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Although I agree that it's a good but not great movie, for many of the reasons other posters have mentioned, I still enjoy it. One reason is the music: I'd call attention to the very cool appearance by the Candoli brothers -- Conte and Pete -- in a well-staged scene in the nightclub. These guys were two of the best jazz trumpeters of their day, and they manage to convincingly boggle the mind of Jimmy Stewart by playing an hysterical trumpet duet, one trumpet in each of Stewart's ears. The Candolis really did play that well, too, though I suspect the actual music for that scene was dubbed later by the two of them. I don't know much about George Duning, who gets the credit for the music (other than that he seems to have worked with the Three Stooges on more than one occasion), but the casting of the Candoli brothers as jazz-playing warlocks was a real nice touch.


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After you see Vertigo, then watch Bell, Book and Candle, made within months of each other.
My second favorite Kim Novak film, with Picnic, coming in as third.
All three performances are great, Vertigo, being the best, of all.
They came to my nowhere Kansas Prairie town, near by, at Salina, Kansas in the 50s, to film, Picnic.
Bell, Book and Candle's musical score, I believe is one of Alex North's. Perfect for this bit of comedy.
After Vertigo, Stewart and Novak, did this comedy, how amusing to note the dramatic contrast.
Worth your time, if you like Kim Novak. The Greta Garbo of my youth.


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Have not seen this 1958 film in a very long time and greatly enjoyed Kim Novak playing the role as Gil Holroyd who is an actual witch and has an aunt named Queenie Holroyd who is also a witch and Gillian also has a brother warlock named Nick played by Jack Lemmon. When Gillian sets her eyes on Shep Henderson,(James Stewart) who is engaged to a girl he is going to marry; Gillian performers some magic spells with a cat and changes his mind about his intended bride and then becomes very lust full and falls in love with Gillian. The story tells that a real witch cannot fall in love, blush or cry and this begins to prove a big problem between Shep and Gillian, so Nick and Aunt Queenie decided they have to do something about this situation. Great film to view over and over again and a great classic film from 1958.


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I watched this movie after watching Practical Magic, and the older film was far superior. I liked the way the lighting, makeup, and costumes changed as Gillian changed in the story. Jimmy Stewart's mannerisms didn't do a lot for me in this film, but I suppose they did serve to highlight the reserve of Gillian's character. I was also struck by Nicky's and Gillian's mannerisms--it was as if the director wanted him to appear effeminate and Gillian to appear masculine. The gestures Nicky makes when he's showing Redlich his powers especially struck me. I've never thought of warlocks as being effeminate, so it was an interesting way of contrasting those characters.


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"Bell Book and Candle" was shown recently on cable. Not having seen it for a while, we decided to take another look at this comedy. Based on the James Van Druten's Broadway hit, which was a vehicle for Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer in the early fifties, the film was adapted for the screen by Daniel Taradash. The film was directed by Richard Quine, who turned the play into a delightful comedy.
Evidently, judging by some of the comments submitted by IMDb, the big issue seems to be the pairing of the two stars, who had collaborated on "Vertigo", released the same year. Movie audiences didn't think anything about the age difference when this film was released. In fact, most of the aging male stars of that period were always involved with much younger women.
The film set in Manhattan during Christmas is a delightful comedy that has enchanted viewers. Kim Novak was at the height of her beauty as it's clear the camera adored her no matter what was she playing. As the witch that becomes human, her Gillian is charming. James Stewart, who plays the publisher Shep' Henderson, is also seen at his best. Mr. Stewart was an excellent comedy actor who shows in here why he was at the top.
In supporting roles the wonderful Elsa Lanchester, playing Queenie, is a welcome addition to any movie, as she proves here. Jack Lemmon's Nicky Holroyd, the brother of Gillian, is also good. Ernie Kovacs is also seen as the writer Sidney Radlitch.
This is an excellent way to spend a winter night at home watching "Bell Book and Candle".


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I can watch B,B&C and feel all the emotions I felt when I first saw it at aged 18 well,maybe all but one.Certainly Miss K.Novak has lost none of her silky allure in nearly half a century.She was a thinking youth's Diana Dors.All those thinking youths now collecting their pensions can briefly regain the heart - clutching,collar - tightening,blood - pulsing ardour they felt when she gazed directly into their eyes back in the days when they were being told that they had never had it so good. Now,huddled up against the cold and fearful of being mugged by a Hoodie,they scuttle home as fast as their arthritic knees can carry them from the Video Shop,relatively happy in the certain knowledge that within the triple - locked comparative safety of their fourth - floor tower block flat they can regain just a small fragment of their lost youth and perhaps reflect that love truly is eternal. This movie is Miss Novak's Golden Moment.She seized it avidly and gave a performance of awesome voluptuousness combined with a hypnotic awareness of her own sex - appeal and,despite all this,she convinces us that her character possesses a strange and beguiling innocence. She completely dominates the amiable Mr J.Stewart who seems resigned to handing her the movie.Misses E.Lanchester and H.Gingold offer comic relief along with Mr E. Kovacs whose peculiar talents are strictly proscribed.Mr J.Lemmon plays Miss Novak's brother.He is a beatnik,a species that disappeared as soon as it realised that its existence was being acknowledged by the mainstream.Some of the more hardcore beats reinvented themselves as hippies a few years later.Certainly they had become figures of fun by 1958 and Mr Lemmon does not appear overly concerned with restraint in portraying one. But all else is mere frippery,Miss Novak - bathed in a particularly beautiful spectrum of Technicolor - is the sole raison - d'etre for "Bell,Book and Candle".It survives,its reputation enhanced,as the ultimate showcase for one of Hollywood's most beautiful women. Loved by moviegoers,ignored by critics,Miss Novak will continue to captivate with that enigmatic smile all the time thinking old men have the strength to push the "Play" buttons on their DVDs.One day,probably after we are all gone,she will be discovered by a new generation who will - belatedly - realise that it is quite possible for a woman to be fully - dressed and sexually attractive at the same time.


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Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) is a witch. Secretly, she's attracted to her quite normal neighbor Shep Henderson (James Stewart). She casts a spell on Shep that forces him to dump his fiancé and fall for her. Things are going along quite nicely until Gillian discovers she really cares for this mortal man. She decides to tell him her secret. But how will Shep react when he finds out that he was "tricked" into falling in love with Gillian?
As far as light-hearted 1950s comedies go, Bell Book and Candle is good, but nothing spectacular. It's an enjoyable enough watch and should appeal to almost anyone who sits down with it. Just don't go into the movie expecting the greatest thing since sliced bread. The movie's cute, funny at times, and touching in the end. Kim Novak and James Stewart do their best and have some real chemistry. Novak (as others have pointed out) looks quite incredible in an understated sort of way. The supporting cast with Jack Lemmon, Hermione Gingold, and Elsa Lanchester is often laugh-out-loud funny and steals a lot of the spotlight from Novak and Stewart. The biggest problem I see is that Bell Book and Candle can't quite decide what kind of movie it wants to be. Is it a screwball comedy? Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a supernatural comedy? Had director Richard Quine stuck with just one approach, the movie might have been even better and more memorable.


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For those of you unfamiliar with Jimmy Stewart, this is one of his "lesser" films from later in his career. And, while it isn't a great film compared to many of his other pictures, it isn't bad and is a decent time-passer--but not much more.
Kim Novak is a witch in New York City and for some inexplicable reason, she decides to cast a spell on poor Jimmy to make him fall in love with her. Over time, the cold and detached Ms. Novak also begins to fall in love with Stewart--and apparently in the witch's rule book, this is a definite NO, NO!!
The film is odd in its sensibilities about the witches. They are neither the baby-sacrificing nor the all-powerful variety. Most of their magic is pretty limited and pointless (such as Jack Lemmon using his powers to turn off street lamps). And, very oddly, the witches all seem to be bohemians who hang out in hip bars where you might find people wearing berets and listening to crappy jazz. Considering what I think of jazz, it must really stink to be a witch in this movie's world!
Anyway, the film is pretty romantic and mildly comedic, but not something I would rush out to watch. The acting is pretty good, but the script doesn't offer enough payoff to make this an exceptional film--in fact, I almost scored the film a 6--it was really close.


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Vertigo co-stars Stewart (in his last turn as a romantic lead) and Novak elevate this, Stewart's other "Christmas movie," movie to above mid-level entertainment. The chemistry between the two stars makes for a fairly moving experience and further revelation can be gleaned from the movie if witchcraft is seen as a metaphor for the private pain that hampers many people's relationships. All in all, a nice diversion with legendary stars, 7/10.


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This is the kind of film that, if it were made today, it would probably star Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant; actually, now that I think about it, this one is quite liable to be remade one day. It's pleasant, but with no depth whatsoever. It suffers from the almost fatal miscasting of James Stewart in a role he is about 20 years too old for, and as a result there is no chemistry between him and the beautiful Kim Novak. Ernie Kovacs, in the small supporting role of an aspiring writer, is the only actor in the film whose performance approaches what you might call "wit". (**1/2)


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Kim Novak's a witch on the prowl for a mortal lover, and James Stewart's her choice. Scintillating comedy of manners, from the Broadway stage; shot by James Wong Howe in Witch Color, and performed by a sterling cast. Ernie Kovacs is wonderful as the perpetually dishevelled writer Redlitch. I love this movie, though few others seem to. Kim alone makes it a winner in my Book. Ha! My #5 film of 1958.


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This impossible tale is of a female witch pursuing a mortal man, in a mortal world. Her "community" is open among it's members, but she conceals her witchcraft from the mortals. Hmmmm...this is starting to sound familiar. LOL. It's not your typical movie. Very "campy" performances by Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs keep things from getting dull. Kim Novak is always a pleasure on screen, but I found her pairing with James Stewart unusual (but not fatal to the story).
With re-newed interest in all things witchy and dark, this film deserves to be discovered and re-discovered by old and new audiences...... IT'S STILL A HOOT !


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this is an honest attempt to make a bewitchingly sweet love story. the obvious inspiration behind the successful TV series "Bewitched," this lovely sweet rom-com is a timeless treasure. the comparisons are obvious. jimmy stewart plays a hapless but stolid "straight." kim novac plays a voluptuous blond witch who captures him through the use of a love spell. but when that spell is broken by a stronger witch, she contents herself with the duties of running her own shop and takes comfort in the fact that her beloved pyewacket (her feline familiar) is being cared for by her beloved aunt. you'll recognize the aunt from "Murder by Death." this movie is fun and touchingly sweet, bearing some spectacular wit and a nice witchy feel. worth a look.


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Bell Book and Candle was released in December 1958 and features James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon. and Ernie Kovaks. This film had James Stewart and Kim Novak in their second on-screen pairing (after the Alfred Hitchcock classic Vertigo, released earlier the same year). This was Stewart's last film as a romantic lead as he was deemed too old at age 50 to play that sort of part anymore. The movie is about a witch played by Kim Novak who is attracted to a mortal played by James Stewart. She puts a spell on him and he falls head over heels in love with her. I enjoyed the movie and its cast. This movie at the time was a moderate success which was nominated for a Golden Globe for best Movie Comedy. GimmeClassics


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The 1960's TV series Bewitched owes it's idea from this movie. This is the movie that Jimmy Stewart & Kim Novak made right after they were cast together in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. This one is not as obsessive as that one but Novak is just as captivating.
This was Jack Lemmons 10th movie and he is good in support here as well as Ernie Kovacs. The movie has a lot of good things about it. Hermine Gingold is very good in this movie, almost as good in support here as she was in The Music Man. The cast is very solid.
This movie has a late 1950's New York City feel & a cat that is as hexing as any feline in any movie. It is well worth watching as it is a love story with all the emotion of any, & a little magic too boot.
It is not Vertigo but I think because it followed that movie, viewers then did not rate it as good as it deserved - sure am glad that William Asher saw it, so that the 1960's series got created. I am not so glad about what Will Ferrell did to it on the big screen, this movie is much better than that.


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A number of contributors have mentioned the age difference between Stewart and Novak. She was 25 and he was 50 when this movie was released. I think that the difference didn't matter for a suspense drama like Vertigo, but it does matter for a romantic comedy. We can easily understand, that is, why his character would be attracted to hers, but it's less clear why hers would be attracted to his.
Still, the movie works as a light romantic fantasy. The scene where she stares at him across the cat's head, with her dark painted-on eyebrows flaring and the sounds of her humming and the cat purring, is true magic. It's a little jarring, therefore, when the scene shifts to the top of the Flatiron Building, and we see the age difference very sharply. As he embraces her, she reaches up to run her fingers through his hair, but stops that motion and just brushes her fingertips lightly against his toupee.


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I really enjoyed watching this movie about the Delany sisters. I knew of them, but that was all. This movie opened my eyes to their bravado and courage. What a pair. What sacrifices they made to live life on their own terms. This is not only a movie for African Americans, but for all Americans. It is sort of a history lesson and a documentary rolled into one and combined with an entertaining movie biography. The acting was superior by all included and we really do get a glimpse of the hardships these two sisters went through for many years. Both sisters are quite different from each other. They came from a very loving and very strict family with high, maybe even impossible standards of perfection. It is sad to see how Sadie's father refused to allow his daughter to continue to see her boyfriend due to a possible misunderstanding. I thoroughly recommend this movie and I am glad I caught it on television the other day.


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The autobiography on which this movie is based remains one of the most heart-rending books I have ever read. It tells the amazing stories of two sisters, both who earned devotion and respect working well into their 70's as a teacher and a dentist, then lived another 30 years with dignity. Ruby Dee steals the film with her perfectly nuanced performance as the rebellious "blacker" Bessie, the dentist. She not only expresses her anger, angst, and wisdom well; she lets you know exactly where they've come from using an economy of words. Diahnn Carroll has the feel of the older sister, the teacher, down perfectly, but I'm afraid she never makes me believe that she's over 100. No matter -- the stories are well worth telling. Amy Madigan is a bit too extreme and intrusive in acting overwhelmed and insecure in the first half of the movie as the Caucasian NY Times reporter. This, too, is only a minor distraction. The stories, all true, are the attraction and although two or three get slightly damaged in the translation, most of them make it through just fine.
I recommend the book as essential reading to all people I recommend any books to. I cannot quite but this TV-movie in that rarefied air, but it certainly captures enough of the flavor to be highly worthwhile in its own right.


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A powerful adaptation of the best-selling book and the smash Broadway play about the lives of Bessie and Sadie Delany, two "colored" sisters who lived past the age of 100. Wonderfully played in their old age by Ruby Dee and Diahann Carroll, respectively, they tell their story in flashbacks to Amy Hill Hearth (played by Amy Madigan), a white New York Times reporter. The flashback and present-day scenes don't have as much inspirational value in them as in the book, but really are powerful. However, certain aspects of the sisters' lives, such as the inter-racial background of their mother and the reasons behind their father's stern personality are not presented clearly. You need to read the book to fully understand these things. Which is just as well, because the book's just as great! Aside from those flaws, it's wonderfully done and performed, especially by Dee and Carroll, and a very powerful and educational movie.


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A wonderful film version of the best-selling book and smash Broadway play about the lives of Sadie and Bessie Delany, two African-American sisters who both lived over the age of 100 and told their story of witnessing a century of American history. Ruby Dee and Diahann Carroll give very good performances as Bessie and Sadie, respectively. Amy Madigan also is good as Amy Hill Hearth, the white New York Times reporter whose article about the sisters launched the book, etc. Many of the flashback scenes and even many of the present-day ones are very powerful, if not quite as inspirational as in the book. That is the only real drawback, combined with the fact that certain aspects of the story are not presented clearly, such as the inter-racial background of the sisters' mother and why their father was so stern. But other than that, a very well-done, excellently performed, powerful movie.


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This was a fine example of how an interesting film can be made without using big stars and big effects. Just tell a true story about the struggles of two African American women over a turbulent century.
This movie challenges us all to look at our own personal prejudices and see that people are people, not white, black, etc.
Good movie with a good message.


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After "Beau travail", everybody was waiting for Claire Denis to make a follow-up masterpiece that never arrived. Now it has. Denis makes a quantum leap in this film, an orgy of gorgeous cinematography, elliptical editing and willfully obscure narrative events that feels strange and acts even stranger. There's a nominal plot (derived partly from the Jean-Luc Nancy book of the same name) about a mature man in need of a heart transplant and who seeks a Tahitian son he abandoned long ago; but mostly it's an exploration of the idea of intrusions personal and cultural. It takes a couple of viewings to fully comprehend, and has pacing problems close to the end, but it's still more advanced and gripping than anything else I've seen this year. Miss it at your peril.


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"The Intruder (L'Intrus)" is a visual pilgrimage through a mysterious life.
Grizzled Michel Subor plays "Louis Trebor" like Jason Bourne as an old man with a hidden past, living simply in an isolated hut in the woods for justifiably paranoid reasons (but attracting pretty young women who can be useful to him). We learn more about him through dreams, flashbacks and a journey that may unfold chronologically or not, as well as through his brusque interactions with family, lovers, business associates and a striking nemesis. Like "The Limey," the film resonates with parent/child regrets and a suspicious past revealed through clips from an old film with the same actor as a young man (here Paul Gégauff's 1965 adventure film "Le Reflux").
In a complete contrast of moods, we meet his son Sidney (Grégoire Colin) who has to be the sexiest house husband in the world, as he sweetly and seductively does household repairs and cares for a baby, a toddler and every need of his working wife. Surely director/co-writer Claire Denis must have created him as a woman's fantasy if ever there was one and a lesson to other filmmakers on filming foreplay. There's an additional extended scene where he seeks his father in the woods while carefully carrying his angelic baby in a pouch. He is everything his father is not and has every relationship his father is incapable of sustaining; no wonder he thinks his father is "a lunatic." I spent the rest of the film in dread that something bad would happen to him as the true nature of the heart of his alienated father is very gradually played out before our eyes.
The film is a puzzle, but Subor is ruthlessly fascinating as we watch him traverse countries and negotiate nefarious deals, and the voice-over narration for Denis's "Beau Travail" was annoying anyway. We have to figure out from skylines and incidental signage that he is traveling to Geneva, Korea and the South Pacific. Time passing is indicated by the seasons changing and scars being created and healing. There are lots of images of water for cleansing and for distancing.
Continuing her fascination with the morphing of colonialism into globalization, as well as playing a bit on stereotypes of the Mysterious Orient and Russian criminals, Denis has incorporated elements from Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Gauguin and Marlon Brando's Tahiti idylls and a 40-page memoir by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, the last for the title and heart-transplant plot used for an ironic theme of limited immortality which does have consequences.
While "Louis" thinks he's succeeded in being above boundaries, rules and morals, there is some amusement in the last act as the locals don't quite know what to do with him and try to help him solve his quixotic odyssey, even as he again lies in isolation.
Several people in the audience left in frustration at the elliptical, but strikingly beautiful, story telling method. The unconventional narrative does raise a lot of plot questions on details.


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Two things haunt you throughout L'intrus (The Intruder): who's the intruder and is it a movie or a dream you're watching? The ending is so shocking that for a while you're at a loss for an answer to either of those questions. The intruder pops up as different characters, different men in different circumstances who don't belong in the scene, so they're expelled from it, kindly or brutally, but often without emotional involvement. The main character, Louis, is a contemptible man. He's got rough ways, some mean job and no heart. He needs one and goes after it. He has a heart transplanted and afterwards decides to start a new life. Can this man succeed in his quest for redemption? A guy like that could cut your throat at the drop of a hat. You know it but Claire Denis doesn't encourage you to judge him. Occasionally, there's a young Russian woman -a beautiful girl who seems to inhabit someplace between heaven and earth - who does judge him. She may even punish him. But not Denis. There's the character played by Beatrice Dalle who wants no business with him: don't touch me, she says. But Denis lets this man be himself, films him in his self-absorbed quest. I don't know if what she films is the heart or the mind but it isn't the traditional plot basics. Whatever she films, you get it in the end. You know who's "the" intruder, you know why, more or less, and some scenes come back to your mind with their full meaning. But was it a movie or a dream?


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Claire Denis has demonstrated repeatedly that film does not need to tell a story, that it is sufficient to create an experience that allows the viewer to take the ingredients and make of them what they will.
Ostensibly the idea within the framework of a most non-linear film is the older man living on the French-Swiss border, a man devoted to his dogs, who still has a lover, but whose cardiac status increasingly threatens his life. He has a son with a little family who infrequently meet with him, but when he discovers he is in need of a heart transplant he opts for going to Tahiti via Japan to obtain a heart transplant on the black market and to rekindle a long lost relationship with a son he had form a Tahitian women years ago.
What Denis does with this outline of a story is use her camera to explore the loneliness of the soul, the vastness of nature, man's interaction with people vs animals, etc. Much of the time the 'film' doesn't make sense, but that is because we try too hard to connect all the dots laid out before us in beautiful pictures. Life is sort of like that: we look, see, observe, integrate, process, and make of it what we will.
In using this form of film making (much as she did in the strangely beautiful 'Beau Travail') Claire Denis has developed a signature technique. Whether or not the viewer finds the finished product rewarding has much to do with our individual methods of processing visual and conceptual information. This is an interesting and visually captivating film, but many viewers will find it an overly long discourse about very little. Perhaps watching again will change that. Grady Harp


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The film is not visually stunning in the conventional sense. It doesn't present a series of pretty pictures. Instead it is a visually interesting film. It forces the viewer to constantly process or perhaps imagine the context of the various shots. This sort of thing is easy to try but hard to succeed at. The film refuses to use the crutch of a genre to help the less than fully engaged viewer get what's going on. Instead the film touches on and moves through a number of different genres. The trick to loving the film is being able to enjoy this playfulness. I suspect 99% of North American viewers will just not get it. If you try to pin down the narrative of this film, or the philosophical message, or the symbolist structure, etc. you will waste your time. There are none of these. The film only feints towards these genres and others at times. The only unifying force in the film is Claire Denis's own sense of what fits together. There are so few feature length films that come close to satisfying Kant's description of what art is, namely the enjoyment of the power of judgment itself instead of simply subsuming experiences under concepts. Film usually takes the easy way out and opts for the simpler pleasure of understanding what's happening. Most film is not art. Most film doesn't come close to art. When a film does, as this one does, and is still enjoyable by a large range of viewers, it's something of a miracle. My on negative comment is that at times I find the film too simplistically buying in to the various narrative threads that run through it. The Tahiti father-son narrative, even though it's not exactly conventional, ends up making things a little to clear and simple. It dominates too much.


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The Intruder (L'Intrus), a film directed by French director Clair Denis, is the liberation of film. It follows its own spirit across time, space, and character. There may be a plot, but what I understood of that I picked up from the description on the Netflix DVD sleeve. Honestly, it's probably better to know nothing about the film before watching it, because then the viewer can set aside any and all expectations. The film demands that the viewer think, but also taunts the fact that he or she will not gain full understanding.
The human heart is the film's enigma. Every image questions its role, its nature, and its form. The heart is the intruder, that of the viewer and that of Louis. Louis' character is played by Michel Subor with the peace and mystery required by such a character. Honestly, anyone could've played Louis' character, if he or she possessed a wandering, willing, and comfortable heart. Yet Subor is the one featured here; he becomes the film, his identity is inseparable from it. Many of the film's images lingering in my mind revolve around his expressions, vocal but mainly physical.
The Intruder is poetic in its ability to capture the stillness and fullness of movement, but more fluid than any literature in the shape it refuses to take. "Surrealistic" has been a term used in describing this film, but perhaps "quasirealistic" is a more adequate term. Nothing in the film exists outside of the possibilities of reality; the simple omnipresent score confirms that by imagining in music the connection between heartbeat and dim light.
Watch the trailer a few times if you're attracted to visual imagery; see the film to see the consequences of the combination of verse and a grasping for freedom.


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First of all, I liked very much the central idea of locating the '' intruders'', Others in the fragile Self, on various levels - mainly subconscious but sometimes more allegorical. In fact the intruders are omnipresent throughout the film : in the Swiss-French border where the pretagonist leads secluded life; in the his recurring daydream and nightmare; inside his ailing body after heart transplantation.... In the last half of the film, he becomes intruder himself, returning in ancient french colony in the hope of atoning for the past.
The overall tone is bitter rather than pathetic, full of regrets and guilts, sense of failure being more or less dominant. This is a quite grim picture of an old age, ostensibly self-dependent but hopelessly void and lonely inside. The directer composes the images more to convey passing sensations of anxiety and desire than any explicit meanings. Some of them are mesmerizing, not devoid of humor though, kind of absurdist play only somnambulist can visualize.


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Clair Denis again revisits her theme of estranged fathers, men who follow their own bliss in determined fashion, heedless of the emotion toll on their family but while Nénette and Boni from the earlier film live in a narrow world of Marseilles, our examination of Louis Trebor in The Intruder takes us from a remote location along the French-Swiss border to half way around the world, to Korea and Tahiti. Again the film begins in mid stream, with Louis, in his sixties, coping with an ailing heart while attempting to maintain a high level of fitness. We learn that Louis is no stranger to violence as his cabin is the location for smuggling and gunfire a regular occurrence. Louis sleeps with a large knife under his pillow with rifles nearby. Denis is in no hurry to move the action along, and we must patiently build our understanding of Louis from his daily activities and the few people he deals with along the frontier including a son, Sidney (Grégoire Colin, almost unrecognizable with long hair and a wisp of a mustache) who rejects him as a "lunatic":, shown as a dedicated father of two. There are many brief scenes which, while seemingly unrelated, build up an impression of Louis and his milieu. Ms Godard's camera work is exhilarating here. The controlling metaphor is Louis's heart transplant for which he goes to Korea and then to Tahiti to search for another son, not found, and where Louis's new heart rejects him just as Sidney rejected the old. We are accustomed to brief scenes in Denis's film which are inexplicable: Nénette astride Boni feeding with a spoon; a drive by shooting of Boni's father and then the briefest of images of Boni with a gunshot wound in the head; a scene of Louis in a morgue with a cadaver with the scar of a transplant but the body of Sidney. The implication, of the last two, is a rejection, real or imagined, by a father, kills something indefinable in a son.


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I don't think anyone besides Terrence Malick and maybe Tran Anh Hung makes cinema on a purer level than Claire Denis. That said, I don't love this, her newest film, quite as much as her 2001 masterpiece "Trouble Every Day" (although it comes very close), which itself is one of my absolute favorite films. It it only because the narrative here is possibly slightly too elliptical for it's own good. Don't get me wrong, the fact that this film barely has a plot at all is really one of the best things about it, but I think Denis took it about one degree farther than it needed to go and consequently the film does flirt with incomprehensibility, and a few key plot points should have been clarified somehow (like that the main character goes to South Korea to get his heart transplant, instead of just showing him there all of a sudden without any explanation of where he is or why he is there). Also some of the other characters seemed unnecessary and as if they were just excuses for Denis to use actors she likes yet again (Beatrice Dalle's character in particular is a little distracting because you keep expecting that she is going to have some significance). Still, the film is incredibly absorbing and the cinematography is beyond amazing. It is definitely very much a masterpiece in it's own way. At least as good as Denis' more highly-acclaimed "Beau travail", if not better. Claire Denis has to be my favorite French director at this point, better than Leos Carax even. Also I have to admit that the South Korean sequence really does do "Lost in Translation" better than that film itself does (and I, unlike some, am a huge fan of that film as well).


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This movie is of almost generation-defining importance to some of us born in the early post-war years in that (and especially if you were born between 1946 and 1953 and loved spending Saturday afternoons at your neighborhood movie house) you almost certainly saw it. And the memory of seeing it has probably stayed with you. It's style is the stuff of a brief and somehow gloriously exciting moment in our growing up days.
It had a modern, space-age storyboard for the audiences of it's time. The set was any town with a supermarket and a movie theater that would be packed for a Friday midnight show. It has hot rods and rebellious youth, but in the 'why can't they let us have fun' way rather than the disturbed, histrionic rebel-without-a-cause way. All characters were identifiable to us - teens, parents, the old man, the doctor, the nurse, the mechanic, the boy, the puppy, even the cops - were sympathetic to us. We could relate to them all
It had a singularly horrifying monster. It's first victim is heard moaning 'it hurts.....it hurts' and we were convinced and frightened. The menace grows continually throughout the story. There are intense periods of suspense, colourful effects, a fabulous lead in McQueen, and moments of humour, both intended and not. It even had an almost over-the-top sad part to make the more sensitive of us feel like crying.
I saw it in summer, age 9 or so, double billed with 'I Married A Monster From Outer Space', and was so thrilled by the experience of this particular double feature that I went back a couple more times before it left. Everyone I knew saw it. Everyone I knew loved it.


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This movie is wonderful. What separates it from other 50's sci-fi is the fact that the alien has no features, no face, eyes, anything, yet it can't be killed. I especially like the idea that this film doesn't take place over a few days, it takes place in one night, lasting supposedly past midnight.It's also scary that once the blob gets on you, you can't get it off. you're stuck in it, as it dissolves your flesh and slowly devours your body. My all time favorite 50's sci-fi film, and what is sometimes considered the quintessential one. I can see why this rocketed Steve McQueen to stardom. All this and a catchy theme song! How can you go wrong?


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The Blob is a classic 1950s B-movie sci-fi flick. You probably know the story: two teens (Steve McQueen & Aneta Corsaut) see a meteorite hit the ground, and when they go to look for it, they run into an old man with some weird...blob attached to his arm. They take him to the doctor's office, and then go to find out what happened. From there, the blob spreads, eating everyone in its path. The special effects are cheesy fun, as is the story. There are a lot of great touches, like the cop who plays chess over the radio with a cop in another district. It's no masterpiece, but it has a special place in its genre. Steve McQueen is very good. 8/10.


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The only notable thing about this film is that it was Steve McQueen's first big starring role.
McQueen's talent is undeveloped and raw but refreshingly honest in this campy little sci-fi horror piece. Steve shows himself as the anti-establishment, hot rod car loving actor who would become a polished icon of the film industry just five years hence.
Later on, McQueen would say he hated this film and that "he was the blob". But everyone has to start somewhere and The Blob is cute, fresh and innocent. Would that we all had stayed that way.
The plot is fast paced and although predictable, still an entertaining hour or so. And it's really fun to see Steve McQueen before he became The King of Kool (and Anita Corsaut before she became Andy Taylor's girlfriend). A close friend sent me the DVD a while back and it's a treasured addition to my Steve McQueen film collection.


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I look at this page, and it seems disapproving to me to have to listen to someone ramble and rant at a real classic. Sure, I agree to let everyone have their opinion, but here's mine:
This movie should not be missed by any classic horror watcher, and should be seen many casual viewers around the world. Sure, it has lost some of it's flair and greatness with age, especially in todays world of CGI effects, but that's not why you should like it.
You should like it because it actually is a scary movie, even for today's standards. It's overall ickyness will creep you out just as much as the original audiences, so don't slam a classic if you haven't given it a chance. Watch it, but not with a critical attitude. Watch it to have fun, how it was originally intended.


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I wasn't aware of Steve McQueen in 1958. I only knew that I was extremely frightened about going to see this film. (I'd been devastated by the movie "Trantula" at age seven . . . but I was ten now). The 1st scene where the Blob crawls up the farmer's probing stick and engulfs his hand was enough to make me want to leave the theater. But I stayed and suffered through each of our monster's attacks. I felt such horror when Steve and his girl barely made it out of the doctor's office (poor doc), and even more when The Blob entered a movie theater and devoured a large portion of the audience . . . so many in fact that IT oooooozzzzzzed out of the front doors, too huge now to fit through just one. It seemed indestructible and unlimited in growth potential, and when it trapped poor Steve in a sieve-like diner, he seemed like a sure dinner to be.
To say that the Blob was cold would be a modern day description, but in the end, better icy than scaring and mentally rupturing little kids.
I remember walking home that evening with my uncle Nick, trying to act brave. He knew I was in trouble, and when I got into bed that night I could not only feel the Blob in the room, but when I summoned up the courage to look down at the floor, there the red pulsating, heart-like hungry dude sat, waiting for me to try and get up and go to the bathroom. It took months to recover.
I'm 57 years old now . . . I've made it.
Of course The Blob wasn't destroyed.


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Who would think Andy Griffith's "Helen Crump" (Aneta Corsaut) had a Steve McQueen movie in her past? But that is only one of several weird and wonderful things about the ultimate 1950s teenagers-battle-creatures movie, which might best be described as Rebel Without A Cause meets God Knows What From Outer Space. The Rebel is Steven McQueen (who would shortly decide that "Steve" sounded less prissy), a good boy with just enough wild to be interesting; the very wholesome yet understanding girlfriend is the aforementioned Aneta Corsaut. It was bad enough when their date was disrupted by teenage hot-rodders, but they are considerably more nonplussed when they encounter a gelatinous, man-eating What Is It that rides down to earth on its own hotrod meteor--and begins gobbling up townfolk right and left. But will the grown ups believe them? Of course not, what do they know, they're just kids!
The movie is teeny bopper at its teeny bopping best. The actors take the rather pretentious script very seriously, with many a soulful look into each other eyes, and the "adult" supporting cast probably says "Kids!" very third sentence or so. But the real pleasure of the film its creature, which is well imagined, well-executed, and often manages to generate a surprising degree of suspense. And although clearly on the cheap side (check out those miniature sets, guys!), THE BLOB is actually a fairly well-made film--and there's that catchy little theme song thrown in for good measure. The 40-plus crowd (myself included) will enjoy the movie as nostalgia, but that won't prevent them from hooting right along with the younger set at its whole-milk-and-white-bread 1950s sensibility, and the film would be a great choice for either family-movie night or a more sophisticated "grown ups only" get together. Make plenty of Jello cubes for movie snacking! Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer


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No hidden agenda. Pure scifi. All fun.
I saw the original on TV and was scared pretty bad. I was a kid :)
The original one can be appreciated more when compared to the new one which I saw and have forgotten. The original one, starring the great movie star Steve McQueen (BULLET), is by far the better and only version anyone should see.
The movie production is dated, but the fx used to make the Blob stands up the test of time. I was convinced that that thing was moving on its own accord. 10/10
-Zafoid


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A meteorite falls in the country of a small town, bringing a jelly creature. An old farmer is attacked by the alien in his hand, and the youths Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and his girlfriend Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut) take him to Dr. T. Hallen (Steven Chase). The local doctor treats carefully the blister, and asks Steve to investigate the location where they found the old man. When Steve returns, he sees the blob killing the doctor. Steve and Jane try to warn the police and the dwellers, but nobody believe on them, while the blob engulfs many people, getting bigger and bigger.
"The Blob" is a cult and classic sci-fi. It is a low budget movie, with many ham actors and actresses (with the exception of Steve McQueen), awful effects, but also delightful and very, but very funny. This is the first time that I see this classic (I had seen the 1988 remake with Kevin Dillon), and I really recommend it to fans of Steve McQueen and sci-fi B-movies from the 50s. The film subject of my review number 1,400 could not be better. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): "A Bolha" ("The Blob")


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