Meow. It's Michelle Pfeiffer's Birthday!
Monday, April 29, 2013 at 6:33PM To celebrate the 55th birthday of the one and only I thought we'd resurrect an old post about her Catwoman performance. If she's got nine lives so should this post. Please to enjoy...
Tim Burton's Batman Returns, the best Batman film (you heard me... throw down!) is now 15 21 years old and still one of the best comic book films. The movie didn't change cinema or its genre or significantly alter any careers. But it did send yours truly and millions of other Pfeiffer inclined moviegoers into a pfrenzy, arguably marking the apex of La Pfeiffer's cinematic reign. She was still in Oscar chasing mode (Love Field) and the full fledged move from heavy dramatic lifting into light mainstream fare (One Fine Day) and then blink and you'll miss her erratic appearances (Dark Shadows) was years away.
Ten Best Catwoman Line Deliveries
All the dialogue rocks but these are my favorite Pfeifferian readings
10 "Life's a bitch. Now, so am I"
Blockbusters love to shove quips on the public, in the hopes of catchphrase afterlife. This one’s pretty basic but Michelle sells it with true believer zeal.
9 more purring quips after the jump
09 "How can you be so mean to someone so meaningless?"
Right before her death early in the movie… she realizes she’s in big trouble. I love how pathetic LaPfeiffer is willing to make her mousy executive assistant — sorry, secretary.
08 "But last night... complete blur. Couldn't you just die?"
The morning after her own murder she shows up to work with a new perm, makeup, and flirtatious attitude --she’s yummier [see #5]. The boss who killed her and Bruce Wayne are both flabbergasted at her new appearance (for different reasons). Even out of Catwoman garb she has a delicious catlike appeal, she’s toying with Bruce and her boss whilst also spinning the joke for maximum audience joy.
07 "Did somebody say fish? I haven't been fed all day"
This line always makes me think of The Bening. Annette Bening was originally cast in this role but once knocked up by Warren Beatty she dropped out. Pfeiffer is perfect in the role but in this one specific line I swear I’m hearing Annette Bening’s voice every time. It’s as if Michelle asked her to do the post production looping in tribute.
06 "every woman you try to save winds up dead or deeply resentful. Maybe you should retire"
The Catwoman star turn is bursting with eroticism. Technically this line is a putdown but in her suddenly low purring it throbs with a challenge, a f***ed up come on.
05 "I don't know about you Miss Kitty, but I feel so much yummier"
A classic.
04 "I am Catwoman. Hear me roar."
There are so many ways this type of performance can go wrong [see also: Catwoman (2004)]. But this blonde superstar is phenomenal at stylization. She understands just how much heightening this genre of acting requires. The performance isn’t exactly real… but it has total authenticity. The delivery is equal parts sexy, theatrical, and unhinged. It's a "too much" that leaves you wanting more.
03 "I don't know who I am anymore"
The Spider-Man series gets a lot of things right but the emotional peak of the superhero genre is, to date, Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer’s face-off while slow dancing at a masked ball. They’ve just realized that their new lover is also their enemy. Keaton has just the right note of concern and gravitas and Pfeiffer breaks into several pieces right before your eyes with tears and laughter… her identities fusing and splintering, thoroughly undoing her. In short: this is the best performance ever given in a superhero film.
02 "Four, Five... Still alive! Six, Seven...all good girls go to heaven"
This particular quote, delivered while this anti-heroine lets herself be killed again and again -- throwing away her lives like she’s got more than nine, moves from raging taunts directed at her enemy to a nearly catatonic sing-song to herself. Catwoman has only nine lives but this Michelle Pfeiffer performance will live forever.
01 "...meow"
Reader Comments (29)
Nathaniel, Nathaniel, Nathaniel. When I tell you that "Batman Returns" -- and in essence, Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle/Catwoman -- was THE defining film of my twelfth year, I offer no lies. I watched it almost every day, memorized almost every line (well, EVERY Catwoman line), and got the action figures the following Christmas.
Some more of my favorites:
"Oh, please. I wouldn't touch you to scratch you."
"It's gonna be a hot time on the cold town tonight."
"You're overpaid. Hit the road!"
"Because he is Batman, you moron!"
Great, incomparable performance. One of the best EVER.
I love Michelle, and I love you, Nathaniel, for loving her SO MUCH.
In 8th grade, there were countless times where I popped in my Batman Returns DVD and only watched Michelle's scenes. The "Four, Five..." has to be my favorite scene and also her final confrontation with Batman, moments before.
Not a great line but I still use it...when my personal trainer overworks me I always say "How could you I'm a woman" and I try to say it just like her.
My favorite scene is the one with the whip. I understand she learned how to handle it like a pro. And while prowling in 5 in. stilettos.
I want her to reteam with Jonathan Demme desperately. Married to the Mob was good fun, despite my irrational aversion to Maathew Modine. Anyway, Demme can do any genre, has great female characters, and does not give a rip about any age, race, or any type studio movies have not a clue to make adult movies with those characters.
I don't know why that movie sticks out, as like everybody I was first enraptured with Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns, but it says a lot when a beautiful actress can still be amazing sans her trademark hair color and not feel like she was still herself (I think of Hayworth going blonde in The Lady from Shanghai).
CMG -- well, Demme has gone on record as loving-loving-loving her so if she were smart about it she'd be begging for a reunion!
Gotta go, girl talk...
Batman Returns is easily, hands down, the best batman movie ever made. Nolan takes himself and the batman character WAAAAY too fucking seriously. Batman is a silly ass character and I really don't need some fucking Kubrick wannabe to go all gloomy on me (why so serious, Nolan?)...RETURNS is so much fun, playful and inventive, and so beautiful to look at.
I see it every year at christmas, one of my favorite movies of all time. And, it goes without saying, Michelle Pfeiffer gives one of thee best screen performances in motion picture history as cat woman (I say bump Meryl Streep's Sophies from future "best screen performances lists" and replace her with Pfeiffer's cat woman).
LOVE this list! Everything about that #1 "...meow" is perfect, from her expression to her body language to her tone of voice to her timing. Brilliant, brilliant performance.
I do often wonder what the world would be like today had the Bening played this role as was originally intended...
It's just weird to me that Pfeiffer was Demme's first choice for Clarice in Silence of the Lambs. In fact, Pfeiffer was up for two of the five Oscar nominated roles in the the 1991 Best Actress category (I think she was slated to play Thelma in Thelma and Louise). Still, I don't think she would have won. She's never been the IT girl for Oscar. Too bad, cuz she my favorite actress.
Anyway, wonderful post, Nathaniel.
love this list!
maybe she'll get some Oscar love for Malavita this year? A girl has to dreammmm...
BVR - I disagree, I don't think she's like Julianne Moore or Naomi Watts who I just could never see actually winning. I could've totally seen her winning for The Fabulous Baker Boys or maybe something else back then, but not anymore sadly.
adding onto that - if she played Clarice Sterling, she definitely would've won. Whoever played that role would've won unless they were absolutely horrid.
BVR & Philip H -- she was the frontrunner in 89 up until the last month or so and took all the key trophies (there were fewer of them back then of course!) from the NBR to the Globe and the critical trifecta (LAFCA, NSFC, NYFCC) but the Driving Miss Daisy juggernaut defeated her.
(sigh)
Living for Michelle in Catwoman, that performance deserved an Oscar!
Ooops. the should have read as Catwoman, but really she made that film ;)
I see Pfeiffer as the likeliest from Close and Weaver to prevail for the lone career statuette. So stop your sighing.
I don't remember if I had read this post in the past, but, wow! Delicious!
Me and a friend of mine have quoted "Life's a bitch. Now, so am I" but we both love many of the quotes listed here.
And it IS the best performance ever in a superhero movie.
Happy belated birthday Michelle!
Um, excuse me, Mr. Pfanatic, but No. 3 goes like this:
Bruce: "Who the hell do you think you are"
Selina: "I don't know anymore, Bruce"
Bam!
Ulrich: There's this weird extremism with the live-action Batman adaptations. On the one hand, you've got the 80s and 90s series with it's extreme focus on spectacle fantasy (which wound up completely terrible at the end), which mostly didn't really feel like "the real Gotham." (Batman Returns gets the closest, but is still quite far away.) On the other, you've got Nolan's films, with their extreme focus on "gritty realism" (which also wound up terrible at the end), which ALSO didn't really feel like "the real Gotham" as much as Nolan (desperately) wants us to believe that. If you want a sense of what Gotham's actually like in modern comics without getting used to the story telling methods of a static medium, check out the Dini-Timm animated series and the Arkham games. As for the Kubrick comparison: Huh? He's not known, overall, as a blatant flashy action driven spectacle director who can end a movie on an action setpiece. Edgy, yes, but not spectacle driven. The creepyness of Lolita, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, the barbed hot war criticisms of Paths of Glory (only one action scene, half-way through) and Full Metal Jacket (again, only one real action scene, but it ends on a lingering drama post-script), the hypnotic visual feast of 2001, the Cold War dark comedy of Dr. Strangelove and the sex analysis of Eyes Wide Shut. Spartacus is the only real outlier. If you're calling him out for doing bland "faux-edgy" spectacle fare, call him a Michael Mann or David Lean wannabe instead. Mann has done MULTIPLE movies with multiple action scenes and Lean has done one movie that ends on an action setpiece and one with multiple action scenes. (Michael Mann: Last of the Mohicans, Heat, Collateral. David Lean: Bridge on the River Kwai ends on one, plus Lawrence of Arabia.)
I cannot for the life of me picture Bening as Selina Kyle/Catwoman on any level. Vicky Vale, maybe but not that character especially not in the way Burton directed Pfeiffer at all.
Pfeiffer as Clarice would be interesting. I thought Demmewith Jodie Foster, who is beautiful, de-sexualized her as a woman on the job (and I think Keith Uhlich's read of her and Kasie Lemmons' character having a possible beyond platonic relationship could be onto something) and making the male-driven world around her be the ones responsible for making her gender and sexuality an issue. I don't want to say Pfeiffer was too pretty for Clarice but the way Foster was so specifically made up (in a way that is not too frumpy and therefore a bait-y against type role) that I have a hard time seeing Pfeiffer made up in such a way.
Was Pfeiffer the Louise or Thelma? I have to think Thelma.
Pfeiffer owns this movie and this role (although Anne Hathaway was admittedly the best part of Dark Knight Rises for me). I remember a female film critic at the time writing, "You call it Batman Returns; I call it CATWOMAN."
I always forget about how many scenes focus on the Penguin, and on rewatch cringe every time he appears on screen.
Biggs: I think that's kind of the point. He's the down right creepiest thing Burton's brought to the screen. (Depp's Wonka is the second creepiest.)
I just recalled the other line I keep recalling at random times: I woudn't touch you to scratch you.
Great delivery again!
CMG -- i can't remember for sure but I think it was Louise (the Sarandon part). ANYWAY... yeah, i've always read Clarice as being a lesbian and kasi Lemons as her lover/friend in the agency. But... i will say this: though I've always longed to have seen Pfeiffer in that role (primarily because it's such a great great role) I think Jodie's subtextual lesbianism really gives the movie an enormous boost in terms of its depth and gender themes.
The transformation scenes absolutely rely on Pfeiffer to really sell it...and she does...and NO DISCOUNT! I remember her telling Lipton how it was pure hell to get into that getup. LOL
Nathaniel, I agree. I kept on thinking, 'This theory kind of works in how we have three queer people in this movie (Hannibal is also a homosexual in Uhlich's theory) that vary from coded to caged to in hiding in their queerness. But is this also because Jodie Foster herself is a glass-closet lesbian?' I can almost see other actresses in the role but it almost would not be the same without her because of not just what she brought to the role but who she was. I have also sort of come around that Demme in a very complicated way charges that Buffalo Bill and Clarice are both getting screwed by their surroundings and environments but it can be understood how problematic it had to be in 1991.
I saw this film within the last month ... I made my boyfriend watch it with me. lol. I love it, even though it's a mess. She's superlative in it, and it's one of my favorite performances by anyone, ever.
I agree that it's the best performance in a comic book film ... with Heath Ledger a close second for me.