La Paloma

This heady exercise in excess mixes the operatic passion of La Traviata, stylish decadence of Stroheim and Sternberg, and the macabre glee of Grand Guignol. Ingrid Caven plays Dietrich-like chanteuse stricken with CamilIe-like wasting disease. The disease seems to be arrested when a plump, wealthy young man (Peter Kern) develops a grand passion for her, but mortality raises its grinning skull again when she falls helplessly in love with another man. Jay Cocks in "Time" wrote, "LA PALOMA is a wonderful mad shotgun wedding of high camp move mythology, bad taste, obsessive, romanticism, and impudent satire... Whatever it is, it certainly is some kind of fantastic movie."