A Lapse of Memory

By JAY COCKS

A MATTER OF TIME Directed by VINCENTE MINNELLI Screenplay by JOHN GAY

It makes for an awkward occasion: a group of gifted people working so far below their best talents that everything takes on the giddy air of a runaway charade. Director Vincente Minnelli, a flamboyant, lushly elegant stylist, has been responsible not only for some of the greatest movie musicals (Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon), but some enjoyably parboiled melodramas as well (The Bad and the Beautiful, Some Came Running). Here he is working for the first time with Daughter Liza, a stops-out entertainer, and such gifted, welcome actors as Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. The material, adapted from a novel by Maurice Druon called Film of Memory, would seem suited to all: a sentimental, gilded fairy tale about a poor Italian provincial (Liza) who comes to Rome to work in a hotel. She buddies up with a batty, once regal contessa (Bergman), who urges her always to "be yourself--the world worships an original." The girl follows this advice and becomes a first-magnitude movie star.

Silly, certainly. But the plots for such flights into never-never land have never been notable for probability. The movie could have worked with hard effort and a little magic, but something has gone terribly wrong. Director Minnelli's once wondrous alchemy turns everything to lead. The movie is disjointed, sappy, hysterical; and the actors, perhaps sensing trouble, press on with painful, overbearing desperation. American-International, the distributor, has substantially recut the movie, which is easy enough to believe. A Matter of Time does not look at all like a Minnelli movie. The fastidious craftsmanship that he has through the years expended even on the lowliest undertaking is nowhere in evidence. This movie cannot have been a happy occasion for him, either, so perhaps the best thing to do is simply pass over A Matter of Time and hope that all involved move on, soon, to better things.

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