I had my family over, and we watched Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which was a flop in its time, but which is nowadays seen as the final hurrah in Preston Sturges’ fairly extraordinary series of screwball classics. I’d been wanting to do this for about a decade but, as my sister is rarely in the country, opportunities have been few and far between.
It’s a black comedy which runs the gamut from actual slapstick to sharp-witted dialogue to some genuinely ugly moments; so tonally, the film is all over the place (which may or may not explain its failure in its day), but that’s also partly why I felt it had something for everyone. It’s uneven, but also wildly inventive. Classical music plays a huge part in the film (the lead character is a conductor), and I was confident that my parents would greatly appreciate this aspect, and that my Dad would quite likely be familiar with some of the pieces featured. (Sturges supposedly came up with the initial idea while working on a different script, after realising in the process of writing one scene that the music he was hearing on the radio in the background had caused him to significantly alter what he’d had in his head to start with, subconsciously influencing his thought processes.) My brother and sister share my sense of humour, so I knew the comedy would hit for them. And my sister once played in an orchestra, so she had that middle ground.
I do think it’s a film which would have benefited from some more judicious editing of a few scenes – but then I think I’ve thought that about pretty much every Preston Sturges film I’ve seen, and I love them regardless. Highly recommended despite its flaws.
(I’ve also now found that there’s also a 1984 remake with Dudley Moore and Nastassja Kinski which looks pretty awful. One of the posters for that seems familiar though, so I’m wondering whether I’d seen it advertised at the time. I cannot imagine Moore in this role at all, but apparently it was intended for Peter Sellers who I can imagine playing it. Mind you, based on the dire trailer I just watched, no particular attempt was made to play the original character. Sadly I also have to recommend avoiding the trailer for the original film, as I think it shows several things that it shouldn’t.)