Ash Wednesday * (1973, Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda, Helmut Berger, Keith Baxter) – Classic Movie Review 7,012

The 1973 mystery drama film Ash Wednesday is a hysterical farrago, with Elizabeth Taylor as a married woman in her 50s trying to make herself look young via gross plastic surgery in Italy, where she has an affair with a much younger stud (Helmut Berger).

Director Larry Peerce’s 1973 mystery drama film Ash Wednesday is a quite hysterical soap opera farrago, easy to watch and easier still to chortle over, with Elizabeth Taylor as Barbara Sawyer, a gorgeously gowned, married woman in her mid-50s trying to make herself look young again with a total full-body makeover via gross plastic surgery in Italy.

Once there, now looking decades younger, she finds herself having an affair with the much younger stud Erich (Helmut Berger). Henry Fonda somehow survives dignity intact as Taylor’s husband Mark, despite his miscasting and all the absurdities in the film around him, though he is helped in this by not having anything to do till the film’s last act.

Ash Wednesday is just the kind of thing to give a once good career a bad name, and it is a rotten advert for plastic surgery as well. Undeniably, though, it is one of the great bad movies, and as camp as Christmas and quite a hoot. Elizabeth Taylor really did find herself in some terrible stuff around this time. Just to put us off further, it contains repulsive footage from actual facelift operations. But it is dark comedy fun if you can face it.

Also in the cast are Keith Baxter as David, Maurice Teynac, Margaret Blye, Monique Van Vooren, Heering Schläter, Dino Mele and Jill Pratt.

Ash Wednesday is directed by Larry Peerce, runs 100 minutes, is a Saggitarius production, is released by Paramount, is written by Jean-Claude Tramont, is shot in Technicolor by Ennio Guarnieri, is produced by Dominick Dunne, and is scored by Maurice Jarre.

It was shot at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto, Italy; Dobbiaco, Bolzano, Trentino – Alto Adige, Italy; Miramonti Hotel, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto, Italy: and Rome, Lazio, Italy.

A 1973 letter by Richard Burton revealed his take on Elizabeth Taylor and Ash Wednesday: ‘I sit here vulgarised by the idea that my wife is doing, violently against my ‘taste’, a f*cking lousy, nothing bloody film. Her singular acceptance of this film is because she wants to remain a famous film star. What the stupid (occasionally) maniac doesn’t realise is that she is already immortalised (as a film person) forever.’

Nevertheless, Elizabeth Taylor was a 1974 nominee as Golden Globe Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.

Helmut Berger died on 18 May 2023, at the age of 78.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,012

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