topkapi56

This one is a real doozy. It is extremely rewatchable. Davis gives one of her best late career performances. The ending is perfect yet heartbreaking. I know that it really did have to end that way, but I was rooting for Bette all the way. The scene with the hot poker makes me flinch every time. The movie is peppered with some wonderful supporting actors. Karl Malden is perfectly sympathetic and nails his confusion at the end. Cyril Delavanti turns in his usual wise and knowing persona as the butler. Jean Hagen and Estelle Winwood are always welcome additions to any fil, but this one belongs to Davis. She has a field day and chews the scenery without going to far over the top. Check it out. You won't be sorry.

This one is very dull and by the time it gets to the reveal, I no longer cared who did it. Rogers and Raft were battling it out to see who could give the worst performance. Peggy Ann Garner did her best, I suppose, but I did not believe her as a femme fatale at all. The film wastes the beautiful Gene Tierney who has very little to do as the wife of Van Heflin. I admit that I was glad that the murderer turned out to be exactly who I thought it was early on. I wish they had added a scene at the end showing the killer's execution. I am not generally in favor of the death penalty but in this case I will make an exception.

Adapting the play into this movie sapped the fun out of it. Taking out the Jewish flavor took out all the fun right along with it. It has a good cast, but they have little to do. Fairbanks comes off better than Rogers and Ball does what she can with her underwritten role. The "romance" between the two leads is not believable for even a minute even though it was painfully predictable. Skelton seems to have wandered in from a different movie. He was amusing but that's about it. Pass this by. You won't miss much. I give it two stars just because you get to see Ball and Arden before they each hit it big on TV.

This film is brilliant. The acting and direction are top notch. The cinematography seems to capture something beautiful in almost every scene. The ending is just as heartbreaking as the train farewell scene in Call Me by Your Name. It's not just one of the best "gay" movies ever made. It's one of the best movies ever made.

This a wonderful film. One of those few great ones from the past that I somehow never watched until now. The entire cast was perfect, but Rosalind Russell walks off with it. She is perfection. I do not understand how she was not nominated for the Oscar for this. She won the Golden Globe and I know 1961 was a competitive year, but still she should have been nominated. The film is over two hours long, but it seemed to just zip by.

Les Baxter, not Lex Barker, wrote the score. As for the film, it is an interesting little exercise in noir. Filmed in beautiful black and white, the setting is better than the acting. The acting is all over the place. Bancroft's character is noticeably nuts from the very beginning, so the ending is not much of a surprise. While Bancroft would later prove to be a good actress, she is pretty bland here. Barker is adequate at best. Nice to see Marie Windsor get to play something different from her usual femme fatale roles.

Changing the ending really changed the impact of this story. Hollywood could not handle a character actually having an abortion in the 50's. Of course, getting an abortion back then was a pretty horrendous undertaking but perhaps actually allowing Lynley's character to go through with it would have been the better choice dramatically. The Broadway play was quite powerful. This watered down version was probably the best they could do back then. The Bernard Herrmann score eerily foreshadows his classic Vertigo score especially over the opening credits.