The Cobweb
Starring: Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Gloria Grahame
John Kerr, Charles Boyer, Susan Strasberg, Mabel Albertson
and Lillian Gish
Directed by Vicente Minnelli
Back in the 70's there
was a pub-rock band called the Kursaal Flyers. Their first two albums
were pretty straight, country-tinged rock, but their third album (The
Golden Mile) was something different. It was a mélange of
stylistic parodies, and immediately announced itself with the
brilliantly witty
"Little Does She Know" (their only British hit). Unlike their
stripped-down early sound, this one is ripe with overproduction,
beginning with a Phil
Spector-ish "wall of sound" with a crashing beat, as the singer
mournfully
recalls a tale of spotting the love of his life in a tatty launderette.
Alternating spoken verses with sung choruses, the orchestra gradually
swells until it completely overtakes the song. At the end, as if to
hammer
the point home, the song goes completely over-the-top, with
fanfare-like horns and a female choir singing Handel's "Hallelujah
Chorus."
I know what you're thinking, "Wow...Mike's really
off on a tangent today." Well, trust me, I do have an
actual point to make here. I mention this as an example of "camp." But
"Little Does She Know" is intentional camp. Our subject today
is unintentional camp, the type found in the sort of cinematic
melodramas of the 1950's and before (and even, by some brave souls, a
few years after). These sort of pictures were big business at
the time,
and directors such as Douglas Sirk and actresses like Joan Crawford
made
a killing at the box office with weepy melodramatic material. No
tear-jerking
moment was too manipulative, no plot-twist too ludicrous, no
scenery-chewing
too intense for such films.
"The Cobweb" is not a Douglas Sirk
film. Nor is it, as the title seems to suggest, a spooky proto-Hammer
horror flick. Rather, it was a potboiler set in a high-class mental
hospital* directed by Vicente Minnelli, a man so
deep in the closet he clearly had no clue how silly this film would
look
forty years later. But one is almost tempted to imagine Minnelli saw
something of his own situation. "All these curtains taken up and torn
down, purchased then tossed aside. I feel like those curtains." Think
of it as an object lesson. "If you stay in the closet, you'll wind up
this screwed up." If you'd like to read more on 1950's Gay
Shame,
this time from an out gay man, please see "Suddenly Last
Summer."
And you read right, I said "curtains." I'm
not talking figurative curtains, either. For the central conceit of
"The Cobweb" revolves around which set of curtains should go up in the
library. Every dramatic turn, every plot point, revolves around window
treatments. The word "drapes" is used so frequently in this film, I
almost wanted to have a chess clock I could hit so I could time how
long
the gaps between uses of the word actually were. And for this, an
all-star cast was assembled. And not just then-hot stars that are
forgotten today, real world-class talent like Lauren Bacall, Charles
Boyer and Lillian Gish. There are some out there who might say, "You're
missing the point, the curtains represent how the smallest decisions
can cause a rift between us, blah blah blah..." They can all bite me.
Regardless of how you look
at the film, it's utterly ludicrous. And yet, the entire thing is
played
straight-faced, without the barest trace of irony...except from Lauren
Bacall, who's the only one who seems to have the slightest idea how
silly
the whole endeavour is. Everyone else reads their dialogue, some of
which
is ripe and goofy beyond belief, as though the Bard himself had penned
it.
Nowadays, the very idea would have
been laughed out of any studio. But this was 1955. Not only were
top-flight actors and a top-flight director involved, but the whole
thing was filmed in glorious Technicolor and Cinemascope. "Wolf Devil
Woman" it ain't. And if there's anyone in doubt about whether I'm
serious about a two-hour-plus film that revolves entirely around the
subject of drapes, well, just read on...
Under the very art-deco 50's opening
credits, accompanied by overdramatic, discordant Bernard
Herrmann-imitative music (by one Leonard Rosenman), we get a wide shot
of the large, splendourous sanitarium with a young man running across
the screen and out into a
cornfield. The credits end with the line, written in yellow script
across
the screen, "The trouble began," and the young man (named Stevie, we
later
learn, played by John Kerr†) arrives at a wooden
bridge.
At the same time, a big pink car driven by Gloria Grahame pulls up
beside him. She offers him a lift. She tries to offer the young man
small talk
as they pass by the rear-projected landscapes, but he insists on
rattling
on morbidly about the deaths of Cezanne and Van Gogh and the nature of
sanity, tearing apart one of her red gladioli as he does. She at least
has the
decency to act surprised when she learns he's a patient at the clinic
as
they drive up to it. "That's right, I'm out of touch with reality," is
his reply.
Cut to Dr. McIver (Richard Widmark),
pretentiously dictating a letter to the board of trustees about patient
committee affairs. His secretary interrupts him to remind him of his
appointment with Mrs. Demuth, a mannish, smoking woman in jodhpurs.
"Mr.
Holcomb is disturbed," she announces. From here, we're whisked to Mr.
Holcomb's
door, where some nurses are trying in vain to get him to come out of
his
room. Dr. Devenal (Charles Boyer) arrives to attempt to help. We get a
brief glimpse of the interior, with lamps knocked over, pictures askew,
and the octagenarian Mr. Holcomb lying crabbed with bug-eyes on the
bed,
panting and gasping. It's the first of a large number of
unintentionally
funny instances of hammy overacting in the film.
Anyway, after learning that Mr. Holcomb's
problem lies with an earlier incident with "Curly," the gardener, Dr.
Devenal leaves the nurses to deal with Mr. Holcomb as he traipses off
to confer with Vicki Inch, played to bitchtastic perfection by, of all
people, Lillian Gish. She's in the library, convening with a
representative from K-Mart (or the local, small-town equivalent,
anyway) who's showing her samples of drapery fabric. Only the cheapest
and ugliest fabric will do. "It's my job to do things as economically
as possible," she explains. And when Dr. Devenal first brings up the
subject of Curly, her first suggestion is that he be fired, before she
even knows what he did! A sweetheart to be sure. After storming out of
the room, we see a young woman, who had
been working up till now in the background, thumbing through the fabric
samples, then looking up purposefully at the library windows. We know
she's coming up with an important and earthshaking idea, not because of
the idealistic look in her eye, but because she's played by Lauren
Bacall.
"There it is...the House of Usher!" mutters
Stevie as the Nice Lady drives him up to the asylum's front door. He
compares the inside to the "inside of a dead fish." He mentions Miss
Inch's plans to hang new drapes for the library, "The patients get one
look at them, and they'll hang themselves alongside them." He then says
that the reason she couldn't tell he was a patient was that "you can't
tell the patients from the doctors." "I can," she replies, "The
patients get better." Sparkling dialogue, for sure. As Stevie makes for
the inside, so does Gloria Grahame's character. Not following him,
though, it's too purposeful for that.
Inside the dead fish, she passes Dr. Devenal
boring a nurse with his tale of his Roman vacation. Then in
the library, she too fingers the drapery fabric samples. Outside, after
running into another doctor (Dr. Wolf), we learn that she's Dr.
McIver's
wife. She then barges in on her husband and a patient (Stevie) to tell
her an idea she just had (hmmm...it wouldn't have anything to do with
drapes,
would it? Call it a hunch). He's pissed off that she interrupted the
sacred
doctor/patient relationship, and as good as tells her to get stuffed.
He kisses her on the cheek in the hopes of making things better, but
with the way he kisses, well...the term "dead fish" again comes to mind.
With the missus out of the way, Dr. McIver
can get back to analyzing Stevie. Uh-oh! Time for John Kerr's "Oscar"
moment, and a doozy it is! He accuses Mrs. McIver of being a
nymphomaniac, and the "good" Doctor of marrying her to "wear on [his]
lapel." Not only is Kerr gloriously over-the-top in this scene, but he
has to be so while delivering some of the silliest lines in Hollywood
history. Try some
of these on for size:
"If it's a question of values, your values
stink!"
[imitating Mrs. McIver, apparently] "Stuart,
darling, welcome home! There's a fatted calf on the stove!"
"Why don't you analyze my Oedipus complex
with my lousy father?"
In an attempt to placate Stevie, Dr. McIver
(who seems to be channeling John Wayne in this scene, then busy with
his own megaton bomb, "The Conqueror") offers some platitudes
so trite, they'd make Dr. Bob Hartley blush. I'm surprised he didn't
start quoting popular songs. This is the "brilliant" psychologist
everyone's on about?
Back at Casa De McIver, Mrs. McIver is
gossiping over the phone with Regina Mitchell-Smith, her high-up friend
in Chicago who just happens to be the chairman...sorry, chairperson.
She's discussing her ideas for the new drapes for the library, of
course, which gives her an opportunity to dis Vicki's taste. It also
gives her the opportunity to ask Regina to buy some pricey curtains
from big-city decorating boutiques. "They should never let me within a
hundred miles of materials when there's a budget involved," she admits.
Uh-oh. Something tells me Miss Inch isn't going to be pleased with this
development. Meanwhile, the good Doctor walks in on his daughter Rosie
practicing the
piano, and greets his spastic son Mark (Tommy Rettig, whom elder
readers
will recognize from the "Lassie" TV show). In another scene that looks
odder than it ought to, Dr. McIver manhandles his daughter like a rag
doll
as he carries her upstairs. (Well, what would you call what
he's doing?)
In the McIver bedroom, the doctor
(henceforth Stuart to save space) apologizes to the missus (henceforth
Karen, ditto). She whips out a swatch of "Chippendale rose on antique
satin" to vocalize the idea she had when visiting the library earlier.
As soon as the swatch hits Stuart's leg the conversation takes an ugly
turn, as the subject
of Stevie comes up. Voices are raised, accusations are made. Karen gets
the distinct feeling that he cares more about his patients than about
her. Considering what we've seen so far, we have to admit, she's got a
point.
After she storms out of the bedroom, Stuart
returns to the downstairs portion of the palatial McIver estate to pour
an alcoholic drink and discuss chess with Mark. Here, we also meet the
McIvers' maid, Sadie, who resembles Edith Massey more than a
bit, in acting style as well as in general appearance. Too bad we don't
get to see more of her, she all but disappears after this one scene.
Then in the equally palatial foyer, Karen and Stuart have another, more
subdued and icy blowout, as he forgot the concert the two of them were
supposed to attend, and scheduled the patients' committee meeting for
the same night. The scene is really little more than an excuse to
parade
Gloria Grahame in another expensive outfit as she storms dramatically
down the staircase.
Dissolve over to the patients' committee
meeting, overseen by a still-tacet Meg Rinehart (Bacall), and lorded
over by Mr. Holcomb, the same Mr. Holcomb who (as a fellow patient
helpfully points out) freaked out earlier. Stuart arrives to find them
discussing their own plans for the new curtains: have the patients make
them themselves...designed by tortured-artist Stevie and commandeered
by Miss Rinehart. Stuart
likes the idea and decides to go over everyone else's heads and proceed
with this plan.
At the concert, Karen receives a telephone
call from Regina, who informs that her expensive new curtain material
will be on the plane tomorrow. She calls Vicki to tell her the good
news. Unsurprisingly, she's less than pleased that the wife of a
co-worker
has seen fit to go over her head. Upon discovering that Regina
Mitchell-Smith had a hand in the decision makes her bristle all the
more. "Sprung up
like a toadstool--overnight!" she crows, explaining that while Regina
has been on the board five years, she can remember when the building
was
built, when the last mammoth in the area died out, etc. etc. Finally
deciding
that she's had enough barging into her territory, she slams the phone
down
on Karen. Then she phones K-Mart and demands the bargain-basement
drapes
be sent out post-haste.
After sending his wife Edna (a brunette Fay
Wray) back to her seat, Dr. Devenal meets up with Karen in the concert
hall's lobby. She tells him of her unpleasant conversation with Vicki,
how she hung up on her and called Regina a toadstool. He reassures her,
saying that Vicki is a "character" (You're telling me!) and that he'll
iron out things with her tomorrow. When Karen says that Vicki made her
feel "unwanted," Dev snakes his Gallic hands round hers and says, "I've
never given you that feeling, have I?" Thus another strand of the
cobweb
is strung...
Back at the clinic, stone faced Mrs.
O'Brien, the head nurse, confronts Stuart about some wild, drunken
parties given by Mr. Wietz, one of their patients. She threatens to
take away
his alcohol, which Stuart forbids because...apparently it's the only
thing keeping him from thoughts of suicide. Hard liquor as a tonic
anti-depressant. Man, no wonder this guy's such a well-respected doctor.
On the home front, things haven't gotten any
rosier. In a stunning, dialogue-free scene, we see the McIvers not only
bedding down in seperate beds, but in seperate rooms. Stuart peeks in
on Karen, but she gives him the cold-shoulder. The scene is really
little more than an excuse to show Gloria Grahame dramatically lit in a
scanty nightie.
We get the opportunity to learn more about
Meg when Stevie neurotically wanders in holding some sketches
and starts asking personal questions. She owns up about the death of
her husband and son in an accident, and that she had undergone therapy
after being psychologically scarred by her mother. At the end of the
scene,
she examines some of his sketches which, frankly, look like they were
actually
designed by a mental patient. If someone hung up curtains with those
images
on them in my house, I'd have nightmares every night.
Stuart examines Stevie's grotesques with Meg
and her silk-screen artist friend Abe on-hand. He then phones up Karen
and makes a date to talk with her one-on-one. She emerges from the
shower to answer the phone. The scene is little more than an excuse to
show Gloria Grahame scantily clad in a towel and a bathing cap (A
bathing cap? Even I know that's not sexy!)
The would-be filmmaker in me has to confess
being impressed by the next composite shot, taking place in front of
the clinic. It probably took all day to set up. Make no mistakes,
Minnelli was a pro even when faced with monumental idiocy like "The
Cobweb." The
scene gets underway as Dev straightens his tie and drives away, and
another
car arrives. The driver gets out with a couple of parcels and accosts
Meg,
asking where he can find Miss Inch's office. Dr. Wolf crosses in front
of
them as Meg tears open one of the packages, revealing the slate blue
plain
cotton curtains Vicki ordered. Inside, the complex shots continue, as
two patients accost Stevie as he emerges from the staircase to tell him
how brilliant his sketches were (have they actually seen them?)
As Meg crosses past them, the loud and brash Mr. Capp (Oscar Levant,
who reportedly actually spent time in and out of mental hospitals in
real
life) mocks Stevie as, "The Cezanne of the psychos! You're on the
assembly
line of success. From now on you'll hover between exhilaration and
despair.
I pity you!" As Stevie shrinks back, cute little Suzy (Susan Strasberg,
in her big-screen debut) gives him a dressing-down and storms into the
cafeteria.
Meg finishes her trek to Vicki's office,
finding her in a surprisingly chipper mood. This is explained when
it's revealed that she was sipping a sherry. Alcohol, it seems, can
soften the sharpest tongue. She attempts to plead her case to
Vicki
by appealing to her parsimonious nature, saying she knows a way to
"reduce
the crime to a misdemeanor." Vicki, though, doesn't seem to be pleased
by the idea of "muslin cartoons," and figures she must be up to
something.
Meg makes the mistake of mentioning Dr. McIver by name, which sets
Vicki
off, delivering one of the film's most notorious, unintentionally
hilarious
monologues, "So that's why you're here! So that woman can have her way!
You cat's-paw! I thought you came here to help me! Muslin cartoons
indeed!
I've never heard such paradiddle in all my life!"
While this is going on, Stevie is asking
Suzy to accompany him to the movies. She blurts out "NO!" and he speeds
off out into the hall (Hmmm...hasn't anyone in this film ever
heard of a word called "subtlety"?). She has to run out after him to
explain, she's agoraphobic and highly ashamed of it. He promises to
help
her out with it. "Sometime," they decide.
Dev wasn't just straighening his tie for no
reason, he had a dinner date with Karen. As she fondles her swatch of
"Chippendale rose on antique satin" (!), she tells him of her marital
problems, and reminisces about her happier days when she and Stuart
lived in Chicago. The scene is really little more than an excuse to
show Gloria Grahame clad in a basic black designer gown. In the
meantime, Stuart
meets up with Meg, carrying groceries up to her house. She relates to
him her run-in with Vicki earlier in the day, "I'm a cat's-paw, you're
using me to further some sinister scheme of Mrs. McIver's..." He asks
to
use her phone to ask Vicki about this. When he does, he learns that
Karen
had called her, and has something to do with what made her so upset
(believe
me, it doesn't take much). Naturally, she slams the phone down on him
before
he can learn more. The two of them smoke (this is Lauren
Bacall,
after all) and discuss clinic affairs as a pretext to flirt with one
another.
It doesn't escalate to anything more...yet, but when we see how Meg
drags
on that cigarette after he leaves, we know the score.
Stuart barges in on Vicki in the middle of
the night at her own house to tell her off. It's about time someone
did. He tells her to "sit down and shut up," then goes on to say (again
possessed by The Duke), "First of all, don't ever hang up on me like
that again.
You do, and I'll pull your dress over your head and beat some manners
into
you." He then asks her about this phantom phone call from Karen, which
turns out to be about (duh!) new drapes for the library. He puts his
foot down, telling her his decision on the patient-designed drapes
stands.
"I was under the impression that Dr. Devenal was running the clinic,"
she rejoinders. He asks if she's ever read his contract, which she
tells
him Dev keeps locked in his desk (i.e.: she hasn't).
It's now Karen's turn to pointedly
snub her husband. She apparently made a point of missing their date,
which is why he's stuck playing chess with Timmy...er, I mean Mark. As
she sprints upstairs like a viper in heat, he follows her to have yet
another marital quarrel. Immediately, the subject turns to drapes.
"Before
you know it," he comments, "we'll have so many drapes around here,
we'll
be able to wrap the clinic up in them." She admits to having dinner
with
Dev, in order to (among other things) sweet-talk him into her choice of
drapery fabric. He tries to tell her about Dev's womanizing tendencies,
which prompts her for a typical Gloria Grahame hissy-fit. He shuts the
door,
worried about waking the children. This prompts Karen to deliver
another
of the film's classic lines: "The only ones who get anything real from
you
are those professional children down at the clinic. Yesterday at school
they asked Rosie what she wanted to be when she grew up. Would you like
to know what she answered? A patient!" Stuart walks out to reassure his
son, who looks ready to trap himself down a well (sorry, couldn't
resist). "People...fight sometimes, Mark," is all he says, in that
none-too-reassuring cognac-and-Valium tone of his. Then back in his
bedroom, Karen bursts
in to have her last word on the drapes. His response? "I'd be home
more,
Karen...if there were more to come home to." The scene is really little
more than an excuse to show Gloria Grahame glamour-lit, wrapped in an
off-the-shoulder white robe.
The next morning, Vicki barges in on Dev,
asking if Dr. McIver has the authority on the "library drapes"
issue. He admits he knows nothing on the issue. She demands to see the
contract. He tries to defuse the situation by calling in his secretary
to dictate a letter, and asks that a patient be sent in. Vicki opens
the
door and shouts, "Get out!" at the secretary. Dev tears into her, but
doesn't fire her. "Because you can't," she tells him, "You gave that
up,
too, didn't you." His silence speaks volumes. She regrets going to the
wall
for him and storms out on him after telling him off. He clears his
schedule
to catch up on some serious drinking. In his drinks cabinet, he finds a
copy of a supposedly brilliant psychological dissertation he wrote
years
ago. He tosses it aside and slugs back the whiskey. Then he calls in
his
secretary to write a memo, "Subject: library drapes." Meanwhile, Vicki
phones
up her friend at K-Mart, telling him she's sending the cheapo drapes
back.
Back at the McIver household, the doorbell
buzzes and Karen, now clad in a fetching blue satin creation, bellows
for an unseen Sadie. She winds up answering the door herself. It's a
delivery boy with the "Chippendale rose on antique satin." Into the
closet they go (and I swear that's not a metaphor for anything!). The
door buzzes again, and again she bellows like a fishwife for Sadie
before
quickly feminizing herself and answering the door. It's Dev, who asks
her out for lunch, or perhaps a drive at the lake. She says she can't,
she's not dressed (huh? What's she call that pricey-looking designer
creation
then?), but she placates him by fixing him a drink. He starts putting
the moves on her, but she struggles free of him. She asks him to leave,
apologizing for leading him on. "Wipe your face, Dev," she tells him
finally.
In Stevie's room, Mr. Capp arrives
to elliptically (and callously) announce that a memo arrived cancelling
the patient-designed drapes. Naturally, this causes Stevie to go into
"Overact
Mode." He zips over to the barber shop, attacks Mr. Holcomb to wrench
the memo away from him, then runs across to the art room where he tears
down the drawings and screams at Dr. McIver when he blocks his only
exit.
Stuart looks at the memo and explains, "First I've heard of it..." then
phones Dev's secretary and leaves a message about the drapes. "There's
more at stake than the desires of the chairman of the board of
trustees!"
Then in Duke Mode again, he lectures Stevie and schedules an
appointment
for later that afternoon. Stevie apologizes to Mr. Holcomb and returns
the pictures. Little Suzy gives him a trinket she made and says she'll
agree to go to the movies with him.
That night at some cheap motel room, Dev is
boozing it up as loud jazz music blares. He's invited his secretary, as
she's the only floozy he trusts...or so he thinks. He invites her to
come with him to the Casbah (Oops! Sorry, I must have been mistaking
this for another, much better film with Charles Boyer in it. Pardon
me!), but she just squirms and frets that someone from the clinic saw
her come here. He gets a call from Regina, whom he tells to fly down
immediately. "It's an emergency," he says. (A drape-hanging emergency?)
He then phones up Vicki and tells her, "We're going to fight!" He tells
her his plan to discredit McIver. Naturally, she just hangs up on him.
At least this time she's sensible about it. I mean, who wouldn't have
hung up on him by now?
Back at the library, at a patients'
committee meeting, Stuart tries to reassure the patients that their
drapes will be the ones to go up. They feign confidence when he's
there, but the
second he leaves, Mrs. Demuth snaps, "If you think they'll make any
changes
around here, you're just kidding yourself!" Outside, Stuart receives a
phone call from his wife. Apparently, Karen received a phone call from
Edna,
asking about Dev, and was calling up her husband to see if maybe he
knew
of his whereabouts. No such luck. "He just threw his stink-bomb and
ran,"
he replies, adding, "I thought maybe you did." Karen's
obviously at
the end of her tether, but sweet, understanding Stuart yet again blows
her off in favour of his professional children...er, I mean, patients.
Then he blows off his patients in favour of drunken carousing with Meg,
Abe and Abe's pregnant wife (if you've ever longed to see a film
featuring
a pregnant woman carelessly horking back the alcohol, this is the film
for you), who have just rolled off the first silk-screens based on
Stevie's designs.
After the party ends, Stuart sticks around
to help Meg clean up. Cut to a crowded movie theater just letting out,
where Stevie holds hands with Suzy. Then back to Meg's. Stuart has just
driven her home. More flirting goes on, less subtle this time. She
invites him up for a nightcap, presumably with matching pyjamas. He
phones his secretary to learn if there's any news on Dev, then takes a
call from his own secretary and refers her to Meg's number if Dr. Wolf
wants to
talk to him personally. Then, at last, he and Meg make out passionately.
If you can't see where this is going,
clearly you've never seen a movie before. We return to poor, neglected
Karen, who phones her husband's secretary. She gives her Meg's number
and she phones her up. Unsurprisingly, Meg answers. More surprisingly,
Karen doesn't recognize that nicotine-soaked contralto of hers. She
tries calling information, but they refuse to give her satisfaction. So
she checks a wall-mounted list of clinic-related phone numbers. As the
Bernard Herrmann-manqué music swells on the soundtrack, we see a
close up
of the list with Meg's name and number highlighted and Karen's finger
scrolling
across underneath it, in case there were any pea-brains in the audience
who still didn't get the point!
Now, if this were a normal film, she
probably would have done something like...oh, I don't know...pulled
out her husband's shotgun and blown Meg's head off. This not a normal
film. This is "The Cobweb." Karen, rather, decides it's time to hang
drapes...in a fit of rage!
Mere words cannot describe Gloria Grahame's
possessed bravura performance here, but I'll try. I'm sure Joan
Crawford, under whom Grahame interned in the 1952 campfest "Sudden
Fear," would have been proud. Karen storms downstairs, opens the door,
opens the trunk of her car, then drags the designer curtains out of the
closet (again,
no pun intended, I swear!) and tosses them into the trunk, discordant
incidental music blaring all the while. Cut to Stevie leading Suzy up
to the front door of the clinic, the library's bay windows in full
view. As they disappear inside, down come the patient-designed drapes,
revealing bright light
inside. In an interior shot, we see that it's Karen (duh!) ripping down
the drapes maniacally. She hears Stevie's voice outside, and runs to
the
door, reaching for the light-switch while arching her back and hissing
like a cornered cat. Stevie kisses Suzy good night, who thanks him then
goes to bed. Pull back from this tender scene to reveal Mr. Capp,
freshly
sedated in a theraputic bath. He mutters about his psychological
problems
to the attending nurse. "He's making me fit to face the world," he says
of Dr. Devenal, "The futility, the emptiness...the hydrogen bomb...Say,
I may even be fit to cope with my mother!" He then breaks into a loud
and
off-key rendition of the "M.O.T.H.E.R." song ("M is for the million
things
she gave me, etc."). This continues to be heard under the
swelling
background music as loony Karen hangs her fancy-schmancy curtains. We
actually
get a wide shot of the library with the new curtains up accompanied by
a
dramatic chord! This scene is the films goofy highlight, easily! The
display
of tag-team overacting by Gloria Grahame and Oscar Levant is truly
astounding,
and lucky for us, composer Leonard Rosenman has chosen to provide
suitably
overdone music along with them. It truly is a wonder to behold.
The next morning, Stuart has to learn from
Mark (who's so not Bill Mumy!) thet Karen's not around. He
dumps the kid off at a friend's house for the weekend, then returns to
the clinic where he learns from Meg that Stevie has yet again freaked
out. He apparently broke down the door to the art room, attacked Curly
when he tried to stop him‡ then ripped up the
drawings and ran off. Mr. Holcomb has to inform him that the new drapes
went up. Stuart follows Stevie's trail, calling after him as if he were
lost in
the Grand Canyon; shouts of "Bobby! Cindy!" spring immediately to mind.
This goes on well into the night.
Back at the clinic, loud music plays.
Apparently the patients are having a "wake" to "mourn" their drapes!
Stuart is beseiged by anyone and everyone upon returning to the
building. He talks to the county sherriff on the phone, then demands
that Mrs. O'Brien take down the new drapes, "before any more patients
see them"! When she shows reticence, he strides across the library
floor and rips them down himself! Dev returns along with Regina, just
in time to see Stuart engaged in this monkey-business. If Regina looks
or sounds familiar, she should, she's played by Mabel Albertson, whom
you'll remember as Mrs. Stevens (Durwood's mother) from TV's beloved
"Bewitched." She demands an explanation, he
explains that it's perfectly theraputic...not for himself but for the
patients. This erupts into a big shouting match between Dev and Stuart
about Stevie's welfare, and Regina joins in the yelling, speaking of
rumours of laxity and incompetence at the clinic.
Morning arrives with an ominous clap of
thunder. Stuart's secretary tells him that Edna Devenal is waiting
in his office. She apologizes for his behaviour, and tearfully tries to
plead his case, asking that he not be discharged. She shows him a form
presenting a case against Dev. Stuart rifles through the form to find
(surprise!) Miss Inch's ornate signature at the bottom of the final
page. He sends for
Vicki, but a phone call from the sheriff stays him. Off to the
rain-soaked riverside, where they're busy dredging the river to try and
find traces of Stevie's body. This goes on into the night, and
everybody, it seems, has gathered by the riverside. Dev tells Karen to
go back to Stuart, "Don't nurse your wounds. Nurse his." Meanwhile,
Stuart and Meg are nursing each other's wounds. Meg gives Stuart an
ultimatum, either leave Karen or break it off with her. When he asks
her what she thinks he should do, she shuts herself into her car and
sobs.
The next morning, before the big meeting
with Regina, Stuart takes Vicki aside to talk to her in private. He
shows her the forms she typed up, then rips them up in front of her.
He explains that he "doesn't want that sort of help," even after she
tells him that Dev asked her to prepare a similar report against Stuart
himself. Before storming out, she makes sure to get a last word in on
the drapes, "I understand that those drapes hung in the library were
removed by you yesterday. You will appreciate that regardless of their
origin or suitability, they are the property of the clinic. I must ask
that they be returned at once." And off she goes.
At the meeting, Regina asks for Vicki's
report. She says, "I have no report, apart from the usual financial
ones." Stuart thanks her (obviously for not presenting the report
against Dev, though he offers no such explanation), then begins another
pretentious monologue. "Out of our needs and our passions here, we've
spun a human cobweb, and this boy's got caught in it." At the
completion of this grandstanding, he walks out, and Dev presents Regina
with a letter of resignation, "for reasons of ill health."
That night, on a soundstage made up to look
like the countryside, Stuart and Karen try to play catch-up. Then they
drive home and discover a bedraggled Stevie in their garage. They carry
him inside, where Karen makes a bed for him out of the "Chippendale
rose on antique satin" curtains. "Seem to keep running into these
things," mutters Stevie as he slips into unconsciousness. The yellow
script
arrives again to announce "The trouble was over." The End. And not a
moment too soon.
Comments? Jeez, where to begin? Apart from
Widmark (who does his usual sleepwalk through his role) and Bacall
(whose smallest gesture seems to scream out, "Thank God I get paid lots
of money for something so incredibly stupid!"), everyone seems to
compete to see who can give the most strident performance. Kerr is
probably the winner in that regard, it was not only his first big
picture, but his first feature film period, he probably way
overcompensated. As previously stated, to see what he (and Minnelli,
for that matter) is really capable of in terms of subtle acting, rent
"Tea and Sympathy," a rôle which he originated on stage. Rumour
has it that the role of Stevie in "The Cobweb"
was originally offered to then-hot James Dean. The mind boggles.
Surely, though, it was Gloria Grahame who
was pushed as the star of the film, considering the plentitude of lush
glamour-shots of her in this film. The images speak for themselves,
there's no doubting that she's a gorgeous woman. But her acting in this
film...how should I put this? Shrill? Grating? Most of the time, her
performance is the most annoying, easily, and in in a film where the
actors compete to see who can overact the worst, that's saying a lot.
At times, she also gives the film's the most unintentionally hilarious
performances. As examples, I point you directly to the "fishwife" scene
just before Charles Boyer
drops in on her and, of course, the infamous "drapery hanging" scene.
I'm
told she's shown a lot more elsewhere but I was perusing her
résumé over at the IMDB, and she has a lot to answer for:
"The Greatest Show On Earth," "Sudden Fear," "Not As A Stranger,"
"Blood and Lace" and "The Nesting," just to name a few.
But it's Lillian Gish who my heart
really goes out to. One of the few stars of the silent era (apart from
the freakish Joan Crawford) to continue well on into the sound era,
this gives you a rare opportunity to see her play something other than
the saintly characters she's normally saddled with. I can only guess
she got sick of playing all those angelic rôles, usually in David
O. Selznick productions. I mean, in "Portrait of Jennie" she played a
nun! A NUN for crap's sake. And not a mean, ruler-wielding nun, either.
I'm talking a "Sound Of Music"-type nun. If that doesn't make you want
to play a viper-tongued bitch, nothing will! "Vicki Inch" has become
sort of an "in-joke" between me and some of my friends. Because, let's
face it, everyone knows a Vicki Inch. If she doesn't work alongside
you,
she probably taught you, served you at a restaurant or audited you.
Wherever
there's a surly counter attendant at the DMV, a mean-spirited telephone
operator
or a snotty librarian, there will always be a Vicki Inch. Amazingly,
though
she never played such a character before or since, Gish was completely
believable as the vinegary Vicki. I imagine the playing the rôle
must have been mighty cathartic for her.
Last but certainly not least, it would be
remiss of me not to mention the film's real star, the drapes
themselves. Don't get me wrong, I'm no interior-design queen, but given
the choice of Lillian Gish's plain cotton, Lauren Bacall's carnival
grotesques silk-screened on muslin, and Gloria Grahame's dowdy old-lady
drapes,
is it any wonder there was so much fighting? I quiver to think what the
result might have been had someone made the mistake of suggesting
Venetian blinds! Perhaps they ought to have consulted with an
interior-design
queen...who exactly was the 1950's answer to Christopher
Lowell,
anyway? Perhaps if they'd consulted Vincente Minnelli himself, all this
madness could have been averted. In any case, go ahead and watch "The
Cobweb." Just don't take it too seriously. And who knows? Perhaps
you'll
be inspired to change the drapes in your own library...
Just avoid the Chippendale rose on
antique satin!
Second opinions: Rotten
Tomatoes
Buy It: Still unavailable on DVD or VHS. If you're really
passionate about finding it, regardless of price, you may wish to track
down the out-of-print laserdisc edition on half.com
(beware bootleg VHS editions that crop up for sale there). Far less
stressful on your
pocketbook would be to check out TCM's schedule, it
turns up there periodically.
And check for availability at Amazon.com, using the link below:
IMDB entry for "The
Cobweb"
Click on Vicki to return.
©2003 by Progbear
*astoundingly, "The Cobweb" was based on the novel of the same name by
William Gibson...no, NOT the "Neuromancer" guy. Though that
Gibson is responsible (in part) for a bad movie of his own, the
atrocious
"Blade Runner" wannabee "Johnny Mnemonic."
†better-known for the later Minnelli-directed
"Tea and Sympathy," an infinitely better film
‡Hell, if I were him, I wouldn't wait to get
fired...I would have quit long ago!