OT: Samuel Taylor Directs!
Did anyone here realize that Sam Taylor, screenwriter of Vertigo and Topaz (and frequent Hitchcock vacation companion) had once directed a film? I hadn't.
I recently stumbled upon The Monte Carlo Story (1956), directed by Taylor from his own script. It concerns titled but now-impoverished nobles Marlene Dietrich and Vittorio De Sica trading on the illusions of their former wealth while fortune-hunting. Each scopes out and zeroes in on the other, not realizing, of course, that the other is as broke as they. Having found one another out, they adopt a new strategy, teaming up to pose as siblings as they look for new wealthy prospects.
Just as he did for Sabrina Fair and its film adaptation, Taylor gently lampoons privileged lifestyles in a comedy of manners that aspires to an Ernst Lubitsch-like lightness and delicacy, but which instead often succumbs to a pace so stately as to seem leaden, coming to life only when folksy Arthur O'Connell, as a nouveau riche American, enters halfway through as Dietrich's new target for a rich marriage. O'Connell's good-natured and unabashedly "fish out of water" demeanor mines the charm in such scenes as Dietrich's coaching him through his first go at the chemin de fer tables, and is an energetically effective counterpoint to the cool self-possession of the Teutonic temptress.
While both a "first" and a "last" for Taylor the director, The Monte Carlo Story represents another "first," apropos of our recent discussion here of the merits of VistaVision: it was the inaugural film of Technicolor's own big-screen process, Vistarama.
What Vistarama did was adopt the "Lazy 8" configuration of VistaVision, applying anamorphic optics to that system's horizontally-exposed 35mm negative to yield a widescreen image of 2.25:1. Indeed, the first Vistarama cameras were VistaVision ones modified from three-strip Technicolor negatives to Eastman "monopack." A little irony there.
Whether it was an effect of photographing in this new system or merely that of Taylor's inexperience as a director, the film ultimately subverts the intimacy so important to such a story by maintaining a physical distance from the performers that renders the action regal but bloodless, and their characters unapproachable, as though the camera itself was aware of the celebrity of the actors playing them and observed accordingly respectful remove. While there's much fluid gliding, panning and tracking, intra-scene editing is sparse and closeups and even medium twoshots are nearly nonexistent. The result is a film that feels as though it's assembled almost entirely from establishing shots.
With these criticisms, I note in passing Dietrich's stringent control over how she was photographed - something to which even Hitchcock had deferred when shooting Stage Fright - and the fact that she was then in her mid-50s (as was De Sica, with whom she shares so many scenes). While as glamorous and svelte as ever, gliding through opulent surroundings in form-fitting gowns, well, one can only wonder. But the tableau-like mise en scène permeates the entire film, even in Dietrich-less scenes.
Taylor's very next project after The Monte Carlo Story was Vertigo. One can't help but wonder if it might have turned out differently if the order had been reversed, and after Taylor had learned a trick or two from Hitch about how to craft and assemble a film. It does muster a certain appeal and, while the entire gossamer atmosphere seems more suited to twenty years earlier, when insouciant globe-trotters were such a staple of escapist fare, The Monte Carlo Story frustrates with unrealized potential.
To paraphrase our friend Arbogast, Taylor just didn't get all there was to get.