BIG HOUSE FILM REVIEWS ~ Roger Westcombe
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PRETTY POISON (1968)
Starring Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld; dir: Noel Black
Black comedy is one of the hardest styles to get right.
Pretty Poison is a rare treat. With its modest scope and emphasis on craft in acting and production, this 1968 Hollywood orphan is oddly reminiscent of Australasian films of the 1980s like Proof and Sweetie.
The opening images, framed often in long shot, of the high school marching band on lush green playing fields radiating innocence and pure Americana conjure up Robert Altman circa Nashville.Image versus reality, perception versus substance is the point around which Pretty Poison revolves. Anthony Perkins knowingly plays on his Psycho persona, cleverly inverting that signature role’s nightmare trajectory of false innocence gradually unpeeled. Here his jittery (and often very funny) progression moves from manipulation to a serene state of near-heroic martyrdom. (Though not at all derivative, at least one other Psycho resonance pops up in the film, when a key character meets a bloody end at the head of a stairway.)
Tuesday Weld gives a great performance, all perkiness personified: toothpaste-bright, but remarkably free of icky aftertaste (giving her later actions all the more impact). Best of the supporting roles is an excellent portrayal of her no-longer-married mother by Beverly Garland, played with a cynical edge that rings true.
Looks are important here. Color symbolism (red, natch) manages to underline linkages when Perkins’ handling of chemicals at work triggers flashbacks conflating his arson, the high school’s drum majorettes and industrial pollution of the river.
The lushly photographed (by David Quaid) bucolic richness of this river’s edge town heightens the contrast with the pettiness of its inhabitants. Their brittle suburban facades in this idealized small town strongly remind us of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. The ‘68 film is naturalistic where Lynch’s is mannered, ironic where his is surreal, but they spring from the same well - and are of comparable quality. It’s not surprising that Pretty Poison screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. would go on to write 1973’s Parallax View, best in the cycle of conspiracy theory thrillers helmed by Alan J.Pakula (of Klute fame).
Pretty Poison is a rarely seen film that was misunderstood by its studio and barely shown. Championed by critic Pauline Kael it went on gain cult status, not unlike Harold and Maude a few years later, with which it shares other similarities of taboo-breaching and an unselfconscious curiousity about life’s marginal players. Today it seems twenty years ahead of its time.
Roger Westcombe's own website is at: http://www.bighousefilm.com/
See also: http://www.movieline.com/reviews/WeldT_Poison.shtml
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