Walk on the Wild Side
|
Our Price: $99.97 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $39.25 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Walk on the Wild Side
Movie Review: DOVE & the "DOLL HOUSE".....
Summary: 4 Stars
It's been said that nobody deliberately sets out to make a bad movie. Based on a novel of the same name and with character names like Dove Linkhorn and Kitty Twist, "Walk on the Wild Side" kind've makes me wonder. Set in the "early thirties", it tells of Texan Dove (Laurence Harvey) on the road to New Orleans to find his lost love, sculptress Hallie (Capucine). He hooks up with been-around runaway Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda). They meet good-hearted cafe owner Teresina (Anne Baxter---with a not very convincing Mexican accent) and Dove discovers Kitty is a thief so he ditches her. Teresina gives Dove work and helps him with a newspaper ad to locate Hallie. After a suspicious phone call (that sounds like Kitty) tips Dove off to Hallie's whereabouts, he finally finds her. She's living off brothel owner/vice queen Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck) and works in Jo's "Doll House" in the French Quarter. But good ole boy that he is, he doesn't catch on. Kitty turns up as a new "doll" and things begin to unravel leading to scandal and tragedy. The performances are rather good even if Capucine seems a bit too classy and patrician to be a fallen woman. The dialogue is ripe and I loved one line a drunken street preacher shouts at Capucine, "You hip-slingin' daughter of Satan!" I can't really call this a bad movie. I enjoyed it despite the obvious plot contrivances and recommend it to those who enjoy somewhat trashy but interesting melodramas. The title sequences by Saul Bass are cool and Brook Benton sings the title song performed in the "Doll House". For some, this will be a good DVD find.Movie Review: Cast on the wild side
Summary: 4 Stars
When Hollywood attempted to loosen the strictures of the Hays code in the 50s and 60s it often turned to the Southern Gothic as a way for testing permissibility because everything they hinted at could easily be chalked up to Southern decadence; this 1962 Edward Dymytryk melodrama is based on a Nelson Algren novel, but it plays like something by Tennessee Williams. A handsome Texas "dirt farmer" searches New Orleans high and low during the Depression for his lost sweetheart from back in the Lone Star state, unaware that she has become the kept woman for the mistress of the toniest and most corrupt bordello in the French Quarter; he is aided in his quest by a runaway juvenile and a Mexican-American café owner, both of whom yearn for him but realize the nobility of his quest. Columbia cast almost every one of these characters wildly against both type and nationality, with Laurence Harvey as the Texan, Capucine as his sweetheart, Barbara Stanwyck (honking Brooklyn accent and all) as the New Orleans madam, and Anne Baxter as the Mexican-American; everyone seems to be taking their parts very seriously, but only Baxter succeeds with her accent (she and Jane Fonda, as the wayward juvenile, seem to be the only two having any fun at all). The film is worth seeing if only for its beautiful camerawork, particularly in the bordello, and for its famous score by Elmer Bernstein and credit sequence by Saul Bass.Movie Review: Definitely worth a look
Summary: 4 Stars
I first saw this film many years ago on TV & always remembered the soundtrack and the nobility of the hero's quest. Its an excellent and bizarre Southern melodrama with great performances by a very young Jane Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. The music and credit sequences are outstanding by any standards. The movie itself is strangely moving and well-made.Movie Review: Walk on the Wild Side
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie was very romantic and the music score was excellent.
Movie Review: wild is back to mild
Summary: 3 Stars
what to say, what to say?
saul bass' work on the main title sequence is among his finest--easily! it is singularly striking and dramatic but it is also a little misleading if a viewer were to think that the cat is symbolic of the film's main character, dove linkhorn.
linkhorn, as played by laurence harvey, is actually quite the gentle man. not at all what is expected to follow his wonderful performances in 'room at the top' and 'summer and smoke' as the model sexy anti-hero. harvey, in his own unique way, reminds me of jude law. he's easy on the eye yet complex at the same time. he was definitely not the decorous callow leading man type of his time.
linkhorn is on a trek from texas to find his lady love hallie gerard (capucine). on the way, he encounters kitty twist (jane fonda), a teenage vagrant and together they make the last leg of the trek to new orleans. this is the film's most lively sequence. fonda is magical as kitty. though she had debuted in her godfather's film version of 'tall story' two years before this film, kitty is pretty much her debut. words just can't express how fully invested she is in her performance--not to mention that she is incredibly sexy in her clingy costumes--especially in the scenes where she must deal with being rebuffed by harvey.
fonda and harvey are matched by barbara stanwyck as jo courtney, the cold and ruthless madam of the dollhouse where kitty and hallie work as bar girls. stanwyck's character is one of the least sympathetic women i've ever seen. she thinks nothing of any man in her path--they're pawns and nothing more--and if they get in her way, she will destroy them as easily as pulling from a cigarette. even worse, if they do her bidding, which runs the gamut from spying for her to beating up the unfaithful bar girls, she is contemptuous of them. it is hard to feel sorry for her as she pines for hallie but i did--almost.
but part of the reason why it is hard to feel for stanwyck's jo is because hallie, as played by capucine, is an unrealized woman. she is beautiful in a hawklike way and it stands a marked contrast to the piquant facial features of harvey, fonda and stanwyck. and she is trying to infuse this woman with something because hallie is complicated. but she is confused and that is a real shame. because she has her moments, particularly her death scene. it is very starkly played.
the lack of clarity in capucine's performance comes from the fact that the film was released in 1962. if the film could have flatly stated she, kitty and precious were whores, she would be more understandable. (fonda and the vixenish joanna moore don't have this problem) had it been pre-code or mpaa, produced charles feldman and director edward dimitryk would not have been so ambiguous about the dollhouse or hallie's place there. clarity, not implication, would have been the order with these people, where they live and what they do. then, as much as i like anne baxter, a latina actress could have played teresina and no one would have cared. and maybe, period detail would have been more concise and clearly said 1930s, not the early 1960s mish-mish period films tended to be at that time.
this is a film to see if you like fonda, harvey, stanwyck or saul bass. and this is a film to hear if you like elmer bernstein. they will keep you involved.