Word: mistressful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...labyrinthine complications of the script use birth control pills for comic fuel the way French farce uses bedrooms. Gerald Hardcastle (David Niven), an elegant British banker with a cool million and a cooler mistress (Irina Demick), decides that he wants out of his dreary twelve-year marriage. Knowing that his wife Prudence (Deborah Kerr) has hardly been faithful herself, he substitutes aspirin for her birth control pills in hopes that she'll become pregnant by her lover so he can sue for divorce. Meanwhile, the Hardcastle maid decides to yield to her boy friend's advances and swipes...
...piano music by that handsome Frenchman Samson François. The monastery was cold and damp, but those clever people from the Renaissance brought along bundles of plaid blankets to cover everybody up. Poor Chopin. He lived in the monastery for two months with his, pardon me, mistress, George Sand, and they say that he nearly died of the chill. He could have used some of those plaids...
...lighted cerulean water becomes his Styx. At one poolside, supposed friends needle him with cruel remarks about his wife and daughters. A stop at another leads him into a party where he finds a piece of family furniture he cannot recall selling. A quarrel with his ex-mistress (Janice Rule) at yet another diving board reveals that he has no memory of their final bitter scene that took place years before. At last, weary and shivering, he finds himself shaking the locked, rusty gate to his house as the rain streaks down. He breaks it, and confronts the dreadful reality...
...Siegel likes to keep his camera on the actors as long as possible, often following them in medium close shot over long distances, thereby establishing character detail rare in a short police thriller. Note, for example, the affection Commissioner Russell (Henry Fonda) plainly has for the freckles on his mistress' shoulder, or the visual relationship between Detective Madigan (Widmark) and his partner toward their car and New York City...
...seen her nagging him and his death locks her in the role forever in our minds. Siegel refuses to resolve the personal problems set-up during the film, and although we hope for positive change, we are often left with ambiguity or permanent limbo (Russell's relationship with his mistress, and Madigan's to both wife...