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Reviews
The Sandpiper (1965)
Burton
This is a gorgeous movie. Yes, it is a sort of soap opera but many facets of it are brilliant. The cinematography and score are excellent but the real star is Richard Burton. That Welsh accent penetrates every scene like a hot poker through plastic. It is like a flat sea with sharks in it. Burton sounds very much like Dylan Thomas; note the pronunciation of the word "boy". Like Thomas, he pronounces the word as if there was an "a" right under the "o" that is more felt than heard.
Taylor seems to be following him everywhere he leads, in opposition to the roles played, as Burton evokes a performance from her that is replayed in her future works.
Out of the Past (1947)
Is That Bunny Berigan on the Soundtrack?
Now, bear with me, I'm not old enough to remember the Big Band era (but my parents were) and I'm a a big Bunny Berigan fan. From what little I've heard, I know that Berigan showed up on many unattributed cuts of famous big band records. There were a lot of people who might have thought that they were hearing Harry James on Goodman recordings when it was really the brilliance of Bunny.Since I didn't grow up with this music, I don't know every song title like someone who was young, then, but the song the band is playing when Mitchum goes into the black night club, near the beginning of the movie, I recall as a famous Berigan tune. Not only that, I am almost 100% certain that the recording of the trumpet player IS Berigan on the soundtrack. Does anybody know for sure? This theme is used throughout the picture, in one form or another.OK, what is the name of the song and is this a Bunny recording? This just could be one more feather in Bunny's otherwise tragic cap.
Young Man with a Horn (1950)
Doris Day "Wowser"
It seems to slip in under the radar, so to speak, but Doris Day's rendition of "I Think You're Swell" is a show-stopper. Day seems completely blown off the screen by the star power of Douglas and Bacall, plus Day is costumed in such mousy looking outfits, but there is no denying the power of Day's little ditty. This isn't Day's usual phrasing or style; it is Day doing a perfectly brilliant imitation of the way a 30s or 40s big band "girl singer" WOULD have sung the song. She is so utterly relaxed and real that we think that this isn't "acting" and that this is how Day naturally sounded at the time. Not so. I think that Day was consciously focusing on doing a "girl next door" version of how Peggy Lee would have done the song, a smiley-face version of Lee's velvet-baseball-bat impact.