Travels with My Aunt (1972)

Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent but underrated film

Boring

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A George Cukor picture made in his twilight years, TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT is adapted from Graham Greene's skylarking eponymous novel, and marks Dame Maggie Smith's much awaited follow-up to her Oscar-winning turn in THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODY (1969), resultantly is blissfully bestowed with an Oscar nomination No. 3. Playing the titular aunt, who is twice of her real age (by virtue of the able make-up artist José Antonio Sánchez), of London bank manager Henry Puling (McCowen, nearly a decade senior of Smith), Maggie's Augusta Bertram enters Henry's sedate life like a down-in-the-mouth raven during the funeral of Henry's mother. A long-lost aunt who has a flamboyant dress sense, an ear- piercing voice and eccentric makeup, from whom Henry receives the first bolt of blue that the woman whose ash he is holding is not his birth mother, and there's more to come. The film looks exceptionally rumbustious in the hands of a septuagenarian, a giddying caper globe-trots from London to Paris, then hopping on the Oriental Express to Istanbul and back, culminating in the terra firma of North Africa. Admittedly not everyone can stomach the whole package of garish fluff and ceaseless palaver prima facie, but once the ransom-collecting story- line is established, Augusta and Henry's adventure eases up into a more affable romp interspersed with Augusta's reminiscences of her youth and sundry love affairs. Maggie Smith's frivolously loquacious personage briskly corroborates the time-honored proverb "never judge a book by its cover", beneath all her self-absorbed wittering and jitters, Augusta emerges as a heart-of-gold, hopeless romantic even after toiling in the oldest profession for most of her life, and we can never quite decide whether she is dimwitted or not, when you think she is, she can gainsay it by intuitively snaffling something costly to shuck off her financial fix, so you opine maybe she isn't, then, how come she could be so credulously hoodwinked along the way? To counterpoint Smith's pyrotechnic extravagance, Alec McCowen's fusty nephew is tagged along with mild bewilderment but seldom loses his grip of his composure and slips into a plebeian laughingstock, he can be exasperating sometimes, but cunningly proves that he is worth his salt in the final reveal. Among the peripheral players, Louis Gossett Jr. is the cock of the walk as Augusta's currently live-in partner, an African fortune-teller called Wordsworth, who makes no bones about smuggling marijuana inside an ash-full urn and also lords over le quartier rouge in the Continent. A plush-looking, brassy-sounding, but ultimately spirit-elevating felix culpa doesn't desecrate Cukor's cachet, like its freeze-frame ending implies: coins have only two faces, and there is no one definite answer to the triad's final question because life is far more multifarious than that.

Maggie Smith is the aunt in "Travels with my Aunt," a 1972 film also starring Alec McCowen, Lou Gossett Jr. and Robert Stephens, and is directed by George Cukor.The movie centers around an old woman, Augusta (Smith) approaching her nephew Henry (McCowen) at his mother's funeral and pulling him into her web. She's trying to raise money to ransom her current boyfriend, Mr. Visconti, from kidnappers as she is receiving his body parts one by one. Before stuffy Henry knows it, she's suggested he steal money from the bank (he won't), his mother's ashes have cannabis in them, and they are on the Orient Express shooting across Europe. As they travel, he learns more about his aunt's life as she tells her story in flashback, including when she first met Mr. Visconti.This is a beautifully produced film, with gorgeous color, costumes, and scenery. Despite the production values and the cast, there is something not quite there with the story. Part of it is because we have no idea what's true and what isn't. Something like the Chinatown she's my sister/my daughter, Henry is either Augusta's son, her nephew, or she just lied to him at the funeral because she needed someone with access to money. Her stories of men, her time in the convent school and as a high-class call girl are either true, embellished, or complete lies. Mr. Visconti is either Henry's father or he isn't. Given the timing of this announcement - when Henry is wavering about pulling a scam - one wonders. So while we may like Augusta and think she's funny, she can't anchor the story.Lou Gossett, Jr. plays Augusta's wacky assistant who's into everything from drugs to mysticism, with a personality that can change in a second. He is hilarious. Alec McCowen plays the uptight Henry perfectly, secretly loving the adventure and the worlds it opens up to him while being a nervous wreck at each new moment. Smith's real-life husband, Robert Stephens, is great as Visconti. He was a fantastic actor who should have done more films. Cindy Williams is very good as a young, free-living woman Henry meets on the train.Maggie Smith is one of my favorite actresses. I am so privileged to have seen her on Broadway in "Lettice and Lovage," in which she was side-splittingly funny yet tugs at the heartstrings toward the end of the play. She's a phenomenal stage actress. Maybe a little big for the movies. Personally, I like performances that take a lot of risks, and her characterization of Augusta was out there. After all, wasn't Augusta? If we go on the premise that she's exaggerating and lying when it suits her, I think Smith's take on Augusta is excellent.Katharine Hepburn was the first choice for this role. I frankly think the film, for all the faults it has, would have crashed and burned with Hepburn. She was a fabulous actress and as a young woman an expert comedienne with superb timing and rapid-fire delivery, but I think in this role she would not have had the necessary flamboyance. While Smith didn't necessarily pull off the youth in the flashbacks, Hepburn, 27 years older than Smith, couldn't have approached them or being a high-class call girl. I think seeing another actress do this role would make one appreciate Smith's contribution even more.All in all, a film with some fun moments and fine performances, definitely worth seeing.

Saw it in Vietnam the year it was released, and it did what a movie is supposed to do - took me somewhere else, and made me forget reality for a while. Any movie that could hold the attention of a bunch of GI's under those circumstances has to be entertaining! Haven't seen the movie in over 30 years, but can recall enjoying it. What more can be expected of a movie?My recollection is the main character reminded me of a composite of two of my own aunts. Made me laugh. I'm usually not too keen on period-movies, but this one didn't overdo the genre.Good cinematography.

Great costumes and scenery and Maggie Smith doing her best Auntie Mame routine still add up to very little. I'm not sure what novelist Graham Greene or director George Cukor had in mind, but surely its not this disappointing mess of a movie.