That was an excellent one.

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Blistering performances.

Ava Gardner, Walter Huston, Melvyn Douglas, Ethel Barrymore, who not would want to see them together in a film. The screenplay written by Christopher Ishwood, based loosely on Dostoyevski's book, "The Gambler", but with elements of some of his other books thrown in.I think this film is an improvement on Dostoyevski's book, "The Gambler", written to pay of the authors gaming debts. Besides the cast and dialogue, there's the philosophy of gambling. In the film, the spa of Weisbaden is also a casino and the author who visits the place (based on Dostoyevski) is after a woman he met on the train. But she is a symbol of Lady Luck, ready to give or take with equal measure.Even Gregory Peck, usually such a log, is pretty good as the writer who turns to gambling to pay the debts of the woman he's mad about. At last, Peck goes to the casino to win back his love. This is the best part of the film, as Peck wins, he understands the sensual pleasure of winning large sums, and the feeling of invinceability it gives you. No film on gambling is better. The only false note is when the casino owner gives back some money that the writer loses.Ava Gardener was in her prime at that time and she never looked or acted better than in this film. Walter Huston is good as the mountebank General, Ethyl Barymore his rich mother. Great film from the Golden Age.

Well, it bears little resemblance to Dostoyevsky's novel, it's the closest that Gregory Peck has ever come to overacting, and it was a flop at the box office, but I kind of liked it.Peck narrates the story of a writer, a man of probity, who falls for a beautiful young woman, Ava Gardner, in the casino town of Wiesbaden. Except for some elegantly overripe dialog, that's about as close as it gets to an autobiographical account by the Russian novelist.Peck's character doesn't gamble but he feels there's a story in the various addicts around the tables. Some of them gamble away everything they have and then shoot themselves. "Try to see that it doesn't happen at the table," says the ruthless manager, Melvyn Douglas.Peck learns that Gardner is committed to marrying Douglas as a way of paying off her father's gambling debt. He throws a coin on the table and wins. He wins again. He continues to win until he has more than enough money to pay off the debt and take Gardner for himself.Little did they know that tragedy lay just around the corner.Peck has practically a suitcase full of bills, minus the ones stolen by Gardner's father, Walter Huston. The night before he and Gardner are about to run off together, Peck is gripped by the conviction that he can win still more. He loses it all. Then he pawns everything he owns, is thrown out of his hotel room and consigned to the servant's quarters, grows a stubbly beard and long hair, and, overall, begins to look like a bum.He avoids everyone he knows and stumbles finally into a church. At first, in the shadows, he hears coins tinkling into the poor box and his eyes gleam. But, lo, an epiphany. As the heavenly chorus swells, he stares up at the beams of light spilling into the chapel and falls to his knees. What is money, after all? Just a piece of paper crawling with germs, as someone once observed. It ends with a reformed Peck nuzzling Gardner's oh-so-nuzzlable neck. Then they both starve to death. (Just kidding; this is an MGM movie.) The cast is terrific. Peck has rarely been so animated. And when he's in the midst of his winning streak, he GRABS for the bills coming his way with a maniacal grin. Gardner is pretty. Walter Huston is pompous and a thief, thoroughly enjoyable. Ethel Barrymore makes a brief appearance. And Agnes Moorehead is the wicked crone of a pawn broker. The script has Peck in her shop, trying to pawn a religious icon that isn't his, and when she screeches insults, he begins to crawl towards a nearby axe. He's going to murder the old pawnbroker lady with an axe. The writers got their stories mixed up.I don't know why it was such a failure. It's no masterpiece but the playing was decent, and the plot was involving.

I think a lot of people are looking at this movie like the Twilight Zone episode called "The Fever." They want a short little story about gambling addiction, The End.I prefer to look at this movie like a "Shakespeare in Love" for Dostoevsky. It has so many little hints about his faith, seizures, and influences on his books. A fan of all his works will catch the obvious inferences (like the ax and the pawn shop, and the scenes straight out of the Gambler). But there are a lot of subtle references to the Idiot and the Brothers Karamizov. The title "The Great Sinner" is a reference to Dostoevsky's planned final works (which included the Bros. K.) but he was unable to finish it. Anyone who is put off by the "heavy handed" religious message of the film obviously has no idea how religious Dostoevsky was. His books are full of redemption by Christ. I think this movie was great. Peck played the part very well. He wasn't supposed to be Alexi from the novel, he is the author. The gambling scenes are intense enough to turn your stomach.

This movie was so stupid I can't believe it was ever made. A man who has never gambled and knows nothing about it wins $200,000 in one day and then suddenly loses all his intelligence and starts just throwing money away for no good reason. Insipid!