Sadly Over-hyped

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

THE GODDESS is not exactly a great film but it is a very interesting one from the point of view of the Hollywood Star System. The production had obviously a very limited budget and the Paddy Chayefsky script could have been altered to better fit Kim Stanley's screen persona (the actress is obviously too old and does not have the beauty to convincingly play a poor young country girl who becomes a highly successful movie star), but in the end that matters little. Kim Stanley's performance is so brilliant, so complex, so achingly true, that one forgets the film's limitations and what remains is a feeling of deep awe in face of so much talent. This is quite possibly the most harrowing, emotionally devastating acting job I have ever seen, along with Liv Ullman's performance in FACE TO FACE. How wonderful to be able to see it over 50 years later! And what a pity that Stanley was not in films more often!

That is a line from the movie and I'm afraid it fits when rating it.Almost everything seems to be wrong with this odd movie. It seems to be Paddy Chayevsky doing a Tennessee Williams. The Southern setting is somewhat believable. The accents are too but somewhat less so.Kim Stanley, a noted stage actress, is hard to ignore. She's very in-your-face in this role. But she seems to have been miscast: This is kind of a r variation on the story of many beauty queens who are neurotic, make it, and ... But Stanley is no Marilyn Monroe. She's no Harlow. Certainly she's attractive but the camera doesn't love her the way it has loved the great beauties of the screen.Further: Her character is exceptionally annoying. Certainly she's meant to be difficult. But I don't think she's intended to come across as a thoroughly self-involved narcissist.Almost every sentence this woman we're asked to feel for utters starts with "I" or addresses issues involving "me." She's hard to feel bad about or even to care about.One aspect of the movie shines: That is the beautiful music by Virgil Thomson. It's a memorable film score.

We have come, over the years, to venerate the famous, no matter how good the work they turn out. Paddy Chayevsky wrote some great works, MARTY, of course, for one. THE GODDESS is not one of the them. In order to make a "well made play", Chayevsky leaves out a great deal of much needed character development. Things happen quickly; too quickly in fact, to either have a semblance of truth or make us feel anything for any of the characters. Instead of agonizing over the rise and fall of THE GODDESS, we spend the whole time trying to piece things together to see if the main character IS based on Marilyn Monroe after all. Look...instead of a baseball player, she marries a boxer! "Is that supposed to be Joe Mankiewicz talking about her in that scene? Is that Daryll Zanuck inviting her back to his home? Is the film she's talking about supposed to be GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES? ALL ABOUT EVE? What should be a heart wrenching drama, turns out to be instead, a far from subtle, far too short and badly over written Hollywood guessing game.The wonderful Virgil Thompson did the musical score, but here it is totally out of sync with the rest of the film. His jaunty melodies put us in mind of the WPA films he did with Pare Lorentz instead of the background to a human drama. (To see how good a score can be in illustrating the images on the screen, go to Leonard Bernstein's amazing work for ON THE WATERFRONT.) But the acting IS good. Thank goodness we see what a fine actress Kim Stanley was. Some of her moments, especially the quiet ones, are breathtaking. Sometimes, alas, she is allowed to go over the top. At her best in this film she gives one of the screen's greatest performances; at her worst, and there are moments, she is a caricature of every Tennessee William's female character with a little Eunice from MAMA'S FAMILY thrown in for good measure. Happily, the good moments far out number the bad, and one should see THE GODDESS to see why Stanley is so justly venerated. (Lloyd Bridges and Elizabeth Wilson are also good.) THE GODDESS should have been a masterpiece. Instead what we get is nothing more than a fairly good film. No matter how good its pedigree, THE GODDESS turns out to be no more than a mixed blessing.

Paddy Chayefsky's monologue-heavy lambasting of the Sex Symbol mythology, with Kim Stanley as a troubled young woman from Maryland who comes to Los Angeles in the 1940s to work as an actress and becomes a star. Queasy, peculiar melodrama seems to blame show-business for the girl's plight, but we can clearly see from the beginning she's an extremely insecure person, able to attract people but not capable of keeping them. Stanley does everything she can with this role, but she looks much more mature than the men she's paired up with, and Chayefsky does her a disservice by having everyone talk about what a talent she is but never letting us see for ourselves. It's a busy, chatty movie that tries on different themes and then drops them (just as it does most of the male characters). Patty Duke (pre-"The Miracle Worker") has a nice bit near the beginning (playing Stanley as a grade-schooler), the black-and-white cinematography is quite good and there are flashes of interest throughout. ** from ****