Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

morrison-dylan-fan Searching around on Amazon Uk for titles that have come out on the Warner Archives DVD label,I was happy to stumble upon a Comedy directed by Otto Preminger,who I had heard about for the first time,thanks to the excellent Film Noir Bunny Lake Is Missing.Talking to my dad and a friend,I was surprised to hear both of them give me the same response when I mentioned the title to them,with each of them saying the movie inspired "That M.A.S.H. episode!",which led to me deciding,that it would be a good time to find out how blue the moon really is.The plot:Taking a break from his work as a building designer in an office based in the Empire State building by doing some window shopping,Donald Gresham notices a very pretty girl called Patty O'Neill,who is also window shopping at a store near by.Keeping an eye on O'Neill, Gresham is pleased to see Patty head to the Empire State building.Deciding to go up and talk to O'Neill,Gresham is relived to find out that Patty is very easy going,and soon starts to arrange for O'Neill to come along with him to his apartment,so that Donald can cook a meal for both of them.Walking into the tower block that Gresham is based in,Donald accidentally shows Patty that his last relationship ended less than mutually,when they both come face to face with the less than welcoming face of his ex-girlfriend Cynthia Slater.Moving O'Neill as quickly on from meeting his ex as Gresham is possible to do,Donald welcomes Patty into his lush apartment.Discoveing that there is no food at all in the fridge,Gresham decides to go to the local shop to pick up some good,whilst O'Neill makes herself comfortable.10 Minutes later:Hearing a knock on the door,O'Neill rushes to the door,excited about finding out what Gresham has picked up.Sadly for Patty,instead of finding Donald standing at the door,O'Neill finds a man who claims to be Cynthia Slater's dad.View on the film:Transferred from its stage origins, (for which he had also been a producer on) director Otto Preminger disappointingly shows an inability to break the movie out of its stage confines,due to Preminger making the limited number of locations that the film takes place be ones that feel confined and closed off,with Preminger only showing a stylish eye in his directing for the appearances of Cynthia Slater, (played by an alluring Dawn Addams)who thanks to distinctively dressing all in black,is shown by Preminger as an icy Femme Fatale.Whilst Otto Preminger shows a limitation in his directing of this adaptation,writer Hugh Herbert shows an impressive amount of skill in adapting his own play,thanks to giving the screenplay a wonderful snappy pace that has each of the character's talking over one another,and hitting each with huge,screwball Comedy gum-balls,which also allows Herbert to cleverly give each of the character's gender-reversing personality's.Bravely playing against the roles that they were meant to,due to the Hays Code still being enforced,each of the lead actors give fantastic performances that wittingly mess with (at the time) audiences expectations on how men and women should behave in films,with Maggie McNamara (who died from a suicide age 48 in 1978,and is tragically buried in an unmarked grave) giving a delightful performance as Patty O'Neill,thanks to McNamara delivering Herbert's sharp dialogue of questioning Donald and Slater's dad bedroom activates with a real Comedy relish.Contrasting the frank & brash McNamara,William Holden and David Niven each give terrific performances,with Niven showing Slater's dad to be someone who fears that he may be getting pushed to the side as a "washed up" playboy by a whip-smart O"Neill,whilst William Holden shows Donald's reservations in meeting his match in Patty O'Neill,which soon leads to all of the character's finding out how blue the moon really is.

Xjayhawker For the life of me, I have to admit I had never seen this until a rainy Thursday on TCM. It is easy to see this stage play was easy enough to adapt to the screen.The entire movie takes place in two apartments and a hallway. Well I suppose you have to include a shot of a fire escape in the rain. Two fathers (David Niven and Tom Tully) and two daughters attracted to the same man , a 35 year old William Holden playing 35. A girl of 23 looking very much like a young Debbie Reynolds..really quite cute and charming and capable of holding her own with two veteran actors Niven and Holden..just a little sad she ended up a typist and overdosed in NY at the age of 48..She is splendid in this piece and the five are all pretty good. It is a little "tell" that Tom Tully admits in this movie he's a cop when he would end up playing a cop in San Francisco Beat/the Lineup with Warner Anderson also in the early 50's maybe a year or two later. I admit this is a delightful film and it is only at the end of the movie that you hear the movie's title uttered by William Holden.

bkoganbing Watching The Moon Is Blue today is watching a rather ordinary comedy that had a respectable run on Broadway (924 performances in the 1951- 1953 season) that got blown totally out of proportion because of the attendant publicity.More tickets were sold for this film, more publicity was generated for this film than the hype of a dozen press agents by the actions of the censors, in this case the Catholic Legion Of Decency who objected to the words 'pregnant' and 'virgin' being in the script. But isn't that always the case, tell people something is banned and they flock to see it out of curiosity if nothing else.Otto Preminger directed the play on Broadway and brought it here to the cinema and expanded it a bit for the screen. The roles of the cab driver Gregory Ratoff, the TV singer Fortunio Bonanova, interestingly enough the daughter of David Niven, Dawn Addams did not exist in the original play. It was a four person comedy with a cast that included Barbara Bel Geddes, Barry Nelson, Donald Cook, and Ralph Dunn playing the parts that went to Maggie McNamara, William Holden, David Niven and Tom Tully.However Maggie McNamara did play the lead in the national touring company and Preminger did bring her to Hollywood. She even received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but lost that year to a very similar actress in a similar role, Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday.The wolfish William Holden spots McNamara leaving his building and follows her up to the top of the Empire State Building observation deck. You know the old saying, he pursued her enough until she decided to let him catch her. They go back to his apartment where she also arouses the interest in an old roué in the person of neighbor David Niven. Holden was going out for a bit with his daughter Dawn Addams. The two pursue her for the rest of the film and you figure out who she winds up with.This is the plot of a gazillion comedies and the mere use of a couple of forbidden words elevated The Moon Is Blue to something way beyond what it actually merited. The Moon Is Blue also got Oscar nominations for the title song and for film editing.This film did not lead to a brilliant film career for Maggie McNamara. That tragic woman did a couple of better films Prince Of Players and Three Coins In The Fountain and then Otto Preminger also cast her in The Cardinal. All of those were better than The Moon Is Blue for which she was nominated.Looking at that film almost 60 years later, you scratch your head and wonder what the big deal was with his movie.

ivan-22 I was a kid when I first saw it, and despite difficulty in following the plot, I knew this was a very likable movie. When I saw it decades later, all my early perceptions were amply confirmed. Of course, the writer deserves most of the plaudit. It's my favorite Maggie McNamara movie. Her death has not even registered on Hollywood's tragedy-recycling radars. Nor have many others. (Kevin Coughlin, Brandon de Wilde, Bobby Driscoll, Scotty Beckett). With disbelief I read that in her last years Maggie had to type for a living. She was a true, dedicated thespian without any vanity, a lady.