Popular reviews

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  Review by Sara Clements ★★★★½ 1

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

  who chooses a violin over joan crawford this is so unrealistic

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★½ 24

  Love and talent are weighed for their credit-worthiness in Jean Negulesco’s romantic melodrama, “Humoresque.” 

  Joan Crawford and John Garfield, who came of age in the Great Depression, here play lovers whose morals are tested by their characters having done the same. With a film by one of the preeminent social drama scribes of the 1930s, Clifford Odets, “Humoresque” is an intelligent observation on how economic disparity can works its way past bank accounts and into hearts, and destinies. 

  Garfield’s journey as a born-in-poverty violinist brilliantly casts the actor against type. The script itself even makes a jape at how Garfield would more likely be a prizefighter than a musician. 

  This improbable imbalance positions Garfield ideally to be knocked around at…

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  Review by Anna Imhof 🌸 ★★★★ 13

  I would like to dedicate this review to someone not so special
  who was a violinist that I was head over heels gaga gugu for
  until I learned that violinists only love three things:
  themselves, their fucking violin, and themselves
  and this movie is about Joan Crawford who falls in love
  with a violinist who looks like John Garfield
  and she doesn't yet know that violinists only love three things:
  themselves, their fucking violin, and themselves
  but by the end of the movie, she will know, too!

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  Review by Melina

  JOAN CRAWFORD IN GLASSES

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  Review by sakana1 ★★½ 12

  Major spoilers in the last paragraph of the review.

  In his 1956 Life Magazine article "Changing Roles in Modern Marriage," Robert Coughlan laid out gender roles this way:

  For a man, the sexual role requires aggressiveness and a certain degree of dominance, even of exploitativeness ... Men are designed by nature to sire children and women to bear them ... For women, the sexual act itself implies receptiveness and a certain passivity ... These primary feminine qualities — receptivity, passivity, and the desire to nurture — color a woman’s entire emotional life.

  The gist of Coughlan's article is that, in the light of rising divorce and delinquency rates, "something is urgently wrong — wrong on such a scale as to…

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  Review by nora ★★★½ 6

  i'm a violinist and i was screaming for this entire movie because of how this production actually made an effort to make it look like john garfield is playing the violin!! having one real violinist finger and another violinist bow during all the closeups actually WORKED i cannot believe it why does every production with string playing not do this??? they hacked it in 1946 you clowns!!! i was always right for being pissed at movies that have fake fucking violin playing!!! I AM VINDICATED!!!!!

  other things this movie gets right:
  - prodigies are assholes with big egos it's just the way it is
  - violinists love to correct and argue with dumb conductors (i'm violinists)

  things this movie could…

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  Review by Christopher Moore ★★★★ 4

  Me and melodrama move in mysterious ways. One day, I hate it, the next, I love it. Rinse, repeat. But melodrama has my attention when a precocious violinist played by John Garfield gets mixed up with an imperious Joan Crawford as a patroness of the arts, or rather a possessive, lonely woman used to collecting and manipulating soft men. In Humoresque, what I normally find overwrought is transfixing. The music can swell, and the conflict between art and love can rise to a level of indulgence that could be downright ludicrous in other films, yet I'm sucked into the film's orbit. Oscar Levant's cheap wisecracks only drew me in more. Melodrama can be a beautiful thing sometimes.

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  Review by vincent price was 6′4″ ★★★ 2

  Humoresque has glimmers of real passion, but it’s just so bogged down by the weight of its overblown story. The film can’t escape its own seriousness. I’m a big fan of both John Garfield and Joan Crawford— they’re enticing on screen together, when the film allows them the chance. However, beyond the performances, an aspect of the film I did enjoy is the unique editing and gorgeous cinematography. Unlike a lot of music-centered movies, the music here is not a separate entity from the action of the plot. It melts Garfield’s violin performances with close-ups of Joan Crawford’s face, and the film crescendos so beautifully to a magnificent climax. I wish I liked this film more, but it could have really benefited from a tighter runtime (and more Joan Crawford).

  3.1/5

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  Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★★★½ 5

  TW: mentions of suicide

  Some spoilers

  "I spend my life doing penance for things I never should have done in the first place."

  "I don't know how you men get that way but every time you meet an attractive woman you begin to plan on how and where you can club her wings down."

  "Paul, what good is a woman who's no use to anyone?"

  I can't believe I gave this film three stars back when I first watched it in 2018. On this rewatch, I was astounded by it, my eyes glued to the screen during the climax as if I was seeing it for the very first time. John Garfield and Joan Crawford are two of my favorite…

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  Review by tammy💫 ★★★★

  there’s a special place in hell reserved for people who put Joan Crawford second.

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  Review by Nora MacIntyre ★★★★

  This movie is entirely Joan's. She steals the picture from the very first second she makes her entrance, and delivers an amazing performance as the complex and spellbinding Helen Wright. Forever my favorite movie.

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  Review by emma ★★★½

  oh to be joan crawford dramatically crying while walking on the beach with violin music swelling behind her