Elizabeth Taylor

  • The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)

    The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) One of the advantages of knowing more and more about Classic Hollywood is that from time to time, you discover a lesser-known film that draws you in just by virtue of casting. William Powell and Elizabeth Taylor belong to different generations of film history, but The Girl Who Had Everything has the distinction of pairing them off as father and daughter, in one of Powell’s last roles and one of Taylor’s ascending ones. (She was 21 at the time of the film’s release, and transitioning from ingenue to sex-symbol roles.)  The plot, borrowed from a play, has Powell as a lawyer, a doting widowed father very much concerned about his daughter when she starts going out with a career criminal — a client of his, to complicate things. Taylor is in her element as an ingenue pushing back against a famous actor in a fatherly role (such as in Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend, with Spencer Tracy), but Powell is not quite at ease in a role decidedly less comic than his usual persona. Still, he’s as compelling as always, and he helps the film go over a few rough patches on its way to a very predictable father-knows-best ending. With those two stars, The Girl Who Had Everything is not a bad film nor a bad time… but there’s a reason why the film seldom springs to mind as an essential.

  • The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

    The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) I’m reliably not the best audience for Shakespeare movie adaptations, and The Taming of the Shrew is an even rockier prospect given its theme of female subjugation (although the more you look, the less this stays true). But there are a few good times to be had in the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli adaptation of it, largely because it happens to feature Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the lead roles. At the time, both were the best-known couple on the planet: both exceptional actors, having begun their relationship in scandalous circumstances and often playing opposite each other in films. In here, Burton plays an uncultured lord who comes to town and sets off to tame the headstrong woman played by Taylor. Perhaps the best moments of the film are those early ones when we see the extent of her uncontrollable nature, furiously berating those around her and throwing things. Despite the doubly-dated nature of a Shakespearian play executed in mid-1960s style, there’s an unnerving contemporary quality to the loutish discourse among the male characters as they discuss their designs on the female characters. It builds up to a conclusion that plays ironically, with a speech on submissiveness undermined by a dramatic exit and a chase. Director Zeffirelli keeps things generally accessible for modern audiences, but it’s really Burton and Taylor (plus Michael York in a supporting role) who get our interest.

  • The Comedians (1967)

    The Comedians (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2021) To answer an obvious question: No, The Comedians is not a comedy. It’s really at the other end of the scale, since it’s a brutally convincing portrayal of Haiti under the murderous Duvalier regime, with its unrestrained tonton macoutes enabling a reign of terror over the island. Like many French Canadians, I have an above-average awareness and affection for Haiti, and wasn’t expecting a 1960s American film to be so effective into portraying a regime of terror that endured well into the 1980s, overlapping with my childhood memories of then-current events. Much of the darkness of the film clearly comes from Graham Greene’s original novel, writing squarely in his usual “white man goes to a poorer country; terrible things happen” mode. This time, the white man is portrayed by Richard Burton, with then-wife Elizabeth Taylor playing his married mistress. The plot is a downbeat mixture of British operatives, American businessmen, Haitian oppressors, diplomatic personnel and homegrown resistance. It really, truly, definitely does not end well. Still, there’s quite a bit to like here: Burton plays world-weariness like few others and he shares a few good sequences with Taylor. Alec Guinness brings some dark comedy to the cast, with Peter Ustinov also contributing some flair to a supporting role. Some black American actors of the time, such as James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson, also get supporting parts due to the setting of the film. Downbeat tone aside, The Comedians suffers most in its pacing — at a punishing 160 minutes, it’s too scattered, too leisurely and too inconsistent as well to be truly effective. Probably too faithfully to its source (Green adapted his own novel without concision), its lack of concision does its topic matter no favours. I still found it interesting, largely for Burton and the portrayal of Haiti (even if filmed in now-Benin), but I can think of several ways in which the result could have been better.

  • Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

    Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) It strikes me that a good way to distinguish between new classic movie fans and veteran ones is to ask them about Suddenly, Last Summer: Novice film fans, not having seen the film, are likely to be astounded by the top talent assembled here: Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Cliff and Katharine Hepburn on the acting front, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz at the direction and none other than Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams penning the script, how can it be anything than terrific? Then there are the veteran classic movie fans who, having seen the film, are simply shaking their heads while saying, “You should see it before getting excited.” The most important name here is probably Tennessee Williams, since his specific sensibilities dominate the film’s narrative in such a way as to influence everything else. True to form for Williams, the story he’s telling is a melodrama with a central (but faceless) character who’s as homosexual as could be at the time. If I understand the film’s production history, the Williams one-act play was then adapted for the screen by Gore Vidal, leading both to accuse the other of sabotaging the result. No matter who wrote it, director Mankiewicz went for maximal melodrama in executing it, with Hepburn being an enthusiastic participant in the result — her role as a family matriarch is heightened opera the moment she descends on-screen in an enclosed throne, and the flowery soliloquies she delivers would have been ridiculous from any other actress. Cliff does his best to keep up as the audience’s representative in understanding the profoundly dysfunctional family in which he’s been asked to intervene, but he routinely gets overshadowed by Hepburn’s arch overacting and Taylor’s ability to take her dialogue right up to eleven even with a heaving low-cut dress. The score is another intrusive participant, underlining every sordid revelation with a heavy note. It’s quite wild, and the narrative never stops one-upping itself, eventually reaching for a cannibalistic conclusion reinforcing the era’s prejudice against homosexuals. What’s more, I’m glossing over the rape, incest, and intended lobotomy as a way to keep the family secret — as I’ve said, it’s a wild movie, and one that’s more impressive for how quickly it becomes untethered from reality than for producing the results that the cast and crew would have preferred. By sheer happenstance, I followed up Suddenly Last Summer by the viewing of homosexuality-in-Hollywood-history documentary The Celluloid Closet, and I’m fortunate that this was the order I watched both films because The Celluloid Closet’s description of Suddenly Last Summer’s ludicrousness would have been too wild to believe if I hadn’t just watched the film. There are plenty of landmark movies in classic Hollywood history, and if Suddenly Last Summer is really not one of them, I still feel as if I just graduated to another stage of understanding Hollywood history simply by having watched it. Incredulously.

  • The V.I.P.s (1963)

    The V.I.P.s (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) In the end, I expected too much from The V.I.P.s. Admittedly, it’s easy to be seduced by the all-star cast and the simple premise: As fog envelops London Airport and prevents departures, an ensemble cast of characters has a last chance to resolve their problems. How can you resist a cast headlined by Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Orson Welles, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, Louis Jourdan and many others? But in the execution, the film falls flat — the rhythm is not a match with the sense of urgency that the characters are supposed to feel, the subplots scatter, the drama doesn’t build up and the pieces don’t come together to make something more than a collection of subplots. (Had they added a mad bomber à la Airport, mayyybe we’d have something to pull the strings together.)  The characters aren’t the only ones stuck here — viewers may tap their feet often during the nearly two-hour running time. This being said, it’s not a complete waste of time either — the accumulation of familiar actors has something interesting, and there is at least a minimum of drama going on, even disguised under British restraint. It does, if nothing else, offer the chance to hang out in an elite airline boarding lounge in the early 1960s, which is not a bad privilege. But even that may outstay its welcome in the end.

  • The Sandpiper (1965)

    The Sandpiper (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) As far as I can determine, The Sandpiper is an average drama whose claim to fame comes from the on-screen romance between then-megastars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. As a drawing card, it’s not inconsiderable. They weren’t known as one of the most famous couples of the 1960s for no reason — both were sex symbols, box-office draws, and their union came from affairs leading to considerable tabloid gossip. They also co-starred in eleven films at various stages of their ten-plus-two years of marriage. The Sandpiper is the third of their pictures, the first one they shot as a married couple and very much focused on adultery — one can imagine how well that sold back then. Filmed in colour, largely on location in Big Sur, it features Burton as a strait-laced headmaster and Taylor as a free-spirited artist. You can guess where this is going, although the conclusion is suitably wistful. Decades later, and taking in the Taylor/Burton romance in its totality, there’s no denying that The Sandpiper has since lost much of the appeal it must have had at the time. We’re left with a well-executed romantic drama — nothing too exciting, but interesting in its own way for people who respond to such stories.

  • The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

    The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) At some point, I’ll have to dig deeper into the quasi-magical link between Hollywood and Paris. More than any other non-Anglophone European Capital (even Rome, which became an adjunct Hollywood for a time!), Paris shows up at an amazing frequency in the classic Hollywood imagination — a city where American GIs could return to after the war, a place of a thousand romances and a town where art reigned supreme. As the title suggests, The Last Time I Saw Paris fully plays into these stereotypes as backdrop for a thoroughly 1950s melodrama. Here we have a WW2 journalist turning to novel-writing as he takes in la belle vie, but things can’t be happy for too long as oil money, adultery and death-by-pneumonia strike our characters. It’s all wild and woolly and unrealistic to the Nth degree and that’s part of the film’s charm. Even if you don’t like the result, you can at least feast upon a young and vivacious Elizabeth Taylor, easily stealing the film from would-be lead Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon and Donna Reed—plus a very young Roger Moore as an adulterous suitor. The Paris backdrop is used as effectively as it could for studio-shot films of the era, but we’re still very much in an American fantasy of Paris. The Last Time I Saw Paris is not an uninteresting film, but it’s probably now best appreciated on a semi-ironic register in considering anything aside from Taylor’s presence.

  • Little Women (1949)

    Little Women (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) When it comes to the multiple adaptations of Little Women, it’s not as useful to say, “That’s the 1949 one” as much as “that’s the Elizabeth Taylor one” or maybe “that’s the June Allyson one,” considering that Jo is usually the main character of the tale. But it’s also “the one with Peter Lawford, Margaret O’Brien, Janet Leigh and Mary Astor” considering that casting is the most spectacular aspect of how each version is perceived. With the 1949 version, I’ve now seen the fourth of the four major adaptations of the tale as of 2020. If it most closely resembles the 1933 (“Hepburn”) one, it’s no accident – it’s essentially using the same script and score, albeit with a significant upgrade in colour cinematography. It plays more as lighthearted(ish) comedy than the others – fewer reconsiderations about the role of women than later versions, not quite as dramatically weighty as the earlier version. Still, it’s a pretty good time with the March sisters – the technical aspects of the production are MGM-grade, which is to say as good as these things were in 1949. A young Taylor is a huge draw despite a lack of attention to her character – in retrospect, there’s a clear lack of balance between her Allyson in matters of starpower. The first half of the film is generally more fun than the second, but it all evens out when compared to the other version, which you absolutely should do in order to get the most out of your viewing. My recommendation: Watch them in chronological order of production so that you get the most out of the growing technical polish of the form.

  • The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)

    The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Well, I suppose you had to be there: MGM going wild to produce an Anglophile weepy drama adaptation of a book, doubling as propaganda picture hailing the courage of those sturdy British. It’s certainly worth noting that The White Cliffs of Dover was produced during the height of WW2, after the Americans joined the fight but before the invasion of Normandy—in other words, at a time when the fate of the war was still very much in the balance, and an extra dollop of home-front propaganda meant something. For modern viewers, it can be more interesting to note Irene Dunne’s performance, or that a very young Elizabeth Taylor shows up in a supporting role. The rest… is a slog. While The White Cliffs of Dover is not necessarily a bad film (MGM’s production values ensure that, if nothing else, the budget is shown on screen), but it is a plodding one with propagandist aims that aren’t so acceptable today. (Is dying for the country really that much better than going back home to Mom?)

  • Life with Father (1947)

    Life with Father (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) When the point of an old film’s popularity is that it’s old-fashioned, I suppose it’s natural to react with very mixed feelings to the result. Life with Father is a film of the past in many ways—a 1947 adaptation of a long-running 1939 Broadway play looking nostalgically upon life in 1880s Manhattan, it’s triple-piled-up nostalgia even before we begin digging into it. As the patriarchal title suggests, it’s an examination of a family with a strong-willed father at the helm, a role that would have been unbearable without the considerable charm of William Powell, completely in his element here. He’s hard-headed, unwilling to listen and impervious to the damage he causes, but the saving grace of the film is how it shows the rest of the family subtly manipulating him into serving their own objectives, taking advantage of his own bluster in order to get what they want. Still, much of Life with Father is subservient to the 1880s and 1940s, all the way to a baptism subplot that seems inconsequential today, but somewhat harms the free-thinking nature of the protagonist. (Significantly enough, film historians tell us that the film’s final line, “I’m going to get baptized,” is a bowdlerization of the Broadway play’s punchline, “I’m going to get baptized, damn it.”) If you’re willing to let slide those things slide, the film does have its charms. In addition to Powell’s performance, we have smaller roles for silent film veteran ZaSu Pitts, a charming turn by a very young Elizabeth Taylor, great matrimonial dialogue between Powell and Irene Dunne, and a few comic set-pieces that still work well. There are times where a film’s appreciation hinges on how much you can surrender to an earlier era’s idea of feel-good movies, and Life with Father is definitely one of those.

  • Father’s Little Dividend (1951)

    Father’s Little Dividend (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) If you’re still annoyed at how Steve Martin (or rather Nancy Meyers) screwed up 1995’s Father of the Bride Part II, I’ve got mixed news for you. For one thing, Martin and Meyer weren’t completely making it up by themselves—the sequel was also a remake of 1951’s Father’s Little Divided, with the main plot (the father of the bride becomes a grandfather; angst ensues) inevitably making up the main arc of the follow-up. The good news is that the 1951 film wisely stopped there—there wasn’t a ludicrous subplot about the wife of the father of the bride becoming pregnant at 49, and that’s for the better. Focusing on the original does highlight how much the remake mishandled fundamental elements. Here, the essence of the film remains a universal experience—how do men go through the perception shift of thinking of themselves as grandfathers? Once again, Spencer Tracy makes for the perfect everyman going through a universally relatable scenario. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Taylor is cute but slightly wasted in the role of a young expectant mother—the focus, unfortunately, is squarely on her father without much interest in what she’s going through. While generally likable and still resonant, the film doesn’t equal its predecessor and highlights how values have shifted in the decades since then—the last set-piece of the film before its happy ending (grandpa losing a baby due to inattentiveness) is now nothing short of hair-raising, and that may stop some viewers from embracing the result entirely. (Still, that scene is notable for one interesting constant—Grandpa doesn’t become grandpa at his grandson’s birth, but later on once his self-image catches up to the events.) Still, the film survives this plotting bump thanks to Tracy’s always-sympathetic performance and some warm direction from Vincente Minelli. It may not be enough to smooth over the 1950s attitudes so prevalent here—there’s a lot of “well, accounting for the times…” required to get to the universality of the film. Still, my bold theory is that the 1951 film is still more relatable than the frantic 1995 remake that didn’t trust itself to tell a simple story without making it a frantic two-ring circus. If you’re going to make a film about a rite of passage for older men, why not focus on that? One final piece of trivia that may escape modern viewers: Father’s Little Dividend was released less than a year after Father of the Bride: a breakneck production pace that may explain why this sequel doesn’t quite rise to the level of the first film despite a good attempt.

  • Father of the Bride (1950)

    Father of the Bride (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) There’s a reason why Father of the Bride remains a classic seventy years later, after a (rather good if far more histrionic) Steve Martin remake and many social upheavals that make the 1950 world of the film feel distant: It’s still sweet, humane and a terrific showcase for both Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Adapted from a then-bestselling novel, the story is simple to the point of being archetypical—Daddy’s favourite daughter is getting married, and that’s cause for emotional, financial and comic upheaval. Handled by director Vincente Minelli in a manner reminiscent of his other musicals, the film moves at a steady pace, starting with a quiet but very effective monologue that sets the frame for the rest of the film. Spencer is typically good as the harried everyman father pushed to his limits in organizing an extravagant upper-middle-class wedding, while Taylor here plays the cute ingenue without the sex-symbol mystique that would accompany many of her later roles. Father of the Bride was an Academy Awards favourite, earning nominations for best picture, screenplay and a nod to Tracy’s performance (most likely cinched by his bittersweet narration that wraps up the film). It almost goes without saying that the socio-economic context of the film is almost entirely alien at this point, with much of the film treating the protagonist’s patriarchal viewpoint as the default assumption, and multiplying rich-people’s-problems as a source of comedy. But is it really so outdated? For all of the intervening social upheavals, there’s still a solid core of drama (expressed as broadly-accessible comic sequences) in seeing a middle-aged man go through the realization that his daughter has become a woman and is leaving his orbit. Father of the Bride is not quite as time-bound as you may think—for all of its circa-1950 context, it still works quite well today.

  • The Flintstones (1994)

    The Flintstones (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On TV, January 2020) I remember seeing The Flintstones in theatres upon release… in its original English version. The distinction is important because the French-Canadian dub of The Flintstones’ TV series achieved near-legendary status due to its refusal to adopt even the semblance of a mid-Atlantic French accent—it’s pure Québec joual, meaning that generations of French-Canadian kids felt that the series somehow came from not too far away. (Twenty years later, The Simpsons did the same trick.) I was reminded of that distinction all over again while stumbling over a French-Canadian broadcast of The Flintstones movie—I generally prefer to watch films in their original language, but this was almost a welcome exception, as the characters speak with a pronounced Montréal-area accent. Sound aside, there is something magnificent about The Flintstones’s late-analogue-era dedication to recreating the funhouse visual representation of Bedrock. Nearly every single frame of the film is strongly art-directed with custom sets, costumes and gadgets. There is some clunky CGI used here for some of the supporting animal characters (including a surprisingly fluffy big cat), but much of The Flintstones heroically does its best with painted foam and practical effects. The commitment to the visual humour of the original series is admirable, and it almost compensates for a fairly dull family-sitcom story and the outdated social conventions taken straight from the early-1960s TV show. The portrait of the nuclear family that was straight parody in 1960 felt creaky in 1994 and now looks increasingly dumb… but that’s what you get. At least, from an acting talent, John Goodman is picture-perfect as Fred Flintstone. The rest of the casting is… debatable. Halle Berry (as “Sharon Stone”) is a delight to watch but she seems to belong in a different, racier movie. Elizabeth Taylor seems just as misplaced as a prototypical mother-in-law, although she’s good for a few laughs. Elizabeth Perkins is fine as Wilma, Rick Moranis is borderline acceptable as Barney but Rosie O’Donnell continues to mystify new generations of movie reviewers when miscast as Betty. The Flintstones is nowhere near being a good movie, but I can practically guarantee that a twenty-first-century watch (especially for new viewers who have no idea about the original TV show) will be a can’t-stop-looking experience.

  • Ivanhoe (1952)

    Ivanhoe (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) Technicolor-era historical Hollywood adventures don’t get any more exemplary than Ivanhoe, what with a 19th-century novel being loosely adapted into a Technicolor swashbuckler. It has more than its share of issues, especially from a contemporary perspective, but it also has quite a bit of charm. Robert Taylor and Joan Fontaine may star as the lead couple, but modern viewers may be forgiven for only having eyes for Elizabeth Taylor in an early yet striking supporting role. George Sanders is also up to his usual standards playing a villain. Otherwise, the rest of the film is a succession of sex appeal, sword fights, medieval jousts, and arena combat as a climactic bow. Ivanhoe is not to be trusted as a historical document, but it’s not a bad way to spend nearly two hours—the film is easy to take in, the hero is interesting (even a bit devious in his combat style), Taylor is luminous and it all builds to an effective action sequence in a film that has a few of them. As a competent Hollywood rendition of medieval adventure, Ivanhoe was nominated for three Academy Awards back then (including Best Picture) and you can see why it was both a commercial and critical success. This less-usual take on the Robin Hood legend is quite intentional, and it prefigures other films in that vein.

  • A Place in the Sun (1951)

    A Place in the Sun (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2019) I had reasonably high hopes for mid-period noir A Place in the Sun and found myself … underwhelmed. The story of a man pursuing both a working-class and a high-class girl but accidentally killing the less fortunate one when she announces her pregnancy and dashes his hopes of marrying the richer girl (whew!), it’s a film that pretty much does what it says in the plot description. Coming from the depths of the Hays Code era, of course he doesn’t get away with it. It’s a remarkably middle-of-the-road premise for a noir, and it executes it about as competently as you’d expect. The big draw here is a very young Elizabeth Taylor, always stunning, as the high-class girl and Montgomery Clift as the man at the centre of it all, with Shelley Winters as the poor victim. But the exceptional nature of the film stops there. While A Place in the Sun is still watchable, it pales in comparison with many of its more daring (or exploitative) contemporaries. The social commentary is tame, the pacing is incredibly slow and the film can’t help but throw in melodrama when good acting would have sufficed. Any respectable film noir would have lopped off the entire courtroom sequence, going right from arrest to the electric chair, and the film would have been substantially stronger from it: said courtroom sequence adds nothing to the plot and actually distracts from the fatalistic theme of the film, or (as suggested by the title) the perils of American greed. But no; A Place in the Sun is determined to parlay it off all the way to the end. It did do very well at the Academy awards for its year, so at least it’s of historical interest. Still, it could have been quite a bit better had it not tried to be so respectable or overly faithful to its literary source material.