Director: Richard Linklater (Ireland, USA). Year of Release: 2025
We open with two quotes: “He was alert and dynamic and fun to be around” (Oscar Hammerstein II) and “the saddest man I ever knew” (Mabel Mercer). Both quotes are about the same man – Lorenz Hart, who Hammerstein replaced as Richard Rodgers’s writing partner. Both quotes accurately summarize part of Hart’s personality, although the Hart who we see in this film is more capable of exuding self-pity than any sense of fun.
Cut to a dark Manhattan alleyway in November 1943. A man in a trilby is drunkenly stumbling through pouring rain until he collapses near a rubbish bin. We hear a radio report telling us that Hart died four days later of pneumonia in a New York hospital. This was largely a result of his alcoholism. He and Rodgers were the authors of The Lady is a Tramp, My Funny Valentine, Manhattan, and a song called Blue Moon, which Hart felt was beneath his talent.
Hart goes with his mother to see the opening of Oklahoma!, Rodgers’ first collaboration with Hammerstein. They sit in a box, where Hart grumbles that the musical is superficial, bound to be exceedingly successful, and does not contain any of the depth of anything which he wrote. And why does the name have to end with an exclamation mark? Hart leaves before the end to go to Sardi’s bar, where he holds court (usually to only the bartender and maybe one other person) for the rest of the film.
At first, Hart, who has a terrible combover, sits alone in the bar, staring at a glass of whisky which he does not touch as he is on the wagon. He talks at the bartender Eddie and the pianist Morty Rafferty (né Rifkin), who is wearing an army uniform. Hart says that Morty has circumcised his name to try to escape antisemitism. Then the author EB White arrives. In one of those meaningless self-referential moments we learn that White is in the middle of writing Stuart Little.
Hart and Eddie banter about Casablanca, which was released not long before the film was set. For those of us who regularly quote lines from the film, it is a slight shock (but makes some sense for the character) to learn that Hart’s favourite quote is: “Nobody ever loved me that much,” a quote which he repeats a couple of times in the film. He also makes a sardonic comment about a possible relationship between Rick and Captain Renault, which mirrors the common belief that Hart himself was gay.
A flower delivery boy arrives twice – once with a small bouquet from Hart for a woman, Elizabeth, then later with a much larger bouquet. Hart gets the delivery boy to switch the labels on the flyers, and invites him to a “huge” party that he’s holding in his house that evening. Elizabeth is a 20-year old woman with whom Hart, who is well over twice her age, is infatuated. Her interest in him is more based on the people he knows than in any genuine affection felt for him.
Blue Moon works best if you feel some sympathy for Hart’s plight, and this is something that I found very difficult. His adoration of Elizabeth is pathetic, but I couldn’t find the necessary sympathy to make it any more than that. Hart’s obsession is not just inappropriate, it very quickly becomes quite boring. I guess we are supposed to give him some slack because he was such a great lyricist, but this to me seemed to be mixing two quite different categories.
Hart has an altercation with Rodgers on the stairs, in which he basically begs for his job back. Hart effectively accuses Rodgers of selling out, of now preferring to produce “inoffensive art”, instead of the biting satire which Hart wants to write for him. Rodgers in turn says that it is a relief to be working with someone who turns up at work on time, that he no longer has to ring his lyricist’s mother at 9am in the hope that he may be available by midday.
Rodgers does not completely cut off working with Hart, and encourages him to write some songs for a revival of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Rather than realise that this is the best offer he’s going to get, Hart continues to badger his old friend about a 4 hour epic about Marco Polo. Rodgers should be joining the celebrations for his latest success, but stays, more out of embarrassment than anything else. It’s clear that his artistic future lies with Hammerstein and not with Hart.
I can understand entirely why I should be impressed by Blue Moon. It is a nuanced depiction of a man in degeneration, who is unable to live up to his past glories. And yet, to me, it was entirely lacking in heart or soul. Why should I care about this privileged man who spends his days sitting in a bar, whining? Yes, the film does capture some of the melancholy of Hart’s songs, but then depicts the man himself as being so utterly insufferable, that you find it hard to care about him.
Blue Moon might well have worked better as a play. From the end credits it seems that the text was taken not from a play but from Hart’s letters, but this leaves a similar impression that the dramatic rules used here are not the same ones we expect from a film. The drama rarely moves out of one bar, and much of the script consists of individuals (almost always men) declaiming at anyone who will listen. Their words are often witty, but rarely captivating. There are few car chases, either literal or metaphorical.
Blue Moon is, in a sense, a perfect companion to director Richard Linklater’s recent Nouvelle Vague – another film which wants us to be interested in a real life character based almost entirely on that character’s artistic genius, even though neither Hart here, not Jean-Luc Godard in Nouvelle Vague, has much to recommend them as a human being. And it is a strange film about Lorenz Hart which includes few to none of the marvellous songs which he wrote. File under: fair enough, but could do much better.
CinePhil 