The VIPs (1963)

For elite passengers awaiting London-to-U.S. flights, takeoff can't occur soon enough. But then fog rolls in, grounding air traffic. Over the next fateful night, the jet-setters must face problems and not flee them.First-class stars book passage for romantic melodrama mixed with wry comic flourishes in The V.I.P.s Frances (Elizabeth Taylor) is runing from her neglectful tycoon husband (Richard Burton) into the arms of the suave Marc (Louis Jourdan). Filmmaker Max (Orson Welles) is dodging the taxman. Harried entrepreneur Les (Rod Taylor) is blind to the romantic devotion of his secretary (Maggie Smith). And a dotty dutchess (Margaret Rutherfor won an Oscar, Golden Globe and National Board of Review awards for ther delightful performance) is determined to save her ancestral manor. Product Description

It was more enjoyable than a lot of other Taylor-Burton films...

This movie is like a soap opera. An unhappily married woman is about to leave her inattentive husband for another man; a playboy, in fact. Her husband goes to find her and get her back...but will he succeed?

There are a couple of other stories added to this, but they're not as important or watchable. I was only interested by the Taylor-Burton story. Overall, the film is not bad at all. August 29, 2007

one of those oldtime all-star fests we no longer see (praise frith!)

richard burton & elizabeth taylor (at the height of "cleomania") are the purported stars of this movie (they dont make them like this any more!) but it is really worth seeing for the tour-de-force of margaret rutherford, who won a richly deserved oscar as a now-poverty-stricken duchess trying to make ends meet. hardly a top movie, but if you want to see something to waste an evening, go for it.
March 21, 2007

A competent rather than stimulating film...

The V.I.P. lounge of the London Airport is cunningly designed to exploit the real-life Burton--Taylor romance... In itself, the film is competent rather than stimulating...

Liz (very lovely to look at) once again is the neglected wife, comforting herself with a lover... When he's threatened by his wife's departure, the husband, who has given diamonds instead of affection, shows he cares... Liz is unyielding, however; she wants him to suffer... Only when Burton decides to kill himself and she finds out does she realize he needs her... The couple are reunited: despite their great wealth, despite his previous indifference, despite her temptations (Louis Jourdan is waiting in the wings), they are respectable, conventional people after all...

The inevitable reconciliation is reached by means of improbable coincidences... But the details hardly matter... The Burtons behave like stars, he shamelessly working his speeches as though they were Shakespearean arias, she being very dignified and remote, on her best lady-like behavior after "Cleopatra." At the end, she has a tearful scene that gives her the kind of torrential emoting she had practiced since "National Velvet" and "The Courage of Lassie;" for the rest, she's cool and serene, her face undisturbed by normal human expression... Playing an instigator of male insecurity, she's not, for a change, altogether sympathetic here...

The Burtons by no means dominate the movie, and again, as in "Cleopatra," the chemistry isn't quite there... He has that deep sonorous voice he's so immensely proud of; she's working with her high, little-girl breathiness... He's stage-trained, an emphatic classical actor... She's movie-trained, skillful at not giving the camera more than it can absorb... His bombastic language and her movie-fashioned subtlety do not mix; often they don't seem to be occupying the same movie space...

Burton was one of the finest classical actors of his generation, but as a movie actor in movie star material, he was no match for his wife... When they have good scripts, with equally weighted parts, as in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," and "The Taming of the Shrew," they are truly responsive to each other...

In "The V.I.P.s" Burton gives too much and Taylor just barely gives enough, but it doesn't matter... It's Old Hollywood pretentious and a big-cast movie like this is only as good as its supporting actors... Maggie Smith, as the unsophisticated secretary with a crush on her boss, and Margaret Rutherford, as the eccentric duchess, stole the show and won a Best Supporting Oscar...

January 16, 2007

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