unwanted child/part two

Bogdanovich directs Shepherd and Del Prete in the "You're the Top" number from "At Long Last Love"

With its elegantly schematic storyline, Peter Bogdanovich's "At Long Last Love" works on a dual-level as both heartfelt hommage and light spoof, lovingly appropriating, as my friend and colleague Carrie Rickey so aptly puts it, "the feel of early Mamoulian or Lubitsch."



The film has insouciance to spare and is tinged with a haunting air of melancholy.



Originally graced with 21 songs by Cole Porter (eventually scaled back to 16, thanks to a series of visits to the editing room), the 1975 release tells the unrushed story of a rondelay - four people who pair up and break up over the course of what seems to be a long weekend, only to regroup in yet another uncertain variation.



Burt Reynolds is spot on as Michael Oliver Pritchard III, a wealthy playboy suffering from bad case of ennui; Cybill Shepherd is the languid, petulant heiress-on-the-skids Brooke Carter; Duilio Del Prete fractures English as Johnny Spanish, a dashing, devil-may-care Venetian gambler, and Madeline Kahn entertains as brassy showgirl Kitty O'Kelly, who's unlucky in love, natch.



On the sidelines is another uneasy couple - John Hillerman as Rodney James, Pritchard's very proper manservant, and Eileen Brennan as Elizabeth, Brooke's sassy, hard-nosed maid. And Mildred Natwick pops in as Mabel, Pritchard's mother, understandably confused about her son's love life.



Bogdanovich handles these amusing denizens and the luxe material that encircles them with easy aplomb, bringing sly wit, a cinéphile's eye and panache to his breezy, fluffy storytelling.



In 1975, Bogdanovich was a young director of great reach, a budding auteur willing to try anything. And, here, he reached rare artistic heights with his rather perilous decisions to (1) have all the film's songs sung "live" (rather than pre-record them); (2) have his cast largely improvise their dance steps (with some help from dance coordinators Rita Abrams and Albert Lantieri), bits that are done with the scratch-pad casualness of those carefree, in-between numbers in the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and (3) style his film with black and white costumes and set decorations exclusively (after Fox vetoed his plans to shoot in black-&-white). Cinematographer László Kovács certainly shares in Bogdanovich's triumph here.



"At Long Last Love" was something of a filmic preëmptive strike in its day, not surprising given that Bogdanovich was young, ambitious and brash (some might say arrogant). Remember, this was the same year when Steven Speilberg's "Jaws" changed everything in film. And here was a movie musical, a genre considered resolutely old-fashioned. The fact that Bogdanovich purposely kept his film "old-fashioned" is something that most people simply didn't get.



That said, "At Long Last Love" is lovely, loving, engaging and fun, and its only true failing is its maker's audacity.



Perhaps it' simply too good for audiences, then and now. I've a hunch, however, that Mamoulian and Lubitsch would have loved it.



Next up- The criticism



Comments can be posted at the end of Part Seven.