Sara Batkie
1991 was not a bad year to be the Coens. Coming off their Palme d’Or win for Barton Fink, the brothers had distinguished themselves as the enfant terribles of cinema that everyone wanted to spoil. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling – despite the “bite that hand that feeds you” nature of their recent success – and come it did. They had their pick of projects, but rather than opting for another gruesome crime drama or black comedy, they decided to finally film a script they’d been working on with their buddy Sam Raimi for over a decade. It would be their most expensive production to date, with bigger sets, bigger stars, and bigger expectations. Warner Brothers was distributing, with producer Joel Silver securing full artistic control for the Coens. The result was The Hudsucker Proxy, released in theaters thirty years ago this month, one of their most idiosyncratic and, for a time anyway, least loved pictures.
From the opening shots, as the camera glides over a scale model of New York City, Proxy announces itself as a very deliberate construction. Set in the final month of 1958, it’s a world of tall buildings, long tables, and conspicuous circles, beginning with the clock face at the top of Hudsucker Industries. The plot too has a circular structure – we meet hero Norville Barnes (played with affable gooniness by Tim Robbins) on New Years Eve as he climbs onto the building ledge and prepares to fall down its forty four stories (not counting the mezzanine.) How he got there and why is what most of the film concerns itself with, but unlike many of the 1950s classics that served as inspiration, it’s not easy to summarize. Perhaps it’ll suffice to say that he’s the titular proxy, brought up from the mailroom on his first day by Sidney J. Mussburger (a superbly officious Paul Newman) to run the company into the ground after the president takes his own leap from the top office. But Norville has some ideas he’s eager to share, and things don’t go according to plan.
For hungry cinephiles, Proxy is a veritable smorgasbord of references. While the frenetic dialogue mimics the rat-a-tat pacing of films like Sweet Smell of Success and His Girl Friday – especially once Jennifer Jason Leigh enters the picture as undercover journalist Amy Archer – the precise production design recalls everything from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Cinematographer Roger Deakins shot many of the effects practically, giving them a ramshackle vaudevillian energy. And it’s all told at the same breakneck Looney Tunes speed of Raising Arizona. To quote a Coen film mentioned earlier in this piece: “Whaddya need, a roadmap?”
Turns out both audiences and critics did. Or at least they wanted some kind of explanation. True to form, the Coens were almost perversely hostile to giving any. Asked if the film could be read as a representation of capitalism vs. labor, Joel replied, “Maybe the characters do embody those grand themes you mentioned, but that question is independent of whether or not we’re interested in them – and we’re not.” Such brusque denial seems a bit disingenuous since they’ve always had an interest in working class stories, but regardless, it did little to endear their oddball satire to viewers looking to get onto its wavelength. “All surface and no substance,” as Roger Ebert put it in his two-star review, was a typical sentiment. John Simon went further, calling it “asinine and insufferable” in a piece published in his compendium, John Simon on Film.
Leigh’s performance often bore the brunt of these complaints about artificiality. Like the film itself, her work is basically a quotation, built on mannerisms borrowed from Rosalind Russell, Katherine Hepburn, and Barbara Stanwyck, particularly in The Lady Eve, and dialed up to eleven. She’s always been one of our most dedicated actresses, and one of the most ahead of her time in the risks she’s willing to take, which may be why some critics chafed against both the vulnerability and unique modernity she brings to Amy. While male actors of the method school are often praised for their immersion in a role, there’s an undeniable misogynistic strain to the reaction Leigh’s “studied” performance drew, as if she was little more than an overeager pupil.
Time has been kind, though, both to Leigh and to The Hudsucker Proxy. While it only grossed about $3 million at the U.S. box office on a $25 million production budget, in an age when younger viewers are all about vibes and aesthetics, it’s ripe for rediscovery. The debate over the Coens’ sincerity continues to rage, but now that their collaborative career is apparently in the rearview, it’s easier to see where Proxy fits into their overall filmography. Their comedies always take longer to percolate with the public, and what might have seemed like a disappointing lark in 1994 feels at home alongside other pastiche-heavy works like O Brother, Where Art Thou and Hail, Caesar. Charges of the film being heartless ignore the genuine affection that went into crafting it. Neither a love letter nor a poison pen missive to the cinematic era it imitates, Proxy strives to exist alongside it in its own right. Studios, however, might have been spooked by its losses and the Coens retreated to their grimier independent roots. But counting them out proved unwise: the next film they made was Fargo.
“The Hudsucker Proxy” is streaming on Kanopy and is available for digital rental or purchase.
