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Thursday, June 14, 2018

LIZZIE (1957)

Hoping to ride backdraft on Joanne Woodward’s Oscar’d THREE FACES OF EVE/’57*, this bargain basement Multiple Personality Disorder copycat opened a mere two months later. Eleanor Parker does triple-duty, flipping nimbly between subservient Elizabeth, slutty Lizzie & well-balanced Beth; Richard Boone her hypnotizing shrink; Joan Blondell an unsupportive Aunt; and actor/director Hugo Haas sympathetic ethnic neighbor/comic relief. (An eccentric minor-league director, Haas has some interesting oddities on his C.V., but this is hopelessly anodyne.) A few fun moments stick out: Lizzie’s comeback line to her aunt: ‘Look like a slut! I AM a slut!’ A bizarre ‘50s electric washing machine that might be mistaken for a small iron lung. And a young Johnny Mathis playing piano & singing (very loudly) at a dive bar, looking like a ripe, lush plum.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *THREE FACES is an obvious choice, but that film has aged something awful. Instead, Alfred Hitchcock’s much debated, psychologically simplistic/thematically compelling MARNIE/’64, which LIZZIE prefigures in many ways. Especially so in its Bad Man childhood memory climax with an actor made up to look strikingly like Kirk Douglas who Exec-Produced this under his BRYNA shingle.

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