Bells Are Ringing
|
Our Price: $39.97 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $39.96 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Bells Are Ringing
Movie Review: Judy and Dean what more can you say?
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've never seen a Judy Holliday film this is great place to start. But don't drink any liquids while you watch this movie. Because you will laughing so hard that you will end up spitting on all your friends. What? Think making this up? Okay. Buy the movie. Watch it. Drink up. It's going to be messy.Movie Review: Bells are Ringing
Summary: 5 Stars
A great movie. I love Judy Holiday. I have many of her movies and she is so talented. I love watching any movie with her in it and of course Dean Martin they make a great couple. This is one of those movies you enjoy each time you watch it and I am so pleased to finally have it in my DVD collection.Movie Review: fun stuff
Summary: 5 Stars
Bells Are Ringing it is very much a time piece but that can be what is fun they're great and the dance scene is very special.Movie Review: Bells Are Ringing
Summary: 5 Stars
Musicals are the best! Dean Martin and Judy Holliday, what a perfect pair! Its just a feel good movie...love it!
Movie Review: "She's rarer than uranium and fairer than a pearl."
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm always happy to give the good word to BELLS ARE RINGING, a 1960 MGM musical comedy starring Judy Holliday and directed by Vincente Minnelli.
Unfortunately, BELLS ARE RINGING is something of an orphan among the canon of really great musicals. The original THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! covered the period from the institution of "talkies" to 1958 and GIGI. This is fair, because GIGI is a truly exceptional movie and demonstrates so well the lavish, big-budget type of musical that was to be no more.
But BELLS ARE RINGING has its charms, too. Surviving relatively unscathed from its long run on Broadway, the movie kept the incandescent Judy Holliday but dropped stage leading man Sydney Chaplin (Charlie's son) in favor of Dean Martin. This may have been a mistake, for Dino seems to have phoned in about half of his performance; and since movies are usually filmed out of sequence we don't know when we're going to get the confident, likable Dean Martin of 1960s OCEANS ELEVEN and the Matt Helm movies, or a relative "stiff."
But that's about the only major complaint people have about this movie, which details the trials and tribulations of a telephone-answering service switchboard attendant at "Susanswerphone" (Holliday) as she provides information linking one subscriber to another -- over and over, to the great consternation of the business's owner, Sue (Jean Stapleton, in a light but decidedly non-dingbat role). Complications ensue when the cops start listening in, while at the same time an entry-level gangster (played to the hilt by Eddie Foy, Jr.) starts using Susanswerphone as a place for bookies to make their bets--all in code, leading to Minnelli's wonderful *tableau vivant* song "It's a Simple Little System." Further Minnellian wit is evident in the movie's opening credits, which show the neighborly, small-scale old Upper East Side of Manhattan under the wrecking ball, lying largely in ruins and awaiting the inevitable appearance of the then-new Upper East Side, with its sterile high-rises and high rents.
A witty screenplay by Comden and Green refers to the "Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company" (a smart nod to a 1955 bestseller), and the "Crying Gypsy Cafe," among other bits of comic pleasure that separate an excellent script from a mediocre one. The immensely talented Jule Styne was at his lyrical best in numbers like "Just in Time" and "The Party's Over." The supporting cast is terrific, too, including Frank Gorshin as a Brandoesque beatnik turned Anglophilic gent so he could secure roles in posh plays; and taskmaster Fred Clark, who here gets to play the bon vivant Broadway producer, Larry Keating.
Unfortunately, the movie has no running commentary, but the disc does include a trailer and a 15-minute documentary about the making of the movie. Happily, this was made when Gorshin and Comden, among others, were all alive and kicking. Also included are two songs from the original score that were filmed, but did not survive editing. As always, we can't take our eyes off Holliday.
I know of no bad Judy Holliday movie; she is indelible and memorable in every single picture she made during the brief ten years of her screen career. At this price BELLS ARE RINGING is a great investment, which surely deserves its place in the great canon of Vincente Minnelli's, and MGM's, musicals.