FILM CRITIQUE:
The director Peter Bogdanovich reportedly enjoyed a great rapport with Orson Welles before his passing. Bogdanovich claims it was Welles who passed along to him the general tenets of an alleged murder mystery that is presumed to have taken place aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht.

With the release of "The Cat's Meow," these rumors have been promulgated as the truth by some along with being a testament to Hearst's influence in burying the facts of this crime. Needless to say, this has also been categorically denied by others as never having happened.

No matter, it's a ripping good yarn and Bogdanovich has taken the script by Steven Peros and run with it into directing a beautifully filmed movie with superb acting by all, especially by Kirsten Dunst as Hearst's very young mistress, the budding actress Marion Davies.

I have to admit that I was shocked when I first heard that Kirsten Dunst had been cast as Marion Davies, as she will forever be for me the striking 12 year old child in "Interview with a Vampire." But that movie was filmed in 1994 when she and the character, Claudia, were then both 12 years old. (Dunst was born in 1982.) "The Cat's Meow" was filmed in 2001, seven years later, and Miss Dunst is now a lovely 19 year old woman and just about the same age that Marion Davies was when Hearst first met her.

One can possibly quibble that the events in the movie are assumed to have taken place in 1924 when Marion Davies was 27 years old and Kirsten Dunst doesn't adequately project that age or maturity. But no matter, she does an exceptionally fine acting job as Hearst's vivacious and very lovely little trophy girl.

However, I do find fault in this movie with Edward Hermann's portrayal of William Randolph Hearst, who would have been 61 years old in 1924. It's not the foolishness of a man pursuing a woman 34 years younger than himself, as heaven only knows that that pursuit, by definition, is foolishness personified.

However, the portrayal of Hearst as a doddering old fool just doesn't seem to fly with my understanding of who he was as a personality. I just can't believe that anyone worth $50 million dollars, who ruled a publishing empire, and once contemplated a run for the U.S. presidency would ever have been a doddering old fool. Vain, yes. Foolish, yes. Jealous, yes. But not a mental incompetent and an emotional child as Hermann portrays him.

That would make his attraction to Marion one based on economics alone. The fact that she stayed loyal to him long after he lost everything shows that there must have been a lot more there than just the money. (A footnote for the record: Marion Davies married for the first time at age 54, several years after Hearst's death. She also employed Hearst's architect of San Simeon to build a much smaller home for herself in Los Angeles.)

While it is beautifully filmed and exquisitely acted, it must be admitted that one has to love period piece "drawing room" dramas such as movies like this or "Gosford Park," and loving movies of this type is very much an acquired taste. Many of you might find yourselves bored to tears by "The Cat's Meow." So please take this "mea culpa" into your evaluation when deciding whether or not you may wish to see this movie.

I, on the other hand, love drawing room dramas and yet I found myself not quite as entranced by "The Cat's Meow" as I was with "Gosford Park," even though both movies are fairly equal in style, quality, acting, and cinematography. So why the difference in their appeal? Some worthwhile comparisons are in order here.

"The Cat's Meow" suffers in comparison to "Gosford Park" in two critical areas. The first is that "Gosford Park" is a better told story with more indelibly drawn characters. Some of the characters are good, others are bad, and a few are indifferent, and yet Robert Altman (and, obviously, the writer Julian Fellowes) are able to imbue each one with unique little personality traits that flesh them out as people. This adds a great deal of appeal (and interest) to this movie.

What happens for us as viewers is that the actors subsequently become more or less real people instead of cinematic, two dimensional cardboard characters. This shows a wonderful collaboration between the writer and the director in fleshing out the minor details in the filming of "Gosford Park."

I can only assume that they also allowed the very experienced actors involved in this movie to add style and substance to their own characters in such a way that the story, and, by extension, the film, is immeasurably enhanced.

While Peter Bogdanovich is certainly a very capable director, I personally don't believe that he is quite up to the level of Robert Altman. Furthermore, Steven Peros' screenplay is decidedly very inferior to that of Fellowes' exceptional script for "Gosford Park," for which he received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Secondly, and more importantly, "Gosford Park" covers the gathering of two classes of people for a distinctly social occasion during a late fall weekend of the English hunting season. There are long-standing relationships of family and friends in this movie and everything functions more or less like a well ordered clock.

The people in "The Cat's Meow," on the other hand, mostly don't even know each other as the weekend party aboard Hearst's magnificent yacht is, for all practical purposes, a business affair. Everyone is there with an agenda and everyone is there selfishly to advance their own personal economic interests. You have some of this in "Gosford Park," but, by and large, it is not nearly quite so crass and commercial.

The characters in "The Cat's meow" are written and drawn only as how they relate, or wish to relate, to Hearst, and very little else is known about any of them. They are all subsumed with economic interests, and this singularity of purpose ends up making for an inherently less interesting movie than "Gosford Park." In short, we don't really know them as people as there is an emotional distance between the characters in "The Cat's Meow" and the audience that doesn't allow the viewer much more than an intellectual connection to the characters in the movie.

The totality of the people in "The Cat's Meow" is summarized by the writer, Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley), who reflects on the weekend's events at the end of the movie. Her comment is very telling when she remembers that when the partying stopped it was all very boring. But nobody wanted to dwell on that, so they all went back to the incessant partying. Contrast this with the fact that Robert Altman made the quiet moments in "Gosford Park" just as interesting as the noisy ones, and that shows the collaborative genius of a master filmmaker and a master storyteller.
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FILM SYNOPSIS:
The mystery writer, Elinor Glyn, is sitting in her car near Hearst's massive 220 foot yacht moored dockside. It's a beautiful day and yet she does not want to leave her car. "I refuse to be the first person to arrive!" she says to herself and her chauffeur.

All of a sudden four men rush off the yacht towards her car like a swarm of bees whose nest has just been disturbed. She leans out of the window and yells to them, "I am NOT here yet!" They stop dead in their tracks and retreat back to the yacht.

Slowly, the other guests begin to arrive. The studio mogul, Thomas Ince (Cary Elwes), shows up in another limousine. He is to be the guest of honor as the weekend cruise is ostensibly a celebration of his birthday. Unbeknownst to the other guests, however, is the fact that his studio is financially on its last legs, and he hopes that the weekend's events will provide for an opportunity for him to discuss a merger between his studio and that of Hearst's.

When this subject matter later is broached, however, Hearst cruelly and brusquely puts him down with the comment, "How would it help my studio to merge with a cripple like yours?" It is then up to the desperate Ince to salvage his reputation and his value to Hearst, no matter how sleazy and disreputable his actions may be.

(An interesting sidelight concerns the actor Cary Elwes, who portrays the studio boss, Thomas Ince. He has had the most unusual career as an actor. Think of the odd roles that he has portrayed from this one to "Robin Hood: Men in Tights"(1993) and "The Shadow of a Vampire"(2000). He strikes me as being almost like a chameleon because he looks so different in each of his movies.)

Thomas Ince also has brought along his young mistress, Margaret Livingston (Claudia Harrison), instead of his wife. Margaret is a budding actress employed by his studio, and she has hopes of her own for a broadening of hopefully both her acting career and her relationship with Ince on this weekend getaway.

Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard, in a surprisingly good performance) shows up at this party straight from the completion of another movie along with a paternity suit for getting involved with the under-aged actress in the movie. He has the smarts to hire an oriental chauffeur who knows how to see everything and keep his mouth shut, except when it comes to letting his boss know what's going on. He keeps bouncing comedic concepts off the other guests, like what could a starving man eat that would be funny, a reference to his later 1925 movie, "The Gold Rush."

Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly) has also been invited to the party. She is only a lowly correspondent for one of Heart's East Coast newspapers, but she loves Hollywood and the whole movie scene and hopes to wangle a promotion out of Hearst that will allow her to move to Hollywood. She chortles and coos and fusses over the star, Chaplin, with her annoying Betty Boop voice that will be sure to grate on many nerves by the end of the weekend.

Other assorted personalities come along for the ride, including an associate of Ince's, other professional acquaintances of Hearst, a doctor, and two young actresses to add a youthful "party-hardy" presence to the sometimes staid older group of men. There is only one married couple on board, and the wife shocks her dinner partner when she informs her that her male partner is actually her real husband and not a lover.

Hearst has also a hired band on board to entertain his guests during those evening-long parties where illegal booze and even more illegal pot is consumed in copious amounts. There are also staff members in abundance to take care of the needs of every guest. You don't know real wealth until you can play ping pong on the sunny deck of the yacht with a uniformed attendant there to pick up all of the stray balls. And one attendant for each player, no less!

The moving force in the movie is Hearst's insecure and even paranoid jealousy of Marion Davies' association with any other men and the fear that she might either be unfaithful or contemplate leaving him. Peepholes and microphones are placed throughout the yacht so that he can silently listen in on the conversations taking place and also spy on the activities of his guests.

Marion Davies is actually a very smart young lady who not only knows which side her toast is buttered on but also seems genuinely to like her much older lover. Heaven only knows, he dotes on her and is constantly showering her with gifts.

The problem develops that the sex obsessed Charlie Chaplin has been carrying a brilliant torch for her as another possible conquest. There also seems to be some animosity between him and Hearst, and the chance to bed Marion and cuckold Hearst at the same time offers great appeal to Chaplin.

Davies is wise beyond her years, however, and knows full well that Chaplin not only does not offer her any long term security, but also presents a very dangerous threat to her more than comfortable way of life.

But very much like the innocent Desdemona in Shakespeare's "Othello," Marion will find herself trapped in a web of conceit woven by others where lies become truths and circumstances assumed to be the truth are merely false assumptions. Hearst finds himself jealously weaving a tapestry of guilt out of some very flimsy threads of evidence.

And just like Iago presenting a handkerchief to Othello as proof of
Desdemona's infidelity, Thomas Ince presents some crumpled notes of drafts of Chaplin's love letters to Marion that he filched from Chaplin's trash basket. Ince hopes to curry further favor with Hearst with this supposed proof of betrayal. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that the letter was never delivered as Chaplin has not yet found the right words to put down on paper before the denouement of this movie.

Now, we all, hopefully, know enough of our history of these circumstances to know that Hearst will live on for many more years and that Charlie Chaplin will go on to star in many more films and become rich in the process while still bedding anyone of any age who will find him attractive or useful. I have also stated above that Davies will live on for another four decades.

So who is it that ends up dead, and why? How is this case hidden from public scrutiny and the ruination of all involved? And, finally, how does this fateful yachting excursion find so many people of differing backgrounds willing to enter into a complicity of silence surrounding the facts of the matter.

That's the fun of this movie.