Checks many of the boxes laid by the previous works in Mankiewicz’s oeuvre—there’s heavy voice-over narration (again—like Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve)multiple voices/POV’s, flashback narrative structure, cynical- biting dialogue—this one is even a Hollywood industry insider like All About Eve
Edmund O’Brien best supporting actor Academy Award- he’s excellent here- sweating in every scene as the soulless PR man. Lots of speech-making and desperation
Mankiewicz’s first color film
The film starts at a funeral—we’re telling the story of Ava Gardner’s character in flashback— not unlike say Citizen Kane and we’re coming to the same resolution about this eccentric character- it cannot be summed up (most of Welles work had this actually)
The Gardner introduction scene has such build-up—it’s tremendous. We start in on a montage of the crowd watching her dance- we don’t actually see her dance. They’re clearly amazed- a great stylistic sequence
Writing with razors in that hard-hitting dialogue
40 minutes with Bogart as narrator, then 40 minutes with O’Brien—then we go to Rossano Brazzi for a bit and that’s where the film derails—not only is Brazzi weak—but they switch back to Bogart at the end as a narrator which is bad form—we also go into Gardner’s flashback within Bogart’s flashback which is like a bad Inception– the film dies in final leg
I do like the touch of them showing the scene of Brazzi slapping a man to defend Gardner twice- from two different perspectives- that’s a nice touch
Gardner isn’t a great actress but she’s a star—and the role calls for it
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