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Escape Me Never
A penniless composer marries a young widow with a baby—even though he is in love with his brother's fiancée.
Release : | 1947 |
Rating : | 5.9 |
Studio : | Warner Bros. Pictures, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Set Decoration, |
Cast : | Errol Flynn Ida Lupino Eleanor Parker Gig Young Reginald Denny |
Genre : | Drama Romance |
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Takes itself way too seriously
Best movie ever!
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
. . . during the Advent of the "Talkies," Prophecy moved from the exclusive realm of pedantic professorial prattlers into the bailiwick of Joe Blow and Rosie Riveter, the True Blue Union Label "Little People" who buy the vast majority of movie tickets. So during Warner's ESCAPE ME NEVER, what present-day deplorable villainess is this story's cold-hearted Rich Witch home-wrecking Fat Cat heiress "Fenella MacLean" clairvoyantly crafted to represent? Hint: Warner provides us with a whopping clue when Fenella lures "Sebastian" into killing working class single mom "Gemma's" baby "Piccolo" through his gross neglect. Can anyone view these traumatic scenes during the long hot summer of 2018 and NOT instantly think of America's Reincarnated version of "Marie Antoinette," who visits one of her husband's notorious Child Abuse Centers wearing a "designer" frock reading "I just don't care: Let them eat cake"? If "E. In-Like-Flynn" writing ballets seems implausible to you during ESCAPE ME NEVER, ask yourself how better could the eponymous Warner Bros. predict the appointment of an illegal alien porn starlet as America's Third Lady?
After 1945 in which Errol Flynn appeared in typical roles for him in Operation Burma and San Antonio, he obviously must have talked to Jack Warner about getting parts that would broaden his range. He did three films over the next two year designed to do that, Never Say Goodbye, Cry Wolf, and Escape Me Never. The last is probably closest to Flynn, but all three didn't either get great critical notice or did outstanding box office. After Escape Me Never, Flynn was back in traditional action roles like Silver River and The Adventures of Don Juan, the kind of parts his fans like to see him in.Escape Me Never is a four sided triangle story set in the years of the turn of the last century. Errol's a misunderstood genius of a composer who is living with a young widow, Ida Lupino and her baby. Ida's another Bohemian sort who broke into the villa in Venice of an English couple and their daughter. When she's confronted she mentions she's living with Errol. That sends a ripple through the house because daughter Eleanor Parker is engaged to Gig Young who is Errol's brother and they think Errol's a two timer. When she leaves Venice in a huff, Flynn, Lupino, and Young chase after her.The problem is that the daughter may have been wrong on the particulars, but in fact Errol is a two timing cad, though a charming one.Charm Flynn had in abundance, but I could never quite accept him as a musical genius. The best thing about the film is the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold who wrote a ballet for the film that is the highlight. Korngold scored a lot of Flynn's early swashbucklers, most notably The Adventures Of Robin Hood.This is the second version of this story, the British cinema did one in 1935 with Elisabeth Bergner and Hugh Sinclair. I'm guessing that was a better film.
It's not a comedy but if you don't laugh, you will be wondering why you continued to sit through this till the very end. Errol Flynn carried this film most of the way with his usual charm but even he can't perform lazarus on such a poorly written screenplay. Peter Godfrey didn't help either. Perhaps he had fallen asleep while directing this piece. Having said that, it has a great cast of actors and actresses. Lupino is a good actress but I felt she was badly miscast in this film. What a pity though because the idea was good and it had potential.
'Escape Me Never' is a tired remake of an Elizabeth Bergner film from the '30s and they should have thought twice before filming it. As the N. Y. Times so aptly observed: "Harsh and unbelievable...the script is a frightful thing." Ida Lupino only made it because she was eager to co-star with Errol Flynn (they had a brief romantic relationship) but despite competent performances by all concerned, none of them have a chance against the poor script. Basically, it's the story of two musician brothers (Errol Flynn, Gig Young) and their involvement with two women (Ida Lupino, Eleanor Parker), a romantic tearjerker with occasional flashes of humor. Ida is the poverty-stricken Gemma in love with Flynn who is unfaithful to her until his reformation at the end. One of his musical compositions is brilliantly performed by a full orchestra and here Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score soars. He was unfortunate in that some of the films he scored were considerably less worthy of his talent than they should have been. His music is the only redeeming value of this disjointed, uneven mess of a film, a short original ballet, Primavera, and a popular song that was well received, Love for Love. Production-wise, the film suffers from an obvious use of process shots and sound-stage simulations of the Alps.My career article on Ida Lupino is due to appear in the Fall issue of FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE.