∞ "I Could Go on Singing"

214 Words filed by Frank @ 22:33 | 13-May-09 in Cinema |

Not much to say about this film (coincidentally released 46 years ago this week) other than — it’s a garish spectacle, of course (alas, without any of the aching colors and overripe embellishments of Douglas Sirk’s garish spectacles; it would have been interesting to see what Sirk would have done with Garland, given what he did with Lana Turner in “Imitation of Life”), with Judy Garland chewing the scenery in a way that would make Bette Davis and Joan Crawford envious. As Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote in his review of the film, “It is sad to say the little lady is not at the top of her form …. Miss Garland tries to play her role with that sort of intense solicitude that is not only patently synthetic but also betrays atrocious taste.”

It’s also kind of grimly fascinating that Dirk Bogarde, given his probable real-life story, played the icy, stern father of a boy that, in the film scenario, he and Garland’s character conceived together. Apparently Dirk Bogarde and Judy Garland were great friends on and off the set, although the film’s director, Ronald Neame, said in an interview with Wheeler Dixon that Garland at one point in the shooting had a fit of anger and hurled a breakfast tray at Bogarde. ★

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