I'm a very sentimental person, as my wife would tell you, and typically enjoy an old-fashioned love story on film, but this film struck me as odd. During the intro to the film I was intrigued--three love stories woven together on a ship. I thought that we would see how the characters from each story interacted on the ship, and how that interaction was both influenced by the love stories that came before, and how that interaction affected the lives of the individuals going forward.
But that wasn't the case at all. The ship serves as nothing more than a vehicle for introducing the characters from each vignette, and the characters never meet or interact. And the vignettes are so disparate in concept that it makes the whole film seem uneven. Consider that the first story is about ballet and heart attacks, the second about witches and wishes, and the third about suicide and circus trapeze artists.
And within the stories there were issues that nagged me. James Mason was great in the first vignette, until the young lady begins dancing in his studio. Then his comments/critique of her dancing--"That's it, that's it, higher, higher..." seemed silly. It worked much better once he was just quiet and the dance became the focus. Otherwise, his comments broke the magic. And in the final segment on the trapeze, the American hiring circus acts goes from "How can I buy an act unless I see it EXACTLY as it is to be preformed for audiences?" to "I'll pay ANYTHING for this act!" in one short minute. Add to that that none of the American actors portraying french men and women in this vignette have a french accent (I suppose that is better than a bad accent) while the non-American actors do have accents, and it just comes across as odd. This accent issue is also amplified by the fact that the second vignette of the young boy who gets his wish to be a man has an underlying storyline about speaking french properly! So we go from one extreme to the other throughout the film.
I can't help but believe that this film was three story ideas none of which had enough depth or breadth to carry a film on their own, and the ship deck mechanism was invented in order to pull together some less than perfect film ideas.
But that wasn't the case at all. The ship serves as nothing more than a vehicle for introducing the characters from each vignette, and the characters never meet or interact. And the vignettes are so disparate in concept that it makes the whole film seem uneven. Consider that the first story is about ballet and heart attacks, the second about witches and wishes, and the third about suicide and circus trapeze artists.
And within the stories there were issues that nagged me. James Mason was great in the first vignette, until the young lady begins dancing in his studio. Then his comments/critique of her dancing--"That's it, that's it, higher, higher..." seemed silly. It worked much better once he was just quiet and the dance became the focus. Otherwise, his comments broke the magic. And in the final segment on the trapeze, the American hiring circus acts goes from "How can I buy an act unless I see it EXACTLY as it is to be preformed for audiences?" to "I'll pay ANYTHING for this act!" in one short minute. Add to that that none of the American actors portraying french men and women in this vignette have a french accent (I suppose that is better than a bad accent) while the non-American actors do have accents, and it just comes across as odd. This accent issue is also amplified by the fact that the second vignette of the young boy who gets his wish to be a man has an underlying storyline about speaking french properly! So we go from one extreme to the other throughout the film.
I can't help but believe that this film was three story ideas none of which had enough depth or breadth to carry a film on their own, and the ship deck mechanism was invented in order to pull together some less than perfect film ideas.