Lizzie

''Lizzie" is an intriguing film with the potential to be better than it is. It starts off well with the ever reliable Eleanor Parker setting the mood and immediately winning audience sympathy. Alarmingly, on Elizabeth's return home from work, the film suddenly feels trashy with Joan Blondell, as her frumpy aunt, giving a wild, over the top performance that I find quite repulsive. What a role for Myrna Loy who would have nailed it. Richard Boone matches Parker in class, giving a sound and convincing performance as the pragmatic psychiatrist.

Parker goes somewhat adrift in transforming from the timid Elizabeth to the vulgar Lizzie and the night club scene comes across as ludicrous ; a sort of Jekyll and Hyde parody. I have always admired Eleanor Parker but it's sad to see her talents compromised by unsure direction and the painful scene-stealing attempts by the shrill Blondell.

I intend keeping my DVD copy but will be re-watching the film for the best scenes ; those featuring Parker and Boone.

Shirley Jackson's "The Bird's Nest" has always been one of my favorite novels, so I was excited to find that it had been made into a movie (albeit one that's nearly impossible to find) 'way back when. The film's black-and-white 1950s graininess perfectly evokes its era, as do the starchy clothes and rigid hair of the characters, and the dreadful, over-the-top "score" of shrieking, dissonant violins. The beginning of the movie promised an experience so terrible that I was tempted to hold off watching it till I could gather some of my snarkier friends, but it was already too late -- I'd been sucked in and was having too much fun to quit. As the movie goes on, it gets much better, yet it remains enjoyable, every now and again flinging itself headlong into vertiginous swoops of insane bathos. All in all, I found it perfectly delightful, and can only summarize it by plagiarizing Mae West: When it's good, it's very good, and when it's bad, it's better.

The very same year Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve, Eleanor Parker played in a nearly identical film released a few months earlier. She, too, played an unstable woman with three personalities who seeks help from a therapist. Some of the scenes were so similar, it's as if one of the screenplays was a rough draft of the other! When Richard Boone hypnotized Eleanor and asked, "May I speak to Lizzie?" you can't help but recall when Lee J. Cobb hypnotized Joanne and asked, "May I speak to Eve Black?"

When you research the similarities between the film, you'll find a sickening backstory: 20th Century Fox tried to "hurry up" the publication of the book behind The Three Faces of Eve because the book behind Lizzie (produced by MGM) had been a hit and sparked public interest in multiple personality disorders. One movie is very famous, and one is obscure and has never been heard of. It's not fair, but that's Hollywood for you.

Lizzie is an inferior movie, but once again, it's not really fair. Eleanor Parker is a far superior actress, and she doesn't falter in anything she's asked to do. However, the screenplay is weak and the production obviously wasn't given as much money. Script versus script, Joanne is given a lot more to do to shock the audiences; but had the cast been reversed, Eleanor would have been more than capable of handling it-and much better.

Basically, if you like the story of The Three Faces of Eve and want to see the "original" with Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone, and Joan Blondell instead, or if you want to give justice its due by watching the movie that came first with an open mind, rent it. If you do, you'll get to see a twenty-year-old Johnny Mathis performing "It's Not for Me to Say" and "Warm and Tender" at the piano bar! You'll also see Richard Boone in a totally against-type performance as an intelligent and sympathetic therapist (far more convincing than Lee was), and Eleanor Parker showing off her wonderful acting chops as much as she's allowed to with a B-picture screenplay.

Lizzie is a magnificent study of multiple personality disorder, a far superior film to The Three Faces of Eve, which won the Acadamy Award that year. Eleanor Parker makes all her transformations between Lizzie's characters on screen, a far more challenging task that disappearing off camera as Joanne Woodward did! Her portrayal is subtle and wonderful. I highly recommend this movie.

It's interesting that The Three Faces of Eve (1957) and Lizzie (1957) were made the same year. Both of them introduce the subject of a woman with Multiple Personality Disorder. Although the story of Eve White--for which Joanne Woodward won a Best Actress Oscar--was based on a real-life woman, it would be hard to say that that movie was really any better than this one reviewed here, based on Shirley Jackson's novel, "The Bird's Nest."

Lizzie (1957) is the story of the mousy Elizabeth Richmond (Eleanor Parker) who lives with her constantly drunk aunt, Morgan James (Joan Blondell) and works as a secretary in a museum. Elizabeth seems to have no real social life and only one real true friend at work, Ruth Seaton (Marion Ross, who later played Ron Howard's mother on TV's Happy Days). Elizabeth is serious and scholarly but has no real self confidence during her daytime job, in spite of encouragement from her friend and co-worker, Ruth. She finds anonymous scribbled out death threats, in her purse or on her desk. These slips of paper, are always signed-- Lizzie. When she shows them to Ruth, Ruth just tells her they are not serious and should be forgotten.

When Elizabeth comes home each night, she is greeted by her lovable, but always soused, Aunt Morgan. Elizabeth goes to her room and transforms herself into a cheap-looking, but beautiful and seductive, alter ego. She becomes "Lizzie" and goes to a bar to beguile men into buying her drinks. (Johnny Mathis makes his first movie appearance, here, as the singer at the piano bar.) When Elizabeth awakes the next morning, she has strange unexplained headaches. At times her aunt notices that her gin bottles have been finished off by someone other than herself, but who can it be but Elizabeth? When Morgan confronts Elizabeth about this, she honestly has no memory or knowledge of drinking any alcohol.

Morgan and Elizabeth have an understanding neighbor, Walter (Hugo Hass--the movie's director), who works at home as a writer. When Morgan confronts Walter about Elizabeth, he suggests that she see a doctor. He knows a good doctor, Dr. Wright (Richard Boone), who he uses from time to time when he has writer's block.

Elizabeth finally goes to see Dr. Wright, complaining of headaches and troubled sleeping. He tells her that he would like to put her into deep hypnosis to explore her childhood background. During a series of sessions, Dr. Wright discovers that Elizabeth has two more personalities--Beth and Lizzie. However, to fully understand the "whys" of Elizabeth three personalities, he goes to her house on her birthday. Something had happened to her on her 13th birthday. But, what was it and how could it have caused her Multiple Personality Disorder?

As with The Three Faces of Eve (1957), the strong central personality, Beth, must understand the other two personalities in order to let go of them and become the one integrated person.