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In Praise of Candy Clark

posted a year ago by ecarle (14979)
3 replies | jump to latest

So I was watching "The Big Sleep" the other night. Not the famous Bogart-Bacall classic of 1946, directed by Howard Hawks. No, the generally panned remake of 1978 with Robert Mitchum in the role that Bogart had done so well (preceded and followed by others: Raymond Chandler's famous Los Angeles private eye, Philip Marlowe.

Mitchum had first played Marlowe just 3 years earlier, in a modestly well reviewed modest hit called Farewell My Lovely, from a Chandler book done most famously before as Murder My Sweet with Dick Powell. The 1975 film stayed "period" in the 40's, and true to the books by putting Marlowe in Los Angeles.

Quite unexplicably, the remake of The Big Sleep was moved to "present day"(1978), and to London! I guess it wasn't really that inexplicable -- the producer was Sir Lew Grade and the director was British director Michael Winner, and it was a kind of experiment, I guess; Move Marlowe to present day (which had already been done with Elliott Gould by Robert Altman with The Long Goodbye of 1973), and place the ultimate American private eye in the Veddy British environs of London and nearby.

Both of Mitchum's films, it seems, were sounded on the same premise: take all the sex, nudity and sleaze which could NOT be shown in 1940's films and tell the novels as they had been written(with less censorship than movies.)

So in Farewell My Lovely, a sanitorium reverted to what it was: a whorehouse, and the naked ladies within were shown as such.

Meanwhile, The Big Sleep had elements of the porn rackets, and a very nutty nymphomaniac character with a narcotics problem. Which could only be alluded to in the 1946 original(though, yeah, it was there if you looked) but could be spelled out and shown in 1978.

Enter Candy Clark. She took the role played by Martha Vickers in 1946 and RAN with it. All the way. As Camilla Sternwood (one of two oversexed and nutty daughters sired by...James Stewart!), Clark gave us the nympho all right. And she did a couple of nude scenes and is seen in some nude photos. Its all very 1978. And the former model was quite pretty back then.

But the nudity was brief; Clark's main contribution to The Big Sleep -- aided by the script, and one supposes, the director -- was to give us a fascinating "whack" performance that seems to change shot by shot, line by line. Jimmy Stewart's older daughter(the Lauren Bacall role) is Sarah Miles) is a bit "off" and into things like heavy gambling and seduction, but Camilla is...so far out there that she barely functions as a human being.

Clark is kept to very minimal dialogue...and every line she utters is nuts. But nuts a DIFFERENT WAY every time. And for further misdirection, sometimes she says something totally "straight" -- like "Please, I would like that" -- and it gob smacks you: this woman is capable of a normal thought? After all? Sometimes?

Here are the various sides of the Candy Clark performance in The Big Sleep:

Child-like
BABY-like
Psychotic
Developmentally disabled(or "mentally retarded" as it used to be called.)
Drugged out
Petulant
Submissive
Hilarious
Seductive
Evil
Murderous
Innocent

SPOILERS:

At the end we see Candy Clark shoot to kill and her child-like doped-up demeanor changes to killer concentration and ...she never looks prettier in any close up in the film. And this: when captured, she actually FOAMS AT THE MOUTH. Great acting!

There are some "freeze captures" from The Big Sleep on the internet and you can see the variations of Candy Clark's facial expressions and its pretty damn impressive, you ask me. Best: a close up from the side of her face(while nude) changing expression from impassive to smiling; she's drugged up but she still has some humor behind those insane eyes.

Clark seems to have taken a lot of chat room hits for her "appalling" performance in The Big Sleep, her overacting, her over-the-top and out of control line readings.

But I think she's much better than that in the film. The Big Sleep came 5 years after Candy Clark got an Oscar nomination for her second film --"American Graffiti"(as famous and successful as The Big Sleep was not) and I think the natural talent that made her American Graffitti character so distinctive(she was the ONLY one of that famous cast to get Oscar-nommed) allowed her to at once let loose and be very precise in her moments.

For instance: there is a scene where Camilla is trying to run out of a house where murder has been committed but at the front door as she tries to head out, gangster Oliver Reed comes in. She collides straight into him and falls back against a wall in comic terror. Reed asks where a certain man is(she and we know he's DEAD) and Clark's fake attempt at silent cluelessness is..simply hilarious. Silently giving off a "I dunno..beats me" look. And this acting moment is over in two seconds -- it lasts just long enough to generate a huge laugh.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Roger Ebert wrote a basic pan review of 1978 "Big Sleep" in which he went out of his way to note that ONLY three actors in the large cast were "great" and gave the movie its style: Robert, Mitchum, Richard Boone, and...Candy Clark. I'm pleased to see that he "got" Clark's powerful jolt to the few scenes in which she was in. Mitchum and yes, Boone, were legendary macho figures of great charisma but Candy Clark was still sort of "feeling her way through" as a new young actress and its good that Ebert took notice. I'd like to hope it helped her career.

As often happens when I see an actor in a role that attracts my attention, I went on a "mini-research" review of Candy Clark's career. Some of it was reading, but I found a treasure trove of Candy Clark interviews on YouTube -- most of them shot at her decades-long appearances at hot rod shows to sign American Graffiti photos. She came off as utterly charming, deeply grateful to Graffiti ("The AFI listed it as one of the 100 greatest film of all time!" she proudly remarked time and time again), articulate, warm and very well versed in how a Hollywood career like hers took off and "held."

Clark was born in Oklahoma, but grew up in Fort Worth Texas. She flew to New York City for a short trip but fell in love with the city and committed to living there. She worked as a model for a long time until a casting agent (Fred Roos) elected first to take her to screen tests for The Godfather in NYC (just to watch) and then invited her to come to California to audition for a movie.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

She made the trip and got the role , in John Huston's 1972 comeback film about boxing, Fat City. She auditioned with the film's young star, Jeff Bridges. She got the role AND she got Jeff Bridges, which was a lucky boyfriend break(for four years or so) because together they went to the Oscars for his nominations( (The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) and hers (American Graffiti.) Graffiti was only her second film so - what a LAUNCH. A blockbuster hit. An Oscar nomination. A relationship with a top young male star on the way up.

The momentum was stopped -- HARD -- when Candy Clark got hepititus on a trip to South America(for a Graffiiti screening) which took her out of a movie called "Report to the Commissioner"(Susan Blakely took the part.)

Next Clark got herself a cult classic -- The Man Who Fell to Earth with David Bowie. Evidently it is this film along with Graffiti that comprise "Candy Clark's classics" (Every actor gets one or two or three.) I have not seen this. I guess I will someday.

Eventually , The Big Sleep, as saluted above.

It looks like the 80's found Candy Clark getting cast a lot in solid roles as "the girlfriend"(Blue Thunder), the wife and mother ("Cat's Eye") and other female supporting roles. (Clark pointed out that she got "blobbed" in the 1988 remake of The Blob.)

A look at her imdb resume finds the career of a working actor -- a lot of TV , a lot of indie films. Clark is now over 70, looks a lot younger, but claims that acting isn't her main thing any more(she's over 70, doesn't need to be.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

As many a YouTube video attests, Candy Clark has maintained a great side career at hot rod shows talking about American Graffiti. On the tapes, she is always kind and gracious and patient with her questioners. Its interesting -- you won't see Ron Howard or Richard Dreyfuss or Harrison Ford at one of those shows, but in Candy Clark, crowds are getting the one actor who DID get an Oscar nomination for that film and, indeed, gave one of the most distinctive performances in the film.

I hope the hot rod show appearances bring Candy Clark good income but she revealed in one interview that one of those appearances brought her a boyfriend of 18 years -- he was just a guy who came by the booth to get a photo signed, and then flirted his way into a lunch date and the star's heart. Isn't there a MOVIE in that?

One surprise in the Candy Clark career came in 2007, at least for me: I watched the movie Zodiac start to finish, left the theater and only a few days later learned that Candy Clark was even IN it. She was -- disguised in eyeglasses, and unflattering wig and general middle-aged frumpiness as the San Francisco Chronicle worker who first reads the Zodiac threat letters(and memorably screams when he sends in a bloody piece of the victim's clothing.) CANDY CLARK played her? I was amazed. Impressed. And of course, a little sad that the bombshell of the 70's could play that kind of a role now.

But that was just for the role. Candy Clark is still vivacious after 70, a role model for us all.

Check out her YouTube interviews. Always remember her truly great and unique performance in American Graffitti("D'ya still have those ponies? We could go for a RIDDDEE!" --sucks beer bottle.)

And for my money, check out that balls-to--the-wall out there and very sexy performance in The Big Sleep.

Its her sleeper.