Green Green Grass

Continuing our Stanley Donen fest, we come to The Grass is Greener. This is a very different movie from Bedazzled - made 6 years earlier (1961), it is much less swinging in style. The camera work is mundane, and you can tell it was made from a play. The dialog is witty and cutting, but stagy, from an older generation than Bedazzled. But underneath, it is just as wicked.

It stars Cary Grant as Victor Rhyal (="royal"?), an English nobleman with a fine old house, no money. He is reduced to letting tourists view the manor for half a crown a head. His wife, Hilary (Deborah Kerr), sells mushrooms. But one day, one of the tourists wanders into her private rooms. It is American oil millionaire Charles Delacro, played with great charm and some restraint by Robert Mitchum. He works fast and before the husband shows up he has Hilary falling in love.

So that's the setup. Deborah Kerr gets to choose between poor but noble Cary Grant and rich American Robert Mitchum. Throw in here best friend, Hattie (Jean Simmonds), a hard-drinking, man-chasing gossip and fashionplate, and you have a nice drawingroom comedy.

But - SPOILER - Donen doesn't flinch here. When Kerr goes up to London to "get her hair done" and stays with Hattie for several days, we see her visit Mitchum's hotel room, and retire with him to the bedroom. Like in Blame it on Rio (which I guess I didn't blog, though I watched it just last year), Donen doesn't let his characters off the hook, "almost" succumbing to temptation.

I'll let you all see how it comes out, but I'll give you one hint: gunplay!