The Loved One

The Loved One is a 1965 satire of American life, specifically of life in Los Angeles and Hollywood. Based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, the movie as directed by Tony Richardson shows the influence of another novelist of Hollywood, Nathanael West in his novel The Day of the Locust. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon also comes to mind, but I’m not sure it’s an influence here, only an analogue.

The film industry, corporate America, funeral homes, death, the cult of celebrity, the space program, mothers, child geniuses, religion and religious leaders and evangelism—all fall under the film’s withering gaze. The point of view is British: the film follows the experiences of Dennis Barlow, a young poet (a hilariously bad poet) from England, prone to excessive drinking and absolutely without scruples, who comes to Hollywood to live with his uncle, a famous painter (played by John Gielgud) who has worked for and been co-opted by the film industry for 39 years. His Hollywood house—with its simulated thatch roof and its cracked and empty swimming pool—is a symbol of what he has become. This is the basic thesis of the film—that Hollywood and materialism and a general atmosphere of deluded romanticism pervade America and consume its citizens and their best talents. Money is the motivating force behind all things. Dreams, illusions, and fantasy are its bywords. The funeral industry with its emphasis on preserving the illusion of life for a “loved one” who has died is an extension of this tendency. Even the space industry and the military are caught up in this false yearning for immortality. God is a corporate executive who hovers in a helicopter high above the Los Angeles landscape, surveying all that happens, making decisions when profits flag.

A small colony of British expatriates in Hollywood regards itself as a last bastion of civilized values in a land of corruption, though they themselves are as much a part of the atmosphere as anyone else—they just don’t realize it.

The film is most notable for its array of absurd and outrageous characters: the gravel-voiced advice columnist (the Guru Brahmin), Mr. Joyboy (played brilliantly and disturbingly by Rod Stieger), Mr. Joyboy’s ravenously obese mother, the soulless tycoon played by Jonathan Winters and his feckless brother (also played by Jonathan Winters). Liberace, the incarnation of Hollywood glitz and glamour, has a small part as a coffin salesman.

Despite many moments of hilarity and a biting view of modern America, the film is disjointed and uneven. Transitions between scenes are jarringly sudden (this may have been intentional, but as a method it seems dated now). Though the plot moves forward there is a lack of coherence. Nonetheless, there is nothing else like this film. Its black and white cinematography is outstanding. As a visual set piece, Whispering Glades Cemetery is mordantly overwhelming. The film reminds me in a way of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. In its patchwork way of interweaving characters and subplots, in its satiric view of its subject, The Loved One also reminded me of Robert Altman’s Nashville, and in fact it’s difficult not to see this film as an influence on Altman. It is fierce, biting, satire, and it glows ominously with despair and dark pessimism.