De l'autre côté de minuit

Like the previous commenter Jenny, I saw this movie when it first came out, and I too could not stop thinking about it! I saw it in this really nice theater in downtown Seattle (can't remember the name.. I think it has since been closed down and turned into something more steel and glass-like. Oh well, the memories linger...)

I have not seen this movie since I saw it in 1977, but I remember I saw it mere months before heading off to serve in the US military, and the images from this film somehow remained in my young mind throughout the time I was in the service, and beyond.

I still vividly remember the "prostitution" scene, and I still remember the flying scenes - as a fan of all things aviation-related, the movie is worth seeing just for the flight scenes alone.

I can remember going out on a few dates with girls back then, and talking glowingly about this fabulous movie. They thought I was a passionate, dreamy-eyed romantic or something. Must've had them fooled, I guess.

But if you want to see a good movie that's a bit of a potboiler paperback novel come to life, then this one's for you. I myself will be looking for a copy of this film in my local video store shortly.

I saw this movie upon the persistent recommendations of my lady co-employees thinking and hoping that there may be sense after all in their insistence. But of course, knowing them I expected this to be another chick movie, a maudlin love story.

To my surprise, it had a lot of suspense and I also appreciated the fact that it captured the ambience of the European countries that served as locales.

It did well in the Philippines. I saw it with a standing room crowd and it took me a while to grab a seat. But I doubt if it was well received in the US.

...that a film with copious amounts of nudity can be as dry as dirt. It looks like a handsome production replete with a Michel Legrand musical score and Oscar nominated costumes from Irene Sharaff. But the leads, Marie-France Pisier and John Beck, register zero on the charisma scale. It is hard to care about anything related to them. And the lamentable thing drags on for 166 minutes.

The one saving grace is Susan Sarandon, who, even in a bad film in a sadly supporting role, still has that certain zest and spark of a true star about her, even though her palmy days would not completely arrive for another decade or so. But the rest of the film is apathetic and completely bored me.

Producer Frank Yablans and 20th Century Fox spent some serious cash on "The Other Side of Midnight" filming scenes on location in Paris, Washington, DC and Greece. It certainly looks good on screen. The lush musical score by Michel Legrand made the movie sound more important than it really is. (When is a Legrand musical score not lush?) But the plodding epic WWII romantic story about two women who are in love with the same pilot, adapted from the best selling Sidney Sheldon novel, should not be taken too seriously. The movie is so soapy, I'm surprised Procter & Gamble did not co-produce the movie.

Marie-France Pisier tries her best to flesh out (pun intended) her character of Noelle, using her body to get to the top. But the scenes with Sorrell Booke as a businessman who bought Noelle from her father, Christian Marquand as a filmmaker and Raf Vallone as a Greek tycoon, were rather embarrassing and I did not feel any sympathy toward her character. John Beck fared even worse as a very uncharismatic, two-timing cad.

It is interesting that after "Midnight", Pisier (who I remember from a much better movie from two years earlier, Cousin, Cousine) went back to appearing in movies in her native France and Beck continued to appear in soaps, this time on television.

Somehow, I thought Susan Sarandon fared best because she was the best actor of the three leads. I felt more sympathy for her character Catherine than Noelle. And what has happened to Sarandon after this trash-fest? Can someone say a thinking man's sex symbol? (Oscar-winning performance as Sr. Helen Prejean in "Dead Man Walking" notwithstanding.)

Why a 5 out of 10 instead of a 1 or 2? I remember reading many negative reviews when it was first released in 1977. However, unlike what was reported in the IMDb Trivia section, the movie did have a long run in theaters and was a moderate success at the box office. Even though I was very leery of the film's 2 hour, 45 minute length, I caught the movie on cable TV. This movie is like a trashy summer novel, I could not put this movie down. Without giving the ending away, the plot twists almost made the film worth my time. Having seen the movie several times in the past few years, The Other Side of Midnight is a bad movie but I plead guilty to admit that it is so bad, it's good.

Update (5/10/2007): I tried to re-watch this movie and ended up fast forwarding through the boring parts. I guess my original review was rather generous.

If you cut down the "getting to know you" musical montage scenes, the transition scenes where people are walking from one beautiful scene to another and delete the gratuitous nude scenes, it might have been better. The movie is also filled with script exposition and not enough actual scenes that might have made the movie more interesting. The scenes between Pisier and Michael Lerner, who plays an investigator trailing John Beck's character, are especially deadly.

Sarandon's performance still holds up. She exudes more depth to her character than the script allows.

I sense that the movie was made by some dirty old men whose idea for a "chick flick" was to see the main female characters naked. A naked male lead? Not a chance.

... but not as good as it wants to be. This sprawling drama plays out over a span of decades as it follows a pretty young Parisienne who is seduced and abandoned by an American flier, and who then marries into society with the non-specific purpose of either getting him back or getting back at him. Meanwhile the flier gets married and goes through various crises of his own. The production values are expensive and look good, but the script moves with languorous slowness and, despite some fashionable 70s-style sexual frankness, everything has an old-style Hollywood feel to it, as if the movie had been made 20 years earlier than it was. John Beck and Susan Sarandon in particular seem to have been time warped back to a Ross Hunter melodrama such as Back Street, making their performances seem out of date for the more naturalistic 1970s cinema. Marie- France Pisier emerges as the best thing in the movie, but it's a pretty dull affair otherwise, especially when she is not on screen. Sarandon's career survived this bomb, thanks to Atlantic City a few years later, but John Beck, who was supposed to vault to stardom after this, quickly found himself in the hell of TV guest star shots.