El omnibus perdido

This will be short as there are many positive reviews here and few wrinkled noses!

I watched the film immediately after reading the book (again), and it does what you'd expect in re-jigging a series of individual character studies (with their thought processess) into a mini disaster movie, and I'm fine with that as it didn't deviate too far from the central story line.

The theme of book and almost all of it's characters throughout is sex, trying to get it, or fending it off. If you want to know more read it. However, that was not possible to integrate integrate much into a film of the era, apart from one scene in a barn.

BUT Jayne Mansfield was excellent as the beautiful but battle-hardened wanting-out stripper, and Steinbeck would have been very happy with her portrayal.

The storyline involving Joan Collins was padded out to give her screen time (and over act).

Finally and the MOST disappointing aspect of the film was the usual Hollywood practice of giving a romantic male lead to a guy who was too old. Dan Dailey was 18 years older than Jayne Mansfield and at 42 looked it. You can't suspend disbelief for that sort of nonsense.

A bunch of random strangers get on a bus for a short haul across the border to Mexico. They find out something about the other passengers, but more about themselves.

At one time this had been planned as a prestige production, with names like Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Susan Hayward, and Gene Tierney mentioned for the role. By the time it came to the screen, the cast consisted of lesser-regarded players like Dan Dailey, Joan Collins, Jayne Mansfield, and Larry Keating in the roles. Although on paper it looks like a low-rent version of GRAND HOTEL, the characters are well drawn from a Steinbeck story, and the performers offer much stronger performances than the usual work they are noted for.

Credit producer Charles Brackett. He started as a writer, and in the mid-1930s, he hooked up with Billy Wilder. When they grew tired of directorial interference with their scripts, Wilder began to direct regularly, with Brackett as the producer. After 1950, they went on their own ways. Brackett continued to produce, occasionally taking writing credit, through 1962. Along the way, he picked up three Oscars, including one honorary one, amidst a baker's dozen nominations. He died in 1969, aged 76.

I have often liked this film with Joan Collins as the bus stop café owner whose wandering husband-bus driver, Rick Jason, takes a group of oddly matched tourists on a rugged journey south down a storm flooded road. There is quite a bit of gripping suspense as Chicoy (Jason) manages to pull the bus across a flooded river before the bridge collapses. Also, it has some romantic surprises while the passengers are stranded from their bus as Chicoy searches a barn for a tractor he can use as a tow. Jayne Mansfield does quite well as a cynical bubble dancer trying to conceal her trade. Someone should do a remake of this movie.

Like many Steinbeck stories, this is more of a snapshot of a time and place as opposed to a rigid start-middle-end kind of movie. What we get here is a look into the lives of a bunch of characters with many of their respective futures left open to interpretation.

So we have the buffoonish travelling salesman, the alcoholic diner owner, the teen dreaming of Hollywood stardom, the rugged bus driver, the embarrassed stripper, the repressed teen...the list goes on. Basically, a cross section of society travel on a bus whose journey is as unpredictable and dangerous as that of the lives of most of the passengers aboard.

While it's not the most riveting of movies, and the vastness of Cinemascope certainly spoils the intimacy of some of the scenes, it is a solid little drama in the kitchen sink/new wave style that is an entertaining watch from start to finish. While the copy I own on DVD has clearly been copied from a television broadcast resulting in fluffy picture and muffled sound, I still enjoyed (and repeatedly enjoy) watching this film.

The standout? But Jayne Mansfield of course. If Marilyn silenced the critics that she could act with a movie about a bus, then so did our Jayne. Of course the platinum blonde tresses and eye-popping figure are present and correct but gone are the silly wiggle, the high pitched squeals and the plunging necklines. Here, in a rare straight dramatic performance, Jayne present Camille not as a cartoon character a la Jessica Rabbit, but rather a sex symbol with feelings, someone who is employed for her looks but has fears and emotions beneath the surface. Jayne moves and talks naturally in this film and is a revelation.

How sad that after this solid performance and her wonderful turn as Rita Marlow in Rock Hunter, ego would dictate that she would agree to appear with Cary Grant in what many consider the final nail in her A-list film career, Kiss Them For Me...a truly abysmal waste of time.

But forget about her career mistakes; Jayne is solid gold here and this is well worth a watch.

You hear so little about this film although it was taken from a well received John Steinbeck novel which I understand had to be cleaned up for the screen version. Of course in today's world there's nothing particularly shocking about any of the unruly passengers as they get detoured on a rundown bus making a short trip through California.

RICK JASON is the ruggedly handsome driver (whatever happened to him?), JOAN COLLINS is his unhappy wife tipping the bottle, JAYNE MANSFIELD is a showgirl riding to her next strip assignment, DAN DAILEY is a stock character as a traveling salesman with an eye for a pretty girl, and others are strictly cardboard creations.

But it's strikingly photographed in B&W and CinemaScope, briskly directed by Victor Vikas (who won a directing award for this at the Berlin Film Festival), and not as bad as it might seem for all of its obscurity in the realm of classic films.

Probably lacks the punch of the Steinbeck novel in transferring his characters to the screen in accordance with the code of the '50s.