5/10
Melodramatic Fantasy
27 August 2006
Many a man might give up just about anything for a tumble with Ava Gardner. But what would Ava give up, would she give it all up for a man she truly loved?

That questioned is answered if not to everyone's complete satisfaction in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Ava's character of Pandora Reynolds, cabaret singer and jet-setter is a trial run for her later role of Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises.

She's a cool one Ava, one guy commits suicide over her, Nigel Patrick trashes a perfectly good car to prove something to her, even Harrold Warrender who has a sort of Van Helsing like role is not immune to her beauty and charm.

But the guy who's really taken with her is James Mason, the legendary Flying Dutchman. He's been cursed for about 300 years to sail the seas in search of a woman who would lay her life down for him. He gets to port once every seven years to search and he's put in on the northern coast of Spain this time.

The color photography by Jack Cardiff is nice, the scenery is almost as beautiful as Ava. But I think for this film to work, a more innocent type rather than the worldly Ms. Gardner would have to have been written into the story.
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