Vanities

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

A DREAM OF PASSION

Directed and Written by Jules Dassin

An aging actress portraying an aging actress: it is thought to be, especially by desperate people, one of the surest ploys in show biz. The great lady who undertakes the assignment is certain to be applauded for the honesty and bravery of her self-exposure, and since stars of a certain age are thought to combine volatility and vulnerability in a colorful way, the opportunities for bravura effects are endless. The opportunities for tedious egocentricity are there too--so much so in the case of Melina Mercouri, in this vehicle that her husband, Jules Dassin, has created for her, that the movie has the suffocating air of a vanity production.

Mercouri plays a fading film star who returns to her native Greece to appear in Medea and also in a TV film about her preparation for the role. As a publicity stunt she arranges to visit, in jail, an American woman (Ellen Burstyn) who, like Medea, has committed infanticide. What with a demanding rehearsal schedule and the raging and pouting she inflicts on her director and her entourage, you would think the Mercouri character would have no time left to feel guilty about exploiting the half-mad murderess, but she does. Repeatedly she goes back into the prison to see Burstyn, allowing Dassin some cheap, melodramatic psychologizing about Medea.

But nothing very vital is added to anyone's understanding of that classic figure, and Mercouri's performance in long scenes from Medea doesn't help much either. There is much eye rolling, teeth baring and anguished screeching, but no break in the clouds of self-absorption that always hover around her. Finally, the modern Medea's story gets told, the play opens, and the picture ends, leaving the audience no wiser.

Burstyn's understated performance as a simple, Bible-spouting woman driven crazy by her husband's philandering is the movie's single redeeming feature. Otherwise there is nothing emotionally or intellectually involving here. Unless, of course, one is interested in some "personal statements" about the state of the movie business, contemporary issues and the star and director themselves that they manage to tuck in along the way. It perhaps need not be added that these are of a piece with the rest of A Dream of Passion--awkward, pretentious and empty.

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