Monday, May 08, 2023

Movie review - "Bitter Sweet" (1940) **

 Noel Coward disliked this version of his operetta and it's not hard to see why - but also I'm sympathetic to MGM, who needed a film for MacDonald and Eddy. It removes the opening device of the old heroine telling a young couple about her life in flashback because it was used in an earlier film Maytime. Btut that robs the piece of its point. Also the two stars are too old.

It's overproduced, the colour seems pointless somehow, there's lots of hammy support actors - George Sanders goes fuel Teutonic as the nasty noble after MacDonald. She's okay, Eddy's stiff.

Some of the songs were well done particularly the last number. But this film was annoying. They didn't even give Eddy a chance to put up a decent fight in the duel with Sanders - Sanders just skewers him (which to be fair is realistic but it de-balls him). MacDonald doesn't even seem to care. The actors were probably over each other by now.

I'd forgotten I'd seen a bunch of MacDonald-Eddy movies. They didn't linger in my memory.

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