David Denby
“….Batman Returns will be most famous (at least around my house, where she's very famous indeed) for the acting of Michelle Pfeiffer. She is the truly spectacular element in this most spectacular of Pop films. When we first see Pfeiffer, she's Selina Kyla, a disheveled, terrified secretary, slave to Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), the vicious financier who rules Gotham City. Vague and disorganized as she is, Selina is a threat to him--she asks questions--and he pushes her out a window. She falls and falls, all the way down the side of Shreck's dark, menacing tower, and lands on the pavement, where alley cats revive her, biting on her fingers. This girl has more than one life. Maybe nine.
"If Pfeiffer has any vanity as a woman or a performer, it doesn't come through. Even though she's one of the most beautiful women ever to become a movie star, we don't see her catching the light in the glamorous hollows of her face, like Dietrich or Crawford, swanning in the style of a naughty, old-time Hollywood glamour queen. That kind of acting can be fun, but Pfeiffer is after something else, characterization, and she just gives herself to whatever she's doing. As the frumpy and exhausted secretary, she's got the nag's broken gait she first developed in Frankie & Johnny and something new as well, a way of muttering to herself in disgust that suggests long bouts of loneliness.
"And when Selina is reborn as Catwoman, Pfeiffer explodes, tearing Selina's apartment to pieces with a sustained fury I hadn't known she was capable of. In her new glistening-black skin--the curve of her rump is as shiny as a motorbike's sleek fender--she flicks her whip at anything that catches her interest; she's fast and lithe, a sort of etherealized dominatrix. Catwoman enters a scene by doing a series of rapid forward flips and says "Meow" with just enough weary contempt to suggest that this feline is not unacquainted with irony. A double did the flips, but only a great actress could have meowed like that. Pfeiffer makes fun of sexiness without becoming any less sexy.
"She turns her voice into a small groan of erotic longing. She might tear you apart--if only she weren't always tearing herself apart. Just like Selina, who meets Bruce Wayne and can't quite connect with him, Catwoman can't find fulfillment. She's excited by Batman (her perfect mate in so many ways) but also fights with him--their scenes together are a cross between sexual comedy and sexual torment. They finally join forces to fight the powers of evil, but they cannot join with each other. Like Bruce Wayne, Catwoman is split off from herself, two halves that can't come together or find satisfaction. This cat will never howl with pleasure.
"This is a great idea for a character, but what does it mean? We don't really know; we don't really know what anything in the two Batman films means, and that's why I admire them but can't stand up and cheer for them…."
David Denby, New York, date ?
"If Pfeiffer has any vanity as a woman or a performer, it doesn't come through. Even though she's one of the most beautiful women ever to become a movie star, we don't see her catching the light in the glamorous hollows of her face, like Dietrich or Crawford, swanning in the style of a naughty, old-time Hollywood glamour queen. That kind of acting can be fun, but Pfeiffer is after something else, characterization, and she just gives herself to whatever she's doing. As the frumpy and exhausted secretary, she's got the nag's broken gait she first developed in Frankie & Johnny and something new as well, a way of muttering to herself in disgust that suggests long bouts of loneliness.
"And when Selina is reborn as Catwoman, Pfeiffer explodes, tearing Selina's apartment to pieces with a sustained fury I hadn't known she was capable of. In her new glistening-black skin--the curve of her rump is as shiny as a motorbike's sleek fender--she flicks her whip at anything that catches her interest; she's fast and lithe, a sort of etherealized dominatrix. Catwoman enters a scene by doing a series of rapid forward flips and says "Meow" with just enough weary contempt to suggest that this feline is not unacquainted with irony. A double did the flips, but only a great actress could have meowed like that. Pfeiffer makes fun of sexiness without becoming any less sexy.
"She turns her voice into a small groan of erotic longing. She might tear you apart--if only she weren't always tearing herself apart. Just like Selina, who meets Bruce Wayne and can't quite connect with him, Catwoman can't find fulfillment. She's excited by Batman (her perfect mate in so many ways) but also fights with him--their scenes together are a cross between sexual comedy and sexual torment. They finally join forces to fight the powers of evil, but they cannot join with each other. Like Bruce Wayne, Catwoman is split off from herself, two halves that can't come together or find satisfaction. This cat will never howl with pleasure.
"This is a great idea for a character, but what does it mean? We don't really know; we don't really know what anything in the two Batman films means, and that's why I admire them but can't stand up and cheer for them…."
David Denby, New York, date ?
posted by Intersections28 - David Gibson at
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