Reviews
Angels Over Broadway (1940)
A Well-Written Time-Waster
I agree with most of the other critics' comments. A good script by Hecht. Some over-acting by Thomas Mitchell, or maybe his part was over-written. But Doug Fairbanks Jr. very miscast, completely unbelievable as a fast-talking Broadway heel. Would have been a perfect part for the Bogart of that time.
And what happened at the end? The sudden turnaround of the Fairbanks character and his decision to stick with Rita Hayworth in, literally, the last five seconds of the movie rang totally false. I had to look at the scene again because I wondered if perhaps I had missed something: like, did he win the lottery or what? No. He simply put down his coffee cup, changed his mind, and chased after Rita in the pouring rain.
Maybe Harry Cohen told Hecht he wanted a happy ending. So old Ben gave him one that didn't involve him having to spend one more day on the set. What really happened? Should Fairbanks have wound up in the gutter with a bunch of bullets in his back, with Rita cradling him in her arms?
Who knows? And in the long haul, who cares?
Les voleurs (1996)
Maybe these comments are spoilers
Sure, there were some good things about "Les Voleurs". And if it could have sustained its mood and its so-called plot up to the end of the film, I'd have given it more stars.
It was interesting that almost all comments have been positive. I guess nobody noticed something rather obvious towards the conclusion, and if they had thought about it, they'd have understood why they were a bit baffled by the movie. The cast started baling out of the movie towards the end. Catherine Deneuve vanished. Her absence was explained by someone telling the hero that she had committed suicide. Off camera, no less, with no indication that that might happen. Then the young heroine, Deneuve's lover, disappeared. Where did she go? Oh yeah, someone mentioned that she'd gone to Marseilles. Oh really? I didn't notice her packing.
So the director cleverly covered for them. Were his stars fed up? Was the shoot going overtime? Had the production run out of money? Anyway, finally he's left with the kid to come back to, the same one he opened the movie with. At least it gave him a couple of bookends, but what was between them was a plot with no satisfactory conclusion.
Too bad. This could have been a fine movie, but it never got finished.
Jelby, Victoria, B.C.