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Rating:  - In My Book, this Movie is very Over-rated
I watched "Dance with a Stranger" last night and I was bored. This was a movie that I watched hoping that each scene might be the final one. It was a rental so I figured I might as well watch it in case it suddenly morphed into something worthwhile; it didn't.
The problems with "Dance with a Stranger" are numerous but could have easily been corrected if the format had been changed. The promotional notes on the DVD case point out, in one sentence, that the main character (I can't remember her name) was the last woman executed in Great Britain. It mentions that again, in one sentence, at the end of the movie. That's the only way we know this. The events leading up to, but not including, her arrest is the full scope of the movie. The movie would have been so much more if it had been a courtroom drama with flashbacks supplementing the various testimonies. Frankly, the movie moved along so slowly, I kept wishing the lady would get the job over with. I stopped the recorded movie about halfway through to watch the 3rd period of a college hockey game and then went back to it.
I confess that part of my problem was my hearing limitation. I've been told that I can't hear certain levels of sound and that must include upper class English social conversations. Most movies in those settings leave me missing at least a third of the conversation. It's either that or turning up the vollume so high that everyone in the household wakes up immediately if anyone in the movie started a car or shot a gun. I finally sought help with subtitles although I had to settle for Spanish. That was the one redeeming aspect of the movie for me; it helped me brush up on my Spanish. This is a movie about people who are, frankly, just not interesting. I'm sorry that the two main characters died in real life and I'm sorry that I watched an actor and actress in their roles die on the screen.
Rating:  - Miranda Richardson is tremendous playing Ruth Ellis
I became interested in the history of capital punishment in Great Britain during 2007. In looking up this subject on the internet I discovered the case of Ruth Ellis, whose murder case, conviction, and execution remains controversial to this day. Miranda Richardson became a "star" from starring in Dance With A Stranger playing Ruth Ellis. I bought the film and have seen it several times and have become a Miranda Richardson fan. I am a citizen of "Mirandatia" as her fans are called on the net.
Our sympathies are with Ruth Ellis from her first meeting with David Blakely in 1954-55. He seduces her, makes love to her, and then abuses and ignores her. Ruth Ellis fatally shoots Blakely in April of 1955 and is tried, convicted and hanged for her crime.
I wish this film had included her trial and the last days of her life as
Ruth Ellis awaited her execution. Much of the British public protested
her hanging, and that protest aided in eventually abolishing capital punishment in Britain ten years later.
In a sense, Ruth Ellis "lives" due to the notoriety of her case. I feel
that Miranda Richardson brings her to life in Dance With A Stranger and
this makes the film worth seeing and Miranda Richardson's career worth
following.
Rating: - Dacne with a Stranger
Beautifully rendered, superbly acted film recreates events leading up to one of England's most famous crimes of passion. Newell painstakingly revives the look and feel of 1950's London, using this sordid affair to examine the ingrained class differences that doomed the couple from the start. Richardson, Everett, and Holm are marvels to watch, and the film's shattering climax is worth waiting for. Catch this chilling romantic thriller.
Rating: - great depiction of a real life tragedy
this film has stayed with me because of miranda richardson's showy performance as ruth ellis. she is a woman that is barely in control of her life, then relationships with the wrong men at the same time destroys her. the script by shelagh delaney works the facts into a tight dramatic collection of scenes and moments peppered through with taut dialogue. the stylings and visuals evoke an inky, foggy london that was still struggling to get back on its feet after world war ii. and richardson is supported ably by pretty boy rupert everett as david blakely and ian holm as desmond cussen, the two men in ellis' short and trauma-filled life. perhaps, the most tragic element of the story though, is not ellis' destruction of herself but her unknowing destruction of her son.
Rating: - A Disturbing Movie With Extraordinary Acting
Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson) was a night club hostess in one of London's private clubs. It was a Spring evening in 1954 when David Blakely (Rupert Everett) walked in with some friends. Little more than a year later, Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of Blakely. The movie tells the compelling, tawdry, almost inevitable story of what happened.
Ellis was divorced and living with her young son above the club she helped manage. She bleached her hair, knew how to keep men laughing and buying, and was definitely not part of the upper class system. Blakely was a race car driver, wealthy, young, selfish, had the right friends, and had never had to face any real responsibility in his life. With some mixture of lust and need, the two of them instantly became entangled in each others' lives. "Where do you live?" he asks her. "Over the shop," she says. "Can I take you home tonight?" "Yes." Their affair follows a pattern. First lust, then tears, abuse, his forgetting her for a while, her desperation, and lust again. She has one friend, Desmond Cussen (Ian Holm). Cussen loves her but is the type of man who can't quite get up the nerve to kiss her, much less invite her to bed. He trails after her and tries to pick up the pieces. Cussen knows the kind of man Blakely is. "Why can't you leave him alone," he once shouts at Ellis. "He's so involved with himself he can't think of anything else." The results are predictable. Ellis slides further into misery and fixation the more Blakely takes her for granted and forgets about her at times. One night she takes a pistol, follows him to a pub, and when he leaves she carefully puts two bullets in his chest.
The trial was a great event in Britain. It had everything: sex, the class system, a tawdry affair. The legal system couldn't deal with her fast enough. The trial started June 20, 1955. She was hanged July 13. Ruth Ellis was the last woman hanged by the British.
The movie is excellent and the performances are extraordinary. Rupert Everett was 26 when he made the film. He's perfect as the product of a privileged system, so selfish as to be cowardly, so self involved that he misses entirely what he is doing to Ellis, or even care if he did realize. Miranda Richardson at 27 carries the movie. Her performance made her a star. I can't describe what she does except that every word she says and every step she takes just rings true. She is utterly mesmerizing.
This is, in my view, one of the movies that can probably be called great. You'll be thinking about it for some time. The DVD picture looks fine. The only extra is an alternate ending, which is disposable.
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