Reviews

I was a big Bob Hope fan all through the 1940s. In his movies, he always played the hapless loser who lucks his way out of trouble and into a beautiful woman's arms. In this one he plays a con man. Con men can be funny if they are complete incompetents or if they successfully con someone who deserves to be conned. In this movie, only half of each of the above occurs and it is thus less funny and inconsistent.

Hope starts out a loser and a craven coward in this one, but at the end of the movie as his schemes work, he becomes smarmy and struts around in an unappealing way. I hated this; it undermined all the previous likable schnook characters Hope had played.

I had already read the Runyon story about the Lemon Drop Kid when this film was first released and I was disappointed that the movie contained almost no part of it and only a soupcon of Runyon English could be heard.

Maxwell was attractive and sang well. The song "Silver Bells" is a good one. There were many superior character actors in this, but none of them had a chance to really register.

I can't think of a Bob Hope move made subsequent to this that I liked. This started a downhill slide for me.

Allen Ginsberg, who has no thoughts of writing poetry, leaves a very troubled New Jersey family to go to Columbia. There he comes of age artistically and sexually. He meets the later day Beats, all of them relentlessly displaying the signature behaviors which would later make them infamous They all frolic around.. The seeds of a movement are sown. Kind of an old movie plot: Andy Hardy with sex, drugs, jazz and a crazy mother.

Poor America has no poetry but the doggerel of Ogden Nash, the film says, ignoring the contemporary modernist poetry of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Thus, Ginsburg, it says, rose as a unique pioneer poet from the miasma of jazz, drugs, avant garde friends and almost out of the closet homosexuality to which he was introduced.. The film is much too simplistic to be taken as a consequential story of the creation of the Beat Movement. Women are treated badly in the few moments they appear, and Ginsberg is reduced to a mere observer for some periods of time

Then there is a killing. Things get muddled. Very muddled. Ginsberg who was in no way involved tries to help out and is castigated and rejected. We don't know why. Everybody goes their own way. End of story. All of these diverse elements do not add up to a coherent story.. The script writers have included too many of their "darlings" at the expense of cohesiveness.

I can't see how this would be of interest to anyone not fascinated by, and knowledgeable about, the Beat Movement. For those who are, this is worth seeing as long as they have only modest expectations.

I had heard that this was another exquisitely filmed fantasy by Jack Cardiff. Indeed it is. I saw the TCM version with restored color; some of the color was off. but the color overall was great. The Technicolor was fantastic in spots. It was often moody, eerie. bright, strange contrasts….wow! There were compositions that were quite striking. Some of the costumes, mainly Gardner's clothing, was also eye catching. Thus, I was quite happy with this movie as a visual experience.

This was meant to be an ethereal, supernatural, great love fantasy. This gave Cardiff the freedom to stray from the ordinary to weave in his great shots. A far away fantasy is compatible with experimental photography, especially with color: a realistic story would be hindered by such photography. This is the advantage of this film to me. However, it is also a disadvantage; I do not particularly appreciate ethereal, supernatural, romantic fantasy I did like the over-the-top beginning with men throwing themselves at a disinterested Ava Gardner. While I realize that this was to set up her great sacrifice at the end, it was almost comedy. She was testing out the idea that love can be measured by what one was willing to give up for it. Apparently the numerous men in her life did not give up enough (including their lives) to interest her.. Yet, the men just kept coming begging her to marry them. It didn't seem to bother them that she was a very high maintenance gal to begin with and that she didn't disguise the contempt in which she held them. Oh, well. Gardner is pretty and has some unusual "come hither" looks, but why she was such a femme fatale escapes me.

She falls for James Mason. Why him? Well, he was immortal. This is ordinarily an advantage, but it is a disadvantage in this movie. She has to die so that he can die (and finds salvation). There is a lot of yadda yadda about this at the end. Talking about love never works well in the movies, but it works least well when the love is ethereal, supernatural, and not photographed in any special way in these scenes. On and on. Boring.

Still, this is well worth seeing if color and photography interest you.