Siskel's review

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune (and Siskel & Ebert fame) gave this film 2 and a half stars. His thoughtful review includes comments on the deleted scenes, so here it is:
Poor Editing Mars Fine Efforts By The Minnellis in 'A Matter of Time'
Minnelli by Minnelli. The prospect of a Liza Minnelli film directed by her father, Vincente, is exciting.
And "A Matter of Time" does have it's moments; sometimes even extended passages. But there are signs all over the picture that "A Matter of Time" has been severely and carelessly edited.
The film opens with a written prolog, and that's always a danger sign. Movies typically use prologs when they have been unable to say what they want to say visually. Sure enough, the words crawl across the screen announcing that "A Matter of Time" may strike some people as a fairy tale, but that fairy tales sometimes do come true. Then the prolog goes on to set up the story of a poor Italian peasant girl who journeys to Rome in search of fame and fortune.
The likely reason that prolog was used is that someone thought it was necessary to "apologize" for presenting a fairy tale in these, the hard, cold, jaded 70s.
Once the movie gets going, however, the Minnelli charm, both Liza's and Vincente's-begins to work. Told in an extended flashback, the film opens with a movie star's press conferance. The star (Liza Minnelli) will be at the conference in 15 minutes. We meet her in a Rolls Royce as she is being driven to the press affair. A male admirer in the car asks her about her unusual, oversize, ornate hand mirror. That triggers a long flashback in which Minnelli tells the story of her life.
She used to be a poor peasant girl, and the mirror used to belong to an elderly contessa (Ingrid Bergman). Their paths cross when Minnelli goes to Rome to join her cousin (Tina Aumont) as a chambermaid in the hotel where the contessa, now broke, is spending her last years.
"A Matter of Time" really is an extended lecture by Ingrid Bergman to Liza Minnelli to buck up, be yourself, love life, and don't give up hope. It's much the same role that Bergman played in a little-seen 1973 film, "The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler." Sort of the elder stateswoman of the human heart. The role takes advantage of Bergman's well-known past as a Hollywood free spirit.
Lectures like this usually aren't much fun (remember "The Blue Bird"?), unless there's a story that spices the lecture. With "A Matter of Time," however, much of the story-including possibly some of its most entertaining sequences-has been edited out at the last minute. According to a September, 1976 , synopsis given to me by American International Pictures, whole scenes and at least one major character have been removed.
What's missing are some of the fantasy scenes in which the contessa recalls her old glory days, the days when she was the toast of Europe. Also missing is a scene in which Minnelli tries her hand at streetwalking to get the tapped-out contessa some money.
Despite all these problems, "A Matter of Time" has plenty of visual charm. There's charm when Minnelli sings, usually in voice-over narration; charm when her father directs a montage of modern Roman street scenes, even though the picture is supposed to be set in 1949; and charm when Bergman finally sells the message that we shouldn't regret any part of life, not even the bad times.
In many of these moments, "A Matter of Time" reminded me of another, recent Vincente Minnelli film, "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever." Both pictures are tributes to optimism. Both pictures have their leading young ladies question in song how far they are from their ideal life. And both films offer an old-fashioned plea for being yourself. These are the films of a sentimental old man, and it's a shame that someone felt the need to apologize for such sentiment in the film's prolog.
"A Matter of Time" might have worked as well as "Clear Day" if Vincente Minnelli's movie hadn't been tampered with.
October 11, 1976