A film
review by Andrew Wickliffe for thestopbutton.com on 23 March 2014.
Madison Avenue somehow manages to be anorexic but
packed. It only runs ninety minutes and takes place over a few years. There’s
no makeup – which is probably good since Dana
Andrews, Eleanor Parker and Jeanne Crain are all playing at least
ten years younger than their ages.
Director Bruce Humberstone doesn’t do much in
the way of establishing shots – I think there’s one real one. Most of the
exteriors are obviously on the backlot (even the real one is probably somewhere
on the studio lot). He does have some decent transitions from interior to
interior, but he never visually acknowledges all of the time progressions.
And
there’s no real conflict. Andrews is an ad man who loses his job and tells his
ex-boss (an extremely amused Howard St.
John) he’s going to come get his accounts. To do so, Andrews has to team
with Parker. The problem with Madison
Avenue is its actors are good, its script has some good scenes, but there’s
no depth to it. Norman Corwin can
write decent back and forth banter, just not a real conversation.
Parker’s
got an unfortunate arc, but her performance is fine. She’s really good at the
beginning. Andrews is appealing and doesn’t look fifty-four. He looks about
forty-five, but he’s probably supposed to be playing thirty-one. Crain looks
more contemptuous of her material than the other leads; she does okay. Nice
supporting turn from Kathleen Freeman
as Andrews’s secretary. [Wickliffe’s
rating: *½ out of 4 stars]
[Blogger’s
comment: This is a 1961-62 film about advertising and public relations in the
early 1960s. It’s over-acted, over-plotted and as the reviewer noted, contains absolutely no visual cues that months have elapsed at various points in the
film. For a far better treatment of advertising agencies in the 1960s, I
recommend the TV series Mad Men
(2007-2015).]
Labels:
drama, Eleanor Parker, Jeanne Crain
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