User reviews

E.V. Cunningham's book becomes a glossy potboiler typical of its era, with George Maharis well-cast as an L.A. detective assigned by millionaire Peter Lawford to uncover the life-secrets of Lawford's enigmatic fiancée, poetess and ace gardener Carroll Baker. As Maharis probes the lengthy case, each "witness" reveals a portion of the girl's sordid past in an episodic format--with the ethics involved in such an unmasking (as well as a growing love for his subject) overtaking the private eye just before his report is due. Will he turn the girl's secrets over, or will he attempt to woo her himself? Gordon Douglas directs the film in a hopelessly square, old-fashioned style; even with its adult overtures, the picture still looks like a rerun of TV's "Burke's Law". However, Maharis, dark and muscular, connects with the audience simply by keeping a cool head and a civil tongue (he rises far above the material), and Baker is also fine, although her jaded, non-musical voice puts a wall up between her and the viewer. Supporting players come and go in "guest" spots, with Ann Southern standing out as a trampy lush and Viveca Lindfors puzzling--yet startlingly so--as a librarian (she seems to have had a crush on Sylvia--but also flirts with Maharis!). Douglas manages to steer the picture away from camp, though there is a drag queen "madame" in attendance and a ridiculous scene wherein Baker fights back kinky customer Lloyd Bochner (he pays her off to keep quiet, yet she emerges with only a cut on her cheek). David Raksin's score is cheaply extravagant, much like the film, and there are some intriguing and enjoyable moments, though it overstays its welcome. **1/2 from ****

The filmic trope of presenting a mystery woman to the viewer through the recollections of her friends and lovers has a long history. Perhaps "Laura" is the most famous. A much lesser-known one is the British "Woman in Question." "Sylvia" is in that tradition: a wealthy man wants to find out about the background of his fiancée, Sylvia, so hires a private detective to investigate. As the P.I. encounters people from Sylvia's past, the stories that they tell him are the flashback elements of the film. There's a very touching episode with Viveca Lindfors, as well as one with Ann Sothern. While the film is somewhat desultory in its pacing, it's got some great folks-Edmund O'Brien, Joanne Dru, etc.--and a suitably disengaged performance from Carroll Baker in the title role. It actually works well for the character, who throughout a series of tawdry experiences has kept a part of herself removed and untouched. We also get to see a well-toned George Maharis with his pajama top off--another reason to catch the film if it ever shows up.

David Raksin, who composed the score for "Laura," some twenty years earlier, provides a nice score for "Sylvia" (note the use of the waltz from William Wyler's "Carrie"--also a Paramount film-- in the scene at the restaurant with Sothern and Maharis).

Sylvia (1965)

A movie far out of its time, yet ahead of its genre. By 1965 this kind of small black and white film had migrated to television productions, or had disappeared. While clearly low budget without any stars, it keeps a tight formal structure and strong production throughout. And the idea, gradually piecing together someone's identity, makes for a great movie.

Even if it does borrow, in terms of structure only, from "Citizen Kane," no less. That is, an investigator is set off to learn who the real Sylvia is, and by meeting with one important contact after another, and going through a series of well done flashbacks, we are able to piece together the complicated life of the title character. The biggest difference from Kane (besides virtuosic style) is that Sylvia is an ordinary person. Or she seems ordinary until you learn in stages the nuances and integrity of her survival.

There are many things left unanswered, and I'm not sure that's totally for the best. We never quite understand her meandering through dramatic (and noble) moments one after another. What kind of childhood set her off this way ("Kane," significantly, pivoted around a childhood event). Sylvia is a construction, apparently beautiful (in movie terms), but more importantly interesting, strong, independent. A great role model.

The investigator, called Mack, is played by George Maharis, who has a steady and calm approach all through. What happens after the establishment of his role is really terrific, because each person he encounters offers a new scenario, a new setting and story and conversation, and then a new flashback. And some of these side characters are fabulous true characters. So you get captivated time and after time. In some ways the least interesting character is this hopeless perfect and yet tainted paradigm, Sylvia, who by the end gets her own long segment, a present tense adjustment of all of what we've seen so far.

It's a little stilted at times, and the patient pace isn't always a benefit. The ending might actually seem a bit inevitable, too, which is fair enough. But in the big view you almost want to see it again to catch some of the piece you might have missed. It's filmed a decade after the last great noirs, and so isn't a big in the mode (though some people throw every b&w movie into the mix if they have a loner guy and a blonde). And it is a terrific tonic to the bigger Hollywood machine made stuff coming out in widescreen color (a lot of it). But when you see the changes in the medium with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and so on the next year or two, it's really really old fashioned.

Check it out.

Sylvia certainly has a great tradition of similar films to fall back on. Chicago Deadline, The Mask Of Dimitrios, and the great Citizen Kane all deal with someone trying to pick up the real story of somebody by interviewing people from the past and getting flashback incidents.

Peter Lawford has hired PI George Maharis to trace down the background of Sylvia, the girl he plans to marry. What Carroll Baker in the title role has given him is completely bogus though she's pretty well fixed on her own and doesn't need Lawford's millions. But he's a careful sort and Maharis begins his work.

I have to say that it was a clever idea for him to use her writings, she's a poet, for traces of local idiomatic expressions. Maharis has a linguistics professor on call who tells him his starting point should be Pittsburgh.

After that Maharis starts on his hunt and meets a variety of characters played by some really fine character actors. It's the best thing Sylvia has going for it. These people really make the film. The most memorable for me are Ann Sothern who works in a penny arcade and is a drunk and Viveca Lindfors as a librarian from Pittsburgh who gives Maharis his first bit of real information.

Baker does well as a woman who really graduated summa cum laude from the school of hard knocks. The film was supposed to be a breakout film for George Maharis who left his TV series Route 66 for a career on the big screen. It never quite worked out that way. He does all right in the part of the PI, but I think either Paul Newman or Robert Mitchum would have aced the part of the private eye.

Still Sylvia is worth watching for one of the best cast of character players ever assemble this side of John Ford or Frank Capra.

Sylvia is a well developed film, from cast to direction. It was far ahead of its' time. The plot is slow in the beginning but quickly moves to a steady pace. Sylvia confronts difficult issues few movies can handle with any lasting credibility. The characters are rich and diverse in their perspectives. Carroll Baker delivers a superb performance as the female lead. Carroll Baker's supporting actors and actresses enrich the weave of the emotional undercurrents of the film. Sylvia is also complemented with the use of vivid symbolism and well formed dialogue.

This movie deserves a high rating because of the issues it addresses and the quality of acting. The cast is first rate. As a devotee of "Route 66" I idolized the role of Maharis. His character was the chief attraction of the series. In subsequent roles he did not achieve the aura that he had projected in the series. However, in this movie he plays a middle of the road detective to perfection. The issues discussed make this a movie that one can see over again without boredom. The supporting cast is a Who's Who of Hollywood of the era.

The best thing about this movie is the truly first-rate supporting cast: Peter Lawford, Viveca Lindfors, Aldo Ray and Ann Sothern all give outstanding performances. Ann's, in particular, will stay with you long after the movie is over. She's a gem!

Carrol Baker is fluidly extraordinary in this film. Her character's life is explored in a dreamlike series of flashbacks which unravel like time travel. The various other characters are woven in and out in florishes from charactor actors.

I had seen this a long time ago then caught it on Turner Classics. Kind of bizarre in a good way.

Because of the complexity of the subject matter and the way the film is structured, I think it will get better on repeated viewings.

Excellent Carroll Baker flick. Made just before Harlow almost ruined her career. Carroll plays a rich novelist who's engaged to sleaze-bag Peter Lawford. Lawford knows squat about her past so he hires second rate P.I. George Maharis to find out about her life. What he uncovers is on the tawdry side. Carroll endured many a degredation before turning to prostitution. Some scenes are a little campy. I love the scene where she gets a job in a hooker pick up joint run by a drag queen who's idea of warbling a song is climaxed by him/her karate chopping some blocks of wood on stage. Good supporting cast including Joanne Dru and the ever talented Ann Southern playing a frumpy has-been hooker. Lloyd Bocher plays a client who has some rather kinky-S&M ideas about foreplay, quite shocking for 1964, tame by today's standards. I really liked this movie as the viewer starts to feel much empathy for Carroll's character after surviving all the crap she went through in her life. Not your typical Hollywood ending either.

What begins as a new take on the classic film noir THE BIG SLEEP, where a comfortably stricken rich man hires a streetwise private eye to investigate his missing daughter, it's a fiance this time, here played by the lovely yet moodily enigmatic Carroll Baker, morphing from an older street-urchin to a younger well-read lush, and, in-place of a slowburn crime thriller is a jigsaw-puzzle study of a then-modern woman, pieced together by Maharis like the reporter in CITIZEN KANE...

So half of SYLVIA are flashbacks consisting of the title character, a runaway who grew up in a poor, abusive family, wandering from various homes, mostly man to man, as the kind of prostitute you've probably never of since she doesn't seem to actually sleep with anyone while Maharis, surprisingly subdued in weary cruise-control compared to his edgy persona from TV's ROUTE 66, falls in love with this lovely phantom LAURA-style in Gordon Douglas's theatrical yet episodically-paced neo noir that... since 1965 was too progressive for subtlety and too regressed for daring exploitation... would have been far better either twenty-years earlier or ten years ahead.

Sylvia is of interest for its depiction of themes such as incest and female friendship which would become the focus of attention much later. As stories involving hookers go, this one of a prostitute-turned-poet is non-stereotypical.

The movie begins well enough and we think we will deal with some Preminger-like mystery ("Laura" "Bunny Lake is missing" "Anatomy of murder") or even a Mankiewicz extravaganza ("the barefoot comtessa").One of the first scenes in the library with Viveca Lindfords is intriguing.The books play a prominent part and there's a strange children's omnipresence.

Then the accumulation of melodramatic elements and the abuse of flashbacks end up wearing thin .Interest only occasionally comes back:Ann Sothern's barfly act,her entry in the posh restaurant ,for instance.Carroll Baker only appears in flashbacks in the first hour which preserved her mystery charm.Then,when the private meets her,it peters out.And it's not hard to guess the ending.