Carrie (1952 film) starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones

This movie celebrates Olivier's appreciation of Wyler teaching him how to underplay.

Olivier is handsome and very well-dressed.

This story was written by a morbid Socialist who hated American society. So the story is very depressing.

The movie is more depressing because it co-stars that irritating woman who was married David O Selznick and co-stars that gum-sucking numbskull Eddie Albert. There's also Miriam Hopkins too, isn't there?

It's irritating that a handsome, well-dressed George (played by Olivier) throws his career and life away for an irritating frilly, flighty woman because the author was a morbid Socialist who hated American capitalist society.

Was this film for Paramount (?) who did that other movie with Liz and Monty by that same morbid Socialist who hated American capitalist society?

I just about peed my pants when that hand burst out of the grave at the end!

R2, what relationship is there between the fact that Dreiser was a socialist and the novel's contents (which, by the way, differ A LOT from the film)? It is a great novel indeed and it reflects a reality that, whether you like it or not, was very much present in American society in the late 19th/early 20th Century.

Olivier is excellent in the role and you're right: he was goergeous and charismatic, on top of a fantastic actor. The ravishing Jennifer Jones delivers a somewhat mannered performance that isn't entirely evoid of charm. Still, it is undeniable that she wasn't anything more than a merely serviceable as an actress. It is, nonetheless, a deeply touching film with a very romanticized, tragic ending and more sympathetic characters than those in the book, because Paramount was afraid of receiving attacks from the political establishment due to it being released during the height of McCarthyism. If things had followed the book, things would have been starker and the characters, much more flawed.

Still, it is a good film that has stood the test of time and I would definitely recommend it to everyone, as it is innocuous and sentimental, with a heartbreakingly sad ending.

I loved it when they dumped pigs blood on Jennifer Jones!

Just kidding. It's actually a really good movie. A bit jarring to hear Laurence Olivier with an American accent but he did it pretty well

When I first saw the film, I got so annoyed that Olivier's character totally screwed up his life for a selfish idiot like Carrie, However, Laurence Olivier was superb in the movie and gave a wonderful performance.

The movie bombed with audiences which I think the studio anticipated. The director approached Garson Kanin fir marketing ideas after he’d seen the movie before its general release. Kanin thought they should lead with “You think you’ve got problems!”

[quote] totally screwed up his life for a selfish idiot like Carrie.

She's really annoying.

Why did Dreiser make her so annoying? Wasn't she the same as the character played by Liz Taylor— she was poor but Liz's character was rich.

[quote] It is a great novel.

It's 557 pages long. Have you read it once or twice?

Only once R8, when I was 19.

^ I read 20 Shakespeare plays by the age of 19 but I'm guessing we've both evolved a lot since then.

The World Socialist Web Site says—

[quote] Theodore Dreiser loved the works of Herbert Spencer, the social Darwinist and popularizer of the notorious phrase, the “survival of the fittest.” Spencer, trained as an engineer, “envisioned the universe as a great machine driven by divine hydraulic powers"

'I got so annoyed that Olivier's character totally screwed up his life for a selfish idiot like Carrie,'

I'm so glad this never happens in real life.

I blame this woman.

She did the play 'The Heiress' and Wyler turned it into masterpiece. She then attempted the gargantuan Dreiser and it was so indigestible she vomited up a half-completed screenplay.

And William Wyler rushed it into production when he should have demanded it be re-written.