1968 Directed by Ronald Neame, Fielder Cook
Prudence Hardcastle is on the pill. So is her sister-in-law, but someone has been swapping aspirin for their pills. Is it the teenage niece, the maid, the chauffeur, a lover, Prudence's husband Gerald, or all of the above?
I was considering writing my review of this sex comedy in raunchy terms - how it starts off firmly and robustly and ends up rather flaccid - but my followers hold me to higher standards. So I'll be like Edith Evans in the film and glide graciously like a grande dame over such distasteful details.
Ronald Neame took over the reins of the film more than halfway through the shoot when David Niven clashed with the original director, TV movie specialist Fielder Cook. The direction displays no particular flair and the script is uneven, progressing from a successfully farcical beginning to a drably over-extended conclusion, but the performances are some compensation. Of the leads, David Niven has the more interesting…
oh this was… INSANE. but deborah kerr was cold and bitchy and mean and milfy so really i can’t say i regret watching
Happy birthday Edith Evans! This is a weird one, a jolly farce about reproductive coercion opening with credits where a cherub dodges little white contraceptive pills pac-man style.
It's fascinating to watch a sex comedy that so explicitly portrays era anxieties around the consequences of women's reproductive freedom, or lack of it*, produced seven years after the legalisation of the pill in the uk and around the time it also became avaliable to unmarried women. (*it's notable that none of the women of childbearing age here actually get to exercise any freedom, with no less than six babies conceived by the film's end, but no one seems to mind too much. Feminist brain, off.)
The highlights for me were Evans…
the whole reproductive control thing made me extremely uncomfortable, but..... bitchy deborah kerr? bitchy deborah kerr.
Apparently a comedy but with vaguely sinister behaviour from like every dude in this film??? Deborah Kerr had some fantastic hairstyles though so it wasn’t a total loss.
this is messy but fun messy and DEBORAH KERR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! her outfits are perfect, SHE is perfect.
Bitchy Deborah Kerr wearing absolutely amazing outfits in one film? Sign me in. However watching that film made me feel like I was watching ASMR especially when the characters were eating 🧍🏽♀️
watched this with my mother. also i'm catholic. it was like being a kid and covering your eyes for kissy scenes except for a whole movie. my mom was laughing the whole time.
good movie - mostly cuz deborah kerr and irina demick are gorgeous lol
