MovieChat Forums > The Black Rose (1950) Discussion > Should Cécile Aubry have walked the rope...

Should Cécile Aubry have walked the rope?

posted 17 years ago by MrRobur
3 replies | jump to latest

Before she Cecile turned up, you had a not half bad adventure flick in 1950's technicolor. They're a brand of their own.

You also had a brace of later character actors in their early primes - Orson Welles, Jack Hawkins, Finlay Curay, Michael Rennie, Herbert Lom, and Alfonso Bedoya (Alfonso Bedoya?)and Bobby Blake together again - all babbling away some wonderful over the top rubbish.

Seriously now ... which shtick amused you most? "The Great Argument" or Herbert Lom's "honor?"

But then Cécile Aubry stopped the show with one of the worst cutsey chick turns ever. If my granny's shotzi fawned like that, I'd shoot it. Fortunately, her Hollywood career immediately died (Allah is all just!), but she deserved at least the rope walk as well.

Too bad she got away.

"The morning papers are FULL OF IT!"

Jan Wiley, The She-Wolf of London (1946)

[–] wilsonbond_99 17 years ago

I have to step up to defend Cecile Aubry's Maryam/Mohammed in this role. Usually where these Hollywood costume epics are concerned, we get served with the dreadful likes of Olivia De Havilland or Joan Fontaine in the leading lady roles, all matronly Christian goodness and half-baked nobility. Thank god for Cecile's character: impish, selfish, calculating, and waiflike. All she knows about Christians or England are stories she's heard from her father, so she becomes this charming Miranda-like character, full of glowing fairy tales about miracles and chivalry. I found her delightful.

The one character I found to be a literal drag in this movie was Jack Hawkins's Tris. He's forever bellyaching about the "bloodthirsty infidels" and how much he misses England. Some adventurer he was! I kept wishing that he'd do the rope walk and get bumped off instead, so that Tyrone Power and Orson Welles can ride off together and finish conquering the world. That would have been a movie worth remembering!

I didn't make the world! I barely live in it! - Oscar Levant

[–] jaccusefashion 14 years ago

Cecile Aubrey was bloody awful in this...Ive never seen an actress as bad and so ugly expothe all of her teeth whilst speaking with an impediment as badly as her. It started as a good film and tanked on her arrival. Terrible.

[–] ralecar 13 years ago

I agree with wilsonbond 99 on this one. I thought Cécile Aubry was just fine in this particular role. Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine are beautiful and supremely talented leading ladies and two (02) of my favorites but for this role they really did need (as wilsonbond 99 said) an "impish, selfish, calculating and waiflike character" and that is exactly what that got with Cécile. Tyrone Power was one of the few, besides the great Errol Flynn (who was unsurpassed in looking the part in ANY TYPE of attire) who looked the part dressed in just about any type of costume. Orson Welles, of course, was magnificent as always. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the Black Rose.