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Reviews
Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
This is a great film, but try to catch the live TV version...
I love this film. I love the script. I wish I could have married Lee Remick. Anyway, a few years ago I bought a copy of the original live TV version, with Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. Wow.
As great as Remick and Lemmon are, Robertson and Laurie are even better. And the production is even more serious, as directed by John Frankenheimer. The comedy is gone. It was never there in the first place.
I always tell people that the finest acted film I've ever seen is East of Eden. Or some Elia Kazan production: A Face in the Crowd or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But the finest acting I've ever seen (and it was live, of course) was in the TV production of Days of Wine and Roses. You've got to see it. Devastating ending. Truly.
A Hatful of Rain (1957)
A very moving film. Waiting for DVD.
I saw this play-turned-film many years ago on late-night TV and have been wanting a copy for my collection. I miss that late-night discovery of motion picture history from my bed that I received back in my high-school days, when I'd watch whatever was on because they seemed to care to show good stuff on my local station and there was always something I'd never seen. I'd remembered Eva Marie Saint from "On The Waterfront", but she just blew me away in this film. And Tony Franciosa I new from TV. Was it "The Name of the Game"? Anyway, he was great in this film, as he was in "A Face in the Crowd". I wish more people remembered him. Don Murray was also very good. These were all actors hard at work with a great script. It has one of the most moving endings I've ever seen. Where's my DVD?