1948 Directed by Preston Sturges
Before he left for a brief European visit, symphony conductor Sir Alfred De Carter casually asked his staid brother-in-law August to look out for his young wife, Daphne, during his absence. August has hired a private detective to keep tabs on her. But when the private eye's report suggests Daphne might have been canoodling with his secretary, Sir Alfred begins to imagine how he might take his revenge.
Infedelmente tua, Infidèlement vôtre, Nevěrně tvá, Odeio-te Meu Amor, Die Ungetreue, שלך בחוסר נאמנות, Nieszczerze oddana, Infielmente tuyo, Otrogen u.p.a., Только ваш, 红杏出墙, 거짓 편지
USANR
USA
Okay, it's a masterpiece!!!!
I don't think I've ever seen anything like this! Like Stupid Hitchcock, with a great format around three pieces of music which sets up an even greater finale. A hilarious comedy about men's ego and cruelty and imagined fears, and how that very ego can drive us both to greatness and ruin. It's pretty brilliant in the first hour, but when it goes FULL slapstick in the last 30 minutes, score y todo, that's when it's really elevated into something masterful. Sturges is so good at making movies about men accidentally failing upwards, and the great accident here is so clever and original that even if I didn't like this movie, I'd have to respect it…
One of my favorite comedies, swerving wildly from diabolically bleak to outright zany, ruthlessly conflating male arrogance and simple human fallibility, and that's somehow before it turns into a straight-up Looney Tune.
A sharp and fast, and oh-so Preston Sturges, send up of the upper-classes shifts into something rather different. The film initially appears to be very expected, and is satisfyingly so. Yet, even in the opening acts this is a lesser Sturges, witty but somewhat insubstantial. It is never bad, it is merely that you know Sturges can do more with these pieces: can imbue them with more substance, be more sly and more subversive.
Still, the characters are entertainingly drawn and the dynamics well constructed. It is all captured with snappy direction and a keen visual eye, with enough flourish for Sturges to remind you that he can make a hell of a film. It is strangely restrained though, perhaps…
Made me laugh. Made me cry. Made me pine for lost romances I never even had in the first place before affirming that hope burnt out is the fastest way towards tripping yourself up and falling flat on one's face. Made me realise there’s no tried-and-tested formula for which of these you’ll fall for, be swept up in and completely and utterly entranced by.
UNFAITHFULLY YOURS sees Sturges at his messiest. An amalgamation of opposing tones and flavors that never quite coalesces into a single emotional through line. It’s almost the exact opposite of everything I loved about HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO. So how the hell did it manage to blind-side me, kick me up the backside before tricking me…
1st Preston Sturges
A remarkably biting tragedy about the anxieties of waiting for bad news and the mania of overthinking that can happen while anticipating it. When it does get funny is when Rex Harrison attempts to make those fantasies come true and the unavoidable randomness of life gets in his way. The repeated disasters he undergoes are smirk-inducing for the manner that the Great Man is constantly laid low, reducing to a helpless fool instead of the morbid hero of his dreams. It also serves as a great piece on the ways that music can fuel our fantasies, be they murderous, self-pitying or self destructive, aggrandising the most absurd impulses into high bathos. And those impulses are made even…
Preston Sturges is such a self-inflicted diarrhea man, and absolutely one of the most frustrating directors for me. He does this annoying thing of setting up a fantastic movie, but it's like he can't deal with brilliance or something, so he uses the second and third act to just shit into all four corners of his movie until the whole thing stinks. I have such a hard time figuring out why he was and is so beloved, he's so smelly, so messy, so inconsistent, and tonally all over the place. This starts out as a screwball comedy (a really good one, I should add, which is exactly why it's so frustrating that he doesn't follow through), then all of a…
Both times I've seen this I've spent the first half assuming it would go down as my least favorite Sturges; the jokes come at a measured pace that doesn't play to the filmmaker's strengths, and so much of it is a protracted setup, albeit one that made me wonder if Elaine May cribbed from Sir Alfred's efforts not to be confronted with the insinuation of his wife's infidelity for Matthau's character literally outrunning messages from his accountant in A New Leaf. But then, the ingeniousness of what Sturges is doing sinks in, his careful threading of Sir Alfred's ostensible high-mindedness and trust of his wife revealed to be a subconscious fear of being confronted by the oh-so-common result of an…
“Unfaithfully Yours” is director Preston Sturges - maestro of comedic chaos - finally matching style with meticulous construction.
Sturges’ earlier works must still be called tight and tidy ... but often are built in such a way that they don’t so much collapse, as explode inward on themselves in the final act. Multiple marriages, boatloads of births... stuffed into the timespan of a single credits slate.
“Unfaithfully Yours,” about a symphony conductor who imagines murdering his cheating wife in different ways born from varying acts of music, is the complete opposite. Its deliberateness of form in moving from the macabre to the farcical is essential to its own payoff.
It also makes “Unfaithfully”... a little less fun than early career Sturges.…
This one’s going out for Monetta Eloyse Darnell, born October 16, 1923.
Unfaithfully Yours was a critical and commercial flop when it was released but has come to be seen as one of Preston Sturges’ best films. The mix of classical music, sophisticated banter, marital-infidelity satire, and slapstick may not work for some, but enough of what Sturges has going on succeeds. Sturges places a considerable burden on Rex Harrison. He had already done comedy in Blithe Spirit and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, my favorite of his performances, but this film requires him to do more physical shtick than I’m aware of him doing elsewhere. Harrison probably has more dialogue than the rest of the cast combined and delivers…
Easily one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Took me by surprise too with how much of a gonzo combination of slapstick and mean spirited humor it winds up being.
Man, what is it about Rex Harrison he always finds himself playing this horrible characters with almost not a single ounce of morale?
Nonetheless, even when this has lot of things that may be come as questionable for today's standard, I guess as a black comedy whose also a screwball comedy, works perfect, as it blends these grim murder plots with some spicy, quick comedic bits with all the zanyness that comes with the type of humor predominant back in the day.
Another good thing I loved is how the film plays so much in Ernst Lubitsch's sensibilities, while also having some of HAMMER's Brit wit, with most of the movie feeling almost like a satire.
All in all, while not all the gags and jokes landed for me, there's no doubt this is a very ole' school fun and entertaining movie.
