Blu-ray Review: Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It on the Criterion Collection

This set is going to look awfully smart on the shelf next to Criterion’s forthcoming release of Pink Flamingos.

The Girl Can’t Help ItYears before Kenneth Anger, Frank Tashlin located the decadent Babylon in Hollywood and found it not that different from the splashy Looney Tunes bonanzas that he used to fashion during his salad days as an animator. The Girl Can’t Help It, arguably his most characteristic film, kicks off with a passage that, in its blithe avant-gardism, might have first originated as a blot of animated ink during his formative Warner Bros. studio days: A bow-tied Tom Ewell solemnly steps up to the camera to introduce the feature and, with proscenium-squashing ease, stretches the boxy, black-and-white screen into the Cinemascope rectangle, vibrating with lurid jukebox hues.

Little Richard’s cyclonic rendition of the title tune storms through the abstract credits, and Ewell’s Tom Miller, a talent agent bottoming out, is first spotted amid the contortions of rock ‘n’ roll. Tashlin was always obsessed by America’s pop frenzies, yet this appreciation was laced with ambivalence; the energy of the musical phenomenon (sampled here via invaluable glimpses of the Platters, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Fats Domino, Abbey Lincoln, and Eddie Cochran, among others) is seen as having its transgressive potential drained for the easy consumption of the masses, a neutering commoditization explicitly illustrated in the connection drawn between slot machines and jukeboxes by has-been gangster Fatso Murdock (Edmond O’Brien).

Taking a cue from the decade’s manic consumerism, Murdock orders a bit of manufacturing of his own: to shape his blond bombshell of a fiancée, Jerri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield), from a “nobody” into a star, an assignment that naturally falls to Tom. Mansfield’s still-underrated comic disposition lies at the center of Tashlin’s live-action cartooning, placed as a lynchpin for the director’s most elaborate gags: Her voice cracks a nearby light bulb when practicing her do-re-mis, and her ass-swirling walk down the street precipitates a series of justly celebrated visual jests, from the melting ice block to the ejaculating bottle of milk.

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That Jerri turns out to be not a ravenous vamp but a marital marshmallow (“I’m domestic,” she confides to a flabbergasted Ewell) attests to Tashlin’s awareness of the potential dangers of pop culture, of how success hinges on images constructed and imposed onto people. The theme, though, doesn’t apply solely to Mansfield’s character, as Murdock, for all his gangland cigar-chomping, reveals himself happiest when belting a tune to a crowd of teenyboppers.

As with most Tashlin films, The Girl Can’t Help It functions as both an exultant example of American vulgarity and a leveling thrashing of it, with jokes that cut surprisingly deep—none deeper when a record magnate gets to know his audience by waving his hand in front of a blankly bopping young concertgoer, the grim sense of a generation’s political docility all but anticipates the zombified Yardbirds fans from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.

Image/Sound

How you take this restoration will likely depend on how devoted you are to the idea that Frank Tashlin’s colors on film ought to pop as loudly as possible, especially given that The Girl Can’t Help It is one of the brashest entertainments that the 1950s had to offer. In that context, this objectively flawless transfer can’t help but feel like a bit of a comedown from a sugar rush. The color palette is lush, balanced, and tasteful. But it’s that last word that’s the sticking point, because this film, in which the mere sight of Jayne Mansfield causes a milkman’s bottle to boil over in his hand, comes off almost too naturalistic. Certainly too blue by half. Take the sequence wherein a spectral Julie London croons “Cry Me a River,” which should vibrate with an otherworldly glow but, instead, almost seems like something out of a colorized Val Lewton shocker. To reiterate, the disc looks great, almost as though attempting to imitate HDR luminance. It’s just a question of taste, or the lack thereof. The monaural soundtrack does right by its rollicking soundtrack, easily coasting beyond the limitations of the film’s age and plunging listeners into something resembling the inside of a jukebox.

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Extras

Speaking of subdued presentations, this disc includes an episode of Karina Longworth’s reliably well-researched but lugubriously voiced You Must Remember This podcast. (I kid, of course, but the disparity between the subject of Mansfield and Longworth’s over-deliberate delivery is an amusing study in contrast. Far more aligned with The Girl Can’t Help It’s overall aesthetic value system is John Waters, who in his 20-minute appreciation of the film, which he calls easily one of his top 10 all-time favorites, packs more enthusiasm and observations than film scholar Toby Miller does in his entire feature-length commentary track.

Waters’s observation that most of the musicians featured in The Girl Can’t Help It were, at the time, most definitely not performing in the sort of opulent, red-curtain club depicted in the film but, rather, dangerous dives is especially apt. Equally riotous are WFMU DJs Dave “the Spazz” Abramson and Gaylord Fields, two dyed-in-the-wool pop music encyclopedias who gleefully unfurl their knowledge of the film’s roster of rockers, from the glories of Little Richard and Fats Domino to the meh-ishness of, say, Johnny Olenn.

Rounding out the package are featurettes on Mansfield’s life and the history of CinemaScope filmmaking, on-set footage, a clip of Little Richard on Merv Griffin’s show, liner notes by critic Rachel Syme, and a priceless reprinted excerpt from Tashlin’s book How to Create Cartoons. Overall, this disc provides a bonus feature bill as stacked as the film’s roster of musicians.

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Overall

While the color grading of its video presentation is almost certain to offend those hoping for something more overtly garish, Criterion’s set for The Girl Can’t Help It is going to look awfully smart on the shelf next to their forthcoming release of Pink Flamingos.

Score: 
 Cast: Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O’Brien, Julie London, Ray Anthony, Barry Gordon, Henry Jones, John Emery, Juanita Moore, Fats Domino, The Platters, Little Richard and His Band, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, The Treniers, Eddie Fontaine, The Chuckles, Abbey Lincoln, Johnny Olenn, Nino Tempo, Eddie Cochran  Director: Frank Tashlin  Screenwriter: Frank Tashlin, Herbert Baker  Distributor: The Criterion Collection  Running Time: 97 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1956  Release Date: April 19, 2022  Buy: Video

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