Égarements

The chance to see Noel Coward perform any one of his works is never to be passed up. But The Astonished Heart is inflated out of all proportion from what began as a small one act playlet, part of an octet that comprised Tonight At 8:30.

Another of the playlets from this group was also similarly inflated by MGM as a vehicle for Norma Shearer and Melvyn Douglas. There just was not enough there to warrant the inflation. Coward does marginally better when he inflates it himself.

The English are so terribly civilized about infidelity. That must be the reason that there was never the equivalent of the state of Nevada, a Reno where spouses can soak the adulterer in court. I'm thinking that this particular Coward work did not play well in America as opposed to others.

Coward after years of what was a humdrum marriage to Celia Johnson falls hard for Margaret Leighton who is both beautiful and treacherous. She's an old friend of Johnson's who drops in and one night when Johnson can't make a social engagement, Coward takes Leighton and he descends down hill from there.

Coward in the story is a psychiatrist, a profession that's supposed to have all the answers for human behavior. But his training hasn't given him any answers. Johnson might just take him back, but he can't bring himself to make a move. It all ends badly.

As we know Coward was gay and this film offers us a rare chance to see Graham Payn who was his partner in life and whose career was mostly on the English stage. Payn plays an office assistant to Coward. But I wonder if some previous relationship went bad for him and Coward being the good story teller that he is was writing about something that happened in his own life.

He also understood the human psyche well and certainly pride can be a double edged weapon in our character. It's pride that keeps Coward from doing the right thing all around.

Coward did a far better job than MGM did in inflating one of his short plays to a full blown drama. But while it's good, it's not up there with Private Lives or Blithe Spirit.

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.

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....!

Noel Coward's name appears so many times in the opening credits that you think it's going to be a parody: starring, written by, based on a play by, music by... (Celia Johnson is top-billed at the start; he is in the closing credits). He's "one of the most famous psychiatrists in the world" and living a happy upper-class existence in postwar London, which looks pristine and rich, with wife Johnson, until her schoolmate Margaret Leighton shows up to form a triangle. The dialog does have some Coward wit and polish, and the structure is clever--we learn at the start that something terrible's happened, but we take our time finding out what it is. Johnson's as excellent as you'd expect, and it's fun to see Leighton in a more glamorous mode than she usually employed, and it's literate and soigné. But Coward is not, let's face it, a likely object of affection for this particular triangle, and it's hard not to giggle when you know that after each day of shooting he's going home with Graham Payn (who plays his man-Friday, and has an irritating voice). Even his character, as others have noted, is rather dull, and you wonder why both of these two resourceful, attractive women would be throwing themselves at him. Worth a look, and buttressed by a particularly elegant Coward musical score, but not one for the ages.

Noel Coward was perhaps the wrong person to star in this odd adaptation of his own story, about an unfaithful husband and the decisions he makes.

It works mainly in flashback, so no surprise for the viewer in seeing where the affair is heading. Celia Johnson plays Coward's wife (a second teaming, following In Which We Serve, eight years earlier); while the lovely Margaret Leighton is his love interest.

The scenes between Coward and Leighton are difficult due to the total lack of chemistry, but the film is not altogether bad: Joyce Carey appears in support, and is very effective; the plot, although outlandish, can be accepted to a point. Coward himself had a low opinion of his work in The Astonished Heart, referring to himself as ‘that splendid old Chinese character actress'.