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
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