Unfairly tagged for her lover’s accidental death, a rich young wife & mother disappears to protect her family from social disgrace, hiding for twenty years as Madame X, sinking into absinthe & despair until being spotted by a lowlife blackmailer she does kill. Now, on trial for murder, unaware that the young defense lawyer working his first case is . . . (gasp) the son she abandoned as a child! Oft filmed, and you’ll see why, it’s prime hokum for bravura acting, no less than Sarah Bernhardt brought this irresistible trash to B’way when she was pushing 70. But if you don’t need youth, you do need style & technique to bring it off, two items missing from Lana Turner’s skill set. Too puffy to pull off couture, furs & jewelry (each with separate screen title credit), she looks more swaddled than chic, lost in a hideous Ross Hunter production where furniture, sets & even actors seem made of color-coordinated plastic. (Burgess Meredith’s boozy blackmailer excepted, he at least adds a bit of rude energy.) Turner and Ross Hunter both slipping badly since IMITATION OF LIFE/’59 and Douglas Sirk’s retirement. A bust; and yet you can still make out the sheer craft in Alexandre Bisson’s sub-Victorien Sardou story construction.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: M-G-M’s famous 1929 version, an Early Talkie triumph for Ruth Chatterton, now looks impossibly slow & stilted, but a 1937 remake (not seen here) is said to make the case for the play and forgotten star Gladys George, best remembered for supporting roles later in her career.
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