The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

I normally wouldn’t have watched any of the recently released “Joan Collins Collection,” but I try to keep up with films about architects, and this was interesting for Ray Milland’s portrayal of Stanford White. A very young Joan Collins plays a sanitized Evelyn Nesbit and Farley Granger is the demented rich boy Harry K. Thaw, to complete the fatal triangle. White’s work and the era in general are rather thinly characterized, but the Cinemascope dazzle of Richard Fleischer’s direction certainly characterizes an era when Hollywood turned to spectacle to try to win audience back from television. The rendition of real events is far from reliable and actual motivations are self-censored, so the story is a bit of a hash, sort of minor league Lola Montes with the sex bleached out. But even while putting on a demure act, Joan/Evelyn sizzles, and the well-restored scope and bustle of the colorful staging made this a nice workout for a big new tv. (1955, dvd, n.) *5+*