Gloria Swanson co-produced Perfect Understanding, a romantic comedy that teamed her with a young Laurence Olivier. A young American woman (Swanson), on vacation in England, meets an aristocrat (Olivier) and the two fall passionately in love. Seeing how other couples become possessive and implode in marriage, they make a pact: they’ll marry, but they’ll keep the arrangement light and loose. But can two young lovers really carry on carefree, committed to not belonging to each other?Read More »
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An aging silent film queen refuses to accept that her stardom has ended. She hires a young screenwriter to help set up her movie comeback. The screenwriter believes he can manipulate her, but he soon finds out he is wrong. The screenwriters ambivalence about their relationship and her unwillingness to let go leads to a situation of violence, madness, and death.Read More »
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One of Wilder’s finest, and certainly the blackest of all Hollywood’s scab-scratching accounts of itself, this establishes its relentless acidity in the opening scene by having the story related by a corpse floating face-down in a Hollywood swimming-pool. What follows in flashback is a tale of humiliation, exploitation, and dashed dreams, as a feckless, bankrupt screenwriter (Holden) pulls into a crumbling mansion in search of refuge from his creditors, and becomes inextricably entangled in the possessive web woven by a faded star of the silents (Swanson), who is high on hopes of a comeback and heading for outright insanity. Read More »
Synopsis:
Constantly quarreling couple decide to try the jealousy angle when a naive young couple comes along.
Review:
The screen edition of the Kern-Hammerstein musical play is a skillfully photographed work which includes among its ballads, songs and snatches some of the most distinguished melodies of this cinema season. From the Music Hall’s screen and also the throats of John Boles and Gloria Swanson, “Music in the Air” sends out in a high-hearted cavalcade all the gay, tender and superbly romantic lyrics which warmed the flinty heart of Broadway back in the Winter of ’32.Read More »