The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Blistering performances.

Before this film, I had seen Susan Strasberg in two late 1960s AIP low-budget films 'The Trip' and 'Psych-Out' and enjoyed her performances in both so was quite interested in seeing her in the starring role here.Alas, not only is she not up to the task, but she takes down the film with her. Her performance in the first 30 minutes or so is truly wretched; she's so strained and overwrought that it makes one cringe.To be fair, from the time she does a reading from 'Romeo & Juliet' (which is quite charming) her performance settles down somewhat but the damage is done. After all, it's in the opening scenes where we're supposed to believe that she wins over Herbert Marshall as a close friend and enchants Plummer and Fonda but her performance kills any chance of that being convincing and the film never recovers.However, the film is still fairly entertaining. While Fonda seems rather too genial to convince as a Broadway producer he's always entertaining to watch and helps hold the film together. And Joan Greenwood does a nice balancing act as she gives a melodramatic performance yet still lined with depth.And, as other reviewers have mentioned, director Sidney Lumet puts in some nice touches with the detail he displays in the preparation that goes behind the scenes for opening night.Also of interest is that it was released as an RKO picture and was probably close to the very last film released by that studio.

Susan Strasberg plays Eva Lovelace, an aspiring Broadway actress possessed by some theatric god that directs her to precisely pronounce and deliver each and every word with impeccable timing. She comes to New York by way of Vermont where she performed in numerous summer stock productions and her persistence and personality capture the attention of playwright Joe Sheridan (Peter Cushing) and actor Robert Marley Hedges (Herbert Marshall). Producer Lewis Easton (Henry Fonda) tells her to study the Actor's Studio (would that be Lee Strasberg's school of method acting?) but she doesn't want to dilute her gift by having it altered in an acting school. Strasberg's performance makes and at times almost breaks this picture. It manages to annoy and captivate, often simultaneously. When she delivers Juliet's lines on the stairway of Easton's swank townhome after drinking four or five glasses of Champaigne in front of a party of theater luminaries, it knocks you out. It is as if Eva Lovelace is playing Susan Strasberg. In any event, she (Strasberg) has an unusual beauty and sincerity that come shining through in spite of the theatrics.

Strasberg gives what is perhaps one of the worst performances by an actress in an "A" film. Her acting is jaw-droppingly terrible, and "over-the-top" is too kind of a phrase. She obviously took her father's instruction to heart - he being Lee Strasberg of the Actor's Studio. The "waiting-for-the-reviews" party during the first thirty-minutes of the film actually contains a cring-worthy rendition of the famous balcony scene from "Romeo & Juliet."Of course, director Lumet has a tendency to allow his performers to chew the scenery. Fonda is an exception, though. He provides his usual subdued interpretation. Plummer comes across quite nicely, as well.However, the "romantic" conclusion is totally ridiculous, as there is zero chemistry between the characters who finally end up with one another.I forced myself to watch this film till the end, but it wasn't easy. Not surprisingly, Strasberg's career eventually settled into "B" movies, and hammy TV roles.

There is a strange artificiality to Susan Strasberg's performance which really throws this movie off kilter. Obviously she's playing a very theatrical young woman who lives for the stage, and in certain scenes (particularly the party scene where she is not only intoxicated from champagne but the dreamy proximity to so many Broadway celebrities) this technique is effective, but she never turns it off. In tender, heartfelt moments with Henry Fonda's seasoned producer and Christopher Plummer's blossoming playwright, both of whom are supposed to be madly in love with her, she's frightfully unresponsive. She's like a pretty little China Doll whose eyes can blink.Nevertheless, there is much to like about this film. Fonda, Plummer and Herbert Marshall are superb as various incarnations of success who all become enchanted with Strasberg and her bewildering determination to be a star. They are all caught up in the complicated and decidedly unromantic machinery of the theatre world, and she represents the innocence they've either forgotten (Marshall), lost (Fonda), or are in jeopardy of losing (Plummer). (Although again, as Strasberg plays her, the innocence seems like a put-on, a florid, elaborate joke.) Part of the pleasure of the film is seeing Plummer in one of his very first, pre-"Sound of Music" roles. A darkly compelling leading man during this time with brooding traces of the new method acting style, he and the old school Fonda work well together - there's an interesting "passing the torch" dynamic there.But the real reason to see this film is the stunning location photography of New York City. The director, Sidney Lumet, has always loved the city just as much as Woody Allen, and here it is practically the star. There is an exquisite scene in a snow blanketed park (Central?) that is as vivid as being there.There is an added poignancy to this picture as Strasberg's part as an actress on the verge of "making it" was, I believe, intended to neatly dovetail with her own emerging stardom. A stardom that was, alas, to be short-lived.