Autumn Leaves
by Robert Aldrich
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Product details
Actor: Cliff Robertson, Joan Crawford, Lorne Greene, Ruth Donnelly, Vera MilesDirector: Robert Aldrich
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 108 minutes
Release Date: 1995-05-09
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Studio: Sony Pictures
VHS Movie Reviews of Autumn Leaves
Movie Review: Autumn Almanac
Summary: 5 Stars
Cliff is a little wooden but the part he's playing would be a challenge to just about any actor. Aldrich tried luring Marlon Brando into the part and he would have been ideal perhaps, but few actors had the cojones in those days, the mid fifties, of appearing so weak. Robertson spends much of the movie just lying down and crying like a little baby, as the process of infantilization takes its terrible toll on him. His sobs are real, it's just the other aspects of Hansen's character that he falls down on. You keep waiting to figure out why Joan is drawn to him. Can't shje see there's something wrong there? That quickie Mexcican marriage, with little Mexican children in sombreros, and donkeys in sombreros, why so sudden? I'm sure the contemporary audience would have read this plot as a re-tread of the earlier SUDDEN FEAR, where Joan married a maniacal Jack Palance. Here as it turns out Cliff is no Jack Palance, he's just been turned into a boy by a trauma endured way before the movie begins.
[SPOILERS AHEAD.]
When Virginia comes to visit Millie in the bungalow row, she's wearing a sweetly sophisticated sleeveless sundress and she looks all together. You immediately start wondering, "Who's she"? And so does Millie. Then Virginia reveals that she was once married to Burt Hanson, and that their divorce decree hasn't even been good for a month. For all Burt knows, says Virginia, she's still married to him! Joan shakes her head, she just can't believe it! Neither could I. But it's Vera Miles so she must be telling the truth. Then Lorne Greene shows up as Burt's dad, saying that, even though he loves his boy, the way a man loves his only son, that Burt can't be trusted and one shouldn't believe a single word Burt tells you. Also, he's a shoplifter!
I guess it could have been worse. I wonder why the movie didn't play it so that Burt and Virginia in fact were still married? Wouldn't that have made Burt more perfidious? Maybe it was against the code for him to then marry Millie in a bigamous relationship? It's all very dubious, especially when you find out that Vera Miles and Lorne Greene are committing, according to Joan, "the ugliest of all possible sins, so ugly that it drove him into the state he's in now!" I'll tell you, my heart flew into my mouth and it is still there! I always thought, Vera Miles, nice but dull. Now I discover, she's pure evil.
I always thought that VERTIGO would have been a lousy film if Vera Miles, Hitchcock's favorite, hadn't gotten pregnant and had to drop out, leaving it for Kim Novak. I mean, who could believe that Jimmy Stewart would fall in love with Vera Miles even once, let alone twice! But AUTUMN LEAVES must have been a good audition tape for Miles and she gives off a slow heat, like a leg of lamb. Is she still alive? All of a sudden I'm curious about her.
[SPOILERS NO MORE.]
TV producers used to cast her in the pilots of all their favorite shows, for it was believed she was a good luck charm and that if Vera Miles was in your pilot as a guest star, the show would be picked up by the network. She was the Greg Grundberg of yesteryear. She's great and so is AUTUMN LEAVES.
Movie Review: "Why shouldn't I pick up an expression here and there? I'm not THAT old!"
Summary: 4 Stars
Her purse boasts her initials: MW, which are the same thing turned upside down. She is Millie Weatherby (Joan Crawford), an aging writer whose prospects for romance seem very slim. (Maybe it's those scary eyebrows.) She is a sweet woman, but set in her ways and introverted. Magically, an attractive younger man falls into her lap. Bert Hanson (Cliff Robertson) is an ex-military soldier roaming around town when he finds Millie in a restaurant and begins chatting her up. She spurns his advances at first, but slowly warms up to him. The two begin a passionate love affair. She is afraid because of their age difference, but he convinces her that they are meant for each other. However, the more she learns about Mr. Hanson, the more she questions him. It seems that he isn't being entirely truthful to her.
A highly entertaining and sometimes shocking film, this movie surpasses expectations. It is certainly melodramatic, but it nicely transitions from a romance to a psychological thriller. There are some very sexy scenes in this movie; it seems the code wasn't too concerned with the appeal of aging actresses or the things they said. There is a scene on the beach very similar to the famous one from From Here to Eternity, and you might find yourself gasping at some of the lines, especially one scene where Millie blows up at Bert's father and his girlfriend.
It's a fun ride, and with Joan Crawford, how could you go wrong?
Movie Review: Joan and Cliff will have your mood swinging from unintentional grins to uncontrolable laughter in this 1956 camp masterpiece!
Summary: 5 Stars
"I've been told, `You're so attractive,' `So lovely,' `So this, so that.' Then they assume I'm . . . all tied up. Makes me feel like I'm a package. And I'm left, alone . . . " Spinster typist Joan Crawford just can't seem to land a date in her autumn years; in a flashback, we see young Joan breaking a date with her fianc? to tend to her sick father, saying, "Don't worry about me. There's plenty of time." Back in the present, Joan wanders into a cheap caf? where she orders a chicken salad sandwich -- then plays the ever-present theme song on the jukebox -- and gets picked up by young Cliff Robertson, who takes her to the beach to neck in a shameless imitation of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity. (What makes this even loonier is that Crawford was originally to have played the Kerr role, but quit.) Knowing the folly of her ardor, Joan advises Cliff, "Find a girl your age, there must be lots of them," adding, hilariously, "It's a big city."
Then she comes home one day to hear "Autumn Leaves" playing on her phonograph. "Isn't it strange," she says to Robertson, who's bought her the record, "how that lovely song reminds you of chicken salad?" He explains that though he meets lots of girls, they don't hold a candle to Joan. "Are you sure you're meeting live people?" she asks, while we wonder the same thing. Recklessly, they wed in a Mexican ceremony, and the plot jerks into a thrill-less thriller as Robertson subjects Crawford to pathological lies and scary mood swings.
Out of the woodwork crawls Robertson's scheming ex-wife Vera Miles and Robertson's shifty daddy, Lorne Greene, who is Vera's (say it isn't so!) Lover, neither of whom Crawford knew existed. When Crawford confronts Robertson with the fact that he'd told her his father was dead, Robertson mutters, "Well, I just felt he was dead." When Greene advises Crawford to commit Robertson to the nuthouse, Crawford turns on him and Miles, snarling, "Where's your decency? In what garbage dump? And yours, you tramp? You, his loving, doting, fraud of a father and you, you slut! You're both so consumed with evil, your filthy souls are too evil for Hell itself!"
Crawford changes her tune after Robertson smashes her hand with her own typewriter, and in retaliation, she forces him to endure months of shock treatments. But it's no easier on us: we're forced to endure life-threatening mega-closeups of Joan screaming, wide-eyed, with her hands over her ears trying, no doubt, to shut out yet another rendition of that theme song! It all ends up fine, with Robertson -- miraculously cured of schizophrenia -- kissing the very hand he smashed.
Movie Review: No Camp, No Histrionics, Just Crawford
Summary: 4 Stars
"Autumn Leaves" is Joan Crawford's 1956 Columbia offering and it's anything but typical Crawford for the period.
In this melodrama, Ms. Crawford plays spinster Millicent Wetherby (could this name be any more probable for a spinster?), a typist who works from her modest apartment. As was the usual case for the time, and as told in a brief flashback, Milly took care of her aging father, rather than finding love, and has now found herself older, alone and desperately wishing for a good man. Such an opportunity arrives when she meets Burt Hanson (Cliff Robertson) in a diner, after a solo evening out at the symphony. Despite Milly's initial chilly reception to the at least decade younger Burt, he quickly wins her over and the two have a rushed courtship over the next month. Burt pops the question (after the two spend agonizing days apart)and before you can say "something old, something new", the couple are headed down to Mexico to tie the knot. The honeymoon ends fairly quickly for Milly though - - first with Burt bringing home excessive and expensive gifts for her, then with the facts of Burt's past changing, and then finally with Virginia Hanson (Vera Miles) showing up at Milly's doorstep and announcing herself as Burt's first wife - - having only been divorced recently, with Burt being unaware that they were divorced at the time he married Milly. Milly is floored by this relevation, along with the fact that Burt's father (Lorne Greene) is very much alive, despite Burt telling her he had died, and after speaking to Virginia, goes by the department store where Burt has told her that he is a manager, only to find out that he is a tie salesman (and he has stolen all the gifts he has brought home to Milly). With the weight of his lies catching up with him and his past staying at the local hotel, Burt begins a mental decline. Milly finds out that six months after Burt and Virginia married, Burt walked in on Virginia and his father in a very compomising situation and has been unwell ever since. After being physically assaulted by Burt, Milly makes the difficult decision to have Burt committed, knowing full well that once he is recovered he may not need her any longer. Happily, Burt remains very much in love with his wife, who is waiting for him when he is ready to return home.
"Autumn Leaves" is quite a departure for Ms. Crawford. She plays a simple, quiet woman, without a hint of histrionics or shrewd behavior. She is deeply and desperately in love with her husband and, at the same time, fearful that their age difference will tear them apart. She has a brief scene in the movie, post-wedding, where she is lounging in the marital bed, content as a cat, and it's obvious that she and Burt are physically very happy - - but that mature, experienced and self-satisfied Milly quickly disappears when troubles start mounting.
This is also not your standard May-December romance as the woman is older and the man is found crying in the hallway, or calling out to his former wife. Despite the fact that Burt manhandles Milly, he still remains a sympathetic character who you want to get better and reconcile with Milly by the end.
Overall, "Autumn Leaves" is one of Ms. Crawford's more underrated and underplayed performances, and one of her better offerings in the latter part of her career, before she began her descent into horror and exploitation pictures. Be sure not to miss the scene where Ms. Crawford, as Milly, confronts Burt's ex-wife and father about their sinful relationship, hurling out "[...]" to Virginia with such venom that you just KNOW there's a spitfire lurking under Milly's skin somewhere!
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: Joan, Forever Queen
Summary: 5 Stars
I happened to see this film late one cold Christmas night in England. It is one of the last classic Hollywood films made and of great suspense. Joan Crawford, though older in life, portrays a mature proffessional lady who later gets involve with a younger man, Cliff Robertson, and ends up marrying him. Realising later that he is mentally inbalanced. It is a good movie for a late evning in with hot coco and a warm fire. I recommend you buy and watch this classic film.
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