Five Finger Exercise

Five Finger Exercise ran on Broadway for the 1959-60 season for 337 performances and starred Roland Culver and Jessica Tandy. As it was produced by Fredrick Brisson on Broadway you knew that it would be for Rosalind Russell his wife if she wanted to do it. And apparently she did.

Of course having a British story with one of the leads American you had to make even more adjustments than normally to transfer a one set play to the screen. Instead of a nice English country estate the setting is the Pacific coast. Hawkins is an orphan immigrant who from the United Kingdom and became a millionaire. Part of the problem though is that he's not only British but a total Philistine who sneers at all the culture is wife tries to provide son Richard Beymer and daughter Annette Gorman. A Harvard education for Beymer and a tutor for Gorman so she can go to a nice finishing school. They've taken on a tutor in Maximilian Schell.

Russell came from a family where the father was a learned professor who was also a compulsive gambler and the family was on the edge of poverty.

Essentially Russell and Hawkins come from two different places with entirely different sets of values. There is an permanent conflict in their relationship and Schell boarding with the family with his issues about having an unreconstructed Nazi for a father and a totally submissive mother just brings everything to a boil.

I think the work should have been either all British or all American. The worst scene in the film was Hawkins listening to an American baseball game between Cincinnati and San Francisco. I listened and heard no familiar names in the commentary of the game. You'd think the authors would have used real Reds and Giants player names of the time. Hawkins looked like he didn't know what was happening. He probably would have been right at home listening to an English cricket or soccer match.

Imagine if Jessica Tandy had done the film. That would have had her co-starring with her former husband. Well it worked for Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck in Night Walker.

This study of a dysfunctional family and its dysfunctional tutor would have worked better in its original British setting.

Society wife and mother on a summer estate in Northern California grimaces at her "uncivilized" husband's behavior while adoring their houseguest, a handsome German tutor to their young daughter. Unconvincing transcription of Peter Shaffer's play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett gives Rosalind Russell lots of fluttery, theatrical bits of business in the lead. Her pseudo-cultured Louise Harrington is nervously, desperately gay--but she's not a hoot, like Auntie Mame (though the two share some similar qualities). Louise puts on airs only so her vulgar husband (who never made it out of grammar school) can tear her down--and once the audience perceives that our poor, delusional heroine can only find personal happiness by facing hard reality, the rest becomes window dressing. ** from ****

What a terrible shame that this film of Peter Shaffer's amazing play was turned into an uneventful melodrama. The amazing dynamics of the five character's interaction on-stage, has been reduced in the film to a domestic, "kitchen sink" drama. Perhaps the close of the Second World War was too close at hand for the film maker and the studio to really trust the power of the play and the horrors of the Nazi Germany. The English family is American in the film, which takes most of the punch from the drama, and the erotic undercurrents of the mother /son relationship pitched against the German tutor, Walter have been set aside. With the raw emotional core of the drama removed, what sadly remains is a stereotypical, Hollywood drama with little true emotion and a film that sadly serves the startling brilliance of the play.

Whether "Five Finger Exercise" is a good or bad movie, it is a very painful film to watch...the type I generally avoid. But it stars some terrific actors...so I watched it.

Why do I sat it's painful? Well, seeing a film where a couple hates each other and you see and hear such venom isn't exactly a fun picture to watch! I also dislike similar stories such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" or the TV show "Mama's Family"... as it's painful to see people being so ugly towards each other. I just would rather watch something that isn't so ugly and depressing.

The Harrington family is very well off. After all, they spend their summers in a cottage in Carmel*...a very upscale town. But despite money, the family is in crisis. Mr. And Mrs. Harrington (Jack Hawkins and Rosalind Russell) are a very mismatched couple. He likes sports and being a guy...with few pretenses. She likes being pretentious and putting on airs and smothering their son. Naturally, this is not a good fit and there is tension in the house. But they also have grown or mostly grown kids and they, too, become part of this toxic environment. To make things more complicated, a handsome young tutor (Maximillian Schell) is living with them...and he seems to be pulled into the middle of this mess.

Although I disliked the story, it was mostly well made. I thought the Oedipal tension was very interesting with the son. But I also thought that Russell's character was a bit too much and making her awfulness more subtle would have helped the story. As is, she's a caricature. It also seems to make you feel sorry for the husband, though he is a part of the problem as well. Toning down her character would have helped the husband to be more noticably dysfunctional. Overall, a reasonably well made but unpleasant film.

*To give you an idea about the money needed to live there, today a round of golf in Pebble Beach including all fees is about $1000 per person! And, Mr. Harrington loves to play golf!

Based on a play by Peter Shaffer, "Five Finger Exercise" from 1962 stars Rosalind Russell, Jack Hawkins, Richard Beymer, and Maximillian Schell.

The plot concerns the presence of a German tutor (Schell) for the daughter (Lana Wood) in the family, and ensuing domestic problems that come to a boil.

Russell plays Louise Harington, an unhappily married social climber who has nothing in common with her hard-working, down to earth husband Stanley (Hawkins). The son Philip (Beymer) joins them for the summer at their ostentatious vacation home, and the tension is immediate.

Stanley wants Philip to join him in business, but Philip isn't sure what he wants to do. Then a tutor, Walter, is brought in to teach French to the daughter, and tensions really boil over. For Louise, he represents culture and romance, for Stanley, he's a pretentious annoyance, and for Philip, he represents a threat.

Shaffer is a masterful playwright, and perhaps if his play had been correctly adapted to film, this would have been a magnificent drama. As it is, it's an interesting family drama.

First off, the family is supposed to be British and in Britain, and the presence of the tutor brings up a lot of feelings about the war and the Nazis. Secondly, there is an underpinning of incestuous feelings between mother and son so that the presence of Walter makes Philip jealous.

Both these elements are missing in the film. What remains is Louise's dashed romantic hopes and facing her harsh reality, which releases a firestorm.

This isn't a bad drama by any means, it's just not the unusual film that it could have been. The acting is good if a bit overdrawn - that is partially because it is derived from a strong play. And the resolution is satisfying.

Disappointing. One last thing - this was produced by Russell's husband, Frederick Brisson. At one point, Richard Beymer was fooling around on the set and Russell said something to him, asking him to stop. He replied that whatever he was doing was no big deal.

She responded, "Well just remember this - I'M sleeping with the producer." I think he probably stopped misbehaving at that point.