WATERLOO BRIDGE *

Mervyn LeRoy probably wasn't the right man to direct "Waterloo Bridge"; the film's producer, Sidney Franklin, would almost certainly have made a better job of it. It's a remake of the 1931 weepie about the ballet dancer who, thinking her soldier lover is dead, turns to prostitution...as you do, I suppose. Here she's played by Vivien Leigh, fresh from her success in "Gone with the Wind", but it's a bad performance; she's let down both by her material and by her director.


Robert Taylor is the soldier, (apparently he's meant to hail from Scotland though you would never guess it), and he's a little less wooden than usual while that croaking frog Maria Ouspenskaya is the ballet mistress. As was so often the case back then the great Lucille Watson walks off with the picture as Taylor's mother and Joseph Ruttenberg richly deserved the Oscar nomination he received for his black and white cinematography. Perhaps not surprisingly this 'women's picture' was a huge hit and was remade again as "Gaby" with Leslie Caron as the dancer. It's watchable and mildly entertaining but it's certainly not the classic its reputation might suggest.