"....One curious thing about 1969 acting--Jane Fonda's jugular wisecracker silencing everybody in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Michel Bouquet's meek-murderous husband ... in La Femme Infidele ... is that it inhabits a much smaller space than the ballroom-museum-golf-course that Katharine Hepburn treats as her oyster in Bringing Up Baby. The attitude is all different from Hepburn's egotistical-bitchy "Oh, Davids!" Both Audran (Infidele) and Jane Fonda appear to own every inch of a small principality that extends about six inches to any side of their bodies, and anything else in the horizon is uncontrollable, unattainable, and therefore hardly concerns them. Where Roz Russell in His Girl Friday and Hepburn are swashbucklers running everyone in sight, particularly men, Audran's skillful niggling act of undulating sensuality or Fonda's stubborn life-loathing is very inside, grudging, thoughtful, always faced toward the situation--nothing escapes their suspicious cool observance. It is heroic acting, but it is also enclosed, inclement, and battle ready."
Manny Farber, Introduction, Negative Space (
as re-printed in The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, p. 691-92
(post originally published August 28, 2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment