ada the leading man is my tpye

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

audiemurph This is a film of a play, and it looks it. With a couple of exceptions, all of the dialogue is between the two characters played by Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine. To be honest, Mitchum seems badly miscast here. I don't think he was the best choice for a lonely, insecure and lost bachelor in New York City; Mitchum begging for help from a woman who appears to be half his age? To me, it doesn't work. MacLaine surprised me, however, with some very fine acting, much better than I have ever seen her before; she was quite stunning when she was young. And she even does a bit of dancing in this movie.I am a big Robert Mitchum fan, but he is too old, and the physical mismatch with MacLaine is too distracting.The sets are static; the action, such as it is, rarely leaves the two protagonists' apartments. There is an interesting application of split screen; M & M are speaking on the phone to each other from their separate apartments. The left half of the shot is MacLaine's home, the right Mitchum's. The two apartments are very distinct in furnishing and style. Suddenly, the camera pans right, to focus on Mitchum, and you realize that it is one set, cleverly made up to look like a standard split screen; that is, it is arranged exactly as if it were on a stage, the left side one apartment, the right the other. Very clever! Another interesting note: during the opening credits, Mitchum is seen to be walking around various parts of Manhattan, apparently all in one day; he states shortly thereafter that he spends his days and nights tramping the streets endlessly. In order, he first appears in the Bowery, feeding pigeons in front of St. Mark's Church, then downtown in front of the landmark Woolworth Building, then in midtown, on what may be 42nd Stret, and finally in front and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He sure got around in one day! I am not a big fan of movies made to look like plays, but this is beautifully and cleverly photographed. It may be worth a look.

e_tucker In spite of Ted McCord's beautiful deep focus b&w photography there is very little in this film that is interesting to look at. As a stage play brought to film, it never manages to get off the stage and with all of NYC as a potential set, a little more time devoted to exterior shots could have opened this up and made it into a 'real' film. A few brief glimpses of lower Manhattan, Mitchum pacing the streets in the opening sequence or stalking MacLaine from the shadows outside her apartment gives a taste of what this film could have been if Wise hadn't allowed himself to become hidebound by a talky script.Mitchum is clearly miscast - it almost feels like the overabundant dialog is being dragged out of him. But since it is Mitchum, and he's such a force of nature on screen, it's hard to mind too much - but also hard not to consider that Fonda would have been a much more appropriate choice. As it is, MacLaine has a lot of work to do to convince us that Mitch is the guy for her. She almost succeeds (no doubt the off screen chemistry between the two stars helped her a bit with this), but most of the pleasure in her performance derives from that lovable slob thing that she could do falling out of bed, as she proved so ably in Some Came Running. Problem is, she is a comedienne and Mitch most definitely was not. She could snap out those one-liners, "That must have been some bridge!", and get a laugh. If Mitch said anything funny, I must have missed it.Unfortunately most of the film is shot in two tiny, claustrophobic apartments with very few changes in camera angle which made me think that Wise could take a tip or two from Ozu on how to make a repeatedly shot interior more interesting. When we aren't gazing listlessly at one or the other of these stupefying spaces, we are treated to a stale looking split screen shot of both a la Pillow Talk. Except that this doesn't really remind me so much of Pillow Talk, and not that I ever wanted to be reminded of it, as make me wonder if the original stage set had been carted in.Some relief is provided by Elizabeth Fraser as MacLaine's friend Sophie and Billy Gray as the cranky landlord. At least they get us out of the house before we go stir crazy to visit a few post beat generation Bohemian style parties and MacLaine's dance studio loft space. Early on we do get to go out to for Chinese once with a real live waiter (yay!), but that is soon buried under endless home cooked meals, warm milk and the perennial opening and closing of fridge doors. It's oddly underpopulated for a Manhattan film - think the World the Flesh and the Devil - without cityscapes...Previn's score, loved by many but sorry, I've never been a fan of that overly loud 60s jazz style. Beyond that, it threatens to over power the film by setting a jazzy New York tone that the proceedings simply can't live up to. No matter how hard the music tries, what we see is never in sync with what we hear.Worth a watch for MacLaine's perf and McCord's lensing, but not one of Wise's better efforts.

erynnsmama There are no special effects, no graphic sex........just GREAT ACTING. I could watch movies like this all day and night. Shirley McLaine is at her best.......Robert Mitchum is........well...Robert Mitchum............did you know he smoked pot quite a bit? Anyway, give me two excellent actors and a great script over blowing up buses and the latest and greatest computer graphics any day. (ie; SHREK) I was home sick and forced to watch this, which is how i see many of my movies. two thumbs up. I think she(Shirley McLaine) was nominated for an Oscar for this or did she win an Oscar? I love good black and white movies. It engaged me from the beginning to the end.

dedmedved The post-beatnik / pre-hippie party scene is truly spectacular as a snapshot of a time/place rarely caught on film. While most of America was still living a black & white Eisenhower existence, this film shows the cutting edge NYC scene that had already moved beyond bebop and Kerouac and was just about to stumble full tilt into the Warhol Factory. The party scene probably seemed about as weird to middle America as the alien bar scene in Star Wars, fifteen years later. But one kid in every high school across the country changed their plans to attend 'State' and filled out last minute applications to NYU; they knew that they would grow old waiting for that world to reach their hometown.A little known treat for anyone into the early days of "alt".