scotty12

This film deserves to be better known. If you liked Local Hero or Gregory's Girl, you will probably enjoy this one as well. It has the same quirky charm and unbelievably good weather to display the beauties of the Celtic fringe of Scotland. Some of the accents sound more Irish than Scottish, Bill Travers particularly, but he does make valiant efforts.

Not a deep film but a real delight, and well worth keeping to put in the VCR on a miserable winter's night.

The 40s and 50s produced many alluring performances from beautiful and sexy actresses and Rita Hayworth's in Gilda is one of the most provocative of all. The film is good and quite deep, the male leads are better, but Hayworth's performance is simply stunning and unforgettable. She may not have been the most beautiful 40s actress (Gene Tierney and Veronica Lake were more classic beauties imo), but if you look closely her ability to show the sweet, the vulnerable, and especially the wanton, in women has not been bettered. Somehow her character gets under the male viewer's skin in the same way as it does to the male characters in the film.

Modern film femme fatales are a pale shadow by comparison, for example Linda Fiorentino or Sharon Stone. I'm not sure why. It could be either that nowadays allure is too much equated with sex or nudity (less tantalising than several dashes of suggestion) or maybe it's that present day equivalents are portrayed as hard as nails without the necessary mix of sadness and vulnerability.

Whatever, if you've never appreciated what the appeal of 40s noir is, this is definitely one to try.

What a magnificent work this is! Even in its sadly butchered state, it seems like a masterpiece. Citizen Kane may have scored higher on technical innovation, but it is less touching and involving than this.

I always thought of Gregg Toland as the master b/w cinematographer of all time mostly for his work on Kane, but the cinematography by Stanley Cortez on the Ambersons is as good if a little less showy, and surprisingly similar to Kane's.

Maybe, like the Venus de Milo, the flaws resulting from the petty interference with the director's vision somehow add to the overall impression. We can look at the film and imagine what if? how about this? rather than merely saying the film is perfect.