Popular reviews

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  Review by Marcine M. ★★★★ 1

  A deep exploration of the control men exert over women through the false perception of love, as well as the risks at stake in overlooking the reality of a love object. So many ideas are at work in I've Always Loved You that have seeds rooted in earlier Borzage pictures: the spiritual destiny and communication between two people, the limits of love tested by extreme circumstance, the price of admittance to the mausoleum of each soul.

  Or as Luc Moullet wrote in his 1962 Cahiers du Cinéma piece on Borzage, "I've Always Loved You is perhaps Borzage's masterpiece... The excess of insipidness and sentimentality exceeds all allowable limits and annihilates the power of criticism and reflection, giving way to pure beauty."

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  Review by Diogo Serafim ★★★★★ 1

  A musical power struggle of explosive artists with contradictory feelings, their screaming notes resonating through distance and time as feelings beyond space. Delirious, excessive, untamed, irresistible. The actors’ insane performances and the film’s haphazard dramaturgy make the formal flippancy only more striking and the dramatic weight given to the music only more stinging. The film’s violent ellipses are synthesized in a few seconds of music alongside Borzage’s eye and his actors’ exorbitance. I also love what Borzage does with his main actress’ hands: other women’s lipstick on her hands, the same hand that takes off a ring to play, the hands that hold a loved one more time and forever.

  The two long sequences of the concerts are the most…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

  Drama with music. Mad cruel romance about ownership of people and feelings as imagined as a constant masochist performance struggle with a delirious visual style to match the emotions.

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  Review by Kurt Walker ★★★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  when myra discusses her love for maria goronoff after finding she has passed, one of the diamonds on her dress fires out this luminous flare at the lens as soon as she invokes the word 'love'. one of the best endings movies have to offer. borzage is the prince of cinema.

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  Review by lojasdecanela ★★★★★ 2

  "Minha alma é uma orquestra oculta; não sei que instrumentos tangem e rangem, cordas e harpas, timbales e tambores, dentro de mim. Só me conheço como sinfonia".

  Fernando Pessoa, Livro do Desassossego.

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  Review by GatoBurro ★★★★★ 2

  A música pode ser ouvida ou sentida de qualquer lugar. A música conecta aqueles que não só amam a arte, mas amam um ao outro. O amor expresso a partir da arte. Não somente expresso entre os personagens, mas expresso ao espectador que sente, vibra e se emociona com as sequências musicais. Grande parte do filme contém cenas musiciais que jamais estão perdidas na narrativa. Mesmo com um uso excessivo dessas cenas, ainda assim se mantém interessante, potente e vibrante.

  Frank Borzage faz de todo cenário um palco onde os atores brilham e o espectador aplaude. Tudo é uma enorme peça musical colorida e emocionante. Cada pequeno gesto, olhar ou toque ganha importância. A música não é somente aquilo que…

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  Review by João Queiroz ★★★★★

  Filme extremo, filme extreme - o mais extremo e o mais extreme dos filmes do estremecente Borzage - I've Always Loved You só pode suscitar reacções igualmente extremas e extremes. Não me custa nada perceber as reacções da crítica da época, cobrindo esta obra de sarcasmos e ridicularizando tudo, desde a desvairada implausibilidade do argumento às grotescas interpretações dos protagonistas. Não me custa nada perceber que metade da sala ainda reaja hoje da mesma maneira. Mas quem ficar enfeitiçado - logo na primeira sequência, a do salão de Filadélfia - só pode ir de surpresa em surpresa, de êxtase em êxtase, até ao delirante final (porventura, o mais delirante final de filme de qualquer obra jamais produzida em Hollywood) e amar…

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  Review by brotherdeacon ★★★

  What a discordant mess of a romance. What a courageous story licking at patriarchy with a serpent's tongue. What a Technicolor beauty. What a BDSM (master/slave) proto-type. What almost laughable and inflated characters reading some often silly lines. What a lot of exceptional piano playing. What a florid repertoire of charts for that piano playing. What professionally astute technicians on camera, lighting, costumes. production design, sets, sound, keyboard mimicry and even make-up. What joyous character actors. What a curiously one-sided, exaggerated gender battle settled by corn-pone family values. What big budget Hollywood fluff from the cheap little house of Republic Studios. What a colorful farce. What middle-brow interpretations of art being ridiculously extravagant and only fit for critics. What a…

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  Review by Stephen M ★★★ 2

  This is an oddity. A prestige picture from Poverty Row studio Republic Pictures about the classical music world with a big name director (Frank Borzage) and Technicolor. But it has a confusing and mostly sexist message about a talented young female pianist (Catherine McLeod) romantically torn between her egotistical mentor (Philip Dorn) and the good but simple famer (William Carter) she left in her home town. Very mixed feelings for me, as there were some wonderful moments and a plot that left me scratching my head.

  Borzage was the reason I checked this out. He’d signed a 5-year contract with Republic with the stipulation he’d be given complete control over his films. His touches are apparent here in the depiction…

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  Review by Collin Brinkmann ★★★★★

  "... Eisenstein unhesitatingly placed Borzage alongside Chaplin and Stroheim as one of 'the three greatest filmmakers in America'."

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  Review by Miguel ★★★★½ 1

  A hundred, a thousand miles, walls, a hundred years — no matter: nothing can stop this language.

  ❤

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  Review by KYK ★★★★ 1

  bold of her to play celine dion at her carnegie hall concert

  35mm. MoMA.