Cynthia

All of the reviews seem to be about Elizabeth Taylor, but very little mention about George Murphy and Mary Astor. Murphy almost sleepwalks his way through the film. Sixteen years as a clerk in a hardware store without a raise? Really? Where's the gumption, the backbone in the character. Is Napoleon so small a town that he can't find a better job somewhere else? A better actor would have shown some bitterness as being denied the opportunity to become a doctor. Mary Astor was going to be a concert pianist. Surely these failures of ambition can't simply be blamed on the sickly child that was born to them.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR's fans are really the only ones who will find any reason to watch CYNTHIA, a sugar-coated confection about a sickly girl churned out by MGM for the fast developing teen who was turning into a woman almost overnight.

Here, at fifteen, she's still got a lot of her girlish charm, exhibits a modest singing voice (is that her???), and portrays a girl who's so fragile that her parents hold her back from doing anything more strenuous than going to the corner store.

Ironically, it foretells Liz's own lifelong struggle with illness. GEORGE MURPHY and MARY ASTOR are her rather stern but loving parents and JIMMY LYDON is the boyfriend who gives Taylor her first screen kiss. S.Z. SAKALL is her encouraging music teacher.

It's all very downbeat without a sense of humor, too straightforward in the telling for its own good. Unimaginative and more of a B-film than anything else.

Elizabeth Taylor seemed to go almost overnight in films from child to voluptuous young woman. But in this nice low-budget (for MGM) movie, made when she was 15 at most, there is something of the sweetly awkward colt about her, in the title role. There are scenes in which she sort of oscillates between childhood and adulthood--the visual equivalent of an adolescent's voice cracking--and it was in this movie that she got her first screen kiss (from an engaging James Lydon).

It's a bittersweet movie, about the deferrals and compromises that one has to make in life--the parents who don't continue their higher education, the soldier who resumes his, the refugee professor. As Cynthia's mother, Mary Astor brings her usual warmth and common sense, and there are vague echoes of her questing, yearning character in "Dodsworth." Cynthia's illness is used as something of a metaphor for domestic discontent, and in view of Taylor's chronic health problems is a little unsettling in retrospect.

If the one-sentence synopsis, "A sickly teenager wishes more than anything to be allowed to perform in the school play," doesn't grab you, don't pay it any attention. Watch Cynthia anyway. It's a delightful gem from Elizabeth Taylor's younger days, even earlier than Little Women! And speaking of Little Women, Mary Astor plays Liz's mother in this film as well. George Murphy plays her father, and S.Z. Sakall rounds out the cast as the school's lovable theater director.

At the start of the film, Mary and George are shown young and in love, and their adorable romance quickly blossoms into marriage. They have grand plans to live in Vienna and study music and medicine, but when Mary gets pregnant, their plans go on hold temporarily. Fifteen years later, they're stuck in the same small town, renting a house they can't afford, struggling to pay their daughter's outrageous doctor's bills on a one-income salary from George's work in a hardware store. The parents' part of the film is actually quite sad, as you feel their disappointment as well as their guilt whenever they resent their lost dreams. Both George and Mary give wonderful performances.

Because George and Mary are so three-dimensional, it's difficult to call Liz the gem of the film, but she really is. She's so delightful, innocent, charming, passionate, and frail, culminating in such a captivating performance it's absolutely impossible not to love her. And since it's so impossible not to love her, you understand why George bows and scrapes to his boss as well as his brother-in-law, the greedy Gene Lockhart who treats Liz during her countless illnesses. You understand every part of Mary's behavior, as she embodies every mother's journey in raising a teenaged daughter. In one scene, Liz comes home from her first date. Mary wants to revel in her daughter's happiness, but she also tries to instill responsibility, like taking better care of her dress or soaking in a hot bath so she won't catch cold.

Every part of this movie is a joy to watch, from the cute to the tragic. You'll reach for your handkerchief from time to time, and if you watch this with your kids or parents, you'll cry even more. Everyone gives strong performances, and I'm sure you'll find your favorite moments as I have. At the heart of it all is Elizabeth Taylor, so beautiful and yet so innocent and fresh, even though it's impossible she ever felt what her character went through in real life. How could the gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor know what it felt like to be ignored by all the boys in school, and then the thrilling joy at being allowed to go to her first dance? It's called acting, and she does it beautifully.

I came into this film on TCM at 6:15 AM one morning, about 1/4 into it so I missed the opening and establishing of the players backgrounds and motivations, and I did not 'get them' until the denouement. The motivations of the mother and father as well as the uncle as the doctor and his family, are the engine that drive the plot. However, the directors job, once he has a decent story, is to elicit emotion of varying kinds from the audience. If you want to look at and watch Liz Taylor in all her youthful glory and magnetism, this is one of the best. Ironically if forebodes her complete life as a great actress who has health problems all her life. This film took me up and down several times much to my amazement and has a great Hollywood, happy wrap up. (nothing wrong with feeling good especially at 6 A M). Yes, of course there are some problems but I watch films for the way they make me feel in the end, not specifically to be a critic, especially films of this genre and contrived time period. I loved it because it made me feel alive and real!!We all have felt these same emotions in our youth and this well done film allows us feel these once more.