The Cole Porter Syndrome
Throughout the nineteen thirties and forties Cole Porter wrote a string of Broadway shows which like clockwork the critics derided with variations of 'not up to his best'; the shows in question were studded with such gems as Just One Of Those Things, At Long Last Love, Begin The Beguine, Get Out Of Town, My Heart Belongs To Daddy and dozens more. It took Kiss Me, Kate in 1948 to shut them up but soon, of course, his new shows weren't up to that. Woody Allen appears to be afflicted with the same syndrome, nothing he does matches up to his 'earlier' work. This is, of course, nonsense, yet there's a lot of truth in it; not unlike the 'message' of Melinda. With the exception of Orson Welles I can think of no American director who is more European in the stories he chooses to tell and in the way he chooses to tell them. Almost alone of mainstream American filmmakers - though there are, happily, a few independents - he takes as his starting point human beings and the Human Condition as opposed to computer graphics and chainsaws and usually has something pertinent, amusing, and, most important of all, ENTERTAINING to say about them. Melinda is no exception though I would argue that it does not so much represent a return to form as an ongoing fairly high standard.score 8/10
writers_reign 2 April 2005
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1051898/35289
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