A writer tells a crowd in a café about a woman he knows who once feel deeply in love with a desperate, compulsive gambler.A writer tells a crowd in a café about a woman he knows who once feel deeply in love with a desperate, compulsive gambler.A writer tells a crowd in a café about a woman he knows who once feel deeply in love with a desperate, compulsive gambler.
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The various movie versions have each chosen different ways of framing the main narrative. In this adaptation, the main story is told as a flashback by a writer played by Leo Genn, whose character also played a role in the main story itself. Genn's character is actually a little underused, and doesn't allow him to use some of his best strengths as an actor, but the character itself is a suitable choice for the narration.
The story takes place in Monte Carlo, and it includes a lot of location footage. But, at least in the public domain print (which could be the problem), the setting and scenery are never quite as striking as you would have expected them to be. Many other movies have used the same setting to more memorable effect.
The main story has Merle Oberon suitably cast as the young widow who becomes irresistibly attracted to a desperate gambler, and who tries to save him from his addiction to roulette. Oberon's rather ethereal, dreamy presence makes her character's actions seem believable. She is hindered, though, by some weak dialogue that sometimes reduces her deeper feelings to the level of clichés.
The gambler character is never fleshed out, and Richard Todd plays him in a one-dimensional fashion. To some degree, this is supposed to be the character's nature, but even a little more of a sympathetic side could have made the story more powerful. Todd, though, is also hindered by some stale dialogue, even more so than Oberon. The conversations between Oberon and Todd ought to have been the centerpiece of the movie, and with better dialogue they could easily have evoked more passion and tension.
The story itself focuses attention on the desire of a woman to change a man who really does not want to change all that much. As such, it is a thought-provoking character study, and it provides some useful ideas to think about. In this particular adaptation, the themes are all there on the surface, but they are never examined as deeply as they could have been. It is still adequate as a dramatic story, but it had the potential to be more than that.
The main difference is the narration of the movie. In this original version, Leo Genn tells the story to a bunch of friends about how his old flame Merle Oberon fell in love with a gambler. In the remake, an elderly Ingrid Bergman tells the story of her own romance to her granddaughter. Besides that, the stories are nearly identical. Merle is a classy woman of high society who randomly chances upon a destitute gambler in Monte Carlo, Richard Todd. She senses that he's about to commit suicide, and she makes it her personal mission to save him and inspire him to live. It doesn't really feel like a 1952 drama, but instead one from the 1930s. It's very melodramatic and has hardly any depth to it, but if you love Merle, you can try it. I found it rather thin, but since it was such a short movie I figured it wouldn't hurt me to finish it.
Genn is a successful author, and he and some friends and unwanted leeches are vacationing in Monte Carlo. He takes Merle Oberon to the Casino, and leaves her to watch the roulette table. There she sees Richard Todd. He has just lost everything and is getting ready to kill himself. She saves him, and lends him money to pay back what he has stolen.... and then they fall in love. Or do they?
Last year's ROMA was a very interesting movie, but its constant use of deep focus disturbed me. In watching movies, the camera focuses on what you are supposed to look at. ROMA's deep focus never permitted you to focus on the story, because something else might grab your attention: a riot outside, or a marching band, or a giant statue of a crab. Might the story wander off to look at them? Yet with a story by Zweig, with its ironic twists and turns, its sardonic and self-slighting attitudes, such camerawork might work.
Maybe it did. The copy I looked at was a very soft print, and seems to have been cut by half an hour from its original 90-minute length. Nonetheless, Victor Saville's direction makes this the most successful adaptation of a Zweig story I have seen.
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- Quotes
The Young Man: You've been talking all night to a gambler and a thief. I put the word 'thief' second, notice? All my life I've been a gambler. No, don't go... listen to me. I think you should hear what sort of a mudpie you've dipped your ladylike fingers into. I was born in Ireland where my father owned a racing stable. At the age of 6 I was saving pennies to back horses for the local bookmaker. Then when I came to England and school, I stopped backing horses and taught the other kids how to play poker. I used to win. At Oxford I got in with the racing set again, and I lost a packet, more than I could ask my father for, so I was sent down. My old man put me into his business in Dublin, providing I promised never to gamble again. So for five years I neither touched a card nor made a bet. I thought I'd got the devil out of my system. As a reward, my father sent me to France to stay with my uncle in Paris. He had a business there. One afternoon we all went to Longshore. They didn't realize that to me, gambling was a disease, a disease which had lain dormant like a cancer for five long years. I knew nothing about form, but luck was with me. That day and the next and the next after, I won a packet. But I didn't really find what was to give me complete and utter satisfaction until I walked through the glass doors of the casino. The sight of the green baize, the scented atmosphere of the room made me drunk, reeling drunk. I was mad to gamble. I can remember my fingers twitching as I picked up the plaques from the cashier's desk and sat down like a drunken man and played. For five nights in succession I won. Some of them advised me to quit, but it was like asking a drug addict to give up dope. I couldn't quit. On the sixth night I had my return ticket into Paris, that was all. I found that my uncle had gone to London and my aunt had gone with him, so I was alone in my apartment without a sou in my pocket. But luck was with me this time. A few weeks before, my aunt had asked me to get something from the safe. And I knew where she kept the key, so I opened it... borrowed a pair of diamond earrings.
Linda Venning: You mean you stole them.
The Young Man: Call it what you like, but if I had won last night, I'd have gone back to the pawnbroker and nobody would have been any the wiser. I told you you were dipping your fingers into a mudpie.
Linda Venning: I followed you last night because I wanted to help you, but you seem to be beyond help.
The Young Man: If you'd known anything, you'd have recognized that fact in the first place. I'm through, and I've got the sense to know it. You're only delaying the end of the story.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Fulano y Mengano (1957)
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- Affair in Monte Carlo
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- Runtime
- 1h 30m(90 min)
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1