Un marido de repuesto

In 1968 I worked as a projectionist. I saw thousands of movies. Memories of this one, among few, have stuck with me for all these years.

Richard Attenborough at his "dry" best. Shirley Maclain at her most sexy and appealing as a bored housewife. James Booth, her "house guest" is a charmer. Along with a host of other fascinating characters an extraordinary look at the 60s English culture and sense of humor.

Keeping your paramour in the attic for the occasional tryst whilst hubby is off making brassieres. It makes for great comedy If you get a chance to see this.....do it. It is worth your time and you will enjoy it.

A relic of its time this poorly conceived so called comedy coupled with Sweet Charity and several other losers killed off Shirley's film career the first time around. Within two years she was finished on screen and was out of pictures for almost a decade until her comeback in The Turning Point. This is one of the unfortunate crop of late 60's movies that tried to cash in on the so called youth wave with the overuse of psychedelic colors and disjointed scenes rather than a cohesive script. The desired effect, whatever that was, is not achieved all that is accomplished is to bore the audience and leave them with eye strain from the overdone color scheme. Skip it!

This movie is completely charming. I've never seen a more wonderful Shirley MacLaine. I fell in love with her. If you liked the Austin Powers films, then you will especially enjoy the costumes and decor of this movie. The artworks that Mrs. Blossom creates are terrific. With the recent public appearance of the polyamory community, it's apparent that the idea of being in love and devoted to two people, and being "faithful" to them both, is still relevant. As a small, funny movie, it still asks some good questions about the nature of relationships and fidelity. Bravo.

I found the film extremely hard to watch. I saw it on Netflix and I kept stopping it after fifteen or twenty minutes and resuming it the next day until I got through the whole thing.

I generally like Shirley Maclaine and Richard Attenborough and I like splashy British psychedelic 60's movies like "Casino Royale" and "What's New Pussycat" However, Maclaine was unexpectedly listless and dull and Attenborough, despite a brave attempt, could not bring a spark of life to the movie. The great sets are wasted in a movie that seems to want to be hip or hippie, but doesn't know how.

Someone named James Booth is the real star. It was a surprise to see such an unknown actor actually given more screen time than big stars like Maclaine and Attenborough. I kept thinking he was going to disappear from the movie, but instead his part just grew bigger and bigger to the point of pushing the other stars out. To be fair, He apparently did star in five or six movies low budget, moderately successful films in the 60's, but then went into playing mostly guest star television roles for the next 40 years. He plays a part that desperately needs the zaniness of Peter Sellers. One feels as if the part of Ambrose Tuttle, a crazy spaced out genius was written with Sellers in mind. Booth is much too laid back for the absurd cartoon style of the character and the work.

The movie is visually quite interesting, but it pitches, rolls and jumps all over the place. Sadly, the director seems to know nothing about directing actors or scenes. The actors seem to be talking directly to the audience and not each other. This has the effect of making the movie seem like a long episode of the 1960's television show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in," but without any jokes. The wonderful time that all the characters appear to be having is not infectious, but annoying.

Anyways, I give the movie one star for Maclaine, one star for Attenborough and one star for the sets, but everything else is a gigantic bore in the film. If you're heavily stoned when watching, as the filmmakers appear to have been when putting this mess together, you can add another three stars.

I am hesitant when recommending this movie, not because I doubt the movie, but because I doubt people. There are so many criticisms that non-believers could throw at THE BLISS OF MRS. BLOSSOM - that it's silly, obvious, crude, cartoonish, dated - but they would all be beside the point. The point is that this movie is a sweet-natured ding-bat adolescent pro-feminist look at sex and marriage in a world where people don't seem to have naughty bits - except women, whose most noticeable naughty bits need to be covered by industrial strength brassieres. The dialogue is a step above Benny Hill, but the performances (Shirley MacLaine, Richard Attenborough, James Booth and even [briefly] John Cleese) lift it to the level of Noel Coward, just by putting an aching sincerity into the outlandish situations. Most memorable, however, is the art direction, costume design, and editing, all of which take off from Carnaby Street and land somewhere on the planet Swinging Mod Paisley Surprise. The editing is particularly trippy, with deliberate disjunctions of time and space that give the title character an almost otherworldly cool. And why reach for THE BLISS OF MRS. BLOSSOM when there are so many other relics of Mod London in the late sixties to choose from? Because, like Linus's pumpkin patch, it's really and truly very sincere: whereas other movies of the period where aimed cynically at the youth market, T.B.O.M.B. is aimed at adults.