Movie Review: Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948)

A drama and romance, Letter From An Unknown Woman is the story of a tragic one-sided obsession. Stylish directorial touches compensate somewhat for a downbeat plot.

In Vienna circa 1900, former star concert pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) is now a shell of his former self. Having ill-advisedly accepted a duel-at-dawn, he plans to pack up and flee the city during the night.

But he is distracted by a long letter from a woman, with the first line proclaiming she may already be dead. He proceeds to read the letter, and in flashback the story of Lisa (Joan Fontaine) is revealed. She was a young teenager from a modest background living with her mother when Stefan moved into an adjacent apartment in the same building. She was immediately enamoured by the handsome pianist and loved listening to him practice through the walls, although he barely noticed her.

After Lisa's mother remarried and moved the family to a different town, Lisa rebuffed a suitor and returned to Vienna, where she found a job and kept tabs on Stefan's movements. As a star pianist he lived the good life with no shortage of women for company. Lisa has one brief opportunity to spend time with the man of her dreams, but fate intervenes and confines her to the status of an unknown woman.

The plot of Letter From An Unknown Woman is both constrained and aggravating. The running length of 86 minutes feels substantially longer, because the Howard Koch script has very few notes to play with. This is a weepy drama about a child who grows into a woman trapped into a dream-like state of fascination with a man who barely knows she exists. While the teenaged Lisa can be excused, her persistent capitulation to his charms as a grown woman, fully aware of his playboy reputation, is more exasperating than tragic.

Director Max Ophüls and cinematographer Franz Planer elevate the scant material with touches of cinematic majesty. The camera glides across convincing sets, and beautifully choreographed long shots accompany the actors up and down the stairs and through narrow hallways. Vienna is recreated across many locations as a thriving city, frequent nighttime scenes adding to the gloom but captured in mysterious black and white. Lisa may be hypnotized by a philanderer, but Ophüls knows how to capture the look of devotion by focusing soft light on a transcendent Joan Fontaine.

Trains play a big role in Lisa's story. A couple of train station farewell scenes are stock milestones, but an amusement ride with painted backgrounds is a clever metaphor for her soaring hope and Stefan's pragmatic fakery coming together for an interlude of happiness.

The ending goes looking for layers of tragedy to pile onto the misery of misdirected love, a disease creeping into Lisa's narrative as a foreign agent of intervention. If she is unwilling to confront her hopelessly poor judgment, perhaps a convenient infection is the cure for futile infatuation.



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Movie Review: Octopussy (1983)

A tired paint-by-numbers entry in the Bond series, Octopussy rehashes familiar elements and delivers a tepid experience.

The death of Agent 009 in East Berlin and the sudden emergence of an ancient precious Fabergé egg trigger a new mission for James Bond (Roger Moore): find out who is suddenly cashing in on the sale of rare gems. At a London auction he quickly identifies exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) as a middle man in the international conspiracy, along with his beautiful assistant Magda (Kristina Wayborn) and vicious henchman Gobinda (Kabir Bedi).

Bond travels to India in pursuit of Khan, and uncovers a plot whereby Khan and local all-woman cult and circus leader Octopussy (Maud Adams) are enabling the sale of jewels to finance the private warmongering efforts of Soviet General Orlov (Steven Berkoff). It does not take long for Bond to seduce both Magda and Octopussy, but putting a stop to Orlov's plan will require a manic race against time.

Directed by John Glen (his second of five Bond efforts) and featuring the penultimate outing for Roger Moore, now 56 years old, in the role, Octopussy is the oh-so-familiar mix of dry quips, chases, gadgets, stunts and travel to locations that would have been exotic 20 years prior. With the stuntmen and second unit getting the lion's share of screen time, Moore mails in a lacklustre performance, unconvincing as an agent and less convincing as a lover. In the same year a rival, almost equally geriatric Bond in the form of Never Say Never Again was released, and neither set the world on fire.

The few good moments in Octopussy feature a Mercedes-on-rails chasing a train, while former real-life tennis star Vijay Amritraj shows up as an MI6 agent in India and uses a tennis racket to swat away some bad guys in yet another perfunctory chase. Kristina Wayborn and fellow Swede Maud Adams, both about 20 years younger than Moore, pretend to be interested and add decent doses of sensuality.

But otherwise this Bond goes through the motions almost in slow motion. India is condescendingly represented with wall-to-wall stereotypes of snake charmers and sword eaters. The villain Orlov is ineffective to the point of being dispatched early in the final reverse order elimination of bad guys. With both Magda and Octopussy at least partially rehabilitated from their evil ways after the sex-with-Bond treatment, Octopussy somehow designates the smarmy Kamal Khan, a middle man, as culprit-in-Chief.

The climactic race against a ticking bomb features Bond in a full-blown clown suit, and rarely has a film so perfectly captured the sad decline of a once dangerous secret agent.

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Movie Reviews: The V.I.P.s (1963)

An ensemble cast multi-story drama set in and around a London airport, The V.I.P.s maintains a steady level of interest thanks to the numerous stars on display, but never manages to properly take off.

A group of rich travellers gather at a London airport in preparation for a flight to New York. Frances Andros (Elizabeth Taylor) is dropped off at the airport by her preoccupied businessman husband Paul (Richard Burton) to travel to a presumed vacation, but she is secretly planning to abandon her marriage and elope with international gigolo Marc Champselle (Louis Jourdan). Australian businessman Les Mangrum (Rod Taylor) is financially stretched to the limit, and must make it to a meeting in New York to salvage his business. He is accompanied by his loyal assistant Miss Mead (Maggie Smith). Pompous actor Max Buda (Orson Welles) must make it out of Britain by midnight, or otherwise face a hefty tax bill. He is accompanied by aspiring starlet Gloria Gritti (Elsa Martinelli). And the Duchess of Brighton (Margaret Rutherford) carries a big title but has no financial means to keep up her estate. She is hoping to land a job in Florida to help pay the bills.

When thick fog descends on the airport and delays the flight, the travellers have to face their crises. Things get worse when they are forced to stay overnight at an airport hotel. Frances is torn between Paul, who pays her little attention but is passionate in his love, and Marc, who seems to love her but may be an opportunist. Les risks everything by authorizing a bad cheque while remaining oblivious to Miss Mead's feelings towards him, and Max's accountant has to come up with an innovative, but awkward, solution to his client's tax problems.

Directed by Anthony Asquith and written by Terence Rattigan, The V.I.P.s has an intriguing premise, tapping into the growing fascination with the emerging jet set of rich people worried about money and relationships within their world of privilege. Adding real-life couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor into the mix helps the glamour quotient despite rather pedestrian execution.

Asquith brings to life an airport buzzing with activity, the V.I.P. lounge a crossroads of the rich and powerful acting all rich and powerful, and fawned upon by dedicated airport staff. When the drama moves to the hotel the film loses steam and becomes more stagebound, as what is essentially a talkfest is deprived of the surrounding energy generated by a major transportation hub.

Understandably focussing on Paul and Frances Andros, The V.I.P.s spends a long time on Frances' dilemma, exposing in the process the couple's frivolity. She can't decide whether to give her husband another chance to demonstrate genuine affection, or abandon him and tie her fate to a recognized playboy. Her hesitation becomes tedious, and is not helped by Paul running around with a handgun and a short temper, while Marc oozes smarm from every pore.

A bit more interesting is Maggie Smith as Miss Mead, the phenomenally efficient and equally devoted assistant to the jovial Les Mangrum. In just her fourth screen role, Smith combines secretarial capability with secretly held love and delivers the film's most sensitive performance. At the other end of the scale are Welles, Martinelli and Rutherford, who grab onto the broadest definitions of their characters and delve no further. Rutherford somehow won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for a monotonal and ill-defined turn as the dotty Duchess of Brighton.

The V.I.P.s are reasonably engaging characters, but their stories include some bothersome turbulence.

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