Elizabeth Taylor

  • 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.

  • Giant (1956)

    Giant (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2018) As a swan song for James Dean, Giant is a fitting statement. A vast family generational drama set in the vast expanses of oil-rich Texas, Giant begins as our newlywed heroine (the ever-captivating Elizabeth Taylor) moves from the East Coast to arid Texas, and befriends a ranch hand (Dean). One semi-accidental death later, the ranch hand inherits some land that proves to be soaked with oil. Over the next few decades, he develops an empire, leading to a climactic confrontation at the opening of his grand hotel where long-held feuds are detonated. Dean manages to play both a young cowboy and an aging industrialist, holding his own not only against Taylor, but also Rock Hudson as the ranch owner who ends up butting heads with his ex-employee. If Giant has a flaw, it’s that it’s a really, really long movie at three hours and twenty-one minutes. I don’t mind the multi-decade scope as much as the length of each individual scene—time and time again, the film takes forever to make a point that could have been made far more efficiently. Surprisingly enough, I don’t quite dislike Dean’s performance—he’s mopey in the film’s first half, but rural mopey rather than urban mopey or suburban mopey such as in his other two films and as such sidesteps his caricatures that have emerged since then. In the film’s last half, he effectively becomes a drunken unhappy industrialist and actually sells the role rather well despite playing decades older than he was at the time. My other issue with Giant is how it doesn’t reach a climax as much as it blows up over a lengthy period at the hotel, then moves to a roadside diner for a moral climax that actually makes the film’s conclusion feel far smaller. That’s what you get from working from a novel as source material, though—whether you have the guts to change what doesn’t make sense on the screen, or you get criticized for it. The film has endured rather well—its anti-racism streak is still surprisingly relevant, and its anti-sexism message also comes across. The film also shows with a decent amount of detail the transition from Texas’ ranching heritage to its more modern oil extraction boom. I may not like Giant all that much, but I respect it a lot, and I frankly find it disappointing that it got beaten by as frothy a spectacle as Around the World in 80 Days for the Best Picture Oscar.

  • Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

    Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2018) Whew. Some movies are entertainment, some are a spectacle, but Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? feels like a roller derby of emotional destruction. Set among the world of northeastern academics, what first feels like a quasi-parody of mainstream drama quickly turns ugly as a middle-aged history teacher and his wife start arguing, then bring in another younger couple in the clash for “fun and games.”  Nobody escapes unscathed, especially the audience. A solid drama (with streaks of dark but undeniable comedy) becomes something special by virtue of its actors—Not only do Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton play the lead couple viciously squabbling, but they were married to each other at the time. Neither Taylor nor Burton have done anything better in their career—Burton, in particular, progressively shrugs off a meek drink-holding character to best his co-star in merciless put-downs. As for Taylor, it’s still impressive to see how she’d transform herself from a sex symbol to a frumpy shrewish housewife for the purposes of the film. (Not that it’s completely successful—even overweight and made-up with aging lines, Taylor-being-Taylor still looks better than anyone else.)  The film was shocking then for its frank language, but it’s still somewhat disturbing today due to its pure harshness: the film’s four characters constantly tear themselves down in the worst possible ways, and score hits on bystanders even when attacking each other. It’s as good as dialogue-driven drama gets, and it’s still remarkably effective today (albeit maybe a touch too long). As a capstone to the Taylor-Burton relationship, though, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? carries a weight that goes simply beyond a great movie.

  • Cleopatra (1963)

    Cleopatra (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2018) Some films are epic enough that they transcend time, and so Cleopatra remains even today a reference for excess in filmmaking. Long a yardstick for the most expensive movie ever produced, Cleopatra is still notable today for the lavishness of its super-production, whether it’s re-creating Cairo or Rome at the height of their power, putting hundreds of extras on-screen or giving more than sixty different costumes to its title character. And then there’s Elizabeth Taylor herself—while people of my generation mostly remember Taylor as an older woman of multiple marriages and excessive makeup, movies like Cleopatra firmly justify why she was a sex symbol for most of her career. Compelling even when the melodrama around her gets too thick to be taken seriously, Taylor is the film’s centrepiece and offers an unqualified reason to watch the film despite the nearly oppressive running time. Not that she’s the only reason: Seeing her play off future-husband Richard Burton is a great way to get into one of cinema history’s most remarkable romance and an insight in the frenzy that their affair created in mid-sixties pop culture and tabloid reporting. Spread the viewing over two evenings if you can—there’s an intermission and a somewhat different tone to the film’s two halves: the first half (Cleopatra and Julius Caesar) is better, but the second half (Cleopatra and Burton’s Mark Anthony) is more interesting. Cleopatra should have been much shorter, but there’s a lot of stuff shown on-screen, and more peak-era Taylor is never a bad thing.

  • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2017) There’s something oddly satisfying, in theatrically-inspired movies, in seeing the way the script piles on a series of interpersonal conflict in the first half, only to detonate them all in the second. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof does it better than most, helped along by terrific dialogue from playwright Tennessee Williams, the dramatic intensity of Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in the lead roles, and some able assistance from Burl Ives as the patriarch whose impending death forms the catalyst of all conflicts. Despite some surprisingly comic moments, this is a fairly heavy film, especially when all the emotional bandages are removed at the big conflicts within the small cast of character are allowed to explode. Despite some glaring coyness (the homosexual themes of the relationship between the lead male character and his mourned friend hay not be expressly mentioned, but they’re glaringly obvious), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof hits its dramatic peak in time for its third act, punctuated by a thunderstorm. Taylor is in fine form here, showing the extent of her dramatic range even as illness and personal tragedy befell her during the film’s shooting (her husband died in a plane crash midway through production, which had to be halted to accommodate her grief). The result is still worth a look sixty years later as a good example of what fifties dramas could be, even when hobbled by the Hays Code and social conventions of the time.