Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

What makes it different from others?

Pretty Good

They just don't make movies like this anymore! Frank Capra brought magic to the silver screen and A Pocketful Of Miracles is as good as movie making gets! Great storyline, great characters, great acting, and great directing!

It was just my first time seeing this on TCM. I would not buy a DVD of this on discount if I could find one. I am being harsh. It is deserved in my opinion. I felt the opening was a flashback and the cast played the rest as it was of the moment (1961-ish). Sets and costumes did not channel the 30s or 40s in my mind. A Spanish Count and son being such an important and romantic figure when the first version was made, OK, but this 1961 movie pretends very poorly that it takes place in the 1930s. A fail, in my mind. "Apple Annie" - Bette Davis did it like the old days, out of all of them! She was in the center of it all, but out of sync; she should have screamed at the others with all that energy shown at times in this film, "get out of my movie!" Her somewhat acclaimed performance is largely wasted here. It is a bit overbearing and hard to take during the long watch. Too bad they didn't have Lillian Gish, I'm sure. They wanted Shirley Booth, actually for "Apple Annie". Nice lady I'm sure, but insufferable, to me, to watch.A few winks added here and it would be very plain that of the cast were playing it for laughs..while others were there for drama. Perhaps I should have not been stunned to read after I watched and wrote this (before edit) that other famed actresses and actors turned down the major roles. Even Sinatra! Other issues along the way did not stop this project from being made. If Davis had different actors to play off it might have worked much better. Glenn Ford's one-dimensional "Dave the Dude" is worst of the lot. We get emotional high (to relieve concerns for for "Apple Annie" losing face), the film is unable to take us there. We don't burst into joy to such as "Apple Annie" does, as the VIPs and pols burst in to the fancy reception for Louise, bride to be (Ann-Margret), and her husband to be, and the his father, The Count. No bell rings, no angel gets his (her) wings. It seems a Capra knock-off!What is needed is to explain how the pols and power that be were "tuned", to continue the charade at center of film, in the next climactic scene is unsaid and is not revealed by the acting, not by by facial expressions nor verbal inflections. The acting, writing and staging was not of that caliber. It is quite unresolved. The movie is then unredeemed.Afterwards there a brief, lame coda. Worthy of a TV drama of the times.

Frank Capra's final feature film is a remake of his earlier movie Lady for a Day, one of my favorite movies from the '30s. The story is about an elderly street peddler named Apple Annie who is turned into a society matron by a gangster named Dave the Dude. The original movie starred May Robson and Warren William, both largely forgotten today except among classic film fans. This one has more well-known stars, Bette Davis and Glenn Ford, but isn't as good. It just isn't as much fun and doesn't have the same heartwarming quality the original did. Davis and Ford are okay but represent a change in the times I'd say. Davis' Annie is ghoulish and Ford's Dave is hard to like. The charm of the previous film, made in a much different era for filmmaking, is gone. Also the original movie was made during the period it was set in, which gave it a feeling of authenticity this one doesn't have. On the plus side, Peter Falk and Hope Lange are good in supporting parts, Ann-Margret is fine in her screen debut, and reliable vet Thomas Mitchell enjoyable as ever in his final film. Lots of old familiar faces like Sheldon Leonard, Edward Everett Horton, Barton MacLane, and Jerome Cowan is another plus. It's overlong and not among Capra's best but certainly something fans will want to see. I recommend seeking out the 1933 classic first, though.

Apple Annie (Bette Davis) makes her living as a gin-sauced, basket-carrying, apple-selling NYC street woman. This motion picture is in color which makes Davis's famous facial expressions, especially her eyes, all the more effective.The people Apple Annie hangs out with are other street vendors who are social misfits of various sorts; but, they have one thing in common: poverty.Apple Annie is well connected with a mobster known as The Dude. Fortunately, he's superstitious. The tough mobster (Glen Ford) believes Apple Annie's apples bring him daily good luck because she says, "God Bless You," to everyone who buys from her.All along Apple Annie's been writing her daughter on stationary from an upper-crusty city apartment complex, in order to pretend that she's a well-to-do lady. When her daughter, Louise (Ann Margaret, in her film debut) writes that she's coming to the city with her potential fiancé', whose father is a Spanish count, Apple Annie's pretense is not only about to be exposed but it could ruin her only child's chance for marrying well enough so that she'll never live in poverty as her mother has.The rest of the story is fabulous: humorous, ingenious, well-casted, scripted and acted. It's anything but a typical mob story.For me, the priceless scenes are between the veteran actor Bette Davis and upstart Ann Margaret. Imagine being able to claim that in your first film you starred as Bette Davis's daughter? Margaret gives a fine first film performance face-to-face with the Queen of the Screen. Peter Faulk does his mobster version of "Columbo," in top form. Davis, in Technicolor, delivers one of the most realistic, heart-felt, truly dramatic metamorphosis characters I've seen.