1969 - JUSTINE, an odd mess of a film

Justine was one of those troubled projects.  The film was based on a series of novels called "The Alexandria Quartet," which was condensed into one film by the screenwriter Lawrence Marcus. The original director Joseph Strick wanted to shoot the film in Morocco.  He was canned by 20th Century Fox and veteran director George Cukor was brought in to finish,or in this case salvage the film.

 Cukor did what he could with this film.  He had a lot of issues with Anock Aimee as the title character Justine.  Aimee was apparently fairly difficult to work with.  He didn't care for the leading man Michael York who he thought was too bland.  He was also stuck with the footage Strick had filmed and the studio wanted the production brought back to Hollywood where they could get some control over the final version.  That Cukor was able to finish this mess and turn it into a somewhat coherent fiom was probably a tribute to his professionalism.

 

Well the plot, Justine has something to do with an enigmatic woman who every guy is enamored with. She is married to a banker living in Alexandria, Egypt but having an affair with the Michael York character.  There is some kind of subplot about the Coptic religious sect running guns to Israel to aid in their struggle with the British.  But it's rather hard to understand exactly what is going on.

 

The film has a fairly good cast, beside Anock Aimee.  Dirk Borgarde,  Anna Karina, Philippe Noiret and "Dean Wormer" himself John Vernon.  George Cukor knew how to stage scenes so the film looks good.  Fox gave the production a healthy budget but the final result didn't really get any love from the critics and the audience stayed away.

The running time 116 minutes.

1938 - HOLIDAY - very good 30's comedy

 Cary Grant is the "free spirit" who falls in love with rich Manhattan socialite Julia Seton.  While being introduced to her family he meets her unconventional sister Linda and finds that she is actually more simpatico to his beliefs and lifestyle.

 Holiday was directed by George Cukor and in addition to Cary Grant, the film stars Katharine Hepburn as Linda Seton.  The film also has a very good supporting cast, Edward Everett Horton, Jean Dixon and Lew Ayers.  Cukor had previously directed Grant and Hepburn in a film called Sylvia Scarlett which was about cross dressing of all things and not a success unsurprisingly.  However Cukor was one of Hollywood's finest directors when it came to working with actors and he had a very successful collaboration with Hepburn on nine films during their careers.

Holiday was written by Philip Barry who wasn't above skewering the upper class.  The play was adapted by a couple of good screenwriters, Sidney Buchman and Donald Ogden Stewart.  The film has some witty dialog and makes it's points about the "idle rich" in an entertaining fashion.

 

Katharine Hepburn is definitely a unique personality and performer but I've always found her to be a little over the top.  Grant is excellent and was always a very good comedian.  He started his career in vaudeville and was something of an acrobat.  In this film he does some amazing back flips, lets see some leading men try that today.

The film runs 95 minutes. 

1947 - A DOUBLE LIFE, the kind of stuff they give awards out for.

A famous actor goes nuts while appearing in Othello and can't separate reality from his performance in the play.

Ronald Coleman a popular actor during the 1930's and 40's with a melodious voice is the actor.  The script was by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin so the theatrical backgrounds are well established.  The film was well directed by George Cukor who was known for getting good performances out of actors. 

The problem with this film is that it is just plain dumb. Coleman rolls his eyes and breaks out into a sweat as he descends into madness.  The fact that no one seems to notice he is off his rocker until about the last 20 minutes of the film.

This is the kind of stuff people win Academy Awards for.  Lots of hysterics from the leading man.  A musical score that borders on the melodramatic from Miklos Rosza and of course a death scene to make sure everyone in the audience knows what great acting they are watching.

104 minutes.

1972 - TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, high class comedy about a less than high class woman.

The eccentric Aunt of a middle aged bank manager persuades him to accompany her on a series of adventures across Europe.  This was intended as a film for Katherine Hepburn who rumor had it wrote the screenplay.  Hepburn was replaced by Maggie Smith who gives a very eccentric performance wearing some very eccentric costumes.

The film was directed by George Cukor.  Cukor was one of the few directors who knew how to film and compose in wide screen, this is a great looking film.  The production was designed by John Box who had worked with David Lean on his super epics.  Douglas Slocombe who photographed the first three Indiana Jones films and major pieces of Close Encounters of the Third Kind was the cinematographer.  The technical credits for this film are very high.

Cukor hadn't lost his touch with the cast, future star of the horrible Laverne and Shirley TV series Cindy Williams gives a very good performance.  Alec McCowen who I had only seen in Hitchcock's Frenzy as the nephew has a light comedy touch and Louis Gossett Jr. channeling some kind of odd ball character is interesting as a man probably a little to devoted to Aunt Augusta for his own good.

This was never a film that was probably going to have a wide appeal to a 1970's audience.  The era of sophisticated comedies was a thing of the past.  The screenplay leaves a little to be desired as it takes a while to warm up to the Maggie Smith character.  However once the film gets going, this is a real pleasure in watching the skill that this team brought to the film.

The screenplay credits are Jay Presson Allen and Hugh Wheeler, the running time is 109 minutes.

1976 - THE BLUE BIRD, a genuine disaster of a film from a talented filmmaker.

One can only wonder what the thinking was behind hiring a director like George Cukor, a man who had never directed a fantasy film in his life. Apparently there wasn't too much thinking involved because Cukor found himself directing one of the bigger disasters in his career since he was fired from Gone With The Wind.

To add to George Cukor's problems, the source material was Maurice  Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird one of the most coy pieces of allegorical crap every foisted on an audience.  The film features actors dressed in dog and cat costumes pretending to be the human personifications of a brother and sister's pets.

To make matters even worse, this was a major co-production between the Soviet Union and an American film studio.  To their surprise, the Americans were unprepared for the primitive and technical ineptness the Russians brought to the film.  Cukor battled Soviet film technicians who had all the skill of an Ed Wood production crew.  Apparently just getting something on film turned out to be a major ordeal.

Elizabeth Taylor was the star of the film and not to speak ill of the dead but the ratio of bad films starring Elizabeth Taylor to good films is I would say about 90:1, this woman did not make a lot of quality films in her career, The Blue Bird was another one of them.  Somehow,  Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner, Cicely Tyson and Robert Morley got mixed up in all of this and one hopes they were paid in dollars and not some kind of Russian monopoly money.  

George Cukor with Jane Fonda wondering how he got into this Sino-Soviet mess.

The whole thing is a mediocre mess that has to be seen to be believed.  Not only do we have adult actors running around pretending to be dogs and cats, we also have the sight of  actors pretending to be the human personifications of milk, bread and I kid you not, sugar, this is one of the few films where it is genuinely embarrassing to watch what these actors go through.

 Cukor ended his career directing a couple of decent made for TV films and an OK comedy/drama called Rich and Famous at least he didn't go down in flames with The Blue Bird.

99 minutes.

1956 - BHOWANI JUNCTION, George Cukor makes a David Lean film

A biracial woman of Indian and English descent is assigned to an important railway terminal in India around the period of England's departure from India.  She attempts to come to grips with her racial identity and becomes involved with three different men.

George Cukor directed Bhowani Junction and F.A. Young, David Lean's cinematographer on Lean's super epics is in charge of the photography. The film stars Ava Gardner who does very well as the mixed blood Indian woman.  Stewart Granger is the British officer who falls in love with and he's OK in the traditional Hollywood leading man British soldier type of role.

 

Cukor's staging of the large scale crowd scenes is very impressive.  For a director primarily known for working with more intimate films he had a complete understanding staging scenes in the wide screen format.  The scenes at a passive resistance rally were very impressive. Cukor was one of the first directors to work with Cinemascope and actually knew what he was doing with it.

 

Ava Gardner was never considered a great actress and was known more for looking good than anything else she did, but here she seems to be actually working at creating a character.

 

Unfortunately the script tends to rush her from one situation to another and finally the problem the story runs into is in the last third of the film.  Gardner's jumping from boyfriend to boyfriend happens so quickly that by the time she becomes involved with Granger she seems like a slut.

For all the work that was put into the look of Bhowani Junction it's unfortunate that more time wasn't spent on working out the structure and story problems in the script.   Bhowani Junction is a disappointment in certain parts of the film.  Still it’s a good film.

The film was written by Sonya Levine and Ivan Moffat, the running time is 110 minutes.

1960 - HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS, 1962 - SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE, two odd films from George Cukor

Lots of cheesecake in this post.

The director George Cukor got himself mixed up in a couple of odd projects in the early 1960's.

HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS, was Cukor's only western in his long career.  Cukor is way out of his comfort zone with this film.  He usually directed sophisticated comedies and stage adaptations.

The film is about the adventures of a group of touring actors in the wild west.  The film features a blond Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn as the actor/manager of the company.   This is a very good looking film with careful color control and beautiful photography.  Sophia Loren does better with the comedy aspects of the story than the dramatic scenes.  Quinn is pretty good in his part.

The appeal for Cukor must have been the idea to tell a story about actors and acting.  Cukor always felt his strength was working with actors in his films.  He seemed uncomfortable with the shootouts and fights in the film.

Unfortunately the script doesn't appear to have been carefully figured out in spite of the involvement of Dudley Nichols a writer who had worked with John Ford on some of his best films. Still,  Heller In Pink Tights is a well made entertaining film made and acted by professionals.

SOMETHINGS GOT TO GIVE,  Cukor was unlucky enough to get involved with Marilynn Monroe in what was her final unfinished film.  Monroe had recently had surgery and had dropped a considerable amount of weight, so she looked pretty good.  Unfortunately she was up to her usual erratic behavior. Between her mental and physical health problems she worked worked 12 of the 35 days into the production schedule costing 20th century Fox about 2 million dollars.

Cukor became so exasperated with her behavior that he recommended the studio fire Monroe and replace her with another actress.  Fox instead fired Cukor and gave Monroe a raise.  The plan was to restart the film with a different director in a couple of months.  Instead Monroe died of a drug overdose 2 months later.

Someone got the bright idea to assemble all of the available film into a somewhat coherent story.  The resulting 40 minute film shows that the film world did not lose a comedy masterpiece.  Dean Martin was her costar and he seems OK, but Monroe is pretty bad in her completed scenes.  She's supposed to be the mother of two young children, but her scenes with them look more like she wants to molest them than parent them.

Monroe was a decent comedian but you would find it hard to believe watching this film.  The surviving pieces of this film look like it would have been another bland cookie cutter comedy that Fox made in the early 60's and late 50's, something like Gentlemen Prefer Blonds or How To Marry a Millionaire. George Cukor clearly had his hands full with this mess.

Something's Got To Give is available in 4 parts on Youtube.