Avaliações de Irene212
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571 avaliações
Leslie Caron is a delight, and an exceptional actress. She is a true joy to watch as she transforms herself from a gangling schoolgirl to an elegant belle of Belle Époque Paris. She is one of the two reasons to watch "Gigi." The other is the money and talent MGM put into it.
It's a showcase for Paris, where much of it was filmed, and particularly for director Vincente Minnelli and designer Cecil Beaton who garnered two of the film's nine Oscars-- all of which were won by men, and it is entirely informed by masculine sensibilities. No wonder it goes off the rails.
Our hero Gaston (Louis Jourdan) is a wealthy young man who sings of his endless boredom to his uncle Honoré (Maurice Chevalier). Gaston is bored with everything-- Paris, beauty, wine, girls, horse racing, bullfights, Italy, picnics, lunches-- and I was bored with him in short order. The only place Gaston isn't bored is when he visits Mamita (Hermione Gingold), her daughter (whom we never see), and teen-age granddaughter, Gigi (Caron). Gigi is being taught by Mamita's sister, Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans), to become a courtesan, following in Alicia's silk slippers. Alicia looks back proudly on her life, having traded her body successfully enough with wealthy men to have her own handsome apartment and plenty of jewels and frocks. The life of a high-class wh**e is assumed by the elderly ladies to be the only life available to a pretty young woman of no means. So we get a series of etiquette lessons with Gigi learning to pour coffee and (alert Freud) light cigars for men.
As I said, it's a showcase for MGM, and was a roaring success, with more than a few charming scenes."The Night They Invented Champagne" is rollicking good fun, and Chevalier and Gingold have an exceptionally fine duet of "I Remember It Well" before a blood-red sunset.
However. As much as I admire Chevalier, I can't say I appreciated his big opening solo, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." Innocent though it was meant to be, singing about their "little eyes, so helpless and appealing" is the wrong overture to a story about grooming schoolgirls on how to debase themselves. Sentiment was the wrong tone for Colette's original story, which was realistic and even scandalous when it was published in 1944. Her heroine, Gilberte a.k.a. Gigi, is not manipulated by others. She was witty and clever and self-aware, and ultimately accepts her fate as a courtesan, but on her own terms. Caron could have done that, too, with bells on. But, needless to say, that's not how Hollywood ends a musical.
It's a showcase for Paris, where much of it was filmed, and particularly for director Vincente Minnelli and designer Cecil Beaton who garnered two of the film's nine Oscars-- all of which were won by men, and it is entirely informed by masculine sensibilities. No wonder it goes off the rails.
Our hero Gaston (Louis Jourdan) is a wealthy young man who sings of his endless boredom to his uncle Honoré (Maurice Chevalier). Gaston is bored with everything-- Paris, beauty, wine, girls, horse racing, bullfights, Italy, picnics, lunches-- and I was bored with him in short order. The only place Gaston isn't bored is when he visits Mamita (Hermione Gingold), her daughter (whom we never see), and teen-age granddaughter, Gigi (Caron). Gigi is being taught by Mamita's sister, Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans), to become a courtesan, following in Alicia's silk slippers. Alicia looks back proudly on her life, having traded her body successfully enough with wealthy men to have her own handsome apartment and plenty of jewels and frocks. The life of a high-class wh**e is assumed by the elderly ladies to be the only life available to a pretty young woman of no means. So we get a series of etiquette lessons with Gigi learning to pour coffee and (alert Freud) light cigars for men.
As I said, it's a showcase for MGM, and was a roaring success, with more than a few charming scenes."The Night They Invented Champagne" is rollicking good fun, and Chevalier and Gingold have an exceptionally fine duet of "I Remember It Well" before a blood-red sunset.
However. As much as I admire Chevalier, I can't say I appreciated his big opening solo, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." Innocent though it was meant to be, singing about their "little eyes, so helpless and appealing" is the wrong overture to a story about grooming schoolgirls on how to debase themselves. Sentiment was the wrong tone for Colette's original story, which was realistic and even scandalous when it was published in 1944. Her heroine, Gilberte a.k.a. Gigi, is not manipulated by others. She was witty and clever and self-aware, and ultimately accepts her fate as a courtesan, but on her own terms. Caron could have done that, too, with bells on. But, needless to say, that's not how Hollywood ends a musical.
James Bond movies are spectacles, I get it, and I like action pictures. Even so, "GoldenEye" needed to be shorter and wittier. James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is given to wry quips, but the vast bulk involves him wrangling his way out of dangerous situations-- and kudos, because Brosnan controls his physical performance beautifully, with flowing movement interrupted by suddenly alert stops. (His actions remind me of the physical and mental balance required of athletes in biathalons). Alan Cumming is diverting as Boris, and Joe Don Baker provides comic relief. But Sean Bean is one of the lamest Bond villains, and Famke Janssen is over the top.
The action sequences are almost comical in themselves, or I should say farcical: the comedy of the absurd. Unfortunately, there's a fundamental problem common to all film franchises like 007's: we know the hero won't die. So instead of suspense, we are left with mere curiosity about how he'll escape, which he always does because fictional characters can be essentially immortal. "No Time To Die" was only the end of Daniel Craig's gig as Bond.
Then there are the Bond girls. The obligatory sex. The women in "GoldenEye," Famke Janssen and Izabella Scorupco, are gorgeous, of course. All Bond girls have to be because pulchritude is required when there is, again, no suspense in the romance. Actually, no romance, or very little. There is playful sexual tension with Miss Moneypenny, but I think Olga Kurylenko is the only real exception because she was Bond's respected ally in "Quantum of Solace," not a romantic partner until the chaste final kiss. "Quantum" was also one of the more realistic 007's, not all-out spectacle.
It all comes down to the writing, but that is a huge variable. So that leaves the lead actor, and I think Brosnan is second only to Sean Connery as tall, dark, and handsome 007, debonair but dangerous. My favorite Bond movie will probably always be the first, "Dr. No," because of Connery's indelible characterization of Bond, and his deft handling of the inaugural Bond movie, scripted by Richard Maibaum, who wrote (with collaborators) most of the first 16 Bond movies. Throwing more action at the screen is the easy way out.
The action sequences are almost comical in themselves, or I should say farcical: the comedy of the absurd. Unfortunately, there's a fundamental problem common to all film franchises like 007's: we know the hero won't die. So instead of suspense, we are left with mere curiosity about how he'll escape, which he always does because fictional characters can be essentially immortal. "No Time To Die" was only the end of Daniel Craig's gig as Bond.
Then there are the Bond girls. The obligatory sex. The women in "GoldenEye," Famke Janssen and Izabella Scorupco, are gorgeous, of course. All Bond girls have to be because pulchritude is required when there is, again, no suspense in the romance. Actually, no romance, or very little. There is playful sexual tension with Miss Moneypenny, but I think Olga Kurylenko is the only real exception because she was Bond's respected ally in "Quantum of Solace," not a romantic partner until the chaste final kiss. "Quantum" was also one of the more realistic 007's, not all-out spectacle.
It all comes down to the writing, but that is a huge variable. So that leaves the lead actor, and I think Brosnan is second only to Sean Connery as tall, dark, and handsome 007, debonair but dangerous. My favorite Bond movie will probably always be the first, "Dr. No," because of Connery's indelible characterization of Bond, and his deft handling of the inaugural Bond movie, scripted by Richard Maibaum, who wrote (with collaborators) most of the first 16 Bond movies. Throwing more action at the screen is the easy way out.
Unlike any other movie I've ever seen,
the plot is barely sufficient to sustain the interest of anybody who isn't besotted by Steve McQueen and/or Formula One racing. That's potentially a huge audience, and the film did well, but I can't imagine anybody who came just for McQueen would watch it again.
The movie must have been a dream for him, enamored as he was with high-speed vehicles. It's all about the cars and the drivers, many of whom were professionals, including Helmut Mark and Gijs van Lennep. You don't get to see much of France. All the footage is in and around Le Mans in the Pays de la Loire region, where a (roughly) 8.5-mile circuit of private and public roads is used in the annual 24-hour race. The movie has a strong documentary feel, with footage before, during, and after the race including shots of the actual crowd at the June 1970 staging, when filming took place. Cameras seem to be everywhere, and three editors did remarkable work to keep what is essentially turn left, turn left, turn left action lively and engaging. Two crashes are filmed, and both got me in the throat.
As for the plot, the widow, Lisa Belgetti (Elga Andersen), of a driver who was killed in the 1969 Le Mans race attends this year's, and crosses paths with Michael Delaney (McQueen), who bears tangential responsibility for her husband's death. In only a few encounters, Michael and Lisa convey a great deal of emotional content about how much blame she places on him for that crash; his regret for his inadvertent role; and, enhanced by that deep connection, a mutual attraction that will always be shadowed by Belgetti's death. Not much plot, as I said, but delicately and thoughtfully rendered enough to give the film real resonance.
The movie must have been a dream for him, enamored as he was with high-speed vehicles. It's all about the cars and the drivers, many of whom were professionals, including Helmut Mark and Gijs van Lennep. You don't get to see much of France. All the footage is in and around Le Mans in the Pays de la Loire region, where a (roughly) 8.5-mile circuit of private and public roads is used in the annual 24-hour race. The movie has a strong documentary feel, with footage before, during, and after the race including shots of the actual crowd at the June 1970 staging, when filming took place. Cameras seem to be everywhere, and three editors did remarkable work to keep what is essentially turn left, turn left, turn left action lively and engaging. Two crashes are filmed, and both got me in the throat.
As for the plot, the widow, Lisa Belgetti (Elga Andersen), of a driver who was killed in the 1969 Le Mans race attends this year's, and crosses paths with Michael Delaney (McQueen), who bears tangential responsibility for her husband's death. In only a few encounters, Michael and Lisa convey a great deal of emotional content about how much blame she places on him for that crash; his regret for his inadvertent role; and, enhanced by that deep connection, a mutual attraction that will always be shadowed by Belgetti's death. Not much plot, as I said, but delicately and thoughtfully rendered enough to give the film real resonance.
Most famous for making so-called women's pictures, "The Tarnished Angels" is anything but. Director Douglas Sirk speaks to men, just as fellow hombre William Faulkner did in the vigorous source novel, "Pylon," and Faulkner admired this adaptation.
It was shot in black-and-white to emphasize the bleakness of Depression-era America, but also in wide-screen CinemaScope (usually reserved for color movies) to accommodate the flying sequences as well as the many scenes with the shifting relationships of the core characters in spaces that range from open airfields to cramped apartments.
One alluringly ripe blonde, "lucious LaVerne" (Dorothy Malone), is the center of male attention. The least interested man seems to be her irascible husband Roger (Robert Stack), an Ohio boy who became a WWI flying ace. Treated as a hero by the French, he's nobody back home and, a decade later, during the Depression, the only way he can stay in the sky where he belongs is as a barnstorming pilot at airshows. His big and dumb but loyal mechanic, Jiggs (Jack Carson), holds a torch for LaVerne, whom he watches at airshows when she earns extra cash by parachute-jumping in dresses that all but blow off in the winds. But the fellow she'll do anything for is her son, nine-year-old Jack, especially after she learns how he's taunted by Roger's rivals ("Who's your father today, kid?").
At an airshow in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, a hard-drinking news reporter, Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), rescues the kid from such harassment, and smells a human interest story with some oomph, so he invites the quartet to crash at his apartment. He feels LaVerne's gravitational pull during a heart-to-heart at two in the morning when he finds her reading his copy of "My Ántonia"-- a book choice that speaks volumes to anyone who knows that novel. Devlin's heartfelt speech to a roomful of fellow reporters toward the end of the film is Hudson at his best, though his performance is solid throughout, as is Malone's. Stack shouts or simmers, but eventually earns respect as the gifted yet all-but-grounded pilot.
Just 91 minutes long, with Sirk's signature attention to detailed mise-en-scène, it includes shots of Mardi Gras revelers to remind viewers how masked we all are. "The Tarnished Angels" is the kind of movie that makes cinephiles remember why we ask, at every new frame or edit, "Why that choice?" Sirk's visual answers are lessons in cinema.
NB: I strongly recommend the insightful IMDb reviews by Lejink (14 Nov 2012) and zetes (4 Nov 2001)-- both of whom, I conclude from their invaluable points of view, are men.
It was shot in black-and-white to emphasize the bleakness of Depression-era America, but also in wide-screen CinemaScope (usually reserved for color movies) to accommodate the flying sequences as well as the many scenes with the shifting relationships of the core characters in spaces that range from open airfields to cramped apartments.
One alluringly ripe blonde, "lucious LaVerne" (Dorothy Malone), is the center of male attention. The least interested man seems to be her irascible husband Roger (Robert Stack), an Ohio boy who became a WWI flying ace. Treated as a hero by the French, he's nobody back home and, a decade later, during the Depression, the only way he can stay in the sky where he belongs is as a barnstorming pilot at airshows. His big and dumb but loyal mechanic, Jiggs (Jack Carson), holds a torch for LaVerne, whom he watches at airshows when she earns extra cash by parachute-jumping in dresses that all but blow off in the winds. But the fellow she'll do anything for is her son, nine-year-old Jack, especially after she learns how he's taunted by Roger's rivals ("Who's your father today, kid?").
At an airshow in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, a hard-drinking news reporter, Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), rescues the kid from such harassment, and smells a human interest story with some oomph, so he invites the quartet to crash at his apartment. He feels LaVerne's gravitational pull during a heart-to-heart at two in the morning when he finds her reading his copy of "My Ántonia"-- a book choice that speaks volumes to anyone who knows that novel. Devlin's heartfelt speech to a roomful of fellow reporters toward the end of the film is Hudson at his best, though his performance is solid throughout, as is Malone's. Stack shouts or simmers, but eventually earns respect as the gifted yet all-but-grounded pilot.
Just 91 minutes long, with Sirk's signature attention to detailed mise-en-scène, it includes shots of Mardi Gras revelers to remind viewers how masked we all are. "The Tarnished Angels" is the kind of movie that makes cinephiles remember why we ask, at every new frame or edit, "Why that choice?" Sirk's visual answers are lessons in cinema.
NB: I strongly recommend the insightful IMDb reviews by Lejink (14 Nov 2012) and zetes (4 Nov 2001)-- both of whom, I conclude from their invaluable points of view, are men.
Superficially a soap opera, "All That Heaven Allows" is a richly realized study of the social pressures encountered when an attractive fortyish widow (Jane Wyman as Cary) finds love with a free-spirited younger man (Rock Hudson as Ron) in a gossipy little New England town. All the right questions are asked, and answered, and while it threatens to sink to melodrama, it stays steadily afloat thanks to-- in ascending order-- a strong screenplay by Peg Fenwick; sensitive use of classical piano music by Liszt and Schumann; genuinely glorious photography by Russell Metty, particularly the lighting, with bold contrasting colors; and the kind of captivatingly detailed mise-en-scène that director Douglas Sirk is famous for.
The plot threatens to be heavy-handed and even didactic, but Sirk maintains a light touch. Ron's nonconformist friends welcome Cary cordially at a freewheeling lobster roast with singing and dancing. In strong contrast, Cary's friend (Agnes Moorhead), after reluctantly accepting the relationship, attempts to introduce the couple to Stoningham's country-club set-- a gathering that is anything but freewheeling. In fact it's disastrous because, with one exception (Conrad Nagel as Cary's suitor), they're all stereotypes of superficial and status-conscious suburbanites. Forced though the scene is because of that, you nevertheless feel the pressure on Cary, pressure which is soon magnified beyond tolerating when her son and daughter (William Reynolds and Gloria Talbott) hear about her plans to marry Ron. Although they are both away at college during the week, they are nevertheless selfishly outraged at what this will do to her reputation, and theirs, not to mention their father's when a rumor suggests that Cary began the affair with Ron while she was still married.
That genuine praise notwithstanding, I believe the movie could have been even more affecting if Jane Wyman had loosened up. Cary is an almost seamless continuation of her role opposite Hudson in Sirk's "Magnificent Obsession." In both movies, I had trouble understanding what attracted Hudson to an impeccably gracious matron. She exudes an easygoing warmth, but Wyman, still in her 30s, could easily have softened up a bit as Cary, or been given a playful wit-- something to make her sexy other than her slender figure. I realize that her maturity is what attracts Ron ("I've met girls," he says dismissively at one point), but I blinked twice when he invited her to see his tree farm. Screen chemistry is missing altogether. The heavenly allowance I had to make was a leap of faith.
The plot threatens to be heavy-handed and even didactic, but Sirk maintains a light touch. Ron's nonconformist friends welcome Cary cordially at a freewheeling lobster roast with singing and dancing. In strong contrast, Cary's friend (Agnes Moorhead), after reluctantly accepting the relationship, attempts to introduce the couple to Stoningham's country-club set-- a gathering that is anything but freewheeling. In fact it's disastrous because, with one exception (Conrad Nagel as Cary's suitor), they're all stereotypes of superficial and status-conscious suburbanites. Forced though the scene is because of that, you nevertheless feel the pressure on Cary, pressure which is soon magnified beyond tolerating when her son and daughter (William Reynolds and Gloria Talbott) hear about her plans to marry Ron. Although they are both away at college during the week, they are nevertheless selfishly outraged at what this will do to her reputation, and theirs, not to mention their father's when a rumor suggests that Cary began the affair with Ron while she was still married.
That genuine praise notwithstanding, I believe the movie could have been even more affecting if Jane Wyman had loosened up. Cary is an almost seamless continuation of her role opposite Hudson in Sirk's "Magnificent Obsession." In both movies, I had trouble understanding what attracted Hudson to an impeccably gracious matron. She exudes an easygoing warmth, but Wyman, still in her 30s, could easily have softened up a bit as Cary, or been given a playful wit-- something to make her sexy other than her slender figure. I realize that her maturity is what attracts Ron ("I've met girls," he says dismissively at one point), but I blinked twice when he invited her to see his tree farm. Screen chemistry is missing altogether. The heavenly allowance I had to make was a leap of faith.
Four writers are credited with the screenplay of "Smart Woman," including Alvah Bessie (later blacklisted) and Adela Rogers St. Johns. It was directed by Poland-born Edward A. Blatt, who worked mainly as a dialogue coach in Hollywood, but with Stanley Cortez ("The Magnificent Ambersons") behind the camera and Brian Aherne as her co-star, Constance Bennett had a fair chance of reviving her career, which flagged like almost everyone else's during World War II.
Engaging though Bennett always is on screen, however, "Smart Woman" feels like a vanity project. She plays Paula Rogers, a smart defense attorney-- and a uniquely stylish one. With costumes by Adrian, she is the only movie lawyer I have ever seen whose courtroom ensemble includes hats. That's rather amusing. What's damaging is the way she is always strategically lit and positioned for her best angle by Cortez, which constrains the natural movement a convincing performance requires.
Such fussy glamour undermines a workable plot involving a crooked District Attorney Wayne (Otto Kruger) and his mobster partner McCoy (Barry Sullivan), a man who has dirt on Paula that forces her to defend him after he murders Wayne. Prosecutor Robert Larrimore (Brian Aherne) falls for Paula, and takes a liking to her young son, and the whole thing plays out credibly enough until the dramatic moment when Paula takes the stand herself to testify on behalf of McCoy-- offering nothing but her impressions and emotions as evidence. As if.
As much as I enjoy Brian Aherne in anything, especially with James Gleason as his wry sidekick, "Smart Woman" would have been far better as a film noir, with a darker mood and an emphasis on the moral quandary of Paula's relationship to McCoy. Bennett had the talent to do that, but she evidently saw herself-- and wanted to be seen-- as a movie star first, and actress second.
Engaging though Bennett always is on screen, however, "Smart Woman" feels like a vanity project. She plays Paula Rogers, a smart defense attorney-- and a uniquely stylish one. With costumes by Adrian, she is the only movie lawyer I have ever seen whose courtroom ensemble includes hats. That's rather amusing. What's damaging is the way she is always strategically lit and positioned for her best angle by Cortez, which constrains the natural movement a convincing performance requires.
Such fussy glamour undermines a workable plot involving a crooked District Attorney Wayne (Otto Kruger) and his mobster partner McCoy (Barry Sullivan), a man who has dirt on Paula that forces her to defend him after he murders Wayne. Prosecutor Robert Larrimore (Brian Aherne) falls for Paula, and takes a liking to her young son, and the whole thing plays out credibly enough until the dramatic moment when Paula takes the stand herself to testify on behalf of McCoy-- offering nothing but her impressions and emotions as evidence. As if.
As much as I enjoy Brian Aherne in anything, especially with James Gleason as his wry sidekick, "Smart Woman" would have been far better as a film noir, with a darker mood and an emphasis on the moral quandary of Paula's relationship to McCoy. Bennett had the talent to do that, but she evidently saw herself-- and wanted to be seen-- as a movie star first, and actress second.
The style is Douglas Sirk, good for at least a 6 rating; the substance is hogwash, good for zero. To wit: "This is dangerous stuff," says a pontificating painter (Otto Kruger as Edward Randolph) to a wealthy playboy (Rock Hudson as Bob Merrick). "One of the first men who used it went to the cross at the age of thirty-three." By "it," Randolph means "perform secret services" that will make Bob receptive to "inexplicable energy which guarantees personal power." That mumbo-jumbo is from the 1929 best-seller by a minister, Lloyd C. Douglas-- a intellectually flawed novel that's the basis for this deeply flawed movie.
Sanctimonious swill permeates the plot: Bob's reformation comes about because he wants to make amends to the widow Helen Phillips (Jane Wyman) by performing some of those "secret services." When he boldly confronts her in public, she flees only to be hit by a car and blinded. Plots don't get soapier than that. But her blindness is crucial to the plot because Bob can now woo her, calling himself Robby, without her recognizing him as the man who, however inadvertently, caused her husband's death and then her own blindness.
I couldn't help thinking, especially when Randolph is pontificating to the sound of heavenly choral music, how much better the story would be if Merrick's reform had happened naturally as an awakening after his tangential role in Helen's double tragedy. There's no real need for the vague and pious hogwash. There's plenty of cinematic entertainment without it, starting with Russell Metty's lush photography around Arrowhead and Big Bear lakes in California, the mid-century modern homes of the wealthy characters, and the moody Swiss hotel where Helen goes for treatment. Sirk does his usual flawlessly fluid direction, even with Wyman and Hudson who not only lack screen chemistry (the age difference alone is problematic), but they aren't even realistic people (blindness is no barrier to Helen's perpetually perfect lipstick). They are characters devised to embody the spiritual hogwash. Stripped of that, this might have been a proper tearjerker.
Sanctimonious swill permeates the plot: Bob's reformation comes about because he wants to make amends to the widow Helen Phillips (Jane Wyman) by performing some of those "secret services." When he boldly confronts her in public, she flees only to be hit by a car and blinded. Plots don't get soapier than that. But her blindness is crucial to the plot because Bob can now woo her, calling himself Robby, without her recognizing him as the man who, however inadvertently, caused her husband's death and then her own blindness.
I couldn't help thinking, especially when Randolph is pontificating to the sound of heavenly choral music, how much better the story would be if Merrick's reform had happened naturally as an awakening after his tangential role in Helen's double tragedy. There's no real need for the vague and pious hogwash. There's plenty of cinematic entertainment without it, starting with Russell Metty's lush photography around Arrowhead and Big Bear lakes in California, the mid-century modern homes of the wealthy characters, and the moody Swiss hotel where Helen goes for treatment. Sirk does his usual flawlessly fluid direction, even with Wyman and Hudson who not only lack screen chemistry (the age difference alone is problematic), but they aren't even realistic people (blindness is no barrier to Helen's perpetually perfect lipstick). They are characters devised to embody the spiritual hogwash. Stripped of that, this might have been a proper tearjerker.
"B. F.'s Daughter" is as good as it is because of Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin-- especially Heflin. His character is saddled with such stubborn pride that it is only Heflin's steady and soft-spoken charm that redeems him.
It's the late 1930s in New York. A progressive scholar, the penniless Tom Brett (Heflin) meets Polly (Stanwyck), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, B. F. Fulton (Charles Coburn). They fall in love and marry, and Polly adapts to living modestly because Tom insists he make good entirely on his own, not needing or wanting help from anybody, ever. She's happy with him, but he's struggling to write a book, and with her connections, she knows she can help, so she does, behind his back: she guarantees profitability to a promoter if he hires Tom on a lecture tour.
Her faith in her husband is justified: Tom becomes such a success that he is soon wealthy in his own right. Delighted to return to the kind of lavish life she used to live, she builds them a mansion, believing that egalitarian Tom will not object. She's wrong-- he hates such extravagance. To top it off, now that he's a prominent intellectual, he is offered a position in Washington as a diplomat after Pearl Harbor.
But before his departure to D. C.-- and here's where the movie becomes flawed, where his pride seems petty-- he learns about Polly's early deception from a friend. Now he'll never know, he says, if he could have made it entirely on his own. But instead of talking with Polly about that deception-- all she did, after all, was give him the chance to prove his own worth-- he moves to D. C., where another contrived problem troubles their marriage: distrust. Polly succumbs to rumors that Tom is having an affair with a young European refugee (Barbara Laage in a delicate performance), who turns out to be a plot device: a woman who needs Tom in a way his own wife never seemed to.
The screenplay by Luther Davis ("Columbo," "Baretta," "Ironside") is a bowdlerized adaptation of John P. Marquand's controversial 1946 novel. The plot is kept afloat by cheap tactics-- Tom's stiff obstinacy and misunderstandings that could be corrected with two-minute conversations-- that only undermine what could have been a good hard look at a marriage of social opposites.
It's the late 1930s in New York. A progressive scholar, the penniless Tom Brett (Heflin) meets Polly (Stanwyck), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, B. F. Fulton (Charles Coburn). They fall in love and marry, and Polly adapts to living modestly because Tom insists he make good entirely on his own, not needing or wanting help from anybody, ever. She's happy with him, but he's struggling to write a book, and with her connections, she knows she can help, so she does, behind his back: she guarantees profitability to a promoter if he hires Tom on a lecture tour.
Her faith in her husband is justified: Tom becomes such a success that he is soon wealthy in his own right. Delighted to return to the kind of lavish life she used to live, she builds them a mansion, believing that egalitarian Tom will not object. She's wrong-- he hates such extravagance. To top it off, now that he's a prominent intellectual, he is offered a position in Washington as a diplomat after Pearl Harbor.
But before his departure to D. C.-- and here's where the movie becomes flawed, where his pride seems petty-- he learns about Polly's early deception from a friend. Now he'll never know, he says, if he could have made it entirely on his own. But instead of talking with Polly about that deception-- all she did, after all, was give him the chance to prove his own worth-- he moves to D. C., where another contrived problem troubles their marriage: distrust. Polly succumbs to rumors that Tom is having an affair with a young European refugee (Barbara Laage in a delicate performance), who turns out to be a plot device: a woman who needs Tom in a way his own wife never seemed to.
The screenplay by Luther Davis ("Columbo," "Baretta," "Ironside") is a bowdlerized adaptation of John P. Marquand's controversial 1946 novel. The plot is kept afloat by cheap tactics-- Tom's stiff obstinacy and misunderstandings that could be corrected with two-minute conversations-- that only undermine what could have been a good hard look at a marriage of social opposites.
A must for anyone who loves cinema. Rouben Mamoulian took his camera and *sound equipment* (that was a first) on location on the streets of New York City in 1929. It's of historic interest for that reason. But it's of artistic interest because of Mamoulian, who was as imaginative as any director, and far more so than almost all of his contemporaries. With cameraman George Folsey, he brings the city to life with a ragtag parade, a burlesque show that's so comically shabby it just has to be real, and scenes shot in the McKim, Mead and White Pennsylvania Station and from the roof of a downtown skyscraper, all of which give us a strong sense of New York in the year before the stock market crash.
The story is melodramatic and sentimental, but with Helen Morgan giving it her all as an aging, hard-drinking burlesque dancer, you'll be sorry it's over in 80 minutes-- ending as it began, with a poster advertising her as the star she never was.
The story is melodramatic and sentimental, but with Helen Morgan giving it her all as an aging, hard-drinking burlesque dancer, you'll be sorry it's over in 80 minutes-- ending as it began, with a poster advertising her as the star she never was.
In the first scene, Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is with his psychiatrist (Faye Dunaway), who asks, "Has it occurred to you that you have a problem with trust?" That question cuts to the heart of Norman Jewison's smart existential original "Thomas Crown Affair," letting me hope that this remake by John McTiernan would measure up.
Sadly, no. In the original, Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is a man who only feels alive when he puts himself at risk. In this remake, Pierce Brosnan is a kinder, gentler Tommy, a rich man with risky hobbies. While many critics and viewers mistook the original as a love story following a heist, this remake actually *is* just heist movie with a love story.
McTiernan, who is a great action director, chickened out. All the trappings of the first film are there-- the flagrant wealth; the dangerous stunts; the bold female investigator (Renee Russo) who challenges Crown; a clever heist, though the loot is paintings, not cash; and sex, but instead of being erotic, McTiernan settles for nudity. He adds smartly, too, though, e.g., the "holy game of poker."
What's missing is Crown's fatal flaw: McQueen's Tommy Crown has to live on the thrilling edge, not just in sport but in his career and his life. He's reluctant to begin an affair with the investigator (Dunaway) because he knows that trusting each other is out of the question, which means love is out of the question even though she is the closest thing to a soulmate that he will ever know: there is tragedy in that, which deepens the emotions. But while Brosnan's Crown pushes the envelope for excitement in a glider and on a racing catamaran, he's in control of that weakness. He has an affair with Russo (whose hair upstages her in every scene), and tests her veracity by letting her think he's two-timing her, so when she has the jealous fit that proves she cares, he knows he can trust her. It's clever, and it's entertaining, but it's not Steve McQueen risking everything because he has no choice. Brosnan's Tom Crown has been tamed.
Sadly, no. In the original, Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is a man who only feels alive when he puts himself at risk. In this remake, Pierce Brosnan is a kinder, gentler Tommy, a rich man with risky hobbies. While many critics and viewers mistook the original as a love story following a heist, this remake actually *is* just heist movie with a love story.
McTiernan, who is a great action director, chickened out. All the trappings of the first film are there-- the flagrant wealth; the dangerous stunts; the bold female investigator (Renee Russo) who challenges Crown; a clever heist, though the loot is paintings, not cash; and sex, but instead of being erotic, McTiernan settles for nudity. He adds smartly, too, though, e.g., the "holy game of poker."
What's missing is Crown's fatal flaw: McQueen's Tommy Crown has to live on the thrilling edge, not just in sport but in his career and his life. He's reluctant to begin an affair with the investigator (Dunaway) because he knows that trusting each other is out of the question, which means love is out of the question even though she is the closest thing to a soulmate that he will ever know: there is tragedy in that, which deepens the emotions. But while Brosnan's Crown pushes the envelope for excitement in a glider and on a racing catamaran, he's in control of that weakness. He has an affair with Russo (whose hair upstages her in every scene), and tests her veracity by letting her think he's two-timing her, so when she has the jealous fit that proves she cares, he knows he can trust her. It's clever, and it's entertaining, but it's not Steve McQueen risking everything because he has no choice. Brosnan's Tom Crown has been tamed.
Let's start with the downsides because there aren't many, but they are why this isn't one of Buster Keaton's greatest movies. Some of the gags are clumsy or protracted-- the swimming pool, raining in the rumble seat, the window getting broken over and over, the cop who keeps showing up and thinks cameraman Buster is insane. And Keaton himself, in one small way: though he was only 33, was already showing too much age to still be playing an innocent youth who falls for and fumbles around a pretty girl (Marceline Day).
But Keaton is still Keaton, who could make his comical stunts astounding with his fearless and perfectly controlled athleticism. The scene in Yankee Stadium could not be improved upon. The filming of Buster while he's filming the Tong War is eye-popping-- and would be even without the introduction of little Josephine, Hollywood's go-to monkey.
I especially admired a brief scene for its irony: Meant to show how inept Buster was, the footage he shot of a fire brigade is laughed at a screening for newsreel bosses, but it is a surrealistic delight of street scenes in New York double-exposed and shown on top of each other and in shifting matrices. Far from being a mess, it's one of Keaton's signature inventive cinematic tricks, like the delightful and still-fresh dream sequence in "Sherlock, Jr." His greatness was still evident, but for the last time.
But Keaton is still Keaton, who could make his comical stunts astounding with his fearless and perfectly controlled athleticism. The scene in Yankee Stadium could not be improved upon. The filming of Buster while he's filming the Tong War is eye-popping-- and would be even without the introduction of little Josephine, Hollywood's go-to monkey.
I especially admired a brief scene for its irony: Meant to show how inept Buster was, the footage he shot of a fire brigade is laughed at a screening for newsreel bosses, but it is a surrealistic delight of street scenes in New York double-exposed and shown on top of each other and in shifting matrices. Far from being a mess, it's one of Keaton's signature inventive cinematic tricks, like the delightful and still-fresh dream sequence in "Sherlock, Jr." His greatness was still evident, but for the last time.
If there is a key scene in this ultra-cool movie, it's the least cool one: early in their affair, Crown (McQueen) and Vicki (Dunaway) are having breakfast and he's already getting bored. This is a picture of a fearless man who feeds on excitement to feel alive. Vicki gives him that in bed, and during one wow of a chess game (the lighting and the shifting backgrounds and close-ups should be shown in film school), but most of all she captivates him by admitting in their very first conversation that she has been hired to prove he's behind a $2 million bank heist.
I can't think of another crime film where the mastermind is the only person who has all the information about the heist, having orchestrated it so carefully that the men who carry it off never even meet him, or hear his real voice. The heist itself is orchestrated with equal care in the film, with hints dropped along the way for the audience, which makes us begin to feel like Crown's only confidantes. Once Crown gets that money into a Swiss bank, he is set for life-- except that the excitement of the heist is now over. Boredom looms like a death threat. Now his problem is, as he says, "Who I want to be tomorrow."
Enter Vicki, boldly challenging his freedom to be anything but a jailbird. Very well paid as an insurance investigator, she admits she's in it for the money. Wealth is so important to both of them, for their own reasons, that it dooms their love-- and it is the real thing, a passionate attraction between soulmates. But love can't survive without trust, and they cannot trust each other. The money from the heist came between them. That's the genius of the plot, which is a love story sans romance: they're both too tough to get mushy.
Director Norman Jewison has impressive range (from Doris Day to "In the Heat of the Night" to "The Hurricane"), and he, film editor Hal Ashby, and DP Haskell Wexler were given the gift that is the taut screenplay by Alan Trustman ("Bullitt"). Dialog is minimal. The story is told cinematically, with not one unnecessary frame. Why the polo and dune buggy, and the glider with "Windmills of my Mind" repeating on the soundtrack? Because, with the dynamic filming and editing, we ride and fly along with Crown who will live on the edge or die trying. Why the split screen with moving images? Because it efficiently adds action without adding bulk. Why does he walk with Vicki through Mount Auburn Cemetery? Because his urgent need to feel alive might be felt most acutely among the dead, and she's right there beside him. Two sides of the same coin-- and it's money that will keep them apart.
I could go on. This movie is a masterpiece of cinema. Critics and viewers who think of it as a heist movie with a love story need to look at it again. The rewards keep coming, frame after frame.
I can't think of another crime film where the mastermind is the only person who has all the information about the heist, having orchestrated it so carefully that the men who carry it off never even meet him, or hear his real voice. The heist itself is orchestrated with equal care in the film, with hints dropped along the way for the audience, which makes us begin to feel like Crown's only confidantes. Once Crown gets that money into a Swiss bank, he is set for life-- except that the excitement of the heist is now over. Boredom looms like a death threat. Now his problem is, as he says, "Who I want to be tomorrow."
Enter Vicki, boldly challenging his freedom to be anything but a jailbird. Very well paid as an insurance investigator, she admits she's in it for the money. Wealth is so important to both of them, for their own reasons, that it dooms their love-- and it is the real thing, a passionate attraction between soulmates. But love can't survive without trust, and they cannot trust each other. The money from the heist came between them. That's the genius of the plot, which is a love story sans romance: they're both too tough to get mushy.
Director Norman Jewison has impressive range (from Doris Day to "In the Heat of the Night" to "The Hurricane"), and he, film editor Hal Ashby, and DP Haskell Wexler were given the gift that is the taut screenplay by Alan Trustman ("Bullitt"). Dialog is minimal. The story is told cinematically, with not one unnecessary frame. Why the polo and dune buggy, and the glider with "Windmills of my Mind" repeating on the soundtrack? Because, with the dynamic filming and editing, we ride and fly along with Crown who will live on the edge or die trying. Why the split screen with moving images? Because it efficiently adds action without adding bulk. Why does he walk with Vicki through Mount Auburn Cemetery? Because his urgent need to feel alive might be felt most acutely among the dead, and she's right there beside him. Two sides of the same coin-- and it's money that will keep them apart.
I could go on. This movie is a masterpiece of cinema. Critics and viewers who think of it as a heist movie with a love story need to look at it again. The rewards keep coming, frame after frame.
Brian Aherne does a fine comic turn as David Garrick, the legendary British actor who travels to Paris to star as Don Juan in a new production at the Comédie-Française, France's national theater. Unfortunately, before he arrives they get word that he plans to teach them "how to act," an insult that results in the company seeking revenge. Playwright Beaumarchais (Lionell Atwill) then writes them a plot: : they waylay Garrick at a country inn and proceed to teach him a lesson-- or they try to. He and his valet, Tubby (Edward Everett Horton), see right through their antics and foil the plot, only to be foiled themselves by a lady traveler (Olivia de Havilland) whom they wrongly assume is part of the troupe.
A lot of lively fun is had, with crisp and witty dialog from the original play by Ernest Vajda. Melville Cooper is particularly well cast as the troupe's director, but Luis Alberni is featured and his histrionics become exhausting. It's not entirely Alberni's fault. Director James Whale doesn't have a light enough touch for this kind of antic comedy; most scenes go on too long, and only Aherne and Horton can bring it off with the required flair (at least until Garrick's final speech).
As for De Havilland, she's lovely, but it's an ingénue role and she's mostly reduced to luminous close-ups. The production itself is stagey, but made dynamic by Whale's great DP, Ernest Haller, who was nominated for seven Oscars (winning "Gone with the Wind"), and whose career extended from the silent era to the 1960s with "Lilies of the Field."
A lot of lively fun is had, with crisp and witty dialog from the original play by Ernest Vajda. Melville Cooper is particularly well cast as the troupe's director, but Luis Alberni is featured and his histrionics become exhausting. It's not entirely Alberni's fault. Director James Whale doesn't have a light enough touch for this kind of antic comedy; most scenes go on too long, and only Aherne and Horton can bring it off with the required flair (at least until Garrick's final speech).
As for De Havilland, she's lovely, but it's an ingénue role and she's mostly reduced to luminous close-ups. The production itself is stagey, but made dynamic by Whale's great DP, Ernest Haller, who was nominated for seven Oscars (winning "Gone with the Wind"), and whose career extended from the silent era to the 1960s with "Lilies of the Field."
I haven't seen every Cold War espionage film (and I never want to meet anyone who has), but from the many I have watched, "Funeral in Berlin" is the one to beat. I'll even put it ahead of films of John Le Carré novels (Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman notwitstanding). The brilliance is Harry Palmer's character, a reluctant spy with a prison record. He has a useful set of pals-- fellow thieves and the like-- whom he calls upon occasionally. He's smart and capable as well as wry and charming, which is crucial for us to admire him. But what matters even more is his cynicism. His dark view sheds light on the whole era because he sees the work of MI6 during the Cold War as the intricate, costly, swollen, and yet very dangerous game of who-do-you-trust that it boiled down to.
Caine delivers a superbly balanced performance, with vigorous support from Oscar Homolka, as a would-be defector from the East, and Eva Renzi as an Israeli agent. It's smartly written, with the complexities of the spy vs spy vs spy plot gaining greater clarity and resonance because one of the nations is seeking justice after the Holocaust. It may be the best film Guy Hamilton ever directed, and it's worth reading about Otto Heller's approach to cinematography (according to Caine, Heller pretended to use a light meter because it was expected of DPs).
Palmer was evidently created as a response to James Bond, who was almost cartoonish. But Palmer is also an improvement on the Le Carré films, including "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," which was almost too serious. "The Bridge of Spies" is impressive and has a lot of heart, but it was shot in Berlin decades after the Cold War so it isn't as visually raw as "Funeral in Berlin." As for Florian Henckel Von Donnersmark's masterpiece, "The Lives of Others," it is about domestic surveillance, not international espionage. Finally, the first Palmer movie, "The Ipcress File," is absolutely worth seeing as an introduction to the MI6 characters and the whole byzantine who-do-you-trust game, but it is not as sophisticated a piece of filmmaking with its protracted torture scenes and abrupt ending.
Caine delivers a superbly balanced performance, with vigorous support from Oscar Homolka, as a would-be defector from the East, and Eva Renzi as an Israeli agent. It's smartly written, with the complexities of the spy vs spy vs spy plot gaining greater clarity and resonance because one of the nations is seeking justice after the Holocaust. It may be the best film Guy Hamilton ever directed, and it's worth reading about Otto Heller's approach to cinematography (according to Caine, Heller pretended to use a light meter because it was expected of DPs).
Palmer was evidently created as a response to James Bond, who was almost cartoonish. But Palmer is also an improvement on the Le Carré films, including "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," which was almost too serious. "The Bridge of Spies" is impressive and has a lot of heart, but it was shot in Berlin decades after the Cold War so it isn't as visually raw as "Funeral in Berlin." As for Florian Henckel Von Donnersmark's masterpiece, "The Lives of Others," it is about domestic surveillance, not international espionage. Finally, the first Palmer movie, "The Ipcress File," is absolutely worth seeing as an introduction to the MI6 characters and the whole byzantine who-do-you-trust game, but it is not as sophisticated a piece of filmmaking with its protracted torture scenes and abrupt ending.
Max Steiner wrote the music for both films, but "The Unfaithful" can't hold a candle to "The Letter," the moody 1940 film with one of his greatest scores and Bette Davis as the homicidal wife. Both are based on the W. Somerset Maugham story set in the Far East, but the plot is barely recognizable here, transposed to Los Angeles after World War II, and with an inculpatory sculpture replacing the eponymous letter.
We meet Chris Hunter (Ann Sheridan) the night she stabs a man named Tanner, who was apparently an intruder in her home. Her husband, Bob (Zachary Scott), returns from a business trip in the morning to find Detective Reynolds (John Hoyt) processing the crime scene downstairs while Chris is upstairs with their lawyer, Larry Hannaford (Lew Ayres).
Chris's true motive is revealed when a shopowner (Steven Geray), who owns a bust that Tanner sculpted of her, proposes a little blackmail. Chris is forced to confess, after which Bob demands a divorce. As in "The Letter," Chris ends up on trial, but there the two films part ways, with "The Unfaithful" taking the Hollywood way out. 'Nuf said.
It's entertaining enough as a murder mystery. Ernest Haller's camera is a tad darker than his work on "Mildred Pierce," and Vincent Sherman directs efficiently. Sheridan's strong performance is supported by both Ayers and Scott, but especially by Eve Arden. She enlivens the film in her signature role-- the catty, wise-cracking friend who nevertheless stands firmly beside Chris. Arden's character is the one departure from the original that actually adds rather than detracts from the story.
We meet Chris Hunter (Ann Sheridan) the night she stabs a man named Tanner, who was apparently an intruder in her home. Her husband, Bob (Zachary Scott), returns from a business trip in the morning to find Detective Reynolds (John Hoyt) processing the crime scene downstairs while Chris is upstairs with their lawyer, Larry Hannaford (Lew Ayres).
Chris's true motive is revealed when a shopowner (Steven Geray), who owns a bust that Tanner sculpted of her, proposes a little blackmail. Chris is forced to confess, after which Bob demands a divorce. As in "The Letter," Chris ends up on trial, but there the two films part ways, with "The Unfaithful" taking the Hollywood way out. 'Nuf said.
It's entertaining enough as a murder mystery. Ernest Haller's camera is a tad darker than his work on "Mildred Pierce," and Vincent Sherman directs efficiently. Sheridan's strong performance is supported by both Ayers and Scott, but especially by Eve Arden. She enlivens the film in her signature role-- the catty, wise-cracking friend who nevertheless stands firmly beside Chris. Arden's character is the one departure from the original that actually adds rather than detracts from the story.
Cinematographer Joseph Biroc, whose career spanned decades, from "It's a Wonderful Life" to "Blazing Saddles," provides the best reason to see this movie: his noirish nighttime tour of Times Square in the early 1950s. The movie is cobbled-together propaganda about the United Nations. With its eponymous glass walls, it is treated like Oz-- the answer to every man's prayers. Hope sprang eternal in the early 50s, I guess.
Peter Kuban (Gassman), an Auschwitz refugee without papers, jumps ship in New York harbor, breaking a rib and becoming a fugitive. The most preposterous element is then introduced: his face on the front page of a tabloid. As if. He goes in his search for an American G. I., a jazz clarinetist named Tom (Jerry Paris), whom he befriended in Europe. At a cafe, he stumbles into a petty thief, Maggie Summers (Grahame), and together they dodge the police as well as Maggie's landlady and her horny son (Richard Reeves). The cops manage to nab Maggie, and at the precinct, she meets Tom, who saw the tabloid and wants to help Kuban. Now everybody is after Kuban, who is still on the run and eventually finds his way to the glassy new United Nations Secretariat-- specifically the roof, where more Biroc photography distracts from the half-baked plot.
Vittorio Gassman and Gloria Grahame, their fabulous faces often framed in close-ups, contribute some screen chemistry, but suspension of disbelief is required throughout, as well as forgiveness of every lovers-on-the-run cliché in cinema history. The final desperate bromide from screenwriter Ivan Tors (producer of the "Flipper" TV series), spoken by Gassman: "As long as there is one man who can't walk free where he wants, as long as there is one displaced person without a home, there won't be peace because to each man, he is the world."
Peter Kuban (Gassman), an Auschwitz refugee without papers, jumps ship in New York harbor, breaking a rib and becoming a fugitive. The most preposterous element is then introduced: his face on the front page of a tabloid. As if. He goes in his search for an American G. I., a jazz clarinetist named Tom (Jerry Paris), whom he befriended in Europe. At a cafe, he stumbles into a petty thief, Maggie Summers (Grahame), and together they dodge the police as well as Maggie's landlady and her horny son (Richard Reeves). The cops manage to nab Maggie, and at the precinct, she meets Tom, who saw the tabloid and wants to help Kuban. Now everybody is after Kuban, who is still on the run and eventually finds his way to the glassy new United Nations Secretariat-- specifically the roof, where more Biroc photography distracts from the half-baked plot.
Vittorio Gassman and Gloria Grahame, their fabulous faces often framed in close-ups, contribute some screen chemistry, but suspension of disbelief is required throughout, as well as forgiveness of every lovers-on-the-run cliché in cinema history. The final desperate bromide from screenwriter Ivan Tors (producer of the "Flipper" TV series), spoken by Gassman: "As long as there is one man who can't walk free where he wants, as long as there is one displaced person without a home, there won't be peace because to each man, he is the world."
With inventive filmmaking typical of Rouben Mamoulian, this ambitious quasi-musical features an enormous cast in a seriocomic tale of farmers in Pennsylvania. The twist: they discover oil in the 1850s and begin building derricks-- Amish barn-raising-style. That's just one crisply edited sequence in a lively film that includes a medicine show, a rollicking country wedding, old ladies recalling young love, a full-blown square dance, gambling saloons when Titusville becomes a boom town and the righteous zealots who rout the revelers in a torchlit night raid.
Among the treats: Irene Dunne feeding pigs in the flouncy number she wore the night before, Akim Tamiroff beset by cats, a youthful Dorothy Lamour, Ben Blue in a rare controlled comic performance, Alan Hale as a blissfully ruthless railroad baron, as well loads of livestock, including circus elephants in a wild chase scene. Except when it sinks to the romance between Dunne and Randolph Scott, the dialog smartly leavens folksiness with wit.
Sound hadn't been mastered by 1937 (and this obscure film has yet to be restored, the best print I found was on youtube), so Irene Dunne is rather screechy-- Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II never sounded worse-- but the music has a wonderful country simplicity. I was happy enough to be long on the ride as it reeled from charming to poignant to goofy. It's a must for everyone who appreciates Mamoulian-- and is there a cinephile who doesn't?
Among the treats: Irene Dunne feeding pigs in the flouncy number she wore the night before, Akim Tamiroff beset by cats, a youthful Dorothy Lamour, Ben Blue in a rare controlled comic performance, Alan Hale as a blissfully ruthless railroad baron, as well loads of livestock, including circus elephants in a wild chase scene. Except when it sinks to the romance between Dunne and Randolph Scott, the dialog smartly leavens folksiness with wit.
Sound hadn't been mastered by 1937 (and this obscure film has yet to be restored, the best print I found was on youtube), so Irene Dunne is rather screechy-- Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II never sounded worse-- but the music has a wonderful country simplicity. I was happy enough to be long on the ride as it reeled from charming to poignant to goofy. It's a must for everyone who appreciates Mamoulian-- and is there a cinephile who doesn't?
A truly extraordinary series, "Homicide: Life on the Street" earned three Peabody Awards because of the quality of the writing, the mise-en-scène in Baltimore, the cinéma-vérité look by DP Jean de Segonzac, and the cast. The shifting ensemble is impressive enough; add to that the multitude of actors who populate the 122 episodes from 1993-1999. It was admired in the industry, too, if we can judge by the kind of actors it attracted including Steve Allen, Steve Buscemi, Joan Chen, Vincent D'Onofrio, Edie Falco, Paul Giamatti, Moses Gun, James Earl Jones, Anne Meara, Terry O'Quinn, Chris Rock, Eric Stoltz, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, Alfre Woodard, and Jeffrey Wright.
Andre Braugher caught national attention as Jesuit-educated detective Frank Pembleton for good reason, but I would single out another character as the one whose arc provides the most resonant story line: Detective Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond) was introduced in 1995 as an arson specialist whose skills impress Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) of the homicide division. But Kellerman hits the skids during a corruption investigation: he watched as his colleagues in arson accepted bribes from a real estate mogul who set fires to collect insurance. Kellerman gets caught in the net with them, a good cop now part of a very publicized investigation that forces him to choose between ratting on the others or allowing himself to be railroaded. He squirms off that hook, but it leaves him with a clouded reputation, which makes him increasingly cynical about police work.
Season after season we watch his anger grow, making it hard to watch. We want to admire him, but his toxic cynicism eventually drives him to execute a murderous local drug lord, Luther Mahoney (Erik Todd Dellums), rather than arrest him, an event witnessed by fellow detectives Lewis (Clark Johnson) and Stivers (Toni Lewis) who then become two more good cops who can't rat on their colleague.
The fallout from the Mahoney murder is particularly strong because of a cast that includes Mekhi Phifer and Hazelle Goodman. Complexities are introduced as people begin to suspect Kellerman, Lewis, and Stivers of falsifying the report. Little by little, episode by episode, it remains in the background as Kellerman seethes, deflecting the action is taken to investigate the shooting, but finally, in the penultimate episode of Season 6, it all comes to a head with a gunfight in the squad room. Not everyone survives, but Kellerman does-- though his life and his career will never be the same.
Showrunner Tom Fontana stayed with the Kellerman story, even as dozens and dozens of other plots flowed around it. He put a lot of faith in Reed Diamond, a boyish-looking actor with the talents to make us hope for his redemption. I can't think of another character in network television with a stronger, more complex and persuasive reality.
Andre Braugher caught national attention as Jesuit-educated detective Frank Pembleton for good reason, but I would single out another character as the one whose arc provides the most resonant story line: Detective Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond) was introduced in 1995 as an arson specialist whose skills impress Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) of the homicide division. But Kellerman hits the skids during a corruption investigation: he watched as his colleagues in arson accepted bribes from a real estate mogul who set fires to collect insurance. Kellerman gets caught in the net with them, a good cop now part of a very publicized investigation that forces him to choose between ratting on the others or allowing himself to be railroaded. He squirms off that hook, but it leaves him with a clouded reputation, which makes him increasingly cynical about police work.
Season after season we watch his anger grow, making it hard to watch. We want to admire him, but his toxic cynicism eventually drives him to execute a murderous local drug lord, Luther Mahoney (Erik Todd Dellums), rather than arrest him, an event witnessed by fellow detectives Lewis (Clark Johnson) and Stivers (Toni Lewis) who then become two more good cops who can't rat on their colleague.
The fallout from the Mahoney murder is particularly strong because of a cast that includes Mekhi Phifer and Hazelle Goodman. Complexities are introduced as people begin to suspect Kellerman, Lewis, and Stivers of falsifying the report. Little by little, episode by episode, it remains in the background as Kellerman seethes, deflecting the action is taken to investigate the shooting, but finally, in the penultimate episode of Season 6, it all comes to a head with a gunfight in the squad room. Not everyone survives, but Kellerman does-- though his life and his career will never be the same.
Showrunner Tom Fontana stayed with the Kellerman story, even as dozens and dozens of other plots flowed around it. He put a lot of faith in Reed Diamond, a boyish-looking actor with the talents to make us hope for his redemption. I can't think of another character in network television with a stronger, more complex and persuasive reality.
The Doctorow novel, which I haven't read, has been described as having "comic heft." That's gone, and what's left is as boring a gangster movie as I ever hope to suffer through. We watch Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman) during the months in 1935 as he awaits trial for tax evasion-- not one of your livelier crimes, though it can be entertaining in the right hands (e.g., De Palma's "The Untouchables").
But this movie isn't really about criminals: it's a love story about a woman (Nicole Kidman) coveted by three men: Schultz and two of his men, enforcer Bo (Bruce Willis), and protégé Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean).
The problems? For starters, Hoffman is about as menacing as Elmer Fudd. Bruce Willis displays some range, but he's in cement shoes early on. Loren Dean's career peaked here; 'nuf said. The central role, though, is Mrs Preston (Kidman), and what a rare creature she is-- socialite by day, moll by night. "I'm not his girl, he's my gangster," she says of Schultz, which sums up her character: femme fatale. Mostly Kidman smiles and flirts and swans around in gowns or nightgowns.
On the upside, Stanley Tucci is always welcome, but his role as Lucky Luciano is almost a cameo. And two Steve's do quality work: Steve Buscemi who gets almost no dialog as one of Schultz's gunsels, and Steven Hill as his efficient fixer.
Designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and cinematographer Néstor Almendros at least make the film visually interesting. Uninspired direction by Robert Benton includes full blackouts between sequences for no good reason (is there ever a reason?). Most disappointing, though, is the screenplay by Tom Stoppard, which is so far beneath his works of genius-- e.g., "Travesties"-- that I feared I'd get the bends before it was over.
But this movie isn't really about criminals: it's a love story about a woman (Nicole Kidman) coveted by three men: Schultz and two of his men, enforcer Bo (Bruce Willis), and protégé Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean).
The problems? For starters, Hoffman is about as menacing as Elmer Fudd. Bruce Willis displays some range, but he's in cement shoes early on. Loren Dean's career peaked here; 'nuf said. The central role, though, is Mrs Preston (Kidman), and what a rare creature she is-- socialite by day, moll by night. "I'm not his girl, he's my gangster," she says of Schultz, which sums up her character: femme fatale. Mostly Kidman smiles and flirts and swans around in gowns or nightgowns.
On the upside, Stanley Tucci is always welcome, but his role as Lucky Luciano is almost a cameo. And two Steve's do quality work: Steve Buscemi who gets almost no dialog as one of Schultz's gunsels, and Steven Hill as his efficient fixer.
Designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and cinematographer Néstor Almendros at least make the film visually interesting. Uninspired direction by Robert Benton includes full blackouts between sequences for no good reason (is there ever a reason?). Most disappointing, though, is the screenplay by Tom Stoppard, which is so far beneath his works of genius-- e.g., "Travesties"-- that I feared I'd get the bends before it was over.
A smartly structured freight train of a movie, "Uncut Gems" is about a man with no control over his worst instincts. A compulsive gambler deeply in debt, Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) cons anyone and everyone with motor-mouth lies while he scrambles for cash. A low-life, right? Yes, but he doesn't look like one. He's one of the Jewish diamond merchants on West 47th Street, with a wife and kids in the suburbs.
Such normalcy is almost shocking halfway through: All day we watch this desperate con man reel from one intensely stressful encounter to another, avoiding enemies including thugs, arranging a tryst with a mistress (Julia Fox) he keeps in a posh apartment. Then, at nightfall, we watch him drive his family to their modest mansion, where he ends his day by hauling two big garbage bins out to the curb. We watch that, too, boring though it is, because this is the whole life of one very f'd up family man.
Though it is a New York movie, thoroughly and convincingly, it begins in Ethiopia, where Africans mine for gemstones in harrowing conditions. Ratner manages to acquire an uncut 'precious opal,' worth a million or more, and plans to auction it. But his diamond business caters to the bling market, with at least one favored customer, NBA player Kevin Garnett playing himself, or a superstitious version of himself. So Ratner offers him ownership but also tries to leverage his possession of the opal (and other items) every which way-- borrowing against, pawning, trading-- before he turns it over to the auctioneers.
The movie is more than two hours long for good reason. A great deal is revealed about character and the nature of close relationships in Ratner's tête-à-têtes with his wife (Idina Menzel), his daughter, his son, his father-in-law (Judd Hirsch), his mistress, and, for a potent reason, one of the men he owes serious money to, Arno (Eric Bogosian).
The Safdie brothers, who wrote and directed, made a decision to exclude two things that a lesser movie would wallow in: drugs and, to a large extent, guns. The men after Ratner threaten, abuse, and humiliate him, but it makes little sense to kill someone who owes you money. But Ratner is thoughtlessly rude, and he makes the mistake of not realizing how much he is loathed by one of Arno's enforcers (Keith William Richards, very convincing). Ratner's relentlessness, the exhausting stream of lies, almost makes you hope for the hard comeuppance he deserves. Almost. But "uncut gems" can also refer to individuals, and the movie respects the complexities of humanity too much for us to expect anything as simple as plot-satisfying revenge.
If I had to choose the dialog that sealed the quality of this movie, it would something Kevin Garnett says to Ratner, "Let me get this straight. You gave some guys in Ethiopia a hundred thousand dollars for something you believed was worth a million and you don't see anything wrong with that?" Ratner doesn't. Because that's the kind of high-living low-life he is. A greedy, opportunistic fool with a gambling addiction and a mistress, a gonif who takes out the garbage so he expects his teen daughter (Noa Fisher) to care when he says he's proud of her.
Why a 9 rating, not a 10? Because this is probably the best work Adam Sandler will ever do, but he is not a great actor.
Such normalcy is almost shocking halfway through: All day we watch this desperate con man reel from one intensely stressful encounter to another, avoiding enemies including thugs, arranging a tryst with a mistress (Julia Fox) he keeps in a posh apartment. Then, at nightfall, we watch him drive his family to their modest mansion, where he ends his day by hauling two big garbage bins out to the curb. We watch that, too, boring though it is, because this is the whole life of one very f'd up family man.
Though it is a New York movie, thoroughly and convincingly, it begins in Ethiopia, where Africans mine for gemstones in harrowing conditions. Ratner manages to acquire an uncut 'precious opal,' worth a million or more, and plans to auction it. But his diamond business caters to the bling market, with at least one favored customer, NBA player Kevin Garnett playing himself, or a superstitious version of himself. So Ratner offers him ownership but also tries to leverage his possession of the opal (and other items) every which way-- borrowing against, pawning, trading-- before he turns it over to the auctioneers.
The movie is more than two hours long for good reason. A great deal is revealed about character and the nature of close relationships in Ratner's tête-à-têtes with his wife (Idina Menzel), his daughter, his son, his father-in-law (Judd Hirsch), his mistress, and, for a potent reason, one of the men he owes serious money to, Arno (Eric Bogosian).
The Safdie brothers, who wrote and directed, made a decision to exclude two things that a lesser movie would wallow in: drugs and, to a large extent, guns. The men after Ratner threaten, abuse, and humiliate him, but it makes little sense to kill someone who owes you money. But Ratner is thoughtlessly rude, and he makes the mistake of not realizing how much he is loathed by one of Arno's enforcers (Keith William Richards, very convincing). Ratner's relentlessness, the exhausting stream of lies, almost makes you hope for the hard comeuppance he deserves. Almost. But "uncut gems" can also refer to individuals, and the movie respects the complexities of humanity too much for us to expect anything as simple as plot-satisfying revenge.
If I had to choose the dialog that sealed the quality of this movie, it would something Kevin Garnett says to Ratner, "Let me get this straight. You gave some guys in Ethiopia a hundred thousand dollars for something you believed was worth a million and you don't see anything wrong with that?" Ratner doesn't. Because that's the kind of high-living low-life he is. A greedy, opportunistic fool with a gambling addiction and a mistress, a gonif who takes out the garbage so he expects his teen daughter (Noa Fisher) to care when he says he's proud of her.
Why a 9 rating, not a 10? Because this is probably the best work Adam Sandler will ever do, but he is not a great actor.
Guy Kibbee to the rescue, almost. He's a delight as 'Judge' Blake, a pool hustler recruited by Dave the Dude (Warren William) to be the pretend-husband of Apple Annie (May Robson, versatile and charming), a Times Square peddler whose apples are Dave's good-luck charm. With the help of the Dude's friend, nightclub owner Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell), Annie gets the Pygmalion treatment, gussied up and bejeweled and installed in a borrowed penthouse, in preparation for a visit from her daughter, Louise (Jean Parker), who has been raised in Spain(??). She arrives with an aristocratic fiancé, Carlos (Barry Norton), and his father Count Romero, played by Walter Connolly, whose scenes with Kibbee are the reason to watch, insofar as there is any reason at all.
Ignoring the three Oscar nods, "Lady for a Day" is a soporific production of a silly story. It's low-level Frank Capra directing a formulaic Robert Riskin screenplay. The original story, "Madam La Gimp," is one of Damon Runyon's seriocomic, sentimental tales about urban underdogs in Prohibition- and Great Depression-era Manhattan (cf. Ring Lardner for the real thing.)
Only 96 minutes long, it feels a lot longer because of the preposterous fairy-tale-in-the-gutter plot. I swear I haven't tried so hard to suspend disbelief since I saw John Wayne play Genghis Khan.
Not one to leave bad enough alone, I guess, Capra re-made the film as "A Pocketful of Miracles" with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford in 1961, a classic example of a movie being out of sync with the times. Except for a star turn by Peter Falk, the remake is even worse simply by virtue of being even longer (1hr 17m). So if you're going to see one of them, this is the one unless you're a Peter Falk completist.
Ignoring the three Oscar nods, "Lady for a Day" is a soporific production of a silly story. It's low-level Frank Capra directing a formulaic Robert Riskin screenplay. The original story, "Madam La Gimp," is one of Damon Runyon's seriocomic, sentimental tales about urban underdogs in Prohibition- and Great Depression-era Manhattan (cf. Ring Lardner for the real thing.)
Only 96 minutes long, it feels a lot longer because of the preposterous fairy-tale-in-the-gutter plot. I swear I haven't tried so hard to suspend disbelief since I saw John Wayne play Genghis Khan.
Not one to leave bad enough alone, I guess, Capra re-made the film as "A Pocketful of Miracles" with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford in 1961, a classic example of a movie being out of sync with the times. Except for a star turn by Peter Falk, the remake is even worse simply by virtue of being even longer (1hr 17m). So if you're going to see one of them, this is the one unless you're a Peter Falk completist.
Barbara Stanwyck chalks up another solid performance, and this time the entire movie depends on her as Naomi Murdoch, aging vaudevillian and prodigal wife. She gets a lot of help from director Douglas Sirk, but nobody in the cast is at her level. The men playing opposite her are familiar mainly from guesting on TV Westerns like "Bonanza" and "Rawhide": Richard Carlson as her estranged husband, Henry, and Lyle Bettger as her former and still eager lover, Dutch.
When Naomi left her (fictional) Wisconsin hometown to become an actress, she abandoned three children as well as Henry, though she has kept in touch through letters. The story begins when the younger daughter, Lily (Marcia Henderson), impulsively invites Naomi to see her in the high school play, and to everyone's surprise-- by which I mean the entire town's-- Naomi shows up. She proves to be an irresistibly charming, with an ingenuous affection for the home she left. She wins everyone over, even, eventually, her resentful eldest child, Joyce (Marcia Henderson).
Sirk directs high-end soap operas, by which I mean not just point-and-shoot, he thinks cinematically. Naomi is framed as an outsider returning to her home town, even to her own home. She's photographed on the porch or through windows, looking in on her family or, from inside, down on the street. Intricate emotions are handled with crisp common-sense dialog ("You don't know how unimportant success is until you've had it") and effective use of close-ups, reaction shots, and deep focus.
It's a swift 80-minute movie, hard-edged and open-hearted, and Stanwyck is flawless. She does get support from Maureen O'Sullivan in a minor role; from young Billy Gray as her sensitive son; and especially from German character actor Lotte Stein,whose does a vigorous comic turn as a zaftig housekeeper determined to marry the handyman, tall quiet Hans, whose only dialog is, "No."
When Naomi left her (fictional) Wisconsin hometown to become an actress, she abandoned three children as well as Henry, though she has kept in touch through letters. The story begins when the younger daughter, Lily (Marcia Henderson), impulsively invites Naomi to see her in the high school play, and to everyone's surprise-- by which I mean the entire town's-- Naomi shows up. She proves to be an irresistibly charming, with an ingenuous affection for the home she left. She wins everyone over, even, eventually, her resentful eldest child, Joyce (Marcia Henderson).
Sirk directs high-end soap operas, by which I mean not just point-and-shoot, he thinks cinematically. Naomi is framed as an outsider returning to her home town, even to her own home. She's photographed on the porch or through windows, looking in on her family or, from inside, down on the street. Intricate emotions are handled with crisp common-sense dialog ("You don't know how unimportant success is until you've had it") and effective use of close-ups, reaction shots, and deep focus.
It's a swift 80-minute movie, hard-edged and open-hearted, and Stanwyck is flawless. She does get support from Maureen O'Sullivan in a minor role; from young Billy Gray as her sensitive son; and especially from German character actor Lotte Stein,whose does a vigorous comic turn as a zaftig housekeeper determined to marry the handyman, tall quiet Hans, whose only dialog is, "No."
Absolutely worth seeking out, "An Upturned Glass" is a solid example of British film noir. It was developed by James Mason and his wife Pamela Kellino (one of the credited writers), both of whom star in it.
Mason is exceptionally fine as Dr. Michael Joyce, an unhappily married psychology professor in London who lectures on the mental health of murderers, not all of whom are evil or insane. He's also a practicing brain surgeon with an office in Harley Street, where he meets Mrs. Emma Wright (Rosamund John) and her daughter Ann (Ann Stevens), who can be saved from blindness only by life-or-death brain surgery. During the course of the consultations, Dr. Joyce falls in love with Emma, and director Lawrence Huntington does a diabolically clever job of twisting that into tension: Mason's voice-over reveals his worry that he's never before been emotionally involved with a patient, and therefore doesn't know if the lack of cool objectivity will affect his surgical skills-- as he aims the scalpel at the child's head. My cool objectivity went out the window, too.
The friendship between Dr Joyce and Mrs Wright is a frustrated courtship, which ends abruptly when she falls to her death from her bedroom window. He is devastated. At the inquest, her death is declared accidental, but Dr Joyce becomes suspicious of Emma's sister-in-law, Kate (Kellino), a selfish chatterbox of a woman whom he begins to duplicitously befriend for information. They drink and dine and chat in surprisingly stylish postwar London, until his patience runs out. His determination to get to the truth without compromising his character culminates in yet another death, but also yet another life saved.
The film that looks squarely at a core question of ethics: because doctors have control over life and death, they become vulnerable to the power of such awesome responsibility-- a power that may be beyond the control of some physicians. "A doctor dispenses death and healing with blind impartiality," Dr Joyce insists to a more cynical colleague. Does that mean he's indifferent? What will he do with that power when he discovers who murdered the woman he loved? You won't be prepared for his decision.
Mason is exceptionally fine as Dr. Michael Joyce, an unhappily married psychology professor in London who lectures on the mental health of murderers, not all of whom are evil or insane. He's also a practicing brain surgeon with an office in Harley Street, where he meets Mrs. Emma Wright (Rosamund John) and her daughter Ann (Ann Stevens), who can be saved from blindness only by life-or-death brain surgery. During the course of the consultations, Dr. Joyce falls in love with Emma, and director Lawrence Huntington does a diabolically clever job of twisting that into tension: Mason's voice-over reveals his worry that he's never before been emotionally involved with a patient, and therefore doesn't know if the lack of cool objectivity will affect his surgical skills-- as he aims the scalpel at the child's head. My cool objectivity went out the window, too.
The friendship between Dr Joyce and Mrs Wright is a frustrated courtship, which ends abruptly when she falls to her death from her bedroom window. He is devastated. At the inquest, her death is declared accidental, but Dr Joyce becomes suspicious of Emma's sister-in-law, Kate (Kellino), a selfish chatterbox of a woman whom he begins to duplicitously befriend for information. They drink and dine and chat in surprisingly stylish postwar London, until his patience runs out. His determination to get to the truth without compromising his character culminates in yet another death, but also yet another life saved.
The film that looks squarely at a core question of ethics: because doctors have control over life and death, they become vulnerable to the power of such awesome responsibility-- a power that may be beyond the control of some physicians. "A doctor dispenses death and healing with blind impartiality," Dr Joyce insists to a more cynical colleague. Does that mean he's indifferent? What will he do with that power when he discovers who murdered the woman he loved? You won't be prepared for his decision.
I dedicate this review to Dwight Macdonald, whose eviscerating review of the original James Gould Cozzens novel ("prose of an artificiality and complexity that approaches the impenetrable-- indeed often achieves it") became a classic of literary criticism: Cozzens' reputation never recovered. The movie adaptation deserves at least an honest attempt to be Macdonald's successor.
For starters, melodrama is not exactly in the wheelhouse of John Sturges, director of "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Great Escape." But he benefited from having DP Russ Metty behind the camera, delivering autumnal images for a story about two struggling marriages in a wealthy East Cost town.
Elderly lawyer Noah Tuttle (Thomas Mitchell) seems to be losing his marbles, but his fancy bookkeeping suggests something else is afoot to his two senior partners, who are the struggling husbands:
Julius Penrose (Jason Robards Jr) and his wife Marjorie (Lana turner) are on the rocks because, after a car accident, his cane is his only reliably stiff attribute. This is a extra-devastating because, as he admits, he was attracted to Marjorie strictly for her appetite between the sheets, and with coitus off the table, he doubts she could love him, and he doesn't even seem to know if he loves her. Meanwhile, he tells her to seek pleasure elsewhere, just don't tell him about it.
The third partner, Arthur Winner (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), is married to Noah's daughter Clarissa (Barbara Bel Geddes), who has concluded with no particular evidence that theirs is a loveless marriage. Arthur is an upright citizen, a lawyer with a conscience, and the central character in the film.
There's also dysfunction in the next generation. Noah has a pretty ward, Helen Detweiler (Susan Kohner), who the poster girl for insecurity. She's also independently wealthy, of course, because that's the kind of flush movie this is. She in love with Warren (George Hamilton), the Winner's headstrong son, a Harvard law student who spends the entire movie resisting Helen's slavish appeals. Sex enters into it with father and son: While Arthur has a roll (singular) in the hay with Marjorie, Warren finds his way into the arms of the town trollop (Yvonne Craig minus any subtlety whatsoever), who cries rape in the morning. Warren's father usefully remonstrates him by stating the movie's timeworn theme: "Your generation doesn't have a monopoly on sex, legal or illegal. You just talk about it more."
Extramarital sex wasn't shocking by 1960, so Hollywood aimed to make it titillating. This film tries, but it's so dialog-heavy that the dominating sin is gossip. Even the local doctor (Everett Sloan) participates, saying of Veronica, "She's been around more times in her twenty years than the moon has in a million."
No performance stands out, though Thomas Mitchell is always fun. Helen is as dull as room-temperature water, but Kohner manages to carry an aura of sadness that presages her fate. Jason Robards never disappoints, but he disappears for at least two-thirds of the picture, away on business, and when he is home, he lacks chemistry with Lana Turner (whose eyebrows have been relocated north of their natural line-- a unwelcome distraction). Zimbalist and Bel Geddes disappear into their roles, effective but unmemorable. George Hamilton is at his best when he doesn't even try to display range, so he shows flying colors here.
One last thing, minor to some. The mise-en-scène is old New England, overstuffed sofas, wood panelling, but there's the bonus: Tiffany lamps, a distracting number of them (Google lens helped with identification). I was grateful to see so many of those beautiful creations captured on film for posterity, and just as grateful to find such a welcome distraction from the dawdling action on screen.
For starters, melodrama is not exactly in the wheelhouse of John Sturges, director of "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Great Escape." But he benefited from having DP Russ Metty behind the camera, delivering autumnal images for a story about two struggling marriages in a wealthy East Cost town.
Elderly lawyer Noah Tuttle (Thomas Mitchell) seems to be losing his marbles, but his fancy bookkeeping suggests something else is afoot to his two senior partners, who are the struggling husbands:
Julius Penrose (Jason Robards Jr) and his wife Marjorie (Lana turner) are on the rocks because, after a car accident, his cane is his only reliably stiff attribute. This is a extra-devastating because, as he admits, he was attracted to Marjorie strictly for her appetite between the sheets, and with coitus off the table, he doubts she could love him, and he doesn't even seem to know if he loves her. Meanwhile, he tells her to seek pleasure elsewhere, just don't tell him about it.
The third partner, Arthur Winner (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), is married to Noah's daughter Clarissa (Barbara Bel Geddes), who has concluded with no particular evidence that theirs is a loveless marriage. Arthur is an upright citizen, a lawyer with a conscience, and the central character in the film.
There's also dysfunction in the next generation. Noah has a pretty ward, Helen Detweiler (Susan Kohner), who the poster girl for insecurity. She's also independently wealthy, of course, because that's the kind of flush movie this is. She in love with Warren (George Hamilton), the Winner's headstrong son, a Harvard law student who spends the entire movie resisting Helen's slavish appeals. Sex enters into it with father and son: While Arthur has a roll (singular) in the hay with Marjorie, Warren finds his way into the arms of the town trollop (Yvonne Craig minus any subtlety whatsoever), who cries rape in the morning. Warren's father usefully remonstrates him by stating the movie's timeworn theme: "Your generation doesn't have a monopoly on sex, legal or illegal. You just talk about it more."
Extramarital sex wasn't shocking by 1960, so Hollywood aimed to make it titillating. This film tries, but it's so dialog-heavy that the dominating sin is gossip. Even the local doctor (Everett Sloan) participates, saying of Veronica, "She's been around more times in her twenty years than the moon has in a million."
No performance stands out, though Thomas Mitchell is always fun. Helen is as dull as room-temperature water, but Kohner manages to carry an aura of sadness that presages her fate. Jason Robards never disappoints, but he disappears for at least two-thirds of the picture, away on business, and when he is home, he lacks chemistry with Lana Turner (whose eyebrows have been relocated north of their natural line-- a unwelcome distraction). Zimbalist and Bel Geddes disappear into their roles, effective but unmemorable. George Hamilton is at his best when he doesn't even try to display range, so he shows flying colors here.
One last thing, minor to some. The mise-en-scène is old New England, overstuffed sofas, wood panelling, but there's the bonus: Tiffany lamps, a distracting number of them (Google lens helped with identification). I was grateful to see so many of those beautiful creations captured on film for posterity, and just as grateful to find such a welcome distraction from the dawdling action on screen.
Having now seen the three other major screen adaptations (1995, 2007, 2022), I concluded that this two-part BBC version is the one I will never watch again. Although it is certainly faithful to the Jane Austen novel, it suffers from 1970s video technology, looking faded and sounding echoey. Those are lesser drawbacks, perhaps, but there are others, notably the casting.
Ann Firbank is competent as Anne Elliot, but she pales in comparison to Amanda Root or Sally Hawkins, as her career trajectory indicates. I even prefer Dakota Johnson, though the 2022 adaptation is in another category altogether-- and not beloved by Austen fans-- because of the bold updating.
Similarly, Bryan Marshall has the range to play Captain Wentworth, but he doesn't have the romantic appeal of his successors, dreamboat Rupert Penry-Jones or masterful Ciarán Hinds.
The faithfulness to Austen is actually another problem of a sort: at 3hr45m, it's too long. Don't get me wrong. It doesn't boil down to length. But no film adaptation can hope to equal an original classic work because it is not the story or the characters that make masterpieces. Those essentials matter less than use of language and the quality of the thought, two things that cannot be realized on screen unless the text is recited. So filmmakers need good reason to elaborate on plot details that are not critical. My vote for best adaption goes to the 1995 version directed by Roger Michell, under two hours, written by Nick Dear, and authentically presented with mud on dress hems, bad English teeth, and, a bonus, Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Croft.
If only for fun, I did an arithmetical comparison of lengths, which proved interesting. Two of the finest BBC adaptations I've ever seen are "Middlemarch" (1998), a six-hour series from George Eliot's 315,000-word novel, and "Bleak House (2005), an eight-hour series from Charles Dickens's 360,000-word novel. It turns out that both series covered roughly 50,000 words per hour. But with "Persuasion," an 88,000-word book, the ratio for this 1971 production was 24,000 words per hour. That's more than double the other two-- and it was no better at capturing the author's phraseology or insights. Ultimately, it's a drab and prolonged homage rather than a lively interpretation.
Ann Firbank is competent as Anne Elliot, but she pales in comparison to Amanda Root or Sally Hawkins, as her career trajectory indicates. I even prefer Dakota Johnson, though the 2022 adaptation is in another category altogether-- and not beloved by Austen fans-- because of the bold updating.
Similarly, Bryan Marshall has the range to play Captain Wentworth, but he doesn't have the romantic appeal of his successors, dreamboat Rupert Penry-Jones or masterful Ciarán Hinds.
The faithfulness to Austen is actually another problem of a sort: at 3hr45m, it's too long. Don't get me wrong. It doesn't boil down to length. But no film adaptation can hope to equal an original classic work because it is not the story or the characters that make masterpieces. Those essentials matter less than use of language and the quality of the thought, two things that cannot be realized on screen unless the text is recited. So filmmakers need good reason to elaborate on plot details that are not critical. My vote for best adaption goes to the 1995 version directed by Roger Michell, under two hours, written by Nick Dear, and authentically presented with mud on dress hems, bad English teeth, and, a bonus, Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Croft.
If only for fun, I did an arithmetical comparison of lengths, which proved interesting. Two of the finest BBC adaptations I've ever seen are "Middlemarch" (1998), a six-hour series from George Eliot's 315,000-word novel, and "Bleak House (2005), an eight-hour series from Charles Dickens's 360,000-word novel. It turns out that both series covered roughly 50,000 words per hour. But with "Persuasion," an 88,000-word book, the ratio for this 1971 production was 24,000 words per hour. That's more than double the other two-- and it was no better at capturing the author's phraseology or insights. Ultimately, it's a drab and prolonged homage rather than a lively interpretation.