Unfaithfully Yours
Criterion Collection, $29.95
Unfaithfully Yours
20th Century Fox, $9.98
Crouching beneath the camera as scenes played, Preston Sturges often stifled his hilarity by stuffing a handkerchief into his maw. Dudley Moore’s facility with Sturges’ No. 1 rule of comedy (“a pratfall is better than anything”) might well have prompted just such an episode from one of filmdom’s singular funnymen. Had Hollywood not balked for nearly a decade in letting its first screenwriting superstar direct one of his stories, Unfaithfully Yours might today be recorded as Sturges’ directorial debut from 1932/33 rather than 1940’s The Great McGinty, winner of the first Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Instead, the former film remains the modern Molière’s final treasure. “All creators must find a way to sustain belief in their own powers,” divines Diane Jacobs in her superb Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges. “For him, the mixed reviews and box office failure of Unfaithfully Yours were immeasurably destructive.” Before sitcoms, flops, not masterpieces, were likely candidates for remake, so the Barry Levinson-scripted Eighties take on Unfaithfully Yours distinguishes itself as the sole Sturges retread. Gutting all the grandiloquent dialogue, but keeping the premise and major plot points – English conductor fantasizes about offing his wife during a concert – the Dudley Moore translation trades on its star’s comedic pinnacle (Arthur, Micki + Maude) and a Sturgian supporting cast: Albert Brooks, Armand Assante, Richards Libertini, and Shull. Nastassja Kinski all but disposes of her original counterpart Linda Darnell, homaging Pietro Germi’s delightful Divorce Italian Style (1962) by playing Italian. (The little woman’s still Italian in the 1965 Jack Lemmon vehicle How to Murder Your Wife.) A first-generation cable classic. As is the original ever since the advent of TCM, Rex Harrison exorcising the director’s huge alter-ego through straight-razor Shakespeareanism (“A thousand poets dreamed a thousand years and then you were born my dear”). Darkest noir was the predominant shade in the late Forties, and like Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux a year earlier, Unfaithfully Yours casts a desperately black shadow with its humor. Composer Alfred Newman darkens the mood further with Rossini, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky. Audiences stayed away in droves, even after 20th Century Fox head Darryl Zanuck cut the film by 20 minutes. Criterion bonuses include a Sturges scholar roundtable commentary that would have been better if either Diane Jacobs or James Harvey had flown alone, and a 25-minute interview with Sturges’ widow Sandy, whose Faulkner anecdote might just require a hankie.
This article appears in July 15 • 2005.
