Word: bisset
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...Korea, caught in a withering enfilade of clichés, is Ben Gazzara as an officer with no unit, no fixed duties and an inexplicable relationship to the general that permits him to witness all sorts of unedifying carnage. He has an estranged wife (rather gamely played by Jacqueline Bisset), whose function it is to become a refugee so that we can see what havoc was wreaked on the civilian population by the Communist invaders. One has not seen a heroine's hairdo stay so splendidly in place, no matter what her travail, since the 1940s. The $46 million...
Rich and Famous condemns Bisset to a loverless existence. She has Bergen; but the film makes clear what a prize she is. Bisset and Ayres intend this film to be an affirmation of female friendship. Well, there should be a film affirming female friendship, but this is not it. Bisset's last statement that Merry "is the only flesh around"--the only human, that is--is heartbreakingly accurate. The people in the movie are so alone...
Ayres based Rich and Famous on the Van Druen play, Old Acquaintance, also the title of the 1940s melodrama based on it which started Bette Davis and Miriam Hopks. In its newest incarnation, Ayres supposedly follows the two women, here, Bisset and Candace Bergen as her best friend, Merry Noel Blake, from their college days in '59 up through 1981. It traces their literary careers and sexual histories up to apparent collective midlife decisions to reject men as anything other than sexual toys and to reject their own work. Ayres clutters the original melodrama at side issues like the effect...
...first novel met with critical raves; she now suffers from severe writer's block on her second. Meanwhile, Merry has compiled the histories of her famous Malibu neighbors, who came to her for tuna and consolation. She changes their names and calls it a novel. She then emotionally blackmails Bisset into bringing this litter-box lining to her prestigious publisher. Not merely a supportive friend, but a good neighbor; that's Merry Noel Blake. The film seems unaware of just how appalling Merry's behavior is; it certainly doesn't take it very seriously. Needless to say, Merry quickly joins...
Although Cukor has a history of weak male performances when he doesn't work with the very best, he can't be blamed for the pathetic males of Rich and Famous; they were not his choice. And in any case, Ayres condemns Bisset to remain alone. After the breakup of her marriage, Liz falls in with a pseudo-intellectual journalist who proposes to her; Bisset snipes at the offer, obviously afraid to commit herself to anyone, let alone this infant. Finally, after a conference with Bergen, the sole time we see Bergen at all supportive, Bisset decides to accept...