As imaginatively designed as this film is, all the more remarkably so for having been shot before the beginning of World War II, I was still stunned by how poor it is. It plays like a badly directed version of The Twilight Zone. A fine cast screams its way through 3/4 of the film. The final sequence is marginally better, marginally being the operative word. It leaves little if any impact.
What a disappointment.
I agree. For such a large scale prestige picture that must have cost a lot to make I was amazed at how badly directed it was in places. Sometimes the editing is not too good and the dialogue is laughably bad in parts. And considering the acting talent on show I was also amazed at how bad some of the acting actually is. Korda productions were very good at putting on a spectacle but sometimes at the cost of realistic acting. Another example where this happens is The Thief of Baghdad a few years later, another film full of visual flair but some terribly wooden dialogue and acting. Such a shame really because this film had bags of potential and could have been a bona fide classic.
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Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.