Das Leben ist Lüge

I have been a Clift fan for years reading his biographies and having seen all of his films numerous times. The only exception was the 1958 film Lonelyhearts; for some reason I couldn't locate a DVD and had missed it when shown on TCM. I finally caught up with it on the network this week and all what I heard about the film to my perspective was misdirected. I had read/heard it was a soap opera, meandering and somewhat lifeless. As I saw this movie almost a week ago I can't help in not thinking about it from time to time. To me this was a moving film with amazing performances topped by Stapleton, Ryan and of course Clift. Monty Clift...what a gift of an actor who in this role after his major auto accident plays his character with such intensity and emotion. Incredible. There are scenes where you can see the emotion in his eyes that are so moving and the thought processes of the impact of his actions are so simple but awe inspiring and transparent. He was truly an artist and the shame of it was because of all the pain and ups and downs in his personal life we never got to see his full potential. The amazing Robert Ryan is incredible as well as he plays a cynical character with variation and depth that you have to marvel at the dexterity he uses in communicating the pain and mistrust of anyone he comes into contact with. Great actor. Maureen Stapleton is brilliant with her longing for connecting to something she is missing in her life and right when you begin to feel sympathy she changes on a dime. Brilliant! The only reason I gave it an 8 was the structure of the script and the backstory of Clift's character was a bit weak and rushed. Never the less...very good film that is a near not to be missed because of the performances. Must see for Clift fans.

I liked the movie and the one thing about it that I didn't like was Monty. He was too old by at least 15 years for the part, the girl and the hurt. The hurt was a young man's hurt. Robert Ryan had the lock on the mature man's regret and Monty was supposed to be at the front end of the voyage but having been acting and living in bathos for all his life,he was too well seasoned. Instead of a boy whose dad had left him wounded and who was going to emerge from this transformed and transforming, he was Monty front and center and always. I loved Ms. Hart's Justy. Now there's a characterization who developed and a person who was and became. Ryan was once a boy, became a hard and then a bitter man and perhaps regained a bit of himself at the end. Ms. Loy, well-faded but true, a lodestar who was beyond much but hope, the inverse of Ms. Stapleton but in some ways more than that and the true core of the film in that she was a Lonelyheart even though she had material comfort. I'll admit it, I liked Monty in some of his roles but in this,he is terribly miscast. He might have pulled it off before we learned too much about him and his self-pity but alas, the part and the actor met too late. At bottom, his compassion for others here, as in in almost every other role, was just self-pity writ large.

In view of some of the comments categorizing this film as unsatisfying soap opera, it all depends on what you're looking for. If what you want are excellent performances from a superior cast, then this is your kind of movie. Robert Ryan gives his typical outstanding performance as an extremely cynical newspaper editor who inflicts his particular brand of misery to the full on his long-suffering wife, beautifully portrayed by Myrna Loy. Maureen Stapleton is electrifying in her movie debut and received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her riveting performance. Montomgery Clift's fragility works to his advantage here as an advice columnist whose sensitivity runs a little too deep. The haunted eyes and pained expressions perfectly match what the character in this situation would realistically feel and express. Overall, a nicely done, well-photographed film that is sure to hold the attention and is definitely worth the time to find and view.

Dore Schary introduced modest films noirs into MGM's technicolor pantheon, and he wrote and produced this late (1957) entry. While Nathanael West's satire was exhilaratingly brutal, just about everything about this movie seems weary and faint-hearted. Montgomery Clift, fresh from the accident which just about scuttled his career, is the cub reporter shoved into the Miss Lonelyhearts column; he's so passive and tentative -- sometimes so hard to understand -- that it's not clear whether it's method acting or the aftermath of his car smashup. Robert Ryan, usually a stalwart of these mean S.O.B. roles, delivers the lines written for the cynical editor but you have the sense he was interested only in his paycheck. Myrna Loy is trashed as Ryan's long-suffering wife, emotionally abused because of some breach of marital fidelity in the distant past. (Why doesn't she just hurl her Cinzano in his face and stalk out?) But the film starts to smoulder when Maureen Stapleton arrives (she received an Academy Award nomination for this, her debut). As Edna Doyle, frustrated wife who starts an affair with Clift, she's unforgettable without ever lurching into one-dimensional parody. She's both sympathetic and repulsive, vindictive yet confused, victim and avenger. Too bad this movie was made at a time when they thought all Nathanael West's teeth had to be pulled for public consumption; the movie vanishes with a whimper. But West is hard to film; John Schlesinger's Day of the Locust, some 20 years later, didn't do a much better job.

... because of its cynicism and brutal honesty portrayed by the characters. However, at the end of it, I felt the men and women who worked on the film put forth a very good product. The underlying moral tones in the film got a little preachy to me, but it was from 1958, and adultery was still pretty big deal back then.

Montgomery Clift has the lead in this one, and while he does his usual good work, I thought his delivery of lines was quite similar to the way he played characters in "Judgment at Nuremburg", "A Place in the Sun", and "From Here to Eternity"--it seemed halted or deliberately tentative. If that's what the role called for, then he did well. If not, well, it just seemed hackneyed (to me anyway). I much rather like Clift in roles like he had in "The Search".

Robert Ryan was verbally sadistic in this one, and I thought he gave a fine performance, although admittedly, I haven't seen too many of his films. Myrna Loy played his wife and had a really emotional scene with Ryan in their apartment...and I absolutely loved it...it's not something you see from her all the time! Jackie Coogan and Dolores Hart provide good supporting roles, as does Maureen Stapleton as a sensuous psycho! Too bad for moviegoers that Hart answered a higher calling. I thought she was really good in this.