Les seins de glace

THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH is a low budget British drama from 1959 featuring direction from B-movie honcho Robert Siodmak. In fact, the movie has quite an international feel to it, featuring a supporting role for US stalwart William Bendix and a leading part for Austrian actress Nadja Tiller, playing the femme fatale of the piece. There are also minor turns for British talent including Donald Wolfit (as a sleazy journalist), Adrienne Corri, and an incredibly youthful Geoffrey Bayldon, although I missed spotting the latter.

The problem with this film is that it's quite uninteresting. A boring young gent starts on an affair with a notorious woman, and that's about all that happens. There's no suspense and not much in the way of drama, just lots of pub visits and people sitting around talking. British B-movies are usually a lot more fun than this one, which feels stodgy and dull throughout. It may have been quite controversial at the time due to some rather frank portrayals of sex and sexuality, but nowadays it's quite tame.

Nadja Tiller, fresh from playing a blackmailing callgirl in 'Das Madchen Rosemarie' (1958) played a blonde tease in this screen version of the 1951 novel by the nephew of W.Somerset Maugham which amply demonstrates that he was another chip off the old block.

Tony Britton goes to pieces over blonde slattern Tiller as Lawrence Harvey would five years later over Kim Novak in Ken Hughes' version of 'Of Human Bondage' and James Fox would over Sarah Miles in 'The Servant'.

Enhanced by noirish photography by Otto Heller, there's a remarkable amount of sex talk; and Donald Wolfit again represents the cynicism and venality of the establishment as he had just done in 'Room at the Top'.

This film is based on a Robin Maugham novel called 'The Rough and the Smooth' which is a gay book in disguise (Robin Maugham was homosexual) and watching the film in this light gives it a whole new perspective. In the book, Nadja Tiller's character was English but the great director Robert Siodmak, known best for his contribution to Film Noir, wisely realised that no English actress could succeed so well in the role, and Tiller delivered one of the best performances on film. It is not a shoddy sex film, but an analysis of sadomasochist needs and how easily it is to be dominated by them. The one spoiler I will give is that Nadja Tiller as the young woman was sexually assaulted at the age of 16, and the man's rough approach appealed to her, and he became the dominating passion of her life. This has consequences for those she meets, and Tony Britton, as a wealthy man, becomes obsessed with her to the point of near total self destruction. If this film lacks a plot for some reviewers it is because they were not looking closely. It is in my opinion much more daring than 'Room at the Top' (brought out close to it), and has been sadly neglected as a truly adult film. William Bendix is borderline camp in his role of Tiller's 'sugar daddy', and there are quite a few gay hints, even using Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony in Tiller's scene where she discusses being abused and liking it. This symphony was a favourite among homosexuals of that era, and no doubt many in the audience of the time will have picked up on it, and Tiller in her 'boyish' brash and direct delivery of dialogue reveals a lot of the sexual ambiguity beneath the surface. The supporting cast are first rate, including Natasha Parry, Donald Wolfit and Joyce Carey. This is my opinion of the film, and I will risk the conjecture; Maugham could not for reasons of censorship, even in books of the time, change the gender of the young woman, nor make Tony Britton's part as her obsessed lover bisexual. Neither could he write Bendix, the cruelly abused 'sugar daddy' as an elderly homosexual. In an age of repression many books and films were not as they seemed, but given all this Siodmak made an excellent film, and Nadja Tiller, great actor that she is, signposted all the sexual ambiguities of her role to perfection. Perhaps it needs a queer eye to see this, but according to my viewing it is all there. A truly original film, veiling and unveiling subjects that were certainly not usual to British or American audiences at the end of the 1950's. It is also a very passionate film and the young woman is not 'bad' but a victim of her own needs and desires. It was brought out on DVD in the UK, under its original title, 'The Rough and the Smooth' not with the more simplistic title 'Portrait of a Sinner'.

There are several interweaving plot lines to this film, and none of them seem to go anywhere. The basic plot line is that Mike Thompson (Tony Britton), a young socialite who is engaged to be married, picks up Nadja Tiller in a London pub. The pair have an affair which all but ruins Thompson's life.

Everything about this film is unreal. I have been in many London pubs, and I can assure anyone reading this that the possibility of seeing anyone like Nadja Tiller in a London pub, let alone of picking her up, is about as remote as the Antarctic.

The direction is so-so, the acting and casting is OK. Tony Britton's part is a bit of a nonentity. Nadja Tiller is hot, and one wonders if the muddled film is due not to incompetence but to the scissors of the overzealous British film censors. But at the end of the film you find yourself asking yourself: "What was that all about?"

When this film began, I thought it offered a less coy approach to sex than most 1950s film, but it turned out to be far more misogynistic. None of the women were favourably presented. It was redeemed, however, by Nadja Tiler's acting, which was quite extraordinary!