Svengali like love story in which both Judy GARLAND and James MASON lack the necessary sexual chemistry to convince.
GARLAND essentially plays a version of herself with a name (Esther Blodgett) as unglamorous as her own birth name: Frances Gumm. MASON performs most of the acting honors - as a tortured alcoholic – to make up for GARLAND's deficiencies in this area; while she delivers mediocre songs with an albeit fine singing voice. The dance sequences are often very good and surprisingly imaginative but, this is still quite an unnecessary remake of a much better (1937) film that only works at all because of the star quality of the leading players.
All this movie really has to offer is the self indulgent pretence that Hollywood is emblematic of the American Dream that talent and hard work will out when experience tells us this is not how the world really works. The Tinseltown domain shown here is profoundly insular. Talent is all too easily wasted and, therefore, everlastingly nascent; where unresolved psychological issues rule the day – and the night – and an obsession with form over content leads to chemical addictions and, ultimately, madness and death.
But the ostensible themes of the movie are not fully explored and the characters remain flat and lifeless; making this Hollywood treacle at its most dramatically cloying and emotionally dishonest.
Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment