Just finished watching Warner Archive's remastered edition of Vincente Minelli's Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), a fine film based on a bestseller by Irwin Shaw. The melodrama is frank in its look behind the scenes of a troubled Hollywood production being shot in Rome. Kirk Douglas plays washed up actor Jack Andrus, lured out of an extended "drying out," at what used to be called a sanitarium, by director Maurice Kruger (Edward G. Robinson), who himself has seen better days. Kruger is shooting a film at Cinecittà starring young Davie Drew (George Hamilton), a volatile actor not unlike Andrus during his tumultuous youth. One thing leads to another, and Andrus must take over for an ailing Kruger, manage his mercurial star, and contend with a manipulative ex-lover (Cyd Charrise), all while gripping tenuously to his eroding sanity. The passion of Minelli's drama, its abrupt tonal shifts from comedy to drama, from romance to disillusionment, and its deep cynicism, all reflected in the director's knack for expressionistic use of color, stands in stark contrast to Sofia Coppola's recent Somewhere (2010).
