Just watched the mighty strange film THE MAN WHO CRIED on dvd.The next time someone of older years says "they don't make them like they used to" you can now point to this film and say "Yes they do". However whether said person will like it or whether it is successful is something completely different.
The always-watchable Christina Ricci plays a young Russian Jewish girl who as a child is sent to America to live with her father already there. But what with one thing and another she ends up in England and renamed Susan. She gains employment with a dance troupe in Paris where she meets and befriends emigre Russian Lola (played by Cate Blanchett darlink). Lola's machinations get them employed in the chorus of an opera company run by... Harry Dean Stanton (?) where the star is an egotistical Italian tenor played by... John Turtutto (???) Cue one too many scenes of Turturro lip-synching arias in cheesy costumes.
While Lola is seducing the tenor, the doe-eyed Susan has fallen for the dark charms of Johnny Depp in another of his flashing-eyed gypsy characters. Soon the talk is of impending war and our four displaced characters must do what they must to survive.
Blanchett is wonderfully flashy in her characterisation of the predatory Lola, Depp smoulders on a low-light, Turturro makes a good hissable villain and Ricci is one of the few actresses who could make the character's fate-tossed journey believable.
Excellent cinematography and lush music help to guide one from a Russian shtetl to (literally) a Hollywood ending via a sinking liner. As much as I admired Sally Potter's film the hapless Susan brought to mind Thelma Ritter's line from ALL ABOUT EVE "What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end."
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