Dir: David Miller | Susan Hayward, John Gavin, Vera Miles | US Drama 1961
Reviewed by Richard Chatten
Quentin Tarantino has gone on record as being an admirer of this, the first of two colour remakes of tearjerkers of the thirties – followed by Stolen Hours, a remake of Dark Victory – that Susan Hayward made in the sixties; embellished by Stanley Cortez behind the camera and Brahms on the soundtrack.
It sees a chance encounter leading to romance between an aspiring designer and a Marine. After their paths diverge, she builds a fashion career in NYC. Years later, they reunite, but new opportunities abroad challenge their rekindled connection.
The title, however, is something of a misnomer, Miss Hayward’s dwellings on this telling comprising a succession of spacious, well-appointed apartments in New York, Rome and Paris. Vera Miles works overtime to be unsympathetic as John Gavin’s vindictive, controlling lush of a wife; while Hayward clad in Jean Louis is maybe too robust to be fully convincing as a pining Other Woman.
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