CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Megamind
To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.
Humbersi
The first must-see film of the year.
Aubrey Hackett
While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
vedadalsette
Fonda is a rich young woman with health problems and a helicopter husband and family. She has these bad lung problems yet the family never tells her to stop her chain-smoking. On her trip to Greece with another couple, she chain-smokes and drinks a lot. ***SPOILER (not that it matters in this film): Is anyone surprised she dies in the end?***Finch is her love interest. He sleepwalks in this role--not his character but the actor. The guy doesn't give crap about this film, and if he doesn't, why should we? Angela Lansbury is the most interesting character in this contrivance and is the only reason for the 1 star. Unfortunately, she bows out of the action too soon, leaving us with nothing to watch.I love me my melodrama, but this isn't the good stuff. Fonda cries about how her mother has convinced her she's "unable to love." That mysterious, elusive condition found only in melodramas could have been put to good thematic use here (as was done also by Fonda in the cheesy-but-fun melodrama The Chapman Report). I guess the subject was too "distasteful" to play up in this "classy" film.If you like seeing Peter Finch do nothing, Jane Fonda smoke, and Angela Lansbury play the ultimate mean girl, this is your film. I'm not watching it again until the MST3K crew reviews it. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have.
marcslope
Travelogue-tragedy-soap opera set in Greece, London, and New York, all of which look luscious in the wide-screen color photography of 1963. And jeez, what a collection of unhappy principals. Peter Finch, a nice-guy British publishing executive, is miserably married to Angela Lansbury, a contemptuous shrew who suffered the effects of a bad deed of his years before and won't ever let him forget it. He crosses the pond to help out buddy and co-worker Arthur Hill, who's also miserable, being unable to please his much younger, fragile wife, Jane Fonda, who also suffers from being the daughter of self-centered, selfish Constance Cummings. She and Finch respond to each other's temperaments and mutual love of Greece, and they're off to Athens and Mykonos and other well-photographed spots, along with Lansbury, who continues to make Finch miserable and pursues an affair, as things heat up between him and Fonda. For a soap, it's unusually literate, and also unusually visual, what with all the island-hopping, and I find it compelling, if a downer. All the actors are good, and Fonda and Lansbury are rather better than that. It's compromised by a an abrupt, depressing ending, and the MGM orchestra saws away more than it has to. But I, too, am surprised to find it has only a 5.0 rating on the IMDB, and I'd urge fans of literate melodrama, and 1960s time capsules, to give it a look the next time TCM shows it.
U.N. Owen
I give it a one, just for Jane Fonda's 'hair' (a lot of us are obsessing about it...), which - seems to be what's most interesting in a very dreary, creaky RomDram from '63.I don't know the story of where the title a actually came from, but, the fact that it's 'opposite' (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) titled film was such a well-received film came out AFTER this (as well as the book that film's based on) is probably one of the more interesting aspects going on in it's making.In her interview with Robert Osborne (PRIVATE SCREENINGS), Angela Lansbury said that it was a 'difficult' project for her, and, while she did her best, she didn't think it was 'that good.'Thus was an early vehicle for the young, gorgeous Fonda. She was still not fully comfortable on camera, and it shows. The film tries to showcase her as the typical 'sexy, young girl,' this time playing married (to the older Arthur Hill), who shares 'common interests' with the also married - to Angela Lansbury - Peter Finch.ICD tries to be too many things, but fails in them all.This was put out at a time in Hollywood before the 'revolutions' of sex, politics would play out in the real world. MGM - desperately trying to find a direction to navigate this tidal change - ends up with a film that might've been 'ahead of it's time' had it come out a few years earlier, but, as the grounds were already trembling, MGM ends up behind-the- times, with a product that - besides the natural beauty of Greece (where this was shot on location) feels very forced and dated.
whpratt1
If you like Jane Fonda, you will enjoy her acting in this picture and also how very young looking she looked in all her fancy looking clothes. There is also fantastic photography through out Greece and the ancient ruins, also a nice Greek dance with Peter Finch and Jane Fonda. Murray Logan, (Peter Finch) is a successful author married to Sybil Logan, (Angela Lansbury) and they are a very unhappy couple because of a tragic event in their early marriage. Sam Bonner, (Arthur Hill) is a very good friend of Murray and one day he meets his wife, Christine Bonner, (Jane Fonda). As soon as this couple look at each other, you can see in their eyes an outstanding attraction and this is what makes this film a triangle of love and romance and plenty of fights.
