User reviews

From the film's title and credits, I had assumed it would be a hysterical melodrama but, in general, I was pleasantly surprised by the result! As expected from this director, it's a stylish film but not an easy one: in fact, it's been likened to Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) - though it's not quite that mystifying!

Still, the plot does blur the confines which separate fact from fiction, especially in the way novelist/screenwriter Michael Caine bases the affair between a man and a woman who meet while on holiday in a foreign city - and which we see enacted from time to time - on the one he suspects went on between his wife (Glenda Jackson) and a young German gigolo (Helmut Berger) in Baden-Baden. The latter, however, is not as naïve and innocuous as he seems to be; apart from being a crook, when invited by Caine to England, he insinuates himself into the couple's household: charming the nanny who takes care of their child, intriguing the apprehensive Caine (playing a character named Lewis Fielding, whereupon Berger presents himself as an admirer citing "Tom Jones" as his favorite novel - actually written by Henry Fielding!) but who still makes him his secretary, while Jackson is annoyed and evidently uncomfortable with the whole tension-filled set-up.

The three stars are excellent, but Caine's character is especially interesting; curiously enough, when presented with the idea for his script, he finds it boring and proposes to change it into a suspenser but, after realizing that the drama held greater resonance for him than he had anticipated, he is unaware of the parallel thriller subplot wherein Berger falls foul of his criminal associates (led by the smooth Michel Lonsdale)! The cast also features Rene' Kolldehoff (as Caine's extravagant producer), Nathalie Delon (severely underused, despite her "Guest Artist" credit) and Kate Nelligan (as a gossipmonger friend of the Fieldings).

The script by Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman (from the latter's novel) is actually very funny, particularly Caine's explosive put-down of Nelligan on her very first appearance (though when Jackson eventually leaves him for Berger, she goes to see how he's doing and they make up), a society dinner in which Caine ends up drunk and Delon is mistaken for a hooker and, again, Caine's close encounter with gangster Lonsdale. Here, Losey also does some interesting things with his camera (Gerry Fisher was the cinematographer) and Richard Hartley's score is notable, too.

I've only watched this and MR. KLEIN (1976) from Losey's final period (1972-85), during which there were evident signs of decline; even if overlong and emerging, ultimately, as a lesser work, the film is more enjoyable - and rewarding - than could be gleaned from a mere reading of its synopsis...

Glenda Jackson decides to get away for a few days from husband, successful writer Michael Caine and heads to Baden Baden where she succumbs to the charms of mysterious Helmut Berger. Unbeknownst to Jackson, Berger's character contacts Michael Caine and comes to stay with them as Caine's secretary, but he is clearly running away from something.

One of those films with an incredible pedigree - Caine and Jackson, writer Tom Stoppard and sixties director giant Joseph Losey (The Go-Between, The Servant). But whilst there is quality at work here with a sometimes witty and clever script, this doesn't really coalesce into a wholly convincing story. The 2 leads are excellent with Caine often very funny, but the witty marriage in crisis element is rather overshadowed by the man on the run story which doesn't really fit with the rest of the material. Plenty to enjoy though and in some way underrated and worth catching, just manage your expectations.

Glenda Jackson's frustrated bourgeois housewife, having gone to the spa town of Baden-Baden for unspecified reasons, maybe or maybe doesn't have a brief affair with Helmut Berger's young gigolo. In town on a botched drug deal, Berger operates through a combination of what we might term freelancing: as a car or drug smuggler but, it seems, principally as a gigolo whose opening line is that he's a "poet". Meanwhile, back in British suburbia, Jackson's husband, writer Michael Caine abandons plans to work on a novel to begin a screenplay based on his jealous imaginings of his wife's Baden-Baden sojourn. When Berger telephones Caine to announce that he's an admirer of his work and turns up (literally) "for tea", the stakes are set for the triangle to play out, with the added drama in the final third of Berger's drug connections, among them the poker-faced, and sadly under-used, Michael Lonsdale, turning up in a kind of lugubrious pursuit.

During the 1960s and 70s, Joseph Losey reinvented himself from a filmmaker of social problem pictures and taut, gritty noirs, to an arthouse director, with mixed results. In some cases-notably his collaborations with Harold Pinter, 'Accident' and 'The Go-Between'-formal innovations-particularly Alain Resnais-style temporal ambiguity-were closely allied to a dissection of the British class system. In others, such as the camp classics 'Boom!' or 'Secret Ceremony', it's not clear exactly *what's* going on-and not necessarily in a good way. Essentially, what we watch is a set of variations on a theme, more or less successfully rendered. Take the use of flashbacks and flashforwards: longer or shorter inserts of scenes whose relation to the main narrative is not immediately revealed, used particularly good effect in the late '60s/early '70s Pinter collaborations 'Accident' and 'The Go-Between'. In 'The Romantic Englishwoman', the flashbacks/forwards centre on an incident that occurs near the start of the film: the moment Jackson and Berger take a lift together in their hotel and may or may not initiate a sexual relationship. This incident is a way to explore the boundaries between action and desire, and various real or imaginary pairings of the heterosexual couple and a third partner. What happened in the lift in Baden-Baden? From whose perspective do we see this?

As the film goes on, though, not much done is to expand these initially intriguing ideas. The film couldn't easily be called either a feminist or an anti-feminist film: Caine's obnoxious outburst at Jackson's friend, a visiting gossip columnist, for repeating feminist statements about female homemaking roles, is clearly absurd, yet, like Jeanne Mourea's Eve, Jackson's dreams of liberation from marriage can occur only through another man, offering no real possibility of sociability outside the heterosexual contract. We thus simultaneously watch the playing out of male jealousy and of Jackson's "romantic" desire for escape--the doomed template of much melodrama. Too often, though, the film simply *presents* this double-bind, offering little other perspective on what we already know. The flashback-flashforward structure insists on the claustrophobic way in which its characters play out pre-ordained social roles, yet it has little to say *about* such roles, apart from telling us that they exist. The result: a film that ultimately feels "cold", dead, an exercise in style.

It may be regarded as minor Losey but it's by no means dismissable and is set once again amongst the Upper Crust and the Hoi Polloi. "The Romantic Englishwoman" of the title is Glenda Jackson, (superb as always), married to novelist Michael Caine, (not at his best here). She's bored by the life she is leading which is no life at all really and he's got writer's block and has turned to writing for the cinema. It begins in Baden Baden where she's gone 'to find herself' and where she meets cocaine smuggling gigolo Helmut Berger, (much too prissy to be a convincing love interest). When she returns to England Berger follows her, landing on her doorstep where Caine welcomes him with open arms planning to make him a character in the film he is writing.

It was adapted by Thomas Wiseman and Tom Stoppard from a novel by Wiseman and there is nice streak of dark, and at times very funny, humour running through it though you would be hard pressed to call it a comedy. It wasn't well received when it came out and hasn't been much seen since. Ultimately it's Glenda's film reminding us just how good an actress she could be in a well-written role, here making mincemeat of her co-stars.

Spa towns seem to have an odd effect on film-makers. Alain Resnais' "Last year in Marienbad", set in the Czech spa town of that name, has a reputation for being bafflingly obscure, so much so that it won itself a place in Michael and Harry Medved's "Fifty Worst Films of All Time". And then there is Joseph Losey's "The Romantic Englishwoman", part of which is set in the German spa town of Baden Baden.

The plot concerns Elizabeth, the "romantic Englishwoman" of the title and the wife of a well-known novelist. While staying in Baden Baden Elizabeth has an affair with a young German named Thomas. Or does she? Is it possible that this "affair" was simply a fantasy on her part? Or does it only exist in the mind of her jealous husband Lewis? Thomas, an admirer of Lewis' work, later comes to stay with Lewis and Elizabeth at their home in England, where Lewis makes him surprisingly welcome for a man who is (or whom he believes to be) his wife's lover. There is also a sub-plot about Thomas' criminal associates, led by a man named Swan, who are pursuing him across Europe, but the exact details remain vague.

There is an adage that one should never judge a book by its cover, and the cinematic equivalent would probably be "don't judge a film by the big names in its title sequence". Even if you have admired the other work of those names. Michael Caine (now Sir Michael) is one of the cinema's greatest stars, appearing in some of the best British films of the sixties, seventies and eighties such as "Alfie", "Get Carter" and "Educating Rita". Glenda Jackson is today best known as a Labour politician, but was a fine actress in her youth. Scriptwriter Tom Stoppard is perhaps Britain's greatest living playwright. Losey was best known to me as the director of "The Go-Between", one of the major British films of the early seventies and one of the films which started the "heritage cinema" movement.

Unfortunately, all this assembled talent does not make for a good film. "The Romantic Englishwoman" goes to show that baffling obscurity was not a monopoly of the Nouvelle Vague and that British art-house film-makers could be just as infuriatingly obscure as their French counterparts. (Losey was American by birth, but I count him as an honorary Briton. He was forced to leave Hollywood during the McCarthy era because of his left-wing sympathies and thereafter worked mostly in Britain). I would not quite count this among my all-time fifty worst films, but it is nevertheless a dull and confusing one which not only lacks a clear storyline but also lacks any perceptible point. There are some films where ambiguity can be a positive virtue rather than a fault, but this is not one of them. 4/10

Losey works again on the rich vs poor theme, Helmut Berger plays a drug runner/gigolo/confidence trickster passing off as a poet. Top notch performances from Berger and Jackson. Kate Nelligan plays a minor role. Caine is is his usual self but he has played more demanding roles than the one he plays in this film. Top marks go to cinematographer Gerry Fischer and screenplay-writer/playwright Tom Stoppard (especially for the sequences between. Caine and Berger and those between Caine and Nathalie Delon).

The Romantic Englishwoman did hold my attention with its opulent settings and actors of stature, Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson, but the story left me confused. In the movie, we see an English woman named Elizabeth on holiday in Germany at a hotel resort in Baden-Baden, where she has a brief liaison with a handsome European named Thomas played by Helmut Burger. Elizabeth is an elegantly dressed and beautiful woman played by Glenda Jackson, who is married to a successful writer named Lewis Fielding, played by Michael Caine. On Elizabeth's return to England, her husband becomes aware of her friend and invites him to tea at their family home in England. Much of what follows seems to be orchestrated by Lewis who is seeking material for his novel. The extent of the "affair" between Elizabeth and Thomas is difficult to judge since they seemed to barely get to know one another, except for a quick sexual encounter in an elevator. Burger, as the Thomas character, maintains an air of mystery while in Germany and later in England as he becomes an assistant to Caine's character Lewis, doing typing and other secretarial work, and letting the nanny become infatuated with him. It seems that he has no real line of work although he purports to be a poet. Instead, he is a gigolo who consorts with underworld figures and is a skillful thief snatching another guest's overcoat, or removing in-room meals for hotel guests. The relationship between Elizabeth and Thomas seems to blossom as a full affair when they return to Europe, this time in Monaco. Thomas continues to be followed by underworld characters while sharing the affections of wealthy women. Burger lacks the acting persona to play alongside Jackson and Caine. Kate Nelligan and Michael Lonsdale are in the cast; however, their roles amount to little. Beautiful settings aside, the acting of Jackson and Caine cannot rescue this story, whatever the story is.

Michael caine, glenda jackson... two of my own favorites! A writer's wife goes off to baden baden to think about her marriage and meets a poet. When the writer can't reach her by telephone, he imagines what is taking place in germany. And by chance, the poet contacts the writer in a case of mistaken identity. And even shows up at their house! When the writer puts his imagination down on paper, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur. Very clever story. We can feel the love and the anger between husband and wife elizabeth and lewis, but it comes out in the form of yelling and arguments. And lewis is just dying to know what really happened between his wife and thomas. Will he ever really find out, or is he too busy yelling and complaining to have a serious conversation? Helmut berger supporting role. The story itself isn't really that compelling, but it is fun to watch caine and jackson. Directed by joseph losey. He was nominated for two baftas, but not for this film. Novel by thomas wiseman.

Elizabeth Fielding (Glenda Jackson) returns from spa town Baden Baden, Germany where she met gigolo conman Thomas (Helmut Berger). Her husband Lewis (Michael Caine) is having writer's block and imagines all manners of things his wife is doing. Catherine is the hot nanny. Isabel (Kate Nelligan) is Elizabeth's gossiping friend who Lewis hates. Swan (Michael Lonsdale) is tracking Thomas. Then Thomas shows up at the Fielding home.

The couple never intrigued me. They have limited chemistry. Part of the problem is that the movie starts with them apart. They never really connect for me. Neither is the affair that compelling. There is a coldness to the movie. Maybe it's the intent to show a relationship in trouble. It does it in an uninteresting way.

When you find "The Romantic Englishwoman" on IMDB, you might notice that the poster displayed (at least currently) makes the movie look like a porno picture! Jackson is wearing practically nothing and the pose is quite provocative. While there is a bit of nudity in the film and its plot about adultery, it's not a porno picture and I hate when unscrupulous studios try to mismarket movies this way. And, if you are looking for a skin flick, you definitely should look elsewhere.

When the story begins, Elizabeth Fielding (Glenda Jackson) is on holiday by herself at a German spa town. She wants some alone time as well as to 'discover' herself. Her husband is a writer who is at home with the kids and she either had an affair when she's there or wants to have one and imagines it (it's a bit vague due to the direction but it looked like she probably DID engage in an affair). She arrives back home and at first their reunion is very passionate, as the Fieldings make love on their front lawn...something most couples only do on occasion (perhaps every other week)! But the marriage returns to the tedium that apparently drove her to take this solo vacation in the first place. and, soon the man she had an affair with (or fantasized about) arrives for a visit and, oddly, Mr. Fielding's writers block seems to disappear.



Despite this film being about a troubled marriage and adultery, it's also amazingly sterile and, perhaps, dull. I agree with another reviewer who also felt this way. They thought having the film begin with the husband and wife apart and for such a big part of the movie further emphasized this sterility and made you care much less about the Fieldings or their marriage. Too often, performances are rather stodgy and the fireworks you might expect just aren't there most of the time. It is not another "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"...where a couple's relationship spirals out of control with vitriol and tons of emotion.

Ah, she is romantic. And he is jealous. And Helmut Berger is a cad. But you'll forgive all in this movie that begins in Baden Baden and ends in lost hope. No one dies though all suffer in some way. Hey, in this, it's just like real life. Romantic English women everywhere, if you ever wanted to run away from it all with a beautiful young man, this movie is your life.

My very first contact with Joseph Losey's canon is this film adapted from Thomas Wiseman's eponymous novel, the reason why I selected this one purely because of its cast, namely for Glenda Jackson, the two-times Oscar winner, whose work has eluded me until now, but the film itself turns out to be a very disappointing misfire.

Speaking of the cast, Glenda Jackson has her charismatic dignity in almost every scene although regularly shoehorned between Berger's perpetual snug grin and Caine's perpetual sullen stare, and eventually cannot save the film from the mire of a psychological drama swamped with behavioral absurdities and non-consistent narrative. The fierce-looking wife with a bob cut and perfectly trimmed fringes, who is discontent with her middle-class lifestyle (her writer husband has immersed into the writer's block when writing a film script and becomes paranoid about her adultery in her solo trip to Baden-Baden), tries her luck to elope with a self-claimed German poet (whose real identity is only hinted by smuggling small-time drugs and cruising of elderly lonely-hearts), whom she has met before in Baden- Baden, but is there a fling between them in their previous encounter? The film never answer the question, a corny exploit being overused here.

Richard Harley's lyrical string score has stolen the thunder since more often than not, I am very much a visual observer than a sonic perfectionist. Also I quite prefer the slowly panning camera in carefully constructing a hunter and prey game in the beginning part in Baden- Baden to the dreadful and ostentatious meandering in the labyrinth of feigned sentimentality, claiming inane quips like "Englishwoman is the most romantic" (Berger's German accent is a major buzz-killer), I hope someone else could be fortunate enough to fully digest all the hocus-pocus and be grateful towards this ill-fated film adaption.

I'm English and left the UK for the USA in 1974 so this was filmed in the year I left.It would be a film made by intellectual snobs for intellectual snobs and if you didn't understand it that was OK. You really weren't meant to get it. This and more like it were made for the critics to devote yards of written critiques about. It's strange to talk of times when profit and bottom lines were not that important but that is what it was like. Superb actors throwing away their talents on horrible films. They were not going to complain it added to their repertoire especially Michael Caine. Does it make for entertainment absolutely not.The film doesn't even have continuity, why would Glenda Jackson run off with the playboy after hating him for so long? It makes not sense. Then we have an enigmatic car scene with Michael Caine who has apparently driven all the way in his Bentley.No Englishman of the era would do that.They would catch a plane to Paris and then a train and taxi. It's like reading a book that suddenly makes no sense, and therefore you stop believing the rest of the book, and wonder why you are wasting your time.That is the crux of this movie

In the extremely strange and uninteresting The Romantic Englishwoman, a husband's suspicion of his wife's infidelity practically pushes her into doing it. The outline of the plot could have been turned into a comedy, but Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman's script is a drama. As a result, there's really nothing and nobody in the film to really care about.

Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson are the married couple, and every time she's out of his sight, he imagines that she's with another man—even though when they are together they can't keep their hands off each other and only get in small squabbles instead of real fights. Then, Helmut Berger appears, and even though he's a virtual stranger to Glenda, Michael can't help but practically push them together so that he can prove himself right. It's extremely silly, but not in a comical way. Unless you're a die-hard fan of Glenda Jackson and want to see her whip her clothes off in several scenes, I can't imagine anyone wanting to sit through this movie. The acting feels uninspired, the plot is beyond frustrating, and the characters are impossible to root for. Plus, Glenda Jackson always seems too angry to be likable.

Is this the worst film ever made (not including Michael Winner's re-make of The Big Sleep which was almost a spoof)? It starts beautifully with Glenda Jackson looking out of a train window over Germany set to lovely music and then it's all downhill from here on in. Glenda Jackson looks stunningly beautiful but Wardrobe obviously had no idea how to dress her in anything that actually suited her, Michael Caine is rubbish as a jealous husband, no subtlety at all & even unsubtle characters require a certain subtlety of acting. He is wholly miscast as an intellectual & a creative type.

Occasional flashes of style but the "plot" is muddled & aimless, the script poor, the direction & editing are an utter mess. The whole thing is very 1970s & very difficult to watch without cringing. What an utter waste of time. A hundred minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

I used to avoid Joseph Losey, believing him to be just a b-s artist. I'm halfway through watching this film and before Losey disappoints me, which he maybe (or maybe not???) will, I would like write something positive about him, because this film is, so far, a pleasant surprise. It's about so called "jealousy", maybe not very analytic as to the reason why we are jealous or what it means in different ages and sexes. However, it is very much to the point and very descriptive about the process of being jealous as far as the male goes.

The film has, so far (I'm currently watching the 62nd minute of it), made me laugh out loud, I think, twice. It has also shown Glenda in the buff and what a bushy buff! So there I got my money's worth right there and could go on watching more relaxed in that department.

Michael Caine is, like so often, superb. Glenda is superbly bushy (forgive me for repeating myself) and Helmut Berger is Helmut Berger, like he always is and I would never go to see a film just because he's in it (as opposed to Caine).

Incidentally, I don't know whether Stanley Kubrick saw this film but there are scenes in Eyes Wide Shut, when Tom Cruise imagines Nicole Kidman with another man, that is very similar to scenes in this film.

Well, if he (Losey) does not disappoint me in the end I guess I will have to re-watch some of his stuff (the Go Between wasn't so bad, by the way).

So, I saw it all and, yes, Losey did disappoint at least a little. He just cannot let it be, I guess. Or, which is more likely, he does not look too deeply into things. Nevertheless, this one is less disappointing than most of his work but it take the urge of a re-watch out of me.

You see, it's like this: infidelity means totally different things for men and women in this society that is being pressed down our throats. It also means different things in different ages of life. This society takes very lightly on the humiliation of the poor and expects the poor to take about just every disgrace possible believing it to be something else.

Women are pressed to manage to fight the right man as breeder and/or provider within a very short period of time, getting shorter when they are also supposed to have a career. Biologically, if the woman has a provider, she may still be doubtful about whether he is a good breeder or, more precisely, whether he has the proper genes to produce children that are attractive and can breed in turn, thus spreading her genes. If she has a breeder but no provider, she will look for that so that the children may reach adulthood safely and, again, be able to spread her genes.

The man, biologically, will have the urge to breed with as many women possible in order to get a large number of kids, not necessarily providing for any of them.

Now, providing for another man's children is not very wise for the man who wants to spread his own genes and therefore biologically humiliating. Therefore the jealousy of men.

Now, loosing provision for her children to another woman, is not very biologically smart for a woman, who needs protection of her children. Therefore the jealousy of women.

A woman betrays with her body, a man with his money to other women. A married man who uses other women without paying for them, will not give rise to much jealousy in his wife, unless she is getting older as well as her husband, who, when using other women may threaten to leave her some day. A woman who goes with other men will however always give rise to jealousy in her husband unless she is too old to get children and not very attractive to her husband. He will only get jealous for her companionship in this case, provided that he cares for it.

We, the people, used to know these things but through the propaganda of power, in which, sadly, even Losey in this film plays a part, we have gotten confused in these matters and jealousy has become a dirty word, when, in truth, it is just a healthy reaction on humiliation!