The first 45 minutes of this movie are astonishingly accomplished. The movie refuses to pretend matters of complexity are black and white. It treats viewers like they have brains, and I always appreciate that. I love the earliest scenes, including the beerhall provocation and the duel we never get to see. Right about the time some distractingly fake exterior war scenes arrive, the quality of the movie begins to head south. After that well-developed opening, the movie loses its impressive scale and gets sunk in drawing rooms, cheap sets, and conversations of no great interest; the generosity of the early scenes is gone. It never regains its early success because it never gets back to saying or doing anything large. Watching a young man become a defeated curmudgeon is an insufficient coda to the premise. I wish Livesy wasn't so sure of his characters wholesomeness. Still I'd watch this a hundred times before I'll ever sit through Powell & Pressburger's 'Red Shoes' again (which I find dreadful). Blimp is a downer but it's rather sweet.
Never heard of it? Blame that awful title which has limited it's cultural dissemination! I hardly expected this movie to be about a long-running, international friendship, linked by some chance encounters with 3 women, all portrayed by Deborah Kerr. An interesting conceit but each new Kerr role is less important than the previous one. I can see its influence on both Jules et Jim and Orlando. One late shot in which Theo reveals his real, sentimental reason for seeking refuge in England (done as a single shot) offers an improbable dramatic moment, but it works.
The aging make-up is a bit obvious, but the transformation of two or three young actors into at least actors who definitely seem older is pretty amazing. Even movies from 1943 feature humor that isn't this corny. It has all the flaws of most epics (Laurence of Arabia, another British officer who doesn't do what he's told, come to mind) but it stays very personal throughout. There are things to see here.
Never heard of it? Blame that awful title which has limited it's cultural dissemination! I hardly expected this movie to be about a long-running, international friendship, linked by some chance encounters with 3 women, all portrayed by Deborah Kerr. An interesting conceit but each new Kerr role is less important than the previous one. I can see its influence on both Jules et Jim and Orlando. One late shot in which Theo reveals his real, sentimental reason for seeking refuge in England (done as a single shot) offers an improbable dramatic moment, but it works.
The aging make-up is a bit obvious, but the transformation of two or three young actors into at least actors who definitely seem older is pretty amazing. Even movies from 1943 feature humor that isn't this corny. It has all the flaws of most epics (Laurence of Arabia, another British officer who doesn't do what he's told, come to mind) but it stays very personal throughout. There are things to see here.