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.