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Rating:  - "Liz IS big. It's the picture that got small"
Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women in the world back in 1960 and she's always been a very talented actress. As the promiscuous model that finally fell in love, Taylor was the best thing in the dated, overly melodramatic, often ridiculous movie that was adapted from the John O'Hara's novel (written in 1935). I did not read "Butterfield 8" but I can't believe that the author of "Appointment in Samarra, and "The Lockwood Concern" wrote the stuff the cheap soap-operas are made of. Liz was big and she deserved her first Oscar but there are so many bad things about the movie - uninteresting characters, uninspired acting by the male protagonists, horrible irritating musical score - just a few of them. I read that Taylor hated the move when she was making it and she hates it now - I don't blame her. Taylor - Yes, the movie - no
Rating:  - BOTH Fullscreen and Widescreen!
It's a guilty-pleasure movie for sure, but I like those. And i LOVE that we, the consumer, can actually CHOOSE and not have it dictated to us whether we wish to view "Butterfield 8" in 'Widescreen' or 'Standard' (Fullscreen).
Of course, this DVD release was manufactured in 2000, and 7 years later, we are not often given a choice. If 'Gone With The Wind' can (and is) a full-screen presentation, please do NOT insist that, say,'Valley of The Dolls'-- a guilty pleasure if ever one existed--MUST be available ONLY in letterbox since its release last year-- it ruined an otherwise lovely retro 60's style deluxe DVD issue of it. But that's another review...
THANK YOU, WARNER HOME VIDEO for titles such as 'Butterfield 8' that you offer with both Fullscreen and Widescreen versions available.
Oh, and though I am in the minority, for me Ms. Taylor's performance was even better here, more nuanced, in 'Butterfield 8' than in 'Virginia Woolf'- her 2 Oscar performances. "Butterfield" may be glossy and a tad trashy, but her performance elevates it to ACADEMY AWARD gloss 'n trash :)
(Very good supporting performances here also by the catty friend of the mother of Taylor's character 'Gloria', ditto Dina Merrill; with Eddie Fisher just fine as Gloria's ex-stepbrother, or whatever he is. Also in 'Butterfield 8,'-- 8 years prior to portraying Streisand's mother in 'Funny Girl', Kay Medford has some fun with the role of the proprietor of a motel "Gloria" will visit on occassion...Every occasion she can :)
Rating:  - As MGM soap opera, as conventional romantic tragedy, the movie is flavorless, but not impossible, and Liz is all right...
Liz would seem to have been ideal casting for the role of a defiant call girl, but she didn't like the part: "The role they want me to play is little better than a prostitute," she protested... Most actresses would enjoy the chance to play a B-girl, but Liz never coveted the showy roles, she never played whores or drunks or nuns or aspiring actresses... Her audience wanted to see her in sensational roles, but she preferred being proper...
Rewritten, the edge taken off, John O'Hara's Gloria Wandrous emerges somewhat undefined... The movie is so cautious that it's never clear exactly how the girl makes her living... She models, apparently, but does she get paid for sleeping with men, or does she sleep with men simply because she likes to?
At the height of a family argument, Gloria confesses to her mother that she was the slut of all time, but there is no evidence of this on screen... As in "The Last Time I Saw Paris," Liz--as girl-about-town--is pallid, almost prissy... She doesn't have the freedom to portray amoral characters... She doesn't have the manic self-destructiveness the part requires... The script makes the character another of Taylor's tragic roles: Gloria Wandrous is a woman, mistreated by her man, who dies of unrequited love...
Like the conception of its heroine, the movie is infected with an enervating morality: once a sinner, the message goes, always a sinner... Deep down, this MGM Gloria feels that her indelible history of nights on the town has disqualified her for the likes of a respectable man... Self-convicted as a bad girl, she knows she's doomed... Much more than the novel, the film emphasizes Gloria's lust for respectability... Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey), the wealthy Yale man, is her one big chance for graduation to the classy life of yachts and weekends in the country... It's as if the character wants to enter the world a younger Taylor so ably embodied in "A Place in the Sun." O'Hara's tough, precise, lovingly detailed novel has been transformed into Metro soap, a lament about a sort of hooker with a persistent desire for suburbia...
But there are moments: the wordless opening scene, Gloria stained and rumpled after a night with Liggett; Gloria trading cracks with her mother's sardonic friend, and with her best friend's girlfriend; Gloria convulsed in tears during an argument with her meek mother (Mildred Dunnock).
Taylor and Laurence Harvey mix like oil and water, but her scenes with Eddie Fisher, who plays her platonic, disapproving buddy are strongly build... Eddie gives her quiet support, the way Montgomery Clift always gave her strength on screen...
Her big scene is her confession to Eddie about how she got started in the life: she was seduced by a house guest when she was thirteen, and she liked it (very wide-eyed, very high-pitched and piercing here), she has always 'liked' it! The confession scene is a Taylor trademark during this period: in "Raintree County," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Suddenly, Last Summer," and here, confessions dramatically lit and photographed are the local points of her performances...
Liz gets the character's self-pity, her sentimentality, her loneliness; she can do the smart answers, the head lifted in defiance... She plays, in short, with an authority that had deepened since "Giant." In "Butterfield 8," she dominates the way a star is supposed to dominate even if, finally, the role lacks definition...
Rating: - Pure, campy fun
'Butterfield 8' is a movie that is good in the same sense that novels like 'Valley of the Dolls' are good: they are pure, campy fun. Dramatic? Yes. A little soap opera-ish? Maybe. Was this film really worthy of an Oscar? That's debatable but I think Elizabeth Taylor did deserve a heads-up for her portay of Gloria. In another actress's hands this movie could have turned into a disaster but Liz somehow manages to pull it off. Chronicling the life of a call-girl was a risky subject for a major motion picture in 1960. One thing's for sure: this movie is not boring. It will have the viewer hooked from the first minute, wanting to know what will happen next. What is most pleasant about the movie is it does not have a happy ending, which would have made a somewhat cheesy film even cheesier. I enjoy watching movies where the characters are flawed and the undertones are dark and sinister. If you're tired of cheerful, happily-ever after movies then you will probably enjoy this.
Rating: - Elizabeth Forever
I have to admit this, I love Elizabeth Taylor, I do not care what anyone elses views are concerning this wonderful lady, I just know that I love her movies, Elizabeth Taylor herself did not like this film, however I do, Elizabeth gives a moving performance and is wonderful to watch, if you liked Elizabeth Taylor in "The Last Time I Saw Paris, Rhapsody or Elephant Walk, you will like her in this, she is brilliant, although I think Elizabeth Taylor's crowning glory will always be Cat On A Hot Tin Roof with Burl Ives & Paul Newman.
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