Before watching this movie, I bethought myself, with Charlton Heston, Liz Scott, and Ray Collins, presented in early '50's beautiful black and white, it can't be all bad. How wrong I was. Bad for Each other was just bad for viewing. The cinematography was gorgeous, all right, and the cast was good, all right, but both were wasted on this movie.
I will not waste time on the plot. Too much ink has already been spilled going over its standard "The Citadel" pattern doctor-torn-between-being- noble-helper-of-mankind-and-making-money story line. It has been used over and over again because it works well. In Hollywood when they found a horse that would run, they just went ahead and rode him to death. And that's not so bad. But this was a very poor treatment of the familiar story.
The development of the story was incompetent and contrived. The story had so many plot threads, it would have taken a two and a half hour movie to cover them all, but this second feature programmer was only 84 minutes. We were led to expect that the X-rays of the miners' lungs displaying some hard-to-diagnose disease, shown to Dr. Heston by both the old coal mine doctor (Rhys Williams) and his idealistic young assistant (Arthor Franz) would turn out important in the denouement. Likewise the issue of whether Heston's character intended to pay off his late brother's debts. But there was no payoff on either. Both were left hanging at the end. People, including her own father, kept telling Heston how bad spoiled society dame Liz Scott had been for all men and how she would ruin him. But he seemed to be developing all of his bad attitude on his own without her help. Her attempts to manipulate him had little effect. In fact he seemed to dominate her.
The characterization in general was very bad. The noble poor -- Heston's mother (Mildred Dunnock), the dedicated nurse (Dianne Foster), and Franz's idealistic young doctor -- all came off like doctrinaire commie stereotypes. All of the rich people were likewise portrayed like socialist models of capitalistic pigs, the exception being Ray Collins' mine owner, who showed a little troubled noblesse oblige. I'm not suggesting it was made from a socialist point of view. I'm not sure the movie even had a point of view. It was just crude. If the commies couldn't do any better than that in the propaganda department, no wonder they lost the Cold War!
The cruelest disappoint of all awaited us Liz Scott fans. What a waste of that dynamite figure, that wicked, toothy leer, those vampire eyes, and that awesome ability to be bad,bad, bad! So bad that in another, much better, movie Too Late for Tears she even made Dan Duryea look like a half -decent guy by comparison! She never got to be really bad in this movie, just a bit spoiled and selfish. I kept waiting for her to shoot someone, poison someone, double-cross someone, or just run off with the plumber. Any of the above would have considerably improved this movie. Unfortunately nothing so interesting happened.
No, Liz wasn't bad, but Bad for Each Other was.
I will not waste time on the plot. Too much ink has already been spilled going over its standard "The Citadel" pattern doctor-torn-between-being- noble-helper-of-mankind-and-making-money story line. It has been used over and over again because it works well. In Hollywood when they found a horse that would run, they just went ahead and rode him to death. And that's not so bad. But this was a very poor treatment of the familiar story.
The development of the story was incompetent and contrived. The story had so many plot threads, it would have taken a two and a half hour movie to cover them all, but this second feature programmer was only 84 minutes. We were led to expect that the X-rays of the miners' lungs displaying some hard-to-diagnose disease, shown to Dr. Heston by both the old coal mine doctor (Rhys Williams) and his idealistic young assistant (Arthor Franz) would turn out important in the denouement. Likewise the issue of whether Heston's character intended to pay off his late brother's debts. But there was no payoff on either. Both were left hanging at the end. People, including her own father, kept telling Heston how bad spoiled society dame Liz Scott had been for all men and how she would ruin him. But he seemed to be developing all of his bad attitude on his own without her help. Her attempts to manipulate him had little effect. In fact he seemed to dominate her.
The characterization in general was very bad. The noble poor -- Heston's mother (Mildred Dunnock), the dedicated nurse (Dianne Foster), and Franz's idealistic young doctor -- all came off like doctrinaire commie stereotypes. All of the rich people were likewise portrayed like socialist models of capitalistic pigs, the exception being Ray Collins' mine owner, who showed a little troubled noblesse oblige. I'm not suggesting it was made from a socialist point of view. I'm not sure the movie even had a point of view. It was just crude. If the commies couldn't do any better than that in the propaganda department, no wonder they lost the Cold War!
The cruelest disappoint of all awaited us Liz Scott fans. What a waste of that dynamite figure, that wicked, toothy leer, those vampire eyes, and that awesome ability to be bad,bad, bad! So bad that in another, much better, movie Too Late for Tears she even made Dan Duryea look like a half -decent guy by comparison! She never got to be really bad in this movie, just a bit spoiled and selfish. I kept waiting for her to shoot someone, poison someone, double-cross someone, or just run off with the plumber. Any of the above would have considerably improved this movie. Unfortunately nothing so interesting happened.
No, Liz wasn't bad, but Bad for Each Other was.