Wednesday, August 08, 2018

MAHOGANY (1975)

Tracy (Diana Ross) is a single working woman living in the slums of Chicago. She's a secretary at a department store but aspires to design her own line of clothes. Brian (Billy Dee Williams) is a political activist running for alderman and provoking trouble wherever he holds rallies. The two meet cute when she pranks him by pouring milk in his bullhorn, accidentally precipitating a brawl. She gets him out of jail and they start dating, though their differing ambitions cause friction. When renowned fashion photographer Sean McAvoy (Anthony Perkins) comes to Chicago for a shoot, he appropriates Tracy as a model and tells her he could make her a star. She leaves Brian and goes to Paris to work with Sean who does indeed make her famous, under the name Mahogany.  At first they're quite happy as a platonic couple, but after he is unable to sexually consummate their relationship, he becomes cold and bitter. Eventually he snaps and drives off with her in a car, taking pictures of her, in fear for her life, as he goes faster and faster until they crash. He dies and she, suffering several injuries, is taken care of by the wealthy Christian (Jean-Pierre Aumont) who agrees to finance her design house in exchange (eventually) for sex. But even though her line is a success, she can’t quite give herself to Christian. He's an understanding sort, and he sends her back to Chicago where she decides to go back to Brian, now running for Congress.

Let there be no doubt—this is a hot mess of a movie. Not a moment of it rings true. The Harlequin romance plotline is only one problem. Berry Gordy, head of Motown Records, directed this himself with no previous film experience. In the realm of music, he is an undisputed genius, but in movies, he's strictly an amateur. Diana Ross has presence to burn, but despite her earlier solid performance as Billie Holiday in LADY SINGS THE BLUES, she is unable to carry a single scene in which she is called upon to act—though her beauty and charisma get her through a fashion shoot montage which is a high point of the film, and tellingly, not supervised by Gordy but by Jack Cole. The more she tries to emote, the shriller her voice gets and the emptier her character becomes. Billy Dee Williams is a pro, but he is stifled here, especially in his outdoor scenes, shot in winter, where he seems to be too realistically cold, delivering his lines in a hurry so he get inside and warm up. Still, there is something to be said for good looks in a romance like this, and Ross and Williams both look darn good, even if their chemistry falters. Aumont is fine in a throwaway role. Perkins gives the best performance here, but sadly it's another in his long line of neurotic and/or psychotic gay characters which began with Norman Bates. The character is not presented as openly gay, but we're slapped in the face with subtext, especially in the bizarre scene in which Perkins and Williams wrestle on the floor with a gun, which ends up in Perkins' mouth. I'm serious.

But really, this film is a guilty pleasure for me because of the music. Specifically, the one song that is played over and over throughout, known on the pop charts as "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)." I liked the song well enough when it was on radio back in the 70s, and Ross' vocal version is played in the movie at least twice, but it's the constant repetition of the theme instrumentally that made me able to stick with this movie, and even watch it a second time. Just as a scene goes off the rails and you want to turn the movie off, the theme swells up and the melancholy yearning in the melody turns you (well, me) to jelly and you (I) have to stick with it to see what happens next to Tracy. It's difficult for me to recommend this to a general audience, but if you love bad campy movies or "Do You Know Where You're Going To," this is a must-see, even a must-own. [DVD]

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