La grande Catherine

This is an off beat movie against which you can measure all others my little cherubs, my little angels, my little white ducks. Yes this one is Zanny, Odd, Wild and, quite well done. The Music is so awesome to it I'd love to have a soundtrack. The sets are lavish and, the people wild. Unlike the Soviet era russians these guys and, ladies could rock they knew how to throw a party.

This is another of the movies I love that has no moral at the end its just fun to watch. But unlike other mindless movies this movie does at least engage you on a few different levels of throught. Potemkin is the best act in the whole movie as he stays politically drunk through the whole picture. If it were available on video or DVD I would say its a must have but alas the folk that make these decisions has not released it on DVD / video yet.... When they do you should order yours right away so you can be in line right after me.

This is a masterpiece of a film filled with masterful performances. Zero Mostel is utterly outrageous, fearless, daredevil, astonishingly clever and versatile. You never know what Peter O'Toole will do next. The only actor underused is Jack Hawkins. Jeanne Moreau is magnificent, fully equal to Sophia Loren, and perhaps much better than she would have been in this role.

The dialogue is brilliant and stimulating, as one would hope for from George Bernard Shaw. But just as fine are the musical score by the Great Dmitri Tiomkin, and the ever-surprising choreography by Paddy Stone. The extended dance scene is monumental in scope and achievement. It is the centerpiece of the entire movie. This movie is simply stunning.

Great Catherine is the last Shaw play to have been made into a movie. And no wonder considering the slaughter these people made of this one. Not only is this the worst filming of a Shaw play ever created (though Sophia Loren's and Peter Sellers' The Millionairess gives it a good run in the awful department) it is for me one of the worst films of any kind that I've ever seen. If you think that people falling down drunk throughout a film (Zero Mostel's Potemkin) is amusing this film is for you. I however think this sort of baloney action is tedious and very unfunny. The only redeeming feature in this film is the Tiomkin score and the Russian peasants' greatly choreographed free for all at the ball. I used to think that what killed this film was the director's slowing down the action of the repartee from trippingly fast to turgidly slow but now having seen the film all the way through on TCM recently I've decided that every other part of the project likewise contributes to its stinkeroo lack of quality. Moreau and O'Toole swimming around fully clothed in the water of the destroyed model Bunker Hill battle---give me a break! To think of O'Toole participating in such a fiasco after Lawrence of Arabia, The Ruling Class, My Favorite Year, and countless other films in which he acts up a storm leaves me very unhappy and disappointed. I agree with another of your reviewers: if you want to see a film of a Shaw play this one should not be the one you see first! Both thumbs as far down as they can get.

Bernard Shaw wrote GREAT CATHERINE (WHOM GLORY STILL ADORES) back in the teens, and it is occasionally revived. Not all of his plays get revived. In particular his "short" plays. GREAT CATHERINE is a one act play, and it runs about ninety minutes (short, in comparison to say PYGMALION or MAJOR BARBARA). As it is a historical play, one has to note that Shaw - while he tried to be accurate on his history in his plays - based his history on the current state of knowledge, which was usually not as correct as we now know.

Basically, GREAT CATHERINE is about how a young British officer is sent to the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, one of the most fascinating rulers in Europe in the 18th Century. He is involved not only with her, but with her crafty chief minister, Potemkin (whom the battleship in the classic Eisenstein silent film is named for). The officer attracts her attention because he is handsome, and the British Minister is fully willing to let him see the Empress, as he may hear something of use and he may "ease" Anglo-Russian relations. As it turns out, the young ninny is such a believer in middle class morality that he blows a great opportunity, loses a chance to witness a great figure in world history, and even - unwittingly - so misunderstands things that he accidentally insults her. Only her own sense of values keeps her from taking up an offer from a furious Potemkin to have the young man killed.

The basics of the play are kept in the movie, but it was jazzed up a bit. Jeanne Moreau makes a very attractive, sexy, alluring Empress. Peter O'Toole is a proper aristocratic numskull. Akim Tamiroff is a comic guard, browbeaten by his boss Potemkin (played with relish by Zero Mostel - a nice historical part for him for a change). Also, in one of his last roles, the now tragically silenced Jack Hawkins, giving his all as the British Ambassador.

I have given the film a 6, for it's attempt to record a minor play by Shaw, for it's cast, and for a scene I liked that dates the play - when O'Toole is supposed to show how the battle of Bunker's Hill was fought. The confrontation ends with the total demolition of the model of the battlefield. It is a minor sequence, but I did like it. But for all I do like about the film, if you are interested in the best work of George Bernard Shaw I would not go to this film first.

One of those movies that I saw ages ago, want to see again, to see if it has the same effect. Trying to capture Peter O'Toole's Whats New Pussycat flavor (although more buffoonish)& including a great array of character actors, Mostel, Hawkins, Tamiroff & Griffith the critics probably wanted this to be better than it is. But it is French legend Jeanne Moreau that is so wonderful. It was one of the first times I had seen her, actually probably the first, & she is not afraid to mix her sexiness with slapstick. With such a male cast it would have been easy for her to be just be scenery but she accepts her pratfalls brilliantly eg getting shot in the seat of her dress by clumsy O'Toole. if anyone has a copy of this gem please post this info