• Sweet Charity (film)

5/17/24 (Fri)

Bob Fosse was evidently a controversial choice as director of this 1969 work, never having helmed a film before, but he had ample Hollywood experience as a dancer and was championed by Shirley MacLaine, who had gotten her break in the Fosse-choreographed Pajama Game. Plus, of course, he had staged and choreographed the Broadway version of this show to tremendous success just a few years earlier. Stories of his battles over the film with the powers-that-be could be a book on their own, but his vision ultimately prevailed. A pity.

The musical, based on Fellini’s great Nights of Cabiria, coyly turns the prostitute into a dance hall hostess and shifts the action to New York. The hostess, here named Charity, is trusting and generous and perpetually in search of love in all the wrong places. As much as she wants to believe in love, it doesn’t seem to believe in her: one lover pushes her into a lake and steals her money, another throws her into his closet when his girlfriend unexpectedly returns, another runs away literally as they are about to sign the wedding certificate. She is battered by a series of bad choices and an unquenchable conviction that people are good at heart. Her fellow hostesses are more realistic about the ways of men and their futures as ladies in a less-than-respectable profession, shielding them from Charity’s endless cycle of hope and despair. Nevertheless, for all the ups and downs, the story is treated on stage with a light touch, including a gag-filled script, winking songs and rousing dance scenes that seek little more than to entertain, which it does extremely well.

Fosse unfortunately shows less interest in simple storytelling than in putting his stamp on the material through experimental effects, undercutting the slight material throughout. He uses stop motion, backwards filming, unnatural camera angles, dramatic lighting effects and more, all of which tend to call attention to themselves rather than contribute to the story or characters. He begins his shenanigans from the opening number and never stops. That works to an extent in numbers like “Rich Man’s Frug” and “The Rhythm of Life”, where the fantasy element allows for playful camerawork, but he carries that over to normal scenes that can’t support it. When Charity and the Italian movie star get into his limo, for instance, Fosse irritatingly films them from outside the car through the rain-streaked window, which makes no sense at all; their conversation isn’t dramatic enough to warrant such special treatment. It typifies his overall approach to the film. In the buoyant “I Love to Cry at Weddings”, he freezes the frame several times in the middle of the number for reasons known only to him, interrupting the action and again elevating an irrelevant scene. He presumably wants to make the experience more cinematic rather than just repeating what was on stage, which is fine in theory, but he still needs to match the tone of the direction to the material. He uses such methods to much greater effect in later darker films like Cabaret and All That Jazz, but they’re way too heavy here for the fluffy story (by Peter Stone, but based on Neil Simon’s typically jokey stage script) and songs. The story and characters get lost in all this. The 1960s were an era of excess for film musicals, and as in most of those cases, the original show’s upbeat mood got ground away by the overkill.

Having Fosse’s innovative choreography preserved on screen is a big plus, especially the irreplaceable “Big Spender” and other-worldly “Frug”. But his jaggy editing (as in Cabaret) makes much of it look like posing rather than dancing, and his quirky approach manages to undermine some of the best numbers, especially Charity’s joyous solos “If They Could See Me Now” and “I’m a Brass Band”. I would have thought that as a choreographer he’d want to show audiences his dances rather than distract our eyes from them. I guess not.

The script more or less follows the stage show, for better or worse. As on stage, the show can be episodic. The entire sequence with the Italian actor simply comes and goes, introducing a major character and quickly dispensing with him afterwards, while the psychedelic “The Rhythm of Life” emerges from nowhere and then goes right back there. The scenes in the dance hall are all terrific, benefiting from some fine acting, and the scene where the broken Charity is talking by phone to her unknowing colleagues, who think she is happily married, is superb. But his direction elsewhere is overblown.

Worse, he chooses a downer of an ending. Charity’s fiancé deserts her for his own selfish reasons just before they get hitched after she has given up job, friends and everything for him. That not only devastates her but leaves her essential goodness and optimism unrewarded. After she’s been beaten down the entire film, it feels cruel to deprive her of happiness at this point, even with the hint of a hippie positivity at the end. (That works in the Fellini source film, thanks in good part to Giulietta Masina’s indelible performance.) In fact, I discovered that Fosse filmed an alternate happy ending where Charity reunites with her beau, which I found easily on YouTube. Though not particularly well written or staged, it was more satisfying in the context of the musical; we’re rooting too hard for Charity at that point to see her fail again. I wish they had stuck with that.

The movie is lifted by the wonderfully jazzy score by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields. Certain songs were cut, the most missed being “Charity’s Soliloquy”, “I’m the Bravest Individual” and the dreamy “Baby, Dream Your Dream”. At the same time, the writers offered three new songs, one of which is soppy and best forgotten but the other two first-rate – the exuberant “My Personal Property” and the tender (though inferior to the song it replaced) “It’s a Nice Face”.

I’ve seen criticism of Shirley MacLaine’s performance, but I thought she was near perfect. Her enthusiasm and tears both felt genuine throughout, and her comic timing reminded me of Lucille Ball (the red hair helped). While she didn’t get the chance to show off her dancing in full due to Fosse’s aggravating editing, the little she did was elating. (Fosse’s ex-wife Gwen Verdon, who lost the role she originated to MacLaine, graciously coached her for the film.) I can’t imagine anyone better in this rendering.

Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly, reprising their London roles, lit up the screen in every scene they were in. They preserved the lighter touch of the original, a taste of what might have been. They were superb in every way. John McMartin, the only of the main performers retained from Broadway, was competent but not overly exciting as Charity’s love interest. In lesser roles, Sammy Davis Jr. basically plays himself in a hip take on “Rhythm” but does it very well, and Ricardo Montalbán and especially a great Stubby Kaye make memorable appearances.

The good things about the movie, mostly involving the songs, left me wishing that it had a director more interested in entertaining than impressing us. I’m sorry it became fodder for Fosse’s film ambitions. I suppose this is unlikely to be filmed again unless Lady Gaga or such takes an interest; it would have been a perfect candidate for the NBC Live musicals.