Two Weeks in Another Town

What the heck were they thinking? Oh, I get it: Take the success of "La Dolce Vita", infuse it w/ the elements of a behind-the-scenes look into the tawdry goings on of a troubled Hollywood production and transplant it back to Rome (Say, "Cinecitta", boys and girls!). And for good measure, have a director w/ an Italian sounding name take responsibility for it.

Trashy camp only begins to describe the little seen(and therefore intriguing to self-confessed cinephiles--we have TCM to thank) "Two Weeks In Another Town"(1962), but what a gloriously colorful bit of camp it is. Director Vincente Minnelli is an acknowledged master of color and---I don't know what else. The dialog has to be heard to be believed("Don't swallow all those pills! The doctor will have to come up and pump your stomach. You know how much that sickens me!"). Everybody spits, dribbles and sweats acid in this movie. Need it be said that everyone overacts? It's a wonder anything at all was left of the scenery after they chewed it up! And having pretty boy George Hamilton play a knife-wielding bad boy is a bit much, no? One exception is the young Daliah Lavi who left the bad acting to the two other women principals (Cyd Charisse and Claire Trevor)and just let her natural charms show through. She's even more fetching here because she looks to have more meat on her bones than in her subsequent roles( The Detainer in the OTHER Casino Royale).

Kirk Douglas as the main character who gets to do the thankless job of saving a movie in trouble after its director(Edward G. Robinson) suffers a heart attack tries to do the same thing w/ this movie and barely succeeds. A plus, though, is that he tools around in(and gets to trash) a cool-looking Maserati convertible. Watching that car alone is worth it. As for the rest of the movie, it's like bad tabloid reportage. We know it's trash, but we can't keep our eyes off it!

Vincente Minnelli's film version bears little resemblance to Irwin Shaw's novel of the same name, not that there's anything wrong with that. This movie belongs on the second half of a double feature with "The Carpetbaggers" as a guilty pleasure I can't resist watching. It spoofs the difficulties American directors had in making quality movies overseas when European producers expressed no interest in quality, only profit. This is a lesser alternative to Fellini's "8 1/2" and Godard's "Contempt," which explored the same theme, and its trashiness is expressed perfectly with footage from "The Bad and the Beautiful," another Minnelli-Douglas collaboration. Favorite line, Edward G. Robinson to Douglas regarding George Hamilton: "He's crazier on the loose than you were locked up."

No one has mentioned the magnificent performance of George Macready as the agent, nor the devastating scene near the beginning of the film where he and Douglas have a chance encounter at an airport. To put it politely, in that scene Macready takes Douglas to task for past failures...it is one of the most brutal bits in all film history. Macready always knew how to make his mark, no matter how small the role! I recently enjoyed seeing him in his third film, The Story of Doctor Wassell, where he had a very small part as a Dutch army officer...striking and vivid, and that smooth chilly voice of his has never been equaled in all of filmdom.

You gotta love the title "Two Weeks in Another Town." It's fabulous. As for the movie...it's a big budget, sprawling color extravaganza that's either a sequel or a prequel to "The Bad and the Beautiful" depending upon whom you speak to. Kirk Douglas stars as Jack, a has-been, alcoholic actor who, fresh from the asylum, is summoned to Rome by his guru, the director Maurice Kruger (Edward G. Robinson). Also in Rome is the wife that drove Jack into an alcoholic stupor, the seductive Carlotta (Cyd Charisse). Initially all Jack is to do is direct the dubbing of Kruger's film so he can finish on time and satisfy the Italian producer - but things become more involved.

I can't agree with one comment that this is the veiled story of Tyrone Power, Linda Christian, and Darryl F. Zanuck, with circumstances changed to protect the guilty. Certainly the promiscuity aspects are similar; Ty took up with Anita Ekberg, magazine editor Mary Roblee, etc., and Linda, well-known for her exploits like the Cyd Charisse character, had an affair with Edmund Purdom. And Power was certainly tied to Zanuck. However, the story is pretty Hollywood generic; one could probably make the case for other actors' marriages and connection to directors and/or producers.

"Two Weeks" is also way over the top, which is what Minnelli intended: old Roman gluttony. It's a feast of scenery, big acting, and a wild, dramatic story, which peaks with Douglas and Charisse in a fast car careening through Rome.

Kirk Douglas is great as an actor returning to his past, only to find there's nothing there of use. Robinson turns in a excellent performance as a tough yet insecure director who cheats on his emotionally abusive and abused wife yet depends on her like a child its mother. Trevor as the wife is appropriately hurt, angry, and downright vicious. George Hamilton plays an up and coming actor - as one comment noted, this is a stretch; he doesn't really register. Charisse gets costar billing but doesn't have much to do but laugh evilly, wear glamorous clothes, and look seductive. She succeeds.

"Two Weeks in Another Town" is certainly worth a look, though it was hard for this viewer to connect with any of the characters. I think it stands alone as neither a prequel or sequel to "The Bad and the Beautiful" as a story of what it's like to make films in another time - and in another town.

Trying to repeat their success in The Bad and the Beautiful with the same studio MGM, director Vincent Minnelli and actor Kirk Douglas give another go at the fabulous world of film making. This time though MGM sprung for color and a location shooting in Rome, the other town the title is referring to.

If Tyrone Power were alive he might have sued MGM because I believe Kirk Douglas's character of Jack Andrus is based on him and the relationship he had with producer Darryl Zanuck and second wife Linda Christian. In her days Linda was quite the party animal, as much as Cyd Charisse portrays here.

The Zanuck character is a director named Maurice Krueger played by Edward G. Robinson. Changing him from a producer to a director probably saved a whole lot of legal fees.

Very simply the plot is that washed up film actor Douglas who is in a high priced alcoholic asylum as the film opens receives an offer from his former director Robinson to come to Rome to help him with a film that threatens to run behind schedule. Douglas comes to Rome and becomes quite indispensible to Robinson, especially after Robinson suffers a heart attack and Douglas has to finish the film.

His hedonistic ex-wife Charisse is also in Rome among many other temptations. It all works out for Douglas, but not quite in the way he would have thought.

Best performance in the film in my opinion is that of Claire Trevor who is Robinson's shrewish wife, based very much on Darryl Zanuck's wife Virginia.

According to the Films of Kirk Douglas, both Minnelli and Douglas were disappointed in how the film turned out. It certainly doesn't measure up to The Bad and the Beautiful. Douglas blamed it on a botched editing job. That maybe so, but my own opinion is that the Code was still in place in 1962 and maybe had this been done ten years later, certain things could have been made far more explicit to the audiences.

Two Weeks in Another Town is still quite a curiosity, catch it if you can.