A One Mann’s Movies review of “Blue Moon” (From the 2025 London Film Festival). (2025, 4.5*, 15).
It’s a REALLY strong week for UK film releases, with “Wake Up Dead Man“, “Blue Moon” and “Pillion” all being released in the last couple of days. Here is the republish of “Blue Moon” which might well make my Top 10 for the year it’s that good.
This review was first published on One Mann’s Movies on October 23rd.
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“Blue Moon” is another of those films that makes me really love attending the LFF. I went into this Richard Linklater movie with no expectations whatsoever and we completely blown away by it. It won’t please action lovers – it is very ‘stagey’ in its presentation. But as a study of a desperate man, the famous lyricist Lorenz Hart, in the latter stages of his life I found it to be an exquisite piece of cinema. And I reckon this one might just give Ethan Hawke (playing Hart) a well-deserved ‘Best Actor’ Oscar nomination.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
It’s the Broadway premiere of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!”: the first musical that Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has not co-written with his long-time partner Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke). The bitter and twisted Hart occupies the bar across the street where the Oklahoma first-night party is set to be held, pouring out his woes to anyone who will listen.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC web site: “Strong language, sex references”.)
Talent:
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Giles Surridge, Jonah Lees, Patrick Kennedy, Simon Delaney, Aisling O’Mara, David Rawle.
Directed by: Richard Linklater.
Written by: Robert Kaplow.
Running Time: 1h 40m.
Summary:
Positives:
- Ethan Hawke is almost unrecognisable in the role: a towering acting achievement.
- Lorenz Hart is a brilliant character to observe and the script zings with ‘Hart-isms’.
- The supporting turns from Scott, Qualley and Cannavale are superb.
Negatives:
- A long cloakroom exchange between Lorenz and Elizabeth in the third reel is overlong and destroys the pace.
Full Review of “Blue Moon”:
An impressive opening.
The film starts with two impressively contradictory quotes:
“He was alert and dynamic and fun to be around” – Oscar Hammerstein; and
“He was the saddest man I ever knew” – singer Mabel Mercer.
We then open on a rain-swept alley and Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) staggering down it, humming one of his own tunes to himself before collapsing to the ground. It was to be the beginning of the end of one of America’s most prolific and successful lyricists, with a huge number of his songs in the Great American Songbook.
I was of course aware of the pairing of Rodgers and Hart and of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but wasn’t aware that Rodgers and Hart had enjoyed such a long collaboration: their wiki page informs that they worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs between 1919 and 1943, the year this movie is set. Some of the most famous ones are “Blue Moon”, “My Funny Valentine”, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”, “Have You Met Miss Jones?” and “The Lady is a Tramp”.
Hart is not a fan.
After the opening scene, we skip back several months to the 31st March 1943 and the premiere of “Oklahoma!” (with the exclamation mark!), the first of what were to be 2,212 performances of the hit musical.
The show was beloved by the critics and the public alike… but not by Hart, who we see leaving his box, mid-show, and skulking across the street to the bar where the celebration party will later be held. There he props up the bar – even though he is not supposed to be drinking – and engages in banter with the barman Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and a GI on home-leave, Morty Rifkin (Jonah Lees), or “Knuckles” as Hart names him, who tinkles away on the piano.
Brilliant, if sometimes irreverent, banter.
And so the scene is basically set for the rest of the film. We never move out of that bar area, which makes the production feel very stagey (it would make a GREAT stage play), but WHAT a play!
There’s real banter between Eddie and Lorenz as they riff off the great lines of “Casablanca” and ‘Knuckles’ runs off that famous tune. I already knew at that point that I was in love with this film. The script is not without some “ooh” moments, reflecting the attitude of the times, with Hart coming out with some close to the knuckle jokes about homosexuals and Jews (of which he was both).
Lorenz is utterly two-faced about “Oklahoma!”, later falsely gushing about it to Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Hammerstein (Simon Delaney) but expressing his true feelings to Eddie… “A 14 carat hit and a 14 carat piece of shit” he rages. When berating the lyrics to “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'” he snarls “who’s ever seen an Oklahoma cornfield with a fucking elephant in it?”
He’s also appears disparaging about some of his own work: as ‘knuckles’ strikes up “Blue Moon” on the piano, he winces and describes it as “the worst goddamn lyric I ever wrote”. But you can sense that Hart doesn’t really mean it: just like Isabella in the last film I watched (“Lady“), Hart is a born-narcissist and bathes in adoration.
Sexually ambiguous.
With his louche manner, the assumption we form is that Hart is gay, which indeed he was. But he was a closeted gay, bowing to the prejudices of the era. As a smokescreen, you sense, Hart gushes about his young college-age protégé Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley) who is coming to meet him at the bar. He implies that although he hasn’t had sex with her yet, it’s very much on the cards for tonight: she is said to express “irrational adoration” towards him. When Eddie challenges him on this, Hart claims to be “ambi-sexual… I can jerk off with either hand”!
It’s just one of a set of brilliant Oscar Wilde-like lines that the script delivers. When in need of the toilet, Hart exclaims that “urination has turned into a two-act play… with a short intermission”!
E.B. White.
We later turn our attention to a quiet man reading in a booth at the bar. It turns out that he is the writer E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), most famous for writing Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. In fact, he is currently struggling to write his first “children’s book” (Stuart Little) and – in a bit of a humorous stretch for the script – it is Hart that comes up with the mouse’s name for him.
In similar vein, we also get to meet a very young George Roy Hill (David Rawle), future director of “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting”.
Rodgers v. Hart.
Where the drama really kicks into gear is when the musical ends and the after-show party begins. Richard Rodgers is played by the immaculate Andrew Scott. Another brilliant performance (and perhaps deserving of a Supporting Actor nod?) Rodgers respects all of the brilliant legacy that the pair have built up over the years, but has clearly run out of patience with Hart’s foibles: they are now like chalk and cheese; Rodgers professional and diligent; Hart often drunk, always late, always looking for sarcasm in the lyrics he writes. “Yes, they want to laugh” says Rodgers. “But not in that way… not in your way.”
The respect goes as far as offering to work with Hart again… on a revival of their earlier hit “A Connecticut Yankee” (which actually did go ahead, with Rodgers and Hart writing six new songs for it, Hart’s last). But it is clear that Hart’s grand plans for a new musical featuring Marco Polo and elephants is never going to see the light of day.
Ethan Hawke is astounding.
Lorenz Hart is an extremely complex and mixed up character and he is absolutely brilliantly portrayed by Ethan Hawke. Hawke is almost unrecognisable with his stooped manner and his radical comb-over. And his bi-polar like transition between joy and depression is effortlessly written into Hawke’s eyes as he bounces from highs to lows and back again. I would absolutely consider Hawke as one of the Best Actor nominations based on this film. For me, it should be as locked in as Jessie Buckley’s surely is for “Hamnet“.
I’ve already gushed about Andrew Scott, so I embarrass him by repeating that. But Margaret Qualley and Bobby Cannavale are also terrific.
Qualley felt like she had a great opportunity with “Honey Don’t“, but the film let her down. But here she plays a role that she is almost perfectly suited for. Though her character, Elizabeth, is in the movie business for set-design, you can absolutely see her as one of the starlets of the golden age of Hollywood. The camera absolutely loves her. As Hart says “I’m in love with her, but, everybody’s in love with her”.
Cloakroom rejection.
My one criticism of the film is in the third reel where Hart kicks the hat-check girl out of her workplace to spent time talking to Elizabeth. Elizabeth spends considerable time describing her sexual liaisons with some of the college jocks but makes it clear that she would never think of Hart in that way… they are just friends. But the scene goes on for way too long and I was itching (as the hat-check girl is) for them to get back out into the rest of the bar for either more banter with Eddie and Morty or else more dramatic discussion with Rogers and Hammerstein.
Summary Thoughts:
It’s very talky… it’s very stagey… but I absolutely loved this one.
“Blue Moon” is set for a UK release from November 28th, 2025, and it is expected to be available on streaming services like Prime Video in early 2026.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo7gRHip0lI
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