Guilty pleasureville. 'Bout three fourths as good as "Mommie Dearest". Best things about it (in no particular order) are the darkly glittering black/white cinematography of Robert Planck that captures the mood of the title character's world, Kim Novak's spirited performance which veers into camp but never into boredom, maybe the best theatrical meltdown scene ever committed to celluloid and the wonderfully tawdry New Years Eve in Gothic Hollywood scene which manages to tap into the "Locust" zeitgeist without the pretension of Schlesinger's film or West's novel. Bad things center around the overacting of Jeff Chandler who usually wasn't guilty of this sin so I'm assuming director George Sidney counseled him to "play it like Brod Crawford", the none too scintillating dialogue that surprisingly flows from the typewriters of three of the 1950s better movie (and non movie) scribes; Daniel Fuchs (of "Low Company" fame), John Fante (of "Ask The Dust" fame )and Sonia Levien (of "Interrupted Melody" fame) and a general sense that whenever Novak's not onscreen the movie is gently stinking up the place. Give it a B minus.
Review of Jeanne Eagels
