Word: melodrama
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Perhaps the most admirable thing about the production is that director Richard Blau and his cast have faced all the problems of the play directly. Blau might easily have turned the play into a shocker, or a melodrama, but he has aimed instead for simplicity, letting the plot do the work...
Scenarist Harold Pinter and Director Jack Clayton (Room At The Top) show proper scorn for the easy tricks of melodrama. Their unsentimental aim is to take a marriage apart and nail up the bleeding pieces for honest scrutiny. Often as not, they succeed, finding lethal words and crisp images to express the timeless battle that Author Mortimer describes as "men and women who murder each other with all the weapons of devotion...
...Used to take care of my garden," Parker harrumphs. "He was a lousy gardener. I hope he'll make a better president." Obviously, the wind of change wafts through this tart topical melodrama, an updated version of the old favorite about a group of decent, civilized folk marooned in a jungle outpost among hordes of savages. They no longer sing Rule, Britannia! Even the comforting strains of There'll Always Be an England are but dimly heard, and the tribal chieftains have evolved into smartly uniformed officers with English accents and political ambitions...
This plot might have made an enjoyable, if not plausible, melodrama. But the film's ludicrous script turns the plot into a parody of itself. The President pleads with Russia's Premier for "Peace Through Understanding" and the Professor tells the chief of staff to strike while the U.S. has the advantage. Meanwhile, everyone draws a long face because man has let machines take over his destiny and isn't it awful that we might go to war when no one wants to, except the professor...
...such melodrama does little to promote air travel, it does even less...