The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender Movie Review
If you've never seen Rock Hudson's Home Movies or From the Journals of Jean Seberg, The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender isn't a bad introduction to the films of Mark Rappaport. But if you have, watching Rappaport's latest effort is like sitting through movies you've already seen with the person you've seen them with—you know all the observations, punch lines, and witticisms in advance. This time around, Rappaport looks at the relationship between male characters in the movies: butlers, desk clerks, and gigolos as played by Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, and Erik Rhodes. Comedy teams like Hope and Crosby, Martin and Lewis, Danny Kaye and Danny Kaye. Murder suspect Clifton Webb receiving detective Dana Andrews in his bathtub. Massimo Girotti all by himself in Ossessione. Wendell Corey hanging out with anybody, especially John Hodiak in Desert Fury. Randolph Scott and, again, anybody, especially Cary Grant, in My Favorite Wife. Walter Brennan, of all people, and anybody, anywhere, anytime. Rappaport devotes considerable screen time to Brennan, not because he was the best character actor of his day, but because he's so, you know, attached to all the male leads. What does it mean? Not that the hero is a strong silent type who says about eight words to the heroine, so we need SOME exposition in there somewhere delivered as painlessly as possible to a scene-stealing sidekick! It had to be the unimaginable, that Gary Cooper (or even Humphrey Bogart) and Walter Brennan were GOING together! Well, it's a thought. But, like so many ideas expressed in this 103-minute compilation, it's a surface perception. Unlike The Celluloid Closet, which digs a little deeper for its insights and expresses a variety of viewpoints from actual participants, The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender has just one joke, re-told again and again and again. If you (a) like the joke and (b) enjoy the clips, have fun.
1997 103m/C D: Mark Rappaport; W: Mark Rappaport; C: Nancy Schreiber; M: Dan Butler. VHS