Why was this made? I guess it had a literary source material. It was cheap - a two hander. In short hand it sounds simple: woman uses old man's infatuation for her to her financial advantage, but when she starts rooting the local groundskeeper the old man gets out his gun. You can build to that. It's clear. Sexy and violent, all that.
But the treatment here is odd. It starts semi comic. Lyrical. John Mills in "character acting" mode with messy hair and accent. Carol White is the girl. It would have been better with a Julie Christie but White is fine. Mills is very pervy on her and so is the film. But they seem to like each other. The affair with the groundskeeper comes late in the piece. It's not sexy or full flung. But then there's this violent ending.
It's an odd movie. I think it needed to be trashier. They went for something more ambitious but didn't pull it off.
Beautiful locations. Bryan Forbes is to be commended giving so many inexperienced directors a go but it came a cropper for him more often than not.
No comments:
Post a Comment