Reviews

It has to be said up front that if you don't like Gregory Peck, you won't like this movie, since it's basically two and a half hours of Peck. In 1950s suburban Connecticut, on Madison Avenue, and in numerous flashbacks to World War II.

Generally, the film is a well-written look at the repressed inner life of a veteran who has come back to the US after the war, gotten a job, had kids with his wife, bought a house and a car and a washing machine, and suddenly decides to do one thing - take a new job, at a TV network - that completely disrupts his rather neutral rut.

The wife (Jennifer Jones), Betsy, is the one who urges and convinces him to make the switch - a chance at a little more money. At the same time, his grandmother has died and has left him her old house - but the inheritance is being disputed by her former caretaker.

In all these things, Tom Rath (Peck) is cautious, while his wife wants to take risks. Of course, in the world we're dealing with - the '50s - he's the breadwinner, and she can only advise from the sidelines. But the film makes it clear that such a relationship isn't necessarily a power imbalance. Betsy is quite assertive and is obviously an equal partner in the marriage.

But something is missing - which she acknowledges, while he doesn't. Something hasn't been right since the war. There's an air of defeat and resignation that hangs over everything. It has to do with those repressed memories of Tom's, that keep coming out in sudden flashbacks.

Another reviewer said best what I was thinking: Nunnally Johnson was a very good screenwriter. As a director, maybe not so good. For one thing, some of his scenes are unnecessarily slow, and long. Mostly this jumps out at you when Peck is off the screen - in the scenes with Fredric March and Ann Harding (whose delivery is particularly lugubrious, for no apparent reason). Although Gregory Peck himself was not exactly a ball of fire (at least, not since Duel in the Sun), he's better at conveying an inner emotional intensity - and he gets to emote in some of those war flashbacks.

Unfortunately, all this somnambulance leaves poor Jennifer Jones giving a lively performance in a vacuum, almost, and makes it seem as if she's overemoting, when she's not. This is particularly true in the bedroom confession scene in the last part of the film, where Peck refuses to display any emotion despite what's going on, almost as if he thinks that to do so would be distasteful. This unbalances the scene, making it appear as if the wife is hysterical out of all proportion to the circumstances (she isn't. She's right to be upset. But Peck is giving Jones almost nothing to play off of).

The supporting performances are good - again, rather ponderous, at times - Lee J. Cobb as a judge handling the inheritance, Geraldine Wall as his secretary, Keenan Wynn as an old Army buddy of Tom's, Arthur O'Connell and Henry Daniell as work colleagues at the network, Gigi Perreau as network chief March's spoiled daughter, Gene Lockhart as a commuter, etc.

Not all that many Hollywood films attempted to delve into the unease beneath the suburban sprawl of the '50s. Those that did were pretty good, and this one may have been the best. There's something haunting about the tone of the film. It doesn't try for easy answers. And the superb score by Bernard Herrmann adds to the somewhat melancholy mood.

And, after a while, the somewhat unusual rhythms of the film start to become second nature. You give in to them. At least I did.

The reviewer, hondo55131, on December 2005, titled his review, "If only a different composer." If I'm not mistaken, no composer is credited on the film. Stock music was used for the score. It was by Fred Steiner, but wasn't composed for the movie.

In 1958 there was a strike in Hollywood by the American Federation of Musicians. That's apparently why no original music was recorded for The Law And Jake Wade (several other MGM movies of 1958 suffered the same fate).

The lugubrious canned music has nothing to do with what we're seeing onscreen, has no character, and really does drag everything down. It might have been better to have had no music in the movie at all.

At any rate, what we do have is a pretty good, moody western, rather deliberately paced, that picks up near the end, but even that final sequence could possibly have used more punch. Noted action director John Sturges could be brilliant (Bad Day At Black Rock, Last Train From Gun Hill) but sometimes he was just okay. This movie isn't as gripping or suspenseful as it should be, but isn't bad.

Through a series of circumstances, Marshall Jake Wade (Robert Taylor) and his fiancee (Patricia Owens) find themselves the hostage of Wade's former partner in crime, Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark). Wade and Hollister were in Quantrill's Raiders together - now Wade has sprung Hollister out of jail before a hanging - "to repay a debt of honor" - but the outlaw wants to know where Wade has hidden the proceeds from an old robbery. His gang is along to keep Wade in line.

At times I thought Jake Wade acted like a bit of a fool, too trusting and noble. At other times, he could have been a bit more honest. There are some inconsistencies.

Also, though it probably was not the intention, there's almost a homosexual subtext in the relationship of Widmark and Taylor. A sort of love-hate thing.

Both Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark are good. The California locations are stark and well-chosen: the Lone Pine and Death Valley areas.

They Were Expendable is based on a novel that in turn was based on real-life events in the Philippines in World War II. It was filmed mostly in Florida and at MGM studios in Culver City, California by the great John Ford, who is at his best here.

Ford served in the Navy and manages to capture something that seems real and honest, as well as heightened and sentimental, but never maudlin. The mundane and somewhat random aspects of war seem better portrayed here than in most war films. And despite the leads being played by attractive, larger than life movie stars, they seem like real people after a while. You feel as if you're living the story along with them.

The somewhat subdued quality of the movie when the battles aren't being fought is in itself a pleasure, since so many other filmmakers then and now want to give us "drama". Also enjoyable are Ford's brilliant compositions, and his wit, at welcome intervals.

Montgomery never had such a great role and he plays it with simplicity and a certain grit that make him memorable. John Wayne as his second in command gives a strong and involving, as well as occasionally charming, performance. Lovely Donna Reed as a nurse who is his love interest for a brief interval is perfect. Her eyes are the key to her performance - it's clear the character has seen grim reality and has an uncertain future, just by looking at those eyes.

The supporting cast is memorable, particularly Louis Jean Heydt, Ward Bond, Leon Ames, Charles Trowbridge, and Russell Simpson as a character with a corn cob pipe that seems like he could have stepped out of Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath.

The film is an unflinching look at grim events but is leavened by its humanity and occasional humor, as well as Ford's underlying warmth as a filmmaker.

There's a real flavor of long-ago Britain in this rousing yet rather serious adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's epic novel.

I think this may be Robert Taylor's finest hour; he's really superb in the title role. No, he's not English, nor does he have the accent. But he seems to have an innate understanding of the character. His eyes are very expressive. He almost gives a 'method' performance - intense, internal, believable - yet fully within the dictates of the costume-picture realm.

I enjoyed Joan Fontaine's "would that I were a man" musings as Rowena - she's far more spirited than the usual Medieval movie heroine and one gets the impression she would gladly joust with the best of them if given half the chance. She's also suitably romantic when necessary. This also happens to be one of Fontaine's best portrayals of her postwar career.

Elizabeth Taylor apparently had little desire to make this film, and the result may be her very low key and underplayed approach to the role of Rebecca, daughter of the Jew, Isaac of York (Felix Aylmer). But whatever the reason for her quiet, melancholy interpretation, she all but steals the film with it. She also was very likely never as lovely as she is here.

George Sanders, as her brusque Norman would-be suitor, Brian de Bois-Gilbert, is suitably threatening and yet appropriately sympathetic when it's called for. Finlay Currie, as the estranged father of Ivanhoe, Cedric, takes up a sword when necessary (at age 74) and generally gives a stubborn, spirited portrayal. Emlyn Williams plays Wamba, Cedric's fool, freed by Ivanhoe, who gets one of the film's best lines: "For every Jew you show me who's not a Christian, l'll show you a Christian who's not a Christian."

Although Ivanhoe is not generally known as one of Hollywood's message pictures of the period, it does in fact contain a strong message of religious/racial tolerance, as you will see if you watch it.

There's also plenty of action - much of it filmed outdoors in England (and a bit in Italy - substituting for Austria), or on the back lot and sound stages of MGM's British operation at Borehamwood.

The lush Technicolor cinematography by F. A. Young, brilliant art direction by Alfred Junge, costumes by Roger Furse, and the rest of the production have been upgraded recently to blu ray and the results are sparkling. Miklós Rózsa's musical score is outstanding.

Pandro S. Berman's production, directed by Richard Thorpe, is an entertaining motion picture experience.

I first saw this great and greatly entertaining film on the big screen, when it was re-released in the 1970s.

Since I was a kid, I loved Cecil B. DeMille films such as Union Pacific and Reap The Wild Wind. Yes, I found them hokey even then. But also a delight. And wonderful storytelling. Many of the them had a love triangle as the basis of the screenplay, regardless of the era or the setting. So does The Ten Commandments (Moses, Rameses, and Nefretiri).

DeMille had of course done Spectacle before - it was his stock in trade - but in many cases the films didn't really live up to the hype, in that one way. They were wonderful films - like The Sign Of The Cross, and Samson and Delilah - but they weren't really big. No DeMille film was as big as MGM's Quo Vadis (1951), for example. Not even close. Not until 1956's The Ten Commandments.

It's really a biography of Moses, from birth to death. At the same time, it doesn't really ever get very close to Moses or give us any real psychology of the man. It's as much about the story as the character. That's very typical of DeMille, though, and surprisingly, despite essentially "staying outside" of who Moses was or what motivated him, the film is an enormously compelling historical and religious drama. As well as a romance, an adventure, a bit of a sophisticated comedy, at times (the scenes at court, with Cedric Hardwicke as Sethi, that have an almost G. B. Shaw-like wit), something of a travelogue (taking us to ancient Egypt and traversing some of the very ground Moses walked upon - as an opening credit informs us) and even a docudrama (as DeMille himself narrates scenes of brickmaking, etc.).

The filmmaker was highly anti-Communist by the 1950s, and if you see a version with his onscreen prologue, he makes a comparison of the ancient Israelites and their enslavement under the Egyptians, to the people living under Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc at the time of the film's release.

So many people have talked about the cast, I don't know what else I can say. I do know DeMille offered the part of Lilia (played by Debra Paget) to Pier Angeli, and Joshua (played by John Derek) to Cornel Wilde. Both of whom turned him down.

The two main stars, Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, are so perfectly cast it's difficult to picture any other actors in the roles of Moses and Rameses (though DeMille did consider casting William Holden as Rameses! Hard to picture that.)

I've always thought Anne Baxter (at around 30, and never really considered a sex symbol) was a somewhat odd choice for the role of Nefretiri, who arouses the rivalry of two princes of Egypt. DeMille originally wanted Audrey Hepburn, because he thought she resembled the women depicted in ancient Egyptian art. One can also easily envision young beauties of the time such as Jean Simmons or Elizabeth Taylor in the role. Baxter was originally considered for the part of Moses' shepherdess wife, Sephora. It might have made more sense for her to play Sephora and sexy Yvonne DeCarlo to have played Nefretiri - though DeMille's decision to cast both actresses against type is interesting. DeCarlo got some of the best notices of her career for her performance. And Baxter has moments near the start of the film that remind one of sexy young Claudette Colbert in DeMille's earlier films. And she's particularly effective in the sequences near the end where she plays the older wife of the Pharaoh with appropriate rancor and bitterness. (By the way, I've always wondered whose child, exactly, "Princess" Nefretiri is supposed to be. She's not Rameses' sister - I hope).

All in all you will probably enjoy The Ten Commandments - but if you can, see it on the big screen, or in at least high definition.

One summer night as a high-school-age teen with nothing to do, I watched this movie on TV. I had never seen Judy Holliday before and I suppose part of my enjoyment of the film was discovering how good she was. I already knew Jack Lemmon was good. I thought the film was funny and delightful from start to finish.

At any rate, a lot of years later, I watched Phffft again, and was very disappointed. I really want to see it a third time, now, because I wonder if I was just in a bad mood, or something. I don't understand how my reaction could be so different. I found it dull and slow-moving, and most surprisingly, not very funny. It also looked kind of cheaply made, and it probably was (cheapness being sort of a hallmark of Columbia Pictures, unless it was a big, important film - and even then, sometimes).

I can usually get into an older film and appreciate the humor based on what was humorous then, but I found a lot of the wit too dated to enjoy, and even at times in bad taste (although nothing like the bad taste of some current movie humor).

I like all four of the main actors a lot, so I'm sorry to report I didn't really get into this listless and rather strained marital comedy this time around.

In this remake of Ninotchka, based on a Broadway musical version with songs by Cole Porter, a dour Soviet emissary (Cyd Charisse) is charmed by a Hollywood producer (Fred Astaire) and the glories of Paris. We hear a lot of about Paris, but - except in some establishing shots - we don't see a lot of it. Most of the film takes place indoors, unlike Fred Astaire's other 1957 musical, Funny Face, which was at least partially filmed on location in France.

That said, director Rouben Mamoulian does a lot with what the budget and MGM's technicians have given him. The interiors are certainly lavish, and the story still holds up. It's been reworked from the original, and updated for the Cold War. Instead of a fight over Russian crown jewels and whether they belong to exiled royalty or the State, we now have a composer (Wim Sonneveld) who has fled to Free Europe and whose services are required by both the Soviets and a Hollywood film company shooting a new version of War And Peace, starring Peggy Dayton, an Esther Williams-like swimming star (Janis Paige).

Along for the fun are three pleasure-seeking Russian government officials (Peter Lorre, Jules Mushin, and Joseph Buloff), whose behavior is being monitored by Ninotchka with increasing disgust - until she herself begins to succumb to similar temptations.

Unless you get the chance to see it in actual CinemaScope, on the big screen, the film (including the spectacular dances) may lose some of its impact. And many of the jokes that were once topical may not land in the same way as they did in the '50s.

But then you still have the Cole Porter songs, the wonderful solo dances and duets of Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire, and the added fun of comic numbers by Paige and the three Russian stooges, Lorre, Mushin, and Buloff. There's also a great contribution from the background dancers, who really stand out, here.

Rouben Mamoulian brings his unique, sophisticated, and refreshing style to the whole thing, a great musical talent but often forgotten next to Minnelli, Stanley Donen et al. He later worked on Cleopatra and Porgy And Bess, but ended up being replaced on those projects, so this was his final released film.

I've read some reviews saying this isn't as good as Hitchcock, and isn't a good film noir. It might be better to just take the movie on its own terms.

Undercurrent is an enjoyable piece of entertainment, in an old fashioned, magazine fiction type of way, which benefits greatly from the stylish direction of Vincente Minnelli and the leading performances by Katharine Hepburn and the often underrated Robert Taylor.

This was Taylor's first film on his return from WWII. He's cast quite differently from his prewar films. Actually, Hepburn is also cast against type. There are elements of Gaslight and Rebecca, with Kate as the inexperienced, rather gawky bride of an industrialist, who whisks her away from her New England college town to the glamorous atmosphere of Washington, DC, Georgetown, and Virginia's rural horse country.

Hepburn is surprisingly effective as the insecure young woman (the actress was close to 40 here but she pulls it off). She really makes us feel her nerves as she tries to fit in, and live up to her husband's expectations.

But it's clear after a while that the husband, Alan Garroway, has a secret or two. Kate (as Ann) keeps uncovering layer after layer - some of it having to do with a sensitive brother that Alan seems to be jealous of, and that Ann begins to almost fall in love with, despite never having met him.

Big MGM movies of this period have a certain leisurely pace and this one is no exception, so you may not find yourself on the edge of your seat, gripped every minute by taut drama. But if you take it for what it is, and settle in, you will likely enjoy the outcome.

There's an emphasis on glamour and sumptuousness - Miss Hepburn wears a lot of beautiful clothes by costume designer Irene - and you won't be surprised that the book it's based on was serialized in Women's Home Companion magazine.

Hepburn gives a very affecting and natural performance; Taylor is also very effective as the husband whose motives remain unclear throughout most of the film. Robert Mitchum (coming off an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting actor the year before) is the third above-the-title star and gives his usual intelligent performance.

Jayne Meadows plays a girl who's supposed to resemble Hepburn's character. Marjorie Main is Hepburn's dad's housekeeper. Leigh Whipper is a worker on Garroway's Middleburg, Virginia, estate. Kathryn Card is a horsewoman. Etc. All do good work.

There are some rather characteristic Vincente Minnelli touches, particularly the, shall we say, undercurrent of thinly-veiled emotional chaos beneath the beauty and order on the surface of things.

I can only guess that the attraction of working in England on a film together was the draw for Bette Davis and Gary Merrill when they chose to do this project. Still, I can't believe they read the script and thought it would make a good movie. It's just a far-fetched, second rate murder melodrama, based on a not very well known play, with only a few characters.

Having done a little research I now know Bette and Gary didn't care for the original script (by Val Guest) but that Bette and costar Emlyn Williams - writer of Night Must Fall, and The Corn Is Green - attempted a re-write on set.

At any rate, having just made All About Eve, you'd think both actors would have been careful about selecting good follow-up material, Bette to solidify her comeback, and Gary to build on his recent success after coming to films from Broadway. Instead this is a bad melodrama and a bore at the same time. It's not long, but it has no feeling of pace. It's like watching a play on '50s TV, and not a good one.

Bette plays an Englishwoman and lets her Boston accent suffice, with a few plummy pronunciations thrown in. She's really the only interesting thing to keep you watching this low-budget affair.

Anyway, you probably will want to see this film once, if you like Bette. She gives a rather bad performance, at times, but at least gives you a lot of bang for the buck. She's a charismatic performer. Gary Merrill is just ok, and the rest of it seems stupid and cheap.

Billy Wilder's films before this one were so adult, yet somehow usually in pretty good taste. This one has a lot of obvious sex jokes and references, including the town named Climax, Nevada, and a shot of one character standing in front of a cactus that juts out exactly like a big, erect penis. And a waitress character called Polly The Pistol (played by Kim Novak, who was too classy for this material - but still gives one of the better performances in the film).

Peter Sellers was originally cast in the male lead, but fell ill and was replaced by Ray Walston - but the lines seem exactly as if they were written for Jack Lemmon (who may have been one of the few actors who could have played the part). Walston, an excellent actor, tries hard, and is good at times, but he's not really all that well cast - he's not a leading man. Or a movie star. Felicia Farr (Mrs. Jack Lemmon in real life), as his wife, has a similar problem. She's pretty, and a good actress, but I only cared about her up to a point. She also lacked the star quality necessary to carry a major role like this. If you re-imagine this film with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, it becomes a different film. Glenn Ford and Doris Day, maybe. Stars.

The two actual movie stars in the film, Novak and Dean Martin - don't exactly carry the story. But they jump off the screen with their obvious charisma. The film should have had four stars, rather than two.

While not quite a masterpiece or a classic, The Bottom Of The Bottle is involving, suspenseful, and watchable. Like many movies of the era filmed on location, especially those made by director Henry Hathaway, it uses the atmosphere and landscape to get you involved. It's hard to picture this story taking place anywhere else (though it's based on a novel that took place in France).

Van Johnson heads the cast as an escaped convict and an alcoholic, who ends up at the doorstep of his older brother (Joseph Cotten), an affluent lawyer in Nogales. Arizona, during the aftermath of a big rainstorm that has caused the local river to rage and flood its banks. Johnson needs to get across to Mexico, where his wife and children are waiting, down to their last cent.

As a prominent attorney, it would be career suicide for Cotten to help his brother to leave the country. He seems cold and unfeeling, but after all, he has his own life to think of. It turns out, though, that years ago, he had a chance to help his brother (who's innocent) and didn't. He has become a shell of his former self, and his wife (Ruth Roman) realizes they're living a kind of half-life, partying and socializing with the other well-off people in town, in a kind of substitute for real happiness.

Eventually their friends (who have met Johnson, whom Cotten has passed off as someone else) realize Johnson is the escaped convict they've all become aware is in the area. But he has escaped into the wilderness, and is going to try to cross the turbulent river waters - even though he's gone back to drinking, in his desperate state. What happens from then on, you'll have to see.

Van Johnson is pretty great - he was an actor who played for charm, usually, and created a kind of familiar, laid back personality that he used in a lot of his roles. But here he has to create a completely different character, that you might expect to see played by a different type of actor.. And he pulls it off. Cotten, also, plays against type, and does it well. They don't really seem much like brothers. There's roughly a 10 year age difference, and they're different physical types. But being good actors, they make it work.

The great Lee Garmes photographed in CinemaScope, and the screenplay is by Sidney Boehm. Though somewhat turgid and heavy, the movie keeps you going and has a suspenseful last quarter and a satisfying pay off.

Despite this being called "The best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed" it really isn't on that level. Stanley Donen is not the Master Of Suspense.

It's a pleasant, if sometimes unbelievable, romantic comedy thriller, the benefits of which are two charismatic stars (in their only pairing), a good supporting cast, Parisian locations in color, and occasionally witty dialogue.

There are weaknesses in the story and plot that are somewhat obscured by the charms of Grant and Hepburn. Cary is remarkably well preserved for a 59 year old man. He looks good, and some of the things he's required to do in the film would exhaust a man ten years younger. I don't think there's much sexual chemistry between him and Audrey, but that doesn't seem to bother too many people who see the film.

There are a few good set-pieces, in the Hitchcock vein, like the fight on a hotel roof and the business with the theater trap doors. Though I think if Hitchcock had made a film in Paris, he would have come up with better ideas. I also think he would have made Paris look better than it looks here. Other than the cruise on the river, the locations that are chosen are somewhat drab or mundane.

Overall, the premise seems a bit contrived, and the people don't seem real, but a lot is done to try to hide that fact. The movie is watchable and entertaining and passes the time pleasantly - and there just aren't stars like Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant any more. Though I think Grant might have had more chemistry with the other Hepburn, Katharine.

For Judy Garland fans this is a special treat - to be able to see an older Judy giving a rounded, dramatic portrayal of a complex character. Her style is interesting - likeable, casual, offhand, at times. She knows when to emphasize, and when to pull back. This could have been heavy, in someone else's hands, but she plays it in a very direct fashion that wins us over.

The film starts off without fanfare, with Judy's character (Jenny Bowman, an American concert star on tour, modeled after Garland) visiting a well-off London medical specialist for her throat. But very quickly we discover these two have a history, and are the parents of a son Jenny gave up at birth and now wants to see again. The doctor, (played by Dirk Bogarde) who has raised the boy, refuses at first, then relents, when Judy promises only to meet the child, then go on her way.

That's not what happens, of course, when the two visit their son, now in his middle teens, at boarding school. Though she doesn't reveal her identity, Jenny and the boy develop a strong bond. Eventually she wants him back.

The boy has been led by the doctor (and the boy's stepmother, who is now dead) to think he's been adopted. Eventually he overhears an argument and learns that the Bogarde and Garland characters are in fact, his real parents.

Though it sounds like a melodrama, it's not played or directed in that style. It becomes a touching, and (mostly) underplayed drama of a situation that seems both believable and fairly realistic.

Though Jenny Bowan is obviously based on Judy Garland (despite being just a singer, not a film star/actress), the character doesn't seem to have a lot of Judy's own issues, and is not exactly like Judy. So that a scene that occurs near the end of the film - which finds Jenny in the ER, visited by David (Bogarde) - as well as the following scene at the Palladium with Jenny late for a performance - make more sense for Garland than for Bowman. Dramatically, the scenes seem to come out of nowhere. The hospital scene was apparently re-written by Bogarde and Garland. It's strong, revealing, and dramatic - the film needs some excitement, here - but Jenny has not really behaved particularly self-destructively up to this point, and the scene addresses that issue - confusingly, as if Jenny has suddenly become Judy.

Unfortunately, these final scenes also lack resolution. You may find yourself confused when the words The End flash on the screen. David has just told Jenny he loves her - it should lead somewhere - we should find out where their relationship is going - or how they intend to raise their son - but it's all left up in the air.

But, overall - especially if you enjoy Judy Garland - it's a good musical drama, with that reseved, understated quality that British films of the period had. It presents likable people and you do care about them. It also has some nice color photography of London and the countryside, along with good backstage atmosphere, Judy sings four or five numbers, the best of which are the standards, By Myself, and It Never Was You (recorded live, on set - with solo piano).

As others have said, this was Norma Shearer's last film. I have no idea if she intended it to be, at the time, but it was, and she retired. Norma was, I think, 39 in this movie.

Shearer didn't appear in many comedies. The Women (1939), also directed by George Cukor, was fantastic, and a big hit. She was the lead, but her part was more serious, and she wasn't required to do the comedic heavy lifting (that was left mostly to co-star Rosalind Russell and the supporting cast).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Norma didn't particularly have the light touch necessary for this type of sophisticated comedy. It's the sort of thing Claudette Colbert could have done in her sleep - and she would have made it seem better than it actually was.

It's a trifle about a woman hiring a good-looking man (Robert Taylor) as a secretary - but really it's to give the impression of being her lover, in order to make her boyfriend (George Sanders) jealous. Taylor's character already has a crush on her when he's hired.

Shearer is good enough, but the role seems to expose not only some of her acting weaknesses but also some of the qualities that made her a little hard to take as a personality. She was always able to rise to the occasion in difficult material - having triumphed in Romeo And Juliet (1936) (another occasion where she was directed by Cukor), and Strange Interlude (1932), as Eugene O'Neill's complex heroine, Nina Leeds. But as a film personality required to just "play herself" in this piece of fluff, she tends to come off as both strained, and, at times, strange.

Robert Taylor wasn't known for his comedic abilities, either, but the times he was cast in comedies he actually did very well. He's funny, here - but there's not a lot of chemistry between him Miss Shearer. And unfortunately he was almost a decade younger- and looks it. (George Sanders was also younger than Norma by a few years.)

Shearer and Taylor had been paired previously in the drama, Escape. They weren't a totally effective screen couple, but then Taylor seemed do do better opposite actresses who could display more vulnerability - such as Margaret Sullavan, Katharine Hepburn, and maybe especially, Vivien Leigh. (Strangely enough, Shearer's final acting role was in a 1951 radio adaptation of Waterloo Bridge - Taylor's one film with Leigh.)

Finally, director George Cukor is simply off his game, in this one. It didn't happen very often, but it was obvious when it did. Not that the script is up to the level of The Philadelphia Story, Holiday, or anything remotely that good. The story is really extremely light and a little dumb, and probably required some very expert, elegant, comedy stars to make you forget that fact. Which Shearer, Taylor, and Sanders were not, unfortunately.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times put it on his 10 Worst list for the year, and it was a box office bomb. Norma Shearer turned down Mrs. Miniver to make it - paving the way for Greer Garson to take her place as First Lady of MGM.

I used to love going to Paul Mazursky's movies, the wonderful Harry And Tonto and the underrated Next Stop, Greenwich Village. Several others.

This one was more serious, and he did a good job with it. Jill Clayburgh was an excellent, popular actress of those days. She had a fine supporting cast.

I wanted to comment here, specifically to address the reviewers who say they couldn't relate to this woman emotionally because she was well off and not living in a depressed neighborhood and didn't have three little kids to take care of and no income, etc. These comments made absolutely no sense to me.

It's not this film's fault the economy of the US has deteriorated since it was made. Yes, even at the time, this was an upper middle class New York woman who had no money worries, and therefore she didn't share a lot with the average woman of 1978. But in 1978, many families were still living on one income. Public college was affordable, food and gas, even rent, were affordable. People didn't travel a lot, and many families had one car. People didn't use credit cards very much. The New York subway cost 50 cents.

Why this film had more resonance in 1978 is that divorce was less prevalent then than now. Women were not in the workforce as much. It may seem hard to believe but I remember just a few years before this, women were not allowed to wear pants in some restaurants and hotels. Many universities were not even co-ed.

So here's a woman facing divorce in this very different time, when many women relied on their husbands, and more than that, relied psychologically on the central thing in their lives, home and marriage. I think it was smart of Mazursky to focus on a woman of means, so that the economic issues would not be front-and-center. Instead, this is a woman whose main crisis is the divorce itself, the rejection, the loneliness, the sexual needs, the need to find oneself and rely on oneself. It works particularly because this was a woman who never really had to rely on herself, before.

It was a very different time and people may find it hard to relate to that time, but it's still a well-made, well-acted film.

If you're looking for a very light comedy to pass the time, starring three very attractive stars, you could do worse than The Little Hut - a hit in its own day, but rarely talked about since.

It's a shipwrecked-on-a-desert-island comedy about a married couple and a friend who's in love with the wife. The couple are Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner, the friend is David Niven.

It's the sort of very British (though originally French) comedy where the men dress in black tie for dinner on this deserted little island. Basically, Granger is so proficiant at survival that he hardly seems to mind having been shipwrecked. He goes around building things and creating a reasonably civilized environment. Displaying little emotion and deadpanning his dialogue, Granger is very good; maybe only Cary Grant could have played it better. As the friend who lives in the little hut, whom wife Ava uses to try to make hubby jealous, Niven is, as usual, delightful. Ava herself, in a rare comedy, is at the height of her beauty and turns in an adroit, sophisticated performance.

At any rate, today what goes on in this little comedy may seem completely out of touch, because morals, and the conventions of society, and sexual politics, are all somewhat different, especially in the way the movies treat it all. There's not a lot of wit any more, and a filmmaker would very likely be pilloried for suggesting that there's a difference between men and women. But it's actually a sophisticated piece whose themes are as old as the Garden Of Eden.

If you want to see an offbeat little comedy of the sexes with a good cast and witty situations, this may be for you.

Johnny Tremain is a well-enough made film and can be enjoyed on its own terms. I'm kind of torn about Disney versions of great books because, on the one hand, I enjoyed them immensely as a kid. They have a certain style all their own (in the art direction, music, costumes, production values) that I still find pleasing. On the other hand, the "Disnifying" of books like Johnny Tremain often takes the real heart and soul out of the work, substituting a kind of formulaic style that still manages to be heart-tugging and soul-stirring, but in a much more simplistic way.

You see it over and over, in all kinds of adaptations. I would describe it as cartoon-like. Every complex situation or emotion can be reduced to this Disney formula. If a book has a child protagonist and Disney gets a hold of the book, you can expect this same treatment of the material. Or at least you could, back in the 50s and 60s.

Robert Stevenson, a good director who had once worked for RKO (Jane Eyre, Walk Softly Stranger, The Las Vegas Story) was at the helm of a lot of these films. I sometimes wonder how he could justify to himself directing so many bowdlerizations of great books. But then, the movies were box office hits, so maybe it wasn't so hard.

Anyhow, looking at the film, it's not bad, but it's also a little weak. The adults in the audience might cringe when the patriots start singing "We are the sons of liberty" as if it were a Nelson Eddy musical..

The acting is fine, with some talented character actors on hand (Sebastian Cabot, Virginia Christine, Walter Sande, Rusty Lane, Gavin Gordon, Whit Bissell, Will Wright). I never cared too much for Richard (Dick) Beymer, who plays Rab, but he's good in this. Hal Stalmaster plays Johnny well. But he's not given as much to work with as he might have been, had they stuck closer to the book (where Johhny is a cocksure kid at the beginning who burns his hand and ruins his chances of being a silversmith, then becomes more humble). The character grows, in the film, but in a less interesting way.

Turning Johnny Tremain into a lighter adventure of the early days of the Revolution, rather than a dramatic piece of historical fiction, doesn't really ruin it. Somehow it still has a thrilling feeling of history in the making. Film itself is an exciting medium, and through the use of color, design, camera placement and movement, a sense of the dramatic can be achieved, and it is, here. That it gives us a happy ending without emotional depth, and a kind of pageant of history rather actual history, or any true human drama, is not unusual from this studio.

It was the early 1950s, when a lot of young couples were moving to California in what has since been called "The Great Migration." It seemed to be a land of opportunity.

Glenn Ford is a young attorney who's doing fairly well at a Montana law firm, but who's clearly propping up some of the partners. His wife (Ruth Roman) sees his talents going to waste, and at dinner one night, having had a few drinks, she tells off her husband's bosses. All is more or less forgiven, but then she urges him to assert himself, one thing leads to another, and they decide to try L. A.

Arriving in California, they find that the home they had wired ahead to rent is unavailable. They end up in a rather seedy bungalow court, with a lot of telephones, because it's a former bookie joint. This figures in a whole series of misunderstandings, that should be funny (and occasionally, dangerous). And gets the couple involved with gangsters.

Meanwhile Glenn has been cramming for the California bar, along with law student Nina Foch, who gets him a job in the collection agency where she works to support herself. Glenn is not exactly the type to go after deadbeats. He even ends up helping out an aspiring French singer played by Denise Darcel. So now he has three attractive women in his life.

Lovely Ruth Roman is fine, in a change-of-pace comedy role, but Jean Arthur she's not. Darcel is cute and sexy, Foch is charming and attractive, and gives possibly the best performance in the movie. Ford is a good actor who sometimes overdid the shambling-mumbling-bashful routine, as he does here.

The final scenes give Glenn's character, Max, a chance to show off his legal skills in a courtroom, and it all ends happily.

Unfortunately, film is slightly contrived. I found myself wishing it had been simpler. Focusing more on how a young married couple adjusts to a new life in Southern California. In a more realistic manner.

Three Coins In The Fountain deftly weaves together three love stories about American secretaries in Rome. Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire), who has been in Rome for 15 years, lives with a younger woman, Anita Hutchins (Jean Peters), and they're joined by another young woman, Maria Williams (Maggie McNamara), just arrived from the States.

Frances has been in love with her boss, the expatriate American writer, John Frederick Shadwell (Clifton Webb), all these years. Anita gets into a forbidden relationship with Georgio (Rossano Brazzi), a translator who works at her place of employment (a US government agency where office relationships between American girls and local men are taboo). Maria meets a playboy prince (Louis Jourdan), and comes up with a plan to get him interested in her as more than just a prospective conquest.

It's not deep, but it's all very well done, good to look at, fairly witty and generally involving. It's really the nicely-drawn characters, the somewhat sopisticated dialogue, the enjoyable performances that keep you interested, though the scenery is certainly worth the price of admission.

The music of Victor Young adds a great deal to the enjoyment of the film. Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn penned the title tune, sung by Frank Sinatra (offscreen) as musical accompaniment to a prologue that showcases the fountains of Rome.

Dorothy Jeakins designed the attractive fashions for the three women stars.

CinemaScope doesn't have the thrills on TV that it must have had on the big screens of the 1950s, but there is enough in the way of clever writing and attractive acting to interest the viewer. Three Coins In The Fountain is a fine example of colorful, light entertainment.

Grand Hotel is considered a classic, and is still well-known today. Week-End At The Waldorf, the remake, is more or less forgotten. It's a bit of a relic of its time. It seems to have been intended as a light, entertaining crowd-pleaser (with heavier moments), and, overall, it delivers on that score.

The two leading couples are played by Ginger Rogers and Walter Pigeon, and Lana Turner and Van Johnson. This being wartime (WWII) in Manhattan, Pidgeon plays a war correspondent and Johnson plays a soldier with a troubling wound - a piece of shrapnel near his heart. Rogers is a movie star and Lana, if memory serves, is a hotel stenographer. I'm not sure why, but neither of the couples has perfect chemistry. Maybe that's why the stars were never paired again. But they play out their parts with all the professionalism you're used to from them, and they're attractive people.

There are some spectacular black-and-white shots of 1945 New York City, and Robert Benchley is around to narrate. There's a big supporting cast, including many well-known faces.

If you're looking to see some glamorous stars in a glamorous setting, with the music of Xavier Cugat (whose orchestra was in residence at the hotel at the time), you should enjoy it.

I'm not sure why this anthology film was made, but its segments seem to reflect a desire by new MGM head of production Dore Schary, a Democrat, to demonstrate that liberal values are American values. (There was a lot of equating liberals with communists, at that time).

An opening segment on a train, that draws us into the whole thing, features James Whitmore as a patriotic, "I love America" type. "Which America?" asks the always-debonair and well-spoken William Powell. We then see the many sides of our country depicted through vignettes.

There are a couple of segments against prejudice. One is about a Greek-hating Hungarian American father of several girls (S. Z. Sakall) whose eldest daughter (Janet Leigh) falls for a young Greek American (Gene Kelly - actually pushing 40 at the time but you'd never guess it). As a piece against xenophobia, it's nice, and gets its point across with humor, wit, and romance.

There's also a segment against religious prejudice, where an ex-seviceman named Maxie Klein (Keefe Brasselle) visits the mother (Marjorie Main) of a dead war buddy. At first the mother doesn't know the man because her son had used his nickname in his letters. She's suspicious of his motives because he's Jewish. Eventually she's grateful for the comfort the stranger has given her, putting aside whatever prejudices she was harboring, and requesting his mother's address so that she can write her about it all.

The segments are all fairly interesting, but not exactly first-rate drama or comedy.

There's one about a minister (Van Johnson) who learns a lesson in humility from a deacon (played by Louis Stone). There's one in which Fredric March plays a working-class Italian American who won't be convinced by a schoolteacher (Nancy Davis) his son needs glasses. Gary Cooper plays a cowboy in a humorous monologue about Texas. Louis Calhern narrates a documentary sequence about African Americans. Ethel Barrymore and George Murphy star in a dramatic sketch wherein an old Boston-Irish woman is upset because the US Census ignored her. Etc.

The overall effect is a little like picking up an old copy of Reader's Digest.

Without the stars, this would be very minor, indeed. With them, it becomes a big film. Not a great film, but, undoubtedly, a big one. It covers a lot of ground, and comes up a little bit short.

Andre Previn in an interview about the MGM musicals said that orchestrator Conrad Salinger could take a mundane tune and make it sound like Debussy or Ravel. Nowhere is that more evident than in his sublime background music for the two big dance numbers in this show, This Heart Of Mine, and Limehouse Blues, both starring Fred Astaire and the somewhat forgotten Lucille Bremer (a protege of producer Arthur Freed).

With the most numbers in the film (4), Astaire is more or less the star of Ziegfeld Follies, a plotless revue that features William Powell as Ziegfeld, in heaven, dreaming up a new Ziegfeld Follies using the talent of the MGM studio. Why not?

Yet, what this film could have been, vs what it is, begs a question as old as talking pictures. Was there ever really a great all-star revue produced by any of the studios?

MGM went all out and originally made a very long film that was cut after previews. One of Astaire's numbers was deleted, as was a number based on The Gershwin song, Liza,, starring dancer Avon Long and Lena Horne (who didn't sing a note, baffling preview audiences). James Melton, the Metropolitan Opera star, had several numbers, but ended up with just one in the finished film.

Of the segments left to us, for my money, the musical numbers are the best things about the movie, and the comedy segments, a mixed bag. Fanny Brice stars in one, which she had performed on stage in the final Ziegfeld Follies . Edward Arnold and Victor Moore perform Pay The Two Dollars, Keenan Wynn does a telephone routine originally done onstage by Fred Allen (that probably was funnier with Allen), and Red Skelton does his Guzzler's Gin routine, which is hilarious.

In the musical department, Judy Garland's spoof of a Greer Garson-like star is sophisticated fun. Lena Horne singing "Love", Kathryn Grayson performing "Beauty", bits by Lucille Ball, Cyd Charisse, and Virginia O'Brien, a dance number starring Astaire and Gene Kelly, an Esther William water ballet, and the aforementioned Astaire-Bremer numbers, are other highlights.

This Heart Of Mine is a story-dance about a jewel thief who arrives at a big party to steal the necklace of a beautiful woman. With its revolving stages, strange, antler-like trees, and red, white, blue, and black design, it's a sumptuous visual delight. Limehouse Blues is a superbly atmospheric number that's possibly an homage Griffith's silent classic, Broken Blossoms, with the normally exuberant Fred playing a character part (the counterpart, in a way, to Richard Barthelmess's young Chinese man in the Griffith film), quiet, humble, but exuding emotion. In Chinoiserie style, with bookend scenes filmed on sets left over from The Picture Of Dorian Gray, this might be the first dream ballet ever seen in an MGM musical.

Though there are dry or mundane parts, all in all, Ziegfeld Follies, with its wonderful moments, largely due to the genius of MGM's Vincente Minnelli, with major contributions from Robert Alton, Charles Walters, Eugene Loring, and George Sidney, among others, gives you a lot of bang for the buck.

This film is illustrative of MGM's postwar creative slump. There were some good movies - The Yearling, for example - and the musicals were always worthwhile - but what was this? Who was it made for? Who could have thought a movie such as this would be taken seriously? It was made around the same time as The Best Years Of Our Lives! Then again, it's not just that it's old-fashioned, but that it resembles no one's real life, ever.

I have the impression the studio was running like a well-oiled machine, churning out pictures its costume, makeup, hairdressing, special effects, and art departments could be proud of. But what happened to believability? Realistic storytelling? Something people could relate to?

At the time, Greer Garson was a top box office star, and Clark Gable, the studio's former top box office star, was returning from war service. So, it was reasoned, why not put them in a picture together? The trouble might be that there was too much focus on trying to create a "vehicle" for the two heavyweights. The deceptively ladylike Garson is cast as a beautiful librarian, while Gable plays a handsome, two-fisted seaman. There's some comedy, some drama, some mysticism - but it all seems awfully contrived. Then there's the ages of the stars - which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't go about acting like adolescents: Gable was 44, Garson was 41. In support, Joan Blondell was 39, and Thomas Mitchell was 53. They all seem like they're old enough to know better. Some of the shenanigans the screenplay puts them through and asks us to care about are not to be believed.

MGM knew how to make a film high in gloss and production values, and the studio had the greatest stars, and some of the greatest directors. If you enjoy their product (and I usually do) you could do worse than Adventure. But the studio just could not go on indefinitely making films like this. Smaller studios were beating them to the punch by having their ear to the ground about what audiences wanted, and what they were tired of.

It could be that MGM never really recovered from the death of production head Irving Thalberg back in the 1930s. His death left a gaping hole that seemed to be filled, as time wore on, with heavy sentimentality and confused messages that didn't happen under his watch. The studio had no head of production at this time, and was set up as a series of production units overseen by studio chief Louis B. Mayer. And Mayer had a taste for the heavy-handed and the sentimental.

Gable and Garson could have been good together. Probably in a comedy, where their styles might have worked together better, similar to Tracy and Hepburn. Victor Fleming was a good director, but he was no longer doing the first-rate work he had done a decade earlier. Making Gone With The Wind and The Wizard Of Oz in the same year may have worn him out.

I haven't summarized the film because other people have already done it better than I ever could. Take a look. My guess is you might enjoy it once, but not put it on your "must see again soon" list.

This was a great idea, a recreation of the 1947 Lux radio Theater version of the film classic, It's A Wonderful Life, with an all-star cast of the late-90s. Almost all of the actors are excellent. People who think Hollywood movie stars can only play themselves, or are unable to give theatrical performances in front of an audience, should see this.

The one exception for me was Bill Pullman, who doesn't seem to connect to the role of George Bailey with even a small fraction of the emotion or concentration of James Stewart. From what I've been told (not sure if it's accurate), Tom Hanks was supposed to play George, but had to drop out, and Pullman stepped in at the last minute. He seems under-rehearsed, and, at times, confused. Since George is in almost every scene, well, it's unfortunate. Because he's likable and seems like the right type.

It's a good recreation of an old-time radio show in almost every particular, from sound effects men to a full band. The only way it differs significantly is that on shows like Lux, the actors wore street clothes, they didn't dress up as the characters they were playing, the way some seem to here (Craig Sheffer, for ex).

Anyhow, take a look - it's something offbeat for the Christmas season. And listen to the original broadcast with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Victor Moore (as Clarence).