I love this movie so much

Undescribable Perfection

Don't Believe the Hype

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Interesting James Garner vehicle has him playing an amnesiac who wakes up in Central Park and doesn't remember who he is and spends the rest of the film trying to figure that out. He has a series of dreamlike encounters with various women who he thinks he recognizes, but who mostly don't recognize him, including Jean Simmons, Suzanne Pleshette, Katharine Ross, and Angela Lansbury. Directed by Delbert Mann ("Marty"), it's stylishly shot and features crisp black and white photogrpahy by Ellsworth Fredericks ("Seven Days in May"), but the film is so utterly pretentious and lacking in a coherent narrative. Garner and the strong cast, which also includes Jack Gilford, Raymond St. Jacques, Wesley Addy, and a pre-Star Trek Nichelle Nichols, are the only thing that keeps this pretentious mess watchable. On the positive side, there is also a nice jazzy score by Kenyon Hopkins ("The Hustler" and "The Fugitive Kind"). In his memoir "The Garner Files," Garner rated this as his worst movie, writing "I'd summarize the plot, but to this day, I have no clue what it is. Worst picture I ever made. What where they thinking? What was I thinking?" Garner may be a bit too hard on this film, because it's well produced from a technical standpoint and the cast is great, even if the script is an utter mess.

Whether you interpret the plot line as a vehicle for allegory or an ultimately flawed exercise in suspense, the highly successful photography, editing and musical scoring in "Mister Buddwing" deserves an audience. It is difficult to imagine a more urgent, dread-tinged, unsettling adrenaline rush as that brought on by the Jean Simmons sequence culminating in the Harlem craps game, even if the climax following is a bit of a pedestrian let-down. Sam Buddwing's grown-up Holden Caufield-like exile in urban wilderness - a bleak mid-1960s Manhattan where he encounters memorable, goodish Samaritans tainted by their own agendas(Jack Gilford as a cafeteria owner preoccupied with Judaism and Angela Lansbury in one of her trampish roles, but distinguishable from, say, "The World of Henry Orient" by her lower social class) and a park vagrant claiming to be God make for a very rich cinematic experience, and the final camera shots, essentially the opening ones in reverse, provide a strikingly satisfying coda.Notable for its time are a couple of overt homosexual references which don't seem to be significant to the plot, but contribute a degree of realism probably intended to be grittily alienating. In the most poorly-handled scene in the film, where Buddwing is accosted by a beat cop and a crowd, unlikely in its sheer numbers, quickly forms around them, an out gay man makes an appearance which is pretty significant considering the pre-Stonewall setting.

Mister Buddwing, a curious made up name for the lead character, finds James Garner as a man who wakes up in Central Park without a clue as to who he is. All he has are a couple of scraps of paper with a phone number on one, an address on another and the name of Grace ringing through his clouded mind. From this he tries to build an identity. He's also given some reason to suspect he's an escaped mental patient.He also runs into during the course of his day, three women, Suzanne Pleshette, Katharine Ross, and Jean Simmons all of whom as his fevered mind flashes back, play the elusive Grace at some point in his life. And they're three very different Graces. We do find out he was married to Grace. Some of the issues involving amnesia were done better in Mirage which starred Gregory Peck and Diane Baker and in Garner's own film 36 Hours. In 36 Hours however Garner is made to think he's developed amnesia. Here it's the real deal, the hysterical kind after some kind of mental trauma. Mirage is a much better film however, far more suspenseful. Mister Buddwing is interesting, but really does lack suspense as a whole. Jim Garner does his best with the Buddwing character, but you really don't develop a rooting interest in him.Best in the film is Angela Lansbury who plays an Adelaide from Guys and Dolls type character, presumably after she finally married Nathan Detroit and settle down somewhat. She only has two scenes, but you really remember her. Especially now since the character is so different from Jessica Fletcher or Mame Dennis roles we know her far better for.The role must have been thought of as a challenge for James Garner, but I think he was betrayed by a flawed story.

This film would have been OK if it had been played for laughs but someone wanted to make a "serious" movie and it ended up a pretentious piece of crap. What were they thinking? When I saw the cast I was excited, three delicious babes and Maverick himself. Poor Jim Garner, his emotions ran the gamut from A to B. In fairness to him, however, Laurence Olivier could not have done much with this part. The plot was confusing and the film so disjointed that it was impossible to follow. Did the movie have a message? The scene where Garner finds the razor and blood all over the sink must be symbolic of a person who has seen this movie. As Tallulah Bankhead once remarked about a play,"There is less to this than meets the eye."