Bloodline (1979)

Thanks for the memories!

Boring

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This movie is not a good one but a very special movie to me is not only the mature Audrey Hepburn in this one but is the very beautiful and fantastic Romy Schneider any movie with a cast like this should be better but doesnot matter you will love it , plus is Maurice Ronet a major international star he too die young, Romy at this time was a big international super star and one of the most beautiful women in this planet i am sorry for Audrey but i love Romy much more sadly she die young and have a tragic life, Romy was mainly an European star at this point but what surprise me the most is that many of the people written a review doesn't mention her name please she was as beautiful and important as Audrey Hepburn was

At the end of the 70's making a movie in Hollywood and Europe was not easy! Looking back one can see that an era of old movie making was coming to an end and a new era was starting! In Europe with the downfall of European cinema, and especially Italian movie making at Cinecitta, movie producers were forced to make movies with actors from different countries as it was in this case like Romy Schneider and Gert Fröbe for Germany, Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazarra for US, Omar Sharif and Irene Papas for Greece and Egypt,... if they would like to sell their movie. Movies were not made in first instance for the cinema's anymore but for the commercial television stations that started to pop up everywhere over Europe due to the end of state television in a lot of European countries. In Hollywood, it was also the end of era around 1979. Producers, actors, actresses that made it big in the 50's-70's period were getting older together with their audience and it was getting more difficult to find good material for them. Classic stories are those of for example Rock Hudson, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton,... On the other hand new actors, directors and producers were entering the field like Spielberg with Jaws focusing more on the action cinema than the character driven story or actors. From that moment on it was down hill for old school movie making. The death of classic cinema came with the introduction of CGI where we are today with almost only action cinema. Other movies are hardly ever made. So in this light the movie Bloodline is a prime example of a movie at the end of the golden era of Hollywood with classic actors like Hepburn, Mason, Schneider, Sharif, Papas, Fröbe...

When "Bloodline" was released in 1979, a major magazine review pointed out that in the course of the story, ostensibly for failure to pay a gambling debt, a character's knees are nailed to the floor. The critic then went on to say, `This is what Paramount Pictures is going to have to do to get audiences to sit through this picture.' There aren't enough negative things to say about this abomination of a movie. The meandering, incoherent story is hampered at every turn by ludicrously bad production values. The direction, the inept blocking of the scenes, the lighting, the sets – in every case conspires to make the results look cheap and hollow. The movie is really a miracle of dreadfulness. The following is one of thousand small crimes against cinema throughout the picture: There is an explosion in the street. This is conveyed by a flash of light on the actors in the scene and a sound effect. The next shot, meant to be the view of the street from the window, is a still photograph beneath which someone is apparently waving a lit piece of paper. Just before the cut from this scene, the photograph actually starts to buckle from the heat of the flame. And the filmmakers left this in the film! The real crime against cinema is the fact that the name of Audrey Hepburn is associated with this repugnant film, a monstrosity so putrid, one wishes every single copy of it would magically disappear.

I had the good fortune as a teenager to sit through "Bloodline" each day or night for the week it ran in Freeport, Illinois. Later, when I ran away to NYC, I watched it again on my first little screen in a tiny, sloped theater-in-a-complex. I scoured Central Park for one of the scenes shot there against a graffiti-dusted bridge. Ahh... It was my last fix for a while on what chic is, what perseverance, trust and fabulous Parisian locales can do for a lost soul... Then I ran away to France. It would a few more years before I made it to Paris, but when I did I searched out Hotel de Crillion, Maxim's, Notre Dame. The Sydney Sheldon book was a bore compared to the film. Seeing these great international actors together -- Romy "Shrew in Silk" Schneider and Irene "Show me your back!" Papas, for example -- gave me a great shot of what it must be like to tread life's waters in Gucci and Bulgari (back when Gucci didn't seem so silly (watch out! is Chanel next?)) This film, about the Roffe Pharmaceutical heiress (Audrey Hepburn)tagged for murder because she won't go public with the stock market, has a great soundtrack, with lovely resolution, and if you can get the album or CD you'll catch a funky tune not used in the film. All those bits of different languages, different people: "Kennst du dieser Mann?" "They make cheese!" "Poland? This time of year?". What about that tacky snuff-murder sidebar (Roffe's film stock is being used to discredit the company)? You have to admit that that bald man is a hotty. I am in a whirl of support for this little picture and I'd see it again and again. Sometimes the best teachers in life are lurking in the cinema. It's not just about art! Look at Audrey's friendship with her Dad's aide, Beatrice Straight. What about that "senseless" death when Audrey goes back to get earrings? The cool unfolding opening credits and shocking change in music? And I could write a book on all that absolutely fabulous Givenchy clothing!!! The velvet applique and crystal-studded gown she wears to meet Gazzara (another hotty) at the "Guess who?" restaurant? How about the OD green wool cape as she meets about a new formula that can save Roffe? How about her chic sweater and cords as she crawls across the imbricated roof of that villa in Sardinia? Reprising the Jewish ghetto in Crakow? Horses and syringes? The ubiquitous tied-up silk robe Audrey wears? Count me in! This was one of her best "adult" roles. She got a million bucks to do it, it gave her family even more security, and I say she infused the project with inestimable elan. It is a satisfying and slightly sickening love story. Long live Audrey Hepburn! (May she rest in peace.)