Post-Mortem Woe

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT JAMES DEAN that enabled him to attract the cult-like, fanatical worship of thousands of teenage American girls from Hollywood to the drought-ridden town of McCarthy, Texas? What was it about these teenagers in the 1950s that made them treat Dean like a second messiah before and after his tragic death on September 30, 1955? And what was it about our society that prevented some of these teenagers from developing into mature, emotionally secure adults?

In his latest film, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, director Robert Altman weaves these themes into an intricate plot as he depicts the twentieth reunion of the Disciples of James Dean--a small club of James Dean fans--in the one-room Five & Dime in a barren town in Texas. Altman borrows the best qualities from the live theatre of precisely staged movements and vocal patterns and merges them with the best potentials of the cinema--fluid-flashbacks, close-up shots and angular filming. The setting of the tacky small-town corner Five & Dime, with its plastic-covered swivel stools around the counter, the displays of cheap trinkets, and the neon-like wall displays and jukebox, never become too confining as Altman uses perpetually changing positions for the characters. His use of reflections through mirrors and dust-covered windows and different camera angles provides the movie with a vast array of approaches to the dime store scene. The pinkish tint to the filming adds an eerie dimension of stagnation, as it makes the characters look even more cheap and tacky.

The script, which comes from a play of the same name, reeks of sexual innuendoes and satirical views of the modern-day world. The dialogue is one of those rare cinema bonuses--more than a screenplay, it clearly develops a plot, while gradually revealing a literary personality. The movements of the characters are poised and their facial expressions and actions resemble a stage production. The fluidity of the filming make their movements even more interesting and captivating: The camera focuses on their minute actions and their carefully enunciated jokes and tirades.

THE SMALL CAST WORKS as an ensemble--no one character stands apart from the rest in the quality of her performance. The three major roles are played by Sandy Dennis as Mona, Cher as Cissy, and Karen Black as Joann. These women, along with the rest of the case, imbue their roles with an energetic magnetism that makes us want to know everything that has brought them to this reunion. These performances not only crane stereotypic responses to Dennis, Cher, and Black but reveal amazing depth--overcoming the possibility for shallow interpretations from the seeming narrowness of the plot.

The three have gathered to reminisce about the twenty years that had passed since their group had dissolved after the death of their idol James Dean in 1955. Each character seems burdened with something from the past that is revealed by the conclusion of the two-hour movie. Sandy Dennis' Mona stuns us with the insipidness of her character. Virtually insane, she consistently insists that she had an affair with James Dean some 20 years before while he was filming the movie Giant. Her every movement, including her stiff posture and constantly flickering tongue, make Mona a treacherously attractive woman. Her self-conscious motions and carefully modulated voice reveal a delicately constructed character who could never face the brutality of the external world and is forced to wither away in the vapid small town. Dennis brings this crazed woman's self-proclaimed role as the mother of Dean's illegitimate son into perspective; she has no other reason for living except for the attention she has received for her son Jimmy Dean--who she maintains is an imbecile.

Cher, as the never-aging sex-pot Cissy, becomes the perfect foil for the unstable Mona. Her character has had the same wonderful figure--boobs and all--for 20 years and she resounds with a sensuous good humor. In this difficult role, Cher doesn't allow her character to become a stereotypical, dizzy nymph. In fact, she uses her sensuality and dark good looks to present a raunchy woman who has more to offer than a mane of wavy black hair. Cher shows a new side of her abilities as an actress with the fluidity of her movements that reveal her character's ineffectual dreams of escaping from the rhythmic drowsiness of the Five & Dime shop.

And Karen Black as Joann tackles her role with a delicacy and finesse that enable her to come across as totally believable despite the initial implausibility of her character. Her gaudy, dyed red hair and her overpowering femininity enhance the sexual ambiguities surrounding her character--the only one of the characters to have changed during the past 20 years. Although she doesn't come into the movie until the plot has been underway for quite some time, Black's Joann breaks the trance-like spell that pervades the reunion; she forces cruel reality to enter into the plot as her character causes the later revelations of Cissy and Mona to occur. The information she reveals undermines everyone's position and tests the fervor of their characters.

ALTMAN FILMS FLASHBACKS with the characters in the same positions as they are in the present, enabling the actresses to reveal even more sides of their characters. Without changing makeup or costumes, Altman does away with the pretentious attempts at shifting back and forth 20 years by forcing the actors to make up the different times with their voices and movements.

The plot is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams' plays, grounded in the Deep South and illustrating unusual contrasts between the stagnation of the environment and the unique depravity of the characters. Altman manipulates the setting and the characters in a similar way by having the demoralization and depravity of the external world converge with the stagnant heat and aridity of the South. The brutal backdrop of the heat-filled environment sets off the characters' sweaty breathlessness as if the storm that hasn't come for 20 years was about to burst. And the film drowns out any potential for platitudes and mundaneness with the director's ingenious presentation of the characters in their orange-crush, James Dean-filled existences.