Cinema: Rushes: May 25, 1981

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THIS IS ELVIS

When Elvis died at 42 in 1977, he made Frank Sinatra's signature tune his own Top Ten epitaph. "The record shows I did it my way ..." Wrong. As this ghoulishly riveting compilation of public performances (on TV, in movies and concerts) and home movies shows, Presley did it every which way but his. He began as an original—a white man who sang like an angry black and moved like a bad woman—and ended as a bloated amalgam of Liberace and Judy Garland. It was the standard show-biz tragedy, which Andrew Solt and Malcolm Leo document in delicious detail. Today Elvis remains a thriving industry, like Disney; this film is both a comment on that industry and (through the authorization of Presley's mentor, Colonel Tom Parker) a part of it. The remark of the Hollywood cynic, upon hearing of Elvis' death—"Good career move"—was prophecy after all.

HARDLY WORKING

Richard Nixon may one day run for the U.S. Senate. Rosie Ruiz may run in another Boston Marathon. But it is a mystery why Jerry Lewis would choose to run around, fall down, go cross-eyed or winsome in one more movie comedy. Comedy is a taxonomic term here, not evaluative. The only people laughing at Lewis' first film released since 1970 are in the movie—supporting players earning their keep by pampering the star-director-screenwriter. Jer, 55, is still the goony kid from the '50s, talking while eating a doughnut, parading in drag, leading a children's crusade through a Florida shopping mall. Hardly Working has grossed $10 million at the box office, in part because parents are taking tots to see "the original Jerk." They find themselves attending not a revival but a requiem.

JUST A GIGOLO

If the Nazis hadn't existed, moviemakers of the '70s might have invented them. The whips and whimpers, the glistening boots, the macho marching songs, the sado-chic —my dear, the divine decadence. It's all so terribly cinematic. Cabaret and The Night Porter set the stage; Just a Gigolo lights it in elegant chiaroscuro and populates it with every species of eccentric known to Weimar Berlin. Marlene Dietrich (her first film since 1964) intones the title song. David Bowie makes love to Kim Novak in a cemetery. David Hemmings (who also directed) plays a Nazi who turns Bowie's corpse into Horst Wessel. The stars keep straight faces and hold the viewer's eye through every narrative absurdity, and the film is handsomer, weirder, certainly funnier than Hardly Working. It would be stylish high-camp fun—if only the Nazis hadn't existed.