When I want something done I always ask the busy person; the others never have time.
--from Sturges's screenplay for Unfaithfully Yours
One of the many wonderful things about director Preston Sturges is how he flouts categories, mixing elegant slapstick with verbal wit and invention. When I took a course on slapstick ("Painfully Funny") Sturges was never mentioned. For verbal wit there is Lubitsch and for physical humor there is, among others, Tashlin. In Unfaithfully Yours Sturges brilliantly combines genres and one could even call the movie a comic film noir, as conductor Rex Harrison imagines getting rid of his unfaithful wife Daphne while conducting. During the overture to Rossini's Semiramide he imagines killing her and framing her lover; during Wagner's reconciliation theme from Tannhauser he forgives her and pays her off; and while conducting Tchaikovsky's tone poem Francesca da Rimini he plays a game of Russia roulette in which he himself dies. (The shadowy cinematography is by Victor Milner, who did this movie between the film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946 and the noir Western The Furies in 1950)
After he finishes conducting these scores Harrison tries to enact all his fantasies, one by one, and fails disastrously and hilariously at them all. Sturges brilliantly orchestrates Harrison's personal insecurity (his wife, played lovingly by Linda Darnell, is considerably younger than he is) in contrast with his love of music and conducting, the movie even including a long rehearsal scene where the mobile camera shows all the instruments and their players. (My wife Susan said, "can you imagine a scene like this in a movie today?"), effectively establishing Harrison's rapport with the orchestra.
Unfaithfully Yours explores, with intelligence and humor, the gaps between fantasy and reality, the complex beauties and pleasures of of classical music, the importance of trust and passion in one's life, work and love.
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