Reviews

Disregard the bad reviews from what seem to be high school students. (I won't comment on their validity for a high school audience.) If you are familiar with the history of Russia in the first part of the 20th century you will surely enjoy this documentary. Lots of footage of now-obscure players weaved into a frenetic but understandable narration. Especially if you like really old newsreel-style footage you should try to see this. (MPI Video was the distributor on VHS, but it is also listed on at least one sales site.) The naked men swimming went on for about a minute -- they were Czar Nicholas and his cronies. Trotsky reads a screed denouncing Stalin in English. The Russia Civil War -- the Reds vs. the Whites. Except for a brief passage which seemed to be lifted from a Russian film about the revolution, almost everything looks authentic. I've seen this twice and in a few years will see it again.

I've read scientists are turned off by this film for its omissions, simplifications, falsities, and other failures to explain Prof. Hawking's theories. I can understand that, being a law specialist who can't watch law dramas. But if you're not a cosmologist or a physicist you should not be discouraged by the film's failure to give you enough detail for a two credit course. It's a good drama of people, a bit schmaltzy as befits the facts, and in that regard I understand it's pretty accurate, and is definitely well acted and directed. Also a nice glimpse of what Oxbridge life was like in the 1950s. As they say, the male lead is Oscar bait.

This is an excellent comedy about an actor on his last legs hamming it up for his own amusement. I reject any of the evaluations here that rely on Mr. Barrymore's real life or condition at the time of making of this film. I don't see the logical connection. It's a funny movie, with Barrymore skillfully playing his part. I understand our English and arts departments in universities are infested with an irresistible need to analyze and judge everything not by what it is, but the conditions, times, politics, and philosophies of the people who produced them. If that makes sense to you, then you can't enjoy the Marx Brothers without bearing in mind Groucho's unhappy marriages, Chico's gambling mania, Zeppo's desire to leave performing and become a Hollywood agent, etc. Barrymore is a terrific comic actor in this film. Do you really care about his life off-screen to decide whether to enjoy it? Read about Barrymore all you want (including Ben Hecht's memoirs, A Child of the Century) and try to catch Christopher Plummer's one-man show, recently on PBS. But for heaven's sake, leave off the higher criticism or whatever the hell you call referencing stuff that's not in the work itself.

I saw this, at least an exploitation film with this title, around 1960, close to when I saw Lash of the Penitentes, of no relation except both were knocking around in the days before the porno dam busted. When the baby started birthing (or is it the mother who births?) there was a cut, whether a splice or an editor's cut I cannot say, but the viewership, which was mostly interested in the medical aspects, of course, was robbed of an unencumbered shot of private parts. Anybody who tells you these were the "good old days" wasn't there, or has suffered memory loss. The film was even less sexy than the chopped up burlesque films that were also making the circuit, if you can believe that. Wonder whatever happened to that kid?