Metro has put some top stars into a beautifully dressed Technicolor combination of three yarns tied together by placing the key characters aboard an ocean liner. With a strong initial entry and a suspenseful finale [directed by Gottfried Reinhardt], picture's weakness lies in the middle [section, directed by Vincente Minnelli].

Metro has put some top stars into a beautifully dressed Technicolor combination of three yarns tied together by placing the key characters aboard an ocean liner. With a strong initial entry and a suspenseful finale [directed by Gottfried Reinhardt], picture’s weakness lies in the middle [section, directed by Vincente Minnelli].

Opening episode, The Jealous Lover [scripted by John Collier] is easily the most effective. Moira Shearer plays an aspiring ballerina prevented from dancing by a serious heart condition. When James Mason, a famous choreographer, sees her improvising on an empty stage, he asks her to perform for him.

Both Mason and Shearer score, the latter especially in her beautiful terping to the music of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Credit Sadler’s Wells choreographer Frederick Ashton with some topnotch dance arrangements.

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Second episode, Mademoiselle, a fantasy [scripted by Jan Lustig and George Froeschel, from a story by Arnold Phillips], is aimless in direction and lacking in interest. A boy (Ricky Nelson), in Rome with his parents, wishes he could grow up so as to be rid of his French governess (Leslie Caron). Ethel Barrymore, as an old lady believed by children to be a witch, grants him the wish for four hours, and as a man (Farley Granger) he falls in love with the governess.

Final episode [Equilibrium, scripted by Collier, from a story by Ladislas Vadja and Jacques Maret, adaptation by Lustig and Froeschel] has Kirk Douglas as a trapeze artist who’s retired after being accused of killing his femme partner by giving her too risky a trick. After he fishes Pier Angeli, a lonely young widow, out of the Seine, he decides she would be a good partner, since she has no will to live. Story gets off to a slow start, but it builds suspense and thrills for a solid close.

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The Story of Three Loves

  • Production: M-G-M. Director Gottfried Reinhardt, Vincente Minnelli; Producer Sidney Franklin; Screenplay John Collier, Jan Lustig, George Froeschel; Camera Charles Rosher, Harold Rosson; Editor Ralph E. Winters; Music Miklos Rozsa; Art Director Cedric Gibbons, Preston Ames, Edward Carfagno, Gabriel Scognamillo
  • Crew: (Color) Extract of a review from 1953. Running time: 122 MIN.
  • With: Pier Angeli Ethel Barrymore Leslie Caron Kirk Douglas James Mason Moira Shearer

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