Monday, February 22, 2016

Movie review - "The Private Lives of Adam and Eve" (1960) *1/2

An odd movie which I wanted to find more fun than it was - I found it hard going. 

It's a kind of a spoof of sweaty William Inge 50s stage melodramas, with the Bible thrown in (or, to be more accurate, John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus). There's a bunch of characters in a small town: casino owner Mickey Rooney, his trampy wife Fay Spain, bus driver Cecil Kellaway (who doesn't seem very healthy), teen runaway Tuesday Weld, mechanic Martin Milner, sleazy salesman Mel Torme, juvenile delinquent Paul Anka, divorcee Mamie Van Doren.

They get caught in a storm and Milner and Van Doren imagine they're Adam and Eve. The longer this went on the worse I found it - it's full of banged-over-the-head satire, pious platitudes, poor acting, and crappy handling.

The sheer novelty of it does keep you watching - Van Doren has fun as Eve, Milner is bland as Adam, Rooney has the time of his life as the devil. Tuesday Weld isn't in the film much - at the start and the end.

No comments: