Charles Wills (Van Johnson) is an aspiring American writer, living in Paris for the time being. After France was liberated near the end of World War II, he meets Helen Ellswirth (Liz Taylor) at a party. She is instantly attracted to him, though he at first prefers Marion (Donna Reed), her sister. But when Charles starts to take a liking to Helen, Marion becomes very jealous and holds a grudge against him for many years. Over the next few years, Charles marries, has a daughter, and struggles to have his novels published. Over time, the struggle to become a successful writer alienates his family from him, and threatens to tear apart the family.
I usually like Liz Taylor movies, and I have never seen a bad performance from Walter Pidgeon, so I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Taylor is beautiful in this film, and she gives a fantastic performance. Pidgeon also does a great job playing the father of both young women. The rest of the actors also do very well in this movie, especially Donna Reed, Van Johnson and George Dolenz. In general, this film has good acting and a well-crafted script.
Overall, I wanted to like this movie more than I really did. At the beginning of the film, I thought it was one I would like, and it starts off well. There are some great points in the movie, such as Van Johnson's character gazing at a mural of Liz Taylor's character, and then later seeing someone create it. The scenes with Johnson's character and his young daughter are especially effective, and that makes the end of the film so much better than it would have otherwise been, as you'll see.
Donna Reed does a wonderful job in her role. She doesn't need to say much in order for us to know exactly what she is thinking or feeling throughout the movie. I was not impressed with Roger Moore, however. Tony Curtis is about the same age as Moore, but he would have been much better at this role. In fact, I think just about anyone could have played Moore's part better than he did.
This movie also moves pretty slowly and seems a lot longer than the nearly 2-hour running time. There are several scenes which serve almost no purpose except to increase the running time. All of these excess scenes could have been cut out without any negative effects on the overall production. I do not want to say too much about the film, but if you watch this, you'll know what I mean about several stretches of the film that seemed unnecessary.
The last 15 or so minutes of the film are by far the best. By then, the viewer knows exactly what happened to these families, but there is still a very compelling reason to watch it to the end. Maybe one reason the middle is so slow is to help set up the end of the film. That's what I'd like to believe anyway. Still, if it could have been slightly quicker to the end, I'd rate this movie higher.
Finally, a note on the DVD. I watched the Madacy version of this movie, and I do not recommend it to anyone. The movie itself is fine, but the DVD transfer is absolutely horrible. There were several skips/jumps in the film and several obvious cuts that should have been done a lot better. There were no special features, and when the DVD loads, you get only one option: "play." This is at least the fifth Madacy DVD that I've seen, and they're always the same - terrible picture and sound quality.
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