This is a film that does try to be good - and it is actually amusing at points. The central story about the aristocrats finding interest in an American millionaire (Mitchum) and an old flame of Grant's (Simmons) had potential. But the problem was that the screenplay is too talky and too cerebral, but not (paradoxically) as complete as it should be.
There are pages and pages of the dialog which are (frankly) long winded. Cary Grant is not amusing when explaining his behavior to people, even Deborah Kerr. Whatever emotional chemistry worked for them so wonderfully in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER is cut down considerably here.
The additions of Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons does not really help. Mitchum's growing interest in Kerr, and her growing response to his seeing her in London is okay, but Simmons' relationship regarding Grant is not developed. We know they had an affair before he married her friend Kerr, and she has remained a friend of both, and she is funny regarding her open interest in sex, but why Grant's rejection of her is never really gone into. Also, at the tale end, there is the suggestion that Simmons and Mitchum might find each other a worthy lover. But nothing in the film really builds up to that final look between them! There are good moments - Grant and Mitchum going fishing, and muttering under their breaths about each other, and the business about the fur coat gift that Mitchum buys Kerr, and she tries to hide (and Simmons ends up wearing as her own). But the good moments are fragments. The duel scene towards the end is analyzed to death. It says a lot that the use of Noel Coward's song THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND on the soundtrack at the start and end of the film is one of the highlights. One wishes Coward wrote the screenplay here - it might have been brighter or more consistent.
Because the cast really tries I have given it a "7", but it is not as good a film as it should have been.
There are pages and pages of the dialog which are (frankly) long winded. Cary Grant is not amusing when explaining his behavior to people, even Deborah Kerr. Whatever emotional chemistry worked for them so wonderfully in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER is cut down considerably here.
The additions of Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons does not really help. Mitchum's growing interest in Kerr, and her growing response to his seeing her in London is okay, but Simmons' relationship regarding Grant is not developed. We know they had an affair before he married her friend Kerr, and she has remained a friend of both, and she is funny regarding her open interest in sex, but why Grant's rejection of her is never really gone into. Also, at the tale end, there is the suggestion that Simmons and Mitchum might find each other a worthy lover. But nothing in the film really builds up to that final look between them! There are good moments - Grant and Mitchum going fishing, and muttering under their breaths about each other, and the business about the fur coat gift that Mitchum buys Kerr, and she tries to hide (and Simmons ends up wearing as her own). But the good moments are fragments. The duel scene towards the end is analyzed to death. It says a lot that the use of Noel Coward's song THE STATELY HOMES OF ENGLAND on the soundtrack at the start and end of the film is one of the highlights. One wishes Coward wrote the screenplay here - it might have been brighter or more consistent.
Because the cast really tries I have given it a "7", but it is not as good a film as it should have been.