Dans la douceur du jour

This is a pretty strange little film about an illicit affair between a married man and his best friend's wife. Finch is the man, a publisher, who finds himself drawn to friend Hill's much younger wife. Finch's wife is a virtual shut-in, played by Lansbury. She suffers from the effects of a car wreck (shown in flashback, in which she looks OLDER than present day!) Fonda is the young lady married to Hill who suffers from emotional problems, lung difficulties and the ugliest hair ever to hit the silver screen. She is downright scary in this film! Her make-up is done in such a severe way and her hair (a hideous "fall", actually) is so unflattering and Orry-Kelly decks her out in an increasingly bizarre set of clothes and atrocious hats that the film becomes a sort of fashion horror movie! Fonda, so attractive in the films before and after this one is made to look like a total freak. At least the unflattering, ugly clothes are something to focus on because the story and the romance between her and Finch is deadly dull. The one bright spot is Lansbury. Though her character is foolish and unreal, she steals every scene she's in, looks terrific (though she keeps obsessing about a "scar" which is almost completely impossible to see!) and when she exits the film, she takes the life right out of it. She gets off a few wisecracks and displays a sexier figure than she often got to show. Cummings is wasted in a very small role. Apart from her first scene, she gets virtually nothing to do or say. The film is watchable for it's Grecian scenery and for the camp value of watching the May-December maneuverings of Finch and Fonda. The music score is exceedingly annoying and the short running time often feels like twice that. Sherwood appears very briefly...the film definitely could have used more of her.

The premise of In the Cool of the Day was intriguing: a married man falls for his friend's wife while on vacation in Greece. Since I'd just come back from a vacation in Greece myself, I was looking forward to watching it. Plus, any movie with the insanely beautiful Jane Fonda will be good, right? Not so much. And the hairdresser and makeup artist must have hated their leading lady. Poor Miss Fonda was given a hideous wig and strange eye makeup to distort her features - you can still tell she's a beautiful woman underneath all that, but it's painful to watch such attempts to make her look otherwise. She does get to wear some gorgeous outfits, though.

Peter Finch is the lead, and he's unhappily married to Angela Lansbury. Angela refuses to be seen in public because she doesn't want the "disfiguring" scars on her face to attract attention. But there's nothing wrong with her face at all! Perhaps the makeup artist was too busy with Jane Fonda to remember Angela's scar tissue. Anyway, Peter goes from one sick woman to another: Jane has bad lungs and could die from pneumonia at any time. Then why is she practically chain-smoking throughout the entire movie?

Thankfully, there are other movies you can watch if you want to see the sights of Greece. And even more thankfully, there are other movies you can watch if you're a Jane Fonda fan (and who isn't?). So why watch this one? It's weird, uneven, and disappointing.

Saw this one on Turner today- with a great cast: Peter Finch, Jane Fonda, Angela Lansbury- all Oscar people (I think)- it was TERRIBLE ! First off, the title seems to mean nothing whatsoever... Angela carps, Jane flirts... they are off to Greece on the flimsiest of pretenses (how dumb can Angela be ?)-- then the same cat/mouse game continues-- lots of good shots of Grecian ruins, but a travelogue would have been a lot more honest use of celluloid !

No wonder this wasn't even listed in my comprehensive special edition video book covering thousands of movies ~ not even as a dog. Since yesterday, 10/16/06, was Angela Lansbury's 81st birthday they featured her movies on Turner Classics. Evidently Jane Fonda must still have some pull with Ted, because her performance didn't warrant viewing; it made ME uncomfortable watching her. Angela, in a recent interview, mentioned her disappointment with that movie. No surprise! That's 90 minutes I'll never get back. However, I made a lovely cauliflower au gratin and a pumpkin pie while the movie played on our kitchen TV (I kept thinking something would happen or the story would get better; it didn't).

I give it a one, just for Jane Fonda's 'hair' (a lot of us are obsessing about it...), which - seems to be what's most interesting in a very dreary, creaky RomDram from '63.

I don't know the story of where the title a actually came from, but, the fact that it's 'opposite' (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) titled film was such a well-received film came out AFTER this (as well as the book that film's based on) is probably one of the more interesting aspects going on in it's making.

In her interview with Robert Osborne (PRIVATE SCREENINGS), Angela Lansbury said that it was a 'difficult' project for her, and, while she did her best, she didn't think it was 'that good.'

Thus was an early vehicle for the young, gorgeous Fonda. She was still not fully comfortable on camera, and it shows. The film tries to showcase her as the typical 'sexy, young girl,' this time playing married (to the older Arthur Hill), who shares 'common interests' with the also married - to Angela Lansbury - Peter Finch.

ICD tries to be too many things, but fails in them all.

This was put out at a time in Hollywood before the 'revolutions' of sex, politics would play out in the real world. MGM - desperately trying to find a direction to navigate this tidal change - ends up with a film that might've been 'ahead of it's time' had it come out a few years earlier, but, as the grounds were already trembling, MGM ends up behind-the- times, with a product that - besides the natural beauty of Greece (where this was shot on location) feels very forced and dated.