Five Finger Exercise

A girl named Annette Gorman plays the daughter. Miss Wood has a tiny role of one of the two girls on the beach in a few insignificant scenes. Sadly most of the punch of the original play about an English family is left at as some of the other reviews imply. It is a strange mishmash to have a British father and an American mother as they keep trying to explain to us the audience. Shoulda stuck with the original British family but it was produced by the husband of Miss Russell and so she being very American they changed it to a great disadvantage to suit her. Still Miss Russell is a formidable talent and does everything she can to make it an Oscar winning performance in my opinion, that elusive statute that she never did win though two or three nominations. This was not one of them though.

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.

An interesting flick, if not a great one, based on a play by Peter Shaffer. I can't quite grasp the meaning of the title, which refers to a piano playing exercise. A bourgeois family finds itself going through some contortions following the arrival of a nice young tutor from Germany, who moves in with them. The woman of the house, whose love of culture and the finer things is not shared by her husband, is drawn to him, and he begins a love/hate friendship with their bright but troubled son. Things get a little melodramatic towards the end (not surprisingly), but the fine cast makes things work. The character of Philip, who is played perfectly by Richard Beymer, was the outstanding feature.

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 ****

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.