Sorry, this movie sucks

Simply A Masterpiece

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

First of all I'd like to say I'm no great lover of Barbara Steisand's work so I even surprised myself that I would want to view another of her films. Perhaps I was charmed by the title "On a clear day you can see forever" which has a certain magic about it.I once knew a gardener who talked to his plants and we have all had odd experiences concerning a telephone call or a knock at the door or meeting a long lost friend. i suppose you would call them premonitions and quite unexplainable. So Daisy Gamble with her cigarette addiction as well was not so different from the rest of us and she had enough sense to seek psychiatric help.Flashbacks in the film added a welcome degree of variety because for me the film lacked sparkle and at times was on the edge of boredom. At times I was wondering how much longer the film would continue because it was beginning to feel rather drawn out. In a really good film you are craving for more.I think the songs were a really great let down. None of them was particularly catchy, a tune that would stay with you for the next few days or so. I can understand why the original Broadway production was not an outstanding success.The actors in this film seemed somewhat tired and disinterested. As a comparison check out once more "Hello Dolly" with an enthusiastic cast and great vocals and you'll see what i mean.

In some ways I felt like I enjoyed this movie in spite of myself, or itself. Equally drawn to the film by my admiration of the director Vincente Minnelli and repulsed by its leading lady Barbara Streisand, I find that in the end neither artist contributed his/her best or worst work, and that the whole package itself is mostly lacking in the necessary charm. Yves Montand presents far more problems than Miss Streisand, and Minnelli trips over his own staging to try to make the modern sequences all too modern and the historical sequences all too romantic.Streisand plays Daisy Gamble (a name only a musical comedy doyenne could possibly be saddled with), a young would-be wife who comes to a college psychologist (Montand) in hopes that he can use hypnotism to cure her excessive smoking habit. Instead, the good professor uncovers a whole past life involving a seductress called Melinda, a persona whom the professor promptly and unconvincingly falls in love with.At first it seems refreshing to have Minnelli directing this movie, with his gloriously excessive bouquets conjured up to bring some portion of artificial magic to Daisy's wistful rooftop escape. His style quickly becomes overbearing, especially since he seems to have little taste or comfort with the modern settings and styles he's using. His use of the zoom lens, the only time I can remember him using it, is garish and obvious. An ascending helicopter shot of Montand warbling atop the Pan Am building only manages to distance us from any possible emotion that could be squeezed from his continental charmer. Only in the historical sequences with their incredibly elaborate costuming and real location shots of the Brighton pavilion, does Minnelli momentarily come alive, to live again in the romantic past for one more brief moment.Montand is the glaring problem with the film. His character is completely unappealing and the way he plays him makes it much worse. The more we see of him, the less we appreciate him or can understand why Gamble is becoming infatuated with him. Likewise it's hard to see why Montand is becoming fascinated with the past life Streisand. His whole scheme is very underhanded, since he hasn't told Gamble that he's been recording all her sessions or that he's investigating a past life at all. His motives are supposed to be cleared up thanks to a series of distracting conferences with a professorial colleague oddly played by tough-guy character actor Simon Oakland.When the "good professor" becomes desperate to get Gamble back on his couch and begins sending her psychic messages to "Come Back to Me", the result is less romantic than stalking. Psychic stalking -- it's something that belongs more in a Phillip Dick nightmare sci-fi story than a musical comedy. It's hard to not get a really bad taste in your mouth, especially since the film-makers have already provided a suitably obvious and suitably compatible well, uh, suitor in the person of Daisy's ex-brother-in-law played by Jack Nicholson. We first see Jacko on the roof brazenly strumming his sitar, as if he walked out of the J.C. Penney catalog of hippies. Made-to-order hippy Jack Nicholson apparently got a solo but it was cut when a decision was made not to roadshow this film. Thus even the film's relatively satisfying conclusion seems to be drawn in abstract lines, thanks to Minnelli's liberal style of shooting and the subsequent edits that cripple the film's continuity.As for Miss Streisand herself, she does her best to play the character in a rather sophisticated way but is often undone by her own energy. I didn't feel that she carried off the multiple characters particularly well, and in her solo numbers she heaves and bellows through without any hint of real human vulnerability. She has some good moments as Daisy, but in the Melinda personality she's outclassed by her own headgear.The film itself doesn't really ever rise to the level of its ambition. What should be a fun evening of musical comedy becomes a mere distraction. The story and its characters never really become anything human or convincing. A stifling aura of artfulness prevents the film from taking off -- it's as if all the performers and the director are standing a few feet away from the film they're making. Montand barely seems to know what movie he's in. Lerner and Lane's songs are ponderous and barely memorable. The story itself seems to revisit Lerner's past artistic life, with its Henry Higginsesque professor remonstrating himself and mistreating his naive leading lady in a way that strangely manages to evoke absolutely none of the charm that lifted his Fair Lady above the fray. The film is saved from outright artistic failure thanks to a few imaginative sequences staged by Minnelli, Nicholson's goofy and fun cameo, and a few moments of inspired clowning by Streisand.

The final musical directed by the legendary Vicnente Minnelli, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, is the expensive and lumbering 1970 film version of the 1965 Broadway musical, revamped to fit the talents of Barbra Streisand. In her third feature film, Barbra plays Daisy Gamble, a college student who we learn has ESP and the ability to make plants grow VERY quickly, who seeks the help of a college professor, Dr. Marc Chabot (Yves Montand) in helping her to quit smoking via hypnosis. While under hypnosis, Chabot discovers Daisy had a previous life as a 17th century temptress named Melinda Tentrees, who he falls in love with, but has to deal with the dull and annoying Daisy to get to the ever fascinating Melinda. This inventive Broadway musical has been dramatically re-tooled into a Barbra vehicle and despite Minnelli's still evident eye for color and cinema landscape, this long lumbering film fails to sustain interest until the end, despite some lovely scenery and breathtaking period costuming by the legendary Cecil Beaton. Streisand and Montand have no chemistry whatsoever and Bob Newhart, Simon Oakland, Larry Blyden, Elain Giftos, and Jack Nicholson (!?!)are wasted in pointless supporting roles. The severely tampered with Burton Lane-EY Harbug score includes "Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here", "What did I have that I Don't Have?", "Melinda", "Go to Sleep", and "Come Back to Me." For hard-core Streisand addicts only.

It would be easy to dismiss this as The Three Faces Of Eve with songs but it is, actually, a little more than that. Alan Lerner had a lifelong interest in ESP and toyed with the idea of basing a musical on it for years before finally getting around to it in the mid sixties more or less a full decade after My Fair Lady. The Broadway version failed to find its audience but was jam-packed with great numbers (Lerner was again working with Burton Lane with whom he wrote one of the all-time great ballads, 'Too Late Now' for the MGM movie Royal Wedding) most of which the producers have seen fit to jettison leaving the leading man only three numbers but the film is, nevertheless, interesting if only for the chance to see and hear the great Montand working in English. Montand, who learned English late in life, made several films in the English language none of them really satisfactory and whilst at one level the antipathy of most of the posters here is understandable one can't help feeling they are lacking in sensitivity inasmuch as the charm and shining talent of the man are obvious even in a vehicle tailored to his co-star as is this. Streisand is certainly adequate and with Minnelli at the helm she is both costumed and photographed to full advantage but by 1970 sophisticated lyrics like those in What Did I Have were wasted on if not bewildering to an audience educated in punk rock. Despite what the nay-sayers think Montand was worth every dime of the (for the time) silly money that enticed him to cross the Atlantic. Maybe not one to buy (unless you rate even minor Montand as I do) but certainly one to rent.