Some things I liked some I did not.

one of my absolute favorites!

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Sylvia certainly has a great tradition of similar films to fall back on. Chicago Deadline, The Mask Of Dimitrios, and the great Citizen Kane all deal with someone trying to pick up the real story of somebody by interviewing people from the past and getting flashback incidents.Peter Lawford has hired PI George Maharis to trace down the background of Sylvia, the girl he plans to marry. What Carroll Baker in the title role has given him is completely bogus though she's pretty well fixed on her own and doesn't need Lawford's millions. But he's a careful sort and Maharis begins his work.I have to say that it was a clever idea for him to use her writings, she's a poet, for traces of local idiomatic expressions. Maharis has a linguistics professor on call who tells him his starting point should be Pittsburgh.After that Maharis starts on his hunt and meets a variety of characters played by some really fine character actors. It's the best thing Sylvia has going for it. These people really make the film. The most memorable for me are Ann Sothern who works in a penny arcade and is a drunk and Viveca Lindfors as a librarian from Pittsburgh who gives Maharis his first bit of real information.Baker does well as a woman who really graduated summa cum laude from the school of hard knocks. The film was supposed to be a breakout film for George Maharis who left his TV series Route 66 for a career on the big screen. It never quite worked out that way. He does all right in the part of the PI, but I think either Paul Newman or Robert Mitchum would have aced the part of the private eye.Still Sylvia is worth watching for one of the best cast of character players ever assemble this side of John Ford or Frank Capra.

Filmmakers sure tried to make George Maharis into a star during the mid-1960s. "The Satan Bug", with its beautiful photography, great plot, and good cast didn't do it; "Quick, Before It Melts", with its comedy angle and dopey story didn't do it; and "Sylvia" didn't do it, either."Sylvia" starts out as rich guy Frederic Summers (Peter Lawford) hires iconoclastic P.I. Alan Macklin (Maharis) to investigate beautiful, young Sylvia (Carroll Baker). The story takes Macklin from one intriguing situation to another, as he tries to decipher the life of the woman known as Sylvia. Naturally enough, Macklin falls in love with Sylvia at the end of the film. Baker is so beautiful that I probably would have done the same thing.Maharis and Baker look good, but the real strength of "Sylvia" is the veteran supporting cast. Viveca Lindfors, Edmond O'Brien, Joanne Dru, Ann Southern, Lloyd Bochner, Nancy Kovack, and Aldo Ray appear as characters Maharis meets during his investigation. The B&W cinematography is good and captures the mid-1960s quite nicely.You're not going to sing the praises of "Sylvia" to the heavens, but it's certainly worth watching. The strong supporting cast adds lots of substance to the story and helps maintain interest in Macklin's investigation. After this film, movie makers quit trying to make Maharis into a major star, letting him return to TV and character roles. Still, it was a very interesting experiment.

Despite almost universal condemnation by contemporary critics, I like this film. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a team comprising screenplay writer Sydney Boehm, director Gordon Douglas and cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, dancing too far into the wrong. And here, if anything, they excel themselves. Other writers would be hampered by the screenplay's necessarily picaresque structure, but Boehm skillfully turns it into an asset, making each episode such a memorable vignette with its brisk dialogue and astute character-drawing that the various elements make a glorious whole. Of course, he is considerably assisted by the marvelous cast, topped by Carroll Baker, plus the deft direction and mood-mirroring camera-work.

This movie deserves a high rating because of the issues it addresses and the quality of acting. The cast is first rate. As a devotee of "Route 66" I idolized the role of Maharis. His character was the chief attraction of the series. In subsequent roles he did not achieve the aura that he had projected in the series. However, in this movie he plays a middle of the road detective to perfection. The issues discussed make this a movie that one can see over again without boredom. The supporting cast is a Who's Who of Hollywood of the era.