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Reviews
Columbo: Any Old Port in a Storm (1973)
one of columbo's best
I agree with those who say Donald Pleasance and Julie Harris make this a great episode. But the plot makes little sense: Why would Carsini turn off the A/C and ventilation in his wine cellar? Are we to believe a wine cellar is air tight and that someone tied up within it would suffocate? He should just have given his brother another clout on the head. And then in disposing of his many bottles of overheated wine, why would Carsini drive to the coast and toss them into the sea, unless he wanted Columbo to catch him at it? Why not pour them down the sink? Still, a great episode, mainly due to Donald Pleasance's extraordinary performance.
Lonelyhearts (1958)
suffering is real
Robert Ryan's toweringly sardonic newspaper editor squares off against the delicately balanced advice columnist Montgomery Clift in this nicely gripping film. Ryan, as editor Shrike, scorches the screen with his world-weary cynicism, and delights as Clift, his latest staff writer, comes apart at the seams.
Other reviewers have stated that Clift was a pill and alcohol addict at the time of filming, and also suffering the effects of an accident. But I've never seen a more convincing nervous breakdown in a flick, and indeed Clift seems unglued and melting down in every scene. It is a mesmerizing performance, matched only by Ryan's Olympian cold and scorn.
Ryan bets Clift that, if he were to investigate the weary and perplexed who write to him for help and advice, he would find they are all acting and have ulterior motives. Clift is naive enough to take the bet, and stumbles upon a young Maureen Stapleton, already unattractive at the beginning of her acting career, who is out for some extramarital action. Of course Ryan's cynicism is unsustainable, as is Clift's moral naivete, and this makes for a contrived ending to the film. Clift's Christlike resurrection is no more believable than Ryan's newborn warmth and understanding.
The Woman on the Beach (1947)
interesting if muddled
I agree with the reviewer who found Charles Bickford's performance as the blind painter as the most compelling and best done. But then, Tod, the artist, is the only one of the three main characters who motivations and personality are clear. His much younger, beautiful wife, played by attractive brunette Joan Bennett, is held captive by him in an emotionally and physically abusive way. At the same time, she finds herself powerless to leave him, though she finds the psychologically injured Navy vet Robert Ryan, who dreams of walking underwater toward a beautiful sea nymph who resembles her, very attractive.
Ryan's character is the biggest puzzle. We can perhaps understand the young wife's clinging to her aging, blind husband out of guilt. After all, it was she who apparently severed his optic nerve during a drunken argument some time ago, though how she managed this without a scalpel is unclear. There are no marks on the painter's face, leaving one to wonder if the cause of blindness is not psychological, or indeed metaphorical. But Ryan's murderous stupidity when he twice comes close to killing the blind painter are only pardonable under the assumption that Ryan is so stress inflicted from his war experiences that he is innocent of even a murder attempt. I didn't buy it, and nor do I see how the movie's conclusion begins to resolve Ryan's obvious mental issues.