Lenny (1974)

Directed by Bob Fosse. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Stanley Beck, Jan Miner, Gary Morton, Rashel Novikoff, Guy Rennie, Mark Harris, Ted Sorel. [R]

Biographical survey of button-pushing stand-up satirist Lenny Bruce (Hoffman), shot in a quasi-documentary style with talking head interview clips of his stripper wife (Perrine), comedian mother (Miner), and agent (Beck). Photographed in stylized black & white, and cut of a lot of the fat and half-baked interludes that plague a lot of other “up close and personal” movie exposés of real-life figures. Regards its subject as a genius, a prophet, a myth, a martyr, but little effort is made to actually get to know the man behind the bitter façade; instead, the filmmakers treat us to a lot of recreated stage material (some incisive, some witty, some merely obscene for the sake of obscenity) and vignettes of his unconventional relationships, cleverly sewn together by editor Alan Heim. At least director Fosse, working from a script by Julian Berry (expanded from his own stage play), has the courage to show onstage Lenny at his worst, from his hacky early days to his miserable later period on the decline of inspiration and strategy; serves as a sly reminder that just because a comic is provocative and groundbreaking, it doesn’t mean he’s always doing his job (being legitimately funny and entertaining). Though it’s not a deep performance, Hoffman is nevertheless excellent in the central role, with fine support from Perrine as his “Shiksa goddess,” Honey. The freeze frame at the end with Lenny lying on the bathroom floor is of Bruce himself, not Hoffman.

76/100