Purely Joyful Movie!

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This is a comedy that is hilariously nutso bad. Van Johnson is Joe Bedloe, a teacher in a small New England college. He's perfectly happy instilling a new generation of American students with an appreciation for the writing of William Shakespeare. His wife Connie, portrayed by Janet Leigh, is expecting their first child and they live in a cute little two-story house. But being a professional intellectual doesn't provide enough money to keep the family table filled with plates of meat. "Haven't seen a rib roast since 1948." The town butcher Emil Spangenberg, played by Walter Slezak, prescribes a dietary regimen for the mother-to-be: "Meat. So I'd have a strong, healthy baby." In this town of meat hungry carnivores, populated by meat junkies, the butcher's role is tantamount to the one provided today by dispensers of medical marijuana. De-toxing from the red meat craving by going cold turkey is to be avoided at all costs. That's where Joe's father Opie Bedloe comes into the picture. He's of all things a prosperous Texas cattle baron! When he comes to visit the couple he is horrified to learn that his son is such a poor family provider. It's not that this husband can't provide his wife with jewels and furs and lavish vacations. His beef is that Professor Joe can't shower the woman with…beef! Cultural satire when well done can be a great comedic look at society. When done in this movie it is a ham handed misfire, a plate of baloney adulterated by coy whimsy and artificial ingredients. I give this a 2 in recognition of what I interpret as scriptwriter's Max Shulman's mockery of the American mindset of entitlement to all the consumer bounties of life. Hip, hip, hooray! It's the American Way!

I'll dissent a bit from the other reviews here of this film. Make no mistake (or in this case misteak), this is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination. For the first 12-15 minutes of watching it I pretty much decided I would pan the film. But then I began to give it some credit for something -- that every once in a while a film comes along that is truly different. And, while not great, this film is different. How many movies do you see about a pregnant woman's need to eat steak? That's the premise of the film. Van Johnson is a professor, Janet Leigh his wife. They are poor living on a college professor's meager salary, and she's pregnant and needs to eat nutritious meat, which they can't afford. Along comes Johnson's father (Louis Calhern), who just happens to be one of Texas' largest cattle ranchers. His plotting to get his son back to the ranch backfires into a meat price war. And of course, they all live happily ever after, but only after some constant bickering by father and son. It is a comedy, but the bickering of father trying to control son is a little on the serious side, as well.Interestingly, Johnson's real-life car accident a decade earlier left his forehead badly scarred, and those scars are very evident in this picture. Johnson does okay here, although this is not one of his better performances. Janet Leigh is enjoyable. As is one of my favorite character actors -- Louis Calhern; perhaps not quite convincing as a cattle baron, although a few years earlier he had played Buffalo Bill in "Anne Get Your Gun". Walter Slezak is okay as the butcher, but this is not one of his better roles. Gene Lockhart, not usually one of my favorites, actually does pretty well as the Dean of the college.Again, this is no great picture, but it's decent, if a bit shallow. Worth a watch, but I doubt it will show up on many DVD shelves.

This is very possibly the worst movie I ever watched. But my wife and I sat through it, remarking later that it was as riveting as a slow-motion train wreck. This movie is so bad, we wondered how it was ever put on film. From initial premise to final scene, everything about this movie is the pits.The premise of the movie is that the faculty at a small Maine college (symbolizing small colleges, in general) is so underpaid that putting red meat of any kind on the table is an extreme luxury, and a real budget-buster. On the other hand, they have money to eat plenty of fish and pay for loads of vitamins. The economics of this film also permit sacrificing cigarettes in order to eat lamb chops. In 1950 how much did cigarettes cost - 20 cents a pack? Whew, that seems like a lot of foregone smoking!The meddlesome parent of a newlywed couple is hardly an original idea for comedy, but here it never generates a smile. The young couple are portrayed by Janet Leigh and Van Johnson. After his initial appearance, Van Johnson portrays his character as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in the deepest of tragedies. Meanwhile, Louis Calhern, Johnson's "Pop" up from Texas, is hamming it up as a wealthy cattleman. Janet Leigh, somewhere in between, seems to think she is June Cleaver before giving birth to Wally. The director never seems to have any of them pulling in the same direction at the same time, consequently the boat just goes 'round and 'round and eventually capsizes.The preoccupation with meat makes for one of the most bizarre plots ever made into a picture by a Hollywood studio. It was so freaky that I admit to never paying attention to whether the lines, themselves, if delivered by other actors under the direction of another director might have been funny. Let me think... NAAAAH, No Way! But, if you are a movie junkie and want to see a historically bad film - and I don't mean cheesy, like some B sci-fi flick - check this one out. You'll be puzzled hours after you watched it - "Just what hit me?"

Unintentionally one of the weirdest mainstream movies ever made. Let me put it this way: if you can't get your hands on a copy, try recording it when its on TCM, invite the kids over, and pass a cold 40 around with the holder having to take a slug every time the word "meat" is mentioned. My guess is that you will all wind up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning. Maybe you'll meet some baby boomer there whose parents were influenced by this film and now suffering chest pains. This film is so meat mad that one suspects that times were so lean at MGM that CONFIDENTIALLY CONNIE was an early example of product placement, cooked up by the meat industry. Its a shame that none of the filmmakers are still around to be grilled. In context, CONFIDENTIALLY CONNIE is one of the true mainstream post-war American films. Today what is taught in school, as well as discussed critically, are the noirs, but this dark underside of American life were the exceptions. The rule was, in the first phase, meet, pair up and procreate. CONFIDENTIALLY CONNIE is part of phase two (at this time, probably because of the sustained political attacks such as the infamous HUAC witch hunts, most noirs had swung their POV's 180 ° to become more police orientated) as Connie and Joe Bedloe (as in the island whereon the Statue of Liberty is located) are already married and expecting a baby. We are now at the point where the new nuclear family has to make a home and fit into society as useful participants in the nations glorious future. Its just that in this film that means lots and lots of meat, primarily cheap meat!The picture opens with what would be recognized today as the punch line. Janet Leigh is sitting in the waiting room of her Obstetrician smoking. She puts out her cigarette and sees the doctor who tells her that the first three months were the hardest and now all she has to do is take it easy and eat plenty of meat and we're off. Leigh can't afford to buy meat because her husband, Van Johnson, is a poorly paid college instructor. He has the opportunity to advance to Assistant Professor but the dean, Gene Lockhart, draws out the process among several candidates in order to be invited to their houses for dinner where meat will be served. He especially delights in predicting what meat will be served- pot roast, meat balls, etc. CONFIDENTIALLY CONNIE becomes something like a zombie movie with every inhabitant of this small Maine town obsessed with ingesting meat. This is no recent development either as a meating of the town's butchers fills a large room. Van Johnson's father, Louis Calhern, happens to own "the second largest cattle ranch in west Texas". He comes for a visit in a stew about his son returning to run the ranch. Anxious about his grandchild's health, he arranges with Leigh's butcher to sell her meat at half price. This ruse results in a price war with the price of meat lowered to ridiculous prices (down from porterhouse @ $1.60 lb.). The whole town becomes hysterical in a frenzy of meat buying. Trucks arrive unloading sides of beef, people carry overflowing shopping bags full of meat down the street, freezer rentals soar, people stampede about with a glazed look, etc. There is some lip service given to the idea that teaching isn't merely a low paying job but a higher calling the very existence of The American Democracy depends on which makes the availability of meat seem like society's way of honoring that commitment. It always gets back to meat. There isn't a plea to raise teachers pay but to rather reward them with meat. The plenitude of meat means that the dean can stop ribbing the rivals for the professorship and give the job to the best candidate, Hayden Rourke, who has somehow outflanked Van Johnson for the job. No fault as Van Johnson and his pop are reunited and the picture ends with Van Johnson and Janet Leigh bringing the little critter (a boy) back to the ranch where there is more meat, though still on the hoof. No worry about the Bedloes moving back to the ranch, (presumably Van Johnson could teach in west Texas) but its just a visit, and he maintains his new nuclear family as a separate entity in what Americas call Family Values and advertisers call an independent family unit.By the time of this film Janet Leigh was pretty much the perfect wife, 1950s edition. She succeed Myrna Loy and the contrast is telling about the times. Whereas Myrna Loy was sophisticated, svelte and witty, a creature of the night with a cocktail glass in her hand and usually childless, Janet Leigh was direct, down to earth, pneumatic, (another 50s obsession), a daytime beauty who wore an apron to show she was domestically inclined and, most importantly, eager and anxious to reproduce. She was often depicted as a single mother still overtly desirable despite being with child (Holiday Affair, Angels in the Outfield). It can be said that the 50s really ended when she was so famously butchered in the shower in PSYCHO.Unlike the meat and marry films of the late 40s, there is no attempt to identify ex-servicemen and their problems with reintegration. Unlike noirs there is no reference to either the Great Depression or the War. The only reference to the past is a nostalgic sigh when remembering the price of meat way back in 1948. It always gets back to meat. Max Schulman, was a specialist in gently satirizing the foibles of small town petite bourgeois life, the sort of weak joshing which passed for something beefier in the 50s and now forgotten save for the occasional revivals of the Dobie Gillis TV series.