Reviews

For years, I put off watching this version of Shakespeare's classic love story, knowing that all the main players were about thirty years too old for their roles. Finally, when the film came on late on night, I decided to take a look, because I do admire the work of so many of the players.

Provided you can put aside the problems of the ages of the actors, the result is a very pleasant surprise. The biggest surprise for me was the performance of Norma Shearer - I've always liked her work, but considered her rather lightweight for Shakespeare. Not so - she delivered her lines with a great feel for the style and pace, and was as delightful and open a Juliet as one could wish. Her age became irrelevant; this was a young girl new to love, completely swept off her feet and ready to surrender all - for the first time.

Leslie Howard was also comfortable with the Shakespearean dialogue, if slightly lacking the boyish passion we rightly expect to see. He was more the slightly older suitor, taken by surprise with the fresh appeal of his Juliet, but ready to cast aside previous attachments to pursue and win her. His lovely voice delivered the lines with ease and fluency.

John Barrymore's Mercutio was much more the ageing playboy than the dashing young blade, but his sure touch with the dialogue showed clearly why he was considered the preeminent Shakespearean actor of his day in America. His delivery of the "Queen Mab" speech was a delight. His body was way too old, but his spirit lacked nothing.

Flora Robson came near to stealing most of her scenes, as she so often did, and Basil Rathbone was fully at home in the role of Tybalt; fine performances from these two, as we would expect from their backgrounds.

It was, to my mind, rather over-produced, with the actors in danger of being lost in the expansive sets, but remembering that had these actors been performing on stage, we wouldn't bat an eyelid at their ages, they provide us with an engrossing experience and deliver a play that even the experts couldn't fault.

Director Gianni Amelio coaxed a wonderful performance from Andrea Rossi in this film - his lines were fed to him by the director, allowing this young non-actor to appear spontaneous. His charm and his stubbornness were powerful and endearing, and it would seem that it was the boy's real character and personality that were being very gently and cleverly allowed to shine.

Apart from Andrea Rossi, the strength of the film lay with Charlotte Rampling - although her part was a supporting role, her intelligence and dignity made a strong impact, and you wished that she would be there to counsel and guide Gianni through future events that he would perhaps not handle too well. She has matured into a very fine actress indeed, and one hopes that she will get the kind of roles she deserves in the future.

My first thought was that Kim Rossi-Stuart wasn't a good choice for the lead - good-looking certainly, but way too wooden an actor to carry a role as demanding as that of Gianni. On reflection, however, I wondered if casting an actor who appeared to have very little to give his role emotionally was deliberate, because it wasn't hard to believe that this was a man who deserted his son at his birth. Even when he slowly began to warm to his son, and we knew he desperately wanted to help, he was still awkward as he tried to compensate for his instinctive emotional detachment.

When he took his son from the hospital - clearly before his round of treatment was completed (this would certainly have to be an ongoing routine for Paolo) - this was not the action of a responsible, loving father but an act of rebellion from an immature man who couldn't, or wouldn't, see that the painful procedures were the only hope for some small improvement in Paolo's condition, and something that the boy himself accepted and participated in, however much he hated it.

Taking Paolo to Norway to visit his "girlfriend" Kristine was not an act of kindness, but one of insensitivity - in earlier scenes, although Paolo spoke of one day marrying her, he also had all sorts of excuses for not being able to meet her. Clearly, he was able to understand what his father could not - that she may reject him when she realised that he was not like other boys; yet he trusted his father enough to take the chance. It was when Gianni threw away his walking stick that I felt he had made very little progress from the boy who couldn't face up to his responsibilities to his motherless son - he was acting less from a desire to help Paolo walk on his own than he was trying to pretend that the boy's disabilities could be cured by an act of will and that he would one day be more like a "normal" son. This was explored further during the driving scene - having told Nicole earlier that Paolo didn't know how to construct boundaries, he encouraged him to think that he could drive and was then shattered when he realised the extent to which his son could at times fail to recognise the limitations that would always confront him. Was Paolo himself unconsciously trying to teach his father a lesson by behaving in the same irresponsible way that Gianni had been?

The ending of the film therefore presented us with two possibilities - Gianni's newly-awakened love might lead him to a new sense of maturity and responsibility if he could accept that love was not going to be a miracle cure, or he just might once again abandon his child to others. For Paolo's sake and his father's too, I'd like to think that Gianni would have developed a new perspective on his physical and emotional journey with his difficult and beautiful son.

I saw this film three times before I ever bothered watching the 1959 remake. Admittedly, watching the latter on television in letter-box format is not the best way to view it, but even on a full screen, nothing would be able to disguise the hammy acting and shallowness of the film.

The original, on the other hand, has the spectacular scenes - the battle at sea was much more convincing, and the chariot race superbly well done, but where it really shone though was in the simplicity and intimacy of the performances, and although it's quite long by silent standards, its 2 hours+ length is just about right. Ramon Novarro's performance was very good indeed; I thought Francis X Bushman was a little cold, which marred the early scenes, but struck the right note in the later scenes. And the scenes where the two women leave the prison and make their way to their old home before moving to the Valley of the Lepers were very moving and beautiful to watch. The segment in the Valley, with silent wraith-like figures moving about, and the later healing of the women by Christ on his way to Calvary, also stand out in my memory - a tribute to Fred Niblo and his sensitive direction.

Technically, I'm sure it must have been a marvel in its time, and it still stands up today as a very watchable and enjoyable film.

Undoubtedly a "B" movie, and it's not altogether surprising that it was originally intended as soft porn. But it rises above its origins, in large part due to Robert Quarry.

It's been a long time since I've seen this movie - it doesn't seem to have made the transition to cable in Australia - but I saw it quite a few times in the seventies, and even on third or fourth viewing, it was still scary stuff. And that's what vampire films need to be. For me, Robert Quarry's attractiveness and over-smooth charm made it instantly understandable why so many young girls would find him appealing enough to willingly accompany him to his home, without the benefit of hypnotism. Most vampire films don't portray vampires as sexy creatures at all, and I thought the casting of Quarry, even with a slightly campy edge, added an extra dimension to the character.

I liked the slow initial pace of the film - you know something is going to happen, and waiting for it to eventuate can be scarier than the action when it does, and I thought the slow pace made it all the more credible. The final scenes, with vampire girls all over the house, and one lone guy left to fight the Count to the death, were some of the scariest scenes ever in any vampire film.

The direction, for a B film, was good, but most of all it was Robert Quarry's film. I never could understand why he didn't do more quality work after this.

This film starts out promisingly, with some witty and sophisticated dialogue, but it deteriorates towards the end, when the joke has worn thin.

The birthday party scene, with Jeanette in her tacky little angel costume, was delightful, as was the following segment where Nelson falls asleep and is visited in his dreams by a real angel, also played by Jeanette. The scenes where she slowly learns the art of being insincere and how to skirt around the truth are also a lot of fun.

But the joke goes on for too long, and musically also the film takes a downward slide towards the end. Musically, both stars were capable of handling much better material than they were given in this film, and it's a shame that, while there are some pretty little songs in the early part, there is not one really memorable musical number that allowed them to shine as only they could.

But the pair handle the inferior material as well as anyone could, and there is still a special magic between them.

Just a pity about the heavy censorship of the Hayes Office, and the lack of a really good score.

Naughty Marietta has earned it place in film history for being the first film to pair the singing duo of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, but it's also a fine example of its particular genre.

A typical variant on the boy-meets-girl theme, this film has a French princess running away from the court of Versailles to the newly- colonized Louisiana, where she meets and falls in love with a mercenary soldier who sings as well he fights. There is an excellent supporting cast including Frank Morgan and Elsa Lanchester, but it is above all a vehicle for the singing talent of Eddy and MacDonald. The script is amusing and at times quite sophisticated and the pair handle it well (MacDonald is a bit ahead of Eddy here, but he makes up for that with his glorious baritone voice). The final duet, Ah Sweet Mystery of Life is one of the great vocal duets in cinema musical history, and only slightly less orgasmic than the "Czaritza" duet in Maytime.

Obviously a vehicle for fans of the Singing Sweethearts, but the film's production values are good, and it should be interesting viewing for any student of cinema's Golden Age.

I have seen this movie only twice, and the last time was at least ten years ago, but the memory has stayed with me. As my country becomes more repressed and dictatorial, this film has come back to haunt me.

The events start out very simply but under a paranoid regime, quickly escalate to a point that must have been unimaginable even to those living in Argentina at that time. When I first saw it, my heart ached for those children and their families caught up in a situation that was hard for me to imagine; now it seems closer than I could ever have dreamed.

The very simplicity of this film and its straightforward telling of the story of these bright and idealistic teenagers is all the more powerful for its lack of embellishment. There is no need to beat up the story and its hand-held cameras and lack of sophisticated lighting or makeup has the effect of breaking through the fourth wall and making us participants in the unfolding drama. We can't get away but neither can we help, and our powerlessness reflects that of the children and their families.

It should be mandatory viewing for all those who think "it can't happen here".

It is a mystery to me why this film isn't on everybody's top ten films listing. It is truly a masterpiece of acting and direction, and without doubt the best anti-war film I have ever seen. Yet it was never released on video, and it took over 20 years of waiting to see it repeated on television and tape it for my collection.

It is all the more telling for its simplicity - none of the many great actors taking part delivers a weighty pronouncement on the evils - or otherwise - of war; it is enough to see the awful toll posted on the cricket scoreboard that keeps the daily tally of dead. The ordinariness of the Smith family, who lose every last one of their young men to the conflict, the cheerful patriotism of the proud families waving their loved ones off to war, and the stupid banalities of the officers who daily send their men out to be killed only serve to highlight the absolute futility and waste of WWI and all the wars that followed.

Scenes of upper class twits at play while their servants are dying to preserve their privileges; the officers' ball where military leaders try to score points off each other, concerned only with protocol and promotion; and the brilliant black humor of the outdoor church service are juxtaposed with scenes from the trenches as we watch the young men die one by one, all the more harrowing for their cheeky humor and fatalism.

Why this brilliant film has been allowed to sink without trace is baffling; I first saw it in the early seventies, and today it still has the same impact. And sadly, it is just as relevant now as it was then - a testimony to our inability to learn from our mistakes.

How sad that this film appears to have been lost - how do you "lose" such an good film?

I too have only seen it once, on television - was it in the seventies? But I've never forgotten it, and always kept an eye out for it to appear on television again, especially since the advent of cable, or in video stores, but it has eluded me.

I've always liked Marius Goring's work - yes, I fell in love with him in The Red Shoes - but this film was particularly strong in both story- line and casting. I've always preferred black and white film for drama, and it was just right for this romantic and ultimately tragic story.

I'm rating it high, although I saw it so long ago and can't remember details, but for any film to have had such an impact that one can't forget it decades later after one viewing, means it deserves the highest rating.