Melanie Griffith is wonderful onscreen

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 3:22pm

I think maybe the voice throws people off, but I can think of so many performances of hers that I just adore.

Night Moves
Body Double ("We need more comedians in this business.")
Something Wild
Working Girl
Bonfire of the Vanities (maybe the *only* good performance in the movie)
Lolita
Cecil B. Demented

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 3:45pm

If you're going to have a discussion about her films, you can't leave out CRAZY IN ALABAMA. She was remarkable in that.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 4:04pm

I'm with you, Mr. Midwest, I think she's a wonderful talent and she's stuck at that age in which a lot of actresses (other than our regulars like Meryl and Glenn) become invisible to the film industry: between middle aged and "granny". She's got a few 2014-15 credits on IMDB. I know nothing about these projects, but hopefully one of them offers her something substantial.

Updated On: 2/19/14 at 04:04 PM

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 4:11pm

I also think she was heartbreaking in RKO 281. A lovely performance.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 4:15pm

Her episode of Inside the Actors Studio was one of the more emotionally honest ones.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 4:43pm

I love the scene in Body Double right after she has sex on film with Craig Wasson and he comes in her dressing room and asks her out.

"I don't even know you."

Brian De Palma is so very much not a misogynist. The interviews with Melanie and Deborah Shelton about what a gentleman he is on the Body Double dvd make that clear.

Fear City is entertaining enough in a trashy sort of way as well.

Updated On: 2/19/14 at 04:43 PM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 4:46pm

I can't watch WORKING GIRL and not think of this

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 4:54pm

Melanie Griffith is someone I regularly look up on IMDB to see what she's doing and so is Meg Ryan (who I just read announced that she has officially retired) but I see now that the two of them are doing a new film together based on THE HUMAN COMEDY and produced by Tom Hanks.

And I can't wait!


Linky Linky

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 5:02pm

Yeah, Ms. Melanie must've been chasing the white lady a lot during the making of Working Girl.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 9:37am

It's ironic that Mr. Midwest said that it's her voice that throws people off. Because I find her voice to be the most interesting thing about her.

I have nothing against her. Still, I'm curious. What about her work is particularly wonderful? Is it anything someone can put into words or is it something one just gets or doesn't?

It's also interesting to me that the majority view seems to be that her mother wasn't all that good an actress. But I find Hedren's performances much more intriguing, mysterious, complex and far more stylish than Griffith's.

[tazber]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 9:59am

Did anyone see Shining Through?

It's kind a ridiculous movie, but she's really good in it.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 10:33am

Tippi reads as a model onscreen, whereas Melanie feels more human; sensitive and charming and flirty.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 10:39am

Taz, I LOVE "Shining Through"!!!

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 10:43am

Good answer.

Melanie's characters were always more sensitive than her mom's, and much flirtier and more human. Griffith definitely has warmth in strong relief to her mother's ice.

Hedren was an effective ice goddess in an era of kittens, babes, gamines and earth mothers (read: Novak, Monroe, Hepburn, Loren). Griffith was just the opposite and in an era where she stood out from her competition as having curves, warmth, erotic vulnerability and approachability.

[tazber]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 11:05am

Ha! I knew you would Jordan!

I remember thinking what a silly premise, but also being amazed at how well they handled it.
I've always felt it was unfairly maligned.

[AC126748]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 12:35pm

Griffith's performance in SOMETHING WILD remains an absolute favorite of mine. So vivid and connected. Every move she makes in that film is genius.

[dented146]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 1:07pm

Jordan, that was great. I've always been a huge fan as well.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 2/21/14 at 11:14am

"Most narrative art is "about" emotional metamorphosis that can be abstractly equated with the above concept. Few directors, however, have tackled social and personal shape-shifting as concretely or as intuitively as Jonathan Demme. Throughout his diverse yet unified oeuvre, characters are uncannily aware of what makes them tick, to the point that exposition is occasionally bypassed altogether. Something Wild, one of his best films, stylizes this strength of personality a step further with people who are addicted to reinvention, both as a means of expression and as a method of exposing absurdity. When Lulu (Melanie Griffith) catches go-getter businessman Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) skipping out on a lunch check in a Manhattan diner, she's wearing a straight, black wig and faux-voodoo accoutrements around her neck and wrists; before the movie hits the halfway mark, she's exchanged this for a cozy, floral sundress and cropped, bleach-blond hair. By the time the film ends, she's dragged Driggs through at least four iterations of herself, and done it all with a sarcastic smile not for the thrill of the moment, but the depth of possibility at her fingertips."

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/something-wild

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 2/21/14 at 11:19am

[strummergirl]

Posted: 2/22/14 at 6:43pm

Something Wild is awesome. It's probably one of my favorite 'New York in the 80s' films even if half of it is a road-movie. The way it moves from space to space and in many instances genre to genre was seamless and she was great in that role.

Her getting a Razzie for Bonfire is a total shonda. Read The Devil's Candy and you'll have a lot of respect for her, that performance, and the gusto she had behind the scenes though I am pretty sure had the author of The Devil's Candy had been male and not Julie Salamon it might come off different. It takes a lot of skill to make the most sympathetic player (aside from Kim Cattrall) in the book be somebody who got an id-driven breast augmentation in a 3-week hiatus to suddenly then return to filming knowing it throws off a troubled production shoot even more. But, regardless, the performance was good, alive, and totally better than anybody else.



Updated On: 2/22/14 at 06:43 PM

[Mrs Mangel]

Posted: 2/22/14 at 9:51pm

I haven't seen "Bonfire" for sometime, but I remember thinking her performance was the most natural in the film- everyone else seemed to be chasing the more farcical tone . "Something Wild" is one of my favorite films of all time. Also, her cameo inn "Celebrity" is also really enjoyable- her scene with Kenneth Branagh after they have sex is so cold and disinterested. It's fantastic.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 2/23/14 at 12:51am

Her constant throat clearing in Working Girl was very annoying.
A frog in her throat

[bobs3]

Posted: 2/23/14 at 3:12am

'Did anyone see Shining Through? It's kind a ridiculous movie, but she's really good in it.'

Oh, it is one of my favorite trashy movies. The director filmed it as an homage to those great World War 2 romantic melodramas of the 1940s and 1950s. Melanie is very good and Joely Richardson is good as the best friend who turns out not to be such a good friend.

[bobs3]

Posted: 2/23/14 at 3:17am

She also did "A Stranger Among Us" where she plays an undercover NYPD detective who infiltrates a closely knit and secretive Hasidic Jewish community to find a murderer. Sidney Lumet directed. It wasn't one of his best films but it was fun.

Updated On: 2/23/14 at 03:17 AM