Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

merc6983 Gable is one of my most favorite actors. Deborah Kerr one of the most beautiful actresses of the day. And Ava Gardner, at least in this film, showed a lack of talent. Greenstreet and Wynn were greatly miss cast. The movie is phony, the story line is unbelievable. How can such talent be so miss directed and their characters so contrived. On a normal day I watch three or four movies on cable. You might say I am addicted. This picture, well I can't recall one with such poor acting. I would go out of my way to watch Gable, and Kerr, she is the ultimate at her craft, (they teach them real good in England). And Sidney Greenstreet,(Where is Peter Lorre?), his main shtick is to play an evildoer, like in (The Maltese Falcon). Who cares about Wynn, he is just a overbearing loud mouth. But this film is just plain terrible, I wasted two hours of my time watching it plus this rant on IMDb.

Robert J. Maxwell Near the beginning of this movie Evan Llewellyn Evans, Sidney Greenstreet, owner of Beautee Soap and the most powerful client of Adolph Menjou's Madison Avenue advertising agency, hawks up a big ginder from the back of his throat and lobs it onto the boardroom table, much to the shock of his sycophants. "Gentlemen," he announces, "I have just performed a disgusting act." It's the most telling moment in the film. Evan Llewellyn Evans may be genetically incapable of Welshing on a deal but he's capable of some pretty disgusting acts. The second most telling moment in the film is saved for the climax, when the successful new employee, Clark Gable, finds that the phoniness and throat-cutting of the advertising business is not for him, and tells Greenstreet and Menjou what they can do with the jumbo-sized salary they've just offered him, and then stalks out of the board room to melt away his old self and discover his new, more principled, bite-sized, transfat-free new self in the arms of Deborah Kerr.The plot isn't stupid. The intrigues, betrayals, and misunderstandings aren't openly spelled out as in a child's storybook. Most of the character development takes place in Gable's character, just returned from the war. He's pretty honest about himself and a little blunt with others but he keeps his cool throughout. He has what sociologists call "role distance." Role distance is Erving Goffman's term for "actions which effectively convey some disdainful detachment of the (real life) performer from a role he is performing". He knows when he's being good at his job and he knows when he's being a cad. His chief mistake is in thinking that money is the most important goal and that it's achieved by sometimes unethical means. His performance throughout is quite good.Deborah Kerr as the aristocratic war widow is excellent. Her beauty is of an ethereal sort. She's delicate, frangible. She's "in touch with her feelings" and can be firm enough but her demeanor suggests she might collapse with fear or an excess of desire at any moment. (I kind of like that in a woman.) I don't know where she got the reputation of being some kind of ice queen in the movies. As an actress, she had good range -- comedic in "Casino Royale" and homespun and earthy in "The Sundowners." I don't think Ava Gardner ever looked more attractive or gave a better performance. But then all the acting is good and earns the film some extra bonus points. All the acting except for Sidney Greenstreet, that is, who is miscast as a rude blowhard redneck with some kind of terrible COWBOY hat and a blustering insistence on an in-your-face commercial style: His ideal jingle does nothing but repeat "BEAUTEE SOAP" without syncopation. This is Ed Begley's role, not Sidney Greenstreet's.The movie was a bellwether in its own way. In 1947, the economy was just getting back onto a peacetime footing. People were beginning to make money again, and in the 1950s there would be an explosion of stories (eg., "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?") about the Madison Avenue ad agencies that would guide consumers into one or another channel to spend it all and go into debt doing it. Logically, in the 60s, there should have been a succession of dramas about credit card companies but it didn't happen.

vincentlynch-moonoi First, I highly recommend one read the Wikipedia article about this film before viewing it. It's pretty entertaining reading, and gives one some background as to just how important a film this was at the time.It was not that popular, and critics were not fond of it at the time, either. But, according to Wikipedia, the attitude of critics toward the film has "mellowed". And, in my view, deservedly so.First, this is an ideal film for Deborah Kerr, although she was new to the public at that time (this was her first American film), so the public didn't yet know how to peg her. In a sense, this is "An Affair To Remember" in reverse. Kerr is enchanted -- reluctantly so -- by Gable, who is the complete opposite of Cary Grant. Instead of suave and sophisticated, he's a big rough around the edges...a huckster in all of life. And, this is no light comedy or traditional romance. No, it's an expose of sorts of the advertising business of the time...though some things still run pretty true. Gable is also perfect here. Can't you just see Gable as huckster? It's a paring that works.The supporting actors here are very strong. Knowing his politics, it's sometimes difficult for me to like Adolphe Menjou, but here as the advertising executive he's very good. Sydney Greenstreet is perfectly (word intended) obnoxious here as the spoiled rotten (literally) sponsor...particularly in one rather daring scene where you see him hawk a spit on the boardroom table. I'm not a fan of Ava Gardner's, but she's very pleasant here as the singer. And, Edward Anrold is great as a talent agent, though his role is not large.This is a very watchable film, but a rather serious one. Recommended! And perhaps one for your DVD shelf.

jpaisan The screenplay is actually very bad, but the actors are well worth watching.This was Deborah Kerr's first American film, and she is not only beautiful, but also quite young and beautiful. Clark Gable falls in love with her here.Gable is dashing, dynamic and completely likable while Ava Gardner is so young she's almost unrecognizable. Sydney Greenstreet dominates the picture, however, as his character is built up to be a terrifying tyrant amid the film's light atmosphere, but Greenstreet blows hot, pompous air masterfully.The story doesn't make a lot of sense, but Gable, Kerr, Gardner and Greenstreet are at their youngest and/or best in this harmless but enjoyable film.