Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Steineded How sad is this?

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Bob Pr. I'm in a play reading group and we often watch a movie based on a play we've read when one's available. Similarities are that a group of wealthy Parisian men find that there's oil underground in Paris and want top scatter derricks all over the city to get it. The countess is opposed to the plan. Among the differences are that she does away with all the ____. Still, it's a worthwhile movie with a fabulous cast of characters.

JasparLamarCrabb Katherine Hepburn is a free-spirited Parisian countess out to save the world (literally) in this absurdist farce that doesn't really work. She plays a dreamer snapped into reality by the have-nots in her neighborhood and declares war on the "establishment" (embodied by a group of wealthy creeps looking to dig for oil beneath Paris). Although it's not very successfully sewn together by director Bryan Forbes, there are vignettes that are wonderful and Edward Anhalt's script contains many witty lines. Unfortunately, the film is too often draggy (if not outright boring). It's really too bad that there's not more substance here. The cast is enormous but the fact that Donald Pleasence, Yul Brynner, Charles Boyer, Danny Kaye and many others are involved merely make for a far too densely populated film. That doesn't mean that the performances are bad. In fact, Hepburn is quite touching realizing that in order to stop dreaming, she has to wake up! It's also fun watching her share the screen with the likes of Boyer, Margaret Leighton and others. Pleasence, Brynner and Kaye are exceptional as is Giulietta Masina (as Hepburn's flighty, lovelorn friend). Ultimately, Forbes is simply not a particularly imaginative director. The pacing of the film is very slow, especially in its last quarter. The interiors are drably put together, but, thanks to some great cinematography by Claude Renoir and Burnett Guffey, the exterior scenes are mostly stunning.

junkohanko I was not expecting much of this movie. Unfortunately, I was not disappointed. This movie started out with a bad script. And the direction was very poor. I have read the English adaptation of the original play by Giradoux and I have seen the musical "Dear World" based on the stage play. Too many characters were added to the screenplay, and too much dialog was removed. The director wasn't sure whether it was a drama or a comedy or a tragedy or a farce. Or maybe he thought it was all of the above. I watched it with someone who did not know the story and she was totally lost. Hopefully this will not make it onto DVD. I can't imagine any company wasting the money on such a project.

alicecbr Every Civics class (are they still teaching Civics in our increasingly more ignorant society?) should watch this and write an essay on it (if they know what one is, or what a subject and predicate is). What a fantastic analogue to today's insane reality, where the news is owned by the corporate giants: Yul Bryneer does a great turn describing how 'sensible' this arrangement is. To see Yul Bryner laughing is a treat in itself, when you have visions of Yul the Outlaw dancing in your head. Of course his evil in this film is far more insidious than any "The Wild Ones" could have envisioned.The Ragpicker's soliloquy by Danny Kaye is sometimes pointed to as the highlight of his career, when he was trivialized as a song and dance man....much as Einstein's political views on the insanity of war were sublimated to his scientific contributions. To watch Margaret Leighton give way to the Ragpicker's depiction of how easily women can be bought (with 'sable and morals'). As the defense lawyer, he almost gets his clients off by describing how he gave to all tax-exempt charities, and built many hospitals for the children who ate the food he grew in his 234 farms. (This will remind you of George Bernard Shaw's lines in "The Countess", in which the Indian muses on the much overlooked fact that those great givers to charity --whose names are etched on hospital walls-- are the same corporate giants who owned the mills that put the patients IN the hospitals.) Of course, we the people are no longer taught the skill of analytical thinking, so we wave the flag and gladly sacrifice our children to the merchants of death via their minions, the Army recruiters. And of course, it's all about oil, just as this illegal immoral invasion of Iraq is. How timely this movie is. No wonder you can't find it in the video stores. No wonder you can't even find reviews of the movie in Leonard Whoever's Reviews Book or the Time-Out English Review Book but in Variety's 2000 Movie Guide. Too dangerous in a time of McCarthyism, of Salem witch trials, where the 1st Amendment is so easily discarded.Naturally, we have a minister, who admits to being involved in some anti-Semitic activities using an atrocious Southern accent. Each of the plotters-- the commissar, the broker, the doctor, the DeGaulle prime minister...all 'confess' to one another their nefarious doings in order to show their loyalty to one another. The fact that Katherine Hepburn gives each of them an 'exclusive contract' to the oil under her mansion in Paris....soon known by all....indicates (according to Yul) that they are all worthy of being business partners, each one totally derelict of the chains of morality.This is a movie you'll see again and again. See it once for the gorgeous scenes of Paris, a city I love. See it again to remind yourself that once there was a Camelot, once there was a citizenry who cared enough, who knew enough about the danger democracy is in within our country to revolt, courting injury from the police stooges. Of course those police didn't have pepper guns or 'non-lethal' stun guns that kill. (Even at a Red Sox over Yankees celebration, by a direct hit, not the political demonstration the guns were bought for).These great actors are topped by Katherine Hepburn..her welling eyes mirroring her emotions, her concern at killing these monsters, her sadness for her lost love (the ragpicker?) that drove her insane. Here's an example of "If you had fore knowledge of the evil Hitler would do to the world, would you have killed him?".Yul Bryner shows also that he was an actor, not just a movie star...but then what enervated these great actors: Charles Boyer, Dame Evans, Guiletta Massina, Margaret Leighton (Betty Davis' nemesis)? It was a labor of love by an international cast which understood the greed, the amorality, the savagery of our 'leaders'. I note that the previous comments also mirror the reviewers' political outlooks in their thumbs down approach: too much truth for them?If ever such a dramatization of our society's plight (also Britain's, by the way) is needed, it is the year 2005-- with amoral incompetence in the saddle of our Executive Cowboy and mirrored by the insipid cowardice or ineffectiveness of our Democrats in Congress. Although you won't find it for less than $69, it's well worth the money.