La ragazza di campagna

Adapted from the stage play of the same name, the narrative follows fading star Frank Elgin (Bing Crosby) whose drinking and shunning of any responsibility over the years has completely taken a toll on his relationship with his rather worn-out wife Georgie (Grace Kelly). He gets a chance at redemption when Bernie Dodd (William Holden) recruits him to star in a stage play.

Frank had been a big musical and theatrical hit at one time, but now he's eking out a living singing for commercials and living in a shabby apartment. Frank tends to be a shape-shifter. He badly wants to be liked, so when he hears Dodd talk about his bad marriage, he makes up a story about Georgie that paints her as a hopeless alcoholic who has had multiple suicide attempts and tries to live her life through controlling his. Dodd believes this story because he WANTS to believe this story -it rather mirrors the story of his own failed marriage. In fact it is Georgie propping up alcoholic Frank, not vice-versa. I'm not spoiling anything here, because all of this is clearly shown. How does this work out? Watch and find out.

This is passable enough entertainment, but it seems like a stage play that is filmed, just like every stage play that Mervin LeRoy ever directed as a film. In fact, after I saw this, I went to look up the director, thinking it might be LeRoy - it was not. As for Grace Kelly, I couldn't see how she could have won the Best Actress Oscar for this. She's not bad or unauthentic, but she doesn't come close to knocking it out of the park like she did in "High Noon" where she wasn't even nominated. I can only explain it by Kelly daring to look drab throughout the proceedings and 1954 being a weak year for performances by an actress.