The "all-American" values that this film promotes are mostly repulsive, i.e. that it is a fate worse than hell for a teenager to get As in school, that her only chance for health and happiness it to have a boyfriend, that mother knows best, that most doctors are stuffy and inept authority figures, that the only music worth listening to is operetta, etc. etc. etc. The young Elizabeth Taylor plays the teenager in question, George Murphy her overprotective father (she is the objectification of the timidity he can't overcome), and Mary Astor. It is Astor's magnificent performance that ultimately is the only thing that makes this film worth watching. Somehow she manages to be magnificently ambivalent--as steely as any bitch she plays in her film-noir roles and yet as wise and maternal as the film's ethos requires her to be. As for Taylor, I find her primping prettiness quite off-putting. Somehow her beauty (of which there can be no doubt) comes off as calculating and inauthentic. When she swoons over the lout of a teenager who falls for her, I'm ready to gag.
Review of Cynthia
