Movie Reviews : ‘Actors’ Offers a Tour of Golden Era Hollywood

Once past a color prologue set in the present, “I Hate Actors!” (AMC Century 14 in Century City) takes us on a black-and-white tour of Hollywood Boulevard in the ‘40s. Soon we’re at Empire Studios, where “Sons of Destiny,” a remake of a ‘20s swashbuckler, is in production.

The match between the outdoor archival footage and the Streamline Moderne studio interiors is remarkably persuasive. There’s a bombastic bald studio head, one part L.B. Mayer and one part Harry Cohn, in action, and there’s a temperamental star, a Mary Beth Hughes-Carole Landis composite in looks, a blonde in pompadour and peplum. There’s also one little hitch: Everybody is speaking French!

For his feature debut, French director Gerard Krawczyk has chosen to film legendary Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht’s 1944 novel, first serialized in Collier’s. The result is a jaunty film that’s intensely verbal (and therefore a bit wearying). Yet the French dialogue is an amusing asset, freshening up the overly familiar process of sending up the foibles and excesses of Golden Era Hollywood.

Someone starts killing off the cast of “Sons of Destiny.” It really doesn’t matter who or why, even though suave top agent Orlando Higgens (Jean Poiret) seems to be the first person that the cops always suspect.

The mystery plot allows Krawczyk to bring alive a raft of Hecht’s colorful Hollywood types. Among them, besides Poiret’s delightfully dry Orlando, are Bernard Blier’s vigorous mogul, Michel Galabru’s florid, over-the-hill star, Wojtek Pszoniak’s excitable director, Guy Marchand’s weary, cynical cop and Jean-Francois Stevenin’s intrepid reporter.

The comic set-piece of the film is a conference of screenwriters, all detective mystery specialists, that the mogul has called together in hopes they will be able to come up with a solution to the murders.

Among the writers is a wonderfully beady-eyed weirdo, played by director Claude Chabrol in one of several inside castings. By the time “I Hate Actors!” (MPAA-rated PG) is over, it no longer seems so strange that everyone is speaking French (sprinkled with Yiddish). After all, Hollywood has always been filled with film makers whose first language was not English.