Movie Review: Heaven Knows Mr. Allison (1957; 20th Century Fox/Twlight Time)

...there's no denying that the literary concept of the 'odd couple', has made for countless interesting and intriguing motion pictures, since...well, since the onset of the motion picture, itself. Two characters...polar opposite of each other...different worlds...forced to exist, at least for the moment, within the same circle...sometimes enemies, often just indifferent of each other...frustrated over each other's differences, and yet, out of irony, managing to find common ground to work with, out of their similarities. But then, considering those ideals and observations, let's break it down to specifics...not just merely two different people. How about man and woman?? More specific, you say?? How about one of dutiful spirituality, and the other, of spiritual indifference?? We've all see this type of thing before, as well...'63's "Lilies of the Field", '75's "Rooster Cogburn" and '51's "African Queen", just to name a few. But then, "The African Queen"...with oddly, though ideally matched Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn as the film's dueling protagonists...wouldn't be the first time that grizzled and seasoned filmmaker John Huston touched upon the classic 'odd couple' concept of one character being dedicatedly pious, and the other...well, to read the opposite side of the coin, one much more opposingly and conflictingly impious...with the result, invariably quite compelling and moving...

Movie Review: Beloved Infidel (1959, Blu-ray)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell


Directed by Henry King

Seemingly overnight, flappers and wild parties gave way to bread lines and soup kitchens. Formerly charming European vistas became populated with sinister figures intent in pulling the rest of the world into war and chaos. Jazz age novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (Gregory Peck) found himself suddenly irrelevant in 1930s America. Needing quick cash to pay for his wife Zelda’s sanitarium bills and his daughter’s private education, Fitzgerald turned to Hollywood to begin his disastrous career as a screenwriter. While in Tinseltown, Fitzgerald would fall in love with second-string gossip columnist Sheilah Graham (Deborah Kerr), who, Jay Gatsby-like had invented an upper class British background to conceal her childhood poverty. Their affair would be tempestuous, but unable to conceal the fact that literary great Fitzgerald was in irreversible decline …

Beloved Infidel, based on Graham’s memoir, is best appreciated for what it is than what it is not. The adaptation is brave in addressing some highly adult subject matter for its time, such as adultery, alcoholism and failure. Above all else, Beloved Infidel is yet another big-budget weepie like those being churned out by director Douglas Sirk at Universal Studios, strictly intended for 1950s moms escaping household drudgery at a matinee.