tomsview "Spector of the Rose" may be overwritten and overwrought, but it also has mood to spare and is strangely haunting.It was Samuel Goldwyn who said that it is the last five minutes that makes a film memorable, and "Specter of the Rose" has a stunning last five minutes. But the first eighty-five are more problematic.Haidi Kuznetsova (Viola Essen), a young ballerina in Madame La Sylph's ballet school, is in love with Andre Sanine (Ivan Kirov) a brilliant dancer who is recovering from the death of Nikki, his previous love. La Sylph (Judith Anderson) warns Haidi that Sanine is going insane. He hears music, "Le Spectre de la Rose" that no one else can hear, and probably murdered Nikki - Sanine is an anagram for insane after all. Haidi marries him anyway.When they embark on a successful ballet tour, Sanine suffers a breakdown. They leave the tour and book into a high-rise hotel. After the exhausted Haidi falls asleep, the internal music overwhelms Sanine. He becomes the Spirit of the Rose and commences to dance armed with a stiletto - "The rose has a thorn". In a truly startling sequence he dances around the apartment like a trapped animal before he takes that Nijinsky-like leap. It's a scene that stays with you.Writer/director/producer Ben Hecht created an intriguing plot based on two of his earlier short stories, and the famous ballet. Although Judith Anderson's La Sylph is superb, Hecht also created some characters that drag the story down. Michael Chekhov as failed impresario, Max Polikoff and Lionel Stander as failed poet, Lionel Gans, overstay their welcome with ponderous dialogue and lots of it. Gans is also creepily attracted to Haidi.It shows the dangers facing the auteur. Where another director may have considered some passages of dialogue overripe and jettisoned them, Hecht the director seemed to fall in love with every word Hecht the screenwriter wrote.There is a whiff of tragedy about the two leads. Both were dancers with theatre backgrounds. This was Kirov's one and only movie and Essen only made one other. In Kirov's case you can see why, he is a pretty strange actor, almost distant, but as one critic noted, his alien presence was perfect for this part. He had a great physique, and the set of jumps (entrechat) he completes just after he first appears is pretty impressive, but his acting was leaden.Not so Essen. Why a studio didn't grab her is a mystery, she had an unusual beauty, not unlike Pier Angeli or Gail Russell, and like them she died young, but she could act as this film proves.George Antheil's rippling score sweeps the film along from the opening titles, and although studio bound, the cinematography, often shot at a low angle, is classy. The film has similarities to the more successful "A Double Life", starring Ronald Coleman. In that film, the actor becomes possessed with his role as Othello. It came out around the same time as "Specter of the Rose" as did "The Red Shoes", but Hecht's film predates them both - did he spark a trend?"Specter of the Rose" has flaws aplenty, but it also has an indefinable mood that makes it one of the strangest, most intriguing films you are likely to see.

Johnny Gunn I saw this once at the age of 20. I'm now 80. It's still on my top ten, all-time list. I remember Lionel Stander and "loving her with his eyes". I haven't seen it since. It's a most unusual, beautiful memory. Others on my list are "Separate Tables" (produced by Hecht who wrote "Spectre) and Witness for the Prosecution": Is anybody picking up a pattern? No, because "My Fair Lady" and "Quacker Fortune Has A Cousin Living In The Bronx" are there, too. Until I wrote this I hadn't realized that everybody in all these casts only truly fell in love ONCE. Until I wrote this I hadn't realized that I did, at 20, and still am, at 80. And, until I wrote this line I haven't written the minimum ten.

bmacv Whatever unfulfilled ambitions drove Ben Hecht to write, produce and direct Spectre of the Rose, it's charitable to pretend they bore scant relation to the gruesome folly that eventuated. Did Hollywood's most prolific uncredited contributor to great screenplays crave the glory that would come with his very own Citizen Kane? If so, he made choices that can only be accounted as bizarre.First, he set his story in the world of `the dance.' Since of all the arts, ballet, for Americans at any rate, reeks of the rarefied – the elite, movies about it invariably lapse into gaseous talk about `aaht.' Spectre of the Rose dives right into this pitfall. The high-flown, portentous dialogue must have entranced Hecht but it plainly baffles his cast. They variously give it stilted readings, flat it out, and drop quotation marks around it, but except for Judith Anderson – as an old assoluta now training novices in a `dingy' studio – nobody can make it work. (But then, she made Lady Scarface work.)The plot concerns a deranged male superstar called Sanine (Ivan Kirov), who may have murdered his first wife and partner and now seems to be rehearsing to kill his second (Viola Essen). It's safe to presume Kirov was engaged only to fling his polished torso around because he can't even act embarrassed; it's no surprise that this is his solitary screen credit. But his murderous madness just sits there, with a take-it-or-leave-it shrug, while the movie pirouettes off on other tangents. There's a larcenous impresario (Michael Chekhov) who outdoes even Clifton Webb in trying to break down the celluloid closet's door. Most puzzlingly, there's Lionel Stander as a Runyonesque poet who seems intended as some sort of Greek chorus to the goings-on but serves instead as a major irritant, uninvited and out of place.Without knowing what compromises Hecht made and obstacles he faced in bringing his work to the screen, it's easy to be glib. But there's such a discordance of tones and jostling of moods that the movie elicits diverse responses; thus some viewers have found in Spectre of the Rose something special and unique. Movies, maybe more than any other art form, touch our idiosyncracies. But when we're left unsure whether The Spectre of the Rose is dead-earnest or a grandiose spoof – an election-bet of a movie -- something has gone radically awry.

Jay Harris This is the 6th viewing of Spectre of The Rose ( I see this every 10 years or so. Aside from some Ballet scenes, this is primarily a love story centered around a male Dancer & the death of his first wife. Ivan Dixon plays the Dance with grace (he cant act) Viola Essen is the ballerina he falls in love with, ( she also dances gracefully) but cant act. The main reason to see this film is for LIONEL STANDER as a sardonic writer.(he could play this type role in his sleep),He should have been nominated for best supporting actor. Mikail Chekov plays an effeminate producer quite well. The magnificent Judith Anderson is the bitter dance teacher. & of course she is superb,Reccomended for ballet loves & fans of Lionel Stander.rating only **1/2 78 points 6 on IMDb