After 1944's MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK, Preston Sturges and Paramount parted company. He was too independent a film creator, in a period when film was made in a studio factory system with levels of producers watching how films turned out. Most of his movies had been profitable (one exception was his attempt to do a straight dramatic story - THE GREAT MOMENT). But he was too big for this type of pressure. So he left the studio and proceeded to make two independent (or semi-independent) films. The first was THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK with Harold Lloyd, produced with Howard Hughes. The results were pretty good, but certain flaws prevented it from being fully successful, and Hughes re-cut the film when he re-released it. The second, done at Twentieth Century Fox, was UNFAITHFULLY YOURS. Here, he had problems with Fox chief Darryl Zanuck that mirrored the problems he had at Paramount. But the resulting film was one of his best works. As mentioned elsewhere it was his dark comedy, his MONSIEUR VERDOUX (which appeared a few years earlier).
Rex Harrison is the great British conductor Sir Alfred De Carter, who is married to the beautiful (but somewhat younger) Daphne (Linda Darnell). Daphne is sister to Barbara (Barbara Lawrence) who is married to a billionaire August Henschler (Rudy Vallee) Leading a major orchestra on tour, De Carter finds when he gets home that August hired a detective (Edgar Kennedy) to keep an eye on Daphne. There is a full report suggesting that her behavior was incorrect. De Carter is furious at August's actions, and goes to confront the Detective. But he finds Sweeney the Detective a fan of his music, and actually a fairly reasonable man. After an initial moment of anger, De Carter decides to read the report. He finds that the evidence suggests that Daphne has been having an affair with his secretary Anthony (Kurt Krueger).
The background of the story, and an interesting sequence showing Sir Alfred in rehearsal, takes up about half an hour of the movie to set up the story. We see Sir Alfred (deeply troubled, and already snapping at Daphne and Anthony) conduct Rossini, Tschaikovski, and Wagner in a three part concert. Each time he conducts he is thinking of his marriage partner and how to handle her. He imagines a perfect murder that pins the killing on Anthony. He imagines an overwhelmingly saintly version of himself being all forgiving and generous to his departing wife, leaving a self-hating Daphne in tears. He finally imagines confronting Daphne and Anthony with his pistol and playing Russian Roulette, ending with his own shocking suicide.
The concert ends, and the conductor goes home to put his schemes into effect, starting (of course) with revenge by murder. Of course, if this was a Lang or Hitchcock film the revenge would have been effectively carried out. It's Sturges however, so everything possible to carry out the "perfect" murder goes wrong. My personal favorite is a recording device that will enable him to make a record of himself saying "Help...Tony stop! Stop!" or something like that, and changing the pitch to resemble the voice of Daphne screaming! In the vision it was so simple. But the recording device falls through a window, causes Harrison to fall through a chair, keeps throwing the record off the turntable, and when he tries to follow the "easy to follow instructions" the plans look more complex than an atom smasher.
The same thing is repeated for the two other visions, with equally embarrassing failures. It is only at the tale end of the film that Sir Alfred is able to find a quiet way out of the mess of his life, without any real embarrassment.
Sturges did very well indeed in this film. Harrison was quite pleased with this role, which he felt (with THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR) was the best he did in Hollywood in the 1940s. He felt that Sturges' script was better than Shakespeare. The film also gave Sturges the chance to give Edgar Kennedy a splendid last moment on screen, as the Detective who loves De Carter's handling of Handel and Frederick Delius. Kennedy is only in the film about five minutes, but does well - even though he looks ill (he'd die in 1948). Lionel Stander, as Carter's business manager Hugo, keeps the annoyed conductor from ringing his idiot brother-in-law's neck several times. Linda Darnell is as sexy as she appeared in LETTER TO THREE WIVES, and to the end we wonder if she and Anthony did have an affair. And Vallee appears as hopelessly incompetent in being helpful as he was in romancing Claudette Colbert in Sturges' THE PALM BEACH STORY.
But the film failed. There is a downer atmosphere around it of death. First Kennedy's demise (mentioned above), and then the Harrison - Carole Landis Suicide Scandal as well. The idea (to a 1948 American audience, tired of death from World War II) of humor from subjects like murder and suicide was too much. The film flopped, and Sturges never regained his footing. Following it came the half-way decent THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE OF BASHFUL BEND with Betty Grable, which ended his Fox years, then his living abroad in Paris, and then the awful THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE. One can only say that at least Sturges did do the string of great comedies that he was able to do while he could, and be grateful for that.
Rex Harrison is the great British conductor Sir Alfred De Carter, who is married to the beautiful (but somewhat younger) Daphne (Linda Darnell). Daphne is sister to Barbara (Barbara Lawrence) who is married to a billionaire August Henschler (Rudy Vallee) Leading a major orchestra on tour, De Carter finds when he gets home that August hired a detective (Edgar Kennedy) to keep an eye on Daphne. There is a full report suggesting that her behavior was incorrect. De Carter is furious at August's actions, and goes to confront the Detective. But he finds Sweeney the Detective a fan of his music, and actually a fairly reasonable man. After an initial moment of anger, De Carter decides to read the report. He finds that the evidence suggests that Daphne has been having an affair with his secretary Anthony (Kurt Krueger).
The background of the story, and an interesting sequence showing Sir Alfred in rehearsal, takes up about half an hour of the movie to set up the story. We see Sir Alfred (deeply troubled, and already snapping at Daphne and Anthony) conduct Rossini, Tschaikovski, and Wagner in a three part concert. Each time he conducts he is thinking of his marriage partner and how to handle her. He imagines a perfect murder that pins the killing on Anthony. He imagines an overwhelmingly saintly version of himself being all forgiving and generous to his departing wife, leaving a self-hating Daphne in tears. He finally imagines confronting Daphne and Anthony with his pistol and playing Russian Roulette, ending with his own shocking suicide.
The concert ends, and the conductor goes home to put his schemes into effect, starting (of course) with revenge by murder. Of course, if this was a Lang or Hitchcock film the revenge would have been effectively carried out. It's Sturges however, so everything possible to carry out the "perfect" murder goes wrong. My personal favorite is a recording device that will enable him to make a record of himself saying "Help...Tony stop! Stop!" or something like that, and changing the pitch to resemble the voice of Daphne screaming! In the vision it was so simple. But the recording device falls through a window, causes Harrison to fall through a chair, keeps throwing the record off the turntable, and when he tries to follow the "easy to follow instructions" the plans look more complex than an atom smasher.
The same thing is repeated for the two other visions, with equally embarrassing failures. It is only at the tale end of the film that Sir Alfred is able to find a quiet way out of the mess of his life, without any real embarrassment.
Sturges did very well indeed in this film. Harrison was quite pleased with this role, which he felt (with THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR) was the best he did in Hollywood in the 1940s. He felt that Sturges' script was better than Shakespeare. The film also gave Sturges the chance to give Edgar Kennedy a splendid last moment on screen, as the Detective who loves De Carter's handling of Handel and Frederick Delius. Kennedy is only in the film about five minutes, but does well - even though he looks ill (he'd die in 1948). Lionel Stander, as Carter's business manager Hugo, keeps the annoyed conductor from ringing his idiot brother-in-law's neck several times. Linda Darnell is as sexy as she appeared in LETTER TO THREE WIVES, and to the end we wonder if she and Anthony did have an affair. And Vallee appears as hopelessly incompetent in being helpful as he was in romancing Claudette Colbert in Sturges' THE PALM BEACH STORY.
But the film failed. There is a downer atmosphere around it of death. First Kennedy's demise (mentioned above), and then the Harrison - Carole Landis Suicide Scandal as well. The idea (to a 1948 American audience, tired of death from World War II) of humor from subjects like murder and suicide was too much. The film flopped, and Sturges never regained his footing. Following it came the half-way decent THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE OF BASHFUL BEND with Betty Grable, which ended his Fox years, then his living abroad in Paris, and then the awful THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE. One can only say that at least Sturges did do the string of great comedies that he was able to do while he could, and be grateful for that.