Word: rose
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THIS EFFORT IS NOT pure and traditional socialism. We're trying to find a point somewhere beyond the New Deal--an American transition," says Don Rose, a Citizens Party organizer and the political strategist behind Chicago Democrat Jane Byrne's mayoral upset. The party filed a statement with the Federal Election Commission, laying out a gentle Party line for the transition: "There is nothing wrong with profit, or with private ownership. What is wrong is when private interest, and not the public good, determines how we live. That is what must be changed, and that is the issue...
...Rose is exactly the kind of vehicle one would expect for Midler's screen debut: it aspires to the tradition of Funny Girl and Lady Sings the Blues, musicals that boosted Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross to fast movie stardom by casting them as legendary singers of the past. Still, there is a basic flaw in The Rose's design that makes the film hard to take seriously. While Streisand and Ross were reasonably plausible stand-ins for Fanny Brice and Billie Holiday, Midler is not credible as a bluesy rock belter. Her strident Broadway voice and campy...
...happens, The Rose is so unfaithful to its ostensible subject that the miscasting is eventually forgotten. For all the film's rock-concert ambience, its overeager references to Viet Nam and drugs, it has almost nothing to do with the '60s or the counterculture. The movie's true setting is the timeless never-never land of Hollywood kitsch; The Rose is a definitive catalogue of A Star Is Born clichés. The heroine battles with booze and men and show-biz tycoons, but somehow always manages to get out onstage and give a hell...
Rather than pretend that this material makes any naturalistic sense, Director Mark Rydell (Cinderella Liberty) shrewdly goes for broke. The Rose has the same visual excess and garish romanticism as the oldtime Technicolor backstage sagas. When Rose gets into a yelling match with her manager (a somewhat forlorn Alan Bates) or plays in bed with her pickup of a lover (a frisky, sexy Frederic Forrest), the closeups are steamy and relentless. When Rose lands by helicopter at her nighttime stadium concerts, it looks like the arrival of the mother ship in Close Encounters (both films were shot by Vilmos Zsigmond...
...Bette Midler, self-styled queen of "trash with flash," The Rose is an ideal throne. -Frank Rich