User reviews

Whatever unfulfilled ambitions drove Ben Hecht to write, produce and direct Spectre of the Rose, it's charitable to pretend they bore scant relation to the gruesome folly that eventuated. Did Hollywood's most prolific uncredited contributor to great screenplays crave the glory that would come with his very own Citizen Kane? If so, he made choices that can only be accounted as bizarre.

First, he set his story in the world of `the dance.' Since of all the arts, ballet, for Americans at any rate, reeks of the rarefied – the elite, movies about it invariably lapse into gaseous talk about `aaht.' Spectre of the Rose dives right into this pitfall. The high-flown, portentous dialogue must have entranced Hecht but it plainly baffles his cast. They variously give it stilted readings, flat it out, and drop quotation marks around it, but except for Judith Anderson – as an old assoluta now training novices in a `dingy' studio – nobody can make it work. (But then, she made Lady Scarface work.)

The plot concerns a deranged male superstar called Sanine (Ivan Kirov), who may have murdered his first wife and partner and now seems to be rehearsing to kill his second (Viola Essen). It's safe to presume Kirov was engaged only to fling his polished torso around because he can't even act embarrassed; it's no surprise that this is his solitary screen credit.

But his murderous madness just sits there, with a take-it-or-leave-it shrug, while the movie pirouettes off on other tangents. There's a larcenous impresario (Michael Chekhov) who outdoes even Clifton Webb in trying to break down the celluloid closet's door. Most puzzlingly, there's Lionel Stander as a Runyonesque poet who seems intended as some sort of Greek chorus to the goings-on but serves instead as a major irritant, uninvited and out of place.

Without knowing what compromises Hecht made and obstacles he faced in bringing his work to the screen, it's easy to be glib. But there's such a discordance of tones and jostling of moods that the movie elicits diverse responses; thus some viewers have found in Spectre of the Rose something special and unique. Movies, maybe more than any other art form, touch our idiosyncracies. But when we're left unsure whether The Spectre of the Rose is dead-earnest or a grandiose spoof – an election-bet of a movie -- something has gone radically awry.

This is the 6th viewing of Spectre of The Rose ( I see this every 10 years or so.

Aside from some Ballet scenes, this is primarily a love story centered around a male Dancer & the death of his first wife. Ivan Dixon plays the Dance with grace (he cant act) Viola Essen is the ballerina he falls in love with, ( she also dances gracefully) but cant act. The main reason to see this film is for LIONEL STANDER as a sardonic writer.(he could play this type role in his sleep),He should have been nominated for best supporting actor. Mikail Chekov plays an effeminate producer quite well. The magnificent Judith Anderson is the bitter dance teacher. & of course she is superb,

Reccomended for ballet loves & fans of Lionel Stander.

rating only **1/2 78 points 6 on IMDb

I agree that it has been shelved and not appreciated. The love scenes are better totally than todays bare all... you were in the room and at the table.. it should be revived. The ballet is made very real, and the people become part of the whole scene, even if you don't care for the ballet or understand it, you will get into this movie. As I said it is an unforgettable movie and should also be shown in cinema classes as an example of great writing and directing.

Wow, a ballet noir!

Written and directed by Ben Hecht, this is certainly an interesting film.

Ballet dancer Andre Sanine (Ivan Kirov) is suspected of murdering his first wife. Ballet teacher Judith Anderson and poet Lionel Stander certainly think so.

Andre is handsome with a speaking voice like Joel McCrea's. However, he hears music in his head, and it gives him the urge to kill. Another dancer, Haidi (Viola Essen) is sure he's cured. She falls in love with him, and they marry. The ballet company goes on tour. For awhile, all is well. Then problems develop.

Some good dancing and some wild acrobatics by Kirov are highlights of this film, but nothing - nothing - can compare to the dialogue. And coming out of raspy voiced Lionel Stander, it is really something. Try this: "The lunacy of great artists usually produces masterpieces, not murders."

Kropotkin: You're only one man suffering. When the masses suffer, then the suffering counts.

Lionel (Lionel Stander as Lionel Gans): The suffering of the masses is a minor phenomenon beside one man's tears....

Kropotkin (George Shdanoff): The masses would never get married if the poets didn't tell them how beautiful it was....

and: "The lunacy of great artists usually produces masterpieces, not murders."

This was Ivan Kirov's only film. He was a dancer whose career was interrupted more than once by knee problems. He also did some acting, and eventually developed his own act and also started a dance school. He had a magnificent build, and he is certainly right for this offbeat role.

Recommended just for being unusual.

18 years before Susan Sontag defined "camp" in her famous 1964 essay, Ben Hecht fully realized its on screen possibilities with his "The Spectre and the Rose." Words fail entirely to capture the fruity tongue in cheek ineptitude here--it must be seen to be believed.

Judith Anderson, who looks like a fortune teller for a rural traveling carnival, is worth the whole price of admission. She utters lines like: "We've eaten caviar and we've eaten sawdust," but, oops, that was actually Joan Crawford's line from "Berserk," (which is, in many ways, cut from the same cloth.)

Well, anyway, you get the point.

I am surprised and even saddened that there are no other votes or comments for this extraordinary film about the ballet world, because that would seem to mean that no one using IMDB has seen it; you are missing one of the most unique films ever made.

Ben Hecht wrote and Ben Hecht directed this surreal film about a dancer in the eccentric world of ballet who is obsessed with a ballerina; there are few if any obsessions that are not destructive, and I will not give away the ending, but it is spectacular and moving. You will not forget this film once you have seen it.

Michael Chekhov returns to Judith Anderson's ballet school. He has just been fired by Billy Rose for fouling up, but he doesn't care. He's going to stage SPECTRE DE LA ROSE, using Ivan Kirov as his leading man and for money he will... well, eventually he will con a bunch of people, including Lionel Stander as an agent who believes in art, Miss Anderson, even the musician's union. Because Art is what is important. What matters it that Kirov is believed by the cops to have killed his first wife with a knife? Viola Essen marries him anyway, even though he spends a lot of screen time calling himself bad names because he's really a kid from the sticks, not the guy who dances, whom he hates.

I'm not a balletomane -- I prefer the (vanished) Broadway stage and movie dancing -- so to me that part of the movie looks pretty good; Lee Garmes' camerawork is top notch. Where writer-producer-director Ben Hecht has me raising my eyebrows is the artificiality of the actors' speaking. Even old hands like Stander and Miss Anderson sound like they're bad performers on the stage. Perhaps that is deliberate. For a guy who made and blew several fortunes writing and doctoring scripts for Hollywood, Hecht had contempt for film. That's how he wound up directing seven movies; that's where that Hollywood money disappeared to, never to be seen at the box office. Perhaps that's Hecht's point; as a writer, he may have thought that no one directed or spoke his lines properly, so what the hey! They're all idiots! They're never sincere!

Well, perhaps. I've occasionally mused on what seems to be an anti-technological bias among people who get paid millions of dollars to make technological artifacts like movies. Still, the clearly fake manner in which everyone delivers their lines is off-putting. The question remains: was that Hecht's intention, or did he stink as a dialogue director?

Still, the images are beautiful and striking.

For those of us who are part of the real world of ballet - this film is completely ridiculous. Ivan Kirov was basically a gymnast, not a ballet dancer. Viola Essen at the time was with Ballet Theater, now American Ballet Theater, and a reasonably good dancer, but except for Dame Judith Anderson, the acting is amateurish and Checkov is completely over the top .... embarrassingly so! I saw this film at age 14 and at that time, never having seen a ballet, I was very impressed. However, later in life, long after I had completed my own career as a dancer - I purchased the video tape of it, curious as to what it was like after so many years. I couldn't believe how naive Hollywood could be about the world of ballet. But it was made in the mid 40s, before The Red Shoes or The Turning Point, the latter giving a true picture of the ballet world. The entire cast of Spectre have now passed away ... Ivan Kirov (not his real name)dying at age 79. It was his one and only film, thereafter being kept by a Chicago business man .. so the rumor goes.

This Ben Hecht film is one-of- a-kind. it's about the ballet world and might remind you a bit of The Red Shoes on a superficial level. However this film is quite different-more perverse and it contains some REALLY erotic dialogue between the young lovers--the wonderful Ivan Kirov and Viola Essen. Judith Anderson, Michael Chekhov and Lionel Stander are also superb. Ben Hecht wrote, produced and directed this film--too bad he didn't attempt more directing!! A must-see!

"Andre is not a man...he is a shadow that flickers on the wall..."

Andre Sanine: Hug me with your eyes. Haidi: I am. Andre Sanine: Harder.

Such is much of the dialog in this film. To be blunt, it's among the worst written dialog I've ever heard and it's often unintentionally funny. Because it is so incredibly bad, it makes it hard to believe that the dialog was written by the incredibly respected guy who wrote such classics as "The Front Page", "Kiss of Death" and many other good films. Perhaps the director should have stepped in and objected, but in this case Hecht was also the director! The bottom line is that the only reasons to watch the film are to laugh at the tripe they consider dialog or if you hated Hecht and wanted to see his worst. As for the story...who cares.

This seldom seen film produced, written and directed by Ben Hecht, brings some terrific dancing, namely from the two leads, Ivan Kirov [with a gorgeous physique, and doing fantastic leaps and bounds] and Viola Essen [another fine ballet dancer]whom I had the pleasure of auditioning with back in the 50s for "Dead End" [roles of Baby Face Martin and his ex-girl friend Francie] we didn't get cast, unfortunately. They bring some wonderful moments of dance in spite of a somewhat hard to believe plot and corny lines. Appearing as La Sylph, who sits around knitting, while the dancers go through their paces is none other than Dame Judith Anderson, the queen of film noir [such as "Laura"]. She does manage to keep herself out of the mire of this melodramatic piece with her presence. Add to this another great actor, Michael Chekhov, from Russia's Stanislavski Moscow Theatre, giving a silly performance of a foppish manager of the dance troupe. He did more realistic acting in the such of "Spellbound" and "Rhapsody". Hard to believe from this performance he was the great acting teacher of the time along with Sanford Meisner. Then there's comedian Lionel Stander being realistic as a sort of serious suitor to our leading lady. The choreography was done by none other than Tamara Geva, once married to George Balanchine, and star of Broadway's "On Your Toes" starring Ray Bolger where she initiated the "Slaughter On Seventh Avenue" ballet. [Later brought to film by Gene Kelly and Vera Ellen in "Words & Music"] In spite of a twisted plot and sketchy dialogue, you become fascinated with this gem of a movie. Watching the lovers dance is worth the price of admission.

It HAD to be a good movie, just look at the people involved. And when it was so not a good movie, I felt it had to be my fault, that I just didn't GET it. Perhaps its badness was exacerbated by my wanting to like it. Perhaps I should have had more belief in the poetry-babble incessantly coming out of these people. Perhaps I should have brushed up beforehand on notions of art and performance. I wondered and worried but then upon more reflection, no, this was simply a BAD movie, a bad movie on a grand scale.

It does not work as psychological thriller-- the main characters are too over the top in love-- him with himself and her with him (and WHY?!) This last bit is why it doesn't work as a romance. And it doesn't work as a dance film because so many of the dance sequences are cut short-- despite their being good-- as though the movie wants to stress that dance is secondary... but to what? I ended up with the feeling that the only person in the audience applauding was Ben Hecht, the sap.

The final thing that convinced me that this was simply a bad movie was that I was glad when the film was over and that I would never have to watch it again-- unless there is a hell.

I saw this once at the age of 20. I'm now 80. It's still on my top ten, all-time list. I remember Lionel Stander and "loving her with his eyes". I haven't seen it since. It's a most unusual, beautiful memory. Others on my list are "Separate Tables" (produced by Hecht who wrote "Spectre) and Witness for the Prosecution": Is anybody picking up a pattern? No, because "My Fair Lady" and "Quacker Fortune Has A Cousin Living In The Bronx" are there, too. Until I wrote this I hadn't realized that everybody in all these casts only truly fell in love ONCE. Until I wrote this I hadn't realized that I did, at 20, and still am, at 80. And, until I wrote this line I haven't written the minimum ten.

This was one of the most unforgettable films I saw as a child, I never had the opportunity to see it again until 50 years later, and it remains a lasting impact. Its weaknesses are admitted, it's more like a play than a film, (although some cinematic tricks occur as positive surprises,) the acting is not very brilliant but rather stiff, the camera moves as little as possible; but against all these foibles you have the overwhelmingly beautiful and brilliant story and play, the virtuoso dialogue all the way, and above all, the music, the dances and the poetry. Ben Hecht clearly conceived the idea inspired by the fate of Nijinsky, who was disabled as a schizophrenic from the first world war till after the second, and the real theme of the film is the freedom of artistic madness at its most exuberant and creative. Michael Chekhov sometimes tediously dominates long scenes of the film as the sore tried impresario of infinite tribulations who nevertheless is wholeheartedly sympathetic but outflanked by the indomitable realist of long and hard experience, Judith Anderson, who is magnificent in every scene; while the focus of the drama is the dancer's genius and the difficulty of handling it, or rather, subjecting it to discipline, because it's so totally beyond control that it really can't be disciplined, only at best directed in a creative vein. Powell-Pressburger's classic "The Red Shoes" a few years later would have been unthinkable without this for a road mark, and it must remain for always one of the most important and innovative ballet films ever made, especially for its delicate treatment of the difficult subject of genius. The film gains by seeing it a number of times, at first sight its depth and ingenuity is not obvious, but as you sink into it you never reach the bottom. This is an ingenious film about the trickiness of genius.

The most amazing thing of it is its very ambitious effort at pioneering in the field of staging ballets on screen. Its title is the ballet by Michael Fokine about a lovely lady dreaming about a rose that becomes alive, to the music of Carl Maria von Weber, but that is not the ballet staged here. Instead it is a completely new ballet of the same story but with George Antheil's almost expressionistic music, and his music is perhaps the most important part of the film. It is equally expressionistic all the way, and it is the music that drives the dancer mad, so that he can't hear it even inside his head without feeling compelled to dance, and the music if anything dominates the entire film. It is worth rewatching any number of times just for the sake of that music. To my mind George Antheil did not appear much as a film music composer, but in this film, he is allowed to dominate completely, and the result is unforgettable. Ben Hecht's consistently eloquent dialog, the amazing performances of the ballets and Ivan Kirov, Judith Anderson's wonderful character of a worn out veteran overloaded with experience, the ideal love story, the adoration and treatment of art as a sacred devotional plight embedded in Michael Chekhov's ridiculous but tenderly honest character, the overwhelming richness and details of insights into backstage problems of making ballets work, the intensity of the drama although diluted by long talks and discussions making the film seem much longer than it is, all this and much else besides contribute to make this film a work of genius and a milestone in film history.

When my mother took me to see this film in 1946 at the Leland Theater in Taft, Texas, I was 7 years old. This movie set a standard ,for me,of motion picture excellence and expectation that has never wavered. I am not saying that this is the greatest movie ever made, I am just expressing or rather trying to convey the power of this film over the rather naive mind of a young boy. Judith Anderson became my role model of female intuition and cohesiveness. Every time I watch a movie (and I have watched literally thousands over the years), I communicate with her and wait for her voice to put it into perspective. She was a remarkable actress whose theatrical actions were a combination of dance and music that revealed hidden truths and subtle whispers about life, death and our invisible role within it.

You must see this movie. We were baffled and amused by the incomprehensible dialogue, stone-faced acting, and ridiculous plot of this ballet/murder mystery written and directed by Ben Hecht(!?). Actually, we were more than amused, we were in physical pain from continual laughter!

Dame Judith Anderson manages to rise above this surreal debacle and provide an intelligent performance. On the other end of the scale is legendary acting teacher Michael Chekhov, nephew of Anton, who is so over-the-top that doubts arose in our minds about his acting theories.

The fact that Hecht, writer of hard-boiled cynical tales (The Front Page), would write such loopy dialogue leads us to theorize he meant this to be tongue-in-cheek. We can only hope.

See this film!

I saw this for the first time tonight, mainly because I read recently that it was one of the few films in which the marvellous Judith Anderson had the leading role. A weird yet utterly compelling combination of film noir and ballet courtesy of bargain basement studio Republic, who were responsible for other such genre-mashup classics as Johnny Guitar.

It goes without saying that Anderson is superb as the protective head of a ballet company who is worried that her chief dancer may be a dangerously unhinged killer. Real-life dancers Kirov and Essen were obviously cast for their ability to dance, which they both do exquisitely, but they also both give life to some astoundingly erotically charged dialogue and both look beautiful. If you close your eyes and listen to Kirov speak you'd swear it was Jack Nicholson. The climax to the film is haunting and strangely touching. This is a film I will definitely return to.

Film noir set in the world of ballet. Ben Hecht wrote, produced, and directed this gem. And it offers three superb performances by star characters actors Michael Chekhov, Judith Anderson, and Lionel Stander.

Plot has a male dancer (Ivan Kirov) suspected of killing his first wife, but an impresario and a dance teacher (Chekov, Anderson) need him to mount a new production. Things get complicated when a star pupil (Viola Essen) marries him and he starts to go nuts again.

While the new ballet is a hit, the pressure makes Kirov noticeably agitated and he is finally compelled to violence again.

While the world-weary Anderson and Chekhov remember their golden days, a writer (Stander) hovers in the background, offering choice comments about the goings on.

This is the only theatrical film Essen and Kirov made but they are very good as the dance stars. Anderson, Chekhov, and Stander give excellent and memorable performances. There are also good bits by character actors like Billy Gray, Bert Hanlon, Lew Hearn, and Geroge Shdanoff.

Very stylized but its fits the very stylized world of ballet.