In Glorious Black & White

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2001)

For those among us who remember when about half the movies that came out were in black and white, and nearly all of television, and who look back fondly on those days, Ed Wood is, if nothing else, a feast for the eyes. It is a gorgeously photographed film and I loved every second of it for the cinematography alone. Its subject, Ed Wood, was and to a large extent still is a marginal figure in film history. He was a man in love with the movies who wanted to be a great film-maker. Most of his career was spent, sadly, making low-budget pictures, and he apparently never had much talent to begin with. What he did have was enthusiasm, and the movie of his life is (charitably) about this great passion he had for films rather than about his talent. Ed had his problems, which included among other things, a fondness for dressing up in women's clothes. He spent his professional life, such as it was, on the lunatic fringe (literally) of Hollywood, and it is this marginal, if you will crepuscular world, that director Tim Burton lovingly recreates in his film. One of the things I like most about this movie is Burton's total immersion in this world of genuinely eccentric people. Now there's eccentric and eccentric. Purple hair and body-piercing are not, strictly speaking, eccentric, at least not anymore. These Ed Wood characters are eccentric from within. They don't need funny costumes, though most of them do tend to dress oddly, but they needn't have bothered. This bunch would be weird in three-piece suits. Bela Lugosi also figures in the story (natch), and the scenes with him I found sad rather than funny. As Lugosi Martin Landau is extraordinarily good. At its core Ed Wood is a valentine for the world of the might-have-beens and wannabes of the Hollywood's demi-monde. I should add performers here; all the actors are excellent, not good, excellent. Johnny Depp captures what I imagine was Ed Wood's warmth and naiveté to absolute perfection. Jeffrey Jones is a droll riot as Criswell, and he really should be used more often than he is. I also liked Bill Murray's turn as Bunny Breckinridge. As a tribute to the low-budgeters of Hollywood's Poverty Row, Ed Wood could scarcely be better. The irony of all this is that in celebrating the life of a hack director Tim Burton has shown himself to be anything but.