"All of Me" is not a highlight in the career of any of the principal players. It is slow to get to any point, and after the climax it slithers off weakly into nothing.
That said, none of the actors is bad here, and all have flashes of something quite special. James Flood's direction is so stilted it drags the sometimes interesting dialogue down with it. And none of the performances can quite rise above that. The plot is absurd while it tries to be important. The script plays coy with the obvious element of out-of-wedlock pregnancies not to mention premarital sex. The end scene, if you can call it that, is the limpest point of the film.
Fredric March is reteamed with Miriam Hopkins for the first time since they were so great in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The combination is not nearly as interesting here. They are lovers (he a professor and she a student, for added raciness) who have intellectual differences about love and marriage. Only when they cross paths with George Raft and Helen Mack do they begin to discover that love is more about heart and soul than about a thought process. Raft and Mack are lovers trying to overcome a criminal lifestyle that has left them at the mercy of the System.
March underplays his role with aplomb and disappears for a long stretch while Hopkins (for good reason) seems to struggle to find motivation in her confused character. Their situation gets tiring and is set aside all together as the Raft-Mack subplot takes over. This is fortunate as it is much more interesting. Unexpectedly, after slogging through the storyline, Raft is quite compelling in the climax. Mack is direct and on-point throughout.
March and Raft were both stars for Paramount, and the studio would have had trouble finding two more different men with such different styles. That could have been interesting, but alas, they have only one scene together.
That said, none of the actors is bad here, and all have flashes of something quite special. James Flood's direction is so stilted it drags the sometimes interesting dialogue down with it. And none of the performances can quite rise above that. The plot is absurd while it tries to be important. The script plays coy with the obvious element of out-of-wedlock pregnancies not to mention premarital sex. The end scene, if you can call it that, is the limpest point of the film.
Fredric March is reteamed with Miriam Hopkins for the first time since they were so great in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The combination is not nearly as interesting here. They are lovers (he a professor and she a student, for added raciness) who have intellectual differences about love and marriage. Only when they cross paths with George Raft and Helen Mack do they begin to discover that love is more about heart and soul than about a thought process. Raft and Mack are lovers trying to overcome a criminal lifestyle that has left them at the mercy of the System.
March underplays his role with aplomb and disappears for a long stretch while Hopkins (for good reason) seems to struggle to find motivation in her confused character. Their situation gets tiring and is set aside all together as the Raft-Mack subplot takes over. This is fortunate as it is much more interesting. Unexpectedly, after slogging through the storyline, Raft is quite compelling in the climax. Mack is direct and on-point throughout.
March and Raft were both stars for Paramount, and the studio would have had trouble finding two more different men with such different styles. That could have been interesting, but alas, they have only one scene together.