The videocassette edition of this film includes the theatrical trailer at the beginning. What a letdown when the movie unfolds! The trailer promises an intriguing Hollywood story along the lines of `The Bad and the Beautiful.' Instead, the filmmakers deliver a boring gabfest.
While some of the performances are very good especially Gardner and O'Brien their efforts are undermined by a script loaded with lengthy slabs of cynical philosophy. Perhaps this would have been better as a play Mankiewicz certainly makes very little effort to create a cinematic experience. He must have been averse to silence; as soon as the characters stop speaking, in comes the narration it's so pervasive that it almost seems like a parody. But there's little evidence that parody was intended.
The writer/director's approach seems to have been: Never show action on screen when you can talk about it and talk and talk and talk. And yet, with all that talk, the point of it all remains quite muddled.
While some of the performances are very good especially Gardner and O'Brien their efforts are undermined by a script loaded with lengthy slabs of cynical philosophy. Perhaps this would have been better as a play Mankiewicz certainly makes very little effort to create a cinematic experience. He must have been averse to silence; as soon as the characters stop speaking, in comes the narration it's so pervasive that it almost seems like a parody. But there's little evidence that parody was intended.
The writer/director's approach seems to have been: Never show action on screen when you can talk about it and talk and talk and talk. And yet, with all that talk, the point of it all remains quite muddled.