Book: Being Cary Grant (Martine Reid)

Being Cary Grant
France, 2021
Titre original : –
Author: Martine Reid
Publisher: Éditions Gallimard
154 pages
Genre: Biography
Publication date: May 13, 2021
Format : 140 mm X 205 mm
Prix : 16 €

2,5/5

Since his death almost forty years ago, a significant number of books have been written about Cary Grant. Mainly for the English-speaking market, while the actor of English origin enjoys to this day a certain popularity with the French cinema-loving public. The retrospectives, organized jointly at the Institut Lumière de Lyon and the Paris Cinéma Club last month, are there to remind us of this. In terms of French-speaking works, however, there are only sporadic translations of biographies and other thematic analyzes to satisfy fans of the quintessential symbol of Hollywood elegance. Published three and a half years ago, “Being Cary Grant” could therefore have filled a void in the bibliography of the biggest stars of Hollywood's golden age.

Unfortunately, Martine Reid's book unfortunately remains on the surface of the personal destiny of a man, who worked meticulously not to reveal anything about himself, beyond the strongly idealized image sent by his films. While the author is visibly recognized in the field of biographies with feminist connotations, such as those published before and after this one on the writers George Sand and Colette, in the case of the peerless charmer from the middle of the last century, she does not find at no time is there a more relevant angle of attack than the eternal question of identity.

Thus, it moves quite vaguely from an arbitrary and succinct evocation of the actor's filmography to his profound identity problems, caused by his stage name, which came to supplant a past infinitely less glamorous than the character Cary Grant, adored until 'to this day. Unless his remarks digress in an even more inopportune manner towards a lecture on the historical context of the actor's career.

This editorial choice certainly demonstrates indisputable erudition. However, it makes little sense when it comes to helping us better understand the motivations of an individual who has carefully stayed away from any public stance on social, political and even artistic issues over the decades. turbulent times he had gone through. Between society chronicles to the rhythm of the five marriages of the hero of Death in pursuit and summary reflection of American cultural history, “Being Cary Grant” remains constantly suspended between these two poles that almost nothing connects. At least the fluid and rather sophisticated style of Martine Reid's writing did not further frustrate our reading.

Synopsis: The king of romantic comedies from the golden age of American cinema, masterfully showcased in four Alfred Hitchcock films, actor Cary Grant remains one of the most famous Hollywood stars in the world . Yet, behind the polished image of the phlegmatic gentleman and the caustic seducer, perfected from his debut on the screens in the mid-1930s and maintained flawlessly for more than thirty years, hid a man traumatized by his unhappy childhood under the name of Archie Leach. Professor of French literature at the University of Lille Martine Reid seeks to unravel the mystery of this gap between the star of fiction and the man of a reality that has been remodeled many times.

Cary vs. Archie

There is something profoundly reductive in the approach of “Being Cary Grant” of wanting to bring everything back to this identity schizophrenia at the origin of the birth of Cary Grant, the archetype of the elegant and seductive man, to the detriment of what he was before, a sort of orphan, without goals or points of reference in life. Obviously, the legendary actor belongs to this group of incredibly affable men and at least indirectly accessible to the public, through a cinema screen, although incapable of defining themselves outside of this cliché and of basing their relationship with others on a sincere intimacy. In the French political world, the former president of the republic Jacques Chirac was also a priori part of it.

However, it is precisely this refusal to really face its internal contradictions which should have tickled Martine Reid's curiosity, instead of evoking it flatly in a tiring refrain through repetition without notable progression.

Failing to carry out an in-depth analysis of the numerous roles played by Grant – only a handful of his films are mentioned on respectively one or two pages at most and not even necessarily those for which the actor remains popular today – the The author remains most of the time prisoner of hasty biographical evocation. Nothing really important is hidden there, either. But the incessant back and forth between the little story of Cary Grant and the big History that surrounds him attributes a barely anecdotal level to these altogether major events, such as the supposed death of his mother, the arrival in the United States United, the acceptance of his new identity, his funny escapades with his colleague Randolph Scott, his rise to power in the Hollywood microcosm, his serial marriages and finally his experiences with LSD.

Since we were already vaguely familiar with the major stages of this sadly animated life, the only bonus of the book for us was the ultimate activity of Cary Grant. Indeed, the actor had become in his old age a salesman of his own former celebrity, through evenings of monologues in the four corners of the United States. On this subject, the author's position seems doubly questionable to us.

First, on a factual level, since she affirms that Grant was the only one to feel so close to his death the need to measure the longevity of his celebrity, while his friend Gregory Peck had engaged in comparable tours about ten years later. Then, if his almost cynical view on this last lap before bowing out demonstrates a certain lucidity, he at the same time asks the not unimportant question about the appreciation or on the contrary the harsh criticism of Grant by Martine Reid.

Long live the digression!

Largely imbued with objectivity, “Being Cary Grant” leaves us as much in the dark about the character of Cary Grant, the man, as about what the author might think about him. This wouldn't worry us so much if the book's major modus operandi wasn't dodging. From paragraph to paragraph, the author's remarks have an unfortunate tendency to move from the cock to the donkey, to devote a considerable number of sentences to the successive stages of the making of a film, without ever making us learn anything of truly new or at least described from an innovative angle.

Thanks to a fundamentally erudite writing style, although never in full swing towards academic discourse, it remains pleasant and easy to read, but without the essential contribution of opening our eyes at least here and there to one aspect of Hollywood History or on the biography of Cary Grant that we ignored until then.

And even if we are ready to subscribe to most of Martine Reid's more or less off-topic reasoning, there is still the rare occasion where it would have been preferable for her to be more precise. Therefore, allow us to nitpick a little, in the face of a work which does not claim to be an exhaustive biography of Cary Grant, but rather the kind of booklet to read for pure entertainment – ​​like the Capricci Stories started by the competition two years earlier and which now bring together seventeen easy-to-digest biographies, from Marlon Brando to John Wayne, including Bruce Lee, Jean Gabin, Nicolas Cage, Romy Schneider and Bette Davis.

Let us therefore clarify that, no, Joan Fontaine is not the eponymous heroine of Rebecca by Alfred Hitchcock, that the latter's wife, Alma Reville, never had the luxury of being a director in her own right and that considering the actress Eva Marie Saint as little known at the time of Death in pursuiteven though she had won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress four years earlier for On the docks by Elia Kazan, is not obvious.

Conclusion

After reading “Being Cary Grant,” will you know more about the famous actor of countless classics, from The Impossible Mr. Baby from Howard Hawks to Charade by Stanley Donen? Yes and no. And this is the whole dilemma that Martine Reid's book confronts us with. As much as the author gives a generally satisfactory overview of the major stages of Grant's life, she wastes an unnecessarily high number of pages telling us about the social and cultural life of the United States. The mystery of the personality of Archibald Leach / Cary Grant irremediably pays the price, so much so that it remains just as opaque for us, after reading more than one hundred and fifty pages!