In viaggio con la zia

In a plot as zany as any the Marx Brothers could have hilariously mangled, the characters of Travels With My Aunt whirl you along with them through their oddball adventures. This is a film that just missed being a cinema landmark. But miss it does.

Travels With My Aunt has everything going for it: splendid performances, helzapoppin' pacing (except for one or two brief languishments in the directorial doldrums), clever writing (adapted from Graham Greene's endearing story), and a cast working the material for all it's worth. So why does it miss?

It misses because when it needs to be trying hard it lays back; and when it needs to lay back it tries too hard. And, more importantly, because it never grounds itself in the solid realm of the believable.

ALlso, every VHS print I've seen suffers from sound so muddy that I found myself rewinding to catch, and enjoy, some of the film's funniest lines. The editing on VHS prints also leaves a lot to be desired; a hectic, zany film doesn't need any "help" from eye-startling jumps past the occasional few sprocket holes.

Nevertheless the comic performances are brilliant, especially Louis Gossett Jr.'s as the patois-butchering, potheaded, half-mystical, half-cutthroat, hair-trigger-tempered Wordsworth. Maggie Smith's Aunt Augusta (a perfect name for a character who's anything but august) reigns like a mad queen over the whole cast throughout Augusta's self-narrated, self-indulgent, breathless reverie and search for her past loves & losses & triumphs. Alec McCowen plays Henry Pulling with perfectly understated aplomb, making you believe that his dowager aunt is leaving him breathless, bewildered, and yet bewitched by the world she leads him, from out of his insipid workaday life, to experience. As Tooley the young Cindy Williams deftly sends-up the pop-culture-soaked American youth of the time on a European spree: neither of Tooley's two feet ever seem to touch the earth, but her heart reaches out to touch Henry Pulling. And Henry, being Henry, manages to mismanage - but later learns that mismanaging is just part of...c'est la vie!

This film urges you to stop taking life and yourself too seriously, and to instead, as the old Schlitz beer spots used to exhort, "Grab for all the Gusto you can!" This is all well and good, but the film wants some sort of bottom, a sense of grounding, a matter of connection that's just not there despite the lovely pathos the energetic characters generate. Maybe it's that a film that's not just a vehicle for comic antics can't be all sparks and no fuel? That worked for the Marx Brothers, but their "storylines" were mere props for their well-rehearsed antics and brain-boggling doubletalk. But Travels With My Aunt actually tries to tell a touching human tale - yet, like Tooley's, the film's feet never touch the ground that an engaging tale needs to convince, to captivate its audience.

In the end, which seems to leave cast and audience suspended somewhere between earth and a fifth dimension, you wonder: is Maggie Smith's character really Henry Pulling's mother, and not his "aunt"? One thing's for sure: Henry's not going back to being a bank manager, or to anally tending his little garden where the loud trains - of life and experience and adventure - had always, until now, passed him by.

This is a pretty odd movie that mixes drama with adventurous elements and yet somehow works.

The movie is definitely entertaining to watch, with a good cast, some fine comedy moments and a good solid adventurous story. Nothing too big or fancy, just a decent enjoyable movie quality movie to kill some time with.

The movie has a perfectly adventurous way of storytelling, meaning that lots of places around the world are being visited in short amount of time and many different characters come and go.

The movie obviously had some great production values, since the movie is set all around the globe, from Paris to Istanbul and everything around it and between. The movie is also looking with some lively, deliberately over-the-top looking sets and costumes (both nominated for an Oscar with the costumes even eventually winning.). But what else was to expect from a George Cukor movie. The man who is known for director cheerful and good musical mostly in the '50's and '60's including "My Fair Lady" but also comedies, like "Born Yesterday" and well known serious drama classics as well, such as "Gaslight", "The Philadelphia Story" and for some part, before he was booted from the set, also "Gone with the Wind".

He mixed all those previous styles he had worked with before in this movie. The end result is a quite unique and one of a kind movie, that works fine on the adventurous level, as well as the comical and dramatic one.

The movie is well cast with Maggie Smith in an absolutely splendid role. A role that even got her an Oscar nomination. She also had some great chemistry with Alec McCowen, who is obviously the least known actor of the main cast. His role even got him a Golden Globe nomination. Abolutely great and humorously entertaining was Louis Gossett Jr. in his role. He not only shows that he is a great actor but also how well he can handle the comedy genre. His character provides the movie with the most and biggest laughs. Too bad that his career has derailed so badly the last couple of decades, ever since his Oscar winning role for "An Officer and a Gentleman", from 1982.

But no, when you look at this movie you'll realize that it also is far from a perfect one. The story gets a bit too odd at times and the storytelling is just off. The movie also too quickly ends some potentially interesting or amusing plot lines and the different adventurous/comedy and drama elements don't always go together well.

Nevertheless it was a movie I mostly enjoyed watching and I wouldn't mind viewing it again.

A good entertaining movie, that definitely deserves to be seen.

7/10

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With all the talent connected to this film, it's amazing that it isn't better. Katharine Hepburn was the original choice for the lead, but some kind of contract dispute stopped her from doing it. Maggie Smith took over the role and won an Academy Award nomination. Even so, many critics complained at the time that she over-acted, but I feel she's the life and breath of what fun there is in the movie.

Anthony Powell died recently, so I decided to watch a movie for which he won an Academy Award for designing the costumes. George Cukor's "Travels with My Aunt" is no masterpiece but enjoyable enough, with Maggie Smith as a fun-loving woman who takes her nephew across Europe. There's a number of high jinks along the way. It looks like a movie that they had fun making. It's not any sort of great movie, but I liked it.

In addition to Alec McCowen as the nephew, the supporting cast includes Louis Gossett Jr. (An Officer and a Gentleman) and Cindy Williams (American Graffiti).

Graham Greene's novels can be so subtle as to tend toward the obscure. It's no wonder, then, that "Travels" translated to film tends to meander a bit. Greene himself admitted that he wasn't really sure where Henry and Aunt Augusta were going to land next.

The travels here are of two types -- physical, across Europe, and temporal, as Augusta reminisces. One breaks up the other, while still advancing the plot, such as it is, although at times it seems to disappear.

The chief enjoyments here are the travels of the physical kind -- the varied scenery, the sumptuous architectures, the brilliant photography, the geographically-appropriate costumes.

The acting isn't bad, either. One can but wish they'd had more to work with.