The Film Junkie

It is by no means one of the greatest noirs of all time, however I don’t think Lana Turner ever gave a better performance than here as a conflicted wife with big plans and even bigger affections for the two men in her life.

The noir aspect of the film falls a little flat mainly due to the performances by the men in the film and the somewhat dull plan of attack.  The exception for the male actors is Hume Cronyn, looking young and spry, as the defense attorney who sees every angle and knows how to manipulate people to his advantage.

All in all the film is dull in parts but Turner makes it sparkle.

Grade: B-

How bad can a movie with Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles be?  ‘Tomorrow’ proves it can be godawful.

The premise of this movie is that Colbert and Welles are married, but early into their life together he enlists for WWI and when the soldiers return a few months later she recieves word that he is dead.  However he was not actually killed, only disfigured.  He chooses to continue the lie so as not to disrupt her life.

Cut to 20 years later when Welles, now posing as an Austrian scientist, comes to America and due to various contrived circumstances finds himself involved in Colbert’s new life with her husband and two children, the oldest of which is, of course, Welles’ son.

This film is pure melodrama from start to finish and it takes Colbert an insane amount of time to figure out that Welles is her first husband, it is almost painful to watch.  You can only stretch dramatic irony so far. 

Perhaps the best work in the film is Natalie Wood as Welles’ adopted Austrian daughter.  And in a film with two screen legends, a little girl stealing screen time is something to say.

From the music, to Welles’ over-acting eyebrows, this is a clunker.

Grade: C-

Hedy Lamarr stars as a manipulative working class daughter of a drunk who works her way up from man to man to the life of leisure she always wanted only to find she has sacrificed too much along the way and doesn’t even recognize herself.  She falls for the son of her husband by convienience and then drops him for the fiance of her best friend while tricking everyone into thinking she is a decent person.

This film is melodramatic in the worst of ways, with its orchestrations too full of strings and Lamarr’s overactive eyebrows.  You are never given a chance to like any of the characters but you are supposed to sympathize?

Lamarr plays Jenny like Scarlett O’Hara with ADD.  She switches from each man while not dealing with her feelings about the last, she mourns for the children she cannot have without really wanting children at all, she tosses aside friendships too swiftly and then begs for them to return.  She is a confused and frustrating woman that you just want to go away.  Also, her homegrown American gal has a distinctly Austrian accent at times, as Lamarr was clearly unable to hide her heritage.  She leaves you constantly wishing they would have incorporated her obvious accent into the plot.

George Sanders is supposedly dashing and masculine, but he comes off as dull and robotic in comparison with Lamarr’s slinking shoulders and constantly shocked eye-acting.

The story is awkwardly constructed and no one ever makes a logical choice, instead they seem as though they are a bunch of puzzle pieces manipulated to fit one another despite the fact they are meant to fit entirely different pictures.

I couldn’t wait for it to end…and then it had one of the most maddening endings ever…

What were they thinking?

Grade: C-