This must be the only mainstream S&M movie turned out by Hollywood after the Code and before, well, maybe "The Damned." The more cruel to the Henry Fonda character the Lucille Ball character is, the more he loves her. He gives her all his money. He risks his life.
I guess this is meant to be heartwarming, like the far more successful Runyon tale "Lady for A Day." I hadn't seen it in ten years and back then I thought the Ball character unspeakably mean to the Fonda character. Now it seems as if he is, figuratively speaking, lapping it up. And the whole thing is an unpalatable mix of the harsh, the cutesy, and the maudlin.
(The final scenes in which he makes her wheelchair-bound, dying person into royalty are very mawkish.
On the other hand, Fonda is excellent. Ball -- well, she always, even in her TV series, which I like, came across as hard; and here she plays a woman with a heart of pure cast-iron. Eugene Palette is always great to have around and Agnes Moorehead! What a marvelous actress she was. She shows a flair for comedy here. (Guess that wouldn't be surprising to the 99.9% of the public who know her, if at all, as Endora on "Bewitched" rather than for her 1940s roles such as the great performance she gives in "The Magnificent Ambersons.")
On the other hand, Fonda is excellent. Ball -- well, she always, even in her TV series, which I like, came across as hard; and here she plays a woman with a heart of pure cast-iron. Eugene Palette is always great to have around and Agens Moorehead! What a marvelous actress she was. She shows a flair for comedy here. (Guess that wouldn't be surprising to the 99.9% of the public who know her, if at all, as Endora on "Bewitched" rather than for her 1940s roles such as the great performance she gives in "The Magnificent Ambersons.")
I guess this is meant to be heartwarming, like the far more successful Runyon tale "Lady for A Day." I hadn't seen it in ten years and back then I thought the Ball character unspeakably mean to the Fonda character. Now it seems as if he is, figuratively speaking, lapping it up. And the whole thing is an unpalatable mix of the harsh, the cutesy, and the maudlin.
(The final scenes in which he makes her wheelchair-bound, dying person into royalty are very mawkish.
On the other hand, Fonda is excellent. Ball -- well, she always, even in her TV series, which I like, came across as hard; and here she plays a woman with a heart of pure cast-iron. Eugene Palette is always great to have around and Agnes Moorehead! What a marvelous actress she was. She shows a flair for comedy here. (Guess that wouldn't be surprising to the 99.9% of the public who know her, if at all, as Endora on "Bewitched" rather than for her 1940s roles such as the great performance she gives in "The Magnificent Ambersons.")
On the other hand, Fonda is excellent. Ball -- well, she always, even in her TV series, which I like, came across as hard; and here she plays a woman with a heart of pure cast-iron. Eugene Palette is always great to have around and Agens Moorehead! What a marvelous actress she was. She shows a flair for comedy here. (Guess that wouldn't be surprising to the 99.9% of the public who know her, if at all, as Endora on "Bewitched" rather than for her 1940s roles such as the great performance she gives in "The Magnificent Ambersons.")