Come Back, Little Sheba
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Movie Reviews of Come Back, Little Sheba
Movie Review: 4+ stars for 'Little Sheba'
Summary: 4 Stars
Many erudite comments here. I'll keep mine brief. Recently saw this for the first time in 25-30 years. An unusual movie; hauntingly realistic and excruciatingly sad.....an antithesis of much of the feel-good entertainment of its day. Shirley Booth shines like the moon in a clear autumn sky. Put this in on a chilly, rainy day and have a good cry.Movie Review: Go Back, Little Sheba
Summary: 3 Stars
This dated but interesting film is another of the stage/TV to screen black-and-white melodramas that flew onto the screen in the 1950s in the wake of "A Streetcar Named Desire". A great stage success for Shirley Booth, who won a Tony award for her efforts, this film is a rather uncinematic representation of the stage play with little opening-up or deviation from the original work. That's okay. William Inge's quirky characters and less-than-mainstream situations (for the time) draw and sustain interest. Burt Lancaster's broodiness as the alcoholic husband has rarely been captured so effectively, and his gentle qualities as an actor were never more fully realized. Terry Moore is actually quite right as the college girl and, if her acting is at times too superficial, she nevertheless presents a girlish innocence that leavens the heaviness of the film. Richard Jaeckal is perfect as the burly athlete who scoffs at Lancaster and Booth but has other more nefarious things in mind for Moore. This leaves Booth, who's character is unquestionably the centerpoint of the film. She won an Oscar for this performance, but it simply doesn't hold up today. Granted, Inge created a one-note character here and one waits for the big scene where Booth explodes with her own rage over life's trajectory, but it never comes. Instead, she remains a simple, over-accomodating mass of neediness who desperately clings...to everyone, everywhere, at any time. To make matters worse, Booth's choices as an actress help make her character the most masochistic screen presence since Scarlett O'Hara, with none of the charismatic provocativity. Booth is an annoying dolt from start to finish and her character generates no interest or empathy.
That anyone dared to present such surly or lost characters at the time was hardly a commercial strategy. It certainly would have been far off the beaten path of 1950s cinema tradition (with hindsight, it's now a quintessential tradition of that era). "Sheba..." remains a quirky, unexpected drama, but the eye of this storm is stillborn.
Movie Review: rather boring, actually
Summary: 3 Stars
I realize why so many others gave this the highest rating. However, I
just could not help thinking - this woman needs to get a life. She is so
needy. Every time she called her husband "daddy" I wanted to scream.
She spends the vast majority of her time trying to get the dullard's
attention and approval.
The outcome is so predictable. The wife welcomes a sexy little college
student into their home as a symbolic replacement for the baby she lost
many years before. And the husband's interest is at first non-existent
and then becomes more than fatherly.
Maybe I have heard this story too many times. I don't know, but I had
hoped for something at least a little more subtle.