HarveyA

Very silly but very entertaining movie. Great cast. And the dancing...one number, I think, compares very favorably with the big dance number in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The individual dancers are superb. One female dancer (I don't think it was Ann Miller) does steps I've never seen before and should attract the admiration of skilled orthopedists. Milton Berle and Jack Okie make an interesting pair of con men, and if you remember Uncle Miltie from his television days, you'll see that he was practicing his "schtick" long before TV. It's also interesting to see Jane Froman--beautiful face and beautiful voice--before the accident that crippled her (and led to "With a Song In My Heart" with Susan Hayward.)

I think it is highly significant that this movie was made in 1950, five years after WW II. Underneath the adventure and the romance, it is a story of ethnicity, of history, of the cost of war, of survival under great duress and of the need for cooperation among peoples, if humanity is ever to reach its goal, its peak. The exhausted Englishman, the pathetic philosophical Frenchman, the rigid and angry Nazi, the strong but innocent American, the wise and patient old mountaineer, the girl trying to achieve what her father could not--triumph, that is, peace. It is a plea for selflessness, since the mountain cannot be climbed by one person alone. It is a message that has meaning for every age. The scenery, the casting and the acting are all superb.

This is a fabulous movie and I can't add much to what has already been said. But I did notice this: some of Eli Sunday's preachments as he "cures" the old lady of arthritis are taken word for word from Elmer Gantry. Maybe they go back further, to Billy Sunday or some other preacher, but the words are identical.

Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal, as usual. Just as Meryl Streep is almost without question, the best female actor of our time, Day-Lewis holds that honor for the other side. Imagine a movie with both of them. It would be memorable. On the other hand, There Will Be Blood is memorable all by itself.