Victor and Hillary are down on their luck to the point that they allow tourists to take guided tours of their castle. But Charles Delacro, a millionaire oil tycoon, visits, and takes a liking to more than the house. Soon, Hattie Durant gets involved and they have a good old fashioned love triangle.
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Reviews
I love this film and recently bought it on DVD. I had not watched it for many years, and it's wonderful to see it again. Since I last saw it I've visited Osterley Park in Middlesex - it's on the Piccadilly Line and easy to get to, and I was fascinated to see the changes that have taken place there since this film was made. Apart from the filming locations, which are excellent, the action is well worth seeing again. This is a comedy of manners, worthy of Noel Coward or similar authors, which challenges our assumptions about how people might behave. It's supposed to be the upper classes behaving in a civilised manner, but that is rather difficult to believe. You have to suspend disbelief and go along with the premise that people could behave like this. All the performances are excellent and it works, even in 2014. I wonder what people thought in 1960? My interpretation is that the Earl (Cary Grant) is hurt that his wife appears to have chosen to be unfaithful to him on a whim, and he has to decide what to do. He decides to be civilised, but he plays a very clever game to get her back and it works. Beneath all the civilised talk there is a very primal contest going on, and the emotional blackmail works. The bond is too strong to break, but he had to fight for her or face losing her. The desperation of his position is not obvious, but it is there nonetheless.I'm not sure that Robert Mitchum was right for this - he was the least convincing, but the other 4 main players were completely right. How anyone could consider leaving Cary Grant in the first place is beyond me.
Had I gone to see this film in 1960 (when I was 14), I would have felt cheated, it was so boring, wordy and lacking action that I could hardly wait for its end.All I saw was a bunch of actors - Grant, Kerr, Mitchum & Simmons (who were in the autumn of their screen careers), mainly sitting around doing nothing in particular, making small talk endlessly about marriage, fidelity and this and that.Even for 1960 the screenplay seemed very dated and contrived while the actors drank copious quantities of liquor and alcohol.None of the characters seemed to have a useful job or do some service to society so I suspected this was the influence of the idle rich from the 1930s, but since then there had been a world war, penal taxation to help repay Britain's war debt, the need for women to do a job of work and a social revolution in Britain with the new wave of films like "Look back in Anger"; this film seemed curiously dated even for 1960.What an advert for the perils of drink and dipsomania!I noticed that the majority of the USA based user comments seemed in favour of this film while European comments were more critical.I have seen many films when each of the above actors starred individually in more worthy films but I am afraid that here too many cooks spoilt the broth.I voted it 4/10.
This is a film that does try to be good - and it is actually amusing at points. The central story about the aristocrats finding interest in an American millionaire (Mitchum) and an old flame of Grant's (Simmons) had potential. But the problem was that the screenplay is too talky and too cerebral, but not (paradoxically) as complete as it should be.There are pages and pages of the dialog which are (frankly) long winded. Cary Grant is not amusing when explaining his behavior to people, even Deborah Kerr. Whatever emotional chemistry worked for them so wonderfully in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER is cut down considerably here.The additions of Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons does not really help. Mitchum's growing interest in Kerr, and her growing response to his seeing her in London is okay, but Simmons' relationship regarding Grant is not developed. We know they had an affair before he married her friend Kerr, and she has remained a friend of both, and she is funny regarding her open interest in sex, but why Grant's rejection of her is never really gone into. Also, at the tale end, there is the suggestion that Simmons and Mitchum might find each other a worthy lover. But nothing in the film really builds up to that final look between them! There are good moments - Grant and Mitchum going fishing, and muttering under their breaths about each other, and the business about the fur coat gift that Mitchum buys Kerr, and she tries to hide (and Simmons ends up wearing as her own). But the good moments are fragments. The duel scene towards the end is analyzed to death. It says a lot that the use of Noel Coward's song THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND on the soundtrack at the start and end of the film is one of the highlights. One wishes Coward wrote the screenplay here - it might have been brighter or more consistent.Because the cast really tries I have given it a "7", but it is not as good a film as it should have been.
Lord Cary Grant and Lady Deborah Kerr as nobility have fallen on hard times and now they show their fabulous estate off to the tourists for pin money. One of those tourists is American millionaire Robert Mitchum who thinks the best sight he's seen is Kerr. He sweeps her off her feet and her marriage is put in danger.Cary's not going to take this lying down and Mitchum is invited to the estate for the weekend. Along for the ride is Jean Simmons, a friend of Grant's and Kerr who wouldn't mind getting Cary on the rebound. It's quite a weekend.Cary Grant and I assume Deborah Kerr's parts according the recent biography of Robert Mitchum were originally intended for Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall. When Kendall died, Harrison dropped out. Cary Grant's part probably would have been better in Harrison's hands. But you can't say that Grant didn't learn a lesson. He was widely quoted as saying after he turned down My Fair Lady that he wouldn't even by a ticket to see the film of Harrison didn't play Henry Higgins.Simmons does come off the best in this comedy of manners. She's full of wisecracks and is no hypocrite about her life.You know when you think about it the same premise was used for Sleuth with much more serious overtones. It's sometimes a small margin between comedy and drama.Not the best work that any of this talented quartet has done.