The Wild Affair

Welcome to The Wild Affair, also known as Nancy Kwan cuts her hair and still looks adorable. In this very 1960s movie, Nancy stars as a regular Jane who works in an office and faces immediate retirement upon her marriage. But, as many regular Janes in 1965 felt, she's not sure she wants to close up her social life and stay barefoot in the kitchen. This movie feels a bit like a time capsule, with the fashions, hairstyles, and type of party - but also with the attitudes that were new in the sixties and have paved the way to modern feminists' views decades later.

Nancy is just adorable in this movie. If you loved her as much as I did in The World of Suzie Wong and were disappointed that the rest of her career petered out, rent thus one to get one last great glimpse of her sweetness. In this movie, she hasn't yet been typecast as a bodacious babe who never has to act. She has worries, conflicted emotions, and an actual character to flesh out.

If you liked the feel of The Party, where the entire movie takes place in one evening, you'll like this one. When Nancy says goodbye at the office, you can tell she doesn't mean it. She stays for the party and juggles unwanted attentions from her boss, carefree attitudes from her coworkers, and the steadfast love of her fiancé. What will she decide? Will she stay a career woman, or will she settle down and get married - or is there a middle ground? Watch this time capsule to find out.

This long-forgotten film has fortunately been resurrected on DVD and is very amusing to see now, giving us so many glimpses of what things used to be like in that faraway age when people tried to throw what was then considered a wild party. It stars Nancy Kwan, wearing dresses specifically designed for her by Mary Quant and with a hair cut personally invented for her by Vidal Sassoon. Nancy Kwan was a pretty and vivacious half-Chinese Hong Kong girl who had caused a big stir amongst audiences not long before by being 'discovered' and starring in two big hit films, THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG (1960) and FLOWER DRUM SONG (1961). She was particularly popular in America in the sixties, where she was enthusiastically regarded as a breath of fresh air with an alluringly exotic tang. People thought then that she looked very Chinese, but in retrospect, we can see that she looks only vaguely Chinese, as we have seen so many more of them by now. Three years into her new career, she starred in this film in order to show that she could be an excellent comedienne. She carries it off very well, and readily dominates the screen with her personality. Apart from Kwan, the finest performance in the film is by Betty Marsden, as Mavis, who is spectacularly effective in her supporting role. Marsden was one of the best British character actresses of her time, and she died in 1998. The famous Bessie Love plays Kwan's mother. Love appeared in 246 films during her career, commencing in 1915, and continuing for the next 68 years. She was a true veteran of the silent screen from its very beginnings and she knew and worked with all the legendary creative figures who created the American movie industry. One particularly interesting appearance in the film is by Frank Thornton, an assiduous wine salesmen looking younger but playing exactly the same character as he was later to appear in the TV series ARE YOU BEING SERVED? (1972-1985), which was one of the most hilarious and best loved TV comedy series ever made in Britain. It is fascinating to see Thornton honing that same punctilious persona nine years previously, and doing an excellent job of it too. (Those interested in the origins and history of ARE YOU BEING SERVED?, please note.) I wanted to obtain this DVD because I am interested in the films of director John Krish, and this was one of his early works which no one had seen for decades. I used to know him slightly in the late sixties when he lived in the Vale of Health in Hampstead. I attended the premiere of his film DECLINE AND FALL (1968, from the Waugh novel, see my forthcoming review) at that big cinema in Lower Regent Street which used to be called the Paramount, or perhaps then it had even an earlier name. John was a very nice bloke, and highly talented. I never understood why he did not become a famous director, and remained semi-obscure. He does a good job of directing this 'comic romp', as it would have been called in those days. Terry Thomas has a supporting role, but got star billing because of his fame at that time. He gurns and grimaces but has little else to do. He helped draw the punters into the cinema though. Victor Spinetti has a good part and does well, and Frank Finlay excels as an obstinate drunk who invades a phone booth and accosts someone else who is making a call, and tries to get him to join him for a drink. He does this completely straight, which makes it even funnier. The excellent cinematography was by Arthur Ibbetson, assisted by his trusty operator Paul Wilson. They had a considerable challenge filming most of the story in a very cramped studio set, and I don't know how they managed to squeeze in with their camera sometimes, especially in the scenes where people have passed out on top of one another in heaps at the party, so that even the actors were tripping over them. John Krish wrote the screenplay, from a novel by William Sanson called THE LAST HOURS OF SANDRA LEE. Sanson was a very prolific writer, who died in 1976, and who does not appear to be much remembered today. One of his novels was called PROUST, though whether it was about Marcel Proust or not I cannot say. An article about Sanson appeared in the London INDEPENDENT in 2008 informing us that 'William Sanson was once described as London's closest equivalent to Franz Kafka. He wrote in hallucinatory detail … it made his stories hauntingly memorable.' This story is however a comedy, though a satirical one. It might not appeal much to contemporary tastes, but this film met the temper of its time and is very funny when seen in temporal perspective. So much in it which seems unbelievable today was perfectly accurate to what things were like then. Many of the film's characters, now extinct as species, were exactly like that at the time. Yes, such people really existed, though you can hardly believe it now. The film is a real time warp for the manners and mores of 1963 London, shot just months before it became 'Swinging London' (that happened in the autumn of 1963), and released in December, not long after a group of youngsters called the Beatles blew traditional England right out of the water.

Nancy Kwan is to be married in a few days, whereupon she will become a housewife. She's a good girl in the early phases of the Swinging Sixties, and she wonders what she is missing.

It's a pleasant and, in the end, rather normative effort, mostly distinguished for its efforts to make a real star of Miss Kwan (who is still alive and working), with lots of cinematic leering efforts of the men to get in a one-night stand with the lovely actress while the getting is good. In the end it is pleasant, if not particularly distinguished.

Some of the casting is rather interesting, with Bessie Love playing Miss Kwan's mother, Bud Flanagan as the building's door man, and Terry-Thomas as her boss -- sans mustache and gap-toothed grin.

A very enjoyable and fast paced farce. Nancy Kwan is perfect as the impish bride to be on her last day at the company that produces "it" perfume. (Wasn't Twiggy the original "it" girl?) It has a splendid cast of British character actors, headed by Terry Thomas and including Victor Spinetti, who must have gone straight from this (production began in late 1963) to his role in "Hard Day's Night." There are certain similarities in the look of these films, from the titles to of course the exteriors and certain motifs. Some good dialog and physical comedy. Glorious black and white cinematography, at times gritty and at others glamorous. Overall very enjoyable. The only uneasy thing in the movie, which is not particular to this film and common to similar storylines, is the guys continuously hitting on Kwan are sad reminders of what the workplace once was like and all too sadly as today's news shows, still are far too often. But as other reviews mention, these scenes always resolve innocuously or ridiculously for the guys doing the hitting. Well worth the time watching.

I found this film really very charming, with values that have all but disappeared from popular entertainment, but still hold quite true. In that sense, the script was unusual and rare. It didn't shy away from sexuality, but rather praised the substance of love. The actors were very good, particularly Thomas and the whole variety of excellent British supporting players such as Spinetti. The very interesting part of this film is the perfect casting of Nancy Kwan at the time. I don't know any other actress I could have seen perfectly in this role, with the hint of seriousness that is in her face.