Nina

Film star Nina (Liza Minnelli) remembers her early days as a maid in an Italian hotel. There are many eccentric guests including Contessa Sanziani (Ingrid Bergman) who is longtime estranged from her husband Count Sanziani (Charles Boyer).

This is the last film from director Vincente Minnelli, Liza's father. This is rather flat. Maybe it could have been turned into a full fletch musical. Liza keeps singing but as a musical, it keeps holding back. Maybe it could strip away all the jumping around to get to a simple female friendship story. There is a dullness to the rundown hotel set. The various eccentric guests have an uncontrolled randomness to it all. The 'rape' scene shocked me at first. It's a bit of a mess. There is a good film here somewhere.

So much talent behind and in front of the camera to lay such a big egg. The whole thing reeks of decay and that seeps into the tenor of the film. There's no strong narrative flow to the film just a collection of scenes that lead nowhere. Liza is all over the place and only registers in a positive way twice, in the final hospital scene and most of all during the musical performance of the song Do It Again-really her only powerful moment. Of interest more for its cast of second generation performers than any merit or entertainment value of the actual film. Beside Liza there's a brief appearance of Isabella Rossellini in her screen bow and as Liza's cousin Tina Aumont, who was the daughter of B movie star Maria Montez and Jean-Pierre Aumont. Nonsensical mess was the unfortunate swan song of both Vincente Minnelli and Charles Boyer. Such a missed opportunity.

If you're not a Liza Minnelli fan, don't even bother because despite the other talent involved, this is her show (and not a very good one -- father Vincente Minnelli, the director, very wisely disowned the edited picture). This isn't one to watch for Minnelli's acting (like "The Sterile Cuckoo" or "Cabaret") or even her charm ("Arthur," "Stepping Out"), but her voice is incredible. While the songs (except for Gershwin's "Do It Again") are middling, Minnelli's delivery makes you forget how silly the story and her character are. Mother Judy had better songs to sing, but Liza's instrument was phenomenal at its peak.

On the plus side is Ingrid Bergman as the aging contessa. She's so at ease and has so much fun as the grande dame that it's impossible not to love her -- again. Reunited briefly with Charles Boyer more than 30 years after their first pairing (in "Gaslight"), she has on-screen history working for her in her playful scene with him. (Watch the melodramatic "Arch of Triumph" if you really want to see Bergman and Boyer connect.)

Another reason to watch is for the film debut of Bergman's daughter, Isabella Rossellini. She's barely in "A Matter of Time" -- and you can barely tell it's her under her nun's habit -- but seeing her luminous face next to her mother's has the feeling of the passing of a torch, or at the very least a blessing. To give you an idea of the kind of cornball humor at work here, Rossellini's character is called Sister Pia; the actress's real-life sister, of course, is Bergman's daughter Pia Lindstrom.

Vincente Minnelli in his farewell film as director got to direct daughter Liza. When the film opened up with Liza doing a full production number, I thought we had another Cabaret for Liza. Sad to say that that number and another one Liza did are the highlights of the film. When the players stop singing and dancing and get down to dialog, the film becomes rather pedestrian.

I don't think Ingrid Bergman ever got a handle on her character as the eccentric countess living on dreams and charity. Possibly Minnelli was concentrating too much on his daughter. Minnelli a country girl from rural Italy comes to Rome and gets a job as a chambermaid in a posh hotel courtesy of her cousin Tina Aumont. There Ingrid Bergman playing a slightly daft countess kind of takes her under her wing. Liza blossoms but Ingrid becomes more daft, Ingrid is just this side of Norma Desmond. Minnelli goes up and Ingrid goes down.

In addition to being the last film Vincente Minnelli directed this was also the farewell performance of Charles Boyer who co-starred with Bergman in Gaslight and Arch Of Triumph when they were big box office. Boyer plays a brief role as a former husband of Bergman, stopping by to see how she was doing.

See this one for Liza and her numbers.

How could the final film to be directed by Vincente Minnelli, for which he got to direct his daughter, Liza, and 1 starring Ingrid Bergman, for which her daughter, Isabella Rossellini, got to play her nurse, turn out to basically suck lemons?!? Just try and watch it all the way to the end (Liza's second singing bit comes near the end, and those two musical moments are the only bright spots in this dreadful film, although the movie itself is not a musical). I gave this 3-4 star (out of 10) movie an extra star because I love Ingrid without reservation, and Isabella would turn out to be darned good, too, but it's just a gift. Mr. Minnelli apparently spent his time encouraging Liza to over-emote (and hence overact), while ignoring his stars (even, in a bit part, Charles Boyer's last movie appearance), their roles and motivations. Watch "Cabaret" instead.