Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tinear (A) on March 02, 2008 at 10:39:48

lady's man?
And he pulls it off very well!
An actor, hoping for his big break, is chosen to star in a successful director's new play. During audition, however, the female playwright decides he isn't "romantic enough looking" (a very clever and realistic appreciation of Palance's non-matinee appearance) and she has him summarily fired.
Before he leaves, he gives her an example of his talent in an impassioned, angry speech lashing out at her superficial appraisal of his skills.
Not long after, they find themselves on the same train and, one thing leading to another, he follows her all the way to San Francisco where Joan Crawford's middle-aged-heiress character melts like a 110-lb. candle under his fierce passion.
But this is noir! So, not long after, another love interest of Palance's appears, the tough, alluring and remarkably voiced Gloria Grahame and before you can say TREACHERY, murder is in the fog (it is San Francisco, and a well-filmed one, at that).
Crawford won her third Oscar nomination for this role which has some very strange melodramatic moments, though the character several times laughs at herself for speaking as if she were reciting dialogue from her own plays.
Well worth your while and you'll be guessing right up to the end.