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Outrageous Fortune
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In
chapter ten of Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983), Gilles Deleuze uncovers, via the example of Ernst Lubitsch, “the law of the new index: a very
slight difference in the action, or between two actions, heads to a very great
distance between two situations”. As Deleuze recognises, this is a
quintessentially comic law, which Lubitsch raised to its highest complexity:
the entire trajectory of To Be or Not to Be (1944) is crystallised in the different situations and ways in which the same
multiple actor/individual/resistance fighter quotes the immortal speech, “If
you prick us, do we not bleed? …” – which means something a little different
each time. It’s an index of Deleuze’s wisdom to see that this is also (in
Lubitsch, if not quite as much in Mel Brooks) “a question of life or death”.
Since
one of the great and consistent joys of Deleuze’s cinema books is to confront
its more philosophical and/or trendoid readership with films they have probably
never heard of and may not bother to seek out – everything from Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) to White Dog (Samuel Fuller, 1981) – I find it only
proper to add to Deleuze a modest postscript. Arthur Hiller’s Outrageous
Fortune (scripted by Leslie Dixon) provides an exact and quasi-Lubitschian instance of the law of the new index in action – right down to the title
appropriation of a Shakespearian cliché. Here’s another film about acting (the
plot involves rival students in an acting class who are also fighting over the
same, vanished man); its best moments hinge on the repetition, in differing
circumstances, of the same gestures – a performance upon which hangs a question
of life or death.
Beyond
this fortuitous and pleasing encounter of Gilles Deleuze and Walt Disney Pictures
(i.e., Touchstone [1984-2017]), there’s not a lot to say about Outrageous
Fortune. (Yes, it’s entertaining). It’s another unholy action-comedy hybrid
in the historical line that starts mightily with North by Northwest (Alfred
Hitchcock, 1959) – personal story ties up with and resolves itself in
international espionage story – and limps ever onward today in Jumping Jack
Flash (Penny Marshall, 1986), Critical
Condition (Michael Apted, 1987), The Golden
Child (Michael Ritchie, 1986) …
Unholy,
because the action bits and the comedy bits never quite get together or arrange
themselves interestingly; they start behaving like they are mutually exclusive
elements or aspects. The comedy bits are funny, but utterly pre-set and
predictable: Shelley Long (as Lauren) doing her Cheers character,
colliding with the brassy Bette Midler (as Sandy) persona.
There
are some good sex jokes along the way – not just Midler’s splendidly vulgar
one-liners, but a beautifully set-up indexical gag involving the sound that Michael
(Peter Coyote) makes when he cums.
That’s
the one gag in Outrageous Fortune which Lubitsch didn’t already do
better – but only because it wasn’t permissible, at least not in the same way,
in 1944.
MORE Hiller: The In-Laws © Adrian Martin May 1987 |
