MAME Directed by GENE SAKS Screenplay by PAUL ZINDEL
It was a novel that became a stage play that was adapted into a movie that was redecorated as a Broadway musical. Now, in a singularly costly act of taxidermy ($300,000 for the star's wardrobe alone), Mame has been mounted once again, this time as a transcription of the musical. Through its various incarnations, the plot details of Mame must be well enough known for most members of the audience to recite them in their sleep. Before the movie is too far along, many may be doing just that.
For the benefit of hermits, Mame is sort of a superannuated Sally Bowles, an addled adventuress who nurtures her orphaned nephew Patrick in her own freewheeling ways. Mame is supposed to lead a lavishly bohemian life, although her pranks and her parties as shown here would not look outré even to a congregation of missionaries. Patrick, however, remains wide-eyed with wonderment over the decades and throughout excursions down South (where Mame marries into Southern gentility) and up North to Connecticut, where she exposes the family of his affianced as a bunch of bigoted yahoos. The movie spans about 20 years, and seems that long in running time.
Vigor and Grace. Lucille Ball plays Mame, an event calculated to please those throngs who dote loyally on her reruns, which rain down on television like static interference. Miss Ball has been molded over the years into some sort of national monument, and she performs like one too. Her grace, her timing, her vigor have all vanished. When she is photographed at close range, the image goes soft, indicating that the lens was smeared with Vaseline and shrouded in gauze. The other actors in the movie are clear enough on their own. But when they step into a shot with her, they go out of focus too.
However kind the camera tries to be to her, Miss Ball is still the victim of her vehicle. Jerry Herman's music and lyrics ("You make carnations bloom in the mud, Ma-aa-me") abuse the ear. The screenplay, by the Pulitzer-prizewrnning playwright Paul Zindel, is full of inexcusable dialogue ("I haven't got you anything for Christmas yet, but how about a kiss on account?" "You know who Mame is—she's the Pied Piper"). Beatrice Arthur, the rage right now as television's Maude, brings the movie to life whenever she appears. Her voice—that of a Marine D.I. with social ambitions—can coax a belly laugh from a wheeze. She tucks Mame under her arm and walks away with it, although not far enough.
J.C.