Feeling Blue

Now that I think of it, I actually do remember seeing one of Elizabeth Taylor's movies. Ironically, it was one of her least memorable films. It was The Blue Bird, based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play about two children who seek the bluebird of happiness.

How could I forget? That had to be one of the worst movies I ever saw!

Directed by George Cukor (!), this 1976 adaptation of The Blue Bird was a joint U.S.-Soviet production filmed in Russia, and it clearly worked out much less successfully than the Apollo-Soyuz space mission of the previous year.

The movie's horridness wasn't really Elizabeth Taylor's fault. Give her credit for trying something different. But casting Elizabeth Taylor in a fantasy film made about as much sense as casting John Wayne in a Truffaut picture would have. Anyway, Taylor's miscasting wasn't the biggest of this movie's problems. Not when it also featured Cicely Tyson as a cat, in a feline costume that made her look more kinky than cute.

I don't remember much else about The Blue Bird. I don't even remember when I saw it or how I came to see it. I only remember that it was awful.

Back on Monday.