Thursday, May 02, 2013

Hey! I've Finally Seen Skylark!

                                        Skylark (1941)

I finally got a copy of Skylark --- thank you, Carrie.  It IS a good movie, darn good actually.  But, then, how could it not be.  You take a good director (Mark Sanrich), three talented stars at their peak (Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland and Brian Aherne), the usual stalwart supporting cast (Binnie Barnes, Walter Abel and Mona Barrie in particular), an excellent, witty script, and SURPRISE, it works! 

Claudette is excellent, as always, and she pairs well with Ray ... two of my favorite people.  And one can definitely see why Claudette is tempted by Brian Aherne, even with Ray Milland as her husband.  [If you ever get a chance to read Aherne's biography of his friend George Sanders, A Dreadful Man, do so.  A great read, and impressive to me because Aherne was 77 years young at the time.]

The rating on IMDB is only 6.3.  I do not understand that at all ... well, it is in black and white, and it was made 72 years ago, and Claudette who?  Maltin's ***1/2 rating is much more on track.  For me, a movie is good if I enjoy it and feel better having watched it ... keeping things simple, life comes with enough complications. 

2 comments:

Carrie said...

OK, after reading that, I'm going to have to watch it again!

Kathy said...

I've never been a big Walter Abel fan, but he does some funny bits as Ray's drunken buddy and Binnie Barnes is a particularly nasty villianess. It's all good fun.