Desejos Ocultos

1957 was apparently a year for muliptle personalities. Joanne Woodward got her Oscar for The Three Faces Of Eve and Eleanor Parker came out with this film Lizzie.

With the acclaim that Woodward's film got which made her a star, Lizzie seems to be lost in the shuffle. That's a pity because Parker's performance is noteworthy and may have been Oscar worthy.

The similarities between the films are really astonishing. Parker is a woman with three recognizable personalities, a mousy good girl, a tramp who writes nasty letters to her other selves and a relatively normal type. Both go through some therapy with a psychiatrist in this film Richard Boone to find a cure. As is usual with films on mental illness the cure is way too simplistic. But the moviegoing public wants easy answers to life's problems. It's why they go to the cinema.

Also note a good performance by Joan Blondell as Lizzie's frowsy drunk of an aunt whom she lives with

Lizzie is wortthwhile viewing.

Shirley Jackson's "The Bird's Nest" has always been one of my favorite novels, so I was excited to find that it had been made into a movie (albeit one that's nearly impossible to find) 'way back when. The film's black-and-white 1950s graininess perfectly evokes its era, as do the starchy clothes and rigid hair of the characters, and the dreadful, over-the-top "score" of shrieking, dissonant violins. The beginning of the movie promised an experience so terrible that I was tempted to hold off watching it till I could gather some of my snarkier friends, but it was already too late -- I'd been sucked in and was having too much fun to quit. As the movie goes on, it gets much better, yet it remains enjoyable, every now and again flinging itself headlong into vertiginous swoops of insane bathos. All in all, I found it perfectly delightful, and can only summarize it by plagiarizing Mae West: When it's good, it's very good, and when it's bad, it's better.

''Lizzie" is an intriguing film with the potential to be better than it is. It starts off well with the ever reliable Eleanor Parker setting the mood and immediately winning audience sympathy. Alarmingly, on Elizabeth's return home from work, the film suddenly feels trashy with Joan Blondell, as her frumpy aunt, giving a wild, over the top performance that I find quite repulsive. What a role for Myrna Loy who would have nailed it. Richard Boone matches Parker in class, giving a sound and convincing performance as the pragmatic psychiatrist.

Parker goes somewhat adrift in transforming from the timid Elizabeth to the vulgar Lizzie and the night club scene comes across as ludicrous ; a sort of Jekyll and Hyde parody. I have always admired Eleanor Parker but it's sad to see her talents compromised by unsure direction and the painful scene-stealing attempts by the shrill Blondell.

I intend keeping my DVD copy but will be re-watching the film for the best scenes ; those featuring Parker and Boone.

The very same year Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve, Eleanor Parker played in a nearly identical film released a few months earlier. She, too, played an unstable woman with three personalities who seeks help from a therapist. Some of the scenes were so similar, it's as if one of the screenplays was a rough draft of the other! When Richard Boone hypnotized Eleanor and asked, "May I speak to Lizzie?" you can't help but recall when Lee J. Cobb hypnotized Joanne and asked, "May I speak to Eve Black?"

When you research the similarities between the film, you'll find a sickening backstory: 20th Century Fox tried to "hurry up" the publication of the book behind The Three Faces of Eve because the book behind Lizzie (produced by MGM) had been a hit and sparked public interest in multiple personality disorders. One movie is very famous, and one is obscure and has never been heard of. It's not fair, but that's Hollywood for you.

Lizzie is an inferior movie, but once again, it's not really fair. Eleanor Parker is a far superior actress, and she doesn't falter in anything she's asked to do. However, the screenplay is weak and the production obviously wasn't given as much money. Script versus script, Joanne is given a lot more to do to shock the audiences; but had the cast been reversed, Eleanor would have been more than capable of handling it-and much better.

Basically, if you like the story of The Three Faces of Eve and want to see the "original" with Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone, and Joan Blondell instead, or if you want to give justice its due by watching the movie that came first with an open mind, rent it. If you do, you'll get to see a twenty-year-old Johnny Mathis performing "It's Not for Me to Say" and "Warm and Tender" at the piano bar! You'll also see Richard Boone in a totally against-type performance as an intelligent and sympathetic therapist (far more convincing than Lee was), and Eleanor Parker showing off her wonderful acting chops as much as she's allowed to with a B-picture screenplay.

I thought "Mommie Dearest" was on of the campiest films I had ever seen, but this one topped it! Maybe it was just the mood I was in, but I couldn't stop laughing. The acting was way over the top, the lighting was terrible...it was like watching one of those old Carrol Burnett parodies. I loved it!