Even if you have read just one Dick Tracy comic strip, Warren Beatty`s
”Dick Tracy” movie may startle you as much as it did me.
It is not primarily about a detective solving a crime.
Rather, its storyline about Tracy tracking down a mob boss is secondary to whether Tracy will remain true to the good woman in his life, Tess Trueheart, or succumb to the devilish charms of the bad girl, Breathless Mahoney.
If you think of Tracy as a square-jawed straightshooter who is tough as nails-and that is certainly the way Chester Gould drew him-you are in for a shock.
Director-star Beatty portrays Tracy as a contemporary man, sort of an Alan Alda goodguy, torn between his job and his heart. This approach stands out, negatively I think, from the rest of the film which is a dazzling panoply of set design and primary colors, a throwback to the innocence of classic movies a half-century ago. If this film doesn`t sweep the technical craft Oscars next year, it will be a crime worthy of a Dick Tracy investigation.
But Beatty doesn`t seem to care about Tracy as a professional detective. For example, there are no allusions to Tracy`s Crimestoppers` Textbook. And Tracy isn`t portrayed as a major moral force in a sleazy world. He`s more of a workaholic.
Beatty seems to be saying: Of course Tracy is going to capture mobster Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino in the film`s best, boldest performance). But I`m more interested in whether Tracy will settle down and wed Tess and adopt a crime-fighting orphan called The Kid as his son.
In that way, ”Dick Tracy” can be read as a movie that`s more about Warren Beatty`s Lothario public persona-a childless, notorious bachelor-than about Chester Gould`s comic strip hero.
”While I was making the movie,” said Beatty in an interview last weekend in Los Angeles, ”I considered using the title, `The Temptation of Dick Tracy.` This is not some cockamamie detective story. I didn`t want to make that film. It`s about the temptation of Dick Tracy`s love life, about the love triangle between Tracy and Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) and Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headley).
”The comic strip is full of plot, plot, plot. But I didn`t want to want to make a film only about plot. I wanted to say, `Thank you, Chester Gould, but I`m going in another direction. Thanks for the ticket.` I didn`t want to make a detective story. My film is about a guy torn between love and duty. My Dick Tracy is human. In this story he`s all goofed up by temptation.”
The result is a ”Dick Tracy” that is much different from that other recent comic book-inspired picture, ”Batman.”
Whereas ”Batman” is big and tall, ”Dick Tracy” is often intimate. Whereas the character of Batman is larger than life, Tracy is lifelike. Batman is confident; Tracy is not, at least not in his personal life. I enjoyed
”Batman” from start to finish; ”Dick Tracy” worked for me in fits and starts.
What both films share is a strong visual style. Whereas ”Batman” is dark and foreboding, ”Dick Tracy” pops out of the screen like an all-primary-color peacock, with greens bumping reds into yellows and blues. The film`s colors, angular streetscapes, and grostesque villains are what`s true to the Sunday comics page.
”I put on all the prosthetics, I tried to wear all kinds of make-up on my chin and nose,” said Beatty, explaining the decision to use his own jaw and beak in the film. ”It just didn`t work. There were no capillaries (in my face). No blush, no emotion. And you wouldn`t have been able to follow the story because you couldn`t have stopped studying my face.
”And it`s not just the jaw. It`s the nose, too, that gives Tracy his square look. No actor looks like that. And that`s one of the fears I`d always had about the project, because I had been offered the role down through the years. But then I realized that because no living person looks like Tracy that I was as qualified as anyone to play him.”
And so whereas the film is packed with classic Chester Gould villains in all manner of grotesque comic makeup-my favorites are Flattop and Pruneface-Beatty effects his Tracy look primarily with a yellow hat and matching yellow topcoat.
And what of Madonna? She is well used in a limited way as a nightclub singer vamp, resembling in surface detail such movie sirens as Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe. Her dialogue is mostly double entendre. Asked by Tracy if she mourns her murdered boyfriend, she replies, ”I`m wearing black underwear.”
The major acting presence in the film is Al Pacino`s mobster, who has a Richard III hunchback and shouts like Pacino`s righteous lawyer in ”. . . And Justice for All.” Pacino plays Big Boy Caprice as comic book vulgar, violent, and funny. He`s the only reason we pay any attention to the crime story.
Dustin Hoffman scores a few laughs in a small role as the hanger-on crook Mumbles. But Glenne Headly is bland as Tess Trueheart. We`re not exactly sure what Tracy sees in her. Can`t a woman be good and exciting as well?
That`s a review of the movie, but what I wanted to know is why Beatty decided to make Dick Tracy in the first place. It`s a far cry from the last film he directed, ”Reds” (1981), the story of an idealistic American communist.
”I wanted to try to create a naive world, something that took me back to the emotions of when I read those comic strips when I was five and six years old: when good was very clear to me; when bad was very clear to me. When stars twinkled. When red was Red and incredibly beautiful, and blue was Blue, and I couldn`t make up my mind which was my favorite color.
”Or the time when I first went into Times Square and I saw all of those lights and that city and I didn`t yet know what all those signs were trying to sell me. I wanted to return to a world before there were Chevrolets and Fords. When there was just Car.”
On that score Beatty`s desire to re-create innocence is reflected in the film`s absence of product plugs, which easily can bring upwards of a half-million dollars toward production costs.
”I don`t like talking about money and films,” Beatty said, ”and as critic I don`t think you should talk about it either. It`s a trap. I`m doing the best I can to stay out of Disney`s way as they promote this thing. I`ve made a film that I think has the integrity of its own style. All I know is that I like looking at it.”
But why the comic book look? What does it mean that such film titans as Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando (Superman`s father) have played comic book characters in recent years?
”These characters are classic pieces of American cultural history, and by playing them you can comment on that. He represents, I think, the puritan work ethic, fueled by sexual abstinence, that built this country through the Industrial Revolution. Those are my roots, too. I`m the product of Nova Scotia and Virginia Baptists.”
But Beatty seems to be rebelling against the work ethic. He`s appeared in only three movies (counting ”Reds” and ”Ishtar”) in the last decade.
”Just because I haven`t been making films doesn`t mean I haven`t been working. I`ve been spending a lot of time on public policy or political issues. And even so, there is another way of living, you know. In Europe they think we`re crazy the way we work here.”
In recent years Warren Beatty`s image as an accomplished filmmaker has been unfairly overridden by media gossip about his sexual exploits. The coverage reached its nadir this past month when Esquire magazine published interviews reportedly with his sexual partners. Relatively ignored is that he`s been nominated for 11 Academy Awards as an actor, director, writer, and producer, and that he won the Oscar as best director for ”Reds.”
”The media`s interest in sex cannot be overstated,” Beatty said. ”I`m not unique in being trashed by the media. As somone who has been famous for 30 years and famous for being single for 30 years, this is to be expected. With the Esquire article, I don`t think that`s something that I should respond to. People make up things. Quotes are invented.”
And then there was his recent Barbara Walters TV interview in which Beatty, by all reports, did not come off well, hemming and hawing and evading personal questions.
”She asked me a lot of questions, and I answered some of them,” Beatty said. ”She obviously was trying to make some point with the way she edited the piece, but I don`t think it reflected positively on her as a journalist, and I think she`s a very good one.”
But doesn`t he want to clarify his image?
”I`m talking to you, aren`t I?”
OK, well, how do you account for making a romance out of what could have been just a detective story?
”Romance runs through most of my movies, even going back to `Bonnie & Clyde` and `McCabe & Mrs. Miller,` which I sort of cowrote, and `Heaven Can Wait` and `Reds.”`
Why do you think you make films about romance?
”Because I believe that love can conquer all.”
I was moved by the scene in which The Kid, in effect, adopts you as his father. Your eyes blink repeatedly and it looks as if you might cry. I know you don`t have any children, and this is a very romantic portrayal of a father-son relationship. Would you like to have a child?
”Yes.”
What`s kept you from having one?
”I`ve always thought that you ought to be married if you are going to have children.”
Do you still feel that way?
”Less so.”
Are you close to having a child? Can you see having one in, say, the next year?
(Long pause.) ”I don`t think that`s something I should be telling you.” In the movie, Dick Tracy is torn between two women-one worth marrying and one who wants a sexual encounter. Based on your popular image, would you, Warren Beatty, tell Dick Tracy that he can have them both?
”No, I wouldn`t.”
That response may surprise people.
”Then inform them.”
