It’s a Natalie Wood double header!
Inside Daisy Clover is about a street-wise California boardwalk girl who becomes a movie star, only to marry a homosexual actor Wade Lewis (Robert Redford), have an affair with her controlling boss Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer) and battle the crazy Hollywood system while trying to keep her sanity and dignity intact.
According to TCM, Wood and everyone around her expected her to win the Academy Award for best actress. She didn’t, which disappointed her, but the work she did in this movie should be commended. She portrayal of Daisy Clover is both tough and sensitive, creating a well-rounded character that another actress might have just kept as a stereotype. Redford plays against his usual type that he’s come to signify and does so quite well, not letting the audience know his character’s true self until the right moment. Plummer is also fantastic as a manic studio boss who treats his actors like cattle.
The Oscar may not have been given to Wood, but Ruth Gordon, the woman who played Daisy Clover’s mother, received one for best supporting actress, and it is rightfully deserved. She also takes a character who could be played as a stereotype–a mentally-sick mother–and make her into a compassionate, sympathetic character.
Other actors featured in this film are Roddy McDowall as Swan’s mysterious secretary/assistant Walter Baines, Katharine Bard as Melora Swan, Betty Harford as Daisy’s sister, Gloria Clover Goslett, and John Hale as Harry Goslett.
The one thing that might be a bit off-putting is how quickly the characters–specifically the Swans–break down into their crazy, neurotic selves. If there was just a few more minutes before those shots to better establish those characters and their potential to break down, the flow of the film might be better. Overall, if you’re a Natalie Wood fan, you will like this movie.
Brainstorm is a sci-fi drama that involves researchers Michael Brace and Lillian Reynolds (Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher) creating a device that allows people to feel the emotions and thoughts of others when set in various situations. The invention, which is at first lauded, later becomes part of a government brainwashing scheme and, through the sudden death of Lillian, unlocks the mystery of what happens after death.
It is ironic that this film deals with death; during this film, Wood, who was playing Walken’s wife Karen, died suddenly. However, she draws everything she can out of her role as a wife who succeeds in pulling her marriage back together. The real stars in this film, however, are Walken and Fletcher, Fletcher especially. Her death scene is alarming, gripping, and, in a weird sense, awe-inspiring because her character still wants to contribute to science by recording her death. When Michael views the tape, the visions that he sees (and subsequently, the audience), are, on the whole, like nothing shot on film (for me, the only thing that took away from the vision of the afterlife was the myriad of angels or spirits floating toward the white light). The scenes of the afterlife were created by director Douglas Trumbull, who worked on special photographic effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Overall, Brainstorm is one film that will stay with you for a while after the movie’s over.
I found Brainstorm stuck with me as well. The questions it posed about the danger of really spending some time in another person’s shoes intrigued me. What would happen to us if we had access to such amazing technology? After recently seeing Brainstorm, I wrote my own review about it for an online magazine. You can find it at http://scififantasyfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/brainstorm-poses-some-intriguing-questions
Thanks for the link, Mandy, and thanks for the comment.