A graduating poet/teacher falls in love with a Southern woman, and then the Civil War and her past create problems. [imdb]
Nominated for 4 Oscars:
Best Actress: Elizabeth Taylor
Best Original Score
Best Art Direction
Best Costume Design
This is the first of Elizabeth Taylor's 5 Best Actress nominations (4 of which are consecutive, starting with this one). Unfortunately the film, which is a wannabe epic Gone with the Wind style, is a huge flop and for most part a waste of time, camera work and potential. It's not an epic, but a badly acted, directed, written film lacking the fluidity it needs to put some sense into the story.
The technical nominations are worthy, I guess. Elizabeth's is not the real leading character, but the problem is that she benefits of such terrible screenplay, storyline, all cheesy, putting the fatal mark on her performance. She's not THAT bad, but her performance is replaceable & unspectacular, even though it's nice to see a pretty face onscreen. Montgomery Clift is as boring as always, but I forgive him because during the filming of this he had the infamous car accident that left him a drug addict. The direction of the film sucks, just like the Civil War scenes. And don't get me started on the screenplay...
My rating for the film: 3/10. Easy to watch, but too superficial to be taken seriously. And they've even made Eva Marie Saint seem annoying.
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More interesting than the film is the gay trivia that surrounds it.
ReplyDeleteIt's the last film Monty Clift made before ruining his face, and produced by David Lewis before his partner James Whale drowned in his swimming pool.
Monty Clift gay? :P
ReplyDelete[kidding; even though I think he went both ways :D ]
I didn't know the james whale trivia. but what I did understand from imdb was that he had to CONTINUE SHOOTING this film after the accident. so I was very focused trying to notice the differences, but didn't really put my finger on it.