Reviews

The movie tells a simple, light-hearted love story between Leonora Cambaretti (Esther Williams), the leading swimmer in a water ballet show, and Ferdi Farro (Jimmy Durante), a singer who just returned from World War II. The plot is rather straight, without serious complications, harmless, sometimes naive, insubstantial. But within its limited scope it is well done and enjoyable.

As this is a musical movie, there is singing, dancing, and -- most remarkable -- the water ballet. The different numbers include some charming scenes. But you cannot compare the dancing with the wonderful performances that are known, for example, from Fred Astaire movies. Also the singing numbers do not reach the quality that is present, for instance, in "My Dream Is Yours" (with Doris Day as a singer), a movie that was produced at about the same time with a similar, though slightly more ambitious entertainment scope.

"Django" counts as a classic of Italian western cinema and influenced many other movies of the time. When I went to school, everybody knew the name "Django", even if he had not seen the film, and it stood for a person who was hard and manly up to ridiculousness.

If I watch the movie today, I find this ridiculousness again in Django's completely exaggerated, unrealistic capabilities that help him to defeat his enemies. The coffin that he drags behind himself through the mud is certainly an original gag, a suitable requisite for an anti-hero in a movie that wants to make fun of the classic pathetic western style and drag it (literally!) through the mud.

However, what else is left? The classic American western is broken down, but nothing is substituted for it. The movie has almost no plot, was filmed at a cheap-looking set and poorly directed. There is nothing what one could seriously call an "action scene", only incredibly stupid "bang! bang!" shooting. The spectacle might count as a form of modern Roman circus, with whores wrestling in the mud, people being killed in vast numbers as if it were nothing, a celebration of sadism and violence. And that is the point were it goes beyond an (already otherwise bad enough) joke. I do not want producers to keep violence away from cinema - some of my favorite movies show violence in abundance. But these movies do not show violence in the form of shallow entertainment, and I do not watch these films just to see the violence. "Django" shows extreme violence for the sake of violence only. This alone would make it unbearable, if it were not already a poorly produced movie.

With Sergio Leone's excellently directed masterpiece "C'era una volta il West" ("Once Upon a Time in the West") the Italian western genre created a milestone for cinema. But if "Django" is a milestone, it is a milestone for trash, and the genre is obviously also full of that.

Connie Doyle (played by Ricki Lake) is abandoned on the streets by her former lover as she tells him that she is pregnant and does not want an abortion. Months later, in an advanced stage of her pregnancy and on the way to a shelter for the homeless, she enters the wrong train and gets involved into a chain of coincidences that finally leads to the end that, when the train crashes in an accident, she is mistaken for Mrs. Patricia Winterbourne, another pregnant woman, who loses her life under the shattered heap of steel. Because Hugh Winterbourne had married Patricia only a short time ago in distant Europe, never sent a photograph and is himself among the death victims, the Winterbourne family accepts the mistaken identity, at least at the beginning. Thus, when Connie wakes up at the hospital, she finds herself in a different world, as the member of a wealthy family and with a little son who is enthusiastically welcomed by his supposed grandmother.

The main part of the plot that follows this exposition is what should be romantic comedy, from the time on when Connie meets Hugh Winterbourne's brother Bill. However the movie is neither able to create any romantic atmosphere nor does it come up with a single scene that I could find really comic. Of course there are situations that are quite absurd, but they did not make me laugh or even smile, because they were too directly and sometimes crudely contrived.

All in all, the movie is not very original. It makes use of a large number of plot elements that we have seen fitting together much better in hundreds of comedies before. And what is absolutely fatal for a romantic comedy is that the central relationship does not work. We see two people come together because it is written in the script, not because they are drawn together by affection.

The movie is obviously intended as a kind of Cinderella story for female movie viewers. At least this explains why Bill's part is played by a good-looking Brendan Fraser, while for Connie's part an actress with a more average look and figure was chosen. But it is hard for me to believe that the female perspective would turn this movie into anything worth mentioning, if it were not simply because Brendan Fraser appears on the screen.

The only genuine reason for watching the movie could be the fact that Shirley MacLaine plays Grace Winterbourne, Connie's supposed mother in law. She is great as ever and therefore appears misplaced in a weak movie among actors who deliver only second-rate performances.

The story of this movie takes place in the middle ages at a time when Genghis Khan's Mongolian army was threatening Europe. It centers around the adventures of a Polish knight who wants to save the town Kraków from being taken by the cruel enemy.

The creators of the movie put much effort into the scenery and even more effort into the costumes. But they did not put any effort at all into the script or into acting. The plot is as simple-minded as if it had been invented by some twelve year old boys, playing cops and robbers. The dialog consists of stupid, hollow phrases. This alone would already make the movie a bad movie.

However its weaknesses go beyond that. The background music is not only unbearable symphonic rubbish. It is also inappropriately matched to the atmosphere of the individual scenes. Even the optical aspects that seem to have been the film maker's only focus are flawed. I do not have sufficient historical knowledge to judge about the historical correctness of costumes, weapons and other equipment. But I am quite sure that ordinary Polish women in the middle ages did not possess a hairstyle, makeup, and manicure like models in the early 1960's, especially if they were hiding from the Mongolian army in the marshland.

This having been said, it is almost unnecessary to mention that even the main story line is far from telling a true story about Genghis Khan's time.

There is no reason to watch this film, as long as you do not want to see how much can go wrong simultaneously with a single movie.

The movie tells the story of Doug Blake (Jack Carson) as he searches for a new radio singer star in order to replace his conceited former friend Gary Mitchell (Lee Bowman), who has just refused to sign another contract. In New York Doug is spellbound by the singing talents of young war widow Martha Gibson (Doris Day). He brings her and her little son Freddy to Hollywood, where Martha and her manager Doug have to go through all the difficulties that an unknown singer has to face on the way to success. Gradually, Doug also falls in love with Martha, who however is more attracted by Gary Mitchell. We can't wait to see, of course, who will finally get the girl ...

The familiar story line (with a musician rising from being a nobody to being a well-known and recognized star) is often delivered in a boring and either over-sentimental or spiritless way by other movies of this kind. In contrast, "My Dream is Yours" combines an original, heart-felt story with a good script and excellent direction. And there is Doris Day at the age of twenty-five! She may already appear quite charming in some of the better-known comedies that were produced ten or fifteen years later. Here her performance is so delightful to look at and her singing so refreshing to listen to that I was overwhelmed. If you like Doris Day, you simply have to see this movie.

This one is a really bad movie. The only positive remark that I can make about it is: I like Deborah Kerr, and she is acting in it.

The script is a pure disaster: The story does not work because of the many inconsequential, unbelievable, and spiritless emotional reactions, even in potentially dramatic situations. There is absolutely no chemistry between the leads. Instead we are bored by much talking in stupid, meaningless dialogs throughout the plot.

I think it would be unjust to say anything about the actor's performances here. The defect that is caused by such a bad script cannot be neutralized or even compensated by the best actors in the world. Nor is this possible for the director or the cinematographer, who appear to have done a solid job.

Admittedly, this movie is one out of a legion of romantic comedies and it uses many of the standard patterns of that genre which we have seen a lot of times before. Moreover, it is not a big-budget cinema production with a top cast that was made up of Hollywood stars. It was produced for a German TV station and was shown in TV only.

Also the starting point of the story does not sound very extraordinary: Alma is a woman in her early twenties who has the problem of being much overweight. Feeling disesteemed by her fellow human beings, she flees society after work. Alone at her apartment, she tries to forget her physical problem and her loneliness by immersing into the dream world of certain Asian martial arts movies on DVD, which show a rather slender heroine. As she discusses the movies with other enthusiasts on the Internet, it turns out that one of the male movie fans sharing her cinematic passions is living in the same town as she does. However, when he asks her to describe her own person, she makes the mistake to describe herself as slender and sporty. It seems to be impossible to meet each other in real life after that ...

What is special about this movie so that it is worth a review and even worth to give it 9 out of 10 stars?

In spite of the lightness that is inherent in the comedy genre, the movie manages well to present a genuine picture of the problems that are met in society by the sexually unattractive together with their emotional reactions. (For this aspect it does not matter that Alma's problem is being overweight. It could be anything else that is making her unattractive for the opposite sex. It even does not matter so much that she is female and dreaming of a male lover. It could be the other way round.) In contrast, most romantic comedies are unable to explore the fate of sexual unattractiveness and its consequences: The leads are normally extraordinarily attractive, as nearly all movie stars are. Sometimes the dream couple is only contrasted by some odd looking pair of lovers in order to create a supporting comic effect. This movie does not choose an overweight woman in order to laugh about her appearance. It is taking her as serious as a comedy plot can take a main character serious at all.

That Alma has a problem with men because of her outward appearance cannot be overlooked: The movie does not make the frequent mistake to create a wallflower just by supplying an otherwise sexy actress with a crude pair of glasses, a dreadful haircut and strange clothes. Although Katrin Filzen (who is playing Alma) is far from being ugly, she is overweight enough here that we can believe the story which the script wants to tell us about Alma. In consequence, Alma's struggles against her fate do not have to stick to the ordinary clichés from women's magazines that make e.g. the corresponding parts of "Bridget Jones's Diary" (with the actress Renée Zellweger not as "chubby" as Bridget is supposed to be) so annoyingly shallow.

This movie is funny and has an intelligent script, and instead of making the audience laugh at the costs of those who are sharing Alma's fate in real life, it supplies comfort to them. But (surprise!) this is not being done by an unbelievable attempt to tell us that the outward appearance does not matter much at the end when humans choose someone as a partner. (Or that anyone's appearance can be changed at will, e.g. by consequent diets, training etc.) Instead we are reminded in a funny comedy way that finding the partner for life is really difficult for most people, even for the "ideal" women and men, only that for the latter it is easier to try out an affair with the wrong mate.

This is certainly not one of Hitchcock's best movies. The crime story lacks much of the intelligence found in other works directed by him.

The story takes place in France at the Côte d'Azur. The atmosphere of this surrounding is responsible for much of the fascination which the movie still has, and this effect must have been even more dominating at the time when it was released. Also Cary Grant is very cool as the former jewel thief John Robie. However, as a character he remains a stereotype. This is also true for the remaining roles in the movie, including John's admirer Frances (played by Grace Kelly) who is reduced in this way to a nice decoration wrapped into some stylish dresses.

All in all this is solid entertainment from the fifties. But it is not more than that. I gave it 7 out of 10 stars.

Not only judging from the numerous Oscar awards (which I experienced to be sometimes misleading earlier) but also from the emphatic praises of some independent critics, I placed high expectations on this movie: It promised to present an intense, epic story on the a historical background of world war II, a story that centers around a passionate love, touching the viewer with the depth of a tragic romance.

But what a disappointment! The movie is flawed in so many ways. The slow pace that is criticized by a lot of viewers is not part of the problem itself. It would have been appropriate for this kind of story if the script writer and the director had explored the characters and their motivations more deeply and more convincingly. Unfortunately the movie remains on the surface. Moreover,the way that many elements of the plot come in makes them unbelievable, as if they were constructed only to support the overall story line.

The worst of all is - from my point of view - that the movie is unable to present the central romance between Laszlo and Katharine as anything deeper than an affair which is based on simple erotic attraction only. If it were meant in this way, I had no problem with it: Affairs that remain on this level are probably frequent in reality. However this movie tries hard to convince us of more. And it fails miserably.

It looks as if the film makers took some ingredients to produce a romantic atmosphere (diaries, candle lights, sunsets etc.) from an average TV soap, mixed everything together and hoped to come out with a romance in this simple way.

Proceeding in this way, the potential of the story for many highly dramatic moments was thrown away. There is at least one scene that would have made me cry in the context of a true drama. However watching "The English Patient" my mind was mostly dominated by the fact that everything I saw was only acting and a bit too obviously contrived.

If the script had been better, other flaws of the movie were not so important: Although much of the story presents to us people that come together at the end of a war and, during the flashbacks, we are are supposed to see people that have spent many days on an expedition in the sandy desert, everybody looks neat and clean. A convoy of new cars with soldiers in new clothes drives along the road. Badly injured soldiers seem as if they came not from the battle field, but directly from the hairdresser. Artificial light is used too often for the sake of an evenly illuminated, but unnatural picture.

All in all, this movie is much overrated. However, it is not unwatchable or insultingly stupid. In spite of the aforementioned flaws, I enjoyed it still enough to give it 6 out of 10 stars.

This movie is one of the classics that again proves Alfred Hitchcock's outstanding abilities in the art of directing crime thrillers. The story by Patricia Highsmith is also quite original. However the plot would not be half as interesting without the excellent direction and the perfect use of the camera. This is one of the most perfectly produced black and white movies I have ever seen.

A certain weakness lies in the amount of prolongation of the plot towards the end. This serves to increase suspense to a certain degree. But Hitchcock goes a bit over the top here, possibly because Highsmith's story does not provide an adequate climax.

The movie is certainly worth seeing. I gave it 8 out of 10 stars.