Kim Novak Appreciation Thread

[ClassyCo]

I've often said that when Crawford is on her best (think those late-'40s Warner Brothers melodramas), I actually prefer her to Davis. MILDRED PIERCE is easily my favorite Crawford performance, and one of my favorite movies in general. I hesitate to say that the movie wouldn't have been as rewarding if Davis had been in it and hammed it up. Crawford had other strong performances, too. POSSESSED (1947) and SUDDEN FEAR are great, but everything post-BABY JANE is a dud.

Likewise, Davis has a long list of very good (even great) performances to her name. In an era of "star acting", she really transformed the requirements of what it meant to get "lost in a character" and really play someone unlike herself on-screen. Still, some of her best performances might be the closest to Davis in reality. ALL ABOUT EVE is a flawless movie. Like, I literally wouldn't change a thing. JEZEBEL and NOW, VOYAGER are also great films, and she continued into her B-movie hagsploitation-era with solid movies like CHARLOTTE and DEAD RINGER, outside of BABY JANE, of course.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I've often said that when Crawford is on her best (think those late-'40s Warner Brothers melodramas), I actually prefer her to Davis. MILDRED PIERCE is easily my favorite Crawford performance, and one of my favorite movies in general. I hesitate to say that the movie wouldn't have been as rewarding if Davis had been in it and hammed it up. Crawford had other strong performances, too. POSSESSED (1947) and SUDDEN FEAR are great, but everything post-BABY JANE is a dud.

Likewise, Davis has a long list of very good (even great) performances to her name. In an era of "star acting", she really transformed the requirements of what it meant to get "lost in a character" and really play someone unlike herself on-screen. Still, some of her best performances might be the closest to Davis in reality. ALL ABOUT EVE is a flawless movie. Like, I literally wouldn't change a thing. JEZEBEL and NOW, VOYAGER are also great films, and she continued into her B-movie hagsploitation-era with solid movies like CHARLOTTE and DEAD RINGER, outside of BABY JANE, of course.

Yes, POSSESSED (1947) may be my favorite Crawford picture --- and one intended for Davis, by the way, but she went on pregnancy leave.

Of all Davis' core career era movies, I'm most fond of THE LETTER for some reason, as well as ALL ABOUT EVE, naturally.

I don't guess either one of them ever worked with Kim Novak.

 

[ClassyCo]

Yes, POSSESSED (1947) may be my favorite Crawford picture --- and one intended for Davis, by the way, but she went on pregnancy leave.

POSSESSED (as opposed to the 1931 movie with the same name Crawford did with Clark Gable) is probably her finest screen performance. She's practically perfect in it, but I still like MILDRED PIERCE better. I think I prefer her Oscar-winning performance more because it blurs so many of her genres into one film. There are elements the rags-to-riches trope, the women's picture genre, melodrama, film noir, you name it.

BTW: I would like to see a Davis version of POSSESSED, but I wouldn't trade the Crawford one we got for anything.

Of all Davis' core career era movies, I'm most fond of THE LETTER for some reason, as well as ALL ABOUT EVE, naturally.

It's been years since I've seen THE LETTER, but it's quite an expectational film and Davis performance. I need to revisit it.

I don't guess either one of them ever worked with Kim Novak.

No, neither of them ever worked with Novak. And poor Kim Novak, too, getting sidelined in her own thread.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

POSSESSED (as opposed to the 1931 movie with the same name Crawford did with Clark Gable) is probably her finest screen performance. She's practically perfect in it, but I still like MILDRED PIERCE better. I think I prefer her Oscar-winning performance more because it blurs so many of her genres into one film. There are elements the rags-to-riches trope, the women's picture genre, melodrama, film noir, you name it.

BTW: I would like to see a Davis version of POSSESSED, but I wouldn't trade the Crawford one we got for anything

They should have called the 1946 film "POSSESSION" since it was only 15 years later.

Bette Davis played "crazy bitch." But Crawford played "dark" and "sick" -- which is probably what it needed.

 

[ClassyCo]

The wife and I watched BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE (1958) while on vacation for our third anniversary earlier this week. I've watched it twice before (but many years ago), but this was my wife's first time seeing it.

If I'm being completely honest, the movie isn't as good as I remember. To be classified as a romantic comedy, the movie isn't particularly funny. James Stewart has a few funny moments, as does Jack Lemmon, but they're few and far between in a run time bumping two hours.

Kim Novak is simply breathtaking in the wardrobe chosen for her. She's rocking the black outfits and a sizzling backless dress. The only dress that doesn't look good on her is the one she wears with the bullet bra and a wrap around her head. It's not flattering on her at all.

As for her performance, it's up for debate as to whether it's good or bad. I don't guess she's supposed to be funny, or at least she isn't, as a barefoot Bohemian-style witch.

Elsa Lanchester is annoying here. That about sums up her presence here as Queenie.

There is some good color camera work and I like the use of color throughout. There's some visually appealing sets, too.

It was nice to revisit BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE, only to prove that memories sometimes overshadow the reality of quality.

 

[TaranofPrydain]

I was born a long time after her 50s heyday, but I feel like I've known the name for most of my life, because my mother was one of the first babies named after her.

I feel that Kim Novak was a superb actress. Everyone acknowledges how good she is in Vertigo, but she's brilliant as well in Picnic, The Eddy Duchin Story, Pal Joey, Jeanne Eagels, Strangers When We Meet, Boys night Out, Kiss Me Stupid, Of Human Bondage, and the Mirror Crack'd. She never gave a bad performance, and frankly her guest turn on Falcon Crest was that series last great hurrah, as she played it beautifully , especially in her scenes with John Saxon.

She left films in 1991 because she was devastated with how director Mike Figgis cut out nearly all of her part as a dying woman from the 1991 erotic thriller Liebestraum, aside from her moaning and screaming in pain and one dialogue scene where she had to say one of the filthiest words in the English language . But even with only about 5 minutes of screentime in that film, she completely dominated the memories and the mood of the film, hypnotic as ever.

 

[ClassyCo]

 

[ClassyCo]

Kim Novak says Sydney Sweeney is ‘totally wrong to play me’ in biopic

The 93-year-old says Sweeney ‘looks sexy all the time’ and she ‘never approved’ Scandalous, drama about her romance with Sammy Davis Jr

www.theguardian.com

 

[Crimson]

Last night, I watched THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE (1968). I'm not generally one to seek out films known for being bad, but I usually like Aldrich's films. Like some of his other movies, I'd hoped this would be a trashy, elevated B-movie. Plus, it seemed like an interesting premise: an unknown actress hired to play a deceased legendary actress (something of a Dietrich/Harlow hybrid) in a plot that borrows heavily from VERTIGO. Plus, Kim Novak as a callback to that movie.

"How bad can it be ...?"

Pretty bad, as it turns out. Curious thing about so many 1960s melodramas, how they contrived to be preposterously overwrought and dull as drying paint at the same time. Novak wasn't a good enough actress to elevate this kind of bad material but not a bad enough actress to go full throttled bonkers, which might have made it funny.