st-shot
Joined Nov 2006
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International film's Tracy and Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, team up once again in A Special Day, an uncomfortable reflection by director Ettore Scola of Hitler's visit to Rome when Italy was in the throes of fascism. Together they made over a dozen films, mostly light comedies but A Special Day is a somber tale of two people trapped within their own society; one a child producing wife of a chauvinist bureaucrat, the other a homosexual liberal recently fired from his job as a radio announcer.
Hitler is coming to town and the entire apartment complex empties out to catch a glimpse with few exceptions. Antonietta (Loren) stays home to catch up on housework while Gabrielle (Mastroianni), persona non grata to begin with prefers to stay away from the "festivities." The two opposites meet and slowly form a bond over the course of the day, escaping if only for a brief moment the prisons they find themselves trapped in.
The Loren/Mastroianni chemistry has always been a given but the approach here is under far more melancholy circumstance in which they once again glowingly connect with superlative understated performances.
For his part, director Scola does not spare the Italian viewer of a certain age the slavish unbridled, worship poured on Hitler during that period, providing copious amounts of documentary footage and endless praise in a time (1938) where the future looked very promising for Italy going forward with Germany.
Hitler is coming to town and the entire apartment complex empties out to catch a glimpse with few exceptions. Antonietta (Loren) stays home to catch up on housework while Gabrielle (Mastroianni), persona non grata to begin with prefers to stay away from the "festivities." The two opposites meet and slowly form a bond over the course of the day, escaping if only for a brief moment the prisons they find themselves trapped in.
The Loren/Mastroianni chemistry has always been a given but the approach here is under far more melancholy circumstance in which they once again glowingly connect with superlative understated performances.
For his part, director Scola does not spare the Italian viewer of a certain age the slavish unbridled, worship poured on Hitler during that period, providing copious amounts of documentary footage and endless praise in a time (1938) where the future looked very promising for Italy going forward with Germany.
John Drew Barrymore brings the vaunted thespian family name but not the chops to the The Big Night, a somewhat pedestrian noir that looks like it was made on the cheap in a warehouse studio. A dark night of the soul coming of age drama Barrymore borders on cringing from start to finish with a whiny unconvincing performance.
Georgie La Main (Barrymore) wrestles with being 17 as a nerd outcast. When his bar owner father (Preston Foster) is humiliated by a sadistic sports writer in front of his patrons, George gets his hand on a gun and vows vengeance. In a walk on the wild side he spends the night coming of age quickly in a series of seamy situations.
Barrymore is certainly no Dean and his teenage angst fails to resonate. Director Joe Losey, making his last film before being chased out of the US by "Red Hunters" seems distracted, his cast unenergized his sets and compositions lifeless and lacking ambience; the film's most exhilerating moment a drum solo in a jazz club. The Big Night offers little in return.
Georgie La Main (Barrymore) wrestles with being 17 as a nerd outcast. When his bar owner father (Preston Foster) is humiliated by a sadistic sports writer in front of his patrons, George gets his hand on a gun and vows vengeance. In a walk on the wild side he spends the night coming of age quickly in a series of seamy situations.
Barrymore is certainly no Dean and his teenage angst fails to resonate. Director Joe Losey, making his last film before being chased out of the US by "Red Hunters" seems distracted, his cast unenergized his sets and compositions lifeless and lacking ambience; the film's most exhilerating moment a drum solo in a jazz club. The Big Night offers little in return.
New York detectives Danny Madigan (Richard Widmark) and Rocco Bonaro (Harry Guardino) are hard nosed cops who bend the rules slightly when they find themselves unprofessionally distracted while trying to pinch what turns out to be a far more dangerous criminal than expected, who grabs their guns, escapes and shoot and kills a cop. A furious police commissioner (Henry Fonda) gives them 72 hours to catch the guy or face severe reprimand.
Director Don Siegel delivers his typical economical touch to Madigan as he makes his way from Harlem to Coney Island in search of leads but its a tired paint by the numbers pursuit with a TV show style and an absolutely dreadful, ill fitting music score that sounds like it was slapped on as an afterthought.
Widmark comes across fatigued and it shows in tiresome dialogues with his wife (Inger Stevens) and Fonda's commissioner in a series of drab confrontations.
There are a couple of tense, well edited shootouts but with Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and Siegel's own Dirty Harry upon the horizon as new sheriffs in town Madigan finds itself behind the times dealing with a Naked City scenario and style, nearly a decade previous, combined with lackluster performances that gives it an overriding anachronistic feel from the outset.
Director Don Siegel delivers his typical economical touch to Madigan as he makes his way from Harlem to Coney Island in search of leads but its a tired paint by the numbers pursuit with a TV show style and an absolutely dreadful, ill fitting music score that sounds like it was slapped on as an afterthought.
Widmark comes across fatigued and it shows in tiresome dialogues with his wife (Inger Stevens) and Fonda's commissioner in a series of drab confrontations.
There are a couple of tense, well edited shootouts but with Popeye Doyle in The French Connection and Siegel's own Dirty Harry upon the horizon as new sheriffs in town Madigan finds itself behind the times dealing with a Naked City scenario and style, nearly a decade previous, combined with lackluster performances that gives it an overriding anachronistic feel from the outset.
