Quinze jours ailleurs

A film of love and hate.Between the fallen actor and his aging director;between the director and his hysterical wife;between Carlotta and her former husband;between the young actor and the old one.In a nutshell, an intense melodrama in the vein of these Minnelli extravaganzas ("some came running" "home from the hill" and particularly "the four horsemen of the Apocalypse" -remember the famous scene where the whole family is gathered around the table while a storm is raging-).

Minnelli had already broached Hollywood before in "the bad and the beautiful" the ending of which was one of the most ferocious I know.Excerpts of this 1952 work are used here with stunning results.Douglas watching himself when he was supposed to be young and famous recalls Gloria Swanson watching her silent movies (with her former director Von Stroheim now her butler) in "Sunset Boulevard".

But it's Cinecitta now.A new Italian cinema is rising and Minnelli is aware of that.He had probably seen Fellini's and Antonioni's works and their influence emerge sometimes:Rosanna Schiaffino 's character reminds me of Anita Eksberg in "la dolce vita";the posh receptions have an Antonioni atmosphere("la notte").On the other hand,Douglas's mad drive might have influenced Fellini for his segment of "spirits of the dead" ,"Tobby Dammit" (1968).

But if the movie has a message ,it's this one:If you want somebody you can trust ,trust yourself.Stop hiding in the movie theaters (or in the films),as Douglas's character says to Schiaffino on the beach ,and get a life!

Vincente Minnelli's film version bears little resemblance to Irwin Shaw's novel of the same name, not that there's anything wrong with that. This movie belongs on the second half of a double feature with "The Carpetbaggers" as a guilty pleasure I can't resist watching. It spoofs the difficulties American directors had in making quality movies overseas when European producers expressed no interest in quality, only profit. This is a lesser alternative to Fellini's "8 1/2" and Godard's "Contempt," which explored the same theme, and its trashiness is expressed perfectly with footage from "The Bad and the Beautiful," another Minnelli-Douglas collaboration. Favorite line, Edward G. Robinson to Douglas regarding George Hamilton: "He's crazier on the loose than you were locked up."

What the heck were they thinking? Oh, I get it: Take the success of "La Dolce Vita", infuse it w/ the elements of a behind-the-scenes look into the tawdry goings on of a troubled Hollywood production and transplant it back to Rome (Say, "Cinecitta", boys and girls!). And for good measure, have a director w/ an Italian sounding name take responsibility for it.

Trashy camp only begins to describe the little seen(and therefore intriguing to self-confessed cinephiles--we have TCM to thank) "Two Weeks In Another Town"(1962), but what a gloriously colorful bit of camp it is. Director Vincente Minnelli is an acknowledged master of color and---I don't know what else. The dialog has to be heard to be believed("Don't swallow all those pills! The doctor will have to come up and pump your stomach. You know how much that sickens me!"). Everybody spits, dribbles and sweats acid in this movie. Need it be said that everyone overacts? It's a wonder anything at all was left of the scenery after they chewed it up! And having pretty boy George Hamilton play a knife-wielding bad boy is a bit much, no? One exception is the young Daliah Lavi who left the bad acting to the two other women principals (Cyd Charisse and Claire Trevor)and just let her natural charms show through. She's even more fetching here because she looks to have more meat on her bones than in her subsequent roles( The Detainer in the OTHER Casino Royale).

Kirk Douglas as the main character who gets to do the thankless job of saving a movie in trouble after its director(Edward G. Robinson) suffers a heart attack tries to do the same thing w/ this movie and barely succeeds. A plus, though, is that he tools around in(and gets to trash) a cool-looking Maserati convertible. Watching that car alone is worth it. As for the rest of the movie, it's like bad tabloid reportage. We know it's trash, but we can't keep our eyes off it!

Trying to repeat their success in The Bad and the Beautiful with the same studio MGM, director Vincent Minnelli and actor Kirk Douglas give another go at the fabulous world of film making. This time though MGM sprung for color and a location shooting in Rome, the other town the title is referring to.

If Tyrone Power were alive he might have sued MGM because I believe Kirk Douglas's character of Jack Andrus is based on him and the relationship he had with producer Darryl Zanuck and second wife Linda Christian. In her days Linda was quite the party animal, as much as Cyd Charisse portrays here.

The Zanuck character is a director named Maurice Krueger played by Edward G. Robinson. Changing him from a producer to a director probably saved a whole lot of legal fees.

Very simply the plot is that washed up film actor Douglas who is in a high priced alcoholic asylum as the film opens receives an offer from his former director Robinson to come to Rome to help him with a film that threatens to run behind schedule. Douglas comes to Rome and becomes quite indispensible to Robinson, especially after Robinson suffers a heart attack and Douglas has to finish the film.

His hedonistic ex-wife Charisse is also in Rome among many other temptations. It all works out for Douglas, but not quite in the way he would have thought.

Best performance in the film in my opinion is that of Claire Trevor who is Robinson's shrewish wife, based very much on Darryl Zanuck's wife Virginia.

According to the Films of Kirk Douglas, both Minnelli and Douglas were disappointed in how the film turned out. It certainly doesn't measure up to The Bad and the Beautiful. Douglas blamed it on a botched editing job. That maybe so, but my own opinion is that the Code was still in place in 1962 and maybe had this been done ten years later, certain things could have been made far more explicit to the audiences.

Two Weeks in Another Town is still quite a curiosity, catch it if you can.

If you liked the "Bad & The Beautiful" with Kirk Douglas,( Jack Andrus) this picture is pretty close to the same story line, however, there is plenty of color, drama and romance. Great actors appear in this film, Edward G. Robinson,(Maurice Kruger), "The Red House" puts his heart and soul into the role and yells and screams his head off as a big shot movie director. Kirk Douglas still plays the role as an abusive drinker who is reformed and is placed in some rather difficult situations from actor to assistant director. Cyd Charisse, (Charlotta) adds plenty of sexy charm to the various scenes and George Hamilton, (Davie Drew) gives a great supporting role. For some reason over the years, I seemed to have missed viewing this film and found it quite enjoyable and also seeing how very young all the actors appeared in 1962. Enjoy