Monday, April 30, 2007

Movie Review: Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Unfaithfully Yours is an old b&w comedy by Preston Sturges. I first found out about Sturges by finding Sullivan's Travels (and The Lady Eve) on lists of the all-time funniest films. That's a great film and I think it aged well, better than Unfaithfully Yours did.

Rex Harrison plays Sir Alfred De Carter, a famous orchestra conductor and Linda Darnell is his wife. The first 30 minutes introduces the characters and has a lot of dense banter that while witty just struck me as rather unnatural. There's also a slapstick attempt to put out an office fire. De Carter finds out that his wife has been cheating on him with his secretary Tony. During an evening performance of three pieces he imagines three ways to deal with the situation. After the show he returns home and tries putting the first plan into action. The film returns to slapstick as things don't go at all the way he imagined it.

I laughed a fair amount at the end, but I found the rest rather silly.

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