Coisas da Sorte

This is problematic from the start. Stanley Baker seems okay but while he enthuses over his young love we are only too aware that poor Ginger Rogers is a little old for her role. Another problem arises almost immediately when we realise just how flat and uninteresting this is going to be. Baker looses it as he has to become more two faced and Rogers doesn't stand a chance as she has to take on another lover. Only Herbert Lom stands a chance of saving the day and as things hot up towards the end it seems as if he might but then the story unravels and we don't care about anything at all.

This movie seems to be hampered by preserving Ginger Rogers' good girl image. This leads to a lot of highly unlikely scenarios, none of which ring true.

Ginger Rogers stars with Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom in "Twist of Fate," a 1954 film shot on location in the Riviera. Even in black and white, the scenery is wonderful.

Rogers is Johnny, an ex-showgirl living on the largesse of her sugar daddy Louis Galt (Baker), who's been separated from his wife supposedly for years and whose divorce will be final any minute. After a fight with him, she runs off and has a minor accident with her car. Going to the nearest house, she meets Pierre (Jacques Bergerac). (In real life, Rogers had the same reaction when she saw him as Dorothy Malone did - she married him.) Johnny and Pierre fall in love, and she wants to leave Louis. First of all, he's a criminal, though she's unaware of this; secondly, he's been lying to her, which she finds out the night of the accident; and thirdly, he turns out to have a violent streak. He announces that he won't let her leave.

Louis sees that the diamond bracelet he gave her is in the hands of a con man (Herbert Lom) and thinks he's her lover. That's where the twist of fate comes in.

Very derivative film, with Rogers excellent as Johnny, and with good performances by Baker and Lom, both scary in different ways.

Jacques Bergerac was a handsome Fremchman, and that was about it. My mother once told me, "He was someone who married beautiful actresses." After he had married a couple of them and done some films, he became the head of Revlon's Paris office. Bless his heart, at 86, he's still with us.

Lively and Lovely to Look at Movie that moves rapidly here and there with Everyone trying to figure out Who is Who and What is What and is breathless to say the least. The Cast, including the Dramatization of Ginger Rogers Career is OK if nothing remarkable. It is the Action and the Intrigue that Star here.

Some on location Photography and Criminal behavior Spice things up beyond the rather Bland Romance Angles. There are extended Fight Scenes, Misidentifications, Smuggling, Thievery, and Murder, Adultery, Betrayal, and after all, a Deathbed confession that thankfully, and predictably clears things up.

There is enough here to recommend because once things get going it is all in Perpetual Motion that makes for a Fun Film Experience, although it fails to be sharp enough for it to rise above expectations, but it does manage to deliver just that.

Ginger Rogers stars in this portmanteau of romance and thriller, which is called "Beautiful Stranger" on the title. Eddie Byrne is his usual disreputable self - "I stole it, I'm innocent".

Rogers is the girlfriend of an apparently reputable millionaire living on a continental island when she meets a young potter at a bijou beatnik house on the coast.

Bizarrely, her Rolls Royce keeps changing colour from white to silver, even during car chases. I'm not sure if this is a filming fault, because of film processing, or a mistake made in digitisation.

Eddie creeps around a house and the potter looks outside but doesn't see his Citroen (the same one as used by the police) parked clearly in front of the house. The same white telephone is used throughout the house and office.