Égarements

i've just seen the movie and i enjoyed it. one shouldn't expect the shooting and love scenes that are so common in today's movies, the film has a certain classical perfume. although the action lacks violent events and all the characters behave calmly, the tension is present always, especially through music and landscape, a constant feeling that something bad is about to happen. there are some beautiful moments of interior struggle which are not expressed through words but through the glowing eyes or shadows on NC's or Celia Johnson's face. the lines are poetical in the well-known NC style and the music is beautiful. the movie is intense and personal.

By the late 1940s, after total war and subsequent insolvency, the Brits were gasping for glamour. Their movies supplied it in the Herbert Wilcox/Anna Neagle cycle of London comedies, and Gainsborough weighed in with this romantic melo where everyone suffers in splendour.

Main setting is a Park Lane flat/office. White telephones, quilted headboards, furs, fresh flowers and cocktails. Miss Leighton is gowned by Edward Molyneux. The only hint of post-war austerity is that the tea shop where the two loves of Noel Coward's life accidentally meet has run out of biscuits.

The dialogue is peppered with 'marvellous', 'simply dreadful', 'frightful', 'absolutely'. The vowels are Mayfair-posh: 'thet' for that, 'may' for my, 'Peris' as a city for Johnson to run away to. Like the pronunciation, the story's attitudes and values feel too old for escapism: World War Two and a socialist government had left them behind.

Source material is a playlet from the 1930s anthology 'Tonight at 8.30', as 'Brief Encounter' was developed from 'Still Life'. But this one has no comic relief like the Holloway/Carey byplay to throw the lovers' crises into perspective; the playlet is expanded only to pile on the agony. Blame Coward, who wrote the screenplay and the lush symphonic score. He was surrounded by old pals Johnson, Carey and Payn, with Gladys Calthrop as artistic adviser but no Cineguild (Lean, Neame or Havelock-Allan) to control his excesses.

Terence Fisher later made some stylish Hammer horrors, but here, not long out of the cutting room, his staging and camera-work are as dull as in an episode of 'Colonel March of Scotland Yard'. The illicit pair's sojourn in Venice is covered by a few cheesy back-projections. Coward's big final scene prefigures Fisher's future with Dracula and Frankenstein in that he processes about like a zombie or golem. But he is generally adequate, if never more buttoned-up, portraying a heterosexual-- unlike (say) Ian McKellen.

There is a teaser opening with Johnson doing a flashback narration as in 'Brief Encounter'. Coward does not appear until two reels in. It transpires he's Dr Christian Faber: a fashionable, uptight and overworked shrink, 'one of the most famous psychiatrists in the world'. He goes missing after wife Johnson discovers and unnervingly tolerates his fling with Leighton, her school contemporary, a divorced, fickle expat on the loose. (Johnson was 14 years older than Leighton; and though meant to be 34 in the story, she was 42.)

The title alludes to 'The Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart' (Deuteronomy). Physician, heal thyself. As we know from his diaries, Coward did experience bouts of amour fou which he half-regretted for interfering with the work which, he once said, was 'more fun than fun'. When Dr Faber's not mooning over Leighton, cigarette in hand, his brisk way with patients resembles Capt Kinross's buttressing of morale on the lower deck in 'In Which We Serve'.

The tale could be Coward's way of obliquely acknowledging the drawbacks of his clipped, corseted approach to life and emotions, which was beginning to be mocked. He was no longer the child prodigy or even the wartime booster. In the 1950s, as kitchen sinks displaced french windows, the Master would lose touch with the mood of theatre critics (if not audiences) and would increasingly appear as a cabaret performer and featured player in others' films, mass-marketing his persona for rich Americans.

'The Astonished Heart' was his last serious stab at cinematic auteurisme. It was the diminuendo end of an ace decade on and behind the screen. For a blistering portrayal of the same sort of guilt, we must turn to his old 'Brief Encounter' colleague Trevor Howard in 'The Heart of the Matter'.

In motion pictures, we have many different artistic disciplines coming together to make one finished product. In some films, there are elements that have great artistic merit, while other elements fall short.

Recently, I watched THE ASTONISHED HEART. Noel Coward wrote the original play, the screenplay and even performed the lead role in the film. I guess years later, he made fun of his performance, calling himself a bad actor. But he also wrote the score for this project, and I must say that even though the story is not one of his best, and his acting is not as good as other men of his generation, he has crafted a most superb musical composition. The movie should be watched just to enjoy the soundtrack alone!

So, do we call THE ASTONISHED HEART a masterpiece, or a flop? Is it art or something less than art? Even the creator (Mr. Coward) seems to offer conflicting testimony. But I think it does have artistic merit, and I am sure others do, too.

This appears to be one of Noel Coward's lesser known films, and it is easy to understand why. Taken at face value it's not a bad film, but there's nothing terribly good about it either. Nothing much happens at all throughout the course of the film, it's simply the story of Chris and Leonora's ill-fated affair, and Barbara's reaction to it. The only thing that keeps the film interesting is the fact that we already know it's going to end badly for one reason or another, owing to the first scene. Oddly, there are many perfect opportunities in the story for conflict, and yet none of them are utilised. For example, it would've been much more interesting and believable if Barbara had've fallen out with Leonora, but instead the two remained on good terms throughout the film. The notion of Barbara having been betrayed by her friend was not explored at all - in fact she didn't even seem to feel betrayed by her husband; she even encourages him to go on a holiday with Leonora. Similarly, Chris' two secretaries at his practice, Susan Birch and Tim Verney, who also happen to be close friends of both Chris and Barbara, are never forced to take sides. In fact, Tim shies away from conflict by telling Chris that he's terribly fond of both him and Barbara. Despite the strange lack of conflict, the biggest flaw in the film is the fact that we don't care whether Chris ends up with Leonora or Barbara. The two womens' personalities are indistinguishable anyway so we don't know which of the two is better suited to be with Chris, and besides this, Barbara's permissiveness gives the impression that she hardly cares about the affair anyway. Furthermore, I found Chris and Leonora's relationship somewhat unconvincing. I can overlook the ridiculously short timeframe in which they fall for each other because that is so common in films of this era, but even then the relationship seemed shallow. Coward's character was too austere and cynical to be the object of Leonora's affections. He reminds me of the socially inept genius Sir Earnest Pease from the film "Very Important Person" - I'm sure the two would've gotten along well. Chris' coldness and austerity made his love for Leonora seem insincere. I think Coward should've sat this one out and given his part to a younger man - as it is, I was constantly wondering what this young beauty saw in such a sombre, mostly emotionless, balding middle aged man. Despite all my criticisms, the film still manages to be interesting - just not terribly compelling. The fact that none of the characters are particularly well developed gives them an enigmatic nature, which is somewhat intriguing. The Astonished Heart is certainly worth watching, but it is a flawed piece of cinema.

Yes, dated, yes, stiff, yes, mannered, yes, upper class twaddle, yes, Noel looks 99 years old, yes, wet, yes, blinkered clipped and indoors... BUT what a script! I had never seen this 1950 film which delves well into adultery and gay relationships and (in one jaw-dropper throwaway scene, an incest/son-mother proxy moment where a mother is aghast at her sex drive for a boy 'younger than her son who looks just like......him'...)... While it is easy to sneer and carry on being superior to the 'drama'... THE ASTONISHED HEART is a very well behaved and quite intelligent dissecting of a weak marriage falling into lust by a man who knows what it means, how it is caused and what the result will be... and that therein is the thrill of it: He knows and he still cannot stop falling. Don't ridicule this film, enjoy its melodrama and manners. It is a really intelligent adult film from the post war years of Britain when everyone was sick of... waiting....!