Beautiful Stranger (1954)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Ginger Rogers stars in this portmanteau of romance and thriller, which is called "Beautiful Stranger" on the title. Eddie Byrne is his usual disreputable self - "I stole it, I'm innocent". Rogers is the girlfriend of an apparently reputable millionaire living on a continental island when she meets a young potter at a bijou beatnik house on the coast. Bizarrely, her Rolls Royce keeps changing colour from white to silver, even during car chases. I'm not sure if this is a filming fault, because of film processing, or a mistake made in digitisation.Eddie creeps around a house and the potter looks outside but doesn't see his Citroen (the same one as used by the police) parked clearly in front of the house. The same white telephone is used throughout the house and office.

Ginger Rogers stars with Stanley Baker and Herbert Lom in "Twist of Fate," a 1954 film shot on location in the Riviera. Even in black and white, the scenery is wonderful.Rogers is Johnny, an ex-showgirl living on the largesse of her sugar daddy Louis Galt (Baker), who's been separated from his wife supposedly for years and whose divorce will be final any minute. After a fight with him, she runs off and has a minor accident with her car. Going to the nearest house, she meets Pierre (Jacques Bergerac). (In real life, Rogers had the same reaction when she saw him as Dorothy Malone did - she married him.) Johnny and Pierre fall in love, and she wants to leave Louis. First of all, he's a criminal, though she's unaware of this; secondly, he's been lying to her, which she finds out the night of the accident; and thirdly, he turns out to have a violent streak. He announces that he won't let her leave.Louis sees that the diamond bracelet he gave her is in the hands of a con man (Herbert Lom) and thinks he's her lover. That's where the twist of fate comes in.Very derivative film, with Rogers excellent as Johnny, and with good performances by Baker and Lom, both scary in different ways.Jacques Bergerac was a handsome Fremchman, and that was about it. My mother once told me, "He was someone who married beautiful actresses." After he had married a couple of them and done some films, he became the head of Revlon's Paris office. Bless his heart, at 86, he's still with us.

Lively and Lovely to Look at Movie that moves rapidly here and there with Everyone trying to figure out Who is Who and What is What and is breathless to say the least. The Cast, including the Dramatization of Ginger Rogers Career is OK if nothing remarkable. It is the Action and the Intrigue that Star here.Some on location Photography and Criminal behavior Spice things up beyond the rather Bland Romance Angles. There are extended Fight Scenes, Misidentifications, Smuggling, Thievery, and Murder, Adultery, Betrayal, and after all, a Deathbed confession that thankfully, and predictably clears things up. There is enough here to recommend because once things get going it is all in Perpetual Motion that makes for a Fun Film Experience, although it fails to be sharp enough for it to rise above expectations, but it does manage to deliver just that.

British filmmakers faced what they thought was a problem. They spoke English (of a sort) which meant that they should be able to make some money in the US . This was necessary because UK returns weren't enough to make really big money. The problem, as they saw it then, was that they needed some star appeal for the Americans. Even going back to the twenties they would import American film star to headline the production and hope that people would go to the theaters expecting a first class Hollywood picture and buy a ticket before they found out it was a cheapo British movie by which time it would be too late.Their big mistake is importing a 'star' with no box office appeal, or more, likely one who was over the hill, a bit passe, the news of which hadn't caught up in London. Of course it was the alternative that worked, (such as Ealing comedies) - unknown but superb actors in a well written and directed film was more successful and wound up with the unknown star going to Hollywood- e.g. James Mason, Maureen O'Hara, Richard Harris, Richard Burton ad. infinitum.Along with the star it was common practice to import a director and a cameraman. Many of the best British cameramen of a generation started as assistants to some Hollywood 'old pro.' The British had an inferiority complex about their own directors.For this film they imported Ginger Rogers and David Miller. Rogers was 40+ and her career was winding down. She made a picture with Fred Astaire THE BARKLEYS OF Broadway in '49 and MONKEY BUSINESS with Howard Hawks and Cary Grant in '52 but it was the co-star that everybody noticed and I don't mean the chimp (I.e. Marilyn Monroe). Miller was a superior hack, fully capable of rendering a good script like SATURDAY'S HERO but not able to save a turgid one like BACK STREET.The script for BEAUTIFUL STRANGER (TWIST OF FATE) is a derivative rehash of what was mildly popular as a second feature a few years before. In other words - a noir. The dialogue seems to be the type where one expects an actor to turn to the camera and remark 'We're all in a movie, aren't we?' The real potential star of the picture, Stanley Baker, is miscast and badly used as the heavy of the piece, the fifteen year age difference between Rogers and him poorly covered up with grey streaks in his hair. Herbert Lom is a thief and a foreigner and crazy and doing none of them well. Jacques Bergerac was the nominal hero because he was the best looking etc. This was his film debut and was Ginger Rogers fourth husband at the time. Bosco, I believe, is the Italian word for wood and a piece of wood could have done a better acting job. I'm sure he must have had some other talents.To make matters worse the film was shot on location on the French Riviera. Not a classic noir location. Once away from the Hollywood Studio system Miller seems unable to stage even the simplest fight or action sequence. Never has the Riviera looked duller (the film is shot without any inspiration or colour). I'm not too sure if it wasn't shot in Devon. A stinker but an educational one.