left her incapable of having children, so she decides to adopt - an impossibility for a twice-divorced working woman, given California's strict adoption laws.
Still, with Steve greasing the right palms, Joan is finally given a child, a little girl she names Christina. At first, it appears that she is giving her daughter an ideal life. As Joan's career problems grow, however, she becomes ever more irrational, first competing with her young daughter, then physically abusing her. All the while, she projects herself to the cameras as the perfect parent: As the initial posters for this movie noted, she is "A star... a legend... a mother... The illusion of perfection."
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| Joan feigns humility while accepting her Oscar for Mildred Pierce. |
FAYE DUNAWAY AS JOAN CRAWFORD:
Faye Dunaway's performance has been mocked as the height of unintentional camp comedy. I suspect much of that mockery has come from people who have never been in close proximity to a real-life narcissist. I found her acting to be frighteningly spot-on. She puts on a perfect face for the public, all the while seething with a sense that she is a victim mistreated by everyone around her. Mix alcohol with self-pity and, once safely out of public view, she ends up screaming that she's the one being mistreated even as she beats her daughter. All of this rings horribly true. If you've ever been in proximity with such a personality during a meltdown, then you know that there is nothing subtle about it.
Still, I think I know why the performance has been mistaken for being campy. Dunaway is a little too spot-on. To paraphrase Tropic Thunder, she goes "full (narcissist); you never go full (narcissist)." Had she pulled back just a bit, to a degree that suggests true-life meltdowns without actively replicating them, she might have seemed more identifiable. As it stands, her Crawford ends up feeling over-the-top to anyone with no experience of such personalities... while at the same time, being uncomfortable accurate for anyone who has that experience.
OTHER CHARACTERS:
Child Christina: Mara Hobel, as the young Christina, is excellent, and the child Christina is easily relatable. She deals with her mother's mood swings in a variety of ways. Sometimes she meets her mother's behavior with stubbornness. When served overly rare meat, she refuses to eat it, even when it leaves her sitting at the table for hours. Later, as Joan's abuse escalates from emotional to physical, she starts tiptoeing around on eggshells, trying to avoid setting her mother off. Ultimately, there is no successful way to navigate this situation. When her mother's rage explodes in the infamous "wire hangers" scene, Christina is left crying out that she doesn't understand.
Adult Christina: Unfortunately, Diana Scarwid isn't nearly as good as teen and adult Christina, which severely damages the second half. Scarwid is too wooden overall, and her attempts to infuse emotion into the barbs she flings at her mother during a mid-film confrontation feel forced and artificial. I felt horrible for child Christina throughout; but while Joan's behavior is just as irrational in the movie's final hour, I couldn't make myself feel much for the adult Christina, in large part because the actress failed to make me believe in the character.
Carol Ann: As Joan Crawford's long-suffering housekeeper (actually a composite character based on several servants) Rutanya Alda is a steady and supportive presence. Carol Ann isn't blind to her employer's faults. She physically pulls Joan away from Christina in one scene, and dismissively diagnoses a passed-out Joan as "drunk" in another. However, she is devoted to her to a ridiculous extent, excusing all of her bad behavior as she insists that Joan always loved Christina. Rutanya Alda was substantially less devoted to Faye Dunaway; years after the film was released to infamy, Alda published The Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All, describing Dunaway's difficult and self-absorbed behavior on-set.
Greg Savitt: Another composite character, Joan's boyfriend early in the film is a Hollywood lawyer who helps to arrange for the out-of-state adoption of Christina. Savitt is played by Steve Forrest, an actor I always tend to regard as the poor man's Robert Stack; he fills the same kind of roles adequately, but with less screen presence and less self-awareness. Still, it's not as if Savitt is much of a role to start with. He exists so that Joan can exposit about her difficult early life and her declining position at MGM; once he secures the adoption, the film has little remaining need for him, and he's pushed out shortly thereafter. "Disappearing Character Syndrome" is a constant problem in this film, and Savitt is the first and most noteworthy example of this.
Louis B. Mayer: Howard Da Silva is particularly good in the small but critical role of Louis B. Mayer, the one person Joan can't stand up to. He's first seen in a restaurant with various moneymen, "inviting" her to join them for dinner. When she tries to politely refuse, he gives her a calm look and says, "I insist," in a way that makes clear to all that he is not giving her a choice. Later in the same scene, after Mayer is described as a king, he tells Joan that she's "aces." She breezily notes that aces beat kings, only for Mayer to reply in a jovial but commanding tone: "Not in Hollywood, dear."
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| Louis B. Mayer (Howard Da Silva), holding court. In Hollywood, Kings beat Aces. |
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
The first thing that's evident about this movie is how much better-made it is than Can't Stop the Music. The opening sequence, showing Crawford's morning beauty ritual, is beautifully shot and edited. The sequence grows actively uncomfortable as it progresses, showcasing how hard she works to maintain herself for her fame, while at the same hinting at the mania bubbling underneath. There's more genuine film technique in these few minutes than in the entirety of the previous year's Razzie winner.
The slow emergence of Joan's abusive behavior is surprisingly well done. Her mounting anger at home is carefully juxtaposed against her declining career. Over the first third of the film, she keeps losing things: her box office dominance, her studio influence that once allowed her to secure strong scripts, her relationship with Savitt, and finally her contract with MGM. She has to screen-test in order to secure her Oscar-winning role in Mildred Pierce, and the indignity of that stings. As the vice tightens around her career, her drinking increases, and she seems to deliberately set up tests of will with her daughter. This is all well-done. We sense the perfect storm of pressures on Joan, without it being hammered home and without her work stress being made into an excuse for her behavior.
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| Joan has a wire hanger-related meltdown. |
OTHER MUSINGS
Unfortunately, the first third is the only portion of the movie that is well-structured. Or structured at all, really. The pressures build until they explode in the famous/infamous "No wire hangers, ever!" meltdown. After that point, the rest becomes a sort of a formless mass. Scenes happen, but from that point on little context is given to each moment.
Even the "wire hanger" scene is guilty of this. In Christina Crawford's book, we learn that some of her clothes came back from the cleaners on cheap wire hangers, and that the little girl didn't think to change them to more suitable hangers. This is important information; without it, viewers of the movie are justified in wondering where the wire hangers came from in the first place, as Joan obviously would never have purchased them - a question that can't help but undermine the entire sequence.
The second half becomes ever more guilty of this lack of context. Late in the film, Joan faces down the Board of Directors of Pepsi, who are trying to forcibly retire her. Unlike with Mayer, she is not cowed in the least. She reminds them of her celebrity and how easily she could use that against Pepsi, until the board relents. It's a good scene on its own... but it has no connection to Joan's relationship with Christina, so it feels like it belongs in a completely different film! Meanwhile, Christina gets a job on a soap opera and, when she's hospitalized, a drunk Joan ends up subbing for her. Yes, this really happened, and it apparently was just as ridiculous as it sounds... but in the movie, the incident doesn't lead to anything. The film portrays it, then immediately cuts forward several years for the next scene to avoid having to deal with the fallout.
Passage of time is another serious issue. I regularly found myself distracted from the on-screen events by trying to figure out what year was being portrayed. I'd love to give them points for not resorting to title cards reading: "1945, 1956, 1968." The problem is, I actually wish they had done that - or anything at all to indicate where any given scene fell in the overall timeline.
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| The adult Christina (Diana Scarwid) reacts to Joan's final insult. |
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
1981 saw the Golden Raspberries set a limit of five nominees per year. In addition to Mommie Dearest, films nominated in the award's second year were: Endless Love, a universally-panned romance based on the far better-received novel by Scott Spencer; Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino's infamous, studio-destroying western megabomb; The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which attracted unwanted headlines by snubbing Clayton Moore, the star of the classic television series; and Tarzan the Ape-Man, starring Bo Derek and Miles O'Keeffe (need more be said?).
Heaven's Gate is actually not a bad movie, at least in its director's cut... though it should be noted that the version that played in 1981 had been shortened by roughly 45 minutes and was likely incoherent. The only other one of the nominees I've seen is The Legend of the Lone Ranger, of which I honestly cannot recall a single second.
I tend to suspect that either Endless Love or Tarzan, the Ape-Man are worse pictures than Mommie Dearest... though not having seen them, that's a suspicion based principally on stray clips and reputation.
OVERALL:
I struggle to rate Mommie Dearest. This is a well-made movie, one that for its first half borders on being good. Even with its second half losing focus, it falls well short of being what I'd consider "Worst Picture" material (never mind its later Razzie title of "Worst Picture of the Decade"). Faye Dunaway absolutely did not deserve to be tied with Bo Derek for the title of "Worst Actress," and it boggles my mind that the genuinely good child performance by Mara Hobel received a Razzie nomination.
The movie falls short for two reasons. The first is that, even in the well-structured first part of the story, the depictions of abuse never add up to any greater theme or insight. The second, even larger, problem is the second half, which becomes structurally formless until it ends with a parade of scenes that are often devoid of context.
If pressed, I would label this a better movie than Can't Stop the Music; but despite featuring better performances and stronger film technique, Mommie Dearest is far less likely to ever be re-watched by me than that cheerfully inept would-be musical.
Rating: Raspberry.
Worst Picture: 1980 - Can't Stop the Music
Worst Picture: 1982 - Inchon!
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