Word: wifely
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This spring he built a second greenhouse to indulge his wife's horticultural hobby. He is content to live out his life in the nonbohemian tranquillity of his Hertfordshire home, with only an array inside of small Henry Moore statues and Irina Moore's fine collection of primitive sculpture to show that it is the place of an unconventional family. He also has the satisfaction of knowing that his own breakthrough has opened the way to public acceptance for a whole generation of radical young British sculptors, topped by such bright new talents as Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler...
Back to the Wall (Essex-Universal; Ellis) is a French murder mystery. The victim (Philippe Nicaud) is a young Parisian actor who drinks Scotch and smokes English cigarettes, but his outstanding habit is routinely French. The poor fellow cannot stop making love to another man's wife (Jeanne Moreau), his sweetheart from drama-school days. As the film begins, the husband (Gerard Oury), a dull young electronics millionaire, is expanding his plant, reinforcing a new concrete wall with the corpse of his wife's lover...
...with something more than a Gallic shrug. His grandfather might have shot, whipped or choked the villain straightway. But a man of the husband's generation intends no violence. Instead, he wants to stretch the lovers on a psychological rack, then leave the actor there and reclaim his wife. As a starter, he hires a private detective to make keyhole photographs. For divorce proceedings? "Mais non. For the family album...
...first he succeeds. He blackmails his wife anonymously. She borrows from him to raise money for the payoff ("It is easy to be generous," he tells the audience, "when you are sending money to yourself"). Later, he smoothly implicates her lover as a blackmailing gigolo. But the methodical husband has touched off a larger explosion than he designed, and the film resolves itself in a series of novel twists, most of which are so awkwardly handled that they seem to come off only in Director Edouard Molinaro's heavy hand...
...sheer weight of numbers might win out. and Author Fleming offers some interesting notes on the curious ways of people who expect to die-but hope to do so as ladies and gentlemen. In 110° heat, the Italian minister dressed for dinner each evening, and the wife of the U.S. minister disclosed that she expected to meet her Maker in her dressing gown "with a pink bow of ribbon at my throat...