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| The Cat's Meow | |||
“Elegant, funny and unexpectedly touching, this whodunit about a murder aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst represents a bracing comeback for Peter Bogdanovich. The director of The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc?, Paper Moon and Mask hasn't made a feature since The Thing Called Love in 1993… Hollywood has buzzed for years about what really happened that weekend in November 1924 when media mogul Hearst (Edward Herrmann), the inspiration for the character of Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles' masterpiece, Citizen Kane, hosted a yachting party. The guests included silent-screen genius Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), gossip columnist Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly), film innovator Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes) and British novelist Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley). The married Hearst is violently jealous of his young mistress, the actress Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst), and suspects she and Chaplin are carrying on in secret. Bogdanovich cuts through the artificiality of high-style glamour and bitchy laughs with generous emotion… The kick of the film isn't in solving the mystery, which is still shrouded in speculation, but in enjoying the atmosphere established by Bogdanovich and the camera magician Bruno Delbonnel (Amelie)—and in the scrappy, layered performances. Izzard, the comic who often works in drag, makes a riveting, dangerous egotist of Chaplin. And Tilly plays Parsons with humor and backbone. Herrmann digs deep into Hearst, going past the megalomania to etch a brave, wounded portrait of a fool for love. Still, the revelation is Dunst… Bogdanovich knows old Hollywood, a place the script describes as "a land just off the coast of planet Earth," and his rendering of this poignant piece of time shows us how little things have changed.” – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone |
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| Germany/UK 2001 | |||
Director: Peter Bogdanovich With: Kirsten Dunst (Marion Davies), Edward Herrmann (W.R. Hearst), Eddie Izzard (Charlie Chaplin), Cary Elwes (Thomas Ince), Joanna Lumley (Elinor Glyn), Jennifer Tilly (Louella Parsons), Claudia Harrison (Margaret Livingston) 114 mins, DV (16:9) M low level violence West Melton & Districts Film Society |
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