Long Walk

I recently watched Walk On The Wild Side.  The 1962 film has a slight reputation and even that is too much.  I've never read the Nelson Algren novel it's based on, and maybe that was hot stuff, especially in the 50s, but the film's plot is both too simple and plodding.  If it was ever daring, it sure isn't any more.

It's about a drifter, played by Laurence Harvey, traveling from Texas to New Orleans to find his lost love.  She's played by Capucine, and she's now in a bordello.  They broke up for tiresome plot reasons, and have trouble getting back together for tiresome plot reasons.

But maybe I could overlook it all if it weren't for the two leads.  They're supposed to have an intense love, but Harvey and Capucine, though good-looking, are two of the coldest actors the cinema has known.  Everyone falls for them in the film--Jane Fonda and Anne Baxter for Harvey, Barbara Stanwyck (!) and a bunch of johns for Capucine--but between them, they barely generate a spark.  Allegedly they didn't get along offscreen, but even if they had, considering the screen presence of both, I'm not sure if it would have made a difference.

There are some reasons to watch the film.  It's fun to see the young Jane Fonda as a tramp.  The Elmer Bernstein score isn't bad.  And the Saul Bass opening sequence following a black cat is justly celebrated.  But overall, a dud.