Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)

This is an ensemble drama (or dramedy) directed by Alan Rudolph in the manner of his mentor, Robert Altman, filled with an enormous cast of characters and overlapping dialogue.

In the period between the great wars, there was a flourishing of literary societies in Paris and New York. Paris had the greater literary giants like Hemingway, Joyce, and Fitzgerald, but New York had the sass and wit of people who polished funny dialogue - especially the aspiring playwrights from a time when New York's theater scene was the center of showbiz existence, and the newspaper columnists from the heyday of New York journalism when many newspapers tried to one-up each other for the most sophisticated audiences. The New York group gathered daily in the 1920s for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel, where their gigantic round table became the center of New York's literary life, a daily feast of bon mots, dutifully recorded each day by the ever-present scribes for the next day's editions.

Given the group's reputation as an association of the funniest people alive, one would expect this film to glitter with non-stop wit and fun. There is some of that, but the author seems to subscribe to the cliché that all clowns hide broken hearts, and at its core the film is a tragedy about the inability of Dorothy Parker, the group's ringleader and sharpest tongue, to find happiness. The film even provides its own criticism in the form of a psychiatrist character who latches on to the famous group,  and reminds Dorothy how dysfunctional it is of them to feel a constant need to amuse one another like children at recess, and nags her about finding some deeper connections with people.

The shrink might have added that Dorothy may have come to a happier old age if she had done anything in her youth besides making nasty comments about people. In defense of her integrity, one might note that she seemed to be as harsh in judging herself as she was in judging others. I suppose the shrink was right to have som many misgivings about their hollow pseudo-happiness, especially given the fact that he actually represents the voice of a screenwriter who knew what would happen to them.  Dorothy herself would eventually blast her way through various bad relationships, endless affairs, failed romances, infidelities, repeated suicide attempts, and alcoholism before turning into a pathetic drunken has-been in her final days. For reasons presumably related to a desire for focus and compression, the script ignored the contribution which Parker's radical leftist politics made to her decline in Hollywood during the McCarthy Era.

Along Parker's bumpy journey, the scriptwriters try to shoehorn in just about everyone who was in the entertainment field in any capacity in the twenties, with most of them showing up at the table to say "hello, my name is _____," as if living nametags. Many, if not most, of these cameos are pointless. The brilliant humorist Will Rogers introduces himself to the group, for example, but his interaction with them produces nothing amusing or important to the storyline, and the audience is left wondering why the screenwriter felt Rogers's appearance to be worthwhile.

Jennifer Jason Leigh offered an odd voice characterization as Dorothy Parker, using a clipped Northeast delivery which was  long on bitter mumbling under her breath and short on vulnerability, as if Katharine Hepburn had gotten drunk at a party and decided to impersonate W.C. Fields. I don't know whether that captured the real Dorothy Parker, but if it did I am glad not to have known her. In general, the film is replete with so many mumbled lines and so much overlapping dialogue that I decided to watch it with English subtitles, a process which I recommend, since I picked up some good lines from the captions which I would otherwise have missed.

The main take-away from the film seems to be that Dorothy Parker would have been a nicer and happier person if the great love of her life, supposedly playwright Charles MacArthur, had loved her back. Is that accurate? More important, even if it is accurate, is it a good reason to make a movie about this group? I think most of you could probably think of a better one, like capturing the legendary wit of the round table on film. There is some effort in that direction. The strength of the film is the fact that a good percentage of the dialogue is taken from Bartlett's quotations, representing some of the best puns, wordplay, and wisecracks of some of the 20th century's most famous wits. I wish there had been more laughter, badinage, and cameraderie. I would have preferred if the script had stayed with the "clowns as funny guys" angle rather than slipping into "clowns are really heartbroken" mode.

This is a respectably good movie, but given the potential of the subject matter, one can't help but view it as a missed opportunity.

• Jennifer Jason Leigh film clip (zipped .wmv)

• Gwyneth Paltrow film clip (zipped .wmv)

 

 

 

Jennifer Jason Leigh

Gwyneth Paltrow

 

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