TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN
T.it.: Due settimane in un’altra città; Sog.: dal romanzo omonimo (1960) di Irwin Shaw; Scen.: Charles Schnee; F.: Milton Krasner; Mo.: Adrienne Fazan, Robert J. Kern Jr.; Scgf.: George W. Davis, Urie McCleary; Cost.: Walter Plunkett, Pierre Balmain (per Cyd Charisse); Mu.: David Raksin; Int.: Kirk Douglas (Jack Andrus), Edward G. Robinson (Maurice Kru- ger), Cyd Charisse (Carlotta), George Hamilton (Davie Drew), Dahlia Lavi (Veronica), Claire Trevor (Clara), James Gregory (Brad Byrd), Rosanna Schiaffino (Barzelli), George Macready (Lew Jordan), Vito Scotti (aiuto regista), Erich von Stroheim Jr. (Ravinski), Leslie Uggams (cantante); Prod.: John Houseman Productions per Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 35mm. D.: 107’. Col.
Film Notes
In 1959, sniffing box-office ingredients – sex, violence, movie- making, the Eternal City – MGM pounced on the rights to Irwin Shaw’s novel even before publication. But by the time Minnelli’s film emerged, comparisons were due with another tale of movie folly and disillusionment, Fellini’s La dolce vita. The 23- year-old Peter Bogdanovich knew clearly which was the better film: Two Weeks, he wrote, made Fellini’s film seem pedestrian, hopelessly worthy. Minnelli’s, meanwhile, was “a grand melodrama, filled with passion, lust, hate and venom, surely the ballsiest, most vibrant picture he has signed”.
“I wonder,” Minnelli mused later, “if young Bodganovich and I saw the same picture.” He was right to cast aspersions. He’d seen Two Weeks cut on Head Office orders by the veteran editor Margaret Booth, who had shrivelled Greed almost 40 years before. An orgy scene had been pulverised; Cyd Charisse’s character had been stripped of motivation. Along the way, the hopes that Minnelli and producer John Houseman nurtured for a punchy successor to The Bad and the Beautiful had faded. Two Weeks, complete with a glowering Kirk Douglas, a barking Edward G. Robinson, and ladies poised as a bagful of cats, was not a public success.
Yet Bogdanovich is right as well as wrong. Passion, lust, venom: they writhe through the visuals as they do in Charles Schnee’s script. At times this hysteria reaches apoplexy: take the car ride scene, a specific Bad and the Beautiful echo, with Douglas and Charisse careening over the road, Minnelli’s camera in panting pursuit. In slightly calmer moments, the film can rivet just as much, with Rome’s street theatre and the everyday madness of movie-making at Cinecittà. There’s also the question of whether Robinson’s Kruger – the veteran director with a reputation to restore – represents a self-portrait by Minnelli. This is never a reasonable film; it is a melodrama. But inside the screams and visual shrieks surely some home truths lie. And its portrait of lives in moral chaos doesn’t distort the intentions of Irwin Shaw: not for nothing did he call one of his story collections God Was Here, But He Left Early.
Geoff Brown