Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

st-shot There's an impressive line-up of marquee stars in this triumvirate of love stories that leans heavily on Rachmaninoff's music and little else as it listlessly moves from one tale to the next with little time to develop plot or character.In the first we have The Red Shoes meets The Seventh Veil as Moira Shearer and James Mason do what they do best (dance and display disdain) in a would be Svengali scenario short circuited by a bad ticker. The second has little Ricky Nelson in a Cinderella situation where he becomes Farley Granger for the night romancing his previously detested French teacher Leslie Caron. The third features Kirk Douglas as a French trapeze artist attempting to rescue cold and detached Pier Angeli from herself.Unimaginatively tied together by an ocean liner each improbable brevity sinks as fast as the Lusitania without ever gaining any depth. Performances are rushed and forced with Douglas and Mason chewing scenery up as fast as they can in their alloted time. Old pros Agnes Moorehead and Ethel Barrymore do the most with the crumbs they are thrown and Ricky Nelson is surprisingly effective as a bratty child while Caron, Shearar and Angeli along with a two sentence performance by Zsa Zsa Gabor provide window dressing in this lushly designed but soulless production.

irishmama34 Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" is the gorgeous music to which Moira Shearer danced her lovely ballet in the first story. It's a perfect choice for this movie (and this scene) because it's full of passion and promise. The awed & inspired look on James Mason's face as he watches her dance expresses what we, the audience, see: how dancing makes Moira's character feel. It's a moving scene and there are 3 beautiful, emotional performances: Moira Sheara, James Mason, and the music.This Rachmaninoff piece has been featured in several movies. These include, among others: The Story of Three Loves (1953); Rhapsody (1954); Somewhere in Time (1980); Dead Again (1991); Sabrina (1995); Ronin (1998).It's a beautiful, moving, "timeless" piece of music. It is sometimes used in period movies whose action takes place before the piece was actually written & first performed. That was in 1934.I enjoyed this movie, in spite of the uneven script. There are some great actors giving good performances (at times melodramatic - but that's the nature of the script more than their acting abilities), plus (suprise!) a young Ricky Nelson in the only thing I remember seeing him in as a boy besides the Ozzie & Harriet TV series - and he wasn't stilted like he was on his family's show (probably good directing!!!). Some great face shots throughout, too, showing emotion that the script couldn't (using the classic face-lighting techniques that have fallen out of favor with most of today's contemporary film directors).In spite of some beautiful and memorable scenes in this movie, I'll probably remember the way the music made me feel longer than I'll remember the rest of the movie - and it's worth watching for that alone!

cuzjackincanuckland I thought the first story (Moira Shearer and James Mason, Ballet) was pretentious and dull. I wish the TCM commentator would not pronounce her name as Moria.The second story (Leslie Caron) was done better by Big, even though I love watching Leslie Caron.The third story (Kirk Douglas and Pier Angeli as trapeze artists) was well-written, well-acted, well-filmed and very moving, better than the other two put together. It was memorable, as a love story, while the other two were very forgettable. Having videotaped this movie, I would have recorded another over it, were it not for the third story. I would give it, the circus story, a 9, the ballet story a 4, and the governess story a 5. Also it was interesting to see the almost-forgotten Pier Angeli. She acts well here.

spirit11 I'm a very sentimental person, as my wife would tell you, and typically enjoy an old-fashioned love story on film, but this film struck me as odd. During the intro to the film I was intrigued--three love stories woven together on a ship. I thought that we would see how the characters from each story interacted on the ship, and how that interaction was both influenced by the love stories that came before, and how that interaction affected the lives of the individuals going forward.But that wasn't the case at all. The ship serves as nothing more than a vehicle for introducing the characters from each vignette, and the characters never meet or interact. And the vignettes are so disparate in concept that it makes the whole film seem uneven. Consider that the first story is about ballet and heart attacks, the second about witches and wishes, and the third about suicide and circus trapeze artists.And within the stories there were issues that nagged me. James Mason was great in the first vignette, until the young lady begins dancing in his studio. Then his comments/critique of her dancing--"That's it, that's it, higher, higher..." seemed silly. It worked much better once he was just quiet and the dance became the focus. Otherwise, his comments broke the magic. And in the final segment on the trapeze, the American hiring circus acts goes from "How can I buy an act unless I see it EXACTLY as it is to be preformed for audiences?" to "I'll pay ANYTHING for this act!" in one short minute. Add to that that none of the American actors portraying french men and women in this vignette have a french accent (I suppose that is better than a bad accent) while the non-American actors do have accents, and it just comes across as odd. This accent issue is also amplified by the fact that the second vignette of the young boy who gets his wish to be a man has an underlying storyline about speaking french properly! So we go from one extreme to the other throughout the film.I can't help but believe that this film was three story ideas none of which had enough depth or breadth to carry a film on their own, and the ship deck mechanism was invented in order to pull together some less than perfect film ideas.