Review by Pamela Zoslov
Frederick Wiseman,
who is now 82, has been making his own brand of documentary films
since 1967. A lawyer who became a filmmaker, he created a style
that has been called “observational cinema,” in which his camera
captures the daily life of an institution – a high school, a public
housing project, a battered women's shelter, a welfare office, a
racetrack and, in TITICUT FOLLIES (1967),
Massachusetts' Bridgewater Hospital for the criminally insane. Wiseman rejects the term “cinema vérité” as pompous and meaningless. He
doesn't merely “hang around,” he says; he edits the hundreds of
hours of film he shoots rhythmically and meaningfully to tell a human
story.
Many
of the films are deeply moving, and in some cases, they have exposed
abuses and helped bring about reforms. TITICUT FOLLIES,
after being banned for many years, influenced the eventual closing of
Bridgewater. But not every subject is equally well served by
Wiseman's technique. In recent years, he has focused on lighter
subjects – a boxing gym, the American Ballet Theatre, the Paris
Opera Ballet and now, The Crazy Horse, the legendary Paris cabaret. CRAZY HORSE,
Wiseman's 39th
film, follows rehearsals, preparations and backstage activities in
preparation for the club's latest
nude dancing extravaganza, called Desir.
There
is a great deal of nudity in CRAZY HORSE,
but for Wiseman's method to work, there must be a story to tell,
and the film does
not find it in the quotidian activities of the nightclub's director,
costumer, choreographers and dancers. The footage is expertly edited,
but the questions that naturally arise about the club go unanswered.
What's it like to be a Crazy Horse dancer? What kinds of patrons
visit the club, and what brings them there? What about the history of
the club, which opened in 1951? Wiseman's camera focuses entirely on
rehearsals, meetings and backstage procedures. over 134 minutes, it becomes repetitive and, unlike the dancers' minuscule
costumes, unrevealing. Only a few sequences touch on human feeling. In one, Ali, a gaunt, bald young man who is the club's artistic
director, reveals his lifelong obsession with The Crazy Horse. For
Ali, whose other obsessions have included Marlene Dietrich and Helmut
Newton, working at The Crazy Horse is like a dream. He effuses, “I
have to pinch myself to make sure I belong to this place of ultimate
refinement, beauty and desire.”
Beauty,
they say, is in the eye of the beholder, and it's worth noting that
the Crazy Horse's standard is not to everyone's taste. The dancers
all seem to possess the same body – very slim, with long legs and
small breasts. The primary erogenous zone at “The Crazy” is the
derrière. The dancers are encouraged to thrust out their small,
round behinds as part of every routine, and an embarrassingly silly
musical musical number sings the praises of the posterior, while the
girls' fannies are illuminated with big polka dots. The lyrics, for
your delectation, begin thusly: Baby
buns is what they call me when I pass/Everyone is always looking at
my ass! The revue's staging,
costumes, lighting and choreography are elaborate, and the dancing
often as gymnastic as a nearly-naked Cirque du Soleil. But the
aesthetic, described as “chic” by its creators, is sheer camp. It
would be appropriate – and scads more entertaining — in a drag
club.
Of course, it is not by accident that the dancers all adhere to a
particular physical ideal; they are selected for those features. The
film's most interesting and harrowing sequence shows the audition
process, in which a lineup of nearly nude hopefuls are instructed to
perform individually (“thrust your buttocks out”) and told they
will be judged for their bodies, not their dancing. As they are lined
up on the stage, we hear the selectors' whispered remarks about the
girls' physical attributes. It does make you wonder about what kind
of personality is attracted to nude dancing as a profession.
Unhappily, the film doesn't include interviews with the dancers.
Wiseman
once said, “Human behavior is so complicated, and my goal is to
begin to suggest that complexity.” In films such as this one,
however, the lack of even an implied point of view is frustrating. CRAZY HORSE offers
a titillating glimpse into a world unseen by most of us, but its
subject may be too superficial to provide any complexity. 2 1/2 out of 4 stars.
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