fudgesinger

With a top set of stars plus a very experienced director and and a massive budget, this should have been a huge success. Sadly it wasn't. It is obvious that this was meant to be another Gone with The Wind. - only this time two women in love with one man. The differences are clear. Johnny Appleseed is simply not interesting enough. He is placid - as played by Montgomery Cliff , and the two women are such opposites. One bland and one extreme. Somehow The American Civil War somehow gets involved but Unlike GWTW it does not show how the war affects the characters after it socially. And What on earth is The character played by Nigel Patrick doing with an unexplained perfect English accent!!!! Was he meant to be English and if so how did he get to be there. It was a totally unbelievable character - eccentric yes but simply did not ring true. And through out the story all these characters just turn up together without any explanation again and again. So the story is so far fetched that you do not care about these people as played out by these stars. Elizabeth does her best and shows her real potential as a good actress who is not only just beautiful to look at. But the story is very contrived and does not ring true. The saving grace for this picture is how stunningly beautifully shot it is. Every composition is breathtaking. Johnny Green's musical score is stunning . Green was so disappointed that he lost winning the Oscar to The Bridge On The River Kwai which consisted of Colonel Bogey. Which was not originally written for the film. A true great injustice.

I was lucky to have purchased my copy of this film on Laser disc which contains both the overture and entracte music. It is also in true stereo and in the original cinema 66 CinemaScope ratio ( which sadly the dvd issues are not). It is not a great film as intended by MGM .the story is simply bland and not interesting enough. But if you have Three hours to kill give it a try. Apparently Turner found another fifteen minutes. But if you can find the original laser copy that's the one to see as of this writing, - in order to experience the director's real intentions. Until a Proper copy is issued on DVD with all the trimmings.

So Dumbo can fly! Big deal. But that is not what the story is about This should be a simple touching fable of a little elephant finding himself over all odds. This has now been lost Loads of character actors hamming it up, obliterating everything around it including little Dumbo Over produced. and overlong ( The original was just over sixty minutes No heart; no tears;. No film What a shame!