Bening shines as Gloria Grahame in tearjerker
Based on a true story, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool follows the last days of great femme fatale Gloria Grahame.
Directed by Paul McGuigan it stars Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Waters and Vanessa Redgrave.
Bening, who has not starred in a romance for a while but shines in roles in Bugsy (Berry Levinson, 1991) and Being Julia (István Szabó, 2004), makes a comeback as Grahame. Perhaps because she plays a real-life character known to the world through 1940s films, Bening is unrecognizable as herself. People who may know her through her public persona are aware of her distinctive, low, confident voice similar to that of Jane Fonda’s and distinguishable from other younger actresses. That voice is completely altered in the film, convincingly so that Bening is nowhere to be found.
There is also a rawness that Bening allows the viewer access to. There is a vulnerability in being an actress portraying another actress. Grahame, a product of the Hollywood system of the 1940s, was extremely aware of her appearance. At the time, audiences and producers desired a performer like her whose private life resembled that of the femme fatale. Even after the reported scandal that involved Nicholas Ray, her second husband of four and a director of film noir whose private life also mirrored his protagonists, and his son Anthony Ray, she was offered more parts.
Grahame won an Academy Award for her performance in The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincent Minnelli, 1952). She is also known for her roles in In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950), Cecile B. Demille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) and Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952). Grahame’s career ended presumably because of the press’s knowledge of her fourth marriage to Anthony Ray, son of Nicholas Ray from his first wife. However, considering many other actresses’ careers at that time, they all ended when they reached the age of 40. The scandal mentioned before was what is said to have caused the divorce from Nicholas Ray, which is he speculated that Grahame and then 13-year-old Anthony were having an affair.
The effects of such media attention and harassment are what Bening embodies in Liverpool. As we are introduced to her through the eyes of a young man by the name of Peter Turner (played by Jamie Bell), we understand the complexity of a life judged by many. Turner published a book, on which the film is based, about his experiences with Grahame and her last days at his family’s home in Liverpool. He even attended one of the film’s premieres.
This tearjerker of a film will only satisfy audiences even more in that there is a raw reality that it is based on, almost untouched by Hollywood’s superficial edits to true stories that supposedly lack allurement. The unconditional love between Grahame and Turner is one that is rarely displayed on the screen. With age difference and general insecurities as factors, it is a romance that is fragile when in the hands of other people. The film leaves space for a cosmic view of such a romance that renders it unbreakable. This might be because of the film’s set in the ’70s, which promises nostalgia for admirers of the time.