Bigger than Life (1956)

Giften i blodet

I seem to have problems with a wide range of movies. Substance abuse movies, child abuse movies, cheap romances and so one. Let me just add another one: Mental illness movies.

This is not new though. Mental illness movies have always freaked me out. It is a lot easier for me to deal with broken limbs, cancer or ulcering wounds than people going bananas in the head. Even when played for comedy I do not think it is that funny. So to get a movie that is about a man going screwy in the head means trouble for me.

“Bigger Than Life” is another Nicholas Ray movie featuring (and produced by) no other than the brilliant James Mason. He is a school teacher living a normal 1950’ies style middle class life with a wife at home and child of, I suppose, nine or ten years, maybe less. Ed Avery is well liked by staff and students alike and the only apparent crack in his life is his secret second job as a taxi dispatcher to make ends meet.

Soon we learn that there is another much larger crack in Ed’s life. He is having seizures and pretty bad ones. At first he tries to hide it, but when he gets an epic scale seizure in front of his wife it is off to the hospital. Specialists are brought in and the verdict is that Ed is suffering from a rare and fatal disease and he has only a short time to live unless he starts on a new experimental medicine, the hormone treatment Cortisone.

The medicine works like magic. Soon Ed is up and about and ready to take up his old life. He is in fact almost too cured. Full of energy, plans, big ideas and big spending, Ed is very happy. Lou, his wife (Barbara Rush) and Richie, his son (Christopher Olsen) chose to enjoy the ride and just be happy dad is home. But Ed is getting addicted to the pills and starts taking more than he is supposed to. As a result he is developing a psychosis. At first it looks like a polar psychosis as he is mainly manic, but later it looks more bipolar as he gets further and further away from reality.

Ed is convinced of his own superiority, to his students, the parents at the PTA, his wife and his son. He has wild plans all round and when people do not follow him he is ready to discard them, divorce his wife or kill his son. He is surrounded by enemies who are plotting against him and his wife’s and friend, Wally’s (Walter Matthau), attempts at helping him is a conspiracy and proof they are having an affair.

There is really only way it can go and a Hollywood ending cannot hide the tragedy for all involved.

I had a colleague who has a manic disorder and his attacks were exactly like watching Ed Avery. At first it may seem funny because it is really wild and makes for great stories, but it is not fun at all and the price tag is incredibly high. It is symptomatic that the manic state enhances elements that are already there, transforming quirks into craziness. Ed does feel superior and he feels stuck in his suburban rut. When he gets the drug superiority become fascist and his disgust with his life becomes wild attempts to escape it.

Who is to blame then? Is it Ed himself for abusing the medicine? Or the doctors who prescribe the medicine and then close the door? Or just tough luck? Nick Ray seems to want us to blame the doctors, they do look like greedy businessmen rather than caring doctors and I can certainly understand the sentiment that their interest is to suck Ed’s money rather than his well-being. I am not so familiar with that sort of health system and that may be why it looks particularly harsh.

I think the agenda of the movie is more in the direction of making us aware of the tragedy of mental disorder and the trap in which the afflicted is caught. “Bigger Than Life” is in that sense a parallel to “Lost Weekend”. The realization of this tragedy is the real impact of the movie and it is devastating. The DVD comes with a conversion between Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Rosenbaum who discuss the many layers and messages of the movie and I suppose they are right, it is a movie that packs a lot of content. Yet, I am not inclined to watch it again right away, it is simply too taxing.

On a brighter note it is great to see Walter Matthau early in his career. I know him primarily as a comedian so it is interesting to watch him do a serious role. For the rest they all do a nice job, even Christopher Olsen as Richie. He balances the love, hate and fear of his father nicely and as in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” he manages to mostly avoid being annoying.

No doubt “Bigger Than Life” is an interesting and well-made movie and a worthy entry, but it was a hard movie for me to get through and you really need something to pull you up afterwards. Just not Cortisone.

The Wrong Man (1956)

Den forkerte mand

Alfred Hitchcock has often been described as a one-trick pony in as far as he always made the same kind of movie. I would argue that that is a bit unfair, especially considering the range he presented in his early years, but it is true that there were certain themes that he found so interesting that he kept returning to them. When he did, however, he would usually find a new angle that would make a familiar theme fresh and so widen themes that by any right should have been exhausted after a few movies.

On of Hitchcock’s fascinations was the idea of a man caught in the wrong place and as a result get involved in dramatic event not of his doing. The movie “The Wrong Man” is so exactly this theme and it seems condemned to end up as a Hitchcock cliché flick, but then Hitchcock goes and does something that makes this movie entirely unique and different from any other Hitchcock movie I have seen. He applies a realism style to an extent to make it almost documentarian.

Readers of this blog will know that I have a soft spot for realism. In a fictional world it is easy to distance yourself from a story, but when things look real and authentic everything gets a lot closer and a lot more poignant. You can relate to people and they become alive. This is why “Roma, Citta Aperta” is a tough movie, why we love “Marty” and why Marlon Brando has such an impact in Kazan’s movies. But Hitchcock did not do method acting. For him it was entirely new to try his hands on realism. Maybe it was just an experiment, maybe just a new angle, but personally I think he struck gold and I regret he did not explore this vein more. “The Wrong Man” has a nerve few of his movies had, not just tension, but a pressing urgency that got deep under my skin. For this reason alone I would call “The Wrong Man” a high point in Hitchcock’s career, though I think it is normally rated as one of his lesser movies.

“The Wrong Man” is the real story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero (Henry Fonda), called “Manny”, a musician at a New York venue called “The Stork Club” who was wrongly accused of armed hold-ups actually committed by a man that looked similar enough to be his double.

“Manny” is in every way a decent fellow. He has a wife and two small children, earns just enough to get along and struggles with the same problems that most people have, but deals with them with integrity and humility. He does not gamble and save where he can, raising money the hard way. When Rose (Vera Miles), his wife, needs 300$ for dental treatment (a staggering sum in the early fifties!) Manny tries to raise money from Rose’s life insurance. At the insurance agency office the clerks are convinced (or rather convinces each other as these thing usually happen) that Manny is in fact the guy that twice help up and robbed the office.

Soon Manny experience the ride of his life as he is brought in by the police, interrogated and identified as the criminal. His reaction is dazed disbelief and it is obvious he is wondering wtf is going on. This may be the best, or worst, part of the movie as Fonda, the music and the photography conspire to make this a true nightmare. There is panic just beneath the surface and it is a wonder that Manny does not succumb to it.

His wife does though as Rose is overwhelmed by the feeling that the world is out to get them and she is somehow to blame. It gets so bad she has to be institutionalized and although the epilogue tells us that eventually she recovered it is a fine example of the human costs these accusations can have.

Manny is eventually cleared, but not through fine detective work or sophisticated legal acrobatics, but through sheer luck as the real culprit is apprehended by chance. Had he not Manny would have been convicted, his and his wife’s life and likely those of his boys ruined. All because some clerks worked themselves up into thinking he was the guy that robbed them.

Beside the nightmare of a fickle legal system there is a religious element as Manny eventually has nowhere else to look than to blind luck. He is lucky there in the end and may be convinced of divine intervention because it sure was not by design.

This is such a classic Hitchcock theme, but as I already stated the almost documentarian realism makes this an incredibly strong experience. Locations are authentic, the story is apparently very close to the real one and both Fonda and Miles were actors would cold play ordinary people. Add to that Hitchcock’s uncanny talent for staging and one of the best soundtracks Hitch ever used and you have a winner in my book.

Hitchcock probably was never darker than he was here and I deplore that. There was a hidden talent for dark realism that was sadly underused.    

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

De stjålne kroppe

The fifties was a great decade for science fiction and horror. It was not big business like it is today, but a low budget bonanza where everything was possible as long as it was cheap and could make a buck. And the variety is truly great. As my good friend Bea will know (do visit her site at http://flickersintime.com/ ) there are lots of amazing stuff from this period. However because of the low budget nature of this flood of film only few on them found their way to the 1001 list. Rightly so you might say considering the quality of the majority of them, but I miss them nonetheless. They are hilarious, inventive, outrageous or just inadvertently funny and I love them.

Those that do make the list are probably the crème de la crème, the stand-out examples and that is certainly the case with today’s entry, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Yes, it has a lot of the hallmarks of B, but how many of you can say that you never heard of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”? It is legend. I myself know it primarily from the ’78 version, which was truly chilling, but on this viewing of the original ’56 I realize that I have seen plenty of clips from this one as well over time.

This, the ‘56 version, is told as a film noir in black and white with plenty of shadows and a flashback narrator who early on let us know that thing have fallen pretty much apart. That is a great way to go about it, combining noir, horror and sci-fi. The narrator is Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), practitioner in the small town of Santa Mira. He is pretty upset, possibly raving mad as he is held in custody in a hospital, but eventually he calms down and tells the chilling story of how Santa Mira was taken over by aliens from outer space.

It is one of those stories where everything is seemingly perfectly normal, but for small hints now and then that they are not altogether normal. Bennell is called back to town because a larger number of townspeople need his help urgently, only now that he is back they are perfectly fine. Those who do come in complain that they do not recognize their loved ones, but they just seem overwrought, except there are too many of those cases. What is going on?

Dr. Bennell meets up with old love interest Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), who is worried for her cousin Wilma, and his friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) who has made a scary discovery in his basement: A body with blurred features, but not unlike Jack’s. At this point Miles, Becky and Jack are seriously worried, but they have not seen half of it yet. The town is being taken over by seedpods from outer space who grows copies of people and replace the originals with them. The pod-people are unrecognizable from the originals except that they are unable to show or feel emotion. And they are totally devoted to their cause of taking over the world.

As Miles slowly learns the truth, his becomes a constant run from the pod-people. Who is friend and who is foe? Miles is quickly running out of the former while there is no lack of the latter until eventually he is all alone.

There are essentially two parts to the movie: the slow building up of the mystery with anxiety creeping into the story and then a frantic escape that never really succeeds.  I am sitting here sixty years later and still feel both the creepiness and the adrenalin of the two parts. That is not a small achievement considering this is a genre that has evolved immensely on both accounts in the intervening years.

It is true that the actors are not top notch, but they are also not so bad that the movie falls flat on their account. Most of the regular people are just that and that is probably why they work so well. It is exactly because all these aliens are so normal and recognizable that they are freaky. For me the most horrifying scenes are those with the little boy who is scared of his mother and does not want to go home, yet later we see him perfectly at peace with his mother. Obviously the little boy has succumbed as well. It is not what we see, but what we know has happened.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was supposed to end with Miles standing on the highway trying in vain to warn people, but the studio was concerned about ending on such a downbeat. Instead a prologue and an epilogue were pasted on to tell us that in the end the warning did get out, hopefully in time. It would have been a great ending with Miles on the highway and it would have made it a true Noir, but although the addition feels artificial I suppose it was the best they could do. The world it not saved, far from, but at least it got a chance. Also I quite liked the flashback narrator. That gave it a good Noir feel.

SPOILER ENDS.

I read that the movie has been considered a response to the McCarthy hearings, but I am not convinced of that. So many movies at this time were concerned with the invasion and subversion theme that this simply follows that track. It plays on a paranoia that was very much mid-fifties and just does a better job at that than most movies.

Needless to say I loved this movie and I knew I would. It is deservedly a classic and a must-see for any fan of the genre. And if you see something strange growing in your basement or greenhouse then get rid of it and be quick about it! And do not under any circumstances fall asleep!!!

 

 

All that Heaven Allows (1956)

Med kærlighedens ret

You know those movies that make you roll your eyes? I mean, cry out “Come on!!”, shake your head and roll your eyes. “All That Heaven Allows” is such a movie, at least for me.

I have previously remarked that Douglas Sirk’s movies reminded me of cheap novels from women’s weekly magazines and that is nowhere more true than here with “All That Heaven Allows”. The format, the story, the issues all have that kitschy feel that is just too much. I suspect there is something else somewhere, maybe a critique of mid-fifties values and ideals, but it is very bland.

So let us just say from the outset that I am not impressed, that this is not really a movie for me and that this review may be offensive to fans of the movie.

“All That Heaven Allows” is the story of a woman, Cary (Jane Wyman), who lives alone in her suburban house since her husband died and her grown children moved out. Her husband had money and status and so she is still moving in those circles at the country club. Then Cary meets Ron (Rock Hudson) who shows her an entirely different kind of existence. Ron is a gardener, but more than that he is a free spirit who does what he likes to do and cares little what other people think of him. Cary and Ron falls in love and prepares to get married.

So far all is well and fine. However everybody and their mother seem to have a problem with that marriage. At the country club the all seem to take offense of Cary marrying Ron. They had much preferred that she marry one of their own and cannot relate to a gardener. Maybe it is envy, maybe just juicy gossip or maybe they feel some rules have been broken. They certainly take some glee in spiting Ron and Cary. Worse however is the reaction of Cary’s children. Ned (William Reynolds) is a businessman and is mortified by letting the gardener in as well as the prospect of selling the house and Kay (Gloria Talbott), who is supposed to know everything about people from her psychology classes is so upset about what people will think of her if her mother marries a gardener.

This story in fact resembles that of “Marty”, except that Marty’s friends and family’s objections, though silly, made immensely more sense than those of Cary’s friends and family. Instead of discarding idiot friends like these and telling her children to mind their own business Cary caves in and calls off the wedding. Maybe you can imagine me rolling my eyes at this point. Had there been a single good argument: a dependent child, somebody living at home, a worried professional partner, a real physical risk to this marriage then we may have had a story, but these are all a bunch of busy-bodies who hate to see somebody else doing something unconventional. So fucking what.

True enough, hardly has Cary called off the wedding before it becomes clear that there are no real arguments against the marriage, but now, uh oh, they are estranged from each other because Ron called bullshit and of course telling each other that they do want to marry involves mistakes, accidents and a deer looking into the window of the old mill in the new snow…

Oh my…

Well, there are things I do like here. This is a contemporary movie and that means that everything we see is 1956 and in color too. Cars, phone, houses, cloths and so on, making this a veritable time capsule. I am always a sucker for that stuff. It is also a time capsule in the way it presents the suburban ideal of the mid-fifties, the glorified housewife and all the do’s and don’t’s. I often get the idea that especially in America this period and lifestyle is the ideal for many people. We certainly see it depicted often enough in movies and tv-series. If there is anything subversive in this movie then it is how it refuses this ideal and suggests that life can be lived in other ways. The problem is that that story has been told a million times already, also before 56, so what is the subversive in that?

I did not care much for this film. Somehow I had expected some real crisis to occur, but it is actually quite harmless. At least in “Written on the Wind” there was some real drama, but here it is just blah. Well, on to the next movie, looking forward to that.

 

Giant (1956)

Giganten

Everything is bigger in Texas. THE movie about Texas would have to be a giant among movies and that is exactly what it is. At three hours and fourteen minutes it is a monster to get through (add to that an entire disk of extra material), but also the scope, the lavishness and the all-star cast is just bigger than most other pictures.

“Giant” is in many ways for Texas what “Gone with the Wind” was for Georgia, a portrait of an iconic, if fictional, family on the backdrop of a time and events that changed the land. For “GwtW” it was a plantation through the civil war and the restoration, in “Giant” it is a ranch during the transition from agrarian cowboy land to cosmopolitan oil money. In both cases a transition from conservatism to modernity and I am sure something that was part of forming the American narrative. Yeah, big words from an outsider, but this is not really rocket science.

Epic tales are usually problematic in movies because the medium does not really lend itself well to that sort of story. You need a television series or a book format. In a movie the story is truncated by how long you can keep people in the cinema and usually end up mutilated through abbreviation. I would say George Stevens, the director, did a decent job here, but that abbreviation is still the weakness of the film.

We follow Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), third generation owner of the enormous Reata ranch in Texas and Leslie Benedict (Elizabeth Taylor) of green and verdant Maryland from their brief courtship in their youth to their middle age thirty years later. They represent two very different points of view, ultra conservative Bick and progressive and liberated Leslie, and they could hardly be more different. In fact if you ever needed an argument against quick and spontaneous weddings this would be it. They practically come from different planets and had they known each other a little better I doubt they would ever have married.

The conflict between them is very much the fuel of the movie. As they approach each challenge from their own end of the spectrum we get an issue out of practically everything. It is tempting to see Bick’s conservatism as little more than the right to be an asshole and Leslie as the one bringing some common sense to this backward place, but it is not the entire story. Particularly in the beginning we see Leslie losing the sense of the situation in her eagerness to bring on modernity. Yes, it is terribly old fashioned to exclude women from politics, but sometimes men just like to have their own thing and we still do.

As Bick and Leslie grow older they converge as a symbol of modern Texas I suppose. Leslie gets to like the Texas freedom and Bick embraces modernity, both of them swallowing a few camels on the way. I think we are supposed to like both of them from the beginning, but maybe I am just not attuned to the Texas way of doing things. In the name of his conservative heritage Bick is being a dick again and again. Whether it is against the Latinos, women, his children or Jett Rink, Bick is a bigot. It earned him a hearty dislike from me that was only reluctantly lifted near the end. I think the final compromise is still fairly to the right of my preferences.

What saves the film from being tedious family drama is the character of Jett Rink (James Dean). Jett is the personification of outside pressure on the family. From start to end he is the one poking at the family through his crush on Leslie, his carving out a piece of Reata land and by bringing in oil millions and a possible end to the old way of life. Jett is progress in the fast lane, the energy the tears up old bond, but he is no less a bigot than Bick. However without scruples and conscience he is also the more dangerous of the two. In a sense he is Texas without restraint. The manner in which the Benedicts deal with Jett Rink is a reflection of their own development.

For me the single most interesting element of “Giant” is the treatment of racism. That is done in a very modern way, especially when you consider this is 1956 and as far as I understand it years before the civil rights movement. The movie highlights the conditions the Mexicans, or Hispanics are living under and especially the offhand way they are treated by whites. They are very literally second class people and even talking to them as normal people is frowned upon. Of course when Leslie’s and Benedicts son, Jordy (Dennis Hopper) marries a Latino that really set the issue on the edge. Seeing Bick smiling at his white grandson and frowning at his mixed-blood grandson was infuriating. My own son is in a sense a mix and seventy-five years ago I would have been Jordy.  

This is definitely a movie with an excellent cast and an interesting use of it as well. Instead of making old actors look young, the principal actors here are all young and made to look older as the story progress, something I think works better than the other way around. Hudson, Taylor and Dean all pull that off beautifully. This was the last movie James Dean did, he died before shooting was over, and it is by far the most tempered performance of his. The mannerism that tended to annoy me in his two other movies is not gone, but toned down and that suits him. Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor still had many movies to come and they both deliver very mature performances here.

When it comes to “Giant” whether I like it or not feels irrelevant. This is a big movie and very impressive at that and actually quite interesting beyond all the dazzle.

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Manden der vidste for meget

As I progress through the list it happens with increasing frequency that I encounter movies I have previously watched. This is usually because they are classics and so I do not mind the re-watch. That is certainly the case of today’s film “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. I even think I have watched it multiple times, but last time (before this one) must have been at least a decade ago and I found I had forgotten more than I remembered, which mostly amounted to the Moroccan restaurant scene and the lost child theme.

It was such a joy to watch it again and I feel I can finally appreciate it for the great achievement it is. I will be much surprised if this will not be among my top watches of 1956.

Most readers of this blog will recognize the movie immediately. If you do not the only explanation I can see is that you, like me, insist on doing the List chronologically and so have saved this one for some time in the distant future. You will know that this is of course Alfred Hitchcock and that it belongs to his golden period, the time where Hitch could do nothing wrong. A presentation of the story is therefore deeply unnecessary. Instead I would like to talk about all the things I love about this picture.

First of all there is the format of the story. It takes us along on a journey with the McKenna’s (James Stewart, Doris Day and Christopher Olsen as their son Hank) from Morocco to London and from unconcerned leisure to anxiety, suspense and finally release. It is almost Indiana Jones as we get around, meeting strange characters and odd places and I love it. It is going too far to say we have character development, but these fairly ordinary people (who are as a matter of fact not so ordinary) takes a ride on the emotional rollercoaster and we see them from all angles as they deal with the crisis. Maybe I am not so taken by Jimmy Stewarts Dr. Ben, he is a little too aggressive and self-satisfied in a small town sort of way for my taste, but Doris Day is amazing and she reveals sides of herself you may not expect at the opening.

Secondly I am very impressed with the sets. It would have been easy to just stay at home and build everything in the studio, but so much of the film is made on location, both in Marrakesh and in London. This is a real market in Marrakesh and this is most certainly the Royal Albert Hall in London. The authenticity this lends to the movie is immense and you can tell that every scene is though through in every detail.

This would not be a Hitchcock movie however if the suspense element was not central to the production. I doubt there is ever any question that we are in for a happy end, but that does not ruin it one bit. Suspense is build up slowly with small odd happenings, remarks, people throwing glances, until the McKenna’s are finally convinced that something fishy is going on and when suddenly a French agent in native disguise dies in Ben McKenna’s arms they are thrown into the deep end and their world is turned upside down. Of course with their child missing they are facing any parent’s worst nightmare and that means that anybody and everybody are potentially dangerous to them. I doubt they really care that some statesman’s life is at stake. To them it is all about getting to their boy without endangering his life and that means keeping the police out of it as long as possible. It is logical that their situation is suspense in itself, but Hitch plays the theme again and again in different variations interspersed with relief breaks, almost funny, but not enough to break the spell. The scenes in the Royal Albert Hall are famous and for good reason, but my favorite scene for suspense is when the McKenna’s walk in to the Chapel in the middle of service and stand there in the back while the kidnappers are performing the service. Not much is said verbally, but the eyes, oh dear, they speak volumes.

Hitch clearly knew his way around London and I think he took a special joy in presenting the American couple as fishes out of the water here, maybe payback for his own life in America, but there is also some zeitgeist in Americans coming to England to fix things. The interesting thing here is that this is actually a remake of Hitchcock’s own film from 34 (which I have not seen) so this is either a new element or something already incorporated in the prewar setting.

A final element I have to mention is the music. The score have two prominent themes and I cannot decide which is the more striking. The climax in the Royal Albert Hall is totally submerged into a magnificent rendition of Arthur Benjamins’s “Storm Clouds Cantata”. It is firing on all cylinders with symphonic orchestra and a massive choir and just begs to be experienced in a modern theater with a top notch sound system. The other is Doris Day singing “Que Sera, Sera”, which is a lot more subdued, but not less gripping. Of course this song became a monster hit and so has long since entered pop culture history as one of those songs everybody knows. Incidentally it also gave “The Man Who Knew Too Much” its only Oscar.

Was this the best Hitchcock ever? I think I will leave that decision until I have covered all his entries, but for me this is definitely top tier along with “Rear Window”, “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo”.

 

Written on the Wind (1956)

Dårskabens timer

I guess I am a bit stupid. I read the comments on “Written on the Wind” about how this is a subversive and clever movie, appreciated belatedly by critics some time in the seventies, but I do not get it. “Written on the Wind” is “Dynasty” set and made in the fifties. It is soap. Funny and witty at times, melodramatic at others, exaggerated, trashy and flashy. To me it reminded me more than anything about the cheap novels mass produced for women. Subversive and clever? Hmmm… help me out here, please.

Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) is working in advertisement for Hadley Oil when she is discovered by Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), a rich playboy who wows to give up his lifestyle if that will win her over. Lucy is generally unimpressed, but ends up sympathetic to Kyle and voila, they are married, much to the chagrin of Kyle’s childhood friend and buddy Mitch (Rock Hudson), who has also taken a liking to her.

Kyle is a bad boy, or at least makes a show of being bad. Actually he is terribly weak and always feel inferior to smart, controlled and handsome Mitch. All Kyle has is his money. As son and heir of Hadley Oil that amounts to a lot of money. Lucy is about the first real success he ever had that was not due to his money.

Marylee Hadley (Dorothy Malone), Kyle’s sister is really badass, vicious, scheming and not bothered by trivial things like conscience and common sense. But then again she is also terribly childish and weak. Her viciousness is primarily a means to get attention and out of bitterness that she cannot have Mitch. As a result she tries to ruin everything for everybody, her father, brother, Mitch and Lucy and she is largely successful.

Things fall apart for Kyle when he finds out he cannot get children. Maybe a final failure too many, maybe his life in a nutshell. Anyway, he cracks up and starts drinking again. When Lucy then gets pregnant after all he is sure Mitch is the father and he decides Mitch is to blame for all his failings. Actually Kyle is the father, but he is too far out to realize that. In his raging madness he hits Lucy into a miscarriage, estranging her and ends up shooting himself. That is actually what we see in the opening sequence. The rest is a court drama to see if Marylee will point a finger at Mitch or tell what really happened.

There is not really that much to it. The rich are corrupt and the real hero is the hard working guy who did not have the advantage of money, but instead tons of integrity. When the family implodes he is the only one left standing. Give him Rock Hudson’s physique and this is fast becoming very predictable.

I am unimpressed with the story and even less impressed with the script. Especially the first half is artificial in the extreme. Nobody speaks like that outside a telenovela, not even in “Dynasty”. Fortunately the acting on the most part compensates for that. Rob Stack and Dorothy Malone both put the pedal to the metal and take rich kid lunacy to new heights. It did earn Malone an Academy Award for Supporting Actress and it was a deserved one. Rock Hudson is just being a picture of himself, strangely anonymous, but worst is Lauren Bacall. I had so looked forward to see her again, but I suppose there was a good reason why her career was slumping. Her performance is incredibly wooden and cold as if she is not really there. She is supposed to be tough and the common sense outsider to watch the Hadleys implode, but she appear to be the resident valium addict and almost disappears out of the story after the initial courtship.

As you probably have guessed soaps are not really my thing. Romances can be intriguing and moving, but the escapades of the rich is just uninteresting and blown up as it is here I just cannot get sold on it.

What is worse, I cannot figure out what is that special value of the movie. What am I missing here?

Maybe if Lucy combined with Marylee and Mitch with Kyle we would have two characters that were both alive and equipped with a modicum of integrity. Then they would be almost normal.