I get the rationale - RKO remaking its back catalogue, get exciting new stars (Susan Strasberg, Chris Plummer) and director (Sidney Lumet), add colour. But Morning Glory didn't just launch Katherine Hepburn the film was all about how great Hepburn was - magnetic, talented, etc. So you'd better cast a Hepburn. From this period maybe Kim Stanley could have pulled it off. Or Anne Bancroft. Someone really great. Strasberg is pretty and sweet but not up to it - when she does soliloquies watched by everyone at a party you feel bad for her. To rub it in Plummer moons over her so does Fonda so does Herbert Marshall and then the critics.
Also Strasberg is meant, I think, to be this likeable stage struck kid but comes across more of a manipulative socipath like Eve in All About Eve - she sleeps with producer Fonda (more than 30 years older), gets writer Plummer to fall for her, enchants actor Marshall, manages to get cast in the lead after diva star Joan Greenwood leaves. We're supposed to find the final farewell between Strasberg and Fonda moving I think - Christ, she's 30 years older.
I think this film killed Strasberg's movie career before it began.
Sunny side - looks good, Lumet loves the theatre, Plummer is relaxed and believable as a slightly stiff writer, Fonda is strong.
No comments:
Post a Comment