Legendary television script from JP Miller, turned into a film by Blake Edwards, here directed by John Frankenheimer. This was a landmark in the careers of Frankenheimer, Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson. Laurie and Frankenheimer had an affair before and during filming which she writes about in her memoir - a lot of high brow melodrama. Resulted in some great acting.
Laurie is terrific - Robertson matches her. Charles Bickford also strong as Laurie's dad.
Feels like it should be a TV play - some hoods in New York kill another hood. They're teens so it's West Side Story without songs, as someone commented. The story isn't involving. The hoods kill someone in the opening scene, so we know who did it so there's no mystery. Lancaster is a prosecutor, so he's just putting people in prison.
It's kind of interesting he's downtown and his wife Dina Merill is uptown. But nothing much is done with that - he should have slept with ex Shelley Winters, mother of one of the accused. That would've been drama. Or the mother of the dead kid. I kept waiting for Lancaster's daughter to be threatened. Didn't happen.
John Frankenheimer directs his backside off though. It's gloriously shot, well acted - Telly Savalas is in it, Shelley Winters. He didn't want Dina Merill but accepted her as a trade off to not have Paul Anka! Sydney Pollack was dialogue director and impressed Burt Lancaster so much the actor helped Pollack's career.
Frankenheimer wanted to make the best film he could. But it's just not interesting.
The gang members are irritating. Well acted but still stock types - cocky or secretly disabled.
Joseph Mankiewicz's comedy heist Western with some old stars (Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda) and new writers (Robert Benton, David Newman). He's not a director particularly associaated with Westerns - the movie was originally written for Don Siegel which makes more sense.
I glimpsed this as a child and always remember Michael Blodgett having sex with the girl on the pool table (female parts not amazing in this).
It's not much of a movie. Douglas wears glasses which is novel but he's mostly smug. There's a lot of prison tropes - riots, some gays, people hot for Blodgett, cross and double cross.
The characters aren't that compelling. There are introduced in interesting ways but then gets bogged down. Henry Fonda is dogged. Him turning crook at end feels unmotiavted. Douglas is one note.
I think maybe if had been a woman's prison, maybe it would've had more life.
The cast is special - there's Burgess Meredith, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, etc.
But I didn't like it. The music is awful - those stings. Why did Westerns use these?
Frank Harvey play adapted into a film with Harvey in the lead. He's an old soak whose wife is havin it off with one man, then another (skinny Ian Hunter). EA Dupont directed. He throws in some funky visuals every now and then - tracking shots, dissolves - but the acting is stagy.
Entertaining version of the famous play. The surprises are harder to pull off on film but they do well enough. It has splendid leads both willing to go full ham, with the young bull and old bull. Mankewicz is an ideal director with his love of literature. The set is amazing.
A little long and would be better on stage.
Not good. Erratic acting. Dodgy scripting. Fascinating. Musical about putting on a musical only there's hardly any songs. They were too ambitious.
A recording of the 1964 New York production from Elia Kazan, who directed a character based on him played by Ralph Meeker. It's got Jason Robards and Barbara Loden and Faye Dunaway. Fascinating.
Kazan only liked the Marilyn Monroe stuff. He was right. It's the strongest. The informing friend could have worked - needed to connect him with the Marilyn part, made it a love triangle. The first wife - dull, cheated on - is dull. Ditto the third wife - concentration camp and all. it's wife two, Marilyn, that makes this worth watching.
The making of this play would be a great movie/play.
