If you're not hooked in the first scene seeing Ava Gardner in the white blouse you'd better check your pulse.
Unfortunately, the movie isn't as interesting as Ava is gorgeous.
Sure, there are a lot of expensive-looking set pieces involving hundreds of extras and decent action (of sorts). It's as beautifully shot as any movie of the 50s.
But the story. First we get a preachy talkfest about Indian independence. Then there is the lurid attempted rape scene, whreupon it becomes a cheap crime drama.
The writing is so weak that at one point Ava is forced to tell an embarrassingly bad limerick to a friend in the bar. There is too much narration. And then the scene in the temple where she is imagining(?) all those voices in her head. Gave me a headache.
The less said about the total lack of chemistry between Gardner and Granger, the better.
This movie has the production values to be an epic. And the writing of a high school drama. Ava's luminescent performance is thus tragically wasted. She deserved much, much better.
Nonetheless, watch it to understand why Frank Sinatra left his first wife for Ava and adored her for the rest of her life, decades after their divorce. She was a knockout.
Unfortunately, the movie isn't as interesting as Ava is gorgeous.
Sure, there are a lot of expensive-looking set pieces involving hundreds of extras and decent action (of sorts). It's as beautifully shot as any movie of the 50s.
But the story. First we get a preachy talkfest about Indian independence. Then there is the lurid attempted rape scene, whreupon it becomes a cheap crime drama.
The writing is so weak that at one point Ava is forced to tell an embarrassingly bad limerick to a friend in the bar. There is too much narration. And then the scene in the temple where she is imagining(?) all those voices in her head. Gave me a headache.
The less said about the total lack of chemistry between Gardner and Granger, the better.
This movie has the production values to be an epic. And the writing of a high school drama. Ava's luminescent performance is thus tragically wasted. She deserved much, much better.
Nonetheless, watch it to understand why Frank Sinatra left his first wife for Ava and adored her for the rest of her life, decades after their divorce. She was a knockout.