Bus Stop

I came to this movie prepared to hate it. The plot was enough to drive me away - dumb virgin cowboy falls in love at first sight with well-used barroom singer and decides she'll be his wife. These are people who should be discouraged from linking up together - instead, there's a significant danger they might breed!

But while Bus Stop is populated by people who are definitely a few vouchers short of a pop-up toaster, it does win out in the end by virtue of its star, Marilyn Monroe. This is a film which rebuts any notion that Marilyn could not act. She is fragile and vulnerable, tired and worn, and ultimately very, very touching, in this comedy laced with pathos.

Her co-star Don Murray, who plays the gormless cowboy who has never been kissed, is intensely annoying for most of the filmic journey. Marilyn's acting is a model of restraint. His is jarringly over-the-top. He is not just gauche; he is G-A-U-C-H-E - that should be in capital letters six times that size!

The film irritates while it beguiles. It is 40 per cent annoyance, and 60 per cent satisfying - and Marilyn supplies all the satisfaction. She is intensely believable, especially when she confides to her friend that "everybody has to have a direction in life". She then produces a map of America, showing a straight red line painted across it. "This is my direction", she says. The line heads across the Continent, from near its centre towards California, and traces her route as bar-room belle, as she works her way from bar to bar. She is, she says, headed for Hollywood. She'll just stand on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, and wait for the casting-couch offers and the chance of being discovered.

Bus Stop has not stood the test of time as well as the brilliant Some Like it Hot, and it does not have the eccentric escapist nature of River of No Return. It certainly comes nowhere near the benchmark set by Marilyn's greatest film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But it is a fine testimony to the calibre of her acting - something she was so rarely called on to display.

This is a fair anamorphic transfer of a print which seems in reasonably good condition. It is not breathtakingly sharp, in fact it seems slightly fuzzy in fine detail, but is certainly good enough for a movie of this vintage. Hue and fleshtones are generally excellent.

The English track is excellent for its period, delivering a realistic soundstage. The audio setting must be selected before starting viewing - the DVD authoring does not allow toggling between languages - or between subtitles - during the screening.

This features a trailer of the movie in reasonable condition. What a great idea - this lets you see scenes of the movie ahead of actually seeing the movie. And it lasts only a couple of minutes - welcome brevity, instead of those annoying long documentaries and special features some other companies load their DVDs with. We should be grateful to the Fox executives who tirelessly sought out these old previews for us, instead of just going out and commissioning new special material.

And thanks too for the cheesy old pictures that make up the still photo gallery.

I am pleasantly surprised - this is worthwhile viewing just to see the fine performance by Marilyn. It is not, however, a film I would want to return to very often, if at all. Rental is the first option.