The Millionairess (1960)

hyped garbage

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

This is a better movie than I had expected. Peter Sellers did another uncannily dead on imitation of an accent, to go with his many imitations of accents from England and America, and he got to read some actual GBS lines, which was nice. There was more language from the George Bernard Shaw play than I had expected. Dennis Price and Alistair Sim offer nice comic support. I just wish they could have used an actress less concerned with how she looked and more interested in the language of the play.There are obvious flaws in this film. For starters, it suffers from extreme staginess. It's socialist message is not so much delivered but bludgeoned home. I give this film a pass because of the appealing performances by the film's leads, Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren. Sellers gives a terrific low-key turn as the sweet humanistic doctor. Loren is earthy yet manages to humanize the spoiled heiress she plays. As written, her character comes of as unappealing but Loren manages to engender empathy. Good supporting cast that includes Alistair Sim as Loren's barrister, Vittorio De Sica as a sweat shop owner, and Dennis Price as Loren's psychiatrist. Great film, great direction, great actors and actresses (Sofia Loren is amazingly beautiful, and no wonder why Sellers fell in love with her)!Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

There are countless examples of movies that can't decide what they want to be, and, as other users have pointed out, this is one of them. It's personality is split three ways - a comedy, a romance, and a social commentary sermon. By not committing itself fully to any one of these, it fails at all three. As a comedy it is unquestionably the most leaden one I have ever seen. The humor is forced, and none of the dialogue has any wit or sparkle. Prepare for vast stretches of confusing pointlessness. As a romance, the interaction between the two protagonists is totally unconvincing. And as far as social commentary - the aspect we can doubtless attribute to the socialist George Bernard Shaw, upon whose play it is based - it has all the subtlety of a polo mallet upside the head. The two greats, Alastair Sim and Peter Sellers, do as best as they can with what they are given. Sellers in particular does well reprising the Indian persona he perfected on The Goon Show. But Sophia Loren seems to have been chosen purely to flaunt her sex appeal which, though considerable, poses obvious and clumsy distractions from the story, and her character is totally unbelievable as far as motivation or personality. The movie is a complete waste of the talents of the actors involved.

You cannot hit the target perfectly every time, and this is true of dramatist as the rest of us.George Bernard Shaw gave us MAJOR BARBARA, PYGMALION, ST. JOAN,HEARTBREAK HOUSE, MAN AND SUPERMAN, ... but he could do mediocre work. I think he had become a bit of an old fogy. His mind had gotten set into certain thought patterns that he would not give up. Whether this was due to disenchantment in the failure of the political Labor Party movement to improve England I can only leave to his biographers to fight out. He retreated into a fantasy world. It sometimes succeeds with flashes of his wit but for the most part he falls on his face. In this period Shaw demonstrated a remarkable belief in "strongmen". He looked at those dynamic dictators abroad in Russia, Italy, and Germany, and the result was GENEVA (1935) a play that is rarely considered for revival today - the audience might riot at it's apologia for Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler. Shaw felt that one could not look at these men and their actions without seeing the total aim that they were pushing. The problem with Shaw's vision was he was buying their aims for efficiency and for better economic standards for the bulk of their peoples. Certainly they were dynamic but Shaw ignored huge political crimes. He had always favored the work of a great person who cut to the chase ignoring the damage left and right. Undershaft in MAJOR BARBARA was typical of this - he fights poverty by giving good wages and housing and health care to the people who work in his armaments plants. That he might encourage war is nonsense - "Make war on war" is how he sees it. Only in the Great War had Shaw questioned this. He created Boss Mangan in HEARTBREAK HOUSE, who is really Undershaft up to date (1916). Undershaft had a ready, self-congratulatory statement and answer for everything. Mangan seems that way but his feet of clay are shown. He whines about his business policies that have helped lead to the present disaster to Britain. He can't undue them, for fear of losing his "Boss" position due to his shareholder's anger. And in the end, Mangan is killed (by an enemy bomb, ironically enough). It would take World War II to finally make Shaw realize how misplaced his faith in "Great Men" was. Notably he did not write that much after 1939.He showed he hope that private philanthropy by the wealthy might help. His plays keep suggesting solutions by the rich like BOUYANT BILLIONS. THE MILLIONAIRESS is a similar play. It actually can succeed as a comedy - Katherine Hepburn played Epifania successfully on stage. But it's point of view is hard to take.SPOILERS COMING UPEpifania has just become the richest woman in the world. She is seeking fulfillment in love. Her father (whose painting looks like Peter Sellers in a beard) has set the standard for whomever she will marry in the long run. It's hard to match. She asks for the assistance of the family lawyer (Sagamore - Alistair Sim), who introduces her around. Naturally the first person she dates seriously is that notorious fortune hunting scoundrel Dennis Price - but that relationship soon ends. Epifania decides to commit suicide. She approaches Sagamore, and Sim without blinking an eye hands her the recipe for a fool proof instantaneous, painless poison. Disgusted she goes to the Thames and throws herself in. And she meets Sellers, playing Dr. Kabir from India.Sellers is as mother fixated as Loren is father fixated (Seller's mother's picture looks like Loren). Loren falls for him, but he seems more concerned about his indigent patients and his clinic. What follows is Loren's attempts to win Sellers, first as a desperate patient, then as a would-be financial angel. Nothing she does stimulates him (he is rather surprised). Finally she does get him to agree to taking a test her father set up: can Sellers make a fortune out of 500 pounds (in three months), and Sellers gives her a test his mother set up for the woman he was to marry: can she live on 500 pounds for three months.We watch Loren go to work for small restaurant owner, Victorio De Sica, for three months - she ends up making it into a nightspot for the rich, and De Sica admits that he thinks he will sell it and then find a side street to start a nice small family restaurant again. Sellers tries to get rid of the money as quickly as he can - he puts out a tray with the money on it, and a sign saying "Free Money". His patients thinks it's a joke and don't take it. Finally he manages to unload it on fellow physician Noel Purcell, after a dinner they attend (where they both get drunk). This is disappointing to Loren, who decides that as Sellers has failed she will enter a convent (one that she has funded). Sim, not liking such a waste, contacts Sellers that Loren is going to commit suicide. This finally rouses Sellers, who shows up to prevent such a catastrophe.Sim actually gave the best performance of the three actors, but I feel it is because his Mr. Sagamore was just reacting to the activities of the other two. He was like a breeze of fresh air in the film's actions. Also the work by Purcell and De Sica was quite good, as small as both performances were. Loren and Sellers did well. There is some chemistry. Sellers read too much into this. Reputedly he thought Loren and he would become an item, but Loren never saw it that way.

Rather memorable on the whole. Not a great deal of laughing to be had, but certain vignettes are tasteful and entertaining, e.g. Epifania's three-month poverty-to-riches test, the doctor's futile three-month 500 pound give-away. Placing in the top quartile of my movie experiences, it's a light comedy well worth seeing.