Cole Porter still haunts, delights in life and song
When Night and Day, the 1946 movie biography of Cole Porter, was released, William Bowers, one of the troika responsible for its hackneyed screenplay, apologized profusely to Porter for pasting movie platitudes onto the composer's complex songs. Night and Day is so howlingly bad that it enjoys the dubious distinction of being the worst biopic ever made. For most of the film, Cary Grant, who plays Porter, looks off-camera with such desperation that you'd think he was hunting for an emergency exit. Though Kevin Kline also does not resemble the squat, boyish Porter one whit, the lean, world-weary actor cuts a swellegant (as Porter might have said) figure in De-Lovely. This intelligent, postmodern biography from director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Jay Cocks uses Porter's songs, by turns haunting and hilarious, to decode and reconstruct a life hinted at in the familiar words and music.
When Night and Day, the 1946 movie biography of Cole Porter, was released, William Bowers, one of the troika responsible for its hackneyed screenplay, apologized profusely to Porter for pasting movie platitudes onto the composer's complex songs. Night and Day is so howlingly bad that it enjoys the dubious distinction of being the worst biopic ever made. For most of the film, Cary Grant, who plays Porter, looks off-camera with such desperation that you'd think he was hunting for an emergency exit.
Though Kevin Kline also does not resemble the squat, boyish Porter one whit, the lean, world-weary actor cuts a swellegant (as Porter might have said) figure in De-Lovely. This intelligent, postmodern biography from director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Jay Cocks uses Porter's songs, by turns haunting and hilarious, to decode and reconstruct a life hinted at in the familiar words and music.
"Raising an heir / could never compare / with raising a bit of hell," runs the introduction to "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" from Porter's musical masterpiece, Kiss Me Kate. These lyrics might have been his personal motto. Although married for 35 years to the lovely Linda Lee, Porter led a bifurcated life: He professed love for Linda (played by the incomparably lovely Ashley Judd) and acted upon his lust for whichever duke or chorus boy caught his fancy - and legions of them did.
De-Lovely is matter-of-fact about Porter's liaisons, which is the most groundbreaking thing about it. Stylistically, the film never bursts over the top in the way Moulin Rouge does. Winkler goes more for the down-in-the-dumps-on-the-41st-floor Depression Modern irony, both in decor and mood, that Porter so carefully cultivated in his public life.
Cocks structures the story as a musical revue that an impresario named Gabe (Jonathan Pryce) stages so the dying Porter can relive key moments of his life. To attract that sector of the movie audience born after Porter died (in 1964), Winkler has pop artists such as Elvis Costello and Natalie Cole sing such Porter songs as "Let's Misbehave" and "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye."
Cinematically, this has mixed results, for it's the rare singer who is, like Cole, as mesmerizing before a movie camera as she is before a microphone. Musically, though, the film is a banquet for such diverse talents as jazz thrush Diana Krall and Brit popster Robbie Williams.
With his reedy voice and genial generalissimo personality, Kline is magnificent as Porter, the Midwestern nobody who became a glittering cosmopolitan somebody with homes in Paris, New York and Hollywood. Porter's life was the stuff of fiction; indeed, had he not existed, F. Scott Fitzgerald would have created him. As the film shows, the composer lived large long before he made a living at his art.
Kline is an extravagantly resourceful actor who has done three-dimensional work in any number of one-dimensional scenarios. Here he exults in variously playing Porter the socialite, the artist, the doting husband, and the queen bee of the Hollywood hive.
Kline is better served by the screenplay than is Judd's Linda. She floats into Porter's life on wings of chiffon, but even though the helpmate accepts that her gentleman prefers gentlemen, after a while she looks as if she wants to strangle him with her rope of pearls.
The film glosses over the give-and-take of their marriage, one in which Linda was the rock and Porter the butterfly. It is more interested in showing how Porter, who couldn't be open about his homosexuality because of the mores of the time, sublimated this conflict into some of the wittiest lyrics and most enchanting music of his day.
Winkler is fascinated with mortality, as well as work as a metaphor of life. His last film was Life as a House, starring Kline as a dying architect who reconnects with estranged family members by building a domicile. With De-Lovely, Winkler gives us an artist at his iridescent twilight, one who inspired the world through song but was not always able to connect to the one who loved him most. Like a Porter song, De-Lovely has melancholy, wit and style to burn.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey
at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.
De-Lovely
*** (out of four stars)
Produced by Irwin Winkler, Rob Cowan, Charles Winkler, directed by Irwin Winkler, written by Jay Cocks, photography by Tony Pierce-Roberts, music by Cole Porter, distributed by MGM.
Running time: 2 hours, 5 mins.
Cole Porter. . . Kevin Kline
Linda Porter. . . Ashley Judd
Gabe. . . Jonathan Pryce
Monty Woolley. . . Allan Corduner
Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual content)
Playing at: Ritz Five and Ritz Sixteen/NJ