Quando a Esposa Peca

When this film began, it looked like one of those films the stars and directors made simply to fulfill their contractual obligations.

However, despite Henry Fonda's occasional forays into sleepwalking his role (especially in his romantic scenes), the overall film was amusing, funny in places and occasionally clever.

It's light entertainment and clearly NEVER intended to rise above that threshold. The warm flame that illumined the production was Leslie Caron. This was a better performance in some ways (IMO) than "American In Paris." It was far more "real" and emotionally intimate than other ones she's done, and without it, this picture would have been a genuine yawner.

But that's about it. It's the reason I came here, to see who wrote the script. The tone of the dialog sounded vaguely familiar. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there were other unnamed doctors who tried to breathe life into this script. I also began to wonder if this was some cockamamie remake of A Star Is Born. It isn't, not that I think it would be better if that had been the case.

I'm also somewhat gratified to see that I'm not the only person who never saw the appeal of Leslie Caron. She's always just Leslie Caron; it doesn't matter what the role is.

My fellow reviewers are right. Don't bother with this. It's a European production/film trying to be American, and as a consequence, it's neither one nor the other. It's a disaster of a hybrid.

I don't give this movie as low a rating that many had. It was an ok movie. It's listed as a comedy, that's the reason I wanted to watch it. But it's not a funny movie at all. If you want laughs from a movie, watch something else, this is not for you.

Henry Fonda nearly quit the movies after getting a look at this thing, a backstage-Hollywood comedy-drama by Nunnally Johnson, loosely adapted from Romain Gary's novel "The Colors of the Day". Johnson also produced and directed the picture, and therefore deserves most of the blame for what's on the screen. Famous actor-director Fonda becomes smitten with struggling actress Leslie Caron after watching her do a screen-test and quickly turns her into a formidable star. It's at this point in the film where we see fake movie titles zig-zagging across the screen ("Between Heaven and Hell", "Mademoiselle X"), signifying success, and later get a preposterous scene of Fonda shouting down Caron's agents for their lack of direction (isn't he running the whole show?). Fonda compares his lovely discovery to Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, but we just don't see it. Leslie Caron is attractive here, but sullen and with a deep, monotonous voice. When she supposedly wins an Academy Award, we don't see that triumph either (the statue is super-imposed over a starry background--along with MORE zig-zagging movie titles!). Johnson obviously knows the world of show-biz inside-out, but here he gives us the outer-workings of the movie-making world without any of the inner-workings. Caron and Fonda wed, but she quickly tires of his one-track mind--she wants to be a newlywed forever--and runs off with an Air Force Major while in France. Fonda wants the handsome home wrecker dead and orders a hit on him, but changes his mind when he thinks his wife might be killed too, and so chases after the Mutt and Jeff team he's in-cahoots with while dressed as a harlequin clown. It's too silly for words. *1/2 from ****

Nunnally Johnson, one of the great talents of the movie business in the 1930s and 1940s eased up for several years, and then came back to write and direct this immobile lump of a motion picture..... not helped in the least, by the way, by the fact that the color has faded on the print shown this evening on Turner Classics Movie, going all pink.

Into this mess, he injected some very talented performers, particularly Henry Fonda, but then seems apparently to have directed everyone in a monotone, from megalomaniac Henry Fonda, who plays Leslie Caron's starmaker husband, to Myron McCormick, who plays his platitude-spouting assistant, to Cesare Danova, who plays her seducer. Caron gets to weep and screech a bit, but that's about the limit of emotions on display. Everyone speaks in long speeches all the time.

A thorough-going stinker. Avoid this one.