THE VIRGINIA HILL STORY
US, 1974, 74 minutes, Colour.
Dyan Cannon, Harvey Keitel, Allen Garfield, John Vernon, Robbie Benson, Liam Dunn.
Directed by Joel Schumacher.
The Virginia Hill Story is a brief telemovie about the prostitute who became Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend. Bugsy Siegel and his story was portrayed at greater length in Warren Beatty's Bugsy where Beatty himself played Bugsy Siegel and his wife Annette Bening played Virginia Hill. In that film Harvey Keitel played Mickey Cohen. Keitel is Siegel here and is presented in a much more sympathetic vein than the usual gangster tradition. The focus is on Virginia Hill as an ambitious woman, wanting the make connections, capitalising on her relationship with Siegel who was involved with the building of Las Vegas.
There is a good supporting cast, a strong screenplay written by Joel Schumacher. Schumacher had been a costume designer, on films like Sleeper and Interiors, before moving into screenwriting with The Virginia Hill Story. He also moved into direction. From 1974 he had a long and prolific career as a film director, flamboyant in style, making such interesting films as Falling Down, two of the John Grisham films, The Client and A Time to Kill, two of the Batman films, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin - for which he was attacked. His smaller-budget films are often stronger than the big films for example Flawless, Tigerland, Phone Booth. He also directed the film version of The Phantom of the Opera.
1. The quality and interest of this telemovie? Bringing the gangs theme and Americana into the home?
2. The telemovie style, commercials, close-ups, locations? Court¬room styles? The tempering of violence?
3. Audience interest in and involvement in the structure: the present, the flashbacks? The moral that was being drawn about gangsters, human beings, American society, justice?
4. The fact that the film was a true story: facts, styles of the past, America examining its conscience, bringing gangsterism up to the fifties? How well did the film recreate the era: in the countryside, in the cities, overseas?
5. Dyan Cannon's style as Virginia Hill? Why the choice of this particular woman for a film? The memory of this kind of woman from the backblocks to a gangster's moll, to a wealthy woman, to losing it? The glamourising of a gangster? How was she the symbol of an era? Why present her in the seventies, in a television movie?
6. The complexities of character in Virginia: the presentation of her at home, in the thirties, her family, origins, work? Poverty and the fascination of wealth? Her going to the city, associates? Her gradually being involved in gangsterism? As a cover? Violence, the cover-up of her friends, her going to Europe? The importance of her returning home during this time? The importance of the enthusiasm of her brother? The importance of the phone calls from America to Europe and the bridging of two worlds?
7. Virginia in the court: close-up, memories, sympathy, her answer spontaneous and contrived? Later, a mystery woman? Her death?
8. The men in her life, their memories, associates, gambling, money, gangsters - as types, persons?
9. Contrast family, brother and admiration.
10. View of the U.S.? Examining heritage and ralues.
