Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Pretty Good

Fantastic!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Golden-Age Hollywood screwball fabricator Preston Sturges' last feature film worthy of his caliber, UNFAITHFULLY YOURS stars Rex Harrison as a renowned conductor Sir Alfred de Carter, on the eve of his concert, he is deviled by the paranoia that his much younger wife Daphne (Darnell) might have an extramarital affair with his personal secretary Anthony Windborn (Kreuger) thanks to his philistine brother-in-law August Henshler (Vallée)'s presumptuous misconstruction.The apprehension and exasperation of being cuckolded hangs like a rock over Alfred's mind and Sturges only knows all too well, that for a man of Alfred's Brobdingnagian ego, the last thing to do is to lay bare his suspicion point blank in front of Daphne, from blunt rebuke to mounting curiosity, until firmly convinced by the circumstantial evidence, it all comes down to an increasingly fractious Alfred envisages three possible outcomes when wielding his baton in front of a full symphony orchestra and a full-house audience. Every scenario is pertinently induced by a different classical piece from romantic-era he conducts and introduced by a cracking zooming-in shot right into Alfred's eyeball, the overture of Rossini's baroque SEMIRAMIDE triggers a murderous plan A which a framed Anthony to take the rap, yet what Wagner's operatic TANNHÄUSER suggests is a plan B with lenience and munificence, whereas plan C of a Russian roulette derring-do is influenced by Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, a special treat for musos and cinephiles alike. Sardonically, reality is, more often than not, not exactly what we have imagined, so during his execution of one of the plans after the concert (interestingly, the choice of the plan betrays Sturges' arch amalgamation of comedy and morbidness), a knockabout transpires in a slightly labored fashion which plays up to Alfred's clumsiness, and he is merely stuck in the preparatory step with the "so-simple-it-operates-itself" home recording unit when Daphne returns, thus an air-clearing finale is all we need to put everything back to the status quo. A motormouthed Rex Harrison simulates a great impression as a conductor and relishes Sturges' long-winded screenplay which jollily throws barbs to the folly of machismo, meanwhile, Linda Darnell is hobbled as a virtuous beauty with a little more to act (albeit it is all in one's figment), yet, quintessentially it is Sturges' trademark witticism and sleight-of-hand that marks this oldie a treasure to be appreciated by posterity and here is the takeaway quip to round off my review - "If there is one reassuring thing about airplane, they always come down."

As he conducts a symphony in a crowded concert hall, an esteemed musician imagines different ways to deal with his wife's reported infidelity in this Preston Sturges comedy. Rex Harrison is perfectly posh, snobby and indignant in the lead role, though his character is more than a little hard to relate to as he simply assumes that his wife has been unfaithful based on hearsay without ever confronting her and without any real evidence. In this regard, the film plays out a lot like 'Othello', though with a pronounced black comedy streak as some of Harrison's imagined solutions to the issue are really rather grisly. In arguable bad taste or not, 'Unfaithfully Yours' is laugh-out-loud funny at its best with the zaniest moments coming from Harrison later trying to act on his imagined scenarios, only to find himself foiled by unreliable technology and other things that get in the way. The film is incredibly slow to build up though, with over 45 minutes elapsing before Harrison starts to concoct revenge scenarios. While this build-up does allow us to get under his skin a bit better, it also makes him seem all the more foolish for not doing anything more to confirm the suspected infidelity. A rather nice touch of the movie is how his anger gives him the fuel to conduct more brilliantly than ever, but this is not a first rate Sturges comedy, even if it certainly never once bores.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948)I've never quite loved Preston Sturges as a director or Rex Harrison as an actor, so having the two of them together here didn't bode well, and I thought I'd announce my bias. And sure enough, on this second viewing I was reminded of a kind of crisp calculation that both of them have. Sturges makes amazing movies, no question, and the best of them (Palm Beach Story is my favorite) are hilarious classics. To see this one for what it offers you might first see a classic Sturges screwball from 1941 or 1942. But even those are clinical at heart (if they have a heart), so it's a little like sipping a very dry, clean martini and getting drunk. Alone. No olives. Wit and sophistication do better in the hands of Cole Porter, somehow, but see for yourself.Harrison the actor overcomes his harsh demeanor in a movie like My Fair Lady because the music and the style there give him some kind of liberty, but here he is supposed to be sympathetic in his demented cruelty, and I only wish him failure. He is, to be sure, plotting the death of his wife. Three times. And then the fourth, beyond the symphony podium, with its madcap bedlam. It's funny in that zany way you have to laugh at. And you will laugh.I love classical music and like the structure of the film, but as usual with Sturges, this structure makes the whole process detached and too too clever. Sturges himself wrote the screenplay for this idea way back in 1932, and if it had been shot then, before the Hays code, before the real rise of screwball, we would have had a very different movie. But what we have here is admirable and interesting, for sure, if not the zinger it could have been with a different tilt.

This film is complete rubbish.This is the story - for the first 45 minutes absolutely NOTHING happens. This is quite difficult to achieve so deserves a mention. Rex Harrison hams it up, trying to be funny (his technique being to speak loudly and quickly) but he only succeeds in irritating the viewer. Then, whilst conducting an orchestra, he imagines 3 scenarios as a result of believing that his wife has cheated on him. He tries to put one of these scenes into practice and makes a drawn out mess of it that tests the viewers' patience as we are expected to laugh along with the unfunny antics that ensue.Harrison is way too OTT and the film contains a lot of slapstick, very obvious, visual humour which tediously drags on. An example of the humour you can expect goes like this: Harrison stands on a chair but puts his foot through it (ha ha ha), then he opens a cupboard and something falls on his head (ha ha ha), then he drops something (ha ha ha), then he puts his foot through the chair again (ha ha ha), then he falls over, etc - this scene goes on for 10 -15 minutes but it seems like a billion hours. And its not funny at any point.The film is very boring.