What a Way to Go! (1964)

A woman goes through a succession of marriages which end with her husbands' deaths. She begins to think she is jinxed.

*spoilers below*

This is a highly sophisticated production which somehow falls short of greatness. The sense of humor is a little stiff, and that may have had a detrimental effect on my enjoyment of it. Nevertheless, it still is a respectable spectacle, and one with a nicely thought out script encapsulating an interesting thesis. That thesis says that people are predestined to a certain station in life, and any attempt to change it is bound to fail, and possibly even lead to one's death. Curiously enough, there is one character who never strays from that truth -- namely, the female protagonist. However, her happiness is delayed due to her difficulty in finding her right male match. The film examines the cases of five men -- besides, of course, the aforementioned female protagonist. The cases examined are: two store owners, a painter, a business tycoon, and a sing-and-dance performer. She marries them all, and all but one die. Three of them die because they follow an illusory way out of the mediocrity which in fact was their natural state. One of them -- the tycoon -- does the inverse: he settles for a mediocre life which was impossible for him. The last one, although born into wealth, is not really deserving of it, and only finds happiness when circumstances strip him of his wealth. As I said, the film is not particularly funny, and, as critic Nathan Rabin noticed, seems to make fun of itself when it features a parody of Hollywood's extravagant productions. There are several different parodies throughout the movie, one for each unsuccessful marriage, and aiming at a specific movie genre. Critic Michael Barrett has a funny joke about this film's director: "The latter part of his career was mostly spent on Charles Bronson movies. What a way to go." I could not help but laugh, even though I, being an ardent Bronson fan, could not disagree more. The links to the reviews I cited are below:

Nathan Rabin's review

Michael Barrett's review

As a final caveat, I would like to remark that the film is very well made, and, although I am never really sure about a director's actual contribution to the end result of a movie, I can say for sure that this director did not goof up in any way.

Rating: 51