Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Overrated and overhyped

Overrated

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Unlike other reviewers, I do not think any of the three stories presented here would do much good on their own as feature productions. "The Jealous Lover" is especially anemic plot-wise (and a little too close to The Red Shoes (1948) for its own good) and "Equilibrium" wanders on far too long.In spite of these shortcomings, The Story of Three Loves is a lovely melodramatic anthology, shot beautifully in Technicolor. "The Jealous Lover" is the most visually stunning of the three. Though it utilizes the love at first sight trope so mocked by contemporary audiences, Moira Shearer and James Mason share great chemistry and make the brief love between their characters poignant, masking how thin the plot really is."Mademoiselle" is a charming precursor to Tom Hanks' Big (1988), with Farley Granger as a child in a grown man's body who comes to fall for his French governess, Leslie Caron, whom he had previously bullied and deemed too "mushy" for his respect. This segment is perhaps the best of the three: it has both a good story and good pacing."Equilibrium" has the strongest love story of the three, with Kirk Douglas and Pier Angeli as two lonely people who find a chance to come to terms with their tragic pasts after he rescues her from a botched suicide attempt. As I mentioned previously, it does run on too long, but Douglas and Angeli make sure it is never unbearable.Overall, not a bad way to spend time if you love melodrama or any of the actors involved.

I'm a very sentimental person, as my wife would tell you, and typically enjoy an old-fashioned love story on film, but this film struck me as odd. During the intro to the film I was intrigued--three love stories woven together on a ship. I thought that we would see how the characters from each story interacted on the ship, and how that interaction was both influenced by the love stories that came before, and how that interaction affected the lives of the individuals going forward.But that wasn't the case at all. The ship serves as nothing more than a vehicle for introducing the characters from each vignette, and the characters never meet or interact. And the vignettes are so disparate in concept that it makes the whole film seem uneven. Consider that the first story is about ballet and heart attacks, the second about witches and wishes, and the third about suicide and circus trapeze artists.And within the stories there were issues that nagged me. James Mason was great in the first vignette, until the young lady begins dancing in his studio. Then his comments/critique of her dancing--"That's it, that's it, higher, higher..." seemed silly. It worked much better once he was just quiet and the dance became the focus. Otherwise, his comments broke the magic. And in the final segment on the trapeze, the American hiring circus acts goes from "How can I buy an act unless I see it EXACTLY as it is to be preformed for audiences?" to "I'll pay ANYTHING for this act!" in one short minute. Add to that that none of the American actors portraying french men and women in this vignette have a french accent (I suppose that is better than a bad accent) while the non-American actors do have accents, and it just comes across as odd. This accent issue is also amplified by the fact that the second vignette of the young boy who gets his wish to be a man has an underlying storyline about speaking french properly! So we go from one extreme to the other throughout the film.I can't help but believe that this film was three story ideas none of which had enough depth or breadth to carry a film on their own, and the ship deck mechanism was invented in order to pull together some less than perfect film ideas.

Each of the three love stories would have been worthy of a movie to itself. The second, with Leslie Caron, must rate at least a 7 for anyone who enjoys her, but her work in Lili outshines everything else she has done. The third, with Pier Angeli and Kirk Douglas was a treat even for a viewer who does not usually like Kirk Douglas. It rates a 9 on the basis of the marvelous sequences as he teaches Pier Angeli the art of high wire performance. But it is the first, which deserves 11 out of 10, which makes this film a "must see." I know of no other film in which great orchestral music has been treated with such respect and insight. There are long, uninterrupted sequences of the marvelous Moira Shearer dancing to one of Rachmaninoff's fabulous Variations on a Theme of Paganini. The combination is superlative ballet, and superlative interpretation of a great orchestral work of the late romantic school. As icing on the cake, James Mason is the audience of one as she dances, an irascible impresario who is, quite understandably, overwhelmed by the magic of Shearer's performance. The story ends too soon. At full length, with three times the dancing, and a better love story between Shearer and Mason, it would be a movie I might expect to see in Heaven. It makes the whole film easily worth a 9.

The first of three stories, "Jealous Lover," offers sheer bliss as the great ballerina, Moria Sherer, dances to Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." One is reminded of the exquisite beauty of Sherer, who thrilled audiences for many years at the Sadler's Wells. What a treat for moviegoers when she graced the screen, which was all too rare. Of all the prima ballerinas of the 20th century, Sherer stood out. Her light came from within, and her graceful executions became a spiritual experience. James Mason is perfectly cast as Charles Coutray, and their scenes together are richly romantic, under Gotfried Reinhardt's sensitive direction. Vincent Minnelli lovingly guided the remaining two episodes, whose writings were unevenly crafted, yet ardently realized by as fine a cast as MGM could offer. Miklos Rozsa's original score was vibrant and knowing, melodiously underscoring the action. "The Story of Three Loves," remains a good piece of work, unusually artistic coming from a major studio.