Le Scandale Costello

The subject for the time was a brave, difficult and daring one to tackle and the title role is one that would pose many challenges in terms of how to act it and in the context of the subject. To me, at her best Joan Crawford was a fine actress, especially in melodrama where she was one of the best, although with hit and miss film choices throughout her career and a tendency to overact in comedy. Rossano Brazzi has not really done a lot for me in the past, tend to find him wooden.

Just like the subject, 'The Story of Esther Costello' is a brave and daring film that is appropriately hard to watch (it would have been insulting to sugarcoat or trivialise a subject like this, one that is hard hitting as they come). Am another person that doesn't agree with 'The Story of Esther Costello' being called unintentionally funny and considering the subject and what happens saying that sounds somewhat disrespectful, but maybe that's just me.

By all means 'The Story of Esther Costello' isn't perfect. It does get too heavy on the melodrama at times and has campy parts, namely in the latter stages.

Also felt that the aftermath and consequences of the traumatic event that happens later on (don't want to spoil it) were rather contrived and were not remotely realistic.

Crawford's performance is an emotional powerhouse at its best and to me she didn't overact. Brazzi was a big surprise, he never had a character that was this despicable and he manages to be both charming and genuinely creepy. Not wooden at all. The acting honours, in the most challenging role (playing deaf, or blind, or mute individually is a tough task, it is even tougher when one has to play all three simultaneously like here), is a very intensely moving Heather Sears. The direction is accomplished enough.

Furthermore, 'The Story of Esther Costello' is very handsomely mounted visually and Georges Auric's unsettling score has so much atmosphere. The script is sincere and didn't seem too overwrought or talk-heavy on the most part. The story pulls no punches and it really hit me hard, both in giving me the chills and in tugging at my heart-strings.

On the whole, found a lot to admire even if it didn't completely succeed. 7/10

Leonard Maltin said that the movie was often "unintentionally funny." Sure, I find rape hilarious. I meant that in a sarcastic way, mind you. I don't know why Mr. Maltin found this film funny, because it isn't. It is about a blind, deaf, and dumb girl named Esther and the way she adapts to society with the aid of a wealthy socialite named Margaret Landi. Joan Crawford and Heather Sears are incredible in their respective roles of Margaret and Esther. Miss Crawford did an amazing job, very unlike anything else she did. I highly recommend this film.

This film is perfectly cast, with Joan Crawford at the helm, playing out her trademark histrionics. She was accustomed to this typecasting, and accordingly played it to the hilt in The Story of Esther Costello. This melodramatic on screen persona is a far cry from her early work, in such films as Rain (1932) where she plays a prostitute.

Crawford's melodramatic persona was a safe bet for her since Mildred Pierce (1945) for which she won the Academy Award. This was the making of Crawfod as well as the breaking. She seemed to be stuck in the character of Mildred Pierce from then on in.

As for her co-star Rossano Randi, it was a brave move for him to take on the part of the slime ball rapist, embezzler, and exploiter. It was a risk for his career as an actor, and it could have the affect of stereotyping people from Latin extraction.

The part of the title role; as in Esther Costello, was played exceeding well by Heather Sears. All of her acting was conveyed through emotion and gestures alone. This was especially played well in her vulnerable scenes, such as that of the rape victim.

The fact that Esther overcomes many of her obstacles, the narrative of the story turns victimhood into survival. A powerful theme with a message of hope. However the end of the film, where Esther recovers from her disabilities, is too much.

If the viewer can overcome the melodrama of this film, it has some powerful messages in it. For that reason it's worth a look at.

Joan Crawford looked back on The Story of Esther Costello as her last "really top" movie and remarked that if she had earned her Oscar for Mildred Pierce, she should have gotten "two" for Esther Costello. Perhaps one each for the dramatic arches of her eyebrows, which by this stage of her career were pencilled in with such savage abandon that they could have spanned the wide Missouri.

The grim determination she brought to every role at this late stage in her career remains tauter than ever. As a wealthy American visiting her birthplace in Ireland, she is nudged by the local Padre to look in on poor Esther (Heather Sears), a girl rendered blind and deaf by the explosion of a grenade left over from the "troubles." and living in squalid poverty. Of course Crawford takes Esther back to America, where she finds her the best schools for those similarly afflicted. Soon, the heart-wrenching tale reaches the press, at the same time luring Crawford's long-lost husband (Rossano Brazzi) out of the hole he's been hiding in.

Implausibly, Crawford falls for him all over again, and succumbs to his grandiose schemes for national and European fund-raising rallies for the "Esther Costello Fund," a racket for his self-aggrandizement. He also drinks a lot and starts stealing peeks at the blind Esther slipping in and out of her clothes. (She's busting out of the schoolgirlish frocks and ribbons she's given to dress in.)

Along happens a young reporter who's also smitten with Esther but who starts suspecting that the racket is not on the up and up. From then on it's a race to see whether Brazzi's financial chicanery or his unhealthy interest catches up with him. Crawford does, however, and ends the melodrama a la Thelma Jordon.

The distinctive and responsive score is by Georges Auric, and Jack Clayton gets an odd credit that suggests he had more to do with the movie than its nominal director. The story is certain offbeat and interesting enough, but its social comment invariably defers to the lures of heavy melodrama. The film reaches a crescendo when Brazzi learns that Esther has been left alone; he slithers to her bedside while thunder crashes and the French doors blow open to let a torrent of rain into the room...You get the picture. It's the kind of touch that's effective to watch but which undermines any claim to a serious exploration of the unusual subject matter. It's that kind of literal heavy-handedness that led Lenny Bruce to devise an irreverent (and very funny) routine on this movie's story line.

The first part is the most interesting : it may reminds you of Montgomery Clift , as a private taking in a young child and teaching him English to communicate with him at the end of WW2 ("the search");most likely Anne Bancroft (Annie Sullivan) and her pupil Patty Duke (Helen Keller )in Arthur Penn's masterpiece "the miracle worker"(which had not been yet made) .

They hint at Helen Keller and this fictitious story may have been partly inspired by her real story ;Helen Keller spent her whole life helping her fellow men,collecting funds to create schools ,a true heroine of the last century.

But ,as soon as Mrs Landi's '(Crawford) husband (Rossano Brazzi ) appears , it's downhill all the way ;acting becomes pure camp and the story is guaranteed to net nothing but horse laughs .Only Heather Sears ,the ugly duckling turned into a swan , preserves her dignity ;an extra star fo her.