Humoresque (1947)

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

SPOILER ALERT:The first problem with this film is that none of the major characters are likable. Joan Crawford plays a self-obsessed, half-drunk socialite who ruins the lives of every husband she has had, and while wallowing in self-pity intends to ruin the life of our other main character -- John Garfield. Garfield plays a violinist who is rude to just about everyone -- because he's an artist -- including his mother and the woman who really loves him. About an hour into the film you're wishing the father had gotten his way and the young Garfield had been forced to take the fire engine (you'll understand if you choose to suffer through this film). The third major character is Oscar Levant, a pianist whose sole purpose in the film seems to be to make wisecracks which often seem out of place. I know, he was the accompanist, but that role could have been played by a bit player. The only acting I enjoyed in the film was by supporting characters -- J. Carrol Naish as Garfield's father, Ruth Nelson as Garfield's mother, and Paul Cavanagh as Crawford's husband.I will give Garfield credit for making his violin playing quite convincing, although closeups of the hands playing the violin were actually the hands of Issac Stern. Nevertheless, Garfield did a nice job here. Also, there's some great music here! By the time we reach the movie's climax, I began wishing that Crawford's character would commit suicide and put us all out of our misery. Take pills with all that alcohol. Slit your wrists on that broken glass. Walk into the waves. I didn't see it coming...but she did! If only she had done it 2 hours earlier.I know some people think this was a wonderful film, but I think it was a dog. The best thing about the film -- Crawford in the movie poster. Early in the film when his brother was complaining about Garfield making no money for the family, I was afraid Garfield was going to become a gangster. Two hours later I wished he had.

Humoresque (1946) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Paul Boray (John Garfield) dreams of being able to play his violin for a living but he just doesn't have the right connections to make it. This changes when he meets a rich married woman (Joan Crawford) who takes a liking to his talent but soon the two fall in love as Paul's career takes off. Many people have compared this to GOLDEN BOY only with music and I think that's a fair thing to say. There's no question that this here is going to be very entertaining to film buffs due to a number of reasons but of course when you've got heavyweights like Garfield and Crawford you know you're in for a treat. Crawford was coming off her Oscar-winning role in MILDRED PIERCE and she followed that role up with another terrific character. Even though she's given top-billing she's mainly just a supporting player here but she delivers a remarkable performance. For someone who always played tough characters, the actress does a fantastic job at playing someone very fragile and weak. This is certainly the type of role that fans hadn't seen from Crawford and she is wonderful in it. Garfield is also someone fit with the tough guy roles and seeing him play a violin isn't what you expect from him but he's very much believable in the role. I thought he did a fantastic job showing the character's love for music and why a woman would be second. Oscar Levant is very strong as the piano player, Ruth Nelson is great in the role of the mother and the always dependable J. Carrol Naish. A young Robert Blake plays the kid Garfield. The music is certainly another highlight as it's constantly playing throughout the film and helps explain the 125-minute running time. Isaac Stern dubbed Garfield in the music and he certainly did a fantastic job. There's been much written about the ending, which I won't spoil here but it's certainly a wonderful sequence that is perfectly put together. The way it mixes the music with the actions of Crawford was very impressive.

HUMORESQUE is a really intense romantic drama where a working class musician and a rich and unstable woman fall madly in love with each other. They struggle with each other and the expectations from their family.JOAN CRAWFORD is extraordinarily beautiful and she turns in a remarkable performance here as the hard drinking unhappily married rich woman. GARFIELD is intense and tough as the musician from the working class. Like GARFIELD's character in the film says "the two of them are like wrestlers circling each other". I wasn't sure why nearly every one of their encounters was fraught with tension but it is all revealed in CRAWFORD's monologue towards the end of the film.Oscar LEVANT keeps things from getting too dark and melancholic. He is almost always around when GARFIELD and CRAWFORD are running around circles around each other. His character seemed to be straight out of a noir film. I'm usually not a big fan of these intense romantic drama's but I liked this one because of GARFIELD and CRAWFORD.(7/10)

Cliff Odets, Joan Crawford and John Garfield is an almost unbeatable parlay. Odets and Garfield were both members of the Group Theatre on Broadway in the thirties - other members were Lee J. Cobb and Elia Kazan - and one of Odets' most successful plays was Golden Boy about a poor boy from the East Side who is also a gifted violinist. Odets wrote Golden Boy in 1938, I don't know when Fannie Hurst wrote her short story Humoresque but the similarities are clear except that in Golden Boy the violinist becomes a prizefighter highlighting the conflict between Art and commerce. Whatever, Odets turns in a great script here and Crawford and Garfield play the bejeezus out of it with handy support from Ruth Nelson and Oscar Levant. It's undoubtedly one of Crawford's finest performances even if they do 'borrow' the suicide from A Star Is Born and change the sex. If you're looking for a movie that personifies the forties look no further.