Daniel Mann’s debut as helmer shouldn't work at all. It's one of those dead-in-the-water stage-to-screen adaptations featuring inept camera set-ups that refuse to cut together (Oscar nom'd for editing, natch); sourced from one of those William Inge plays that always smell like something Tennessee Williams discarded; with Burt Lancaster bravely struggling, but utterly miscast as a lumpen, alcoholic chiropractor who's stuck in a loveless/childless marriage to slatternly, windy Shirley Booth. She's busy, busy, busy, recreating every crumb-picking gesture of her award winning B’way perf and smiling hard through the hard to swallow hopeful ending after watching Lancaster freak out in frustrated lust over their cute co-ed lodger . . . or is he reacting to the girl's cute athletic b’friend? And yet, perhaps because of Mann's lack of moviemaking moxie, somehow the stage conventions take hold, and it all becomes almost unbearably moving and effective. And Booth really was legendarily great.
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