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Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

mark.waltz Not a great film by any means, this is still an interesting study of a woman standing by her man in the hardest of times and stepping aside when she believes that she is no longer needed in his life. Barbara Stanwyck give one of her typically multi-dimensional performances as a woman over 100 years old who tells her story to a rising female biographer, flashing back to her days as a very young girl in Philadelphia society and moving on to the wild west when tragedy separates her from the man she loves, rising politician Joel McCrea.While the narrative is excellent, dragging segments and some convoluted details makes for a missed opportunity for what could have been a classic. It is similar in many ways to the Greer Garson/Walter Pidgeon teaming, "Mrs. Parkington", and is a tribute to the bravery and integrity of the men and their women who helped the foundation of our country. Directed by William A. Wellman, it is not just a women's story, but like the best marriages focuses on what partnership. It was a propaganda film of a different sort for World War II, and holds up still on many levels. Brian Donlevy is excellent as the man who stands between Stanwyck and McCrea, while Thurstan Hall is her imperious father. Young K.T. Stevens is sincere as the young girl who reminds Stanwyck (hidden behind old age make- up and a Whistler's Mother dress) that everything is important when your young. So while this isn't one of her best known films, performance wise, it is a true sleeper.

JohnHowardReid The scenes actually directed by producer William A. Wellman (a runaway marriage in a storm, news of the silver strike, the flood, Donlevy bringing the news of Hannah's death) are among his best work. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the movie is directed with only superficial competence by Joseph C. Youngerman. However, William C. Mellor's beautiful photography of silhouettes and bleak landscapes, plus the breathtaking sets created by Hans Dreier and Earl Hedrick are really so outstanding, they make the film worth seeing just on their own account. And let's not forget Barbara Stanwyck's faultless make-up. Stanwyck herself gives a most convincing performance. The screenplay too has its memorable moments but is inclined to undo some of its persuasive work and get all wishy-washy in the last quarter hour.

SHAWFAN Such undeserved condescension on the part of most of your reviewers! I thought it was an absorbing romantic drama in which Stanwyck was at her very best. As she turned from youthful sparkly-eyed amused flirt in her first scenes with McCrea into the mature more gray-haired woman seriously urging him to do his political best for those whom he represented, her virtuosity as an actress of transformations came greatly to the fore. It was a pleasure to respond to her in her various moods of youthful love, a stunned mother's loss of her two babies, her vigorous denunciation of her father in his unconscionable request of her, and finally the resignation of old age in which she at last destroys the long-lived marriage certificate she's been carrying around through most of the story.McCrea was also very good, especially in the scene in which he confesses himself guilty of the same kind of corruption so rife in the American West at that railroad-building time.The story seemed to echo the true events of The Ballad of Baby Doe (opera) in its background of silver mining and marital troubles; and it certainly resembled Edna Ferber-Abby Mann's Cimarron in retelling the story of a marriage in which the husband spends years on the road away from his wife.The 19th-century flooding in Sacramento was certainly up to date given the similar events happening in that city in our own times as well.A great movie. Pay no attention to those detractors.

eebyo This is a mess of a movie that, frankly, should not have been made, especially not by a pro's pro like Wellman, not even as a favor to the dependably phenomenal Miss Stanwyck. Italian grand opera has never featured a plot gone this far off the rails. Nor are any of opera's leading saints or scoundrels accorded the admiration plainly directed at the leads in this film, who show less common sense, valor, or candor than Wile E. Coyote brings to a bad day on the mesa. I won't spoil this turkey for intrepid or optimistic viewers, but I will note that the story nods (so quickly you might miss it) to an entire off-screen family whose existence, if contemplated for more than 10 seconds by any character, would've given some interesting version of this film a problem and points of view worth watching. "Reefer Madness" handled continuity better than this. Many of the lavish costumes are out of place on relatively bare sets. Joel McCrea's mustache, for heaven's sake, looks like it's about to slip off his handsome face through many scenes! Turner Classic, bless them, just showed this, earning my continued thanks for gallantly refusing to do my quality control for me.