A Verdade Dói

Max (Stewart Granger) is a film producer and lousy husband. Why lousy? Because some time ago, he had an affair with one of his leading ladies but his wife doesn't know about it. However, his latest film project is with this same temperamental actress and Max is naturally concerned about what this unstable lady will do. Well, it turns out she's not the one to worry about, but her deranged husband...who works out what seems to be the perfect frame up when he kills his wife. What is Max to do?

The best part of the film is George Sanders...who plays wonderful villains. Here, he's at his smoothest and nastiest and he sure has got poor Max in a bind! Overall, well done and my only reservation is that the story is amazingly farfetched when you think about it.

Though leading man Stewart Granger has occasionally played the heel in a few films, the greatest screen cad of all George Sanders dominates this film playing a very wounded cad. He's a publisher of religious textbooks married to that most unlikely of mates, the voluptuous movie star Gianna Marie Canale who has used her feminine wiles to get to the top of the film business. Her latest conquest is producer Stewart Granger who is a bit down in the mouth since wife Donna Reed left him.

The Whole Truth has Sanders planning a most methodical revenge against his wife and against Granger whom he sees as the pinnacle of all the men Canale cheated on him with. Sanders gives an academy award winning performance, even better than the Oscar winning one he got for All About Eve with the French police.

Though The Whole Truth is far from All About Eve it's a decent enough thriller with Hollywood's greatest cad dominating the proceedings.

"The Whole Truth" breaks a number of murder mystery conventions, making it pleasantly unpredictable. It's almost Hitchcockian (in the lighthearted vein of "Rear Window"), with a good measure of humor, suspense, and romance.

While the film may lack megastars, its cast's performances are faultless. George Sanders is at his oily best in the film as Mr. Carliss, while Stewart Granger is a worthy leading man. Its brisk pace is complimented by a fantastic, upbeat jazz score, more typical of '60s spy films. Its aesthetic sense --cinematography, set direction-- isn't particularly fabulous, and it fails to capture the beauty of its French Riviera setting, but that fortunately doesn't detract from the delightfully suspenseful story.

Ultimately it's a fun bit of suspenseful entertainment --not iconic but definitely worth watching.

A rather tawdry murder mystery set among film makers in the South of France (although the principals plainly never left Walton-on-Thames), directed for all its worth by a young John Guillermin (later described by Granger as "peculiarly lacking in charm, to say the least") from a screenplay by film noir veteran Jonathan Latimer from a play by Philip Mackie, with gothic photography by Wilkie Cooper and suitably trashy musical accompaniment by Mischa Spoliansky (performed on the soundtrack by Johnny Dankworth).

It's good to see female lead Donna Reed play a more active role in the proceedings than one is accustomed to, while George Sanders also looks less bored than usual during this period in his life.

The whole truth. The 1958 one. Stewart granger, donna reed, george sanders. Married but separated max poulton (granger) has been enjoying the company of his leading lady gina (giana canale) while out of town, working on a film. But when he tells gina it's over, she gets angry. Then carliss from scotland yard shows up, asking questions. About gina's murder. And then, a very drunk gina shows up! And she hasn't been murdered. So what is this carliss pulling? And when things get crazy, now carliss is telling a completely different story. What's going on ? Can max convince the coppers that he had no part in any of this? We feel the suspense and anguish that poulton is going through, as the police lock him up. It's pretty good. Kind of a silly bit right at the very end, but it all works. Based on the play by philip mackie. He won the bafta for court martial. Directed by john guillerman. He had also directed the 78 version of death on the nile, and towering inferno!