Bogart saves the film, but barely

Rating: 6/10 (26 July 2006)

If there's ever been a film that needs to be remade, this is it. Normally I'm not in favor of remaking old movies, but this is an exception. My only reservation is that it would do some dishonor to Boagrt's performance, which was a good one, although not his best. Other than that, the screenplay is stilted and in some cases betrays the book, the tone is overly melodramatic, and most of the acting is wooden -- especially that of Van Johnson, who was a dreadful choice for Steve Maryk. If they'd carved a wooden figure out in his general shape and stood it in the scenes and did voice-overs with his dialogue they would have gotten better performances. Robert Francis was not much better, although he did look the part, and the May Wynn who portrayed May Wynn (???) was a annoying squeaky-voiced little non-entity who either should have had more of a character or should have been left out completely. Fred MacMurray did his best but didn't have any real passion. I would say that Jose Ferrer did a great job as Barney Greenwald but for the fact that Edward Dymytyk's main instruction to all the actors seemed to be to act as stiffly as they possibly could. Someone needs to go back to the original novel and start over again. Meanwhile, this will have to do.