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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Madison Avenue (1961) [TV-PG] ***


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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