Shampoo (1975)Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Lester Warden, Carrie Fisher
When I read Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls a few years ago Warren Beatty kept popping up as one of the key figures in the early part of that 1960s and 1970s Hollywood Renaissance (in fact Biskind has since written a biography of Beatty entitled Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America). Shampoo was talked about particularly prominently as a combination of three key Hollywood Renaissance figures; actor, producer and co-writer Warren Beatty, director Hal Ashby and screenwriter Robert Towne. I'd been meaning to see it since then but hadn't come across it until Ulladulla Video Ezy struck again in January. I finally got around to watching it today.
George Roundy (Beatty) is very talented and promiscuous Beverly Hills hairstylist. He is living with aspiring actress Jill (Hawn). He dreams of opening his own salon having grown frustrated with working for man he perceives as being less talented. When one of his clients, Felicia (Grant in the role which won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar), who he happens to be having an affair with, suggests that he should seek the financial backing of her husband, prominent businessman Lester Karpf (Warden), George becomes involved in a web of infidelity. He discovers that Lesters mistress, Jackie (Christie), is an old flame of his, a relationship which soon rekindles. For the sake of his dream George has to not only conceal his relationships with Lester's wife and mistress from Lester as well as Jill, he also has to conceal Lester's relationship with Jackie from his wife.
Like all of Ashby's films, the comedy of Shampoo is balanced with some social commentary. While this film is a tongue in cheek look at the sexual revolution of the 1960s, it is also heavily influenced by the dark times, social changes and loss of innocence America would experience in the mid 1970s with the breaking of the Watergate scandal. Written in 1975 but set in 1968, the federal election in which Nixon wins power is a constant background to the central action of the narrative. Towards the end of the film a couple of characters stop mid-scene to watch Nixon's victory speech and it is no coincidence that the snippet of that address the filmmakers have chosen to include is when Nixon is assuring the people that "this will be an open administration," a statement which no doubt would have left a bitter taste in the mouths of 1975 viewers.
Interestingly, I think Beatty really plays with his reputation as a bit of a ladies man in this film. The character of George is as promiscuous as they come, and early in the film as we see him bounce from woman to woman we think it is simply a caricature of Beatty. But as the film goes on that image is deconstructed as George is shown to be lost, his life seemingly out of control, and struggling to realise what it actually is he wants.
There are some parallels between Shampoo and Robert Altman's earlier revisionist Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller which also starred Beatty and Christie. The dynamic of the relationship between their characters is quite similar in both films despite the vastly different context. In Altman's film Beatty plays a promising prospector and Christie an upstanding whore, roles which can be aligned with Beatty's portrayal of George as a promising young hairdresser just waiting to start his own salon and strike it rich, and Christie as a very stylish, but none the less kept woman.
Shampoo was the screen debut for the 19 year old Carrie Fisher. Her role is small but her performance is quite strong. Her next role, hitting screens two years later, would be the female lead in the film which would make here a star, Star Wars. I think you get more insight into her talent as an actress from her small part in Shampoo than from her much greater role in Star Wars. Star Wars was great, but it wasn't the acting that made it so. In fairness though, the actors were only as good as the dialogue they were given. To quote Harrison Ford as he berated George Lucas on set: "You can write this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."
For mine, Shampoo doesn't really stack up with some of the other films that came out of that brilliant era in Hollywood's history. It is not the best film Beatty, Ashby or Towne have made. Having watched Ashby's The Last Detail quite recently and been impressed by it, I was disappointed that Shampoo didn't quite have the same depth. It didn't resonate with you like The Last Detail did, but in fairness that could be largely attributed to its much lighter subject matter. Like all Ashby films, it is an interesting document as a sign of the times, and you will find things within it to appreciate, but it is not going to blow you away.
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