Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

dougdoepke The movie's a wildcard in Grant's otherwise debonair career. Here he's an aimless London slum-dweller, who thinks futility is just the way the world is. So why should he, Ernie Mott (Grant), try for anything better when the world's rigged for defeat. Still, Ernie's got an indulgent, if fatally ill, mother, along with two adoring girlfriends. They might help if he weren't so casual about their affections. The movie's heart is in the right place, as lefty screenwriter-director Odets links the ease of crime with slum conditions. The trouble is it's hard to take Grant (age 40) as either youthful or poverty stricken (couldn't they have dirtied him up a bit). Maybe I've seen too many of his slick light comedies, but I just couldn't forget that this is the great smoothy playing against type. No doubt, he was trying to expand his range, but the choice of vehicles was unfortunate as he himself admitted. The movie itself is about as dingy as any I've seen. The murky b&w is tediously unrelenting. Naturally, that emphasizes the slum-like conditions, but also serves a more practical purpose. Namely, the dimness masks the many studio-bound streets and sets that are about as cheaply done as any of Grant's many films. Frankly, between the unrelenting talk and bleak visuals, my attention wandered. Still, Jane Wyatt is fetching, Barrymore doesn't over-act, Fitzgerald is not too cuddly, while Grant tries his manful best. Too bad, the results aren't better— the 113-minutes could easily have profited by shaving off 20 of those. Anyway, the movie remains more a bleakly done oddity than anything else in Grant's fabulous career.

jc-osms A tough, almost unremittingly bleak between-the-wars story of life amongst the poor in London, this film is about as far away from the perception of a typical Cary Grant movie as you can get. His character here, Ernie Mott, is a feckless, carefree, selfish itinerant who thinks nothing of returning home to his home patch for a necessary bed, cadge some money and break a couple of hearts, before returning to the open road. However, a couple of events change his outlook, namely the news that his mother, superbly played by Esther Moorhead, is terminally ill and his falling for the divorced wife of the local kingpin, who still harbours a jealously unhealthy interest in her. Grant's gradual humanising, tested as it is along the way by the easy lure of petty crime, forms the narrative arc of the movie, before we reach the downbeat conclusion fittingly in keeping with what has preceded it.Shot in grainy black and white in well-rendered sets depicting the near-squalor of the Londoners' surroundings, Grant for once fails to look the handsome gent he was in almost every one of his "heyday" movies. Even when his mother buys him a suit, he still looks shabby and grubby. At the heart of the film are his relationships with the women in his life, firstly his mother with whom initially he can't get along until his secret knowledge of her ailment changes his feelings towards her, then the girl he picks up at the local funfair where she works, who falls for him despite her reservations about his lack of commitment as well as the lesser character of his old, reliable neighbourhood girl, who loves him hopelessly but feeds off the scraps he throws her even as he strings her along.Written and directed by Clifford Odets, this is, as you'd expect a wordy, multi-faceted film with plenty of peripheral characters playing off Grant's lead showcasing the different aspects of his personality. By the end of the film, you're still not sure if you like his character, but there's no doubt he holds your attention throughout.Grant is very good, cast against type, no doubt drawing on his childhood experiences to play his part. The support acting is very strong too. For me the story was just a bit too convoluted plus I'm not sure that Grant's character would just so easily go along with the brutish hold-up crime he's inveigled into of people he knows, but in the whole, I enjoyed this change of direction for the charming leading man, showing his darker side, which in truth, if the biographical details about him are correct, is probably closer to his real personality than he might care to admit.

robert-temple-1 Cary Grant reinvented himself as a Hollywood film star with an American accent, but before he did that, his real name was Archie Leach, from Bristol, and as English as they come. In this film, he returns to his roots and very successfully plays an Englishman. The film is a very moving and effective story about a young man reluctantly coming to terms with what it means to be responsible and sensible, and giving up a rather wild and unconstrained existence which was leading nowhere. It is superbly directed by the playwright Clifford Odets, who also wrote the screenplay, which is based upon a novel by the Welshman Richard Llewellyn, who is more famous for his novel HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (filmed in 1941). This was one of only two films directed by Odets, the other being fifteen years later, THE STORY ON PAGE ONE (1959, which is such a bad film I did not bother to review it). However, this earlier directorial achievement by Odets was really one to be proud of, and totally works. The film takes its title from the famous song by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, a tune played by the character Aggie Hunter in the film, who is sensitively played by Jane Wyatt. Wyatt plays the cello herself on screen. The same theme tune is also played on the piano by Cary Grant, also really playing the instrument himself. Another excellent pianist/actor appears in the film, Dan Duryea, but he only has a small part and does not play any music. This film is remarkable for the stunning performance by Helen Duprez as a steamy and passionate gal who falls for Cary Grant. Helen Duprez is so amazing in this film that she equals Gloria Grahame for effortlessly conveying intense sensuality on the screen, just by the way she talks, looks, and moves. It is one of the great tragedies of the cinema that Helen Duprez's career misfired (see the account in her bio on IMDb), for she was truly in a class of her own. Anyone interested in the history of screen passion without bedroom scenes needs to study this performance, and see how it is done. Clifford Odets obviously knew how to get Duprez's magic out of her, by gaining her confidence and giving her the necessary encouragement. Although it was Ethel Barrymore, who played Cary Grant's mother, who got the Oscar for her performance in this film, that Oscar should really have gone to Helen Duprez. That is not to say that Ethel Barrymore's performance is not marvellous, for it is. She shows extreme subtlety in a part which a lesser actress would have played with broad strokes and would have hammed it up. This is a wonderfully successful film which deserves to be more widely known.

movie-viking Tough guy Ernie Mott...and his life-battered widowed Mom (played by the great Ethel Barrymore-great aunt to Drew Barrymore) live on the bottom edge of London society. Ernie is the kind of guy who the law might sorta watch...but he does benefit from the counsel of a few older men he calls "Dad"...Will this Diamond in the Rough Ernie Mott make wise---or foolish choices??? The other reviews above suggest potent reasons why this is the best film the usually suave Cary Grant made. This really good film brings out the better reviewers!!! Grant, in real life a Cockney, had to usually play his "Smooth Romantic Leading Man" in too many movies...NONE but the Lonely Heart-is an exception! This film also enticed the great stage actress Ethel Barrymore into 10+ more years as a wonderful character actor. Tho no longer young, she absolutely dominates any scene with her wonderful old beauty and her elegant yet streetwise wisdom. (PS I heard that she was tough...She stood up to a abusive husband!) You get the sense of LOSS as the beginning narrative hints that Ernie Mott might well join the war dead of World War 2. (Movie is set just before WW2 erupts tho it came out in 1944.) Mott's depth is hinted at...He fights with his mom, but sticks with her when he finds she has incurable cancer. When she is tempted to make a disastrous choice, he comforts her...As he ponders a car crash, his musical ear is so fine that he can name the stuck horn tone as "e flat". This drifter, tinkerer and piano tuner...draws you in..You care what happens to him! He is willing to stand up to a gangster (George Couloris) to marry the gangster's abused ex wife...Bravery is not a problem, tho Mott does seem to get in the way of the law.Imagine that some wise WW2 military officer would have been glad to have the tough, rough Mott in his unit!