Yacht Guilty

BOGDANOVICH'S TALE OF HEARST AND HOLLYWOOD, THE CAT'S MEOW

It says a lot about William Randolph Hearst’s place in history that a film can portray him as a callow killer and yet still seem correctively kind; where the rotten old press lord is concerned, Orson Welles continues to have a lot to answer for. The Cat’s Meow, directed by Welles acolyte Peter Bogdanovich, is spun from kernels of truth and yards of ancient gossip about a death linked to a 1924 cruise on Hearst’s yacht. On board were Hearst; his young mistress, the silent-film star Marion Davies; Charlie Chaplin; the producer Thomas Ince; and a handful of others. The situation’s moral dramas are obvious, and Bogdanovich stages them with all the flair of a TNT production. It’s the performances he gets that redeem the picture, especially Edward Herrmann’s as Hearst and Kirsten Dunst’s as Davies. He, with pear-shaped head as well as pear-shaped body, not only looks like Hearst but projects a painful, desperate vaingloriousness that seems all too real. (True? Who knows.) As for the astonishing Dunst, she flirts and flounces and captures the stylized girlishness of the era’s ingenues. Her Davies is wise to Hearst’s rancidity and all the more compassionate for it. When she tenderly calls him “Pops”—a sweeter take on the denouement of Chinatown—you’re both repelled and touched. In truth, Dunst steals the show. (No more cheerleader movies for you, missy!) (Rating: ★★★) —B.H.

B.H.