After spending three years in an asylum, a washed-up actor views a minor assignment from his old director in Rome as a chance for personal and professional redemption.After spending three years in an asylum, a washed-up actor views a minor assignment from his old director in Rome as a chance for personal and professional redemption.After spending three years in an asylum, a washed-up actor views a minor assignment from his old director in Rome as a chance for personal and professional redemption.
Videos1
Daliah Lavi
- Veronicaas Veronica
- (as Dahlia Lavi)
Erich von Stroheim Jr.
- Ravinksias Ravinksi
- (as Erich Von Stroheim Jr.)
Edit Angold
- German Touristas German Tourist
- (uncredited)
Albert Carrier
- Marioas Mario
- (uncredited)
Former film star Jack Andrus is released from a sanitarium where he has lived for the previous three years, suffering from alcoholism, a traumatic automobile accident, and a severe mental breakdown. He's been offered two weeks of work in Rome by Maurice Kruger, his old director, who himself is near the end of his fading career and under pressure from his parsimonious Italian producer to finish his picture on time and under budget. Jack is also pressed from a manipulative ex-wife, a rising but self-destructive young star, the director's shrewish wife, and a temperamental Italian diva who requires handling with kid gloves. When the Kruger suffers a heart attack, Andrus views the opportunity as a last chance at the redemption of his personal life and professional career. —duke1029@aol.com
Top review
trash masterpiece
Vincente Minnelli's film version bears little resemblance to Irwin Shaw's novel of the same name, not that there's anything wrong with that. This movie belongs on the second half of a double feature with "The Carpetbaggers" as a guilty pleasure I can't resist watching. It spoofs the difficulties American directors had in making quality movies overseas when European producers expressed no interest in quality, only profit. This is a lesser alternative to Fellini's "8 1/2" and Godard's "Contempt," which explored the same theme, and its trashiness is expressed perfectly with footage from "The Bad and the Beautiful," another Minnelli-Douglas collaboration. Favorite line, Edward G. Robinson to Douglas regarding George Hamilton: "He's crazier on the loose than you were locked up."
helpful•226
- swisener
- Sep 1, 2004
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