Customer Reviews

Dance with a Stranger [VHS]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson) was a night club hostess in one of London's private clubs. It was a Spring evening in 1954 when David Blakely (Rupert Everett) walked in with some friends. Little more than a year later, Ruth Ellis was hanged for the murder of Blakely. The movie tells the compelling, tawdry, almost inevitable story of what happened.

Ellis was divorced and living with her young son above the club she helped manage. She bleached her hair, knew how to keep men laughing and buying, and was definitely not part of the upper class system. Blakely was a race car driver, wealthy, young, selfish, had the right friends, and had never had to face any real responsibility in his life. With some mixture of lust and need, the two of them instantly became entangled in each others' lives. "Where do you live?" he asks her. "Over the shop," she says. "Can I take you home tonight?" "Yes." Their affair follows a pattern. First lust, then tears, abuse, his forgetting her for a while, her desperation, and lust again. She has one friend, Desmond Cussen (Ian Holm). Cussen loves her but is the type of man who can't quite get up the nerve to kiss her, much less invite her to bed. He trails after her and tries to pick up the pieces. Cussen knows the kind of man Blakely is. "Why can't you leave him alone," he once shouts at Ellis. "He's so involved with himself he can't think of anything else." The results are predictable. Ellis slides further into misery and fixation the more Blakely takes her for granted and forgets about her at times. One night she takes a pistol, follows him to a pub, and when he leaves she carefully puts two bullets in his chest.

The trial was a great event in Britain. It had everything: sex, the class system, a tawdry affair. The legal system couldn't deal with her fast enough. The trial started June 20, 1955. She was hanged July 13. Ruth Ellis was the last woman hanged by the British.

The movie is excellent and the performances are extraordinary. Rupert Everett was 26 when he made the film. He's perfect as the product of a privileged system, so selfish as to be cowardly, so self involved that he misses entirely what he is doing to Ellis, or even care if he did realize. Miranda Richardson at 27 carries the movie. Her performance made her a star. I can't describe what she does except that every word she says and every step she takes just rings true. She is utterly mesmerizing.

This is, in my view, one of the movies that can probably be called great. You'll be thinking about it for some time. The DVD picture looks fine. The only extra is an alternate ending, which is disposable.

If there is one problem with Dance With a Stranger it has to be that inevitably one becomes so mesmerized with the performance of Miranda Richardson there is a danger of missing the other performances. The nuances of her character's brittle emotions are perfectly pitched with the arch of penciled eyebrows, the tightening of blood-red lips, and the lisp of her tense voice. A total victim of her own weakness she is drawn into an emotionally and physically abusive relationship, but is powerless to escape. Even under the wing of a man who truly loves her, she throws his devotion aside in a reckless and indeed masochistic spiral. In Richardson's potrayal Ruth Ellis seems almost to crave the violence and mercurial passion, watch her eyes and face as Blakely hits her. The movie drips ambience, wonderfully creating the London nightclub scene in the early 50's. Costumes and makeup are impeccable. Superlative performances from Ian Holm and Rupert Everett, and indeed all members of the cast. Mike Newell has taken a wonderful slice of an evocative era and portrayed a tragedy that we must hope, could never have reached such an awful conclusion today. Breathtaking.

This is as good a cinimatic achievement of a factual homocide as I've seen since In Cold Blood, the infamous Truman Capote nonfiction novel. Miranda Richardson is rivoting, her performance superlative, as she plunges deep into the depths of depair and self pity. Her portrayal of the attention starved and insecure Ruth Ellis is deeply inspired. How? I ask myself with each repeated viewing of this movie, could such a finely crafted flim be overlooked , almost ignored.

Noteworthy as well is the steeley performance delivered by Rupert Everett, as David Blakley. He is Ellis's part-time lover and object of obsession. In addition the brilliant direction of Mike Newell creates perfection in a Hitchcockian way. He creates the tention and edgeiness, the underlying danger and the oh so real atmosphere. This sense of detail is flawless. I found myself utterly sucked into the dark seedy, lustful world of a dejected and scorned woman. Admittly, Dance With A Stranger is not for everyone. Watching someone drowning in a sea of obsessive desire, and ultimatly rendered helpless by it's grasp, is not exactly light-fare.

No, Ruth's world at the hostess club is nothing like The Kit-Kat Club of Caberet fame. She's no Sally Bowles and there are few, if any, light moments to relieve the tention. I'll defey anyone to sit through Dance With A Stranger and not feel unmittigating despair and pity for Ruth Ellis. Miranda Richardson turns in a performace of unparralled depth and integrity. Miranda Richardson was truely Oscar-Worthy.... Too bad she and the film have been largely forgotten.

A WORTHY sister to Susan Hayward's "I Want to Live" both based on fact, this scorching look at 'fatal attraction' across the Class line will stay with you for a long long time.

Depressing? Of course! MIRANDA RICHARDSON as the much abused real life Ruth Ellis glistens in the sultry expose of 'Life Reaching for the Top' - you just cannot take your eyes off this woman as she battles through this hellish liason with the upper-class David [another brilliant turn by Rupert Everett].

One almost applauds when she is driven to the inevitable conclusion of the affair, but it gets even worse ..... Yes, it's a shocking ride though this mangled life.

This IS the versatile and highly gifted Ms. Richardson's movie.

Other viewings? "Tom and Viv", "Enchanted April", "Damage".

This film was Richardson's first outing as a movie actress and she is outstanding, Everett is also good as the callous playboy, though he has never quite managed to build on his first performance in the way Richardson did. Holme is aslo excellent as the doting "Father" figure.
This is the sad telling of the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in England, in the mid 1950's.
Ellis was essentially a loving and caring woman with a chequered past and little options for making a living, a woman who would have been highly frowned upon in such conservative times. She met and fell in love with, a rich boy rogue, David Blakely and the film chronicles their destructive and doomed relationship. Not an easy story, Richardson is amazing as the increasingly unhinged Ruth and Everett is the perfect "Bastard".
A worthy watch and an excellent introduction to the talents of Richardson (in my opinoin, she is one of the finest contemparary actresses and could only be rivalled by the likes of Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon).
This film is a very sad tale and to this day the British Judicial system debates whether or not Ellis should have been executed, the majority thinking amongst the British public both then and now is that it was a gross miscarraige of justice.
I have to also say that I cannot understand negative reviews of this film, I can only conclude that such people find the content hard to tolerate which is vaguely understandable, or they just don't have the intellilect to work through the story.

Before Brit director Mike Newell became famous for rom-coms starring Hugh Grant, he directed this intense little masterpiece called *Dance with a Stranger*, based on the true-life story of the Last Woman Hanged in England, Ruth Ellis. Firstly, one is shocked to discover that they were still HANGING people in England 50 years ago! -- in the progressive United States, we had moved on to electric chairs and other inventive methods for dispatching our undesirables. Onward and upward! At any rate, this film is an engrossing experience, with dynamite acting from the British Meryl Streep, Miranda Richardson. (Another shocking thing to consider is that this was her first starring role in the movies! She carries herself like a 20-year screen veteran, here.) A very young Rupert Everett acquits himself well as the lover that Ellis eventually guns down. He plays the part with a curious mixture of viciousness and sleepiness. And Ian Holm finds himself in the type of role he was born to play; that is, the repressed, lip-gnawing little man on the sidelines. His character is a torch-carrying friend of Ellis, as equally obsessed with her as she is with the Everett character. (The Everett character is equally obsessed with himself.) There's some social commentary here, if one cares to search for it: it's a feminist saga by its very nature, in which the heroine serves as either a) a repository for Everett's "jam", or b) a punching bag . . . and sometimes as a combination of the two. As you might imagine, Ellis finally gets her fill of this treatment, but don't expect a feel-good, you-go-girl speech as a side-dish for the vengeful main course. This is a woman in living damnation. She's not Susan Sarandon with an accent. There's also a nod toward the caste system in post-war Britain. Ruth Ellis was little better than a hooker, one of those "very friendly" bar-maids who indifferently sings torch songs and keeps the gentlemen company. The Everett character, despite his moonlighting as a race-car driver, came from a family whose home in the country resembled Blenheim Palace. And Everett's comfortably bourgeois friends can muster only contempt for this woman, who -- to them -- seems no better than a tarty and shrill Marilyn Monroe look-alike. Yah yah yah, the social commentary is there, all right; but the movie isn't terribly interested in it. You're better off just watching Richardson portray this woman whose life spirals vertiginously out of control. One senses that she has been waiting all along for a chance to self-destruct: it's not an easy life, coming home to your young son reeking of gin and cigarette smoke. As she slowly but surely turns into a masochistic, lust-soaked monster, pulling down three different people (including her own son) into the abyss right along with her, we can only watch with appalled fascination. I highly recommend this ice-cold film.

This film is one of a few that had me mesmerized from the beginning to the very end.Miranda Richardson should have received every award that is out there.I am sympathetic to Ruth Ellis' plight.Everett was so convincing as playboy Blakely that I wanted to shoot him myself!I do not condone murder, but human beings commit murder for less reason than Ruth Ellis did. I saw Miranda Richardson in "Damage"with Jeremy Irons, and the character was so different, I was amazed!This is a piece that provides an insight into the so called fatal attraction.I do not know the full story of Ruth Ellis, and David Blakely, but this masterpiece turns a terrible tragedy for everyone involved, into a cinematic journey of absolute delight!

this film has stayed with me because of miranda richardson's showy performance as ruth ellis. she is a woman that is barely in control of her life, then relationships with the wrong men at the same time destroys her. the script by shelagh delaney works the facts into a tight dramatic collection of scenes and moments peppered through with taut dialogue. the stylings and visuals evoke an inky, foggy london that was still struggling to get back on its feet after world war ii. and richardson is supported ably by pretty boy rupert everett as david blakely and ian holm as desmond cussen, the two men in ellis' short and trauma-filled life. perhaps, the most tragic element of the story though, is not ellis' destruction of herself but her unknowing destruction of her son.

Beautifully rendered, superbly acted film recreates events leading up to one of England's most famous crimes of passion. Newell painstakingly revives the look and feel of 1950's London, using this sordid affair to examine the ingrained class differences that doomed the couple from the start. Richardson, Everett, and Holm are marvels to watch, and the film's shattering climax is worth waiting for. Catch this chilling romantic thriller.

I love this movie. I saw it first back in 1985 when it first played in the art house theaters in the USA and have seen it a few times since. I believe it was the first time I'd ever seen Richardson or Everett in anything and they both completely knocked me out. When I saw Everett in "Ideal Husband" last year, I didn't even realize it was the same actor at first. He's that good. When you immediately recongize actors doing the same role, year after year, it is a bad sign. This is a notorious British murder case that ended in Ruth Ellis's (Richardson's) execution in Britian for murdering her lover. The thing that always stands out to me in this movie is how obsessed these two become with their sick relationship with one another. This is something everyone can relate to because everyone knows someone in a sick relationship. Many people have even been in sick relationships themselves. Because neither character can break the strangulating force of their combined obsession, the obsession snares and turns on both of them. I also thought that it was pretty effectively conveyed throughout that she just wasn't good enough for him and didn't meet any minimal standards of British respectability. By any objective standard, however, he was not a laudatory individual either and would be easy to classify as big trouble to know or get involved with personally. Yet the country had more sympathy for him. I think Ellis's being considered rather trashy was also why it was so easy to execute her in Britain. Had she been a member of the aristocracy and/or upper class, a different movie would have had to be written. He probably would have been falling all over himself trying to marry her then even if she otherwise remained exactly the same and with the same physical appearance. Then she would have been merely a British eccentric.