Humoresque (1946)
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 5
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
Release Date: Dec 25, 1946 Wide
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 1,195
Movie Info
Fannie Hurst's novel Humoresque is the lachrymose tale of a famed Jewish-American violinist who forgets all about his friends and family in his rise to fame. Screenwriters Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold refashioned this timeworn material into a first-class, big-budget soap opera, completely dominated by the high-octane talents of Joan Crawford and John Garfield. A gifted musician, Garfield rises from the slums to the upper echelons of society, thanks to the patronage of wealthy, alcoholic
Dec 25, 1946 Wide
Jun 14, 2005
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Cast
-
John Abbott
Rozner -
Joan Crawford
Helen Wright -
John Garfield
Paul Boray -
Paul Cavanagh
Victor Wright -
Oscar Levant
Sid Jeffers -
J. Carrol Naish
Rudy Boray -
Tommy Cook
Phil Boray as a Child -
Joan Chandler
Gina -
Tom D'Andrea
Phil Boray -
Peggy Knudsen
Florence -
Peg La Centra
Nightclub Singer -
Fritz Leiber
Hagerstrom -
Don McGuire
Eddie -
Ruth Nelson
Esther Boray -
Nestor Paiva
Orchestra Leader -
Craig Stevens
Monte Loeffler -
Richard Walsh
Teddy -
Patricia Barry
Fritzie the Telephone O... -
Monte Blue
Furniture Moving Man -
Richard Gaines
Bauer -
Creighton Hale
Professor -
Don Turner
Man with Dog -
Robert Blake
Paul Boray (younger) -
Ann Lawrence
Florence as a Girl -
Sylvia Arslan
Gina as a Girl
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All Critics (9) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (3) | Rotten (2) | DVD (8)
pot-boiler with Crawford chewing up the scenery; Garfield does his best to retain his dignity.
remembered largely for its sublime ability to make Garfield look like a virtuoso violinist
Crawford and Haller make it into a dreamy wallow in velvety masochism.
Now a days regarded as camp, Jean Negulesco's melodramatic exploration of desire features Joan Crawford at her limited best, but the music played by Isaac Stern and lush score by Franz Waxman offer pleasure, and so do Garfield, the decor and costumes.
A turgid affair with John Garfield having to choose either socialite Joan Crawford or his bow strings.
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Crawford's film has the far better title, but the films are equally shallow and phony. Audiences in the 1940s flocked to theaters to watch Davis wreak vengeance and Crawford cry of a broken heart. Writers tried to dream up situations where revenge or self-pity would seem authentic to the characters, and they mostly failed.
All through the second of half of the over-long "Humoresque," Crawford's self-lacerating destruction seems fake. Her character is in love with a superstar violinist played by John Garfield, and he's in love with her. For the story of doomed love to work, there has to be a compelling reason why the couple can't be together. But there is no good reason.
I kept wanting to scream at Crawford's character: Just marry the guy already!
There are great elements of "Humoresque" though. The first half-hour is scintillating. It tells the story of the Garfield character, growing up in a working-class family in the Bronx and breaking the social code by falling in love with the violin instead of the baseball bat. We watch him struggle with the competing concerns of developing his artistry and helping his parents put food on the table. His parents emerge as authentic and fully realized characters in their own right. And rarely have I seen Garfield feel so at home in a role.
Then he meets the Crawford character, a high-society alcoholic in a loveless and childless marriage. They meet at a high-society party hosted by Crawford. This party sequence is so good that it should be as legendary as the party scenes in "All About Eve." The dialogue in this sequence was so brilliant, I wrote some of the lines down:
- You just spoiled the beginning of an odious relationship.
- Every time I look at you, I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
- With all that talent, he'll probably end up in jail.
- I'm constitutionally given to enthusiasm about nothing.
Clifford Odets is credited with writing the script, based on a novel of the same name by Fannie Hurst. But I get the feeling that Odets for the most part had his script dumbed down by the Warner Brothers assembly line of hack script doctors. Only the party sequence bears the mark of a genius writer.
Yes, there's a lot of great music played in the film. In fact I think there's too much. I don't watch movies to listen to an hour of music. No matter how great the music is, that's not what cinema is about for me. I can listen to great music any time. I don't have to go to the movies to hear that. Director Jean Negulesco continually put long concert sequences in the film whenever he ran out of story ideas.