Watch The Country Girl For Free

How sad is this?

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"The Country Girl" is Grace Kelly's Oscar winning movie about an alcoholic singer and stage actor who digs deeper into his bottle after the accidental death of his son, and the long-suffering wife who tries to keep him on the straight-and-narrow when he attempts a comeback. Bing Crosby plays Frank Elgin, a rising star who loses track of his young son during a photo shoot with a record company when the boy suddenly wanders off into traffic and dies. His record turns into a one-hit-wonder that is mostly forgotten because Frank abandons the music biz after the tragedy. He has also been paying the bills as a stage actor, but has ruined his reputation by being an unreliable drunk until director Bernie Dodd (played by William Holden), desperate for a leading man for his new play, convinces his producer that Frank is perfect for the lead as long as he cleans him up. Throughout the movie, Bernie thinks Frank's wife Georgie is holding him back by belittling him and micromanaging his career, thus enhancing his insecurities and driving him to continually drink. In other words, as you will see, Bernie is clueless as to what is really going on. Grace Kelly is an early adapter of the-- I'm too beautiful to be taken seriously so the only way I can get an Oscar is if I'm made to look unattractive and given a dark dramatic role that is against type--strategy. It does work for her though. I really bought into her angst and regret as the pain of her daily ordeal of propping up Frank's ego and keeping him away from the booze becomes more clear. Even though Bernie is frustrated with Georgie, he slowly starts to fall in love with her because HELLO! this is Grace Kelly, and no matter how frumpy her clothes are and how pale the makeup is, she's still her, and the movie does show a few scenes of a happier Georgie where all that is washed away and you see the diamond in the rough she really is without Frank's downward spiral to deal with. Bing Crosby is too old for the part and Grace Kelly is too young for hers, but because of their great chemistry together I was able to get past it. Bing Crosby earned a Best Actor nomination by pivoting from his usual crooning self to miserable washed-up showman with ease. George Seaton's Oscar winning screenplay explores how the loss of a child can affect both husband and wife and the ways they deal with it--good or bad, and whether they can rise above it. Definitely worth a watch.

Grace Kelly (in return for the great sacrifice of wearing dowdy clothes and glasses) got the Oscar, but it was Bing Crosby who deserved it for his portrayal of a man who lies as naturally and as often as breathing to preserve his image as a nice, sweet guy. His alcoholism seems a lesser flaw than his essential phoniness--he blames his wife for things she has not done so that everyone can admire how graciously he forgives her; he vilifies in private a fellow actor to whom he is charming in public. It was far more courageous of Bing to show what people might have conjectured, with some justice, was the dark side to his public happy-go-lucky persona than it was for Kelly to wear baggy cardigans. Anyone who has had one of these men in their lives will relish this characterisation, given tremendous force by its being done by such a beloved entertainer. The best performance, though, is William Holden's, and the only one with energy and sex appeal. (What do you say of a woman who makes a picture with William Holden and Bing Crosby and has an affair with...Bing Crosby?) Yet all of them are at the mercy of Clifford Odets's couch-bound drama--and that's the analyst's couch, not the casting one. This is a story in which characters who live a life of secrecy or lies, on being confronted with The Truth, suddenly exhibit a remarkable degree of honesty and self-knowledge and come out with an articulate expression of their psychology. And for all the self-consciously sophisticated dialogue, the instigation for Bing's alcoholism is a piece of Victorian sentimentality-- he stops holding the hand of his cutesy-wootsy little blonde son for one minute, and the kid rushes into traffic to get run over. Poor Bing also has to deliver one of the most tasteless lines in the history of cinema: "I gave that woman ten years of the worst kind of hell outside a concentration camp."The songs Bing is given, though they are by Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen, are limp and mediocre, and the ones he sings onstage, at his audition and as part of the musical in which he appears, are dire. In fact, the stage show is so awful it is hard to believe it was not written in a spirit of parody--it's a combination of the worst parts of Oklahoma! and Our Town; the sign on the hotel in the set even says Our Town Hotel, for God's sake! Everything we see is, like the audition song, stuff that would have been considered dull and corny 20 years earlier. The scenes backstage, however, are rich in amusing theatrical atmosphere.Odets was a notorious misogynist, a trait that he cannot keep from creeping into the movie. When Holden makes scathing remarks about Kelly, his ex-wife, or women in general, he sounds much more believable than when he has to express his love for Kelly in uninteresting, awkward dialogue. And though the music surges at the end to bless Kelly when she decides to reject Holden and return to Bing (and was there ever any question she wouldn't? come on, who has top billing?) I couldn't buy the tragic nobility. The alcoholic and his enabler, both characters who live by sucking the blood of other people, have done it again: they have leeched off the warm, impulsive Holden, screwed him up, and then tossed him aside, having gained the strength to go on. One can't help wondering--did Odets know this and cynically misrepresent it to his audience, or did he fool himself?

Years ago, Frank Elgin (Bing Crosby) was a successful singer and actor, but a tragedy turned him in to an alcoholic loser and his wife, Georgie (Grace Kelly), into a bitter shrew. A young Broadway director (William Holden) wants Frank to star in his new show, but Frank's drinking and his uncooperative wife may spell disaster. This stark and touching drama has both Bing and Grace playing against type and they're both wonderful. Bing plays the weak has-been with utter sincerity and Grace drabs it up to play the nagging wife. She won Best Actress and he was nominated for Best Actor. The two reunited two years later in "High Society," playing carefree socialites, showing their versatility. William Holden is excellent as the demanding director who pulls a good performance out of Frank and shakes up the angry Georgie. The script draws on the themes of guilt, alcoholism, and redemption and the black and white photography emphasizes Frank and Georgie's misery. It's a very good and thought-provoking film.

Musical stage star Bing Crosby (as Frank Elgin) is all washed-up in the theater; after the accidental death of his son, he seeks solace in alcohol. Mr. Crosby's dowdy wife of ten years, Grace Kelly (as Georgie Elgin), is both domineering and co-dependent. Ex-hat check boy, and Cosby fan, William Holden (as Bernie Dodd) becomes overly involved with the pair, while steering Cosby's boozy comeback. Mr. Holden is as dependable as always. Ms. Kelly is good, but sometimes too obvious in showing frumpiness. Surprisingly, Cosby, the least heralded dramatic actor of the threesome, outperforms his illustrious co-stars; he really crawls beneath the surface of his character, and manages to make an almost tuneless, lackluster story much more interesting.******* The Country Girl (12/15/54) George Seaton ~ Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, William Holden, Anthony Ross