Mundos Opostos

Can someone respond to let me know why the name "Lorrison" was featured in so many movies around this time? I have never heard of a person in real life with that name; yet it pops up over and over. And here, the character played by Ava Gardner is never referred to is Isabel but always, always, by both names.

I first saw this movie on TV as a teenager and assumed that life in Manhattan would be like this, just as thought the publishing world would be as it's portrayed in "The Best of Everything."

This has very chic settings -- the East side locations much more believable than the brief excursion into the West side area ostensibly the scene of Heflin -- and Stanwkyck's -- childhood.

The acting is good. The plot is engaging. Decent lines. The direction, though, is very static. All the style comes from the presumably Sutton Place location and the elegant interiors and from the fabulous cast of real movie stars, with James Mason a suave cad prefiguring his brilliant Humbert Humbert a bit more than a decade later.

Gale Sondergaard is amusing as Stanwyck's elderly mother. At one point, she says, "I'm 55 years old." Interesting, as in real life she was only eight years older than Stanwyck, who was 42 when this came out.

Still and all, this movie has stuck in my head for many years as the epitome of chic. The actors are all plausible as socialites, and Gardner is properly gorgeous and evil as a (very) beautiful girl who's hustled her way over from the wrong side of the tracks.

It's fun, but it could have been really great, given the performers, the original author and the screenwriter.

As everyone knows, I don't like Ava Gardner, so usually if I like one of her movies, I say I like it "in spite of her." East Side, West Side is fantastic, including Ava, not in spite of her.

James Mason is married to Barbara Stanwyck, and in the 1940s, it was unusual for Hollywood to cast a woman past per prime as the lead. Some would say that's still the case now, and Barbara Stawyck, in her gray-streaked splendor, does a fantastic job. As does the fantastically conflicted James Mason, who gets seduced by his old flame Ava Gardner. As if one temptation isn't complicated enough, Barbara Stanwyck gets distracted by policeman Van Heflin! It's a fantastic drama that turns into so much more as the film goes on, and I'd love to read Marcia Davenport's original novel, to see if the Ava Gardner scenes are even steamier on the page. I love the script and the characters, not to mention the compelling storyline. It's thrilling, smart, romantic, and intense. This is one classic you're not going to want to miss!

Extremely busy marital melodrama which (rather unsuccessfully) lapses into a homicide investigation! New York City socialite Barbara Stanwyck loves and trusts investment counselor husband James Mason--even though he has a penchant for disappearing after-hours and returning home at four in the morning. Turns out old flame Ava Gardner is back in town; she's a high-class man-chaser who won't take no for an answer. Screenwriter Isobel Lennart, working from the novel by Marcia Davenport, starts things off routinely, but keeps adding characters until the scenario is bubbling over like a stew-pot. Van Heflin does wonders with a shapeless role as a war correspondent/ex-detective who ends up in jilted Stanwyck's kitchen, flirting with her in Italian, while Gardner is offered some juicy repartee (when Mason calls her "cheap", Ava replies, "That's what you like about me."). A country square-dance is curiously transplanted to a Manhattan penthouse, and Beverly Michaels' supporting performance congeals into high camp; still, Barbara and Van have an immediate rapport--one that is not apparent in her scenes with Mason (who doesn't help his cause by portraying the cad-husband like a petulant boy). Stanwyck, outfitted and coiffed like a lady ten times her age, initially doesn't have much to do, but Lennart's script soon has her traveling all over the city--east side, west side, and beyond. It's a nervous, flighty picture, paced exhaustively by director Mervyn LeRoy, but overall quite watchable. **1/2 from ****

Barbara Stanwyck was a great actress over a long and distinguished career and this is an enjoyable drama about the lives and loves of upper income New Yorkers in the late forties. But as much as she delivers her usual sterling performance, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her as she is upstaged in the glamour stakes by both Cyd Charisse and Ava Gardner who are both at the apex of their beauty. A secondary niggle relating to the casting has both Babs and Cyd fighting for the affections of Van Heflin. Van Heflin!! On the other hand James Mason is well-cast as the weak-willed sleazy husband. Overall an impressive entry into the "woman's picture" of the forties genre.

Compelling. This film took me by surprise - I couldn't resist it. Stanwyck is always 100% watchable and moving and she's smart and Van Heflin is a man's man and a very subtly intense actor. Ava Gardner was outstanding and Cyd Charisse is excellent. Mason is not my cup of tea but he pulled it off. These are actors who move with fluid grace and attack their lines and we just don't have American actors like this at present. I watched it a second time because it was seamless and sexy in a very subtle way. The clothes are gorgeous too. All of the intimacy between Heflin and Stanwyck and the easy way he had of just declaring himself was exciting. I was too young to appreciate this actor before, but I'm old enough now to want men to be men in films again.