So, after musing on vintage underwear and Elizabeth Taylor the day, I went on an epic quest to discover what movie it was in which she spent the first fifteen minutes or so in nothing but her slip. (Okay, so it wasn't epic, it was a little bit of typing and a few mouse clicks. You've heard of hyperbole, right?) Then, having found my answer, I netflixed it.
Oh. My. God. Can I just say, this is possibly the cheesiest movie of all time. Can I also just say that Elizabeth Taylor is one of the worst actresses I have ever seen? I guess I haven't seen anything with her in it for many years, but I was totally unprepared for the suckage that is her trying to emote credibly. Not that her co-stars, Eddie Fisher and Laurence Harvey acquitted themselves any better, but seeing as they didn't win any major Academy Awards for this film, I won't judge them quite as harshly. And not that the (unintentionally) hilarious dialogue helped any, but man. That woman could not act. She did, however, have big tits.
On a sociological note, was this the first movie in which female promiscuity (or perhaps just liking sex a lot--it's not totally clear) is attributed to being molested as a child? That seems an awfully 1985, rather than 1960, bit of psychobabble, but perhaps I'm just blissfully unaware of what early '60s psychobabble consisted of. I also found it fascinating that in the movie's world apparently her biggest sin was not sleeping around, or sleeping with inappropriate partners, it was using men for her own pleasure and then dropping them. Horrors! It seems that slutty women were supposed to know their place and be the dump-ee, not the dump-er.
Anyway, I am totally at a loss on how to rate this movie. On Netflix, you can give anywhere from one star, which is "hated it", to five stars ("loved it"). There is really no way to indicate "loved it because it's the biggest pile of camp yumminess, sordid wallowing in sleeze with an overlay of moral indignation, and snarkworthiness that I've seen in forever. Enjoyed it totally just because it's a horrible, horrible movie."
Ah, well.
xoxo
2 comments:
For what its worth, critics at the time said much the same of Butterfield 8 as you said of your epic quest. They omitted the mouse clicks because the mouce hadn't been invented yet.
It does deserve a place in someone's women's studies course....
Apart from the big tits, Elizabeth Taylor had another talent...using them to produce a resonant on-camera sigh. See Cleopatra as an example.
Oh, hell yeah, the sociology of that film is fascinating. The point where her psychoanalyst agrees that she can quit therapy because she's fallen in love--with a drunk who's married to someone else, mind--but "call me if things don't work out", is priceless. Apparently all we wimmin need is a man, any man, for our mental health.
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