![]() ![]() Another way to put this is that if you need to cast someone as an everyman journalist who looks down on the excesses and vanities of the rich, George Bailey of It’s a Wonderful Life makes a lot more sense than the guy Lauren Bacall dubbed the biggest rat of the Rat Pack. And before Crosby and Sinatra sleep-walked through those roles, they belonged to the far more game Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart-opposite Katharine Hepburn no less, who with no disrespect to High Society’s Grace Kelly, is one of the greatest actresses the screen has ever seen. Perhaps that was inevitable, however, since it was a remake of the far superior The Philadelphia Story (1940) from 16 years earlier. ![]() That movie starred Crosby and Sinatra together(!), trading barbs and singing new Cole Porter tunes.Īll that star power made it one of the highest grossing movies of its year, but even then the picture ran into major roadblocks with the critics. Heck, one of the biggest latter day successes of MGM’s famed musical assembly line under Arthur Freed-the veritable Marvel Studios of its day-was 1956’s High Society. During the 1950s, where Don’t Worry Darling’s insulated community of Victory exists, some of the highest paid movie stars were music men first: Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra. radio darlings to sell tickets over the need to sell stories. Even so, Styles’ Don’t Worry Darling performance evokes the ghost of a seemingly eternal problem that comes whenever Hollywood casts a pop star or beloved musician: What can they bring to the film besides the stunt of instant audience recognition and curiosity?ĭuring the much vaunted Golden Age of Hollywood, Tinseltown was more shameless about relying on a.m. He’s still young, and was convincing enough in his admittedly smaller role in Dunkirk, and we have not yet seen his next turn in My Policeman. This is all to say we’re not ready to damn Styles as an actor yet. When actors of that caliber cross swords, you feel the sparks ignited by their tension. And these moments of dread most persuasively appear when Chris Pine, who plays Styles’ smug boss, finally gives Pugh a sparring partner worthy of her talents. Still, Wilde’s vision of a Norman Rockwell hell does flicker to life from time to time. Of course Don’t Worry Darling has many other problems, some of which far overshadow Styles’ simple serviceability. However, you still needed Charles Boyer to sell the persuasive insidiousness of a man patronizing her to the point of madness.ĭespite being a blindingly charismatic presence behind a mic, onscreen Styles struggles to convince the audience that he’s an everyman, never mind the Beelzebub on Pugh’s shoulder. ![]() In the actual Gaslight movie of 1944, from which sprang the popular term for misleading the almost always female spouse, Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for enveloping audiences into her Gothic nightmare. By the very notion of its moniker, in which the slow-boiling menace of being gaslit by your partner is implicit, the most important role after the “darling”-who is here portrayed by a magnetic Florence Pugh-is that of the husband telling her not to worry. Unfortunately, with a film titled Don’t Worry Darling that is a problem. ![]()
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