You won't be disappointed!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Best movie ever!

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Looking the most exquisite here since her MGM days, Joan Crawford doesn't make her entrance until 32 minuets into the film, dramatically entering into the life of promising life John Garfield, and like Norman Maine did with Esther Blodgett in "A Star is Born", aids him to success for a damning price. Both stars are at their dramatic best, Crawford here even more mesmerizing than she was as Mildred Pierce the year before. Garfield trades in his boxing gloves for a fiddle and in some stunning musical sequences, makes love to his violin violently with a passion fit for a Golden Boy.Both invest much emotion in to their dangerous characters, brought together in spite of the odds and doomed from the start, whether it will be his overbearing mother (an excellent Ruth Nelson), his cynical piano player pal (the very droll Oscar Levant) or her possibly impotent husband (Paul Cavanagh), their own personal failings or her many neurosis, this is a doomed affair that can only end in a manner that only Fanny Hurst could envision.The music plays an extremely important role here, the actors expressing their turmoil through close-ups occurring over the dramatic classical music. Peg La Centra, as a piano singer in a smoky cabaret, adds understated involvement in the plot, popping up throughout to lay on a torch song to add to the soul-destroying decay and inner-torment which Crawford lays inside her with great understanding. Perhaps her very best performance, it is one where she looks like a movie star but truly reveals herself to be a genuine actress. Shadowy photography and MGM like gloss (typical for her mid 1930's romantic melodramas) make this a truly wonderful women's picture that stands the test of time with great emotional flair.

This film will get a lot of comparison's to the aforementioned film because of the time it was released. Crawford was coming off a triumph with Pierce and they thought...why not throw another Melodrama with Crawford in it out there and see how well it does.I think the main issue this film isn't on the scale of Mildred Pierce is the content. It's a bit dry. I mean if they could have put a different type of music into this film then it would have really had some heart. As it stands, putting a classical violinist who lives and breathes violin is just plain boring to me. Would have been nice to see maybe a jazz type of feel to it or even big band but it was almost like "Chamber Music" in the film. The story itself is fine it's just....I dunno....there's something missing.The story goes, poor kid who grows up playing the Violin catches the eye of a "Benefactor" at a party and she gets his name out there in classical concert circles. All the while she falls in love with him...as he with her. The problem is nothing in his life is first except the Violin. In her life it's booze and an uncertainty in her own mind about herself. She's very insecure. With this we get a lot of posturing about who runs the relationship and such. Who's in charge...or...who comes first.I personally really liked this film. Garfield and Crawford really do a great job in this one but the one who steals the show is Oscar Levant. Without his wisecracks and injections of reality to the characters in this film, it would just be another Melodrama with Joan Crawford in it. He's an absolute scene stealer. His piano playing is really quite stunning (he was actually a classical trained pianist before he was an actor).A really good film with great performances all around but just a little dry. It doesn't have the kick that Mildred Pierce did but it really is worth seeing. Think along the lines of Daisy Kenyon (another fine film). Just to see how beautiful Joan Crawford was at 40 is worth the price of admission.

I would really like to see this movie made again using the same script.The acting is as good as it gets from that time period so even though the delivery is stiff; I don't believe you will find any better. To the editing i say the same. Choppy in places. Phony scenes depicting the actors riding horses and in cars. Again the same you would expect from that time period - The absolute worst in history was Mickey Rooney in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' But I'm strained by the depth and brilliance of the script. Hardcore. Bites to the bone good. Someday we all come full circle and make the connections necessary to appreciate writing that to me exceeds anything today.

Humoresque (1946)This is a sticky, weepy melodrama, and power to it! If you don't like this sort of thing, or don't like classical music, you truly might still like the movie for its filming excellence, another product of the well-oiled 1940s Hollywood factory for movies. Photography by Ernest Haller, music by Franz Waxman (with assistance from Isaac Stern, who also did many of the close-ups of the violin playing), and direction by Jean Negulesco, who made a number of subtle, highly refined films.John Garfield plays his brooding part with proper broodingness, if not exactly psychological depth. It's appropriate, overall, and a kind of second fiddle to Joan Crawford, who plays her part from every angle, a great performance. Third in line is an impeccable Oscar Levant as sidekick and amazing (as always) pianist, playing his own parts. I've always loved his laconic humor, and the endless one liners he comes up with almost seem like his own. Right on.The plot will strike some people as old fashioned--a classical violinist played by Garfield, Paul Boray, comes from a lower working class family in New York and conquers the music world. With some complications, not least of which is Crawford's rich, troubled, but intriguing character, Mrs. Wright. It's all told in a giant flashback, beautifully rendered musically, and with a relentlessly beautiful camera leading us through it all. In many ways it's an amazing film, restrained mostly by a kind of plot that is tied up and packed with too much knowingness. If only they had let things hang loose, and let some twists take us truly by surprise, then the melodrama really would be melodramatic, which is my favorite thing, at least.