Howard Hawks had a saying that a good movie was three great scenes and no bad ones. For this movie, I would change that to; a great movie has three noticeably excellent elements, and nothing below average. And even by that standard, this movie falls just short of being great. By the one hour mark you've begun to notice an accumulation of better-than-average conceits (A wife puts her husband in his place and confiscates his power, Ingrid Bergman in the sleeping bag, a stand out performance by Katina Paxinou, some excellent photography) but problems lay ahead.
First, the good: The cinematography is above average. It occasionally offers a stunning visual (a horse bucking against a snow drift, a two-shot of Cooper peering from a rock with a strange, expressionist tree limb over his head). Occasionally some frames look like a Japanese print. And the darkness of the shoot in some places produces stunning results. They probably shot dark to disguise that a lot of the outside scenes are shot inside, but it produces a unique, inky look I've never seen anywhere else. The Technicolor process in more conventional scenes looks deeply weird. The palette is very drained: forest green, gray, beige, brown flesh. But I kept thinking "if this was shot in b&w, there's no way it could have the impact of these strange color visuals" (Heresy, I know, but then of course it turns out to have been shot in Technicolor). But only the compositions are good. The film has a real lack of camera work to contribute to moments that should be heightened; the camera just kinda sits there for the whole movie. It seems they assumed one rock looks pretty much like every other rock so why move the camera.
The blowing of the bridge (you know, the exciting part of the movie) is shot pretty dull. It's just kinda off in the distance (an obvious miniature) and half of it falls over. Without a great ending, you really don't have a great movie. Gary Cooper (like Warren Beatty) relies on understatement so much that when he's asked to deliver the films emotional climax, he just can't bring it. It feels hollow and a little pathetic. Each time he tries to sell it, it just sounds more vapid. ("You're me now. I am you. We both go ...You're me too! ...We're not apart... Take care of our life ...Shes going on, with me") Ugh. He can't put that malarkey over. You just can't ask Cooper to be deep or to articulate deep convictions (See the Fountainhead, Meet John Doe).
True to Hemingway's reductivist style, we know the plot is about blowing up a bridge very early, but it still takes 3 hours to get there. I can see why people go the extra mile to forgive it faults, and declare it a masterpiece. But it doesn't take a genius to see that the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans when a war is waging. The movie really failed to make me care about the affair which eats up miles of celluloid. Bergman is inappropriately "movie-star cute" while hiding out with a team of rebels defending her homeland. Pilar (Paxionu) is always more compelling than the couple.
Anyone who likes the big love theme in the score can not have heard the tune "Let's Face the Music and Dance." Every time it played, I thought. 'How could they not know this melody makes people think of Fred and Ginger dancing around a swanky New York nightclub?'
First, the good: The cinematography is above average. It occasionally offers a stunning visual (a horse bucking against a snow drift, a two-shot of Cooper peering from a rock with a strange, expressionist tree limb over his head). Occasionally some frames look like a Japanese print. And the darkness of the shoot in some places produces stunning results. They probably shot dark to disguise that a lot of the outside scenes are shot inside, but it produces a unique, inky look I've never seen anywhere else. The Technicolor process in more conventional scenes looks deeply weird. The palette is very drained: forest green, gray, beige, brown flesh. But I kept thinking "if this was shot in b&w, there's no way it could have the impact of these strange color visuals" (Heresy, I know, but then of course it turns out to have been shot in Technicolor). But only the compositions are good. The film has a real lack of camera work to contribute to moments that should be heightened; the camera just kinda sits there for the whole movie. It seems they assumed one rock looks pretty much like every other rock so why move the camera.
The blowing of the bridge (you know, the exciting part of the movie) is shot pretty dull. It's just kinda off in the distance (an obvious miniature) and half of it falls over. Without a great ending, you really don't have a great movie. Gary Cooper (like Warren Beatty) relies on understatement so much that when he's asked to deliver the films emotional climax, he just can't bring it. It feels hollow and a little pathetic. Each time he tries to sell it, it just sounds more vapid. ("You're me now. I am you. We both go ...You're me too! ...We're not apart... Take care of our life ...Shes going on, with me") Ugh. He can't put that malarkey over. You just can't ask Cooper to be deep or to articulate deep convictions (See the Fountainhead, Meet John Doe).
True to Hemingway's reductivist style, we know the plot is about blowing up a bridge very early, but it still takes 3 hours to get there. I can see why people go the extra mile to forgive it faults, and declare it a masterpiece. But it doesn't take a genius to see that the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans when a war is waging. The movie really failed to make me care about the affair which eats up miles of celluloid. Bergman is inappropriately "movie-star cute" while hiding out with a team of rebels defending her homeland. Pilar (Paxionu) is always more compelling than the couple.
Anyone who likes the big love theme in the score can not have heard the tune "Let's Face the Music and Dance." Every time it played, I thought. 'How could they not know this melody makes people think of Fred and Ginger dancing around a swanky New York nightclub?'