I saw a few minutes of the beginning of this movie and got sucked into it, Jack Palance and the guy who plays the shady studio fix-it guy were really engrossing. It seemed like it would be a great film noir. I made a point of taping it when it came back on, so I could watch the whole thing from the beginning.
This movie is not a film noir, there's really no mystery. It is however a DRAMA with a capital D. The movie is based on a play and feels really stagy, in a bad community playhouse sort of way (not to be taken as knock on good community theater). Towards the end all I could think of was how this would make some especially unwatchable community theater.
At first the musical score really seemed to add heft to key moments, but it's overdone and the heavy hand of the music quickly becomes tiresome and pretentious. A heavy-hand is also evident with the over the top writing. Hollywood destroys dreams rather than creates them, how original! An uncorrupted (and unemployed) writer will light the way and write THE TRUTH (trumpet flares then baa bummmmm)! With the exception two brief scenes, all action takes place on two interconnected sets. While necessary for a play, for a movie it just comes off as dull, and pretentious. With a lighter touch or a lighter budget, it could have come off.
While this review is overly negative, all of the acting was great. This great acting almost carries the movie and allowed me to sit through the whole thing, though it took 4 or 5 sittings. Young Jack Palance as a mesmerizing leading man, who'd of thunk? With all the movies I've seen, I've only known him as Curly and The Believe It or Else guy.
The movie started off great kept losing its edge with each passing minute. The stagy ending was an appropriately pretentious ending to a pretentious movie. You get the feeling that afterwards everyone sat around congratulating themselves on making such high art and making such a courageously damning statement about their industry. Ho hum.
This movie is not a film noir, there's really no mystery. It is however a DRAMA with a capital D. The movie is based on a play and feels really stagy, in a bad community playhouse sort of way (not to be taken as knock on good community theater). Towards the end all I could think of was how this would make some especially unwatchable community theater.
At first the musical score really seemed to add heft to key moments, but it's overdone and the heavy hand of the music quickly becomes tiresome and pretentious. A heavy-hand is also evident with the over the top writing. Hollywood destroys dreams rather than creates them, how original! An uncorrupted (and unemployed) writer will light the way and write THE TRUTH (trumpet flares then baa bummmmm)! With the exception two brief scenes, all action takes place on two interconnected sets. While necessary for a play, for a movie it just comes off as dull, and pretentious. With a lighter touch or a lighter budget, it could have come off.
While this review is overly negative, all of the acting was great. This great acting almost carries the movie and allowed me to sit through the whole thing, though it took 4 or 5 sittings. Young Jack Palance as a mesmerizing leading man, who'd of thunk? With all the movies I've seen, I've only known him as Curly and The Believe It or Else guy.
The movie started off great kept losing its edge with each passing minute. The stagy ending was an appropriately pretentious ending to a pretentious movie. You get the feeling that afterwards everyone sat around congratulating themselves on making such high art and making such a courageously damning statement about their industry. Ho hum.