ThiefHott Too much of everything

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

howardeisman When this film first came out in 1946, radio comics told jokes about it. The jokes centered on John Garfield, who had a filmography of nothing but tough guy parts, playing a classical violinist. These jokes were probably publicity plants, but they do point out a problem with the movie. Garfield carries with him a long established persona of a socially engaged tough guy and this history sabotages his attempt to play an ethereal, over-mothered, nerdy, self obsessed artist. I keep expecting him to punch someone. There is also the shadow issue of his sexuality. The childhood mentor with whom he lives, when asked about the nature of their relationship, answers that it is identical to the one between George Sand and Chopin. Huh? How did that one get past the censors? Joan Crawford does give one of her best performances, but it was a clearly a performance. I appreciated the effort Crawford put into it. She just misses. Part of the problem is the script. She is as much plot device as a fully fleshed out character. Why is she so over emotional? Her over-reaction at the end-and, boy, what an over-reaction- is not forecast by her earlier casual dismissals of her husband and her boy toys.But the film is very high level melodrama. The swelling music behind key scenes fits in. A compelling story is told well. Oscar Levant's one liners are great until they begin to grate. The cast does a uniform good job. Thus, Humoresque is well worth seeing, even if it falls short of being a classic.

PimpinAinttEasy HUMORESQUE is a really intense romantic drama where a working class musician and a rich and unstable woman fall madly in love with each other. They struggle with each other and the expectations from their family.JOAN CRAWFORD is extraordinarily beautiful and she turns in a remarkable performance here as the hard drinking unhappily married rich woman. GARFIELD is intense and tough as the musician from the working class. Like GARFIELD's character in the film says "the two of them are like wrestlers circling each other". I wasn't sure why nearly every one of their encounters was fraught with tension but it is all revealed in CRAWFORD's monologue towards the end of the film.Oscar LEVANT keeps things from getting too dark and melancholic. He is almost always around when GARFIELD and CRAWFORD are running around circles around each other. His character seemed to be straight out of a noir film. I'm usually not a big fan of these intense romantic drama's but I liked this one because of GARFIELD and CRAWFORD.(7/10)

mark.waltz Looking the most exquisite here since her MGM days, Joan Crawford doesn't make her entrance until 32 minuets into the film, dramatically entering into the life of promising life John Garfield, and like Norman Maine did with Esther Blodgett in "A Star is Born", aids him to success for a damning price. Both stars are at their dramatic best, Crawford here even more mesmerizing than she was as Mildred Pierce the year before. Garfield trades in his boxing gloves for a fiddle and in some stunning musical sequences, makes love to his violin violently with a passion fit for a Golden Boy.Both invest much emotion in to their dangerous characters, brought together in spite of the odds and doomed from the start, whether it will be his overbearing mother (an excellent Ruth Nelson), his cynical piano player pal (the very droll Oscar Levant) or her possibly impotent husband (Paul Cavanagh), their own personal failings or her many neurosis, this is a doomed affair that can only end in a manner that only Fanny Hurst could envision.The music plays an extremely important role here, the actors expressing their turmoil through close-ups occurring over the dramatic classical music. Peg La Centra, as a piano singer in a smoky cabaret, adds understated involvement in the plot, popping up throughout to lay on a torch song to add to the soul-destroying decay and inner-torment which Crawford lays inside her with great understanding. Perhaps her very best performance, it is one where she looks like a movie star but truly reveals herself to be a genuine actress. Shadowy photography and MGM like gloss (typical for her mid 1930's romantic melodramas) make this a truly wonderful women's picture that stands the test of time with great emotional flair.

Bolesroor Good gravy... they don't make them like this anymore. "Humoresque" is a dark, melodramatic romance in which everything is played as Grand Tragedy, going so far over the top that it becomes difficult to take seriously. John Garfield is Paul Boray, the violinist so gifted that he can bring every woman in his life to tears with the beauty of his solos. Joan Crawford is Helen, the nearsighted socialite in an open marriage who lusts after Paul's artistic fruits.The movie opens with a flashback: a young John Garfield has a choice between a violin and a baseball bat... being a tortured artist at heart, he grabs the fiddle and his life is never the same. Helen manipulates Paul into falling in love with her under the pretense of advancing his career. Garfield's best buddy is an obnoxious wise-cracking pianist who has a "witty" comeback for every occasion: "Call me back in an hour- I should be asleep by then."If this was a silent movie it would have been a smash… John Garfield's face is perfect: good-looking, almost brutish, with a touch of pain and sadness in his eyes that makes him a fascinating screen presence. And Joan Crawford's face was perfect here, too: halfway between the big-eyed beauty that she was and the menacing monster she would become. If the film consisted of only extreme close-ups of the two leads it would have been a wonderfully rich story... instead we get extended sequences featuring maudlin violin music and pages and pages of stylized dialogue.The unforgettable finale- featuring the longest suicide in film history- is Joan Crawford at her hammy best. As John Garfield gives his greatest stage performance Joan is at their beach house, alone and despondent, heartbroken and inconsolable, and the violin music swells as we cut back and forth between the concert and Joan's snail-paced walk into the ocean. She pauses every few moments for a close-up, enormous eyebrows arched above her contorted features. Slowly... slowly... she makes her way into the surf, which seems to sense her pain and swallow her instantly. Alas, she is gone, and Garfield learns a valuable, tragic life lesson: The violin is the instrument of doomed romance. Deeeep...Next time take the baseball bat.GRADE: B-