Happy Birthday Julie Christie, John Gielgud and Rod Steiger.
TCM ended up celebrating all three today. I watched The Loved One. It is a disturbing, disgusting, confusing, star studded, strange, ironic, interesting, funny and the most beautiful black and white film. The photography is just amazing. After I saw this a few years ago I read the book by Evelyn Waugh. That did not help, I still didn’t really understand the story, but I enjoy the film so much.
Rod Steiger plays Mr. Joyboy, a funeral parlor worker (I really don’t know what he does). He is always rubbing his hands. His first scene is putting The Loved One (John Gielgud) face in an eternal pose. He is like an artist, trying several ways and appreciating his work.
He invites a female co-worker to his home for dinner. He lives with his mother and takes care of her. He has cooked an entire pig and takes it to his mothers room where they eat. The mother is way too into food. He has a strange dream that he tells her. He goes to the store to get a dozen lobsters for his mother. When he gives them to her for dinner they are not cooked. He fells that he has disappointed his mother again. She starts to eat the live lobsters as if they are cooked and the lobsters fight back and start to eat her until she is gone.
One night he gets a call to come in to work on a special dignitary. While working there is a strange sound in the next room. His co-worker has killed herself by self-embalming. He doesn’t want the scandal of her suicide to taint the funeral home so Robert Morse convinces Rod to put her in the dignitaries coffin which will be put in a rocket and put into space. Robert also blackmails Rod into giving him money not to say anything and he will go back to England.
No comments:
Post a Comment