I can see how this would have been something special on stage but like DEAD END which Warners made a few years earlier, this play doesn't quite work as a film.
Whilst visually this is far from static, its presentation isn't too different from those awful stagey theatrical filmed plays which the studios made at the dawn of the sound era. The characterisations and acting style would have been perfect for the stage conveying the protagonist's powerful emotions and the play's messages. On stage, caricatures work, on film however a more nuanced and subtle approach is needed which makes these performances seem really cartoonish.
It's NOT bad acting, it's just not natural enough to work on film. In fact I'd loved to have seen this team do this live but on screen it wouldn't be possible to make these necessarily preachy stereotypes seem real. None of them are in any way believable. Garfield is impossibly one dimensional, Mitchell and Qualen are too good to be true and Ida Lupino is more of a concept than a person.
She is however stunningly pretty which might sound a trivial thing to say but let's be honest, that's why she was in this picture and having a pretty face to look at does make this more palatable. She also looks so different with dark hair - hardly the same girl as the sweet blonde actress in those 1930s English pictures - just saying, she was great in THE GHOST CAMERA!
Whilst visually this is far from static, its presentation isn't too different from those awful stagey theatrical filmed plays which the studios made at the dawn of the sound era. The characterisations and acting style would have been perfect for the stage conveying the protagonist's powerful emotions and the play's messages. On stage, caricatures work, on film however a more nuanced and subtle approach is needed which makes these performances seem really cartoonish.
It's NOT bad acting, it's just not natural enough to work on film. In fact I'd loved to have seen this team do this live but on screen it wouldn't be possible to make these necessarily preachy stereotypes seem real. None of them are in any way believable. Garfield is impossibly one dimensional, Mitchell and Qualen are too good to be true and Ida Lupino is more of a concept than a person.
She is however stunningly pretty which might sound a trivial thing to say but let's be honest, that's why she was in this picture and having a pretty face to look at does make this more palatable. She also looks so different with dark hair - hardly the same girl as the sweet blonde actress in those 1930s English pictures - just saying, she was great in THE GHOST CAMERA!