70's Bonanza: Diary of a Mad Housewife

Filmed and released in 1970, Frank Perry's "Diary of a Mad Housewife" sits comfortably in the middle of his two other films that devote themselves to the mid life crisis of their protagonists. First there was Burt Lancaster and his allegorical swim home (or swim away, depending how you look at it) in "The Swimmer", perhaps Perry's most overlooked but strongest effort of the 60's. Five years later, in 1972, Tuesday Weld literally melts away on-screen as the wife of a Hollywood filmmaker floating despondently through her sunny L.A. days in "Play It As It Lays". In "Diary of a Mad Housewife", Carrie Snodgress not only seethes with hatred for her husband (an excellently devilish Richard Benjamin), but this hatred drives her into the arms of young, handsome writer Frank Langella. This smoldering trilogy not only exemplifies Perry's penchant for moral confusion and emotional disconnectivity in his films, but it paints a marvelously vivid snapshot of America's growing disillusionment during that time period.

Opening and closing on the face of Carrie Snodgress in drastically different ways, everything in between is especially violent, metaphysically speaking. As Tina (Snodgress), her hum-drum upper middle class life is quickly documented through the endless preening of her husband and his ludicrous demands for social status and child rearing. Never speaking a dissatisfying tone towards him, instead resorting to passive indifference, her break with her life comes in the form of novelist George (Frank Langella) when they meet at a party. An affair begins, but even that extra-marital scream doesn't fulfill Tina. Perry and screenwriter Eleanor Perry color George in much the same light as Tina's husband.... dashing and handsome, yes, but just as self-involved and nasty as the person she lives with and puts up with day in and day out. Like Tuesday Weld in "Play It As It Lays", we sort of root for her just because everyone around her is so terrible. It's only during the final scene does the film's title come into clarification,and even that supposedly cathartic moment is clouded by the selfishness of everyone involved.

If all of this sounds dismal, it's not. Perry and wife Eleanor are masters of scraping the surface and revealing the hollowness behind people... its just always sad there's one clear-eyed woman (or man) to observe this. Snodgress does seem to eventually liberate herself. It's an obvious but astute metaphor, but the mention of a deadly plant virus that wipes out the vineyard Tina's husband invests in is apt. "Diary of a Mad Housewife" explores the rottenness that bubbles up slowly not only via the wonderful performance of Carrie Snodgress, but the re-growth that's always possible.

"Diary of a Mad Housewife" isn't available on DVD, only on OOP VHS sources, which is a shame.

70's Bonanza: Play It As It Lays

Tuesday Weld is just beautiful... and that beauty makes it all the more heartbreaking in the way she stumbles through her days in Frank Perry's dark deconstruction of a Hollywood starlet's psyche. Released in 1972 (and never available on DVD, although the Sundance channel once had it in its rotation about 6 years ago), "Play It As It Lays" is a fragmented and very loose character study as Maria (Weld) has her marriage to hotshot director Carter Lang (Adam Roarke) dissolve early in the film. She then faces an abortion, whose sounds and images are replayed like bad nightmares throughout the remainder of the film. Her best friend, a producer played tremendously by Anthony Perkins, is there for long walks on the beach and drunken conversations, but he can barely stand his own insufferable existence and eventually, Maria has nothing better to do than hang around the desert set of her ex-husband's new film and shoot live ammo with the stunt coordinator. Yes, "Play It As It Lays" borders on the misanthropic side, to say the least, all held together by a swooning visual style that heightens the smog across Los Angeles and plays like a feminist version of a later Brett Easton Ellis novel. Even the shadowy chauffer who leads her to her bayside abortion is more worried about the gas mileage of her corvette than her state of well being.

Based on a short story by Joan Didion and with a screenplay by Didion and John Gregory Dunne, "Play It As It Lays" makes for a startling double feature of mid-life crisis when paired with director Perry's previous film "The Swimmer". In that film, Burt Lancaster is on an almost mythological adventure as he's trying to swim home through the backyard pools of his neighbors, getting caught up in their waifish lifestyles and obviously running from something himself. Also not available on DVD, "The Swimmer" is an amazing film for 1968 whose message is oblique yet somewhat disturbing. In "Play It As It Lays", Tuesday Weld reaches a state of emotional and physical paralysis at one point which prompts Anthony Perkins to remark her state of "catatonia" is not pretty. Like Lancaster, Maria is a stunted individual suffering through the empty Southern California lifestyle. But what makes her story more damaging is the fact she does hold out some hope for a brighter future as her young daughter is confined to a children's home for unspecified reasons. In her fractured voice over that frames part of the film, no answer is given for this although we know she deeply cares for her daughter as it seems to be the only part of her life that means something, held out in her mind like an oasis from the shit of SoCal.

As stated here many times, filmmaker Frank Perry is such an under rated talent, equally depressing that his very adult films are rarely available on home video distribution, "The Swimmer" and "Play It As It Lays" being front and center. By the time Tuesday Weld, hair messy and eyes wide, stares straight into the camera and answers her off-screen director to break the wall between film and confessional in the final scene of "Play It As It Lays" attests, there are beautiful disasters still waiting to be discovered.

70's Bonanza: Man On a Swing

One of the more underrated directors of the 70's and 80's, Frank Perry has worked across a wide swath of genre and mood, rarely leaving behind his laid back Southern California vibe no matter how dark the material... although Perry himself was a New Yorker by birth. Two wonderful films in the late 60's, "The Swimmer" with Burt Lancaster and "Last Summer"- which is a remarkable and hard to find ensemble of teenage beach bum lifestyle marred by the encroaching malaise of adulthood- are morally ambitious and thematically pregnant efforts. In the 70's, Perry helmed several highly regarded films including "Rancho Delux" and "Diary of a Mad Housewife" before moving into rather outrageous territory with "Mommie Dearest", "Compromising Positions" and the Shelley Long comedy "Hello Again" (anyone remember that?). But in between these high points of a long career, there were smaller, lesser known works such as a raggedly vicious portrait of the iconic western figure Doc Holiday with Stacey Keach as "Doc" or a 70's indie favorite by many filmmakers about a woman's descent into madness with "Play It As It Lays". Also in the mix was "Man On A Swing".... Perry's entry into the detective-whodunit series with a twist of the occult thrown in for good measure.

Starring Cliff Robertson, "Man On A Swing" begins with the discovery and ensuing investigation of a local girl found murdered and left for dead in her vehicle in a strip mall parking lot. It's not long into the reconstruction of the crime that Robertson receives a phone call from a local man named Franklin (Joel Grey) claiming to be a psychic with important information about the murder. The psychic reveals numerous previously undisclosed details about the murder scene and events leading up to it, which causes Robertson to use the man as a possible lead. Quickly, "Man On A Swing" discards the typical progression of the murder mystery involving the girl and focuses its attention on the psychological battle between psychic and skeptic. In a wonderful performance, Cliff Robertson runs the gamut of emotions from extreme guilt of not being able to crack the case (especially when another dead girl turns up) to angry dissidence when his attempts to debunk the psychic powers of Franklin fails. There's also some telling humor, such as the scene in the film's opening when a local police officer, chauffeuring Robertson to the crime scene, flips on the siren. Without looking away from the window, Robertson mumbles "turn that shit off..." That single line of dialogue tells more about the gruff humility and lazy informality of the man (and the town) than any other establishing shot.

The terrific thing about the film is its unique unpredictability, giving equal screen time to both cop and psychic. As Franklin, Joel Grey portrays the dichotomy of his character with ease. When he slips into a trance or becomes extremely nervous over the unexpected "test" set up by the police chief, he becomes a bundle of nerves and high strung energy. When living a normal life, he becomes even more menacing in silent ways, as if he's a prophetic minister jockeying for his own church. Like "Zodiac" and countless other serial killer films, the real tension is in the nuanced details and probing glances of seeker versus hunter. I'm not quite comparing "Man On A Swing" to the caliber of Fincher's masterpiece, but it is a hugely neglected film that deserves more attention. And the ending, which confidently hinges an ambiguous final scene between Robertson and Grey, does carve out room for its own place in the annuls of haunting, thought provoking conclusions.