Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

lmcooper-32332 Joan and Cliff are both wonderful in this 1956 drama. An unknown movie, with an unusual story for the 1950s. A spring - autumn romance. Not at all surprising for a husband/wife but a wife/husband. The spring- autumn romance of Cliffs character's ex-wife and his father raises no eyebrows in that department, but a father sleeping with his son's wife, well! Naturally, the leading male character comes with problems. It is up to Joan to stick by her husband and hope that he recovers, despite her misgivings he will no longer want her as his wife. A sympathetic role for Joan. Recommended!

Tad Pole In a movie deeply flawed by excessive psychobabble, not to mention letting the evil-doers get the "last laugh," Joan Crawford is convincing playing an aging cougar. She not only evokes Mary Todd Lincoln; she dresses like the former First Lady as well, especially with her omnipresent white gloves. As Millie, Joan plays MOMMIE DEAREST to husband Burt, portrayed by pre-PT-109 youngster Cliff Robertson. That is, when Burt doesn't pull his T-Rex role reversal by smashing professional typist Millie's fingers with her bulky work tool, or blackening her eyes with his short, little atrophied punches. At one point someone on the committee of screenwriters for AUTUMN LEAVES has Pops Cartwright (Lorne Green) hatching an elaborate scheme to wrest away son Burt's birthright maternal inheritance through long-term torture by incest with Burt's wife. But excruciating bouts of Electro-Shock Therapy (shown here with loving detail) inexplicably convince Burt to sign away his financial future without a fight. This leaves Papa Hanson with BOTH Burt's high school sweetie\wife AND the late Mama Hanson's fortune. The idea that Joan Crawford could make suddenly penniless\prospect-lacking Burt forget about the charms of his Virginia (Vera Miles) is preposterous enough to prompt a barrage of wire hangers at the screen!

Timothy Shary This is one of those undeniably intriguing films of the post-war era where Hollywood was trying to pull together multiple elements to appeal to multiple audiences.You have the screen legend Joan Crawford playing a lonely spinster. She meets a confident young man who happens to have a gorgeous ex-wife and an unusually smarmy father. Not knowing about these relatives nor the trouble they have caused him, our heroine marries the young charmer and proceeds to suffer far more than she ever did when she was alone, which makes it all so worth it.Director Aldrich falls prey to exaggeration late in the film when Crawford is at her worst, but otherwise his work is eerily effective, as we get caught up in the mystery of just what the hell is wrong with this dude. Aldrich uses noir style to accentuate the tensions, grossly over- lighting some scenes to force the contrast, especially as the contrasts between the characters become more extreme later in the film.You can really relish how insanely the psychiatric field is represented, which brutalizes the young man into a zombie so he can accept the brutality put upon him by his father and ex- wife. And lest you fret, the "cure" for his trauma does not make him want to leave his cougar lover in the end, it only makes them a more stable couple-- which is actually a slight shift in the melodramatic tradition of the woman's suffering being eternal.I happened to catch the beginning of this around midnight on TCM and though I would just watch a little to see how the May-December romance was set up. After the first scene between Crawford and Robertson, I was engrossed, because it offers so much more than I expected.

Naught Moses She's the typical co-dependent, stand-by-your-man, til-death-do-us-part product of the in-doctrine-ations of the adjust-til-it-kills-you, (supposedly) Greatest Generation. He's (ostensibly) the product of a narcissistic (and crazy-making) father and the equally narcissistic -- and father-resembling -- woman he married in late adolescence. The drama is mid-century pulp fiction, and, of course, (delusionally) hopeful. (Hey! She's getting her @$$ kicked, seemingly forgetting it, and coming back for more.) (But... "Love cures all!") (Please.)High-voltage / high-amperage / long-duration electroconvulsive and/or coma-inducing insulin therapy had =no= such effect upon psychotic patients of the heroic sort depicted here. Patients treated thus tended to emerge with wholesale memory loss and not know their own parents or spouses for months, years, or... forever. But they =were= easier to manage. Was he looking for a "good enough mother" in Joanie's character? Maybe so. One thing's for sure, though: Joanie at =50= was downright =amazing= looking. (I know. "The best that money can buy" and all that, but even so...) she was looking pretty good. (Ditch those eyebrows, though, Joan. Ya looked so much better in "The Women.")