This is a film version of a play that will be considered too intellectual for some people, an artistic view of how empty this family's life is where it is 110 in the shade. That's the name of the musical version of this play, a strange subject to have songs added to. It's the perfect choice for two of the most intellectual of actors of the 50's to star in, Katharine Hepburn as Lizzy and Burt Lancaster as Starbuck, the title character. He's basically playing out what he perfected a few years later with his Oscar winning role in "Elmer Gantry", an energetic shyster who really starts to believe in his own bravado. No wonder Lancaster would go onto play P.T. Barnum!
The film starts with Lancaster trying to bamboozle an audience of country folk desperate for rain. He then disappears for over half an hour so we can get aquatinted with Lizzie and her family which includes uncle Cameron Prud'Homme and cousins Lloyd Bridges and Earl Holliman, a young fool who believes that Lancaster is who he says he is. Uncle Cameron tries desperately to give the insecure Hepburn confidence as a woman but it's only Lancaster and cousin Bridges who don't have the fear to tell Kate the truth.
With Lancaster though, he begins to open up to see the attractive side of the highly buttoned up Kate, and this is when you start to see that he's much more humane than you previously believed. This leads to romantic but emotional scenes between Kate and Burt, this being after Kate has made an unsuccessful pass at her longtime crush, Wendell Corey. While colorful and often filled with passion, I find this the type of theatrical drama that you have to be in a certain type of mood to watch. As good as the acting is, the results can be very depressing if you watch this in the wrong frame of mind.
The film starts with Lancaster trying to bamboozle an audience of country folk desperate for rain. He then disappears for over half an hour so we can get aquatinted with Lizzie and her family which includes uncle Cameron Prud'Homme and cousins Lloyd Bridges and Earl Holliman, a young fool who believes that Lancaster is who he says he is. Uncle Cameron tries desperately to give the insecure Hepburn confidence as a woman but it's only Lancaster and cousin Bridges who don't have the fear to tell Kate the truth.
With Lancaster though, he begins to open up to see the attractive side of the highly buttoned up Kate, and this is when you start to see that he's much more humane than you previously believed. This leads to romantic but emotional scenes between Kate and Burt, this being after Kate has made an unsuccessful pass at her longtime crush, Wendell Corey. While colorful and often filled with passion, I find this the type of theatrical drama that you have to be in a certain type of mood to watch. As good as the acting is, the results can be very depressing if you watch this in the wrong frame of mind.