Review: Two Weeks in Another Town

Kirk Douglas plays a troubled actor who has fallen from grace. He receives a helping hand from veteran director Edward G. Robinson shooting in Rome. The two have worked together several times over the years- Douglas even won an Oscar on one such occasion. But their relationship has been strained for years. Nonetheless, Douglas flies to Rome for his first acting gig in about four years. Unfortunately, when he gets there, he finds out the acting gig never existed, Robinson just wanted to catch up with his old friend, and ask him to do oversee the English dubbing for the has-been director’s latest film. Douglas (who has just finished a three year stint in a sanatorium) is at first annoyed, but eventually agrees. Unfortunately, the leading lady (Rossana Schiaffino) has problems with English, leading man George Hamilton is completely lacking self-confidence, and Italian producer Mino Doro only cares about money, precious little of which he is willing to part with. But things really go awry with a heart attack, and the reappearance of Douglas’ femme fatale ex-wife Cyd Charisse who turns up to mess with Douglas’ head, which last time sent him to the funny farm. Daliah Lavi plays Hamilton’s girlfriend, who develops strong feelings for Douglas during shooting, and vice versa. Claire Trevor plays Robinson’s shrewish wife, whilst George Macready and James Gregory have minor roles.

 

The director, screenwriter, and star of “The Bad and the Beautiful” reunite for this 1962 unofficial companion piece that similarly deals with movie-making. However, this time the approach is more romantic melodrama and the results dreary, boring, and in some cases really, really stupid. Cyd Charisse in particular is spectacularly awful in an unsubtle performance of such silliness it’s as if she was told to base her performance entirely on Lana Turner’s silly driving freak-out in the earlier film. That was the one false moment in an otherwise really well-made film, this is a much lesser film, and Cyd Charisse sure as shit ain’t no Lana Turner. She’s not even Edy Williams (“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”), and does all her acting with her eyebrows and her teeth. She’s like a fully-clothed porn star, only not nearly as attractive. They also try and outdo the camp of the driving scene from the earlier film, and indeed they certainly outdo it. In every wrong way possible.

 

I’m not sure what director Vincente Minnelli (“The Bad and the Beautiful”, “Lust for Life”) nor star Kirk Douglas saw in this one, the only thing I really dug about it aside from Douglas’ performance was the use of a clip from the earlier film in a different context here. Here, Douglas is meant to be the actor from that film, which he of course really was. It’s a real meta-movie moment. Meanwhile, as good as Douglas is here, the casting of Daliah Lavi (who is pretty tedious), George Hamilton, and Claire Trevor (whose shouty performance is almost as bad as Charisse’s) show this for the obvious stepdown in quality that it is from the earlier film. Even Edward G. Robinson has been far better elsewhere, he merely gets by because he’s Edward G. Robinson and always good in everything. Credit where it’s due, though, as much as George Hamilton is no actor, the future piece of luggage (one for the Jim Carrey fans) gives one of his best-ever performances. He tries real hard, and is pretty OK playing a method actor (probably based on Monty Clift or James Dean). Total waste of George Macready and James Gregory, I must say, but Laurence Olivier wouldn’t even be able to do much with this.

 

The earlier film seemed to have ambition, this one is content to be soapy melodrama on picaresque locales and with pretty international glamour pusses. It has scenes of camp all over the place, whereas the earlier film had only that one scene with Turner (who was otherwise excellent). Fans of MGM soap opera stuff who haven’t seen the earlier film might be more forgiving than me, but I found this boring and disappointing.

 

The scenery is nice, Douglas tries, I didn’t much care. Watch “The Bad and the Beautiful”, it’s terrific. This one’s closer to “Valley of the Dolls”, “The Legend of Lylah Claire” and “Inside Daisy Clover”. Scripted by Charles Schnee (“The Bad and the Beautiful”) from an Irwin Shaw (“The Young Lions”) novel. How’d this go so wrong? Minnelli blamed studio interference. Must’ve been a whole lotta interference, then.

 

Rating: C