USA comedy
1975
color 110 min.
Director: Hal Ashby
CLV: $49.95 - available
           1 disc, catalog # CC1272L
"Shampoo
should do for hairdressers what Lady Chatterly's Lover did for
gameskeepers," quipped critic Andrew Sarris about one of the
seventies' sexiest films, in which Warren Beatty reinforced his sex
symbol image in the unlikely role of a Beverly Hills hairstylist who
sleeps with most of his clients . . . as well as any other woman he
runs into.Beatty's George didn't go to beauty school just because
he wanted to style women's hair -- although that has become his
passion -- but because he wanted sexual access to all the pretty women
who come to beauty salons. His plan worked. In this film, George
juggles his free time among his girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn), former
girlfriend Jackie (Julie Christie), lover Felicia (Lee Grant), and
Felicia's daughter, Lorna (Carrier Fisher). "Beatty," marveled New
York Times critic Vincent Canby, "can make outrageous
self-interest plausibly funny in a way that escapes many professional
comedians."
Shampoo's sexual activity and the taboo-breaking
language shocked many viewers in 1975. The New Republic
claimed, "Shampoo is disgusting." But most viewers just reveled
in this combination social satire, bed-hopping farce (in which nobody
initially knows who's sleeping with whom), and acute character study
of a thirty-sevenyear-old stud so afraid of settling down that he ends
up alone. A commercial blockbuster, it was also popular with many
critics. Canby called Shampoo "the film comedy of the year. A
witty, furtively revolutionary, foul-mouthed comedy of manners cast in
the fairly conventional frame of a story about the comeuppance of a
small-town Casanova."
Beatty was instrumental in the creation of
Shampoo. In addition to playing George, viewed by many as his
alter ego, Beatty produced Shampoo -- the first film he had
produced since 1967's Bonnie and Clyde. He co-wrote the script
with the revered Robert Towne (The Last Detail and
Chinatown), and worked in concert with one of the seventies'
most original directors, Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Harold
and Maude, Coming Home). Beatty helped choose the music,
which included original work by Paul Simon and classic songs by the
Beatles and Beach Boys. Originally, Shampoo was to take place
in the present, but it was Beatty's idea to set the picture on the eve
of Nixon's election, giving George's situation added weight. "I think
that's when the American people came face to face with who they really
were," Beatty said. "I think the prospects for George are pretty
grim." It is a day of trauma for both George and the
country.
Moreover, Beatty assembled a remarkable cast, featuring
Christie, Hawn, Grant, the seventeen-year-old Fisher, Jack Warden as
Lester (Felicia's wealthy husband and Jackie's lover) and Tony Bill
(as Johnny, Jill's boss and new lover). Everyone gave uninhibited and,
in some cases, raunchy performances. Grant deservedly won a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar playing George's shrewd, predatory lover, and
Warden was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. As Jackie, Beatty's
then-girlfriend Julie Christie proved to critic Pauline Kael that
"she's not only an actress, she is, in the high-class hooker terms of
her role, the sexiest woman in movies right now." Her sex scenes with
Beatty are all classics: in her bathroom (she's draped only in a towel
while he uses a hair dryer on her), at a society party (she drunkenly
drops to her knees between nervous George's legs), and at a party in a
dark mansion she kisses George romantically to the strains of "Lucy in
the Sky with Diamonds."
The mumbling, twitching, stuttering,
always-distracted George is Beatty at his most charmingly
inarticulate. He can't really finish a sentence; his alibis and
explanations fail as he searches clumsily for the right words, his
response to most questions and comments is a non-committal "Great!"
But nonsexual communication proves problematic for all of
Shampoo's characters. Beatty and his co-stars play sexually
hungry people leading empty lives, using their lovers and being used
in return. Confused, insecure, and insignificant people, they grope
for happiness by sleeping around and cover up their unhappiness by
being unfaithful. Of course, this creates a whole new set of
difficulties. "The picture is unsettling," Janet Maslin wrote,
paraphrasing Beatty, "because it dares accept sexual promiscuity as a
given and treat its concomitant problems seriously." Quite an
accomplishment for a comedy.
-- DANNY
PEARY
Credits
Director: Hal Ashby
Producer: Warren
Beatty
Screenplay: Robert Towne, Warren Beatty
Cinematography:
Laszlo Kovacs
Associate Producer: Charles H. Maguire
Editor:
Robert C. Jones
Original Music: Paul Simon
Costume Designer:
Anthea Sylbert
Production Designer: Richard
Sylbert
Transfer
The edition of Shampoo was
transferred from a 35mm interpositive. The soundtrack was mastered
from a 35mm magnetic track.