Should you see it? Is "pretty, but pretty dull" good enough for you?
It's been a while since I covered a film panned by the Medved brothers. This one is the life story of Edvard Grieg, shot mostly in Norway (in Cinerama, which doesn't hold up on a home screen) and featuring the music of Grieg - lots of it; 40-50 numbers of it, some repeated, about half with added lyrics from the operetta from which this was based. You know what Grieg's music didn't need? Lyrics. You know what Grieg's life didn't have? Dramatic tension. Nothing happens; Grieg's early struggles were minimal and you know historically he succeeds and you can tell why because you're listening to his music. Grieg is played by an untalented nobody who's also the wrong age. Florence Henderson, Robert Morley, Edward G. Robinson and Oskar Homolka and other miscast actors make you wonder who cast this dreck. It's pretty, it's syrupy, it's tedious.
I think this is the movie that starred Hermione Farthingale. She was the first love of David Bowie's life in the late 1960s until she met someone on this film and broke up with him that partially made him write "Space Oddity" and then many years later on the video for "Where Are We Now?" He wears a t-shirt with that film's title.
ReplyDelete"Starred" is a bit much, but she is in it. Two VERY big Bowie fans claim to read this blog; they may have additional details.
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