In defense of Faye Dunaway in "Mommie Dearest"
Sunday, May 3, 2020 at 10:45PM It's Mother's Day in Portugal and Mother's Day next Sunday in the US. Since we're celebrating 1981 this week, we're starting early with the biggest, meanest mother of them all!
In 1971, in her book titled My Way of Life, Joan Crawford, the legendary diva of Old Hollywood, said that, of all the actresses of the time, only Faye Dunaway had the talent, the class and the courage to be a movie star. Had she lived to see the younger actress play her in the infamous Mommie Dearest, Crawford would have probably revised her statement. The 1981 biopic is one of the great camp classics of all time, a prestige picture with pretensions of Oscar glory that crashed and burned most spectacularly. Dunaway herself is said to have believed she was on her way to Academy Award glory. Instead, she got a Razzie for Worst Actress...
The picture's also the big-screen adaptation of a contentious tell-all in which Christina Crawford, Joan's adopted daughter, paints a picture of hellish child abuse that went on for decades. It's such a shocking testimony that its scandal has forever blemished Joan Crawford's legacy, changing how she was perceived in popular culture forevermore. Nowadays, people are more likely to know the gorgon of Mommie Dearest than the Oscar-winning star of Mildred Pierce. That said, we're not here to lambast this admittedly troublesome flick, the veracity of the book's allegations or Dunaway's behind the scenes antics. You're invited to reexamine the performance that won that unwanted Golden Razzberry and, perchance, find value in its grotesquerie.
That said, before dissecting the strengths of Faye Dunaway's maniacal take on Joan Crawford, we should understand some important things about the film she's in. Despite being based on the eponymous book, the movie Mommie Dearest tries hard to be a prestige biopic in the most conventional of forms. The big problem, you see, is that it doesn't attempt to be a biography of Christina, but that of her mother. This makes for an incredibly disjointed experience, as the horrors of a traumatized child's memories must live in coexistence with campy interludes backstage glamour. In other words, the movie doesn't know what it wants to be and nobody involved seems to have a strong point of view to interpret the material. Well, there's one person.
Faye Dunaway has a solid perspective on her character and she brings it to every scene she's in, often rubbing abrasively against the picture's glitzier passages. Even if not consciously, the actress plays Joan, not as a documentation of historical fact, but as the monster she might have been perceived as through the eyes of a terrified child. It's a horror movie performance played to the hilt with a fervor that is more frightening than it is fun. While I've always understood why this infamous star turn became a beacon of drag and high camp, whenever I watch it I never laugh. Take the wire hanger freak-out, an iconic moment of the bad movie canon, as an example. Its exaggerations may be laughable in retrospect, though, in the moment, they terrorize more than they amuse such is the possessed commitment of Dunaway giving herself to primordial rage.
Whenever her Joan goes off the deep end, Dunaway snarls at the camera and sculpts her face into a gargoyle-like mask, her muscles rigid and throat looking like a tight rope that's about to explode from the tension. When this happens, the film comes to life in an electrifying manner, its tone bending around the main performance. For some disperse minutes, this disaster of a melodrama becomes a dangerous Expressionistic portrait of abusive parenthood, a Grand Guignol spectacle that also vibrates with the extremes of ravaged humanity. When Dunaway's Joan catches her reflection in the mirror during these tantrums, when her ears suddenly register her children's crying, it's as if she too is frightened of herself. This usually causes a de-escalation of aggression, her rants going from accusatory to self-pitying, her body deflating and her mouth abandoning the snarl for a frown full of sorrow.
All these choices are very big, astronomically distant from any imaginable permutation of subtle naturalism, but the visceral emotions they invoke are no less galvanizing because of that. Moreover, even if hers is a performance of extremes, Dunaway still finds gradations to play with, especially in the second half of the picture. When rewatching the movie for the writing of this piece, I was particularly impressed by the way she plays relatively warm chemistry with Crawford's fourth husband Alfred Steel, and how her scenes with an adult Christina burn with tentative affection. This character may be a psychotic actress who lives the hollow illusion of perfection, but she's also a haunted woman who longs for the fulfillment she so desperately acts for the cameras.
Returning to the idea of Faye Dunaway's Mommie Dearest as a horror movie, those notes of dissonant sentimentality are needed to round up this most perfect of domestic monsters. Because we get glimpses of her pain and her brittle pursuit of happiness, the violence, physical and psychological, that Joan inflicts on her children becomes that more horrifying. We get a sense that she wants to be the perfect mother, but simply can't help herself. Some of the best villains in horror cinema are the tragic ones, those who are complex. Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford is no exception. She's bigger than life, more real than real, an actress lost within the madness of her performance.
1981's Mommie Dearest may be a trashed piece worthy of mockery, but Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford is closer to a masterpiece of method acting twisted into the stuff of nightmares. In this Mother's Day, I invite you all to applaud her definite take on monstrous motherhood on the big screen.
Reader Comments (28)
It’s such a harrowing movie! Dunaway really commits, and in a way that braces the whole thing together.
I love Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. What she's doing is purposeful instead of being mislead into hysterics the way Verhoeven instructed Elizabeth Berkley.
She’s brilliant in this and deserved an Oscar nomination at the very least
My favorite line:
“Christina!!!... bring me the axe!!!” Hee! Camp heaven
I think it's been lampooned so often that it's hard to see the original for what it is, and a lot of people know it by pop cultural osmosis. For instance, when I tried watching to watch the movie the last time, I could not get Drag Race's Alyssa Edwards' totally inaccurate and but also weirdly hilarious impression of Joan Crawford, which was actually a take on Faye Dunaway's impression of Joan Crawford, so I couldn't really watch the movie fairly.
I never know what to same about this performance. I enjoy the mess that is the film even though I don't think it's a good movie. Dunaway's performance is endlessly watchable just for how far she goes off the edge. All her line readings are iconic but I never know if this performance was oscar worthy because it sort've sits in a plain of existence between good and bad.
I can understand Faye Dunaway fans seeking redemption for their beloved movie star in this infamous performance. Sadly, it is a misguided effort. Dunaway mistakes volume and twisted facial expressions as art while they are the tools of performers who are floundering for a path to understanding the character.
There have been many portrayals of abusive women who inflict pain on their daughters. Oscar nominee Gladys Cooper in Now, Voyager (1942), Oscar winner Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue (1965),.and Oscar nominee Piper Laurie in Carrie (1976) come quickly to mind.
But the most authentic and powerful performance of a child abuser is most certainly Mo'Nique in Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (2009). Here is acting as an art form that when contrasted with Mommie Dearest exposes Dunaway's flaws.
Dunaway has said she blames the director for not telling her to “reel in” and “tone down” her performance. Girl, how could you not have known?
Great article, and as you said, Faye Dunaway is superb in creating some sort of peculiar film horror performance in a movie that's everything but perfect, but still quite enjoyable (and scary).
Dunaway should have been nominated for Best Actress. But the costumes, production design and make up should also have been nominated.
I like the article but frankly I still think that Dunaway's razzie wasn't just unwanted but unfair. She's effective and commanding in her role even if this is not the Crawford we would like to know about. Perhaps Dunaway was overstimating the Oscar Glory possibilities of this film (and anyway she got alreday one) but she was runner-up for a couple of critics awards so at the end it wasn't just a camp triumph
Dunaway is excellent in the film. Her performance is not out of control. She is portraying a character who is out of control. Dunaway, the actress, is fully in control. She deserved an Oscar nomination that year.
I saw this in 1981 when I was 14 and to this day, I wont use wire coat hangers. True story.
That's not me.
The word camp she have a picture of this film next to it,it's like Dunaway chanelled Divine for sheer OTT horribleness.
I wish there were some sort of tell-all documentary about the making of this film but ONLY if Dunaway herself were interviewed and finally opened up about her experiences on this picture. She's a fucking LEGEND!
Faye is absolutely magnificent - and richly deserved an Oscar nom. The film around her...is a mixed bag, to say the least. For as marvelous as Diana Scarwid is in countless other projects, she is just awful as Christina.
Does for wire hangers what Psycho did for showers,Dunaway only has 1 thing to say about that Mommie Dearest and "That's All"
Faye talks Mommie Dearest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsubztPxR3s
I actually liked the movie and the performance.
The book was the collected memories of a child . A child’s memories are often exaggerated or enlarged or they can be denied completely. Maybe Christina remembered her mother looking and sounding just as Ms. Dunaway portrayed her. But that doesn’t mean that either was the reality of the situation. We will never know. And I think that Ms. Dunaway to some degree, has been given a raw deal over the situation. She apparently did as her director asked of her but her reluctance to speak out more about her experience with the film just makes it look like she didn’t know what was going on or she doesn’t want to talk about her motivations while filming.
None of that is easy to say. From what I have read, Dunaway seems to be a bigger bitch in real life than Crawford has ever been known to be.
This film is nothing but divisive (everyone should see it).
The Razzies have never been about “honoring” the worst films of the year, they are just there to punish certain people and films.
Dunaway certainly was something, but I found her performance to be misguided as well. She needed a better director to reel her in. Definitely not Razzie worthy though. I actually prefer Mara Hobel to Dunaway.
What Al Pacino did for actors in Scarface is what Faye Dunaway did for actresses in Mommie Dearest. Performances that were over-the-top but weren't afraid to do so.
I've always viewed Mommy Dearest as a campy horror movie. It has the melodrama of The Omen or The Bad Seed and explores a similar type of movie monster. All that's missing is a murder that could be mistaken for an accident.
@mjs: "None of that is easy to say. From what I have read, Dunaway seems to be a bigger bitch in real life than Crawford has ever been known to be."
From what I understand Dunaway is indeed pretty awful and is abusive to clerks and salespeople, etc. If I ever saw her on the street I would give her a wide berth. As for Crawford, aside the allegations of child abuse (of which we can never be 100% sure of), Crawford had her bad public moments to be sure, but was apparently just about always kind, gracious and approachable to regular-type people and fans - showing particular warmth towards behind the scenes film crews.
Even if Mommie Dearest will never score a nom for Actress & Production Design, how cld the Academy overlooks the superb Make-up in transforming Dunaway to Crawford.
Dunaway is still sooooo identified w this performance is to a large degree, thx to the uncanny Make-up works done!
I bet the real La Crawford is only half as bitchy as the La Dunaway! As Miss Bette Davis famously said: She IS a professional!!
I love her performance and I also was a method actor-- i find Miss Dunaway's performance better than Miss Taylor in "Virginia Wolf" and that is saying a LOT
I love her performance and I also was a method actor-- i find Miss Dunaway's performance better than Miss Taylor in "Virginia Wolf" and that is saying a LOT-- she is ten times better than she was as Bonnie Parker only four years before