Born Yesterday (1950)

Wonderful character development!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Broderick Crawford was great.William Holden was great.The real treasure of this film was Judy Holliday.To play the dumb blonde to the absolute hilt and watch her character slowly become educated to the ways of the world thanks to Holden was a delight.Her character,by the end of the film,was more educated,yet she managed to hang on to that ditsy innocence that made her so appealing in the beginning of the film.This is a feel good story with Crawford as the gruff shady business man who happens to be Holliday's fiancé,who managed to keep Holliday's character in what he felt was her place until Holden,a man he trusted,craftily swept her away.Well done.

Back in 1950 Born Yesterday was a staggeringly huge box-office success. This Rom-Com really wowed its audiences with its apparent clever wit that had them all literally rolling in the aisles with peals of uncontrollable laughter.But, today, 63 years later - I found this film's somewhat contrived and predictable story to be repeatedly teetering on the very edge of being just a one-note joke that got mighty stale after just the first half-hour.At the start Judy Holliday's Billie Dawn character (in all of its crudeness and its cluelessness) was kind of cute and amusing - But, it certainly didn't take long for the loud-mouthed brassiness of her character to grate on my nerves like you wouldn't believe.It certainly seemed to me that the more Billie got educated (which seemed to happen at about warp speed) the more annoying and downright tiresome she became. And I also found that she proved, in the end, to be way too smart to have actually been as unbelievably dumb as she was initially perceived to be.I personally thought that Holliday was badly miscast as the Billie character. Not only did she lack any conviction in her overall performance, but, she was painfully deficient of any sexual appeal, as well.I think that this was the sort of role meant for an actress with the dynamic screen-presence of Marilyn Monroe, which Holliday obviously lacked.Besides Holliday not being able to cut the mustard in this comedy, I also thought that Broderick Crawford was a repulsive bore as the big-mouthed bully-of-a-billionaire and William Holden as the true-blue, little news-reporter was far too wishy-washy for my liking.All-in-all - Born Yesterday was just a so-so comedy that really baffles me in regards to it huge popularity back in its heyday.

Are you folks sure this is a good movie? I'm halfway through and it just gets worse and worse, moving slower and slower and slower to the point that I'm afraid it will never end.Comedy? Maybe people actually laughed in the movie theater 60 years ago, but it's mighty quiet here.Hasn't anyone in this movie heard of "subtlety"? Talk about over-acting. Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford look like they came out of a prequel to Dumb and Dumber. And William Holden is wishy washy, never clearly defining his character or motivation for any of the things he is doing, aside from getting laid by a not especially pretty moll of a gangster, which is a pretty darn stupid thing to do for a supposedly in the know Washington reporter. (This is either a violation of basic journalistic ethics or a deposit on some concrete galoshes.)Neither Holden nor Holliday fit their parts. Put Marilyn Monroe and Kirk Douglas in them and this might sizzle. Monroe knew how to play the dual levels of a smart inner dame and an outer ditsy dame, as seen in Bus Stop. And Douglas wrote the book on cynical reporting in Ace in the Hole. As it is, there is no chemistry between them, zero, and none between Holliday and Crawford, either. Crawford "really loves" Holliday? Why? She is as charming as screeching chalk on a blackboard.So Cukor rehearsed the cast before a live audience to get the timing. That might have had some relevance when this was shown in a theater. But on home video half a century later all this cast produces is puzzled silence.I suppose there was something edgy about taking on political corruption in a more innocent time. Except it had been done, far better, two years before in State of the Union, and earlier by Frank Capra in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe. Whatever shock value there might once have been (were voters every really that naive?) is long gone in today's world of rampant scandals. OK, I'll try to finish it. And I'll try to like it. But I have the feeling it's not going to be easy.Update:OK, I finished it. Spoiler alert:It ends just like you think it is going to end, the plot unfolding with about the excitement of a AAA road map.There's a reason most people have never seen this "classic": It's boring. To be specific, the acting is boring, the plot is boring, the script is boring, the characters are boring and the directing is boring. I don't remember if the music is boring. Was there any music?But who am I to judge? Apparently, some people just love boring movies. After all, there are a lot of boring people in the world.

What a brilliant movie this is. Wonderfully funny, beautifully acted, brilliantly directed and superbly scripted, this is a timeless delight from start to finish. The cinematography is marvellous as well, while the costumes and scenery have a certain elegance about them. The script is witty, funny and intelligent, with not a wasted moment on sight, while the story is endlessly engaging. The film is never dull either, and George Cukor's direction is the best it had been. The acting is just one of the many outstanding assets to this film. William Holden is wonderfully subtle and charming, but it is Judy Holliday's movie, with a presence that melts the heart she was made for the role and is just amazing. In terms of effective scenes, the gin rummy scene fits under that description, it is the epitome of cinematic perfection. Overall, brilliant. 10/10 Bethany Cox