Louise Durant, the central player in this film, is what might be described as a classical groupie. She is a wealthy heiress who attaches herself to two handsome young classical musicians, both students at the Conservatoire in Zurich, in turn. The two men in her life are Paul (dark, violinist, Continental European although his precise nationality is never stated) and James (blond, pianist, American). The story falls into two acts. In Act I Louise falls in love with Paul, but their romance is short-lived because she cannot accept that the life of a classical musician involves a great deal of hard work which limits the time they can spend together.
Fast forward to the beginning of Act II. A lot appears to have happened in the interval between the acts. We learn that Louise is now married to James (a relatively minor figure in Act I), that he has given up his musical career for her and that he is living off her money. These developments, however, do not appear to have brought him happiness because the main thing he spends Louise's money on is drink and he has become an alcoholic. Act II is the story of James's efforts to turn his life around, to kick his drink habit and to rediscover his love of music. Paul, however, has now reappeared in Louise's life and she must decide whether to elope with him or stay with her husband.
Which way does she decide? I was going to say that I won't write a spoiler, but of course in the fifties the Hays Office effectively used to write the spoilers for the audience. Anyone with any knowledge of the requirements of the Production Code, which forbade happy endings for anyone guilty of marital infidelity, will be able to predict, long before the closing titles, exactly how the story will end.
Elizabeth Taylor, at the height of her beauty, here experiments with a boyishly short haircut, and gets away with it. (This look may have been inspired by Audrey Hepburn, Hollywood's "new kid on the block" in 1954. Audrey was in fact three years older than Elizabeth, but it was the younger woman who had had a longer film career, going back to her days as a child star in the early forties). This is, however, far from being Taylor's best performance. Louise, by rights, should be someone we dislike- a selfish, manipulative woman who comes close to destroying James's musical career and would have destroyed Paul's had he not had enough sense to see through her- but Taylor does her best to make us like her, playing her as a conventional romantic heroine. She fails, of course; perhaps Taylor's own complex love life- at 22 she already had one divorce behind her- prevented her from realising just how emotionally destructive women like Louise can be in real life.
This is not a film for anyone with no interest in classical music. Apart from one early scene where Paul is arguing with a conductor about the interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, the film does not go into the technicalities of the subject in any great depth, but we get to hear lengthy excerpts from the Tchaikovsky and from Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. Now I personally could listen to both these composers all day long, but I suspect that those who do not share my love of classical music will be reaching for the fast-forward button during these passages.
The film is attractively shot in vivid colour, but the storyline and the dialogue rarely, if ever, rise above the level of a lurid and melodramatic soap opera. For Liz Taylor completists only. 5/10 (4/10 for the film itself, with a bonus point for the music).
Fast forward to the beginning of Act II. A lot appears to have happened in the interval between the acts. We learn that Louise is now married to James (a relatively minor figure in Act I), that he has given up his musical career for her and that he is living off her money. These developments, however, do not appear to have brought him happiness because the main thing he spends Louise's money on is drink and he has become an alcoholic. Act II is the story of James's efforts to turn his life around, to kick his drink habit and to rediscover his love of music. Paul, however, has now reappeared in Louise's life and she must decide whether to elope with him or stay with her husband.
Which way does she decide? I was going to say that I won't write a spoiler, but of course in the fifties the Hays Office effectively used to write the spoilers for the audience. Anyone with any knowledge of the requirements of the Production Code, which forbade happy endings for anyone guilty of marital infidelity, will be able to predict, long before the closing titles, exactly how the story will end.
Elizabeth Taylor, at the height of her beauty, here experiments with a boyishly short haircut, and gets away with it. (This look may have been inspired by Audrey Hepburn, Hollywood's "new kid on the block" in 1954. Audrey was in fact three years older than Elizabeth, but it was the younger woman who had had a longer film career, going back to her days as a child star in the early forties). This is, however, far from being Taylor's best performance. Louise, by rights, should be someone we dislike- a selfish, manipulative woman who comes close to destroying James's musical career and would have destroyed Paul's had he not had enough sense to see through her- but Taylor does her best to make us like her, playing her as a conventional romantic heroine. She fails, of course; perhaps Taylor's own complex love life- at 22 she already had one divorce behind her- prevented her from realising just how emotionally destructive women like Louise can be in real life.
This is not a film for anyone with no interest in classical music. Apart from one early scene where Paul is arguing with a conductor about the interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, the film does not go into the technicalities of the subject in any great depth, but we get to hear lengthy excerpts from the Tchaikovsky and from Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. Now I personally could listen to both these composers all day long, but I suspect that those who do not share my love of classical music will be reaching for the fast-forward button during these passages.
The film is attractively shot in vivid colour, but the storyline and the dialogue rarely, if ever, rise above the level of a lurid and melodramatic soap opera. For Liz Taylor completists only. 5/10 (4/10 for the film itself, with a bonus point for the music).