How Dare He Make Love To Me and Not Be a Married Man!

theowinthrop

This soufflé of a movie demonstrates what that a film can be entertaining even if it is basically unsubstantial in its story or in any message it may have.

Ingrid Bergman is stage star Anna Kalman. She is introduced by her sister Margaret (Phyllis Calvert) and brother-in-law Alfred (Cecil Parker) introduce her to a wealthy American Philip Adams. Alfred works for NATO, and he is trying to get Philip to accept a job with it. There is a dinner that Philip is giving a speech at, and he needs someone to accompany him. Anna goes, and they hit it off. But when they are alone he explains to her that he is a married man. Anna at first retreats from further interest in him, but she changes her mind. And soon they are having a full scale love affair, although she is aware that there is a Mrs. Adams back in the United States who won't give him a divorce.

Eventually (due to an police report that Alfred has access to) it comes out that Philip is lying. He is not married: he only says so so that he can have what he claims is an "honest" love affair where both parties know ahead of time that there is no chance for permanence. The problem of betraying a spouse (with whom there is supposedly no current love) is gotten rid of from the first. So the remainder is pure romance.

Alfred disagrees with Philip and says that most people want to be married (a rather conventional thought, but Parker's Alfred is a very conventional sort). Later it all becomes a moot point. Margaret saw the same report, and tells Anna. When Anna learns that the man she has come to adore is single (while she thought he was hopelessly tangled in a marriage he could not get out of), she erupts, and yells the line that is in the "Summary" line above.

Rather than simply break with the lying Philip, Anna decides to teach him a lesson - she is going to make him think her fickle with a long discarded lover. The rest of the film follows the revenge that she plans, and what happens as a result.

Flimsy as the story line sounds, the casts carries it off. The film is set in an upper Anglo-American setting, of luxury west end flats, private clubs, diplomat dinners and dances, and private yachts. But Grant and Bergman are giving the oxygen to the lead roles (their second film together since Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS a decade before). Parker and Calvert are suitably good as the conservative brother-in-law and sister, with Parker making the statement that he was born old (a comment that his movie watching admirers would certainly feel is correct). Also note Meg Jenkins and David Kossoff as Anna's servants Doris and Carl. Kossoff in particular shows a healthy fear of unexpected reactions that Anna's practical joking never made room for, and adds a little bit to the conclusion of the movie.

score 8/10

theowinthrop 13 February 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1598492/