Something for Everyone

I haven't seen this movie in a long time. I've seen it more than once, so I must have rented the VHS when it was available. I did see it when it was originally released theatrically. If you weren't that lucky, let me tell you, when Angela Lansbury appeared on screen about to board a train in her white satin traveling suit and matching (stewardess-style) cap, there was a collective gasp from the audience--admittedly mostly gay men. You'd never seen anything like it EVER. And you never saw anything like it again until Dynasty in the 80s.

Furthermore, Jane Carr utters one of the best lines in all of cinema history: "There's nothing like a bit of pre-breakfast chocolate cake."

The movie is pitch perfect, and I'd say required viewing for gay people, even though that theme is a small part of the movie. Hunt it down and see it! And pray for Criterion to get the rights!

Hal Prince's Something For Everyone is perhaps one of the most looked over American classics of the 70's. The blackest of comedies the title might, if taken literally, be misleading since it is, obviously NOT for everyone. Prince's theatrical touch can be felt and lends a strong hand in the telling of the tale and keeping tight reigns on what could easily have become an out-of-control experience (i.e., "Happy Birthday, Gemini"), a taut, thrillingly wry comedy – one of the best of its type. Combining the fantasy of fairy tale with the social repression and economic dire straits of a Post-II World II Bavaria the film provides a vastly entertaining (and darkly hilarious) look into subject matters verboten at the time of the tale including the Nazi issue, social pariahism, class distinction and sexual appetite.

The dichotomy between classes has never been more closely paralleled in film: on one hand there is the starving, eager and willing to do anything young Konrad (Michael York) and on the other the Countess von Ornstein – she of by gone nobility. Countess or now, she too is starving, clinging to a past which has not only faded, but threatens at any minute to disintegrate. Her prospects poor she does what she must. Lansbury's Countess is priceless and she plays it with an unlikely combination of superego and hopeless despair – and she is brilliant. A tour-de-force.

If released today – the film would be at the top of every best 10 list and be talked about salaciously at every Starbucks.

With nazis hiding in the woodwork, sexual weaponry, misplaced romantic feelings, murder, social climbing combining with delicious Bavarian countryside, castles, beer gardens, stunning mountain vistas and even Wagnerian opera, Prince gives us a fairy tale gone wrong. Wondrously, terribly and gloriously wrong.

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Charming, machiavellian drifter manipulates widowed aristocrat and her family to gain control of the estate. Exemplary characters and script, and striking scenery for atmosphere. Viewers may also enjoy "A New Leaf" (1971).(Rating: A)

Angela Lansbury as a decadent noblewoman, glaring out into her shaky future is nothing short of sensational. One of the most entertaining performances ever put on film. She has to overcome two massive obstacles, wooden Michael York as a co-star and Broadway legend Harold Prince as her "film" director. She succeeds and overcomes both problems with the help of a scrumptious script and a personal zest that it's pure Lansbury. She has been, consistently, one of the most startling actresses to come out of Hollywood, she is, often, the only redeeming quality of some indifferent movies. Unfortunately, the enormous success of "Murder She Wrote" has overshadowed her powerful impact as an actress. To introduce her to a younger audience that knows her only as Jessica Fletcher is always a thrill. From "Gaslight" right up to "Nanny McPhee" As a piece of trivia...Did you know she was offered the part of Nurse Ratchet in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"?

A subversive happy-ever-after comedy directed by the famed Broadway director Harold Prince, who has only directed 2 pictures for the celluloid. SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE stars a fresh-faced Michael Fork as a twenty-some stripling Konrad Ludwig, insinuates his way into the family of widowed Countess Herthe von Ornstein (Lansbury), whose financial situation is running on empty in spite of owning a Mittel-European castle, which, curtailed by an inheritance entail, is prohibited to sell.

Who is Konrad anyway? Throughout the whole movie, audience has no inkling of his past, like a tabusa rasa, he pops up from nowhere, and miracle comes about around him just like the butterfly of a rare species landing on his hand in the opening, he can always find "something for everyone", a miracle worker indeed, but morbidly, with a tendency of homicide if he sees fit. Chirpily injecting its daringly amoral keynote with a tongue-in-cheek mischief, the story sends Konrad rising through ranks, and plays up his pansexuality with utter candidness. Soon Konrad incubates a scheme to bring affluence and glory back to the castle, through a marriage arrangement between Herthe's son Helmuth (a wiry and delectable Higgins) and Anneliese (Weis), the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Pleschke (Gill and Meineke respectively), a nouveau riche couple salivating for aristocratic luxury.

But there is a catch, both Helmuth and Anneliese are Konrad's lovers (and clearly he has a preference), the aftermath of their disastrous honeymoon drives Konrad's plan to an almost breaking point, but thankfully, the marriage is official and money is secured, so it is just a matter of dispensing with those unwelcome nuisances, between the patrician and the parvenu, it is a cinch to guess when side Prince/Konrad is inclined to choose by thinking on their feet.

Konrad's star is rising, he cannot get a break, Herthe is swept off her feet eventually, a marriage proposal, however scandalous, is propounded, and he is in no place to decline, in the final twist, there is someone in the upper crust finally can give Konrad a good run for his money, it is neither the self-involving Herthe, nor the effete Helmuth, but a cherubic lass who sees through Konrad's trickery and ploys, and gets what she always want through blackmail without hazarding her own safety, now we are talking about a film truly merits a sequel treatment.

Angela Lansbury entrancingly flaunts royal poise and rhetoric, a facade she nails on the stage but rarely opens to his film audience, and Michael York, is such a unique leading man, angular, confident, charisma-oozing, and the pride in his eyes is undiminished. As a comedy ruthlessly sends up a morally conscious society, this little-seen picture is a blast from the past, and worth being dusted off to, at the very least, give a scare to the prim, proper and prudish.