franzkabuki ~ Every one of the few minutes Grahame was on screen was utterly grating - thank god she got killed in that crash.
Wow. Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.
I thought that most of the character portrayals in this were caricatures, most all of which were a bit over-amplified to make their respective points. Hers was amplified on "11". More than a little overdone, I still found her to be most charming. Her jejune and girlish silliness was the thing he loved about her and the thing that held him back from getting past "I started to work". It was kind of sweet that such a serious intellectual as the James Lee character would be so in love with his wife who was given to such girlish behavior. I thought it worked tremendously well. She was indeed naive and thoroughly enthralled by all the Hollywood phoniness and perks. If it weren't for her, he never would have gone there.
The characterization was a bit much, but in the clinch with Powell there was more than just a little something there. You can't manufacture that. She had something. They had something going on together and Shields took that away from him. I liked their part of the story arc.
I've always found Gloria Grahame to be a very interesting actress and not often used so well or to her best potential. I, just this week, saw her in Human Desire and thought she was fantastic. That is the best performance of hers that I can remember.
Douglas is perhaps the most egregious embodiment of a scenery chewing over-actor to have ever plied his trade. Always with great intensity and never boring he still manages to ruin a great many films with his brand of ham. In this film it more or less fits the part and he is a bit restrained (at least in comparison with much of his other work) but in the majority of his work it is comically absurd how badly he over-plays his parts.
I liked Lana Turner's performance in this. The scene where she was driving away from Sheilds' home, in hysterics, was kind of surreal but she really dished out a powerful performance in that scene.
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franzkabuki
13 years ago
Which films do you think Kirk Douglas ruined? He may have been something of a ham and relied more than a little on his movie star charisma, but hardly among the worst over-actors - and he was also pretty much always entertaining (the only film I recall where I found him somewhat annoying was the overly cheery turn in Lonely Are The Brave - but then again the whole film had a rather goofily & inappropriately upbeat tone). And it´s definitely unfair to say he didn´t have talent - he did well in a variety of different roles ranging from sinister in Out Of The Past, righteous in Paths Of Glory, classically heroic in Spartacus, very funny in The Fury etc. And here in TBATB there was certainly nuance and ambiguity to his character; not an easy man to figure out... so yeah imo this does belong among his best performances.
I recently saw Grahame in In A Lonely Place where she was pretty good - but I never said anything about her acting abilities in the first place as she obviously played the part the way she was asked to. Nevertheless, here she´s completely over the top without an ounce of any charm or charisma as far as I´m concerned; she played that woman as if she were mentally handicapped. Now why would an acclaimed writer marry an airhead like that, especially as she´s not even particularly good looking?
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
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