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Pretty Good

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Before Gregory Peck played heroes in movies about American integrity, he took a few villainous, or at least troubled, roles. In The Great Sinner, Greg plays a compulsive gambler, and he gives a wonderful performance.At first, he's just a writer who wants to write about the incredible sickness of gambling, but before long, he finds out firsthand how the sickness can take over a man's life. What I love most about this movie is the realism of the script and performances. I've heard this movie compared to The Lost Weekend, a movie about alcoholism, but I found The Great Sinner to be much more realistic in its portrayal of addiction. Greg's performance is fantastic, and it's great to see the contrast of how he was before he started gambling. As the movie continues, he becomes desperate, cruel, and self-loathing. Many times Hollywood shows the glitz and glamour associated with gambling, but since this is a period piece, there's no neon lights or Las Vegas strip. It's in black-and-white, it's dirty without being filthy, it warns without becoming melodramatic, and it's heart-wrenching.Greg is flanked by an all-star supporting cast, including Melvyn Douglas, Ethel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead, Walter Huston, and his favorite leading lady Ava Gardner. I don't usually like Ava Gardner, but this movie is an exception. I highly recommend it.

Well, it bears little resemblance to Dostoyevsky's novel, it's the closest that Gregory Peck has ever come to overacting, and it was a flop at the box office, but I kind of liked it.Peck narrates the story of a writer, a man of probity, who falls for a beautiful young woman, Ava Gardner, in the casino town of Wiesbaden. Except for some elegantly overripe dialog, that's about as close as it gets to an autobiographical account by the Russian novelist.Peck's character doesn't gamble but he feels there's a story in the various addicts around the tables. Some of them gamble away everything they have and then shoot themselves. "Try to see that it doesn't happen at the table," says the ruthless manager, Melvyn Douglas.Peck learns that Gardner is committed to marrying Douglas as a way of paying off her father's gambling debt. He throws a coin on the table and wins. He wins again. He continues to win until he has more than enough money to pay off the debt and take Gardner for himself.Little did they know that tragedy lay just around the corner.Peck has practically a suitcase full of bills, minus the ones stolen by Gardner's father, Walter Huston. The night before he and Gardner are about to run off together, Peck is gripped by the conviction that he can win still more. He loses it all. Then he pawns everything he owns, is thrown out of his hotel room and consigned to the servant's quarters, grows a stubbly beard and long hair, and, overall, begins to look like a bum.He avoids everyone he knows and stumbles finally into a church. At first, in the shadows, he hears coins tinkling into the poor box and his eyes gleam. But, lo, an epiphany. As the heavenly chorus swells, he stares up at the beams of light spilling into the chapel and falls to his knees. What is money, after all? Just a piece of paper crawling with germs, as someone once observed. It ends with a reformed Peck nuzzling Gardner's oh-so-nuzzlable neck. Then they both starve to death. (Just kidding; this is an MGM movie.) The cast is terrific. Peck has rarely been so animated. And when he's in the midst of his winning streak, he GRABS for the bills coming his way with a maniacal grin. Gardner is pretty. Walter Huston is pompous and a thief, thoroughly enjoyable. Ethel Barrymore makes a brief appearance. And Agnes Moorehead is the wicked crone of a pawn broker. The script has Peck in her shop, trying to pawn a religious icon that isn't his, and when she screeches insults, he begins to crawl towards a nearby axe. He's going to murder the old pawnbroker lady with an axe. The writers got their stories mixed up.I don't know why it was such a failure. It's no masterpiece but the playing was decent, and the plot was involving.

There is little to no reasoning in this movie. We are supposed to believe that Gregory Peck's character, supposedly an intelligent writer, would throw away his entire life and future based on his compulsion to gamble after his initial exposure to gambling. Would you risk possibly losing the beautiful Ava Gardner to a spin of the roulette wheel or the turn of a card? Uhmmm...not this cowboy.Too many great actors in this film for it to be so average.......Ethel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Frank Morgan...When I think of the movie that could have been made with this cast I feel cheated by this movie. This is one of the few times I believe that Gregory Peck should have turned the script down. Like most Hollywood productions of the 1940's the sets and costumes are lush and believable. It's too bad that the plot didn't follow suit.

This is a sumptuously-staged costume drama, the kind Hollywood always did so well. Only there's a dark side to "The Great Sinner", as the richness of the production begins to coexist with sordid tales of gambling addiction and related human tragedy that soon unfold. No one is immune here; even stolid Gregory Peck falls to the lure of the cards, and hard. Ethel Barrymore is subtly wonderful, as ever, and steals every scene. This becomes a powerful, suspenseful film with a fine cast and a relentless tale to tell. Not to be missed!