ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

JasparLamarCrabb Private eye George Maharis is hired by wealthy Peter Lawford to find out all he can about future wife Carroll Baker (a poetess with a very mystery bio). Maharis finds a slew of lurid details about Baker ranging from rape to prostitution to blackmail. Director Gordon Douglas and scriptwriter Sydney Boehm have Baker climb from a Dante's Inferno of nightmares before achieving respectability. Maharis encounters one loony character after another. There's blowzy Ann Sothern, sassy showgirl Nancy Kovack, sleazy Edmond O'Brien, and ex-prostitute Joanne Dru. Also in the mix is saintly librarian Vivica Lindfors and not so saintly transvestite pimp Paul Gilbert (as Lola Diamond). It's all fairly silly as opposed to compelling with Maharis making a dull leading man. Baker does not have the carriage to be particularly convincing as a poetess! There is a great music score by David Raskin and stellar cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg. Aldo Ray, Val Avery (as one of Baker's unlucky johns) and Lloyd Bochner (as a very brutal john) are in it too.

JohnHowardReid Despite almost universal condemnation by contemporary critics, I like this film. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a team comprising screenplay writer Sydney Boehm, director Gordon Douglas and cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, dancing too far into the wrong. And here, if anything, they excel themselves. Other writers would be hampered by the screenplay's necessarily picaresque structure, but Boehm skillfully turns it into an asset, making each episode such a memorable vignette with its brisk dialogue and astute character-drawing that the various elements make a glorious whole. Of course, he is considerably assisted by the marvelous cast, topped by Carroll Baker, plus the deft direction and mood-mirroring camera-work.

weho90069 Tracking down a copy of SYLVIA was kind of like the Maharis character's attempt to unearth facts about the main character. I finally found a copy and watched it tonight and was mildly impressed overall, very impressed with parts of the film, and unimpressed with other parts. It's an episodic sort of movie, as Maharis's detective goes from Pennsylvania to Mexico to New York to Los Angeles to piece together the background of Carroll Baker's "Sylvia". The supporting cast is terrific, as has been noted by other IMDb contributors. Then there are the flashbacks themselves which are less satisfying. I don't think this is Carroll Baker's fault at all, really. Maybe I am prejudiced since I adore Ms. Baker even when her acting isn't "spot on." Where I think the film flounders is in the way it doesn't avail itself of the kind of subjectivity that a film like CITIZEN KANE investigated. Each of the people Maharis interviews tells a part of Sylvia's life from his/her own perspective. Unfortunately the direction is fairly straight- forward, uninteresting, and doesn't adequately reflect each storyteller's own agenda or personal perspective. That would have made the flashback sequences much more interesting and provocative, and given Baker a bit more "meat" to her role as the enigmatic Sylvia since we would be seeing her -- literally -- through the eyes of the person recounting her life at that point in the film. The flashbacks in SYLVIA are simply that: flashbacks, and nothing more. Because the film is so simplistic, we automatically trust what each character is telling us about Sylvia and the flashbacks themselves are gospel truths. After a while the formula of Maharis meeting a new person from Sylvia's life and the flashback convention starts to get a bit tedious. On the other hand, as the film advances we get some great character performances from Ann Sothern, Viveca Lidfors, and Nancy Kovack (among others). Paul Gilbert as Lola Diamond is a hoot, and Lloyd Bochner and Aldo Ray are sinister adversaries as the men who rape Sylvia. The film feels like it wants to be LAURA but never quite achieves the same spellbinding quality, perhaps because there's no murder mystery which would have given the audience a nice bit of suspense to cope with (just the threat of scandal, which was admittedly more damaging a liability in the 60s than it is today; heck, today an author might thrive on scandal if it sold more copies of her book!). I felt a big "so what" about the unsurprisingly scandalous past of Sylvia. We already know that Sylvia made good on her own, and doesn't really "need" the financial assistance of the Peter Lawford character. There is very little to get worked up about, except perhaps what handsome Mack may do with all his sordid information. And, naturally, it's inevitable he should meet and fall in love with Sylvia. That would seem to me to be a good potential departure point for something exciting, and certainly more interesting than what happens next. What the film doesn't explore very well is how much Sylvia seems to need approval, and how empty she is emotionally (evidently using her reading as a form of escape from reality). As much as Baker tries to fill in the blanks in the script for us with a sympathetic performance, we don't really ever get a deep enough look beneath the surface of Sylvia, or get into her head. All the evidence is hearsay, circumstantial, and very little comes from Sylvia herself. Mack even stops Sylvia from pouring her soul out to him, which is unfortunate because it would have given Baker an incredible monologue to chew on as she dragged up every dark aspect of her past and corroborated what we had seen (would have been a nice recap, as well). I wanted to really like this movie more, even as camp, but found myself only mildly entertained. I think the ending is a real let down. It would have helped if there had been more to the conflict than just the exposure of scandal. The happy ending felt tacked-on and rushed, especially. All this is not to say that I think SYLIVA a bad film or Baker not good in it. Quite the contrary. I think the film has some precious moments indeed, but that as a good vehicle for Baker it is somewhat of a missed opportunity.

dbdumonteil The movie begins well enough and we think we will deal with some Preminger-like mystery ("Laura" "Bunny Lake is missing" "Anatomy of murder") or even a Mankiewicz extravaganza ("the barefoot comtessa").One of the first scenes in the library with Viveca Lindfords is intriguing.The books play a prominent part and there's a strange children's omnipresence.Then the accumulation of melodramatic elements and the abuse of flashbacks end up wearing thin .Interest only occasionally comes back:Ann Sothern's barfly act,her entry in the posh restaurant ,for instance.Carroll Baker only appears in flashbacks in the first hour which preserved her mystery charm.Then,when the private meets her,it peters out.And it's not hard to guess the ending.