Powerful

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.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Private eye George Maharis is hired by wealthy Peter Lawford to find out all he can about future wife Carroll Baker (a poetess with a very mystery bio). Maharis finds a slew of lurid details about Baker ranging from rape to prostitution to blackmail. Director Gordon Douglas and scriptwriter Sydney Boehm have Baker climb from a Dante's Inferno of nightmares before achieving respectability. Maharis encounters one loony character after another. There's blowzy Ann Sothern, sassy showgirl Nancy Kovack, sleazy Edmond O'Brien, and ex-prostitute Joanne Dru. Also in the mix is saintly librarian Vivica Lindfors and not so saintly transvestite pimp Paul Gilbert (as Lola Diamond). It's all fairly silly as opposed to compelling with Maharis making a dull leading man. Baker does not have the carriage to be particularly convincing as a poetess! There is a great music score by David Raskin and stellar cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg. Aldo Ray, Val Avery (as one of Baker's unlucky johns) and Lloyd Bochner (as a very brutal john) are in it too.

Sylvia (1965)A movie far out of its time, yet ahead of its genre. By 1965 this kind of small black and white film had migrated to television productions, or had disappeared. While clearly low budget without any stars, it keeps a tight formal structure and strong production throughout. And the idea, gradually piecing together someone's identity, makes for a great movie.Even if it does borrow, in terms of structure only, from "Citizen Kane," no less. That is, an investigator is set off to learn who the real Sylvia is, and by meeting with one important contact after another, and going through a series of well done flashbacks, we are able to piece together the complicated life of the title character. The biggest difference from Kane (besides virtuosic style) is that Sylvia is an ordinary person. Or she seems ordinary until you learn in stages the nuances and integrity of her survival.There are many things left unanswered, and I'm not sure that's totally for the best. We never quite understand her meandering through dramatic (and noble) moments one after another. What kind of childhood set her off this way ("Kane," significantly, pivoted around a childhood event). Sylvia is a construction, apparently beautiful (in movie terms), but more importantly interesting, strong, independent. A great role model.The investigator, called Mack, is played by George Maharis, who has a steady and calm approach all through. What happens after the establishment of his role is really terrific, because each person he encounters offers a new scenario, a new setting and story and conversation, and then a new flashback. And some of these side characters are fabulous true characters. So you get captivated time and after time. In some ways the least interesting character is this hopeless perfect and yet tainted paradigm, Sylvia, who by the end gets her own long segment, a present tense adjustment of all of what we've seen so far.It's a little stilted at times, and the patient pace isn't always a benefit. The ending might actually seem a bit inevitable, too, which is fair enough. But in the big view you almost want to see it again to catch some of the piece you might have missed. It's filmed a decade after the last great noirs, and so isn't a big in the mode (though some people throw every b&w movie into the mix if they have a loner guy and a blonde). And it is a terrific tonic to the bigger Hollywood machine made stuff coming out in widescreen color (a lot of it). But when you see the changes in the medium with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and so on the next year or two, it's really really old fashioned. Check it out.

The filmic trope of presenting a mystery woman to the viewer through the recollections of her friends and lovers has a long history. Perhaps "Laura" is the most famous. A much lesser-known one is the British "Woman in Question." "Sylvia" is in that tradition: a wealthy man wants to find out about the background of his fiancée, Sylvia, so hires a private detective to investigate. As the P.I. encounters people from Sylvia's past, the stories that they tell him are the flashback elements of the film. There's a very touching episode with Viveca Lindfors, as well as one with Ann Sothern. While the film is somewhat desultory in its pacing, it's got some great folks-Edmund O'Brien, Joanne Dru, etc.--and a suitably disengaged performance from Carroll Baker in the title role. It actually works well for the character, who throughout a series of tawdry experiences has kept a part of herself removed and untouched. We also get to see a well-toned George Maharis with his pajama top off--another reason to catch the film if it ever shows up.David Raksin, who composed the score for "Laura," some twenty years earlier, provides a nice score for "Sylvia" (note the use of the waltz from William Wyler's "Carrie"--also a Paramount film-- in the scene at the restaurant with Sothern and Maharis).

This movie deserves a high rating because of the issues it addresses and the quality of acting. The cast is first rate. As a devotee of "Route 66" I idolized the role of Maharis. His character was the chief attraction of the series. In subsequent roles he did not achieve the aura that he had projected in the series. However, in this movie he plays a middle of the road detective to perfection. The issues discussed make this a movie that one can see over again without boredom. The supporting cast is a Who's Who of Hollywood of the era.