East Side, West Side

Based on a novel by Marcia Davenport, East Side, West Side details the strained marriage between Barbara Stanwyck’s Jessie and James Mason’s Brandon and the impact their crumbling relationship has on a variety of periphery figures (including Ava Gardner’s Isabel and Van Heflin’s Mark). Filmmaker Mervyn LeRoy, armed with Isobel Lennart’s screenplay, delivers an unabashedly soapy melodrama that admittedly does suffer from a hit-and-miss midsection, although it’s equally apparent that the movie benefits rather substantially from the top-tier efforts of a uniformly superb cast – with Stanwyck and Mason’s superb work here ably matched by their various costars. (Gardner’s deliciously broad turn as the scheming Isabel remains a highlight, to be sure.) And while LeRoy has packed the proceedings with a handful of irresistibly salacious sequences, including (and especially) a mid-movie confrontation between Jessie and Isabel, East Side, West Side‘s less-than-consistent atmosphere ensures that it’s often as tedious as it is entertaining – with the picture’s proliferation of underwhelming, overlong interludes enhancing the perpetually rocky vibe. The impressively compelling third act, which revolves around a murder investigation (!), ensures that the whole thing ends on a decidedly positive note, with the end result a decent-enough sudser that’s often more entertaining than one might’ve anticipated.

*** out of ****