Of Love and Desire

Merle Oberon was a great beauty often tabbed the 8th wonder of the World so striking was La Oberon in person and on film. In a career that started in London in the 30's Oberon worked with Laughton, Wayler, Hopkins, Brando, Olivier in a long and great career. A good actress her lavish lifestyle got more attention than her ability as an actress.

Of Love And Desire is a vanity production produced by Oberon's then fabulously wealthy Mexican husband Bruno Paglai, and many of the settings are in the various Mexican homes ( palaces really) that the Paglai's owned in Mexico. A sight to behold is then 53 year old Merle Oberon in a bikini in a scene with an equally daring Steve Cochran also in a bikini who despite the fact that Mr. Paglai was financing this film was said to be Merle's off camera lover as well. No horror roles for Merle like her peers Joan Crawford, and Bette Davis and Ann Sothern, no way! It was glamor all the way with Merle Oberon looking fantastic in this film.

I came to this film because of Steve Cochran. Surprisingly, it is lovely to look at, has an over the top love story, and though a bit of editing would have helped in the last half hour, It is well acted for this genre. Katherine is a middle aged woman, whose self esteem is determined by the number of men who desire her. She meets Steve and something happens--they fall in love against all odds. With a half brother whose intentions are a bit bent, you wonder if the lovers will wind up with each other or go their separate ways. Oberon and Cochran in real life did both--a RL romance that ended with the film, but a connection that caused Oberon to ask the Los Angeles police to further investigate the cause of death for Steve on his boat 2 years later.They refused but she cared enough to risk headlines for him. Life IS sometimes stranger than fiction.

Beautiful photography and wonderful atmospherics of early 60's Mexico as it was back then. It was a good era to visit Mexico as I remember, having been there for the first time in 1961 (yes I'm old). Merle Oberon looks beautiful and displays real star power. Steve Cochran strolls through the film portraying an engineer stuck in Mexico, loafing around waiting for equipment to arrive. Cochran is well cast since he was apparently a world-class loafer at times in his life. He would die amid mystery and sleaze a mere 2 years after the film's release, his rotting and putrid corpse found on a derelict boat in the Pacific Ocean, accompanied by two surviving female "attendants".

Oberon's acting is good, but the role makes you wonder why anyone would care about the affairs of silly, spoiled rich woman "Katherine", her character in this film. Katherine, you need to see a shrink.

Featuring good scenery and atmospherics vs. a shallow plot that drags especially toward the ending, this film will probably entertain Merle Oberon's fans. Other viewers must choose whether they have the time to invest watching this to experience Ms. Oberon's undeniable star power, or just skip it.

Back in the day, when a woman reached the age of forty, she cut her hair and started wearing sensible clothing with high-cut necklines. When she reached fifty, she focused on her grandchildren and wore orthopedic shoes. She certainly didn't prance around in revealing swimsuits, wear low-cut evening gowns, and enjoy numerous lovers! Well, when Merle Oberon was fifty-two, she did all those things in the risqué drama Of Love and Desire. What a knockout!

Steve Cochran meets Merle when he gets a new engineering job in Mexico. Her brother Curd Jurgens is his boss and owner of the company, and he's pretty protective over her. Steve tries to stay away from Merle because he thinks she's just an irresponsible flirt, but over time, he goes the way of all the other men who came before him. He becomes completely enamored by her, risking his job and the wrath of Curd.

If you're a Merle Oberon fan, you're going to want to watch this movie. If you're neutral about her, you can probably skip it. Yes, it's naughty and fun at times, but it also has a darker twist that will (hopefully) make audiences feel uncomfortable.

Merle Oberon became a legend for her beauty that never faded. She just went one remaining beautiful decade after decade, from the 30s and into the 60s, and somehow, in this film, which she made when she was 52, she is still more beautiful than ever, besides being a very good and perfectly convincing actress. This film is particularly romantic, set in a gorgeously lush Acapulco with some dominating scenes set in her own actual garden, drowning in gorgeous flowers. It's a film of people living in exaggerated opulence, they can do what they want and buy whatever they desire, so Merle Oberon bought this marvellous villa of unlimited space of rooms and floors, where one lover after another leave their bathing suits behind, unintentionally because of refuted love, because she never gets the one she wants, who is a ghost of the past lost in the war, apparently by suicide for having been refuted by her, the first of many. It's a great story of significant psychological interest, since her half brother (Curt Jürgens) is equally passionate but in a different direction, of jealousy for her. In all this the blank businessman and engineer Steve Cochran stumbles in and, like all the others, can't find his way out. The colours and the music add considerable lustre to the film, nothing is wrong, everything is beauty and love and passion, while, as usual, only the passion goes wrong, but things get sorted out.