Sidney Sheldon
The Other Side of Midnight (1977) 5/10
Bloodline (1979) 2/10
The Naked Face (1984) 2/10
Bloodline (1979) 2/10
The Naked Face (1984) 2/10
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- DirectorCharles JarrottStarsMarie-France PisierJohn BeckSusan SarandonA Greek tycoon's mistress tries to track down and find her ex-World War II lover.It is a corny, overused phrase but "The Other Side of Midnight" really is the kind of movie they don't make anymore. An operatic, sweeping tale of love and revenge, vicious women, powerful men... The kind of movie that needs captions to let us know where in the world and when in time each scene is set. I understand that many discerning film viewers are quite happy these kinds of films have gone out of fashion but I am a sucker for soap opera when it is delivered with great dollops of cheese and class.
"The Other Side of Midnight", adapted from a bestselling novel by the king of the genre Sidney Sheldon, begins promisingly enough with an opening hour that is surprisingly smart and competent. It presents a frankly startling landscape of a world in which capitalism has grown into a religion. Where favours, positions, and people are bought and sold on the free market. Where anyone is available for the right price. Where anyone is replaceable for the right price. The scene is well set in a monologue delivered by a father (Roger Etienne) to his daughter "You have beauty," he tells her as he lets her go into the world, "It's your only weapon of survival. Use it. Let the hand under your dress wear gold and you'll be that much ahead of the game. You'll be sorry only if you end up with nothing. End up on a yacht. In a villa."
Taking her father's words to heart, Noelle Page (Marie-France Pisier) sets off into the world readying itself for War. Moving to Paris she finds herself surrounded by soldiers and desperate people grasping at straws to survive the oncoming storm. Then she meets a handsome American pilot, Larry Douglas (John Beck) and seemingly finds a shelter. The two begin a whirlwind romance, move in together, and as a delightfully corny montage shows us, steal small moments of happiness from a world going to pot. But then Larry goes to war and even though he promises to return he doesn't. Left pregnant and alone, Noelle remembers her father's advice and realises that unless she sells herself she'll quickly be discarded. In a world where you're either the buyer or the merchandise, she decides to exploit others. Moving swiftly and with charm from one powerful man to another, she eventually reaches the top in the form of shipping tycoon Constantin Demeris (Raf Vallone), the richest man in the world.
So far, so good. But this is only the first hour of a 165-minute movie and as the plot becomes more convoluted and torrid, the film begins to fall apart. Determined to get her revenge on Douglas, Noelle cooks up a hair-brained plan to use Demeris' fortune and influence to ruin her former paramour's life. While the first hour promised a heartfelt, sharp intimate drama, the film develops into a rote, overcooked revenge thriller with a mind-boggling midway plot twist that completely betrays the good work done establishing Noelle's character in the beginning.
Indeed, Pisier's performance is probably the best thing about the movie. She is terrific at portraying Noelle's slow corruption, an arc that takes up the entirety of the film. We see clearly and understand how she went from someone who was good at heart but skilled at applying her father's lessons to a devious and cunning person consumed with passionate hatred. The most affecting scene in the entire film is her improvised abortion with a coat hanger. It is a long, excruciating scene in which Pisier gives a masterclass in acting. Sure, she gets her share of melodramatic and over-the-top speeches and crying scenes, but she is at her best when she is allowed to simply exist on camera. The icy, alluring look she gives Larry upon their first meeting after many years speaks louder than any pot-boiler chitter-chatter can. I was very happy to see that the film never makes her a villain. She is a rare three-dimensional character in the world of soap operas and this is largely thanks to Pisier who is far too smart an actress to stoop to cheap theatrics.
Another piece of wonderful casting is Susan Sarandon as Larry's trusting wife Catherine. She is terrific as the wide-eyed and naive PR woman who, in interesting contrast to Noelle, makes her way in the world with talent and natural goodness. It's a fast-talking, witty role and Sarandon plays it with the rapid-fire delivery straight from "His Girl Friday". She brings a doe-eyed innocence and a natural feel for patter to a part that, in a lesser actress' hands, could have easily faded into the background. I was reminded of her wonderful turn from "The Front Page" and wished she had played a bigger part in the film's conclusion. She is given a lot of screentime in the first half of the movie only to then fade into the background as the silly plot creaks into gear.
I also liked John Beck who is admittedly an unusual choice to play a dashing all-American hero. Sleazy, stocky and moustachioed he is perhaps an all-too-obvious cad but he turns in a good, surprisingly likeable performance. There is a good cast assembled here. Clu Gulager gives an assured, breezy performance as one of the rare decent men in the picture. Look out for nice supporting turns from such character actors as Christian Marquand, Michael Lerner, Charles Cioffi, and the aforementioned Roger Etienne. They don't get much to do but they sure do it well.
I was less convinced by Raf Valone as Demeris. He plays him as something of a thug, a brutish man with little understanding of gamesmanship or subtlety. Omar Shariff would play the role in the film's sequel "Memories of Midnight" with a lot more power, sexiness, and charm. Perhaps the piggishness Vallone brings to the part is right in the context of this story. He is after all supposed to be yet another stooge for Noelle to conquer and discard. But a more commanding, charismatic performance could have done wonders to lift the film's fairly dull second hour.
Thankfully, the grand climax, in which Noelle and Larry have their stormy reunion is far more entertaining. This is where the film switches gears from a classy drama to a full-on soap. The switch into a ludicrous potboiler is so sudden it is bound to give you whiplash. That is the moment where you either stick with the picture or leave the theatre laughing. The slow, thoughtful opening does not do anything to prepare you for just how preposterous "The Other Side of Midnight" gets. From Noelle's plan to get back at Larry to his oneupmanship with her and the ensuing love scene.
There is a scene in this film, set in a cave, which is funnier than anything in any Zucker Bros. film. There are scenes so over-the-top, so overcooked they will steam up your glasses. At the end of it all, the final twist is so unbelievable and corny that you will be compelled to give it a standing ovation for the sheer audacity of it all.
The film is directed by Charles Jarrott, a TV director who is not the best fit for a film this size. His direction is competent and technically sound but lacks the stylishness and pazazz a film like this sorely needs. Sidney Sheldon's grandiose melodramas would eventually find a happy home as TV mini-series, a future Jarrott seems to have predicted with his flat, uninspired work. I wonder if it was his decision to shoot most of the film on soundstages? This highly misguided move dates the film and makes it look artificial and hopelessly cheap when it should be lavish and dazzling. The patio of Demeris' seaside villa especially looks like a "Star Trek" alien planet. The supposedly rousing finale which takes place on a stormy night looks like a high-school production with lawn sprinklers. All of this is badly overlit by Fred J. Koenekamp, an experienced DP who really should have known better.
So where does all this leave us? "The Other Side of Midnight" is no high art, that's for sure. Also certain is that this material could have been far, far more competently made had it had a director like Franco Zeffirelli who could have given the film the stylishness and opulence it so sorely lacks. The truth is that the enjoyment of the movie rests entirely on your tolerance for soap-operatic trash. If you, like me, enjoy your fair share of "Dallas" and Harold Robbins you will enjoy "The Other Side of Midnight" even with all of its flaws. If you are, however, impervious to such charms, its undeniable qualities won't make the film any more palatable.
5/10 - DirectorTerence YoungStarsAudrey HepburnBen GazzaraJames MasonWhen her father is murdered, a pharmaceutical heiress becomes the next target of an unknown killer amid the international jet set.Sam Roffe, the king of pharmaceuticals, is dead. He was a stubborn yet genius businessman who ruled his family company with an iron fist but now he's gone and his greedy cousins/business partners can breathe a sigh of relief. In a not-so-short montage, we meet the members of the board all of whom are in desperate financial straits. There's Sir Alec (James Mason), a sleazy Tory politician married to a compulsive gambler (Michelle Phillips). There's Helene (Romy Schneider), a promiscuous racer married to an embezzler (Maurice Ronet). And then there's Ivo (Omar Sharif), an Italian lothario who has to support two families and keep his two wives from ever finding out about each other. As they're informed of Roffe's passing they all breathe a sigh of relief but their joy proves to be short-lived.
Roffe is inherited not by them but by his equally strong-willed daughter Elizabeth (Audrey Hepburn) who decides not to sell the company for a quick buck but to try and weather the financial storm. Needless to say, the cousins are displeased but one of them appears to be particularly strapped for cash as it turns out that Roffe's death was no climbing accident and Elizabeth might be next.
"Bloodline", based on a Sidney Sheldon potboiler, is one of the most inept and haphazardly put-together films I've ever seen. I'm not, of course, counting here low-budget films as, I think you'll agree, a film that cost millions of dollars and which stars such acting legends as Audrey Hepburn, James Mason, Omar Shariff, Ben Gazzara, Irene Papas, Romy Schneider, Gert Frobe, and Beatrice Straight shouldn't be measured according to those low standards.
The film was directed by Terence Young, a director who wasn't particularly good even in his heyday but whose final few films proved to be especially awful. These included "Inchon" and "The Jigsaw Man" and "Bloodline" presents us with the same kind of lacklustre filmmaking.
Consider, for instance, the fact that every time someone leaves or arrives they enter and exit exactly the same aeroplane on the same airport shot from exactly the same angle. They could have at least bothered to move the camera.
Consider, for instance, the scene in which Elizabeth finds a book on the Roffe family. A book written in old-timey letters yet in modern American English with old family photos in it which are clearly screenshots from the very flashbacks we'll see in just a few minutes. They could have at least bothered to take separate photos.
Finally, consider what must be the most ineptly edited scene in the history of movies. Elizabeth and her secretary Kate (Beatrice Straight) are on the way to a party. CUT. Kate calls the elevator. CUT. Elizabeth touches her ear. CUT. Suddenly, out of nowhere, we hear people screaming and a shot of lights going off. CUT. Elizabeth is sitting alone in her room crying. What happened? Apparently, Elizabeth had forgotten her earrings and went back to get them. Meanwhile, Kate got into the elevator which had been sabotaged and she died. They could have at least completed the shooting of the scene. It would have saved them having to have Audrey Hepburn explain what happened in a bloody voice-over.
This kind of ineptness is evident in all aspects of the film. Ennio Morricone seems to have composed only one piece for the movie as it plays again and again over all the many montages of stock footage and scenes of actors cluelessly barraging through pages of exposition. Even legendary DP Freddie Young embarrassed himself here by overlighting every scene in a monotone flat. As a result, the film is lit like a supermarket and every set looks dingy and flimsy. The less said about Bud Molin's editing the better. Scenes begin and end without any rhythm or logic. Sometimes we even cut away in the middle of an actor's sentence!
The venerable cast seems uniformly bored. Ben Gazzara, in particular, speaks all of his lines in a gravelly monotone without displaying a single emotion. Meanwhile, the 50-year-old Audrey Hepburn is woefully miscast as the ingenue. Everyone treats her like an inexperienced little girl even though she's older than half the cast. Not that she's given much to act anyway. Her character is flat and lifeless and her dialogue (like everyone else's) is clumsy and unwieldy.
In what is one of the most misogynistic subplots I've seen this side of WWII, Elizabeth doesn't want to sell her father's company but being a woman, of course, she can't run it on her own. She should be, as one character puts it, "on a lovely yacht with a lovely man". So she arranges a fake marriage with her father's right-hand man Rhys (Ben Gazzara) so that he can take care of business for her while she... does something. The script never bothers to tell us. What nonsense!
But if you want to see REALLY awful acting just watch the film's misguided and utterly pointless flashback in which a pair of actors who seem like they've never spoken out loud in their life let alone stood before a camera try to pretend they're in 1900s Poland.
"Bloodline's" greatest sin, however, is that it is horrendously boring. For 2 hours, we watch characters as they snipe at each other, plot against each other, and stand around in the most 1970s sets you can imagine. The story, meanwhile, never seems to progress. The script by Laird Koenig meanders, plods, and generally waffles about but there is no discernable pace, no momentum, no urgency. The film just lingers in the air like the omnipresent cigarette smoke polluting the atmosphere.
I wonder why Sidney Sheldon's books turn into such rotten pictures. Perhaps because the filmmakers approach them without a sense of humour or more likely because they were all made as quick cash grabs. The artificiality and soap-operatic melodrama of television proved a much better fit for Sheldon. Even for his die-hard fans, however, "Bloodline" is an impossibly tough sit as it is a boring, languorous, and ineptly made excuse for a film.
2/10 - DirectorBuzz KulikStarsJaclyn SmithKen HowardKevin ConwayBased on Sidney Sheldon's novel. A young assistant district attorney (Parker) is used by a ruthless attorney (Morell) to get his client off. She is fired and almost disbarred, but fights back to become a top attorney, torn between two lovers: Morell and a married lawyer with political aspirations (Warner).
- StarsDyan CannonHarry HamlinIan CharlesonElderly Kate Blackwell looks back at her family's life beginning with her Scottish father Jamie McGregor's journey to South Africa to make his fortune in diamonds. The family history is littered with revenge, lust, betrayal, manipulation, and murder.
- DirectorBryan ForbesStarsRoger MooreRod SteigerElliott GouldA Chicago psychoanalyst's patient and secretary are murdered and he becomes the police's prime suspect despite his claims that someone is trying to frame him.Before Sidney Sheldon adaptations found a comfortable home on television a variety of producers tried (and resolutely failed) to translate his literary millions into movie magic. First, Frank Yablans tried the obvious approach with his torrid melodrama "The Other Side of Midnight". When that failed, Terence Young tried to give his potboiler mystery "Bloodline" the all-star Agatha Christie-style approach. Finally, in 1984, the venerable schlockmeisters Golam and Globus got their hands on Sheldon's debut novel, "The Naked Face", and tried to turn it into a run-of-the-mill Cannon thriller. It is as unlikely a blend as it sounds.
The film stars Roger Moore as a Chicago psychiatrist who has ample reason to believe someone is trying to kill him. First, a patient wearing his raincoat is stabbed in the street and then his receptionist is tortured and killed. However, as these plots often go, no one else is willing to believe him, least of all the cops who are so stupid they make the good doctor their prime suspect. This is one of those plots that make you realize your incredulity can stretch only so far. After a bomb is found in Dr Moore's car you'd think someone would say "gee, maybe he is the target" and put the poor fellow in police protection. But no one does and the plot churns along.
Maybe "The Naked Face" could have been made into a ridiculous but entertaining movie had it taken more of a refuge in audacity. Cast Charles Bronson as the shrink, put in more action scenes, more gratuitous sex. But director/writer Bryan Forbes gives us a glum, listless movie which ambles from one dumb, hopelessly drawn-out scene to the next without much suspense or dramatic propulsion. The result is a film that's neither exciting nor trashy enough to be funny. In fact, it's a crushing bore.
The performances are one of the film's many problems. Roger Moore is a famously witty, charismatic actor but here he looks bored as he is thrown into a series of increasingly more ludicrous situations none of which give him the chance to be either funny or sexy. Mostly he is called on to look concerned and run away from hitmen who rival Inspector Clouseau in incompetence. Imagine casting an actor who was the current James Bond and casting him to play a character utterly lacking in charm.
Rod Steiger and Elliott Gould play the two hapless policemen in performances they quite frankly should be ashamed of. Gould, in particular, is sleepwalking through his part barely bothering to put any kind of inflexion on the pages and pages of expositional dialogue he has to spew out. He seems completely checked out. Steiger, on the other hand, seems to be flailing about through the film like a fish on dry land. He doesn't seem to have any clue what the film he's in is about and his performance changes from one scene to the next. Mostly, however, he screams and shouts and growls as he tries in vain to chew his way out of the film straight through the scenery. But this is not a fun performance to watch. It is excruciating and sad seeing a great actor like Steiger look so lost and sickly on screen.
Art Carney and Anne Archer are also somewhere in this film but they barely register. Like everyone else, they serve merely to deliver pages upon pages of poorly-written exposition. There are no characters in this movie, no wit, no excitement. Curiously for a Cannon movie, there's also barely any action in it either. There's a horribly filmed attempt on Moore's life in which someone tries to kill him by driving a car reasonably close to him. There's also a stupor-inducing protracted sequence in which a pair of hitmen tiptoe through Moore's apartment for what seems like half an hour. What a thriller!
"The Naked Face" is a complete dud of a movie. A boring wannabe thriller that is never exciting nor engaging as a mystery. I've never read Sheldon's novel but I can still confidently lay the blame on director/writer Bryan Forbes whose listlessness and lack of interest in the material reads more clearly on the screen than any of the twists in his turgid film. Besides a lovely little score from Michael J. Lewis, there's nothing of value to recommend here.
2/10 - StarsMadolyn Smith OsborneTom BerengerDavid KeithTracy was an innocent, in love and pregnant by the son of a wealthy family. She is sent to prison for a crime she did not commit. When she gets out, she proposes to take revenge on the people who framed her.
- DirectorPaul WendkosStarsJaclyn SmithKen HowardMichael NouriWhen mobster James Moretti (Michael Nouri) is about to be indicted, one of his people thinks he can get to Adam J. Warner (Ken Howard), the Vice President to stop it. So he arranges for lawyer Jennifer Parker (Jaclyn Smith) to get a job at a prestigious law firm. He knows Parker had an affair with Warner and Warner is the father of her son. When she meets him, she has nothing but contempt for him because his brother tried to kill her. Moretti thinks that Parker owes him, so he tells her to tell Warner to stop the indictment. Parker reconnects with Warner much to the consternation of his wife.
- StarsJaclyn SmithRobert WagnerIan McKellenWhen Mary Ashley is approached to become the U.S. ambassador to Romania, she declines the offer because her husband does not want to leave his medical practice.
- StarsJane SeymourOmar SharifTheodore BikelA beautiful amnesiac struggles to regain her memory, unaware of the danger she will face because of it.
- DirectorGary NelsonStarsDeborah RaffinMichael NouriAmanda PlummerIn Spain, three nuns and a band of revolutionaries are pursued by an evil army colonel.
- DirectorCharles JarrottStarsPerry KingLori LoughlinGeordie JohnsonA naive young woman arrives in Hollywood to become a star, but after she gets drugged and raped during a shoot, she hardens quickly and catches the eye of a popular womanizing comedian who introduces her to his shady powerful agent.
- DirectorJack BenderStarsGail O'GradyBrooke ShieldsVanessa WilliamsStory of the personal lives and careers of three female doctors, from different backgrounds and walks of life, who work at a San Francisco county hospital.