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Welcome to Movies & Film
Movie Reviews, & Film Industry Commentary
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1967 – NR – 112 min.
Director: Stanley Donen
Primary Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron, William Daniels, Claude Dauphin, Nadia Gray, Jacqueline Bisset
Stars *** (of 5)
Popcorn ** (of 5)
Film Type(s): Drama, Romance, Road Film, True Love, Divorce
Synopsis: The premise of this film from Singin’ In The Rain Co-Director Stanley Donen is the lives of a couple as told, not linearly by time, but linear by place on various trips they take throughout their lives together. This examination of the complicated part of life, love, marriage, divorce, and children follows each part in a different thread. We see Mark (Finney) meet Jo Anna (Hepburn) as English students traveling through Europe, a road trip with Mark’s former beau (Bron) and her husband (Daniels) and child, a business trip gone wrong, and several trips about the fidelity of the couple.
Review: The Beginning is the end is the beginning is not an inaccurate statement for this road-centric drama. Rather than following a normal, linear film structure, Director Donen and Writer / Author Frederic Raphael follow a road traveled by a couple, seeing the state of their relationship at each particular stop on the road. This inventive Romance film is well shot and edited, but it does make the audience work for its satisfaction. We constantly come back to the couple, revisiting their past AND future selves as we move from location to location, thread to thread. Sometimes the change of thread is as quick as one shot apiece, showing the couple (Hepburn and Finney) hitchhiking as students, only to be passed by their divorcing selves, who in turn pass themselves as newlyweds on the side of the road with their Ugly-American ‘friends’. We jump so quickly that, at times, that the only way to follow where we are in the relationship is by the kind of cars and prescience (or lack thereof) of people or buildings in a particular location. But if you’re willing, the effort is worthwhile. Henri Mancini excellent score is heard throughout, adding subtle depths to the relationship.
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