With all the recent Eyes Wide Shut hype, I went back to take a look at this early Kubrick work. Yes, you can see some touches of inspiration in this period piece, but I think it really fell short. For its day, the boxing sequence was pretty good, though I was more impressed by straight ahead camera angles in Requiem for a Heavyweight. Kubrick's gladiators didn't even seem like they were taking hard shots at each other -- not nearly as hard as the sound effects would have you believe.
Anyway, I thought Irene Cane did a fine job playing a wayward girl looking for some purpose in life. She latches onto whatever lifts her spirit for the moment and then can so easily turn it away with a casual look. So near the end of the film when she's pleading for her life with her offer to leave her new lover to marry the thug she had seemed to take pleasure in spurning, we just aren't sure whether she is simply acting desperate or if she really can recant her affection so easily. And the main character, Davy Gordon, openly considers this too as he dashes through the window to save his own neck.
If the film just ended right there, with those threds left unresolved, it would have been a much better movie. Davy could have boarded his train to the West never knowing what became of his two-day girlfriend or the thug she tried to appease. And wouldn't it have been ironic if she were forced to marry that man -- like her sister was forced to marry someone she didn't love? That would have been a cruel twist of fate indeed!
Yet what we got was neither cruel or unusual or even mysterious. No, we got the standard Hollywood ending to a film which had done a good job of breaking a standard Hollywood mold to that point. If it wasn't Kubrick making this film, making that woman run down the stairs into her lover's waiting arms as the big music came up to signal the Happy Ending(TM), I would have just clicked off the TV and forgot all about it. But this is Stanley Kubrick!!!!!! Boy was I disappointed! The only thing I can hope for was that the movie studio forced him to edit his true ending and Kubrick wasn't in a position to reject them at that early stage in his career.
Oh well. See this movie if you're a Kubrick fan, but don't say I didn't warn you that the ending is completely Hollywood.
Anyway, I thought Irene Cane did a fine job playing a wayward girl looking for some purpose in life. She latches onto whatever lifts her spirit for the moment and then can so easily turn it away with a casual look. So near the end of the film when she's pleading for her life with her offer to leave her new lover to marry the thug she had seemed to take pleasure in spurning, we just aren't sure whether she is simply acting desperate or if she really can recant her affection so easily. And the main character, Davy Gordon, openly considers this too as he dashes through the window to save his own neck.
If the film just ended right there, with those threds left unresolved, it would have been a much better movie. Davy could have boarded his train to the West never knowing what became of his two-day girlfriend or the thug she tried to appease. And wouldn't it have been ironic if she were forced to marry that man -- like her sister was forced to marry someone she didn't love? That would have been a cruel twist of fate indeed!
Yet what we got was neither cruel or unusual or even mysterious. No, we got the standard Hollywood ending to a film which had done a good job of breaking a standard Hollywood mold to that point. If it wasn't Kubrick making this film, making that woman run down the stairs into her lover's waiting arms as the big music came up to signal the Happy Ending(TM), I would have just clicked off the TV and forgot all about it. But this is Stanley Kubrick!!!!!! Boy was I disappointed! The only thing I can hope for was that the movie studio forced him to edit his true ending and Kubrick wasn't in a position to reject them at that early stage in his career.
Oh well. See this movie if you're a Kubrick fan, but don't say I didn't warn you that the ending is completely Hollywood.