Not afraid of obvious symbolism, Stanley Donen cast Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in this flashback of a ten-year romance that began, coincidentally, on a European road. The struggling confessions of the film’s main characters gives both actors, especially Hepburn, dimension to their careers. As John DiLeo claims in Screen Savers, Hepburn’s character, Joanna, in [...]

[Read more →]

While Brokeback Mountain breaks your heart, Beautiful Thing, a tiny English movie without stars, is the most feel-good gay love story ever filmed. It may be one in a long line of coming-out stories, but the romance that unfolds between the central characters is the cure for their unhappiness rather than its cause. The movie [...]

[Read more →]

While Brokeback Mountain breaks your heart, Beautiful Thing, a tiny English movie without stars, is the most feel-good gay love story ever filmed. It may be one in a long line of coming-out stories, but the romance that unfolds between the central characters is the cure for their unhappiness rather than its cause. The movie [...]

[Read more →]

Fox’s Two for the Road, the most ambitious of the Hepburn-Donen pictures, is a smart, humorous, and touching examination of a marriage. For her love interest, Albert Finney, an age-appropriate actor (actually seven years Hepburn’s junior), was cast. Finney may have caused a sensation as the adorably roguish title character in Tom Jones (1963), but [...]

[Read more →]

One of the many lovely things about RKO’s Rachel and the Stranger is its confident refusal to pin itself to one particular genre. It’s a comedy, no doubt, yet it’s more of a smile-inducer than a laugh riot. Though it’s set in the backwoods of the early nineteenth century, it’s some kind of western, since [...]

[Read more →]