Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Executscan Expected more

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

marcslope She plays a shy virgin saddled with an awful mother (Gladys Cooper, essentially reprising her turn in "Now, Voyager") and obsessed with the glad-handing, deceiving military man living in the same residential hotel (David Niven, who deserved his Oscar), and she drives me nuts. It's like Deborah Kerr playing Carol Burnett playing Deborah Kerr, so overplaying the shyness and awkwardness and terror over sex that it crosses over into parody. The rest of this opus, cooked up from some short Terence Rattigan plays, is quite good. It's a starry hotel, with Burt Lancaster planning to marry hotel manager Wendy Hiller (another deserved Oscar) but distracted by the return of ex-wife Rita Hayworth, and a young Rod Taylor as a medical student we tend to forget about, and Cathleen Nesbitt as an old biddy a good deal more sympathetic than Ms. Cooper. The short stories are skillfully interwoven, and it's franker about sex than much 1958 product. But just as you're settling into it, along comes Deb stammering and gurgling and getting hysterical over nothing. She's such a brilliant actress, I don't know who steered her wrong on this one.

sesht A wonderful interplay of characters and words in this magical adaptation of a stage play, anyone unfamiliar with the material, like I was at the time, will be rewarded with all the goings-on at Hotel Beauregard. A collection of characters, both long-term and short, at the aforementioned hotel, gather at the time of this narration, at various points in their lives. There are the (for those times, at that place) illicit unmarried couple, one of whom is more intent on the romantic getaway than the other, who'd rather focus on an upcoming examination.There is a mother-daughter couple, one of whom hold dominance/sway over the other, and that dynamic is painful for all those who behold them, including this viewer.There is the boorish ex-armyman, who's fulla stories that test everyone's patience, and attention-span, and who's completely oblivious to the effect he has on his fellow-person, and keep at it anyway. And the mainstay, of course, is the return of an old flame into a milieu where the one who lit that flame has seemingly moved on, to, let's just say, stabler pastures? hardly a powder-keg waiting to go up, but go up it does, with media, whispers and gossip doing their jobs quite effectively, until it all comes to a head. Once again, as with most of the works made in this time, very economical story-telling, and powerful monologues as well as dialogues from all characters, who put in strong performances. The score though, and this is something typical for flicks made in this time and period, is very in your face, and if one learns to ignore its manipulation, one will be rewarded for said effort. Kerr is almost unrecognizable, but Lancaster and Niven do their schtick, and that's not a bad thing, since I'm still not able to visualize anyone else doing what they've done here. Definitely their A-game. Worth repeat viewings.

Holdjerhorses Having recently watched "You Were Never Lovelier" with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, it's interesting to notice how she was largely shot and directed throughout her career.Her dancing in "Lovelier" was fun and fine in "The Shorty George," where she's relaxed and clearly having a ball -- and appears to be keeping up with Astaire. "Appears" is the operative word. Astaire (who choreographed) carefully kept their routines within Hayworth's range, never challenging her beyond her capacities. But Hayworth completely lacked Ginger Rogers' lithe body fluidity and on screen electricity.Hayworth was stunningly beautiful, of course. But even in "Lovelier" there are moments when, not carefully lit, the forehead lines that were so apparent in later years (unless also carefully lit) were already apparent and fleetingly distracting.More to the point was how she was directed and photographed in "Lovelier." She actually has very few lines. What she does have are usually brief and delivered in a relatively quick take before cutting away.She never makes emotional transitions in a scene. Rather, the camera cuts to a new angle when she's called on to register a different emotion. The primary goal at all times is to maintain her seemingly flawless facial beauty. Fine in a fluff piece like "Lovelier."Cut to "Separate Tables" 16 years later.Hayworth is still beautiful if more "mature." AGAIN she is never shown making an emotional transition in one shot: cutaways are instead employed. The technique (to disguise her limited acting abilities) is particularly jarring in her dramatic scene in her bedroom with Burt Lancaster. On closer inspection, she "poses" from cut to cut rather than displaying her character's emotional arcs.Sure, she was supposed to be an aging model, all self-possessed poise. But not in that dramatic scene.Still, it's a fascinating lesson in how skilled film making disguises limited range. (For a heartbreaking account of the making of her last film, read Frank Langella's "Dropped Names.")Terence Rattigan's play was forced to disguise the homosexual "scandal" of the Major's (David Niven) being arrested for soliciting men in dark movie houses, though the implication is fairly clear.Knowing the repression of homosexuality at that time makes Niven's performance even more involving; especially once the scandal is revealed to the boarders at the Beauregard.Niven's amazing performance (in only 16 minutes of screen time) is disarmingly deep. He goes from an almost comical figure to an exposed fraud with a dark secret since childhood, to a lost late-middle-aged man with no future, to the final hope of redemption.Niven shows all his character's subtle emotional transitions in sustained takes (unlike Hayworth).Deborah Kerr is fine and completely convincing, as always.Burt Lancaster gives another version of Burt Lancaster in not his finest hour. "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Rose Tattoo," "Come Back, Little Sheba," "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" -- even "Trapeze" -- are better records of his talents. But he's always believable.The remaining cast, especially the nuanced Wendy Hiller, are terrific.Still, it's Hayworth's impression -- not her character's -- who lingers as something not quite real, not untalented, but unrealized and somewhat vacant. It's not her mental deterioration. It was there on screen from the beginning. She tried gamely throughout her career, and looked magnificent thanks to careful costuming, lighting and cinematography. But even with careful cutaway direction she seems little more than a paper doll -- and finally, tragically, just as fragile.

Richard Burin Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958) is an acting masterclass, a stunning adaptation of Rattigan's two single-act plays set at a Bournemouth hotel. David Niven, Deborah Kerr and Wendy Hiller (my new favourite) are flawless in their sensitive, layered performances: he an army major with a dark secret, Kerr the meek, downtrodden girl who loves him, Hiller the hotel manager fighting disappointments of her own. Shooting on home soil, American stars Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth are very good in somewhat less interesting parts. Taking dead-aim at intolerance, as well as examining the disappointments and compromises of adulthood, this is a remarkable piece of humanist drama and one of the most intelligent films to come out of Hollywood in the '50s. Charles Lang's cinematography is a big plus; the only duff element is the wearisome theme song.