Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

John T. Ryan WE ARE QUITE familiar with this film; having worked part time at the old United Artists Theatre in Downtown Chicagoduring its premierre run. It is quite possible that, had it not been for that circumstance, it would be an unknown commodity. ONE CAN ONLY describe it as a sort of Film Noir Romance Murder Mystery in Full Colour. Is that perfectly clear? AS FAR AS the physical look of the production, it is truly beautiful, bright and colorful. Location shooting and studio sets are all well coordinated and add to the impressive story telling. The exteriors done in Europe are interesting; competing successfully with those of any of the old travelogues.* THE STORY ITSELF, based on the novel by Sydney Sheldon, appears to have incorporated the actual true life occurrences from several different incidents into the scenario. Of particular interest is a Greek Shipping Tycoon; who bears an obvious character resemblance to Aristotle Onassis.THE WELL EXECUTED cinematography includes a lot of sex scenes with a heaping helping dose of "Now you see it, now you don't" nudity. The tawdry bedroom goings on lead us to believe that, rather than being an example of the romantic novel, it is more of an exercise in titillation and celluloid masturbation.WE HAVE RECENTLY read that 20th Century-Fox, its studio had projected that THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT would be its biggest money maker of that Summer of 1977 and adjusted its rental price. It had a less higher expectation for another Summer release, STAR WARS, which went into distribution for Le$$ BuckS! NOTE: * For all of those among you (our readers) who are under 60, a TRAVELOGUE is a film which highlights a particular city, state, or country. Typically, one would contain a lot of interesting and varied outdoor scenes accompanied by flowery voice over narration. They were short subjects of about 20-30 minutes in length.

Gary M. James Producer Frank Yablans and 20th Century Fox spent some serious cash on "The Other Side of Midnight" filming scenes on location in Paris, Washington, DC and Greece. It certainly looks good on screen. The lush musical score by Michel Legrand made the movie sound more important than it really is. (When is a Legrand musical score not lush?) But the plodding epic WWII romantic story about two women who are in love with the same pilot, adapted from the best selling Sidney Sheldon novel, should not be taken too seriously. The movie is so soapy, I'm surprised Procter & Gamble did not co-produce the movie.Marie-France Pisier tries her best to flesh out (pun intended) her character of Noelle, using her body to get to the top. But the scenes with Sorrell Booke as a businessman who bought Noelle from her father, Christian Marquand as a filmmaker and Raf Vallone as a Greek tycoon, were rather embarrassing and I did not feel any sympathy toward her character. John Beck fared even worse as a very uncharismatic, two-timing cad. It is interesting that after "Midnight", Pisier (who I remember from a much better movie from two years earlier, Cousin, Cousine) went back to appearing in movies in her native France and Beck continued to appear in soaps, this time on television.Somehow, I thought Susan Sarandon fared best because she was the best actor of the three leads. I felt more sympathy for her character Catherine than Noelle. And what has happened to Sarandon after this trash-fest? Can someone say a thinking man's sex symbol? (Oscar-winning performance as Sr. Helen Prejean in "Dead Man Walking" notwithstanding.) Why a 5 out of 10 instead of a 1 or 2? I remember reading many negative reviews when it was first released in 1977. However, unlike what was reported in the IMDb Trivia section, the movie did have a long run in theaters and was a moderate success at the box office. Even though I was very leery of the film's 2 hour, 45 minute length, I caught the movie on cable TV. This movie is like a trashy summer novel, I could not put this movie down. Without giving the ending away, the plot twists almost made the film worth my time. Having seen the movie several times in the past few years, The Other Side of Midnight is a bad movie but I plead guilty to admit that it is so bad, it's good.Update (5/10/2007): I tried to re-watch this movie and ended up fast forwarding through the boring parts. I guess my original review was rather generous. If you cut down the "getting to know you" musical montage scenes, the transition scenes where people are walking from one beautiful scene to another and delete the gratuitous nude scenes, it might have been better. The movie is also filled with script exposition and not enough actual scenes that might have made the movie more interesting. The scenes between Pisier and Michael Lerner, who plays an investigator trailing John Beck's character, are especially deadly.Sarandon's performance still holds up. She exudes more depth to her character than the script allows. I sense that the movie was made by some dirty old men whose idea for a "chick flick" was to see the main female characters naked. A naked male lead? Not a chance.

ptb-8 What a success this film was in Australia in 1977.... it ran for months gathering momentum among shop assistants and daytime single women ticket-buyers as a much whispered about 'must see'. well for us fellers, it was a bit raunchy showing off Gallic nubile sexiness among the ruins of Paris in WW2. I guess it also caused the rise of the miniseries movie potboiler drama that paved the way for THE BETSY, THE Greek TYCOON and many other 2hr plus glossy romantic efforts.... most long forgotten. TV really corralled this type of book/drama on film with DYNASTY and KNOTTS LANDING etc. I am surprised that is was considered a flop in the USA when a big hit elsewhere. My main memory is from a suburban cinema in Sydney....400 person sized crowd of couples.... then shocked silence during a bathtub abortion scene... followed immediately by (only) one huge athletic man staggering from his seat in a state of distress, dizzy from what he had seen, lumbering Frankenstein monster-style across the aisle, and ploughed headfirst through the plaster wall on the stairway to the foyer. The building shook and we ran to see what happened. There he was, head first through the wall, slumped in collapse, with frantic audience members trying to pull him, legs first, from the hole. He woke up and started crying: "Awww I didn't like that" he sobbed. We had to stop the projector, tell everyone that he was alright and re wound the film. "Aww don't show that bit again" he protested, so we didn't, we re started from just after. With a mug of tea and his tears wiped up, we re sat him with his cringing date and the movie rolled on....and on and on. Just so you know...FROM NOON TILL THREE is a funny (!) Charles Bronson western with Jill Ireland.. equally as enjoyable 70s. No bathtub abortions but a good train smash.

Sherazade I caught an encore of this film on FMC the other night and while I knew before hand what I was getting into (a 3 hour drama), the sheer intrigue of the storyline was virtually impossible to resist.During WWII, a young (Marie-France Pisier) and down on her luck woman comes to Paris with the hopes of making it as a model and is robbed penniless on her very first day there. Delirious, tired and confused she slowly makes her way (on foot) around the neighbourhood where she has been abandoned until she finds a hotel and decides to rest in the lobby for a while. The concierge discovers her soon after and is about to throw her out when she is rescued by an American air-force pilot (John Beck) who is also a playboy who tactfully romances her. Over the course of time the two seeming lovebirds become committed to one another but Larry Douglas (Beck) is called to duty one day. Noelle Page (Pisier) is devastated but Larry promises that he will be back and provides for her financially for the next six months. Noelle gets a job as a model and patiently awaits the return of her lover, to no avail. Months later she discovers that she is pregnant and on the same day finds out from an old acquaintance that Larry (who has no been sent back to America) made an English girl pregnant. Devastated, Noelle aborts the child she is carrying then slowly begins to work her way up the social ladder.Meanwhile, in America Larry meets a beautiful working girl named Catherine Alexander (Susan Sarandon) whom he woos in the same manner that he did Noelle, only this time, he marries this one. Years pass by and the war ends and soon Larry is out of the job. He soon finds out that he is unable to get a job anywhere in the US, so when he is offered a job in Greece, he jumps at the offer. It is only when he arrives there to meet the millionaire tycoon whom has hired him that he realises that Noelle, the woman he jilted 8 years earlier is his new employer.