Utterly bizarre - MGM try to keep with the times, and end up making a big screen version of Jack Kerouac's novel on beatniks. It's produced by Arthur Freed of all people too! So there's lots of scenes with characters performing poetry and saying "dig it" and talking about free love and their novel. No one sounds like a real person which is alright as long as it makes sense in the world - but it doesn't - at least not to this viewer. Maybe there is a big screen movie that could have been done of this tale - in black and white, with Cassevetes like atmosphere. Maybe.
Still, it's fascinating to watch, and George Peppard and Leslie Caron are genuinely well cast in the leads - I completely buy Peppard as a self-loathing, boozy aspiring writer who gets consumed by his passions... after all, he was that in real life to a certain degree, and he played that sort of role in Breakfast at Tiffanys. Caron is also vivacious and sexy as his French lover.
Roddy McDowall and Jim Hutton are far less happily cast as beatniks - Hutton especially struggles with his beard. Janice Rule is alright though her character is annoyingly misogynistic (she's independent and a genuine believer in free love until falling for Peppard converts her into a skirt wearer).
There is some entertaining MGM gloss (photography, production design) but the biggest problem is you can't take it seriously - and the whole point of the work is about passion.
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