Monday, December 28, 2015

Unfaithfully Yours (1948)


☆ ☆ ☆


Unfaithfully Yours (1948) – P. Sturges

Rex Harrison wants desperately to be in a manic Preston Sturges movie (such as The Palm Beach Story or The Miracle of Morgan Creek) and he heroically tries to make it so.  Just look at him thrashing about his apartment destroying stuff on his own.  It’s a bit sad really because this film shows Sturges running out of steam. The concept is good: a famous symphony conductor suspects his wife of cheating (after receiving an unwanted detective’s report from Rudy Vallee) and proceeds to imagine what he will do.  That is, there are three fantasy sequences that arise while he is conducting, apparently magnificently (the camera tracks into his eye each time). Unfortunately, his wife, played by Linda Darnell, isn’t up to the manic comic standards and the script contains too few funny gags and just so much useless thrashing about.  And this was Sturges’ last hurrah (more or less) – too bad because he burned so brightly during the war years.

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