THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND (1961)

Before Leslie Stevens created tv’s OUTER LIMITS (’63 - ‘65), he made his name with this ‘sophisticated’ B’way sex farce.  A big hit for Claudette Colbert & Charles Boyer, it ran a year and half before being filmed with Susan Hayward and James Mason.  Slightly smutty in the popular manner of the day (THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH a paradigm of the form), it’s deliciously dated in content, attitude and style.  Dated in its style of filmmaking, too.  That's the main attraction.  Elsewise, the lame doings have little to offer.  This one proposes a modern take on insemination: use the best man to get the best results.  Enter Julie Newmar (repeating from B ‘way), Amazonian Swede, daughter of Mason’s Nobel Prize winning pal, needing the perfect mate to do the deed; no love, no marriage, no financial or parental responsibilities.  Stevens cheats structurally using a flashback framework with parallel public talks on the experience from Hayward & Mason (both college lecturers), then spoils his argument by having brainy Newmar start to grow feelings.*  Trying hard to be adult & unembarrassed about the facts of life, there’s a fascination to the thing; a grim one, not what they were aiming at.*  And what’s with director Walter Lang?  Effectively his last film (there was a Three Stooges ahead), he’d long been a competent, even Oscar® nom’d journeyman director, mostly of lighter things and musicals.  But he really fell for the laisser-faire less-is-more filming techniques of early CinemaScope.  A slow ‘dolly in’ shot big news here.  Oof.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  Nothing wrong with the idea of a comedy focused on social issues and sex without love; then caving.  Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder did it in NINOTCHKA/’39.  But, oh!, what a difference talent makes.  (BTW - Wilder fell for the smutty B’way sex farce tone directing the film version of SEVEN YEAR ITCH/’55, then doubling down with KISS ME, STUPID/’64.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/ninotchka-1939.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Another ‘smart’ sex comedy of the day titled THE FACTS OF LIFE/’60 stars Lucille Ball & Bob Hope who together just might have made this one work.  Meanwhile, Mason blasted the whole formula to smithereens in next year’s LOLITA/’62.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-facts-of-life-1960.html