Movie Review: Lenny (1974)

Lenny (1974)

Director: Bob Fosse

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner

Synopsis: The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establishment as too obscene for the public.

Who knew Valerie Perrine was such a good actress?   There’s little on her CV to suggest she’s capable of the natural realism we see from her as Honey Harlow in Lenny, Bob Fosse’s downbeat take on the life of the 1960s’ counter-culture comic, Lenny Bruce.  To tell Bruce’s story, Fosse hit on the idea of framing scenes from his tumultuous life with ‘interviews’ of those who knew him best, and those in which Perrine feature could easily be mistaken for authentic footage of Bruce’s real widow.  One might have expected her to be out of her depth opposite an acting heavyweight like Dustin Hoffman (Midnight Cowboy, All the President’s Men), an actor whose personality is strong enough to sometimes engulf both the character he’s playing and those acting opposite him, but he and Perrine complement one another in unexpected ways.  Hoffman channels his nervous energy into Bruce’s stand-up routines and the later stages of his life when he and Honey were estranged, reserving his quieter moments for his scenes with Perrine.   Together, they create a genuine warmth that endures even as the Bruce’s marriage starts to crumble.

Bruce’s story is largely played out in strip joints and nightclubs, his routines often delivered through a smokey haze.   Fosse shoots the movie in stark black-and-white, evoking impressions of enclosed spaces in which the smell of booze and cigarettes and body odour mingle in a dark, unpleasant warmth.   His camera sometimes examines the audience as Bruce works, lingering on those who don’t laugh, as if baffled by their failure to see the humour in his routines.   But then, Bruce wasn’t about belly laughs.   He used comedy to prick his audience’s conscience, confronting them with the injustices and hypocrisy of a society of which he never really seemed to be a part.

He started out as a conventional stand-up, reciting memorised lines to largely silent and pre-occupied audiences.  It’s during these days as a struggling comic that he meets his future wife, Honey, a statuesque stripper with a nascent drug problem.   Bruce also had a problem with drugs, something which the film strangely chooses to play down until a brutal scene in which he takes to the stage wearing just a Mac and one sock before rambling incoherently to a subdued audience.   It’s a harrowing scene, shot from a distance to highlight Bruce’s mounting isolation and paranoia, and made all the more harrowing by the fact that it was taken verbatim from one of his shows.

Despite the birth of a daughter, the Bruce’s marriage falters when Honey’s addiction begins to take hold.   The breakdown is poignantly handled, but alarm bells start ringing.   Lenny and Honey are both portrayed as victims, and it suddenly becomes apparent that the film gives Bruce no responsibility for the bad things in his life, only credit for the good.   In the end, it’s not drugs or booze that defeats Bruce, but the system which he sought to expose through his act, and the sense of isolation he must have felt – rightly or wrongly – is conveyed through the cold starkness of the black-and-white photography employed by Fosse.   The stress Bruce endured must have been immense – and there seemed little room for light or humour in his life.   For Bruce, fleeting success and happiness were fortunate side-roads on a route that was always going to take him down.

(Reviewed 10th April 2016)