"Ah I'm successful at work but creatively dissastifised and my wife is a nagging bitch and I want to root my hot neighbour". There were a few films like these in the late 50s and 1960s based on best selling novels.
Kirk Douglas is the writer surrogate, a frustrated architect whose wife Barbara Rush has the gall to want him to do well in his career. He sees Kim Novak and pretty much puts the hard word on her straight away, asking her out to building sites. A less intense more "everyman" actor may have been more effective - someone like say Jack Lemmon or James Stewart or even old dying Gary Cooper.
It's got 1960 Hollywood gloss - widescreen, colour, stars, art deco, all that stuff. Richard Quine films from this period often offered such pleasures.
The Douglas character is a bit of a lech. I was pleasantly surprised how much sympathy the film showed the female characters. Novak says she's in love with Douglas, but it's clear she's lonely because her (gay? asexual?) husband doesn't want to touch her sexually. Novak's performance is variable as her performances tend to be. She's got that allure, body, insecurity, as well as the awkward line readings. There really was no star like her - charismatically awkward.
The real surprise is Barbara Rush who actually has the best part. I thought she'd be a nagging wife but she's not. She wants to do what's best for her husband's career and family, and she stresses their marriage is going wrong, Walter Matthau (who steals the film) sleazes all over her, she figures out what's going with Novak.
It's really hard to care about Douglas, with his hot wife, hot lover, famous client who agrees to his design, boss who offers him a dream job in Hawaii. I don't get the sense he and Novak love each other but it works dramatically because I think he wanted a root, and she was lonely.
Ernie Kovacs is Douglas' client. There's some odd subplots that don't quite work - Novak's mother had an affair and when Novak starts doing it she goes "it happened to you". The plot about a truckie who sort of date rapped Novak but not really (I think) and becomes obsessed with her feels underserviced.
Other things work better like the device of Douglas building Kovacs' house through the story.
So an interesting movie. Flawed. But there's tuff in it.
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