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| Title: BEAUTIFUL STRANGER AKA TWIST OF FATE Year: 1954 Rating: ***1/2 |
"I stole it... I am innocent," Herbert Lom says to Stanley Baker... One's a gambling con artist and the other a rich businessman/secret criminal, both connected to central star Ginger Rogers...
Baker's her supposedly single fiance and Lom a friend that bums money and steals jewelry, specifically a bracelet that ignites the alternate-titled TWIST OF FATE involving Rogers's real life husband Jacques Bergerac as not only a proud-poor artist but a different kind of Wrong Man, more a Mistaken Man...
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Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Ginger Rogers
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This British production has a famous American (most do) and is set in Bergerac's territory of Cannes, so BEAUTIFUL STRANGER imitates the lavish melodramas from Hollywood's Golden Age...
Which is actually a shame since Baker, who would often play intense yet interesting, fleshed-out characters... bad, good or in-between... is somewhat one-dimensional as the heavy despite starting out romancing the hell out of Rogers before literally smacking her in the face....
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| Jacques Bergerac and Ginger Rogers in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
Yet the film's mostly known for Rogers and Bergerac, whose convenient romance includes flirtatious (pre-GHOST) pottery-making while the crime story (including a weaselly Eddie Byrne) gets secondary treatment...
And with future HELL DRIVERS Baker and Lom brimmed with raw, deceptive energy, BEAUTIFUL should have stretched beyond the Rogers/Bergerac marriage that wouldn't last the decade... yet it's still a neat 90-minute programmer, part noir but mostly soap, making this STRANGER a bit too shiny and clean for the otherwise gritty crime genre.
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Ginger Rogers |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Ginger Rogers |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Eddie Byrne
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Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with secret wife Margaret Rawlings
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with secret wife Margaret Rawlings |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with secret wife Margaret Rawlings |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker and Eddie Byrne in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Jacques Bergerac and Ginger Rogers in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Eddie Byrne and Herbert Lom in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Herbert Lom in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Ginger Rogers |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Ginger Rogers |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker and Eddie Byrne in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker and Eddie Byrne in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker and Eddie Byrne in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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Stanley Baker in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER with Hell Drivers co-star Herbert Lom
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| Jacques Bergerac and Ginger Rogers in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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| Eddie Byrne and Ginger Rogers in BEAUTIFUL STRANGER |
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