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As Good As It Gets

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

TWIST OF FATE is set on the French Riviera and could have been improved with color cinematography, but probably not by much. Its black and white images are not particularly striking and do little to enhance the film's Noir status. A businessman (Stanley Baker) is running a counterfeit operation not because he needs the money but simply because he's bored with big business. It doesn't seem very likely. He's also bored with his wife and is keeping a mistress (Ginger Rogers) in very high style. She, an ex-showgirl, is either naive enough or self-deceptive enough to think that he's going to divorce his wife to marry her. This would seem to be somewhat less unlikely. One of her old friends apparently has had a nervous breakdown and is in a hospital somewhere. This unseen woman's husband (Herbert Lom), a thoroughly lowdown weasel, coincidentally meets Rogers at a ritzy gambling casino despite the fact that he is broke. He also coincidentally is working indirectly as a part of Baker's counterfeiting ring. Baker eventually will mistake Lom for Rogers' lover. Lom may be mentally unbalanced himself right from the beginning of the movie; he certainly is by the end of it. When the necessity arises, Lom proves himself to be an excellent safe-cracker, which may be the most unlikely incident of the entire movie. If you're getting the idea that the plot of TWIST OF FATE is something less than airtight, you would be right. It would be rather churlish to suggest that the love affair between Ginger Rogers and Jacques Bergerac was unlikely given that they were married at the time. He was something like twenty years younger than she and moved on to another actress (Dorothy Malone, I think) after a few years. But movies, including this one, end long before that point is reached, and I suppose that it's just as well.As for performances, Rogers had seen better days, and for that matter would see better days in the future not only on stage but even in her few remaining film roles. Here this normally lively and sparkling actress comes across as quite ordinary, and such a passive role as 'Johnnie' simply doesn't become her. Baker is rather stiff, and as for the performance of the handsome but difficult to understand Bergerac, I'll quote Ginger's character from the movie ROBERTA: "I've seen worse, darling, but not much."By far the best thing in TWIST OF FATE is the performance of Herbert Lom. Despite the fact that his character is loaded down with absurdities and demonstrates no redeeming social values whatsoever, Lom makes him fascinating to watch in a 'How degraded can the poor fellow possibly be?' sort of manner. That and a snappy pace are the movie's two positive attributes. It's not a disaster, just a mediocrity.

In fact, there are so many coincidences and misunderstandings in this movie it looks as though the makers of 1986's "Ruthless People" looked to this film for inspiration in writing that comedy.Ginger Rogers plays Johnny Victor, an ex-showgirl who has become the mistress of Louis Galt (Stanley Baker). Everything she thinks she knows about him is wrong. She thinks he's been long legally separated from his wife and waiting on the divorce to become final - in fact he is estranged from his wife but very married. She thinks him to be head of a family business - he is, but it's his wife's family business, and any divorce would be the end of his executive life and the end of the front for his real business - counterfeiting illegal coins.Now that's the straight-forward part of the film. The rest of it is one long string of coincidences and misunderstandings. First off, Johnny is friends with Emil (Herbert Lom) who is a con artist. She gives him money because she thinks the money is going to his sick wife. Emil is also working for Louis (several flights down in the chain) selling the counterfeit coins. Neither Louis nor Johnny know that the other one knows Emil. Emil owes Louis a bunch of money he can't pay back because he gambled it away, so he thinks he can get the money back by robbing Johnny's safe when she's away from home. He does so, and escapes detection by Johnny, but he takes something that was a personal gift from Louis. When Louis sees the bracelet up for hock and realizes Emil hocked it he thinks Johnny has a lover and it is Emil. Well, Johnny does have a new love, one she met after she found out Louis was permanently married, but he is an artist in the village, not Emil.The end result is all of these people are arguing with each other yet none of them are on the same page. Emil is the only one who has most of the facts, and he's perfect as the cowardly little weasel. Somehow this not too bright piece of inhuman slime manages to steal even more loot, commit what seems to be the perfect murder, and frame unknowing suspects. One piece of advice here from years of watching Perry Mason - if you are ever in such a catbird seat, just walk away from the scene of the crime and act like you were never there - that's what people who want to appear innocent do. Do not follow the people you framed to see how it all turns out.This is a European noir so there are certain techniques in style and acting that make it different from its American counterparts, but it is still an edge of the seat viewing experience. Only Ginger Rogers and maybe Herbert Lom will likely be familiar to American viewers. If those of you who recognize Lom know him only as Inspector Dreyfuss from the Pink Panther movies you'll find Lom's portrayal of the slowly emotionally unraveling Emil a revelation. Highly recommended.

Decent little thriller with an oddly cast Stanley Baker and hard-to-understand Jacques Bergerac, but the story is pretty good: about the mistaken identity of a thief amid the lies and deceptions of others.Ginger Rogers plays a third-rate performer who is shacked up with Baker, a wealthy businessman. They have a fabulous house in Cannes, and everything seems to me going well until an old acquaintance turns us (Herbert Lom) who seems to bring bad luck to anyone he associates with. Aside from that he is a thief. Rogers soon learns that Baker is really not separated from his wife (Margaret Rawlings) or divorcing her. He's also a crook. In a snit of hysterics, she almost drives her Rolls over a sea cliff and wanders to a funky beach house where she meets Bergerac. They fall in love. But how to get rid of Baker? Meanwhile, Lom robs the Cannes house and the diamond bracelet he steals ends up back with Baker, who gave it to Rogers. So he assumes Rogers and Lom are an item. From there everything goes wrong with botched killing attempts, escapes, and each person trying to figure out who is with who.Rogers looks great and acts imperiled well but beyond that has little to do in the finale as the men thrash it out on the sea cliffs. Lom turns in an excellent and subtle Peter Lorre like performance. Coral Browne steals the one scene she is in. Atmospheric and tense and not bad at all.

British filmmakers faced what they thought was a problem. They spoke English (of a sort) which meant that they should be able to make some money in the US . This was necessary because UK returns weren't enough to make really big money. The problem, as they saw it then, was that they needed some star appeal for the Americans. Even going back to the twenties they would import American film star to headline the production and hope that people would go to the theaters expecting a first class Hollywood picture and buy a ticket before they found out it was a cheapo British movie by which time it would be too late.Their big mistake is importing a 'star' with no box office appeal, or more, likely one who was over the hill, a bit passe, the news of which hadn't caught up in London. Of course it was the alternative that worked, (such as Ealing comedies) - unknown but superb actors in a well written and directed film was more successful and wound up with the unknown star going to Hollywood- e.g. James Mason, Maureen O'Hara, Richard Harris, Richard Burton ad. infinitum.Along with the star it was common practice to import a director and a cameraman. Many of the best British cameramen of a generation started as assistants to some Hollywood 'old pro.' The British had an inferiority complex about their own directors.For this film they imported Ginger Rogers and David Miller. Rogers was 40+ and her career was winding down. She made a picture with Fred Astaire THE BARKLEYS OF Broadway in '49 and MONKEY BUSINESS with Howard Hawks and Cary Grant in '52 but it was the co-star that everybody noticed and I don't mean the chimp (I.e. Marilyn Monroe). Miller was a superior hack, fully capable of rendering a good script like SATURDAY'S HERO but not able to save a turgid one like BACK STREET.The script for BEAUTIFUL STRANGER (TWIST OF FATE) is a derivative rehash of what was mildly popular as a second feature a few years before. In other words - a noir. The dialogue seems to be the type where one expects an actor to turn to the camera and remark 'We're all in a movie, aren't we?' The real potential star of the picture, Stanley Baker, is miscast and badly used as the heavy of the piece, the fifteen year age difference between Rogers and him poorly covered up with grey streaks in his hair. Herbert Lom is a thief and a foreigner and crazy and doing none of them well. Jacques Bergerac was the nominal hero because he was the best looking etc. This was his film debut and was Ginger Rogers fourth husband at the time. Bosco, I believe, is the Italian word for wood and a piece of wood could have done a better acting job. I'm sure he must have had some other talents.To make matters worse the film was shot on location on the French Riviera. Not a classic noir location. Once away from the Hollywood Studio system Miller seems unable to stage even the simplest fight or action sequence. Never has the Riviera looked duller (the film is shot without any inspiration or colour). I'm not too sure if it wasn't shot in Devon. A stinker but an educational one.