Mister Buddwing August 27, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , trackback
I propped up Mister Buddwing a couple of weeks ago in my weekly TCM picks. Some minor research left me hesitant but entirely intrigued. James Garner as a guy who wanders around the streets of Manhattan in search of himself sounded familiar. I’ve never experienced memory loss or found myself in Central Park without any idea of how I got there, but there are less literal ways of interpreting the plot.
There’s surprisingly little out there written on the film, and what there is seems mostly dismissive. My enthusiasm is often countered by dolts who act like this or that movie is so appalling as to have devalued their own ever-precious life. The disadvantage of everyone having an opinion on the internet is that, well, everyone has an opinion. Some are well-reasoned and considered while others are from the same type of people who desire, consume, and love the unchallenging byproducts of the entertainment lobotomies beamed directly into their living rooms daily. As someone who does in fact regularly give my own opinion on movies, I recognize the irony in those complaints. Still, dealing too much in absolutes makes me uneasy and I’d be the first person to encourage someone to watch based on one’s own views instead of a negative reaction elsewhere. If a movie sounds interesting, dive in headfirst and sort out the details later.
So that’s what I did with Mister Buddwing, directed by Marty helmer Delbert Mann and based on an Evan Hunter book. The film opens with a first-person point of view shot, black and white, in the city. The man whose eyes we’re looking through peers down at his hands. He’s wearing a ring, broken stone. An inscription of “From G.V.” lines the band. He starts walking from a bench in Central Park and to the Plaza Hotel. When we finally do see the man, he appears well-dressed in a suit and increasingly in need of a shave. At the hotel, he dials a phone number that had been written on a slip of paper he’d found inside the suit. A woman, Gloria, answers. Our man doesn’t know his name and he doesn’t know Gloria either so he has to navigate through some awkward introductions. Gloria, who’s played by the terrific Angela Lansbury, believes the man could be Sam, which is good enough for the stranger. The newly christened Sam makes plans to visit Gloria in hopes of getting this whole identity thing straightened out. He leaves the hotel, sees a Budweiser beer truck, looks at a plane flying through the sky, and decides on Buddwing as a last name.
It’s quickly established that the man is not actually Sam, which turns out to be the name of Gloria’s estranged husband. Gloria doesn’t know Mr. Buddwing any more than he knows himself. She asks him some questions that he doesn’t have the answers for, making the man more and more irritated at his lack of memory. He’s then sent on his way with a few extra dollars and still no idea what’s going on. At this point early in the film, and throughout actually, it’s most intriguing that the viewer is really no better informed than Mr. Buddwing. The line of defeat and frustration James Garner treads in his performance is equally shared by the audience.
I’ve always felt Garner was better as a screen presence than he necessarily was as an actor. He was adept at playing not just an everyman, but the ideal everyman. Who wouldn’t want to be James Garner? That deceptively easy ability to make the viewer identify with him was put to good use in Mister Buddwing. There’s a great deal of psychological undercurrent running through the picture. The mood it sustains reminded me of a less dystopian version of John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, released in the same year. Garner has to be believable as a guy we want to solve these personal mysteries, but there also has to be an air of danger where he could slip into almost insanity at any point. The reveal that a murderous mental patient has just escaped from a nearby institution adds enormous possibility, both for the film and Garner’s performance. The actor does well in never entirely hiding how unhinged his character is, creating conflict in the viewer by way of this lingering uncertainty as to Buddwing’s real identity.
More ammunition for Buddwing’s questionable mental health is sourced from the relationships the amnesiac develops with three random women he spots on the streets of New York. He sees a young brunette (Katharine Ross) and yells out the name “Grace,” but the woman ignores him as she gets into a taxi. Buddwing hails a cab, driven by Marty supporting actor Joe Mantell, and instructs the hack to follow the other car. En route, the driver recounts a fare he’d had recently, an attractive blonde woman who was drunk and less than candid on her $28 ride. Though this moment seems inconsequential, it comes up again later as we realize that much of the film feels like it was thrown into an unreliable blender. Everything doesn’t mix as it might should, leaving ample opportunity for false impressions.
Just as the nervous jazz score and frequent shots of Garner wandering around the city ply into the viewer’s consciousness, so do the perpetually ominous depictions of a city on a completely different pace as our protagonist. This constant unease amid a mass of people who at the very least know more than Buddwing because they know their own name is somewhat underexplored, but entirely effective when given the opportunity. The skyscraper-rich city is enough to induce confusion in anyone, much less a person in total disarray. As with much of Mann’s movie, the tension could have been ratcheted up even further, resulting in a bit of a missed opportunity. As a study in disorientation, however, Mister Buddwing should be re-discovered.
While the film hearkens back to amnesia-heavy suspense movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, as well as foreshadowing more recent fare including Memento and The Bourne Identity, it seems to also accurately predict the oncoming paranoia found in the 1970s. Buddwing becomes so at odds with himself that he can hardly trust his own instincts. In another of the film’s interesting decisions, each potential Grace, starting with Ross, flashes back to Buddwing’s memories of the woman. With every glimpse of the past, the relationship between Buddwing and Grace grows devastatingly harsher. The vibrant optimism of their newlywed days is replaced by turmoil and acrimony, slowly shattering the dreams of youth. That each incarnation of Grace is played by a different actress highlights the stark changes life has to offer over time.
Perhaps done unintentionally, but there’s a strange juxtaposition between how the past versions of Buddwing and Grace move further apart and how amnesiac Buddwing gets closer and closer with his false Graces. Janet, the woman played by Ross, brushes him off completely, even involving the police, but actress Fiddle (Suzanne Pleshette) takes him into her home. The blonde woman (Jean Simmons) he meets next is even more friendly and carefree. Yet, Buddwing seems to become less balanced as he struggles to piece together his past. By the end, when the nobody and the blonde find themselves involved in a high-stakes dice game, his memories spin him into levels near madness.
In trying to get a handle on the film, I found myself curious as to why it’s so little cared about or known, and why there’s not much support among those who have seen this strange portrait of memory loss. It’s far from perfect, not a great film really, and always seems like it could go further than it does (in contrast to Seconds). But there’s definitely something there. That feeling it emits, one of suspense but also caution and deep empathy for the protagonist, is rare in such a tightly wound movie of its era. There’s also a building turmoil we can see coming, but are helpless to stop. Buddwing’s destruction becomes inevitable and that nearly horrific unfolding of how he got to Central Park may be painful for the invested viewer.
The ending changes the game too much for my taste, ultimately making clear that there’s some heavy Christian symbolism at work as it placates the mid-sixties studio film audiences. I’m not impressed with the result, but I do like how it’s handled. The decision to retain a considerable dose of ambiguity is assuring despite an otherwise flat conclusion. I can imagine how I’d like to have the film end, but it doesn’t really matter. Even the apparent happy ending, when kept in the context with Buddwing’s memories, promises little outside the veiled religious undertones.
(Mister Buddwing was made for MGM. Its rights should rest with Warner Bros., but the film is not on DVD.)
Comments»
Thanks, C, for covering this. I enjoy reading about buried treasure.
Just watched it on TCM. What a marvelous little gem. Seeing NY during that time was so wonderful. I was also very impressed with the jazz soundtrack. A very moody piece.
E.
Caught it on TCM this week, too. I missed the first 15 minutes or so but was totally drawn into the story-telling. I thought it was a fascinating way to tell a story. The women he met helped jog his memories. They reminded him of past moments with his wife and in his mind, they were there with him. As I get older I have more of those moments where it is on the tip of my tongue!
Also, look for Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame (Lieutenant Uhura) in the dice game. Wow!