I Really Need to "Ash" You...

We're really chugging along in ticking off bucket list movies, ones we've wanted and needed to see for many years, yet never have. Full disclosure, since the version of this one was of such questionable video quality (a second generation VHS upload!) I really cannot say that I have truly seen Ash Wednesday (1973) as it was originally intended, but this is the best I can do for the moment. I marvel at how long it took for me to see even this, though I would really love to see a cleaned up DVD in the original aspect ratio (and some extras, for Pete's sake!) sometime.

Ash Wednesday is a startlingly downbeat, low-key drama about a woman in her early-sixties whose marriage is at an impasse. Thinking, perhaps misguidedly, that the trouble is the fact that she's dared to age and become saggy and wrinkled, she checks herself into a Swiss clinic for a full-on overhaul, without even telling her husband!

During the opening credits, we see a series of retouched photos tracing the path of the couple in question, Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Fonda. In real life, Fonda was twenty-seven years older than Taylor, but for the purposes of the story, they are closer together in age so that when she's done with her top-to-toe makeover, she can look much younger.

Some of the photos, like this one, are quite awkward. It also had to be strange for the actors to see real moments from their public life (including weddings!) be augmented this way in order to fabricate the history of their characters.

The movie proper begins with one of the slowest pans across a bedroom imaginable, finally resting on the back of our leading lady.

We see that she is fretful and nervous and, rather than staying situated in her room, she is preparing to leave! She knocks over some cosmetics and toiletries into the sink and then catches a glimpse of her own hand. She's clearly distraught over the condition of it.

Next we find her creeping downstairs, past the reception desk and out the door of the place. She doesn't want to be discovered ditching her stay at the facility.

However, she runs smack into a doctor outside, who is dismayed that she has opted to depart the center before her procedures can be carried out. Now, by this time, we've had enough toying around. We are ready to see our star in all her decayed, hideous glory!

Finally, the camera turns it lens on Taylor's face and we see why she's come to the surgical institute in the first place. She is still determined to leave until the doctor assures her that everything will be just like it was before she arrived. That, she cannot bear! Just so there's no mistake, there's a close-up of her creased, saggy face.

This entire next section is both eerie and clinical in its approach. Taylor is given the once over, has her picture taken with a stark flash and a record is made of her eroding face and figure.

I just happen to be reading a book by Virginia Graham in which she writes of the ghastly pictures they take of a person prior to cosmetic surgery (probably to ensure that you look you're very worst and, thus, will be pleased afterwards at the dramatic changes!)

The last time La Liz donned age makeup like this (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1966), it brought her an Oscar. There would be no such repeat of that this time out.

As the doctor uses a pencil to mark all the spots he intends to cut out, one can't be blamed for thinking of Taylor's famous Cleopatra (1963) makeup, which she designed and applied herself! It's only one of several instances in which other, often better, Taylor roles are brought to mind.

Did you think I was kidding??

Someone (not Taylor!) actually underwent a face lift procedure for this film and it is depicted with excruciating realism. Much the way footage of open heart surgery marred Doctor's Wives (1971) for me, this queasy demonstration made my stomach turn (and I'm not including any photos from it!)

I don't know that Taylor had undergone much, if any, cosmetic surgery by this point in her life, but she unques- tionably knew all about the rigors of surgery in general! She was operated on more times than most people can ever imagine in their worst nightmares thanks to chronic back issues and other ailments.

When it's all said and done, she is badly bruised and bandaged up like nobody's business.

As she continues to recover, she appears to be giving Clause Rains as The Invisible Man (1933) a run for his money! Incidentally, Taylor undergoes procedures on her hands, but I could swear that the hands are something that generally cannot be fixed much (people always say, "The hands are a dead giveaway of a woman's age.") But what do I know...?

Taylor makes a friend while there at the clinic in the form of Keith Baxter, who is a world renowned fashion photographer, one who likes to look young as he keeps his finger on the pulse of the clothing world. Again, I know nothing about plastic/ cosmetic surgery, but sometimes these people looked more like they'd experienced massive head wounds instead of a nip and a tuck along the hairline!

"How's your head?" "Haven't had any complaints so far..."

The day her bandages come off for the first time, we get a look at the still-battered, but visibly improved Taylor. The makeup for these scenes is effectively gory and ghoulish, especially around her upper lip. She asks for a mirror and when she's told "no" we get the look below of wide-eyed indignance.

The horror is far from over, however. Now the doctor comes at her with a pointy pair of tweezers, and he's not interested in shaping up her browline.

In another wince-inducing sequence, he picks away at the end of her stitches and proceeds to pull them out of her still sensitive eyelids! All through this, the depleted, weary Taylor is convincing in her understated agony.

She and her buddy spend their days getting to know one another better. It's not a romantic entangle- ment as he's gay as the day is long. They just hit it off during their shared recovery. Her sunglasses here are a scream, aren't they? No clue why his eyework doesn't require any such protection.

Checking in with Taylor later, he finds her quite distraught because she has been completely unable to get her husband on the phone. He implores her not to cry as it will not be good for her wounded face. It may be thanks to the shoddy quality of the video I watched, but I found it tremendously difficult to see any difference between Baxter before and after his procedures!

Also on hand at the clinic are a fat cat business- man with a bimbo in tow. He smokes cigars endlessly despite being warned not to. Then there is a famous German actress (meant to be similar to Marlene Dietrich?) played by Monique Van Vooren. The foursome plays bridge to pass the long hours during their recovery.

Because Taylor isn't feeling as good as she's starting to look, the doctor begins "cell therapy" on her, in which she's injected in the behind with a serum that will supposedly help her organ function and get her to feel younger instead of only looking younger. 

Finally, we get to see Taylor free of any bandages, bruises or gory makeup. Baxter is gobsmacked by the rejuvenated lady before him, and she is pretty, but what's strange is that she looks merely young-ish, not truly the way someone who's had real surgery would look. (For example, her eyes still have gently hooded lids... not the hollowed out ones that people pay for!)

Zoom-bleaching was apparently still a thing of the future...

As she's packing to leave (for Cortina, in the Italian Alps), Baxter takes one look at her wardrobe and has a conniption fit. He won't even let her take most of her clothing, includng some that still have the tags on them, and insists that she shop for a whole new collection of things.

Off she goes into the tundra-like expanses that lead to Cortina. She is thrilled to be flirted with by two young Italian men in a sports car, though they soon run off the road and need her help to get to the resort.

Even though he's just proven that he can't be trusted behind a wheel, the cutest one of the two convinces Taylor to scoot over and let him drive her car to the hotel. Both of them compliment her beauty as they peel along the icy road to the rather remote resort.

Once there, she is beaming as she heads to the registration desk and inquires about her room. The clerk tells her that he has no such reservation and, hilariously, she never considers mentioning that Baxter reserved her suite and that it might be under his name. Instead she curtly asks to see the manager in a nanosecond.

While in the lobby, she is admiring herself in the reflection of a door when a handsome gentleman catches her eye. Her "window-shopping" complete, she proceeds to her room before heading out to get a new wardrobe and hairstyle.

She's having her hair rolled and set by a fruity hairstylist and when he yanks a bit too hard on the pins of her curlers and she reacts a bit, he mentions that he will be more careful with her tender little scars! This brings about a classic bitch-face expression from our star! LOL

Back in the room, though, she can't help marveling at herself in the mirror, stroking her face and cackling with glee at the way she has turned back the clock.

Nevertheless, without her husband there (who is set to arrive at the weekend), it's a lonely experience for Taylor, with meals eaten alone in the grand dining hall.

She cannot help noticing that the young man (Helmut Berger) who she'd earlier spotted in the lobby has just had a spat with the woman he's there with. She has slapped his face and stormed out in a huff.

Not one to let moss grow on anything, particularly female, Berger shoots Taylor a glance. (For whatever reason, this sort of shot of Berger - seated and facing left - is a common one of him in the film.)

She can't help but shoot him a grin of her own, flattered that such a young, goodlooking man would notice her out of the huge dining hall. Then again, look at her!

Taylor soon gets a big let-down when she finally reaches her wayward, absentee husband Fonda (who has yet to be seen in the film apart from the opening credits) and he informs her that he has to go to Washington and won't be able to join her as soon as she'd hoped.

Now the loneliness is really setting in. She has little to do but browse shops, sip cocoa and basically sit alone while all around her other people are living loud. When she goes to ride the ski tram, hordes of people come off it at once, but she's practically alone on board.

All of this is punctuated by a Maurice Jarre score that is memorable only for the fact that he keeps playing the same musical phrase over and over and over until you want to fly to the clinic and have Taylor's doctor sew your ears shut!

Uh-oh, she's beginning to turn to food in order to assuage her loneliness. She chooses two pastries from the dessert tray in a cafe! (This is a terrible harbinger of things to come in real life as it would only be a couple of years until Ms. T. allowed herself to fall completely apart, weight-wise, causing her to be the butt of countless jokes.)

The problems continue to mount when she has a phone conver- sation with her daughter, who was going to come and join her, but has now backed out... This isn't fun anymore.

In an effort to lift her spirits, she gussies up in her best (Edith Head) gown and heads downstairs to the elegant dining hall. Once again, she catches the eye of young Berger.

I've always had to work backwards to appreciate Berger. He was on Dynasty when I was a kid and I thought he was absolutely dreadful and not at all attractive. But looking back at his earlier work, I see him as more handsome and a better actor. He is, perhaps, at his all-time most handsome in this movie. His sometimes hard, angular features are softened.

Anyway, he stops at Liz's table and asks if he can sit down, which she allows. As you might expect, he soon begins to suggest more than just table conver- sation. He wants to know her room number.

Wholly unused to just crass and open sexual finagling, Taylor tells him the number curtly, then gets up and storms out (but stops short of slapping him.)

The next day, we see Baxter shooting a layout in which a gyrating, silver bikini-clad model is positioned in front of a church so that exiting parishoners can be startled as they come down the stairs and become background atmosphere for the photo!

It so happens that Taylor is one of them (!), having gone to church for the first time in eons in order to try to find some level of serenity amid her various personal issues.

Baxter takes her to a party where he knows practically everyone. He revels in gossiping about this one and that one, including a former madam whose son is in attendance as well. He's a former Olympic-level athlete who is now more of a wayward playboy.

Taylor is stunned to see that it is Berger that is being talked about! Once again, he is photo- graphed at this particular angle.

"I call this my Joanne Linville look..."

Somehow, in light of the way Baxter was offhandedly discussing him, Taylor now has a level of empathy for the young man and she approaches him to get to know him a bit better. Here, he is the benefit of some truly flattering lighting, which brings out his pretty eyes. The two begin to dance and almost head to the sack, but she still won't do it.

The next day, Taylor gets a message that her daughter has changed her mind and is in fact headed to see her mother after all. Taylor is excited about it, but Baxter tells her she should not allow the girl to come to Cortina. She will only complicate things and throw off the dynamic (which hasn't been all that dynamic, to be honest!)

Upon her arrival at the airport, the daughter (Margaret Blye) cannot believe her eyes. She barely recognizes the vision before her as her tired, overweight, wrinkled mother.

In fact, the two could pass for sisters. (Blye was about a decade younger than Taylor, which fit the storyline if Taylor's character was actually about twenty years beyond her own age.) They are rather blatantly coiffed and dressed similarly in order to drive the point home.

It becomes clear as they're having lunch that Blye has spoken to her father and he may not bother showing up at Cortina at all! He's in love with a younger woman (younger even than Blye) and wants a divorce.

Taylor is bereft at the thought. She did all of this just for him and wants her marriage to continue. Blye remarks that she survived her own divorce, so Taylor can as well, to which Taylor rightfully responds that Blye's marriage lasted two years, not a lifetime.

Taylor lets it be known that a man at the resort is interested in her and Blye tells her that she should go for it. In fact, she's not going to continue on to Cortina herself. She's going to send her mother back alone to spread her legs wings and fly.

Taylor is red hot and ready to go now. She also, in conflict with doctor's orders, is swilling alcohol, but a gal needs something to fortify herself when she's flirting with the idea of bedding down a local stud.

They lock eyes and it's very clear that the time has come for Berger and Taylor to form the two-headed monster up in her suite...

In the aftermath of their lovemaking, Berger is looking on affection- ately at his conquest. We think... hopefully he isn't looking behind the ears for any visible scars??

Taylor confesses to him that he's the first lover she's had in a long, long time. He asks how long it's been since she made love and the answer is so private/humiliating that she won't say it aloud, even though it's just the two of them in the room. Afraid even the viewing audience might find out, she whispers it to him!

He then promises to keep her locked up in the room for the next couple of days making love as much as possible! You know, Berger was one of the pants-droppingest stars of the 1970s and yet we get virtually nothing here. For an R-rated movie, you'd think they could toss in a bare butt shot or something... Anyway, despite all the fun she's had romping with Berger, she's still got it bad for her husband. And he's about to arrive!

She's quite nervous at the train station where she greets Fonda (who only appears in the last 20 minutes of the movie. That had to piss off any fans who went to see the film specifically for the prominently-billed actor.)

Surprisingly, she chooses a fairly unbecoming, shapeless pantsuit for the introductory ensemble in which to greet her estranged hubby. I mean, let's see some curves or cleavage!

He's nonetheless stunned by her new visage, exclaiming, "My God, my God..." as she presses herself to him.

She's so, so in love with him, yet he's rather detached in his manner towards her. It makes you wonder what sort of man he is that could be clinging to some young chippie when he has Elizabeth Effing Taylor throwing herself at his feet...

Later, she watches him sleep, all the while grappling the penile knob of the footboard on her bed. He has a derisive comment or two for her about vanity and when he suggests getting some surgery himself she is aghast! (Actually, it looked to me like Mr. Fonda had had a chin lift by this point.)

At dinner, he picks up a cigar and Taylor offers to light it, but he'll have none of that. He likes to do it his own way...

Liz, sadly I think this match is the only thing you'll be blowing tonight...

Whether she looks younger or not, it's pretty clear that Fonda has little room for her feelings. Even after she gifts him with an extravagant watch, he can barely muster a scintilla of gratitude or affection.

She does the impossible by extracting a smile from him later that evening at a Mardi Gras masked ball. While her clothing was all done by Edith Head for this movie, this particular costume of Taylor's was made by (and credited to) Valentino. She runs into Berger at the gala event and is happy as a clam, or so it seems. (That really is Helmut Berger and Elizabeth Taylor below, not Wayland Flowers and Madame. LOL!)

She's still breaking the rules by drinking. (Surpris- ingly, she never smokes in the film, something else the doctor forbad her to do after the procedures.) Fonda has been observed chatting up a pretty girl, but he doesn't fail to point out to Taylor that she was busy herself with a nice looking young man.

When she asks him if he'd believe her if she told him she'd been to bed with that man, he can only laugh in disbelief and emphatically answer "no!" Hmmm.  Well, too bad for you, Henry.

Trying to cool her off - and maybe sober her up - Fonda suggests walking back to the hotel along the deserted streets. Taylor demonstrates a profound lack of musicality as she attempts to sing "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" in about four keys while trying to goad the hesitant Fonda into joining her.

Back at their room, Fonda gets a bit of disap- pointing news on the telephone and the couple proceed to try to hash out their marital issues. Here, we are treated to still more unconsciously familiar moments from Taylor's long life as a movie goddess.

"Tell mama... Tell mama all."

"I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof!"

"Appuhamy...  APPUHAMY!!!"

Ash Wednesday is like one long, languid look at Elizabeth Taylor's face. We see it all deliberately marred and mussed at the beginning so that it will seem that much more spectacular in the second half, where she is styled and made up to the nines virtually all the time. Fans of hers cannot dare to miss seeing it. And she's good! Her performance is subtle, thought-ought and authentic (she doesn't move like a forty year-old, even later.) She was even nominated for a Golden Globe, but lost to Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty. There is also thought put into the color scheme as the movie moves from blue and grey to a burnished golden hue by the end. But the movie is also almost morbid, despondent and bleak. It could use a little pep here and there.

One way that pep was denied is that there was evidently a scene in the hotel pool area in which Berger was seen wearing a skimpy Speedo and this sequence was CUT from the final release! WTF?! Perhaps Taylor was in a swimsuit in this scene and didn't seem up to snuff? No clue. But you don't trim scenes that have Speedos in them. That's a cardinal movie-making rule. LOL

At the time of filming, Taylor's decade-long (first) marriage to Richard Burton was fraying and about to end. He loathed the movie and the fact that she was making it (according to him in order to help remind everyone that she was still a famous movie star.) Her movie career had in fact hit a serious lull despite two Oscars to her credit and this one didn't help matters. Subsequent disasters like The Driver's Seat (1974) and The Blue Bird (1976) didn't stem the decline either, though she still managed occasional successes, sometimes on TV.

An ill-advised marriage to Senator John Warner sent her careening into a period of weight gain and alcohol abuse that had her looking so bad she was damned near unrecognizable as the movie queen who'd held the world in its grasp only a few years before. But, in true ET fashion, she beat her demons long enough to reemerge as a whole new persona; trim, tan and visually stunning.

By the 1980s, she had found a new calling that was far greater than the movies. She became a steadfast advocate for AIDS patients and worked tirelessly to draw attention to the crisis and raise funds for its cure. Always plagued by ill-health, she was proclaimed dead on more than one occasion only to survive, but in 2011 she drew her last breath at age seventy-nine due to heart failure.

Austrian-born Berger was the protegee and companion for a dozen years to famed Italian director Luchino Visconti. Berger worked to great effect in the directors movies such as The Damned (1969), Ludwig (1973) and Conversation Piece (1974), though he also worked for Vittorio De Sica in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970.) In 1976, both he and Taylor would appear in the TV-movie Victory at Entebbe. Though he has long since passed his hey-day as an "It Boy" of the jet-set and decadent movies, he has nonetheless continued working and is still acting now at age seventy-five.

Welsh Baxter was a well-regarded Broadway actor who occasionally worked in films and on TV. He'd initially been set to play Octavian in Taylor's Cleopatra (1963) and even filmed some scenes, but her illnesses shut the project down to the extent that he had to bow out when it reconvened. Roddy MacDowall portrayed the part in the finished film. He also was noted for his role as Prince Hal in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1965), a version of Falstaff. Still with us today at age eighty-six, he retired sometime prior to 2000.

Fonda, a stage-trained actor who had been a cinema leading man since 1935 was by now doing more cameo roles than starring ones. He'd just come off a one-season sitcom called The Smith Family and a nice TV-movie The Red Pony (1973) with Maureen O'Hara, which earned him an Emmy nomination (though Laurence Olivier won for Long Day's Journey Into Night.) His career sputtered along with projects of highly varying quality until his daughter Jane Fonda arranged On Golden Pond (1981) for him. The result was a Best Actor Oscar, which he (barely) lived to receive at home. He died at seventy-seven of cardiorespiratory arrest.

Blye had toiled on TV as a guest in various series until Hombre (1967) led to more film roles such as Waterhole #3 (1968) and The Italian Job (1969.) Her time as a popular ingenue was brief, though she continued to work in movies like Little Darlings (1980) and The Entity (1982) along with lesser-known fare after that up through 2010. She was claimed by cancer in 2016 at age seventy-six. (Her age is in dispute with some sources giving an earlier birth date than others.)

Belgian-born Van Vooren had an eclectic performing career to say the least. She was the title villain in Lex Barker's Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953), but then mostly had tiny roles in movies like Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957) and Gigi (1958.) She also acted on Broadway and was a game show panelist. After appearing in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Decameron (1971), she lolled in bed with Joe Dallesandro in Andy Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and has only appeared on screen twice briefly since! She is ninety-two today.

As I mentioned earlier, it had to be odd for the stars to see moments from their own real lives changed into fake moments for the opening credits of this movie. This shot of Fonda and Taylor (in which her eyes have been aged!) is actually from an event Taylor attended with Richard Burton and his Bluebeard (1972) costar Raquel Welch in Monaco!

I leave you with this typically off-beat piece of Japanese promotional art which does prepare the viewer for lots of looks at the visage of Miss Elizabeth Taylor!



Okay, I lied. One more shot of Helmut in his trunks. Take care and I'll be back asap with more movie and TV fun. (It may be a little longer than usual as I am about to spend several days filming a small role in a local independent film!)