Frankie and Johnny

Directed by: Frederick de Cordova

RS: Not Rated Average User Rating: 1of 4 Stars

1965 Drama

Frankie and Johnny

616 10-31-91
This thoroughly captivating film version of Terrence McNally's 1987 stage hit Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune has only just opened, but insiders have been ragging on it for months. Some people have trouble imagining the play -- a two-character comedy-drama about a dispirited waitress and a lonely cook -- expanded into a $29 million movie with a cast of ninety-six, guided by the slick hand of Pretty Woman director Garry Marshall. Some people have more trouble imagining Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino playing these life-battered losers in love, especially since the roles were created onstage by the decidedly unglamotous Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham.

Some people worry too much. Seeing the movie should snap them out of it. There hasn't been a sharper, sassier, more touching romantic comedy this year. In adapting his play for the screen, McNally reworked most of the dialogue, added characters only referred to in the theater and broadened the setting from Frankie's cramped apartment to the coffee shop where she and Johnny work and to the bustling streets of Manhattan.

The frantic pace is off-putting at first. It suggests a pilot for a TV sitcom -- not surprising, since Marshall launched Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and The Odd Couple. When Pacino's Johnny enters Nick's Apollo Cafe looking for a job as a short-order cook, Marshall introduces the cast of characters in broad strokes. Pfeiffer's weary Frankie gets help waiting tables from nearsighted Nedda (the excellent Jane Morris) and kinky Cora (Kate Nelligan), who wears stiletto heels when having sex. Seeing this Royal Shakespeare Company actress cut loose with this bold and brassy performance is one of the film's zippiest treats. Supervising the staff and the customers is Nick, nicely played by Hector Elizondo, whose main job is keeping men away from the cashier, his virginal teenage niece.

Though these scenes suffer from an excess of shtick, there's no denying Marshall's expert timing. This is the director's best work yet -- more like his heartfelt Flamingo Kid than his manipulative Beaches -- and this time Marshall isn't burdened with a venal fairy tale like Pretty Woman. Frankie and Johnny isn't about loving all the way to the bank. McNally's pungent script, like his keen-witted stage work (Bad Habits, the current Lips Together, Teeth Apart), fuses comic drive with rueful longing. In a world where sex and intimacy are considered threats, what amazes McNally is not that Prince Charming and Cinderella find each other but that they have the courage to keep looking.

Pacino, whose recent work has been lugubrious (Godfather III) or broad (Dick Tracy), shows a real flair for comic delicacy. Johnny, an ex-con who served two years for forgery, is fast at dicing onions and faster at come-ons. When Frankie shuns his advances, he takes up with Cora, who thoughtfully wears her best gold pumps. But Johnny's macho routine is an act; his wife's remarriage has made him feel estranged from his two kids and from life. Johnny is desperate to belong again. Onstage, Johnny's needs had a darker, neurotic tinge. The character has been sweetened, and the scene in which he hires a hooker to come to his bed and just hold him is irredeemably twee. But Pacino makes Johnny's attraction to Frankie believable and charming. He reminds her of the song about two jealous lovers that bears their names. "Didn't they end up killing each other?" the hard-nosed Frankie retorts. "She killed him," he answers, "so you have the edge."

Pacino is wonderfully appealing, but Pfeiffer's performance is a triumph. She is among that rarefied group of actresses (Anjelica Huston, Meryl Streep) whose work keeps taking us by surprise. Her powerfully subtle acting can tickle the funny bone or pierce the heart with equally uncanny skill. There's no hiding Pfeiffer's beauty, but she gives Frankie the tired eyes, slumped posture and wan smile of a woman who's stopped caring about her looks. Fresh out of an abusive relationship, with the scars to prove it, Frankie has shut herself off from emotion. When her gay friend Tim, played with compassionate humor by Nathan Lane, urges her to date, she says she'd rather stay home with her VCR and send out for pizza. "That's dinner and a movie," says Frankie. "And I don't have to deal with some schmuck trying to put his tongue in my ear."

Johnny's insistence gives Frankie the creeps. "You don't look, you stare," she tells him. "It's too intense." When she does take Johnny to bed, she's matter of fact ("No rubber, forget it"). For Frankie, having sex is easier than dropping her guard. Johnny figures if he can't win her, he can at least put a few chinks in her armor. Walking on the street one night, Johnny kisses her just as a truck opens behind them, revealing flowers that flood the screen with color. It's an old-fashioned Hollywood moment given full play by cinematographer Dante Spinotti (The Comfort of Strangers). The scene has a special poignancy because the movie has painstakingly built a world with little room for such flights of fancy. And yet McNally keeps sending out flickers of hope.

In the film's luminous last section, Frankie and Johnny listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" on the radio, and we see glimpses of the other characters at home with their own dreams of something that ought to last. There's no sweeping finale, no sexual fireworks. The lovers merely brush their teeth together and listen. But that hint of romantic possibility in a precarious world is a satisfying grace note. In its celebration of cautious optimism, Frankie and Johnny becomes the perfect love story for these troubled times.