FILM REVIEW
– HOLLYWOODLAND. (2006)
A terrific biopic and a murder mystery based on controversial claims relating to the death of 1940’s and 50’s Superman actor George Reeves. Perhaps the biggest shock in the film is the discovery that the normally oh-so wooden Ben Affleck can actually act – his performance as Reeves is simply brilliant.
Reeves’s own story is mostly given in flashback, as the film begins with the discovery of his body at his house, where he has died of a gunshot wound to the head.
The media and the police immediately concluded that Reeves committed suicide, but his doting mother was unhappy with the claim and hired a private detective to investigate below the surface appearances. Half of the film deals with the detective’s hampered investigation, and an intercut half addresses Reeve’s rather sad life.
Reeve was a rising Hollywood actor, who had worked with Ronald Reagan, and who had a minor role in Gone With The Wind. He auditioned for the Superman pilot film and TV show hoping to get the part of a villain, but he found himself cast as Clark Kent and his more famous alter ego. He was initially disappointed that the Blue & Red costume seen in the comics was actually a drab shade of grey, but he was told that this would look better in black and white features.
A stunt with a flying harness brought his first stint in the role to a shattering close. The harness snapped and he fell to the studio floor, busting up his face. With his looks only slightly out, the show was cancelled. Reeve now found himself struggling to find other work. He actually filmed some scenes for From Here To Eternity, alongside Burt Lancaster (recreated for Hollywoodland), but test audiences sniggered as people recognised the Superman actor, so his scenes were quickly cut out before the film was completed. The studios deny this, and in fact Reeves does have a fleeting unacknowledged scene in the completed film.
After a few years in the wilderness, Reeves was making guest appearances in the cape at Hollywood studio tour stunt shows, and in boxing / wrestling rings. The film features a chilling moment when Reeves is attending a rodeo show in costume and a child of about seven points a real gun at him, hoping to see the bullet bounce off the Man Of steel. Reeves talk the kid out of firing by telling him that the bullet would ricochet and risk hurting someone else. This is believed to be one of the film’s few totally made up stories.
With the advent of colour TV, Reeves was invited to revive his Superman show, but it was short lived. He ended up making guest appearances on shows like I Love Lucy, but never got any real work of the kind he coveted.
Worse, his private life was falling apart. In travelling around in search of work, he fell for a starlet, Toni Mannix, played by Diane Lane, who is married to studio tycoon, Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), a repulsive man who was too busy having affairs of his own to really notice. Reeves dumped his estranged wife for her. Then, at a showbiz party he threw at his own house, Reeves went up to his room, and shortly afterwards, guests heard a gun going off.
In the secondary story, which becomes an L.A. Confidential style uncovering of sleaze and corruption, Adrian Brody, who reminds me of a young Sean Penn, plays Louis Simo, (loosely modelled on the real gumshoe behind the exposes, Milo Spenglio).
With his own marriage crumbling, and his son in a state of depression about his TV hero having died by the kind of bullet he was supposed to be immune from, Simo gets a chance to take on the biggest case of his career. Reeves’s mother hires him, and though he doubts her insistence that her son didn’t commit suicide, he takes on the case, and quickly finds himself getting out of his depth.
Simo is quite unscrupulous, and sees the case merely as a quick money ticket. He lies persistently, bribes coroners and gatecrashes the crime scene. At one point, he puts the able bodied mother in a wheelchair to gain her more pity from the press as he tries to publicise the scandals behind Reeve’s demise.
He soon finds however that there are many (genuine) unanswered questions. Though several people in the house had heard the fatal gunshot, and rushed upstairs to find the body, they waited 45 minutes before phoning the police. Reeve’s face had a bullet hole, but no flash burns indicative of a gun going off at extremely close range (as would have been necessary for such a suicide).
Simo finds his path to the truth increasingly blocked. He gets beaten up by thugs hired by Eddie Mannix (who was a Mafia gangster who was once accused of playing a role in a separate murder). Also, Reeve’s girlfriend is discovered to have taken away $4,000 in traveller’s cheques from the then cordoned off crime scene (reasoning that it was hers anyway). Disturbingly, and again, accurately, there is a revelation that Reeves was believed to have previously been involved in a car accident possibly caused by someone sabotaging brake fluid cables.
The film explores all of the possible strands of the mystery, concluding that A/. Reeves did kill him. B/. His lover killed him in a crime of passion. C/. Men hired by Eddie Mannix assassinated Reeves. However, the film wisely avoids proselytising by not stating categorically in favour of any of the three key theories, and allows Simo to withdraw from the case unable to pursue it further.
This is a slow, terrific film about the underbelly of the Hollywood system, and the misery that being typecast can bring. Reeve’s mother has a struggle to stop her son being buried in his Superman cape.
Much of the film’s premise is accurate, and it thoughtfully avoids becoming a screaming unsubtle conspiracy theory. Even if Reeves killed himself, the reputations of many around him were deeply tarnished by much that went on in the period surrounding his passing. The characters all come across as human and flawed. There are no Supermen here, merely people.
LINKS
http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/hollywoodland.php Site that explores the accuracy of claims made in the film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Reeves George Reeves Wikipedia entry.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427969/ Hollywoodland on The International Movie Database.
Arthur Chappell
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