'Autumn Leaves'

GREAT FILM LAST NIGHT!  I settled down last evening to watch a fascinating 1956 film on Turner Classic.  The movie was a sleek and packed with verve piece called 'Autumn Leaves' starring Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson. This film also had a stunning performance by the delightfully feisty Vera Miles.  This particular screen gem puts the focus on a middle-aged woman (Joan Crawford) who has a tremendous amount of harsh loneliness going on.  She meets a strange much younger man (Cliff Robertson) and a striking so odd relationship begins to develop. After a little while the Crawford character marries the Robertson character in Mexico.  Later, when the ebullient couple returns to Los Angeles she abruptly discovers her man was married before to a woman named Virginia Hanson (Vera Miles) and Crawford finds her new husband has all kinds of very strange baggage....the man is really one huge lie after another.  The film goes on a brusque schizophrenic binge and believe me the Robertson character just goes heinously psycho.  I found this movie compelling and cinematically remarkable because it hits one on so many  levels.  It delves deeply into the morass of modern hell that is seen in contemporary lonely lifestyles with all of the ugly trappings that involves.  This Robert Aldrich film is a brilliant work because it indicates how brutal life experiences can smash our emotional inner selves so violently.  In this film the performances of Crawford and Robertson are tremendously creative...indeed the journey into the tragic lonely horror of bizarre lives is very overwhelming.