My review was written in February 1983 after a showing at MGM screening room in Midtown Manhattan.
"Twilight Time" is an old-fashioned family picture lensed in Yugoslavia. Topliner Karl Malden gives an engaging performance as the grandpa caring for two cute kids, but thin writing and a combination of slow pacing and sentimentality make this entry an unlikely candidate to score in the domestic marketplace.
Slight story, burdened with flat, strictly functional English-language dialog, concerns Marko (Karl Malden), a septuagenarian farmer known locally as Americano for his 20-year stay in the U. S. before returning home to a tiny Yugoslav village. He is looking after his grandchildren Ivan (Damien Nash) and Ana (Mia Roth), whose parents are in Germany as immigrant workers. Marko befriends an attractive new schoolteacher Lena (Jodi Thelen), whose main problem is getting Ivan to come to class, as the pre-teenage boy is increasingly taking over the duty of running Marko's farm and household.
With Marko predictably dying, uneventful picture ends with the two children working the farm and evidently standing up for traditional values in defiance of their parents' modern "materialistic" abandonment of family and homeland. Theme will appeal to nostalgic audiences, but lacks the dramatics and story development required for more demanding venues.
Malden earns his star billing with an earthy, at times moving portrayal of an old man living with his memories (signified by frequent playing of his favorite old standard, the 1944 "Twilight Time" hit), but weak material and an inadequate supporting cast let him down. Thelen, very attractively photographed by top-ranked European lenser Tomislav Pinter, reprises her perpetual smile from her pic debut in "Four Friends", and her sincere but goody-goody performance is irritating.
The kids are merely okay, and the Yugoslav minor actors have been dubbed disconcertingly into English, spoiling the otherwise adequate use of direct-sound recording of the principal players. An unrealized romantic interlude between Thelen and Dragon Maksimovic is particularly pointless.
Credit producer Dan Tana (a famous L. A. restaurateur) and his team of filmmakers with attempting to bring back the family entertainment (with which MGM was synonymous in the Golden Age) of yore, but failing to develop adequate story material. Helmer Goran Paskaljevic, for his first English-language entry, directs as if walking on eggshells. The technical side is okay, especially Pinter's laudable still-life landscape shots, but "Twilgiht Time" is a lifeless film.
"Twilight Time" is an old-fashioned family picture lensed in Yugoslavia. Topliner Karl Malden gives an engaging performance as the grandpa caring for two cute kids, but thin writing and a combination of slow pacing and sentimentality make this entry an unlikely candidate to score in the domestic marketplace.
Slight story, burdened with flat, strictly functional English-language dialog, concerns Marko (Karl Malden), a septuagenarian farmer known locally as Americano for his 20-year stay in the U. S. before returning home to a tiny Yugoslav village. He is looking after his grandchildren Ivan (Damien Nash) and Ana (Mia Roth), whose parents are in Germany as immigrant workers. Marko befriends an attractive new schoolteacher Lena (Jodi Thelen), whose main problem is getting Ivan to come to class, as the pre-teenage boy is increasingly taking over the duty of running Marko's farm and household.
With Marko predictably dying, uneventful picture ends with the two children working the farm and evidently standing up for traditional values in defiance of their parents' modern "materialistic" abandonment of family and homeland. Theme will appeal to nostalgic audiences, but lacks the dramatics and story development required for more demanding venues.
Malden earns his star billing with an earthy, at times moving portrayal of an old man living with his memories (signified by frequent playing of his favorite old standard, the 1944 "Twilight Time" hit), but weak material and an inadequate supporting cast let him down. Thelen, very attractively photographed by top-ranked European lenser Tomislav Pinter, reprises her perpetual smile from her pic debut in "Four Friends", and her sincere but goody-goody performance is irritating.
The kids are merely okay, and the Yugoslav minor actors have been dubbed disconcertingly into English, spoiling the otherwise adequate use of direct-sound recording of the principal players. An unrealized romantic interlude between Thelen and Dragon Maksimovic is particularly pointless.
Credit producer Dan Tana (a famous L. A. restaurateur) and his team of filmmakers with attempting to bring back the family entertainment (with which MGM was synonymous in the Golden Age) of yore, but failing to develop adequate story material. Helmer Goran Paskaljevic, for his first English-language entry, directs as if walking on eggshells. The technical side is okay, especially Pinter's laudable still-life landscape shots, but "Twilgiht Time" is a lifeless film.