Overall, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 tale of the tragic ballerina Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) is not in the top drawer of their achievements. The backstage wranglings offer insufficient scope for their usual cinematic vision (though the Monte Carlo scenes are prettily sumptuous). Page's central dilemma, meanwhile, is a bit on the trite side--she must choose between love for a young ...
Bette Midler plays a Janis Joplin-like singer overwhelmed by stardom and its excesses. Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond) directs what is a kind of hybrid showcase for Midler's concert talents and a standard pop biopic, with the usual rhythms of desire, success, betrayal, failure, and such. Alan Bates is the best thing about the movie as the Rose's ruthless manager, and Harry Dean Stanton and ...