A Talent for Loving

Richard Widmark when asked what was his worst film has to answer A Talent for Loving. How he got roped into this one, the Deity only knows.

What A Talent for Loving attempts to do is combine a sex farce and a western comedy in the same film and it succeeds at being neither.

Widmark is a gambler who wins the deed to a big ranch in Mexico from a Mexican bandit played by Topol in one overacted performance. The ranch belongs to Cesar Romero and he and Widmark hit it off. So much so that he's no sooner sat down to the family table than Romero is trying to fix him up with his daughter.

Seems as though there's a family curse at work. Romero's ancestor back in those conquistador days kanoodled with 634 Aztec women and Montezuma put a curse on the family. The women upon their first romantic encounter become insatiable nymphomaniacs. The only way to save them from a life of degradation is to get them married a.s.a.p.

That is the talent for loving the title talks about. And it goes down from there folks. Topol isn't the only one who overacts, everyone here does. I suppose it was the best thing to do keep one's sanity.

I found A Talent for Loving to be hilarious, but I'm not sure if it's for everyone. It's very silly, very tongue-in-cheek, and very raunchy. If you like the sex humor of the late 1960s, like Dirty Dingus Magee or Candy, then you'll probably be in the right mindset for this one.

In this Mexican-set western, Richard Widmark is a guest in Cesar Romero's home. It's a gorgeous estate with beautiful, scantily clad women attending them. At every opportunity, Cesar grabs their behinds, kisses them, and compliments their beauty. His daughter is also gorgeous, and Dick soon falls head-over-heels for her. With marriage at stake in a poker game, he and Cesar hash out the details. Cesar lets him in on a family secret: there's a generations-old curse that everyone becomes obsessed with sex after their first encounter. Dick had better be prepared for after their wedding night! "These beautiful women you see here are my concubines," Cesar confesses. "If I didn't have them, I'd go mad!"

I couldn't stop laughing during this raunchy comedy, but you'll probably be able to figure out whether it's your style or not during the first ten minutes or so. I found it hilarious to see these silver screen stars who became famous during the Hays Code getting to rattle off sex jokes with no more barriers. And, even better than the jokes were the attitudes behind them. Everyone seemed to have a blast making this movie. Richard Widmark looked like he was about to crack up after every line, and Cesar looked like he would have made the movie without taking a salary. Whip up a batch of cocktails and invite a group of your friends over for retro-movie-night. I'm sure you can think of a fun drinking game.

This movie is one of the funniest spoofs on westerns that I've seen. Cesar Romero and Richard Widmark do an outstanding job playing characters who are exaggerated versions of a worried father and a cowboy. Because of the "time frame" it occurs in, it is probably appreciated more by "seniors" who grew up with westerns of all kinds than it would be by younger generations who are more used to "modern" westerns - i.e. Starwars. Nothing in the movie is serious and like "Texas Across the River" and "Rustlers Rhapsody" it has a lot of laughs in it. It is definitely a "laugh out loud" movie and if I could find a copy of it I would purchase it for myself.

The plots for this film are VERY unusual and very confusing. It all starts with Richard Widmark insulting an idiotic Mexican guy (Topol of all people) and then marrying a nympho with a strange family curse. She is super-rich but also super sex-crazed. There are LOTS of strange subplots involving the children of the various characters--and all of it seems, well, confusing.

"A Talent for Loving" is like a train wreck--a terribly unfunny train wreck. I have rarely seen a film try so very hard to be funny and fail at it so miserably. It's a sex spoof-comedy-western--and does a lousy job in all three categories. As a sexy film, it never really delivers and provides lots of innuendos but nothing that is terribly sexy. As a comedy, it's just not funny and tries in a shotgun manner to get laughs. In other words, throw enough silly situations and vignettes into the film and PERHAPS one of them will make you laugh...or not! As a western, it's not entertaining--especially with a lot of non-Indians playing the Indians (sort of like Mel Brooks playing an Indian in "Blazing Saddles"). It's terrible and I can see why it was never released theatrically. And, in many ways, it reminds me of the 1967 version of "Casino Royale"--another sex comedy that simply is unfunny and rarely sexy.

A bad film is practically every way and I am sure that this was a big source of embarrassment for all those involved.