…when Baz Luhrmann‘s Elvis opens on 6.24.22, and particulary (for me) when it has its big premiere in Cannes in a very few weeks….from Pauline Kael‘s review of This Is Elvis:
“There an authentic mystery about Elvis: when we see footage from his early Hollywood movies, he’s only a kid of twenty-one or -two, yet he has the zonked eyes of his later years and he seems to be alive only from the waist down. He walks through his starring roles with his face somnolent and masked; you don’t have a clue what he’s thinking. (He was a terrible actor — he must have understood that he would never amount to diddly in these crum-bum movies, and been resentful and bored.)
“At twenty-three he was inducted in the Army, and the newsreel footage of him being given a G.I. haircut and during the two years of his service (1958 to 1960) shows him more open-faced than at any other time. The sneering, Greek-statue look he had in his movies disappears; he’s leaner and his smile is boyish. But as soon as he’s out of the Army and resumes his movie career, the surly overripeness is back.
“The mixture in Elvis — part artist, part exhibitionist, part good ole boy, part romantic kid, part unknown — could have only fused in pop culture, and it didn’t fuse for long.”
