Review of A Double Life

Coleman gives a great performance and is the reason this movie is as watchable as it is. This is mostly a mood piece and there are some very interesting tricks with sound that add to that mood. I particularly liked the scene where he's trying to concentrate on the monotonous sounds of a cast party and instead the lines of the play get caught in his ears.

I liked Winters in her role - she was just right as a working class girl who doesn't have a clue. But the rest of the performers didn't measure up. I was particularly disappointed with Hasso as Coleman's ex-wife and lover - she can't match Coleman's peculiar style. Neither can O'Brien. Both of them bring down the movie around Coleman, who carries it sometimes laboriously through from scene to scene. The best scenes in the movie do not involve either of these two, but feature either Coleman alone or with Winters.

I was a bit disappointed with the script also. It's fine in most places, but there's that little place that makes you cringe, like when Coleman says to Winters, "His name wasn't Bill was it?" It's a crime to put a line like that in this movie, but there are enough of them to make it a little less than great, little more than very good.