Le retour à l'amour

Having just watched this I thought I'd post a comment.

A fine film, with lots of deft touches.

Victor Mature is very enjoyable to watch in this.

Jean Simmons is perfect for her role.

And supporting the story there is a range of wonderfully talented actors who play their parts so well.

It is old fashioned, sure, but that is no bad thing.

Definitely worth a watch. The script is good.

Highly enjoyable and very entertaining.

I rate this 8 out of 10.

I do not like Victor Mature (VM) in films - put it down to his greasy hair, chain-smoking habit and uncultured voice.He seems particularly miscast in this film as a playwright.A modern playwright should be like Arthur Miller, Robert Bolt or Tennesee Williams.I just did not "buy" our delightful export to Hollywood, Miss Jean Simmons (JS) wanting to have a relationship with VM's character which sponged off her, took her chicken legs food and generally forced his attentions onto her.However I did not buy the DVD to see VM but to see the beautiful brunette JS at the peak of her looks.Basically "Affair With a Stranger" is the story of a struggling playwright who cannot sell his plays to the producers of commercial theatres.He meets JS on New Years eve and starts a relationship poncing off her job as a model.JS has faith in his ability to produce a hit play and of course Hollywood comes to his predictable aid when "Venus Films" agrees to buy the screen rights.During his life of penury VM gets a job as a waiter at a posh restaurant and slips his manuscript into the pile a famous producer is considering at his table.To keep body and soul together VM visits a restaurant and mixes together a soup from various condiments with hot water.This scene has always stayed in my mind over the years when I only saw it on TV (although you do not have access to hot water today in the restaurants I know).

JS and VM marry but lose the child they wanted and VM is told by the male doctor dealing with JS that she cannot have any more children.I laughed when I saw them both lighting up in his surgery.I will not reveal any more of the plot which is predictable.I rated it 6/10.It is one of two JS films I taped off the TV some time ago - the other was Adam and Evelynne (1949) which is the better of the two.My rating reflects the performance of JS and the able supporting actors who did a good job with the script.

Jean Simmons is always reliably good, while Victor Mature sometimes can be awful. Here they are teamed together in a marriage that maybe never should have been. Actually, Jean Simmons is advised against it, and Victor Mature is really not much to have, as a playwright of flops and with a bad habit of gambling and losing. Still she accepts him and mothers him, which he needs, and eventually he makes a success and even gets rich, so he doesn't have to gamble any more. She gets pregnant but loses her child and can't have any more, so the marriage is put to some test. Then a scandal beauty and imprudent actress gets the ambition to hook him and spreads some premature news to a dirty columnist, far too sure of herself as an actress, imagining she has him all wrapped up. The film starts with the columnist incident and then tells the long story of the marriage by flashbacks, eventually returning to the present, both Jean Simmons and Victor Mature getting highly surprised by finding the news of their divorce in the paper. They never even had thought of it. That's the argument of the film.

It's not an uninteresting film, above all it's fascinating as a study in the mechanics of a marriage, what makes it hold and what may threaten it. A certain child also plays an important part, he was later the brother in Charles Laughton's famous "The Night of the Hunter", and on the whole, the story is well written and gets some interesting turns. It is great entertainment on a high level, and the twist in the end to all the predicaments can't leave anyone dissatisfied.

In Affair with a Stranger, Victor Mature's marriage to Jean Simmons is falling apart, only they're the only ones who don't know it. Each vignette of flashback is led into by an "extra", like a taxicab driver, the maid, etc. who remember different parts of their marriage and tell the audience about it. With that format, the movie had potential to be cute, but it didn't turn out that way.

They meet, they fall in love, they fall on hard times, but as the rumor mill flies with their impending divorce, they're completely unaware of it. After all, they're not watching the movie. The reason I didn't really like this romance is because of the title. It's pretty obvious someone has an affair, and I didn't like the way the film handled it. If you like the two leads, though, you can give it a whirl.

This melodramatic and superamerican "comedy" is now terribly dated, not interesting but made with feeling and thus another routine job done by Roy Rowland. It's nice to see epicman Mature in a setting other than the arena or biblical backgrounds.