Viveca Lindfors Movies
Though of the same era as her Swedish compatriots Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, talented and beautiful leading lady of stage and screen Viveca Lindfors never achieved their superstar status due in large part to working in movies that inadequately displayed the full extent of her ability and charismatic personality. Still, she earned accolades and awards from critics and film societies around the world, including two awards from the prestigious Berlin Film Festival.Born Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors in Uppsala, Sweden, she learned to act at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. She made her Swedish film debut in Snurriga Familjen (1940). For the next six years, she would appear in more films and establish a stage career. Moving to Hollywood in 1946, she contracted herself to Warner Bros. studios and two years later starred opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Don Juan (1948); however, in 1947, she appeared in Night Unto Night, Ronald Reagan's first starring role, but the film was not released until 1949. The following year, she debuted in her first French film, Singoalla. She made her first Broadway appearance playing the lead in Anastasia. Other memorable stage roles include Miss Julie (1955), Brecht on Brecht (1961), and I Am Woman (1973), a one-woman show.
For her filmwork, Lindfors won her first Best Actress Award from the BFF in 1951 for Die Vier im Jeep (Four in a Jeep). Her second BFF Best Actress Award was for her role in Huis Clos (No Exit) (1962). In her personal life, Lindfors was renowned for her numerous romantic liaisons -- this in a decade when such behavior was considered shocking. She claims to have married the first of her four husbands just to prove that a promiscuous woman could indeed marry a decent man.
Unlike many actresses for whom the aging process marks the death of their careers, Lindfors grew gracefully into her latter years, gaining a dignified beauty and an even more commanding presence in such films as Welcome to L.A. and Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978). In 1985, she made her debut as a screenwriter and director with Unfinished Business. Lindfors made her final film appearance in Henry Jaglom's Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995). She died in October that year of complications from rheumatoid arthritis in her home town of Uppsala. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1984
When wealthy businessman Richard Kennerly (Richard Crenna) dies, he leaves behind a great many unresolved issues. More specifically, he leaves behind a wife named Catherine (Joanne Woodward) a mistress named Nina (Lindsay Wagner)--and the children from both liasons. Upon learning of Nina's existence, Catherine gears herself for a confrontation with her romantic rival. Things take an unexpected turn when both women discover that Richard left no provisions in his will for his illegitimate 6-year-old son. Made for television, Passions premiered October 1, 1984 on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1984
Ralph Maccio plays teenaged Billy Grier, the victim of a rare degenerative disease that speeds up the ageing process. With only a few months left on earth-if that-Billy wants to realize three goals. He wants to be reunited with his long-gone father; he wants to play sax in a jazz band; and he wants to know a woman, in the Biblical sense. The story isn't as touching as the producers hoped it would be, but Macchio's character makeup (courtesy of Emmy-winner Michael Westmore) is astonishing. Made for television, The Three Wishes of Billy Grier was originally telecast November 1, 1984. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1984
A TV pilot film, Doctor's Story explores the rights--or rather, the lack of them--of geriatric patients. Howard E. Rollins Jr. plays a young doctor who resents the throwaway attitude conveyed towards the elderly. Among Rollins' patients are a near-senile old man (Art Carney), a woman (Vivece Lindfors) with a mysterious abdominal ailment, and a suicidal widow (Uta Hagen). Stymied by hospital bureaucracy and indifference, Rollins fights to give his older charges the same care and attention afforded younger patients--and in so doing, his own marriage on the critical list. Whether or not this premise could have sustained a weekly series is problematic (the pilot didn't sell), but as a self-contained drama, Doctor's Story was certainly worth two hours of anyone's attention, young or old. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Two of the most venerable names in the horror field, author Stephen King and director George A. Romero, present this anthology of original twisted tales inspired by the E.C. horror comics of the 50's and 60's (themselves a more direct basis for the popular Tales from the Crypt TV series). The five stories are framed within the pages of a comic book which a boy's insensitive father has thrown in the garbage. The first tale, "Father's Day," features a zombie patriarch returning to claim his Father's Day cake; "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" stars King himself as a slack-jawed yokel whose discovery of a radioactive meteorite turns him into a walking weed; "Something to Tide You Over" presents a deadly-serious Leslie Nielsen as a cuckolded husband who plans an elaborate seaside revenge; "The Crate" unleashes its ferocious man-eating contents on the enemies of a meek college professor; and "They're Creeping Up On You" pits obsessively-clean billionaire E.G. Marshall against a swarm of cockroaches in his sterile penthouse. The chapters are uniformly creative, filmed in garish comic-book colors, and Tom Savini's makeup effects are quite memorable (particularly the monster from "The Crate"), though the campy treatment does become exhausting after two hours' runtime. The final segment is the most impressive, thanks to Marshall's over-the-top performance, though the planned scope of the cockroach invasion was drastically reduced (no doubt due to budget constraints). ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, (more)
- 1982
This superior ABC Theatre of the Month presentation is not so much about the reasons for divorce as it is about the tensions surrounding the actual litigation. Tom Selleck plays a topnotch Seattle divorce lawyer, juggling several delicate cases at once. Arrogantly secure in his legal prowess, Selleck suffers a major ego blow when his own wife (Jane Curtin) files for divorce. In a half-comic, half-serious manner, the travails of Selleck and Curtin are counterpointed with those of Selleck's clients. Donald Wrye and Linda Elstad's high-quality script for Divorce Wars: A Love Story bears a very faint resemblance to the recent movie hits Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People--a resemblance pounced upon and amplified by the print ads for this TV movie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1982
Mayhem and tangled love knots in the Southwest U.S. desert are the scourge of a group of stranded German immigrants living in a few mobile homes at the crossroads of two desert highways. Joe loves Rosa, and kills someone she had slept with because he thought their union was consentual (a rape), and he gets five years for the murder. When he is released from jail, his first priority is to attend his mother's funeral -- a death that has upset his sister so much that she is on the verge of a breakdown. His sister is supposed to marry a Mennonite, but is stuck on Joe and so that plan is scotched. Meanwhile, Rosa has taken up with another trucker, who is jealous of Joe and tries to kill him. The next thing anyone knows, the trailers and nearby buildings are going up in flames -- will Joe and Rosa survive to continue their desert saga? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ángela Molina, Vera Tschechowa, (more)
- 1982
The two-part TV movie Inside the Third Reich was based on the extraordinary revelatory (if self-serving) autobiographical book by Albert Speer. Played herein by Rutger Hauer, Speer is a young man of privilege in pre-Hitler Germany who happens to be a brilliant architect. Becoming a member of Hitler's inner circle, Speer is appointed the Nazi regime's master builder. According to this film, Speer is egomaniacal and ambitious, but somewhat blinded to the inherent evils of Nazism. Though he'd later claim to be ignorant of Hitler's horrific policies aimed at the Jews, he was certainly aware of the use of Jewish prisoners as slave labor: as Germany's armaments minister during World War II, Speer exploited these enslaved unfortunates as much as anyone, if not more so. The cast includes Derek Jacobi as Hitler, Blythe Danner as Speer's wife Margarethe, John Gielgud as Speer's father, Ian Holm as Goebbels, Maurice Roeves as Hess, and George Murcell as Goering. Originally running 5 hours, Inside the Third Reich was filmed in Munich; it was first telecast on May 9 and 10, 1982. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Oliver Stone's first directorial effort for a major studio (and his second horror film after the 1974 Seizure) came shortly after the phenomenal success of Midnight Express, which was based on Stone's Oscar-winning screenplay. The director turned to Mark Brandel's obscure thriller "The Lizard's Tail" as source material for what is essentially a silly psychosexual variant on low-budget horror films like The Crawling Hand. The title appendage belongs (for a while, anyway) to smug, conceited artist Joe Lansdale (Michael Caine), who owes his success to a popular comic strip featuring a macho, Conan-type hero. After Lansdale's drawing hand is sheared off in a grisly car accident, his career, dignity, self-control and even his sanity soon begin to abandon him as well. His tenuous relationship with his wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) falls apart as she takes steps to improve her own self-worth -- something she had never had the strength to do before the accident. Bitter and paranoid, Joe begins to lash out in anger at everyone around him ... and becomes convinced that his severed hand has come back, wandering in fields and dark alleys and squeezing the life out of everyone it comes in contact with. The question of whether the hand is real or merely a manifestation of Lansdale's rage is never answered, even in the film's "shock" coda. At any rate, it's impossible to take the film seriously -- the crawling-hand effects are laughably shoddy for a major studio production, reflecting none of the skills of effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi, and Caine's sweaty, pop-eyed histrionics are too goofy to be convincing. On the plus side, James Horner's score is remarkably chilling, contributing a great deal to a few effective suspense scenes -- but it belongs in a better film than this. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Andrea Marcovicci, (more)
- 1981
Gregory Harrison breathes some humanity into his two-dimensional character in For Ladies Only. Harrison plays an unsuccessful actor who decides to bank on his awesome physique to survive. He becomes a $100-per-night exotic dancer at a ladies-only nightclub. For those female fans who can get past the sight of Harrison bumping and grinding away, For Ladies Only affords some excellent choreography and a modicum of wry humor. Patti Davis, daughter of you-know-who, makes her TV-movie acting debut in For Ladies Only, which debuted on November 9, 1981; also in the cast are Lee Grant and her daughter Dinah Manhoff. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
A young girl's dangerous dance with dieting leads to near disaster in this exceptional made-for-television drama. In one of the earliest treatments of the subject, Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Casey Powell, the quiet daughter of an overbearing mother and milquetoast father. Feeling pressure to be the good girl of the family after her troublesome older sister gets pregnant, Casey retreats into her secretive world of self-starvation. When arguing fails to produce results, her parents (Charles Durning and Eva Marie Saint) send her to a hospital where she meets a spunky fellow patient (Melanie Mayron) and a caring therapist (Jason Miller). Casey's road to recovery is not as simple as merely eating though, and she and her family realize that together they must confront the deeply-rooted familial issues that lay at the heart of Casey's affliction. Jennifer Jason Leigh is utterly compelling in the lead role. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
- 1980
The title of this made-for-TV biopic is faintly risible: is there anything about Marilyn Monroe that we don't know by now? Pleasingly enough, the story is told in a straightforward, nonexploitive manner (the affair with JFK warrants no more than a throwaway line). Emmy-nominated Catherine Hicks plays Marilyn, nee Norma Jean Baker. We follow her progress from orphanages and foster homes to her first 20th Century-Fox contract at age 20. Considered "washed up" before her career has gotten off the ground, Marilyn is rescued both professionally and emotionally by her agent/lover Johnny Hyde (Richard Basehart). She rises to full stardom and is the center of attention of two "ideal" marriages, first to baseball player Joe DiMaggio, then to Arthur Miller (neither of whom are depicted on screen). But Marilyn remains a lonely, tragic figure, a victim as much of her own demons as of Hollywood's exploitation mill. Based loosely on Norman Mailer's highly suspect biography of the actress, Marilyn: The Untold Story premiered on September 28, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1980
Based on the book by Norman Klein, Mom, the Wolfman & Me stars Patty Duke, David Birney and Danielle Brisebois. Ms. Duke plays a free-lance photographer, the single mother of 11-year-old Brisebois. Both mother and daughter are "liberated" in the anything-goes-1980s sense. But Duke finds herself questioning her values (or lack of values) when she meets Brisebois' English teacher Birney, an uptight conservative save for his bushy beard (hence his nickname). Co-starring are Keenan Wynn and Viveca Lindfors as Patty's parents, and John Lithgow in a pivotal supporting role. Produced for TV's Operation Prime Time series, Mom, the Wolfman and Me was released for syndication starting October 20, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1980
The made-for-television Playing for Time debuted on September 30, 1980. Vanessa Redgrave stars as Fania Fenelon, a Jewish cabaret singer working in Paris at the time of the Nazi invasion. Shipped to the Auschwitz death camp in 1944, Fenelon is certain that she is as doomed as all the other prisoners. But SS camp matron Shirley Knight has other plans: she orders Fenelon and several other female inmates with musical ability to form themselves into a prisoner's orchestra. They are to perform for the benefit of those who are herded into the gas chambers--a "humane" means of easing the condemned into the next world. As much as she despises her work, Fenelon and her fellow musicians continue to play, lest they too be exterminated. The film raises several questions about courage, guilt and survival at any price, but the most controversial aspect was the casting of anti-Zionist Vanessa Redgrave as Fania Fenelon. Like many others, the real-life Fenelon (who died in 1988) was vehemently opposed to Redgrave's appearance in the film. Playing for Time won Emmy Awards for Redgrave, scriptwriter Arthur Miller, supporting actress Jane Alexander, and as Outstanding Dramatic Special. Redgrave's husband Tony Richardson was the original director, but he bowed out and was replaced by Joseph Sargent., who himself was replaced by Daniel Mann (the only one credited) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Alexander, (more)
- 1979
Set in the 1930s, in this story a 16-year-old boy is forced to come to grips with several of life's unpleasant realities. He lives in a large, rather grand house. The house is run by a member of the Swedish nobility (a Countess) as a bordello, and the boy's father is its manager. Calamity strikes when the boy's father is having a liaison with a married woman whose husband is simultaneously (and unknown to him) being murdered in the basement by the criminals who usually assist the Countess in running her illegal empire. They plant evidence along with the dead man's body in the father's truck. The boy has caught wind of the plot and takes steps to keep it from succeeding. His father is arrested, but he has accumulated some evidence which should clear his name. Meanwhile, the boy has entered into a liaison of his own with the Countess' secretary. Director Vilgot Sjoman, best known in the U.S. for his film I Am Curious, Yellow based this drama on his novel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harald Hamrell, Viveca Lindfors, (more)
- 1979
- PG
Amy Irving plays a deaf woman whose ambition is to become a professional dancer in this drama. Rosemarie Lemon is unhappy with the support she is getting from her family for her dreams. She meets a sensitive truck driver, Drew Rothman (Michael Ontkean), and they become lovers. Rothman's family is full of hatred for the world and ridicules his dream of becoming a singer. Their common ambitions and need for support make their relationship stronger, as each pursues a dream. Director Robert Markowitz uses rock & roll songs to fill in the parts in the movie where Lemon's deafness is emphasized. The soundtrack includes tunes by Burton Cummings, Tom Petty, and Willie Nelson. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Ontkean, Amy Irving, (more)
- 1979
- R
The bizarre premise for this often remote and uninvolving drama is that an otherwise apparently normal man can become so alienated from his own feelings and his own wife and children that he plans their murder. Paul Steward (Hal Holbrook) and his wife (Louise Fletcher) are about as interesting as a TV test pattern. Although Paul has realized the American Dream -- that it to say, he has money and is successful in business -- he finds the dream hollow and meaningless. Instead of waking up, he decides that his family is to blame for everything and begins to make elaborate plans for killing them off, talking it over with others and disguising it as a fictional story for his magazine. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hal Holbrook, Louise Fletcher, (more)
Robert Altman's over-frenetic satire on American marriage rituals and hypocrisy concerns the upper-crust marriage between Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker). As the film begins, a senile bishop forgets the lines to the wedding ceremony and Nettie Sloan (the groom's grandmother) drops dead in an upstairs bedroom. Nettie's death is not disclosed to the two families who converge at the wedding reception. As the two sets of in-laws slam into each other, the bride and groom disappear in the ensuing whirlwind of chaos as both extended families vie for sexual favors and try to keep hidden never-discussed family secrets. Regina Corelli (Nina Van Pallandt) is revealed to be a drug addict, while Luigi, is endeavoring unsuccessfully to keep his Mafia connections under wraps. Meanwhile, the bride's family, although more down to earth, are revealed to be no better. Tulip Brenner (Carol Burnett) begins to flirt with one of the wedding guests, Mackenzie Goddard (Pat McCormick), while Snooks Brenner (Paul Dooley) acts like a lout and drinks heavily. And flying around the edges of the action like Tinkerbell is Buffy Brenner, the Brenners' youngest daughter, who is pregnant by the groom. As other characters bang into each other -- sexual degenerates, hard-nosed radicals, raw-boned emotional wrecks -- the wedding reception heads for its inevitable nuclear explosion. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, (more)
- 1978
- PG
One of the first fictional efforts by former documentary maker Claudia Weill, Girlfriends focuses on a pair of roommates, Susan Weinblatt and Anne Munroe, played by Melanie Mayron and Anita Skinner. Anne gets married, leaving the plump, insecure Susan alone for virtually the first time in her life. A mild flirtation with a rabbi leads to a whole new life for Susan when she becomes a portrait photographer for Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs. Claudia Weill wrote the (presumed) autobiographical screenplay with Vicki Polon. Filmed in New Jersey, Girlfriends was an expansion of a short subject subsidized by the American Film Institute. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melanie Mayron, Eli Wallach, (more)
- 1978
Loosely based on a true story this sudsy made-for-television courtroom drama tells the story of a rather hedonistic young divorcee who is accused of killing her own child. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1977
Sexual minorities such as transvestites, transsexuals, necrophiliacs and sado-masochists are lumped together and are given a close examination in this film by director Victor Sjoman, who made I Am Curious, Yellow. Viveca Lindefors and Bunnar Bjornstrand are two of the featured performers. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kjell Bergqvist, Lickå Sjöman, (more)
- 1976
- R
Alan Rudolph's first feature Welcome to L.A. displays his characteristic mood of romantic despair utilizing a La Ronde-like circle of sexual adventures and failed affairs centered around song-writer Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) which spread out through the city. Barber is an aloof womanizer who cannot commit or love and is used by Rudolph to illustrate the loneliness inherent in big-city life. The film, featuring a haunting score by Richard Baskin, is a bit too ambitious for the beginning director. However, he gets good performances from Sally Kellerman as a lonely real estate agent, Geraldine Chaplin, as a Valley housewife addicted to taxi rides and Lauren Hutton as the mistress of a wealthy man. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Keith Carradine, Sally Kellerman, (more)
As the French-Spanish Bell from Hell gets under way, the hero released from a mental institution in which he was unjustly confined. He returns home to his aunt and his three female cousins, who had him committed years earlier so that they could get their hands on his inheritance. Biding his time and playing it cool, he plans to exacts chilling revenge. The film's Wellesian climax takes place atop a treacherous bell tower. On the final day of shooting, director Claudio Hill was killed in a fall from that tower, obliging an uncredited Juan Antonio Bardem to finish the picture. Originally La Campana del Infierno, Bell From Hell was also released as The Bell of Hell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
"Gorgeous goyish guy" meets Jewish radical girl in Sydney Pollack's glossy romance. In 1937, frizzy-haired Red co-ed Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) briefly captures the attention of preppy jock Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) with her passionate pacifism, while the writing talent beneath his privileged exterior entrances her. Almost eight years later, the two are reunited in New York, when well-coiffed leftist radio worker Katie spies military officer Hubbell snoozing in a nightclub. Through her force of will, and in spite of his smug rich friends, the two opposites fall in love, sparring over Katie's activist zeal and Hubbell's writerly ambivalence after a failed first novel. They head to Hollywood so that Hubbell can write a screenplay for his buddy-turned-producer J.J. (Bradford Dillman). But the House Committee on Un-American Activities' Communist witch hunt in 1947 tears the pair apart, as a pregnant Katie refuses to keep silent about the jailing of the Hollywood Ten, while a faithless Hubbell decides to save his career. When the two meet again at the dawn of the '60s, TV hack Hubbell and A-bomb protestor Katie feel the old pull, but they have to decide if it's worth the grief. Although blacklisted writers had returned to Hollywood -- and won Oscars -- by the early 1970s, the HUAC sections of Arthur Laurents's screenplay were still considered dicey, resulting in substantial cuts; Laurents reportedly blamed star Redford for not fighting them hard enough. Regardless of the edits, and critics' complaints about the film's schlockiness, 1973 audiences went for the well-executed and still politically tinged weepie, turning The Way We Were into one of the most popular films of 1973 and Redford into a major heartthrob. Streisand won an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and the Streisand-sung title tune won for Best Song. Despite the eviscerated politics, The Way We Were poignantly captures the insoluble dilemma of reconciling private desires with public awareness. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, (more)
- 1972
In this Spanish film, Daniel (Tony Isbert) is a member of The Organization. It is never quite clear whether The Organization is part of the government, a secret society, or something else. Whatever it is, it is powerful, and does not take disobedience lightly. He is sent on an assignment to Bilbao to determine what has become of a lad his age, a former member. He takes over the boy's room in an odd rooming house. When he is given the photo of the boy's girlfriend (Geraldine Chaplin), he is so taken with it that he puts off his quest. The Organization requires him to continue, however, so he tracks her down to a remote fishing village. The two fall in love and attempt to escape. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
