NOTES: Director "Lucky" Humberstone's last film before retirement.
COMMENT: When I was at school, one of the few modern writers we studied was Norman Corwin. Why he should have been selected is a mystery, unless the Board of Studies wanted to prove that not all writers were in the front-rank and give us some practice at finding faults instead of looking for virtues.
I remember that Corwin had three main faults, all of which are well exemplified in this film: (1) a very off-hand and confusingly slip- shod treatment of Time; e.g. the first scene in this film happens during the day, the following scene presumably takes place the same night but is identical with a scene that the characters say took place three months in the past and is identical again with a scene that takes place later on in the film — is one of these scenes a flashback? But that's not all, for the scene that follows seems to take place the next morning but if you listen hard to the dialogue you will discover it is taking place three months later — but if three months have passed, how come we pick up the same characters in exactly the same place we left them three months ago? — the reporter, for instance, is still writing the same weekly feature on Washington nobodies and yet later on in the film (how long?), she is working for a different outfit.
Allied with this fault, is an amateurish use of unconvincing plot devices — it's inconceivable that no-one at a big national magazine would know what had happened to one of its star reporters, especially a particularly feminine one like Miss Crain. Of course they would know about her new job and it's incredibly naive of Mr Corwin to try to impress upon us they would not. Furthermore, the dodgy trick with the envelope is just incredible.
(2) Characters reveal themselves not so much by what they do as by what other characters say about them, e.g. the Eleanor Parker character is painted in nice colors throughout, but suddenly the Dana Andrews character takes a set against her — why? The 'why' is revealed in a seemingly casual line of dialogue — "There's been a bit of excitement here this morning. She's fired six people already." Which is all the audience has to go on when Dana Andrews says to her, "I kicked you up the ladder and now you kick people in the face!" This is very confusing because we thought she was supposed to be a sympathetic character — which is the way she's been playing it, the way Humberstone has been directing it and the way Corwin has seemingly been writing it!
Another example of the same thing revolves on the Eddie Albert character who is portrayed and played as a likable eccentric. The only reason we have to suppose that he is not, is that Andrews calls him a slob but then Andrews is supposed to be unsympathetic and this maybe is just a further example of his nastiness. But suddenly Corwin would have us believe that Albert is a close kin to the Lonesome Rhodes character in A Face in the Crowd. So Andrews turns out to be a sympathetic character after all and so, even more extraordinarily does Howard St John.
Allied with this fault is the elaborate introduction of characters, most notably Stipe (played by Henry Daniell, one of the few interesting players in the cast whose performance, after his initial entry, is limited to a few reaction shots) who are then utterly dropped.
So plot construction and characterization are faulty, continuity is jerky and there's too much dialogue — some of it is occasionally witty, much of it is just chatter and far too much of it is just plain dime-store-romance drivel and unconvincing slush. What is left — background and atmosphere — Corwin fails at too. His is a schoolboy's simplistic view of public relations. The idea is promising, but in Corwin's hands, it is naively developed and the background atmosphere is negligible.
The film's miserable production values are no help: Humberstone's lackluster direction with its routine compositions and hackneyed reaction shots stifles the cast even further, as if their script were not enough hindrance. The totally undistinguished lighting and sets, the rotten back projection, the banal music scoring as well as lapses in make-up and camera angles that present all the star players in an unflattering light, give the film the look of a hastily-shot programmer (which of course it is).
We are sure that the players would feel that this is a vehicle they would rather forget. Under the circumstances, we will be merciful. Rating: 30%. With considerable and judicious trimming we might go up to 45% tops.
3 out of 8 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
