Paul Bartel’s comedies find something unpleasant beneath good manners, and his acting gives the joke its calm assurance. We recommend Eating Raoul for his partnership with Mary Woronov, with a caveat about how often it repeats itself.
Fi1m perspective
In Eating Raoul (1982), Paul Bartel’s Paul Bland regards other people’s sexual appetites as a tiresome breach of standards. He and Mary Bland want to open a restaurant, and financing it through murder does little to upset their belief that they are decent people. Bartel, directing from a script written with Richard Blackburn, lets that conviction carry the comedy. It is a funny, limited film, and a useful place to see how closely his acting and directing work together.
Private Parts (1972), his first feature, was a horror-comedy; Death Race 2000 (1975) put his satire into science fiction. His early work included second-unit assignments and features for Roger Corman and his associates, before Eating Raoul became his independent breakthrough. The restaurant ambition gives his interest in greed and middle-class hypocrisy a simple, concrete story. Its characters have a modest goal that remains recognisable even as their means of getting there become appalling.
Mary Woronov is essential to making this work. As Mary Bland, she shares Bartel’s refusal to advertise the joke, so the pair never seem to be waiting for applause for their bad behaviour. We laughed at the restaurant scheme because their calm made murder sound like a practical problem to be dealt with before opening. They appeared together repeatedly, but Eating Raoul gives their shared composure a particularly clear use: the restaurant must remain a reasonable goal for the killing to stay funny.
The limitation is how readily the script lets us accept the Blands’ excuses. Bartel and Blackburn make other people’s appetites so tiresome that the couple’s disgust is too easy to share. We are seldom pushed to question their judgement, and the film settles into repeating a joke it has already established. That leaves the actors doing much of the work of keeping us interested, although their restraint is considerably more effective than a louder performance would have been.
After Eating Raoul came independent features including Not for Publication (1984) and Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989), the latter returning to class and sexual behaviour. His acting continued alongside directing, including a part as the Smuggler in The Usual Suspects (1995), a thriller we recommend for its tightly controlled plotting. For Bartel’s own comedy, start with Eating Raoul, provided a pair of unruffled would-be restaurateurs sounds like sufficient company for an evening.
Biography
Paul Bartel (1938–2000) was an American actor, director and writer. He directed and co-wrote the black comedy Eating Raoul (1982), in which he also appeared, and directed Death Race 2000 (1975), Cannonball (1976) and Lust in the Dust (1985). He began with the short film The Secret Cinema (1968) and his first feature, Private Parts (1972).
Bartel appeared in more than ninety films and television episodes. His acting credits include the role of the Smuggler in The Usual Suspects (1995). He also directed two episodes of the series Clueless (1996).
