Walk on the Wild Side (1962) More Like Walk on the Mild Side (Review)

Released to Blu-ray by Arrow Video on the 6th of this month, Walk on the Wild Side is certainly a film with a good pedigree. Based on a novel by Nelson Algren published six years earlier, it is directed by Edward Dmytryk, the Canadian-born American filmmaker who had a very up and down year in 1947 that included an Oscar nomination for the movie Crossfire and being named as one of the Hollywood Ten; a group of film industry professionals who refused to testify to the HUAC and were subsequently victims of the blacklist.

It stars Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda, Anne Baxter and Barbara Stanwyck and is set in New Orleans during the Great Depression. The story concerns Harvey’s Texan farmer Dove Linkhorn, who takes to the road in search of his lost love, Hallie (Capucine). Arriving in New Orleans with the feisty Kitty Twist (Fonda), Dove finds board and lodging with the sympathetic Latina diner owner Teresina (Baxter, playing a Mexican – yes I know) and is reunited with his old flame – only to find she works at ‘The Doll House’, a notorious bordello run by Stanwyck’s hardbitten lesbian Jo and her volatile enforcer Oliver, played by Richard Rust. And to top it all off, the film boasts an impressive and fondly remembered title sequence directed by the legendary Saul Bass that features a prowling black tomcat who eventually gets into a scrap with a white cat as the credits slink by, accompanied by a suitably blousy (and Oscar-nominated) score from Elmer Bernstein and Mack David.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? I’ll be honest, on paper it does. It sounds like the kind of steamy slice of melodrama that Hollywood did so well. But a key problem here – one that was out of the hands of Dmytryk and the cast and crew – can arguably be summed up in two words; Hays Code. Yes, the very office that came into being as a result of many a boundary-pushing Hollywood movie of the 1930s – many of which starred the young Barbara Stanwyck in fact – was never going to allow a faithful adaptation of Algren’s adult novel with its themes of prostitution and lesbianism. In fact, the whole narrative may revolve around a bordello but you’d scarcely notice, so tamed by the moralising Hays Office had the production become.

We are emphatically on the mild rather than wild side, alas. Despite the constraints, Dmytryk manages to imbue his movie with the noirish undercurrents he was famed for, leaning into the Tennessee Williams style steamy melodramatic atmosphere that makes viewers reach for the aircon even if he can’t be explicit. He’s also blessed by the presence of a literal old pro at this game, the aforementioned Hays-baiting Stanwyck, who is effortlessly brilliant in the role of brothel madam, Jo. If you can feel the heat elsewhere in her cat house then she’s the frozen heart at its centre. Tough as old boots and gloriously aloof, there’s nevertheless a strain of vulnerability that Stanwyck skilfully and subtly conveys within her peerless characterisation. Television would soon become Stanwyck’s new home with starring roles in familial horse opera The Big Valley, so this film afforded her the opportunity to shine on the big screen for arguably one last time.

However, another issue that arguably sunk Walk on the Wild Side was indeed the casting. This was not a happy set it seems. You’d be forgiven for thinking that much of the fireworks may have occurred between the once blacklisted former Communist Party member Dmytryk and the staunch Republican, founder member of the MPA, Ayn Rand devotee and supporter of the HUAC Stanwyck, but that doesn’t appear to have been the case. The real friction concerned former model Capucine and Laurence Harvey. The French Capucine had been spotted in 1957 by producer Charles K. Feldman, who immediately put her under contract at $150 per week. She studied acting with Gregory Ratoff and signed a seven-year contract at Columbia the following year. Feldman, whose relationship with his protégé had now become personal as well as professional, set her up in the role of a French prostitute and the love interest of John Wayne in 1960’s North to Alaska and, two years later secured her the role of another sex worker here.

Cries of miscasting and favouritism went up, which culminated in Harvey risking his own prospects by making it clear to Feldman’s French girlfriend that he did not believe that she could act. (This is especially rich when you consider that concerns around casting also plagued Harvey who, as a Lithuanian-born, South African-raised British actor was not perhaps the natural contender for the role of a Texan farmer. It is also worth pointing out that Harvey has also been recognised as being a performer of somewhat limited talents). When faced with this damning verdict of her acting prowess, Capucine naturally sulked. What chemistry there was between the pair – and it was already very little – was now avowedly snuffed out, making the central love story at the heart of the picture an absolute insipid washout. Dmytryk’s headaches continued with Jane Fonda. Walk on the Wild Side may have only been her second movie, but Fonda had recently studied under Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio and had ‘ideas’ about how she would approach her role. Notoriously this included not only changing her lines, but hiring her own personal director who naturally undermined Dmytryk. Understandably, Dmytryk became so disenchanted with the whole production that he walked, giving up his rights on the final cut.

As difficult as Fonda seems to have been during filming, her performance is actually one of the film’s saving graces. It may have only been her second movie, but you’re acutely aware that you are watching a star in the making – one that confirms the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, but has a secondary, exciting ingredient that is wholly down to her and her alone. Her Kitty Twist is almost like a child trapped in a grown woman’s body. She’s almost immediately taken with Harvey’s drifter and just as quick to envious petulance when she fears his head may be turned by Anne Baxter’s Teresina, with whom he shares both a fondness for Mexican chilli and an innate morality and kindness – traits that are an anathema to someone like Kitty who has to live on her wits to survive. She’s funny, wild, unpredictable and trouble and when she disappears from the movie after the first half-hour, so too does much of your attention as a viewer. It picks up once she returns I’ll grant you, but the damage has been done. Whenever Harvey and Capucine are on screen, which is the centre of the movie, the film begins to sag. Not all of this is due to the non-existent chemistry between the stars or the perceived limitations of their respective talents (in fairness I thought Harvey acquitted himself surprisingly well with the Texan drawl), I just feel that the way in which their romance is handled is simply too soppy to appeal, and the decision to focus a story about sex workers in the Depression mostly from the POV of the male lead is a disastrously myopic one. There’s a good film somewhere in here, it even seems set to be one right up until Fonda takes her initial leave, but it was clearly the case of the wrong time and the wrong people.

Extras on this Arrow release include an audio commentary with critics Sam Deighan and Kat Ellinger, appraisals of the film from historian and critic Richard Dyer, an interview looking at that impressive title sequence with the co-author of Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design, Pat Kirkham, and from the archives of the BFI, an audio interview with Edward Dmytryk from the 1970s in which he discusses his films and career but not this film! It’s a curious inclusion, but the director’s unwillingness to talk about this film is not surprising.

THANKS FOR READING MARK’S REVIEW OF WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Wash with new soap behind the collar and have yourself some sugary tea, it’s time for the latest Pop Screen Patreon exclusive. This month we’re looking back at Starshaped, simultaneously a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the early years of Blur and the bleakest chronicle of alcoholism since Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Reportedly drummer Dave Rowntree still finds this film unwatchable; Graham and Ewan are a little more generous. That said, the film’s main asset is the one director  Matthew Longfellow barely seems to notice: it depicts the band on the verge of releasing Modern Life is Rubbish, an album which saved them from one-hit wonder status and set the agenda for the next decade of British rock music.

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