Cary Grant article

[Lauryn]

I came across this old article, a retrospective of Cary Grant, by James Wolcott from his blogpost at Vanity Fair. (Ace, if there's another similar thread out there you can move this.) Unlike many style-watching “cultural critics” Wolcott seems genuinely to like actors and movies, as he goes about sharpening his wits on them. It’s good writing, a true appreciation, and worth a read, if it's new to you. It was written in 2004, which explains some of the references.

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/classic/features/to-catch-a-legend-200406

Here’s an observation (not exactly chosen by me at random)…

Grant died in 1986, and hardly a year goes by without some rich-haired hunk’s being hailed as “the next Cary Grant.” The recent candidates have included Hugh Grant, George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Hugh Jackman, Pierce Brosnan, and, for his martini performance in the underappreciated Down with Love, Ewan McGregor. Each glints with distinct qualities, but only Brosnan gives intimations of darker subcurrents, which go unexplored in the overblown gadgetries of the James Bond movies. The others are too balsa-wood, except for Wahlberg, who tends to thud...

I wonder what ”intimations” struck him and when. The time frame could be beginnings through Bond, but pre-Matador. A lot of territory. I wonder if something rather obviously dark like “Tailor of Panama” got him thinking along those lines, coupled with what he sees as the “latent” hints in the Bond films, or was it an earlier intuition? I don’t know how closely he followed PB’s career, but it’s nice to see a smart critic giving him props.

[Ace]

Lauryn, I don't think I've seen this piece before though I have seen the documentary on PBS that it discusses quite a few times. The article came out in 2004 but Pierce had been compared to Grant since Steele so those intimation could have come from a variety of roles from the preceding decades. Even in Steele where he was often lighter than air there were those darker sub currents. In something like Tailor of Panama they weren't very sub but rather gloriously on full display.

[Lauryn]

Jun 29, 2010 13:48:28 GMT -5 Ace said:

Lauryn, I don't think I've seen this piece before though I have seen the documentary on PBS that it discusses quite a few times. The article came out in 2004 but Pierce had been compared to Grant since Steele so those intimation could have come from a variety of roles from the preceding decades. Even in Steele where he was often lighter than air there were those darker sub currents. In something like Tailor of Panama they weren't very sub but rather gloriously on full display.

I have the Grant documentary on tape and seen it a number of times and, it’s true, the points it makes aren’t really anything shockingly new. Ditto, that companion article, but I did think it was interesting that the writer picked up on that element of darkness in PB vis a vis the perceived lack of it in other actors like Clooney and McGregor who had by that time at least had been in several semi-dark films, though mostly dark comedies. I tend to think that assessment’s on the mark, even now. Clooney’s always been more of a Gable type than a Grant, more straightforward, less ambiguous, more American, even when he’s being tricky, and Ewan may still retain that cheeky, boyish quality of his into his fifties. Neither, at the core, seem darkly mercurial or enigmatic, which are qualities, bound up in elegance, that are innate in PB and CG, and part of who they are, since the beginning, on screen, even if the role doesn’t play it front and center.

Since you mention TOP it’s a shame spies are so sexless these days. A national disgrace on both sides of the Atlantic. Have there ever been any more joyless, intermittent, and perfunctory couplings than in the Bournes and current Bond films? Might as well go to the gym and sweat! What an anathema to Andy Osnard’s constitution, LOL!