MonsterHunter

This movie teaches us the hard way that the only thing worse than a film ending with a big cello concerto is a film that drones on with lots of talk ten minutes after the big cello concerto. Watching Paul Henreid sitting there with a big violin between his legs while he makes all these “either I’m a musical genius or I’m in need of some serious fiber” faces while he plays some obnoxious dirge that composer/rival Claude Raines dreamed up in between bouts of surly self-pity at having lost the affections of Bette Davis, made me realize why you don’t see a lot of love triangle movies involving classical musicians these days.

Movies of this type always work their way up to some big to-do involving whatever occupation the two guys share. Basketball players square off in the big game, the cop and the crook shoot it out during the big heist, or astronauts brawl inside the rocket on the launch pad while the object of their affection is screaming about how their trip to the killer asteroid to save Earth is more important than who gets their hands inside her space suit. Heck, even if these guys had been into rock music instead of orchestral pieces, we could have looked forward to a thunderous battle of the bands!

I’m not addled enough by action movie cliches though to not realize the potential for high drama with a couple of deranged musicians sniffing around Bette Davis. If something in this movie had happened beyond Claude Raines’s interminably catty soliloquies about how stupid Bette is for picking Paul and how he might just happen to mention to Paul that before he showed up, Bette had a thing for Claude, or if Paul had done more than look half-asleep with his insanely jealous attitude, or if Bette had snapped out of whatever funk she was in and just told both of these possessive dimwits to hit the road, I could have tolerated the final showdown at the concerto between the two.

Except that their final showdown never took place at the concerto because Bette had already gone and shot Claude before then, meaning the final showdown was when Paul and Claude had a little verbal catfight during rehearsals and Claude told him to leave. Anytime your movie tries to wring a bunch of melodrama out of a grown man getting kicked out of band practice, you’re asking your audience to giggle instead of gasp. Especially when the guy getting kicked out isn’t even playing the drums or a Stratocaster!

Henreid (Casablanca) plays Karel Novak, the European cellist with all the talent, but with a bit of a sour outlook on life after surviving the war in Europe. Bette Davis plays Christine Radcliffe, a musician who was in love with Karel up until she lost track of him during the war and presumed that he had perished, making it necessary for her to take on world famous composer Alexander Hollenius (Claude Raines) as her sugar daddy. He takes her on as his pupil and more importantly than that, sets her up in a really sweat studio pad with a great view of the Manhattan skyline. Despite Karel’s unsettling jealous streak, you can understand his wariness when they reunite and she talks about how she’s just a struggling musician, but somehow lives in this top floor loft with all these expensive statues. He also was probably somewhat curious about the man’s suit jacket in her closet.

Despite his post traumatic stress disorder, Karel handles all of this pretty well, resorting to trying to choke the life out of Chrissy only once. Clearly, they’re ready to pick up their dysfunctional relationship right where the left off before that pesky war so rudely interrupted things. In fact, it’s only a few days after Chrissy discovers Karel playing at a little concert for some college punks that they get married. It was a beautiful ceremony, complete with lots of musician friends, a jazzy version of “Here Comes the Bride” and the surprise guest appearance by jilted ex-boyfriend Alex Hollenius. Alex has just come back from California following a phone call by Chrissy wherein she casually lets him know that she’s getting married to someone else.

I was thinking, “what a fair weather tramp she turned out to be Alex! You’re not going to let this go unanswered are you?” He hardly needed my needling though, because he’s a raving egomaniac, frequently mentioning his own greatness and if Chrissy isn’t exactly a class act, well, Alex isn’t about to inhabit the high ground all by his lonesome. Alex blusters his way into the wedding reception, unleashes a barrage of contumelious remarks, orders Chrissy around like a maid, and pretty much ruins the evening for everyone.

To show the less than understated nature of the action in this movie, they make a really big deal out of Alex holding onto his glass so hard because of his rage that it breaks! It does allow him to make his exit with a snooty observation about how women turn white as a sheet at the merest scratch, but don’t bat an eye when a guy suffers a mortal wound! If I was Chrissy, I would have been like “what? Is that aimed at me? What are you trying to say? Does this mean you aren’t going to be buying me fur coats or furnishing my apartment anymore? I mean, we can still be really close friends and stuff until my husband is rich, right?”

Normal folks would try to steer clear of the psycho ex-boyfriend if at all possible, but musicians aren’t normal folks (probably closer to circus folk), so it seems as if every ten of fifteen minutes either Karel or Chrissy find some excuse to traipse on over to Alex’s mansion for any variety of confrontations. Chrissy goes over there to find out if Alex is going to spill the beans about their relationship. Karel goes over there looking for Chrissy and ends up agreeing to play a cello concerto that Alex just wrote. Chrissy storms over there to demand to know what’s up with this cello concerto and to see if it’s all just a way to sabotage Karel’s career. Then Chrissy goes back over there again to see if he’s going to tattle tale on her after the big concerto is done. Why don’t these three freaks just move in together?

The fact of the matter is that the whole movie is built on such a weak premise that you wonder if someone got the idea of having Miss Bette being fought over by a composer and a musician and was bound and determined to have this love triangle happen whether it made any sense or not. The movie apparently takes it’s title from Chrissy deceiving Karel about the nature of her relationship with Alex. I’ll grant you that little lies will sometimes mushroom into bigger problems, but this was a little lie that never needed to be.

She meets Karel and they rekindle their relationship and instead of blithely saying that there’s no one else in her life (despite all the expensive furnishings to the contrary) and that she was carrying a torch alone all these years for him (even though she was sure he was dead) just own up that you were seeing Alex, break it off with him, marry Karel and avoid Alex at all costs. In fact, if she had been up front with Karel, that would’ve taken a bunch of the steam out of Alex as far as the constant carping about what a piece of crap Chrissy was. And if Chrissy was afraid to tell Karel because she was afraid of his jealously, then she’s too much of a weak-willed namby-pamby for us to care about anyway.

The build up to the big concerto is as deadly dull as the concerto itself and includes a scene where the three of them are having dinner (I thought they all hated each other. What are they doing having dinner together before the big concerto?) that goes on so long that I wanted to reach through my TV set and slap Alex across the face and tell him to just shut up. What is wrong with Chrissy and Karel that they tolerate this moron? He’s a composer of the kind of music that no one listens to anyway!

Even less interesting than Alex’s boorish behavior at the restaurant is Chrissy’s obsession with Alex trying to ruin Karel’s career with this concerto. Alex is going to be guest conductor for it and the only thing I could think of was that he would re-string Karel’s cello with rubber bands or something along those lines. Eventually, Alex lets loose with the fact that it would be a better way to ruin someone by waiting until Karel was basking in the glow of a successful performance and then drop the bomb on Karel that every time he was humping Chrissy, he was also humping Alex by proxy!

It should come as no surprise to anyone whose ever seen a Bette Davis movie involving a love triangle (see also the much superior The Letter) that Alex ends up tumbling down his big staircase with a bullet in him. If you ever accidentally watch this movie, during this scene be sure to keep your eyes on Alex’s pet parrot who is behind him when he gets shot. The parrot remains nonplussed throughout the shooting, apparently none too attached to Alex and not easily startled. Alex also has a Siamese cat that he strokes sometimes whenever Chrissy or Karel visits, which gives him that James Bond supervillain vibe.

The only thing the movie really delivers on is Claude Raines’s bad hair. Fans of that thing on his head (it did a good job in The Invisible Man as well as in Kings Row) definitely owe it to themselves to check this movie out as it gets a lot of good screen time and assumes a variety of funny looking poses.

© 2008 MonsterHunter