Overlooked Achievements

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 23, 1998 | by Gary Arnold

(A fascinating program could be built around Mamoulian's "lost" projects. In 1944, Preminger got the opportunity to direct Laura when Mamoulian withdrew from the picture. Joseph L. Mankiewicz would replace Mamoulian on what became the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton reinterpretation of Cleopatra.)

Mamoulian, an Armenian born in Tbilisi in Transcaucasia's Georgia, also studied law -- at the University of Moscow -- before pursuing a more passionate attraction to the theater. Schooled in the Moscow Art Theater, he directed his first play in London in 1922 and decided on the spot that naturalism was not his forte. Invited to stage opera and operetta at a theater in Rochester, N.Y., built by George Eastman, he confirmed a preference for the lyrical that informed his production of Porgy for the Theatre Guild in 1927.

Mamoulian developed certain stylistic flourishes while staging Porgy that he called a "Symphony of Noises." He recalled one characteristic rhythmic pattern: "You hear the `Boum!' of a street gang repairing the road. That is the first beat. Beat 2 is `Caught' silent. Beat 3 is a snore. Beat 4 is silent again. Then a woman starts sweeping the steps. She takes up beats 2 and 4. A knife sharpener, a shoemaker ... and so on, all join in. Then the rhythm changes: 4:4 to 2:4, then to 6:8 and syncopated and Charleston rhythms."

Mamoulian never got the chance to duplicate this effect while filming "Summertime" or any other songs from Porgy and Bess, but the "Sympnony" is happily preserved in the Paris-at-dawn opening of Love Me Tonight, costarring Chevalier and MacDonald. The film's curtain-raiser culminates in the introduction of Chevalier as the leading man, a debonair haberdasher, and its "contagious" rhythm is sustained with a charming self-consciousness during the next number, "Isn't It Romantic?" The song travels from character to character ("What a catchy refrain!" observes one) before arriving at the country estate adorned by MacDonald. (You could make a persuasive case that the refrain of this song has never died out. Revived conspicuously in the Billy Wilder version of Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn, it returned in the Sydney Pollack remake that failed to do wonders for Julia Ormond.)

Although Mamoulian's film work started to diminish during the 1940s, his Broadway reputation was enlarged by two musical hits: Oklahoma! and Carousel. He went on to stage the original London productions of both shows, not to mention several subsequent revivals. He also directed the original production of Lost in the Stars in 1949.

But Mamoulian's most indelible image probably is the fadeout of Queen Christina, which lingers on Garbo as her character supposedly sets sail from Sweden, bound for an enduring exile. It remains the classic example of how to use immobility to encourage infinite speculation about the mind-set of a character. Mamoulian gave his actress very specific directions: "Have you heard of tabula rasa?," he told Garbo. "I want your face to be a blank sheet of paper. I want the writing to be done by every member of the audience. I'd like it if you could avoid even blinking your eyes, so that you're nothing but a beautiful mask."