 Director: Jean Negulesco Starring: Hope Lange, Stephen Boyd, Suzy Parker, Martha Hyer, Diane Baker, Brian Aherne, Robert Evans, Louis Jourdan, Joan Crawford Studio: 20th Century Fox Genre(s): Drama Rated: Not Rated |
Though some older films can rightly claim to be ahead of their time, “The Best of Everything” is somehow ahead of its time while being archaic in its execution. It is a difficult watch in this day and age, as it feels like a teenager coming to grips with the reality of life; it ALMOST understands the complexities of the world, yet it is too immature to fully articulate the consequences of its actions. Maybe this was a situation where the filmmakers could only go so far in how they wanted to tell their story, but the end results are no less disappointing or uninteresting.
The story follows three women who end up working in a publishing house. As with most people, they all have dreams and desires, but they will have to put the work in if they want to go anywhere in life. One of the women wants to be an actress. Another wants to climb the ladder at the publishing house. Yet another simply wants to get married and live a comfortable life (all while chasing the wrong man). Who the women are is not as relevant as you would hope, which is one of the problems. Whether the movie wants to be cutting edge on the social commentary or not is one thing, but it fails at the most important aspect, and that is making the women likable and believable.
It wouldn’t matter so much that “The Best of Everything” doesn’t get everything right if we cared for the women and their plight, but the fact that we don’t makes the whole experience a series of events that fail to make us care. This despite the fact that the film (correctly) pointed out rampant sexism in the workforce, how men tended to be more controlling in the marriage than they should have been at the time, and how it was fellow females who would be the first to backstab you if they perceived you as a threat to their own career.
All these things were true then (and some of them are still true now). Yet “The Best of Everything” never feels organic even in that 50s style of filmmaking way. The ending, in particular, comes so out of left field and is played so campy that you might have thought that the whole thing was supposed to be a satire. Sadly, it feels like everything was meant to be taken very seriously, and I just didn’t feel like I could take it so. Movies about the female experience have gotten better since the release of “The Best of Everything.” Though, to be fair, they were probably also better before the release as well.
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