I've not read Sheldon's book but I've no doubt the movie is a fairly faithful transcription. It has all the elements that appeal to the ladies. For a start, it's concerned with the loves and passions of the rich, and it moves – in scenes of incredible luxury – against a background of war, fashion, politics, and even Hollywood. It also has a soap opera plot that relies on twists rather than believability, plus soap opera characters who can turn on emotional fire-works with as little depth as a pizza, and who revel in dialogue that they can chew around and waste a grand amount of time enunciating. And yet, despite everything, this soap opera is so skillfully tailored and fashioned, it's hard to resist its overblown appeal. No doubt the producer had hysterics when he saw the editor's final cut in which he threw away scene after expensive scene of incredible period detail in order to concentrate on TV-style close-ups of the cardboard characters. The producer also went to the trouble to utilize real locations in Greece at enormous cost, but what the editor left on the screen was so minuscule, it wasn't worth even one per cent of the expense. In fact, they would actually have done much better to forget about Greece and simply played against a process screen in Hollywood.

Producer Frank Yablans and 20th Century Fox spent some serious cash on "The Other Side of Midnight" filming scenes on location in Paris, Washington, DC and Greece. It certainly looks good on screen. The lush musical score by Michel Legrand made the movie sound more important than it really is. (When is a Legrand musical score not lush?) But the plodding epic WWII romantic story about two women who are in love with the same pilot, adapted from the best selling Sidney Sheldon novel, should not be taken too seriously. The movie is so soapy, I'm surprised Procter & Gamble did not co-produce the movie.Marie-France Pisier tries her best to flesh out (pun intended) her character of Noelle, using her body to get to the top. But the scenes with Sorrell Booke as a businessman who bought Noelle from her father, Christian Marquand as a filmmaker and Raf Vallone as a Greek tycoon, were rather embarrassing and I did not feel any sympathy toward her character. John Beck fared even worse as a very uncharismatic, two-timing cad. It is interesting that after "Midnight", Pisier (who I remember from a much better movie from two years earlier, Cousin, Cousine) went back to appearing in movies in her native France and Beck continued to appear in soaps, this time on television.Somehow, I thought Susan Sarandon fared best because she was the best actor of the three leads. I felt more sympathy for her character Catherine than Noelle. And what has happened to Sarandon after this trash-fest? Can someone say a thinking man's sex symbol? (Oscar-winning performance as Sr. Helen Prejean in "Dead Man Walking" notwithstanding.) Why a 5 out of 10 instead of a 1 or 2? I remember reading many negative reviews when it was first released in 1977. However, unlike what was reported in the IMDb Trivia section, the movie did have a long run in theaters and was a moderate success at the box office. Even though I was very leery of the film's 2 hour, 45 minute length, I caught the movie on cable TV. This movie is like a trashy summer novel, I could not put this movie down. Without giving the ending away, the plot twists almost made the film worth my time. Having seen the movie several times in the past few years, The Other Side of Midnight is a bad movie but I plead guilty to admit that it is so bad, it's good.Update (5/10/2007): I tried to re-watch this movie and ended up fast forwarding through the boring parts. I guess my original review was rather generous. If you cut down the "getting to know you" musical montage scenes, the transition scenes where people are walking from one beautiful scene to another and delete the gratuitous nude scenes, it might have been better. The movie is also filled with script exposition and not enough actual scenes that might have made the movie more interesting. The scenes between Pisier and Michael Lerner, who plays an investigator trailing John Beck's character, are especially deadly.Sarandon's performance still holds up. She exudes more depth to her character than the script allows. I sense that the movie was made by some dirty old men whose idea for a "chick flick" was to see the main female characters naked. A naked male lead? Not a chance.

If this were to have been done twenty years later with a modern sensibility, gullible stars, a more lethal editor, and a spot more atmosphere, it could well have ended up as a hit. The budget was obviously good, and the photography is mostly excellent despite its too-frequent descent into seventies syrup. The lighting (and look) tends to be pretty uniform - for example, Wartime Paris was apparently a beautifully colorful time, and the mood gay and sumptuous, but then so is everything else, right down to the fitted carpet. The debt owed to the black and white classics is apparent, but there is something very unconvincing about using the old styles of movie-making with full-on glossy, TV color. A shame they didn't go all the way, and let the hammers fly -for heavens' sake give me some deep shadow when the lights are on. All in all, the zoom lens is over-active, the script underwhelming, and the score dreary. The performances, however, are lively and committed and the styling and costumes sometimes inspired. "Entraptured" as I was, I couldn't help feeling I was watching a Judith Krantz novel....oh, that's right - it's Sidney Sheldon! Compelling nonetheless...

I saw this movie upon the persistent recommendations of my lady co-employees thinking and hoping that there may be sense after all in their insistence. But of course, knowing them I expected this to be another chick movie, a maudlin love story.To my surprise, it had a lot of suspense and I also appreciated the fact that it captured the ambience of the European countries that served as locales. It did well in the Philippines. I saw it with a standing room crowd and it took me a while to grab a seat. But I doubt if it was well received in the US.