heartfield-1

The Merry Widow was an internatiional sensation because of its joie de vivre, insouciance, and crack stagecraft. Von Stroheim, who grew up in its shadow, here demonstrates how to desecrate a popular favorite - popular due to its brilliant evocation of an era that had passed - by smearing it all over with his own fantasy fetishes.

90 minutes it takes him to recount a bogus back story that's dull, ugly, and beside the point. Stroheim needed the fame and renown of THE MERRY WIDOW by Franz Lehar to get people into the cinema. That opereretta is still being performed worldwide due to its gorgeous music and the Viennese penchant for romance embodied by its characters.

Stroheim was cute in SUNSET BOULEVARD but as a director, here pulls a trick spme later megalomaniacs would emulate by destroying the "source" material.

Hitchcock did it. Coppola did it. The U. S. public is generally too ignorant to have a clue of what's being trashed. Any excuse to eat popcorn.

Watch it for the clothes and the manners. It is a comedy of manners, and the sets are delicious. Before the Crash... Hollywood recycles 1926 hit play by Somerset Maugham, THE CONSTANT WIFE. Watch out, these people are still basically Edwardians. Americans "set in London" except Clive Brook, veddy English. An incredibly stiff young William Powell, a serviceable dandy. And Ruth Chatterton in the role of the wronged wife who's wise enough to use guerilla tactics. Laura Hope Crews as her Mother is a fascinating relic of a distant age.

Not for the faint of heart who must see a car explode every 5 minues. The tensions here are emotional and erotic, something Americans have mostly had beaten out of them.

Weak script, mediocre direction. Don't be fooled, this isn't Noir, more like the dull Gray of a tired businessman's pantleg. There's no flashback, no tight editing, no macabre shadows or complex framing, no passion. The sexual tension remains at the level of a polite yawn.

Hillary Brooke's feeblest effort, perhaps, and she's a bright spot that gets killed off halfway in. Richard Denning is too flimsy to drive the investigative suspense, downright lacksadaisical. Others are merely dull as ditchwater but I don't blame the actors.

This is cops'n'robbers light, verging on the middlebrow TV to come - with a few vintage car chases to alleviate the ennui.