Better than the 1949 version - more interesting with black actors and the overall quality of performance is stronger. Eartha Kitt has charisma and Sammy Davis Jnr is excellent as is Rex Ingram. It still isn't much of a play.
There's a little dancing and singing and you wish it had been a proper musical - less dialogue, characters expressing themselves through song. Still stagey, not that well directed.
Chat, chat, chat. Peter Schaffer's stage play about Spaniards and Incas as a hit - a literate look at colonialism with some impressive staging. I can see the thought process - "well take this and add scenery and it'll be a literate blockbuster".
Maybe. Some people will like it. but it's a lot of talk. Christopher Plummer is the Inca king in make up. Robert Shaw has grey in his hair.
Some effective moments - a battle sequence in slo mo with flameno, the death of Plummer.
Too much chat especially about God. There's a third act lecture from a priest, in common with many Phil Yordan scripts.
Kind of the history of jazz - it acknowledges the role of slavery and the importance of black musicians, some of whom appear and even get lines of dialogue (not nothing in 1942 Hollywood) but the bulk of the running time concerns Bonita Granville, who plays boogie woogie and is loved by various musicians including Ted North and mostly Jackie Cooper. Adolphe Menjou is her dad but doesn't have much to do.
Plenty of music and guest stars. Major studio polish. First screen credit for Phil Yordan - some of it is set in Chicago. Granbille is a sweetheart. Never became a big star but always nice to meet her.
Best scene - a shoot out in a speak easy and Granville and Cooper kiss in silhouette. Could have done with more gangsters.
Warner Bros tries to get some of that Peyton Place cash with this adaptaiton of secrets and lust in a small New England town. Richard Burton is a doctor coming home who tends sick friend Tom Drake who asks Burton to root his wife Barbara Rush; sexy nurse Angie Dickinson is having an affair with married Jack Carson but wants to hump Burton.
The film doesn't work. It's got some of the ingredients but there's no feel for small town life - there's not enough family drama. Burton needed to be Drake's brother and maybe even Carson's brother. There's too many middle aged people - it needed some youngies. I never thought I would write these words but it cries out for the Troy Donahue treatment.
Angie Dickinson plays it in the right style - her throwing herself at Burton is a highlight of the movie. Jack Carson can act but is too old and fat - the part needed someone sexy like one of Warner Bros TV stars like Clint Walker. Burton has charisma and the voice but feels out of place. He has this entertainingly bad monologue where he reminiscies about discovering his mother cheated. Barbara Rush is quite good but the film would be more fun with a Lana Turner/Susan Hayward.
Phil Yordan and Milton Sperling were credited for the script- they weren't the right people. They specialise in male tales. This needed someone more emphathetic to women.
A fair bit of sex - Rush gets pregnant to Burton, Rush talks about the healthy sex life of her and Drake (which I didn't believe, neither actor give that impression, but it was refreshing to hear), Dickinson poses nude for a lecherous journo and we see her bare aback.
Misses the mark. But Dickinson good.
Solid set up - Van Heflin decides to blow up his cheating wife, his house gets robbed and he gets locked at home, he realises the wife is innocent. The denoument feels vaguely unsatisfactory.
Fun in joke where Van Heflin refers to someone seeing The Three Musketeers at the movies - he was in it. Heflin is a strong actor and gives a fine performance.
From a Cornell Woolrich story.
One with Brian Donlevy, the other with Cary Grant, same script basically from the Cornell Woolrich novel which works as a short story.
Wonderful sense of doom to start off with. Decent ending.
A complete hash by MGM. In the 1950s they remade a lot of its old hits - not a bad idea especially if they had colour and proper stars. This has cinemascope but is in black and white and inappropriate stars.
The throughlines of Somerset Maugham's novel is clear - a woman is silly and selfish, has an affair, realises her husband isn't that bad and the guy she cheated with is useless. That doesn't come across here.
The script is partly to blame - it introduces the lover (Jean Pierre Aumont) but then gets rid of him; we never see him again or his wife. But mostly I think it's the casting. Eleanor Parker is lovely, and a competent actress but is far too sensible for the lead crying out for original choice Ava Gardner, or Elizabeth Taylor or simply someone more of a hot mess. Bill Travers is amateur hour as the husband. He needs to be in love with his wife but hating it, and heroic, but he can't do it, Aumont is just whatever. George Sanders steals the film as a quippy doctor where the big reveal is his wife is Asian and happy because he's docile. Sanders sound have played travers' part. Or Aumonts'. Gosh, imagine Tom Conway and Sanders in this.
The shoot was difficult - Ronald Neame and David Lewis were sacked - but the film was dead to begin with due to casting and inept script.
