From my favorite movies..

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A ridiculous film, at most, with a symphony director, Rex Harrison, led to believe that his wife, Linda Darnell, has been unfaithful film. Most of the film is devoted to Harrison leading the symphony while concocting possible ideas in his mind to deal with the situation.Rudy Vallee is totally wasted here as his brother-in-law, a millionaire who misunderstood when Harrison told him to keep an eye on his wife while he is away in England.Vallee hires a private detective who has pictures of Darnell leaving Harrison's secretary's room.After imagining what he is going to do, Harrison storms out of a performance and goes home and each of his plans is again shown.The picture is a foolish one; far beneath that of Harrison, Darnell and others.The picture is made more foolish by the way Harrison wrecks his apartment during his plans to create mayhem.This is utterly ridiculous and annoying.

World famous conductor Sir Alfred De Carter (Rex Harrison) is in love with his young beautiful wife Daphne (Linda Darnell). He suspects her of cheating on him and, while conducting three separate pieces at a performance, figures out three different ways of punishing her--including murder. When he tries to carry them out everything goes wrong.This movie is, at times, very black. It starts out pretty funny with Harrison spitting out his lines rapidly and his sense of comic timing was just perfect. When he has the fantasies though it turns dark and is pretty gruesome--especially for 1948. However, when he tries to carry them out and things go wrong, the film is uproarious. I've seen this film three times and I STILL laugh out loud at the last section. I saw it at a revival theatre two times and people were literally bent over in their seats helpless with laughter! This isn't for everybody--it was a critical and commercial bomb in 1948 and a lot of people still find it too sick to be funny. I can see their point--there's nothing funny about a man trying to kill his wife, but this is a MOVIE--not real life. It all ends happily also.My only problem, and this is minor, was Darnell. She seems miscast here. But the script is quick and witty, the cast is great and they all go full throttle and the use of music is superb. Basically one of the funniest black comedies ever made. A must see! This gets a 10 all the way."Purple with plumes on the hips"

This is what we might call late-blooming Sturges coming as it did four years after his last Paramount movie and having written and directed eight movies for that studio between 1940 and 1944, the majority of which were successful he was arguably entitled to both a break and a different studio. It was Fox who were to benefit from the breach with Paramount and Sturges got to feature Fox contract player Linda Darnell plus Rex Harrison, who was still hanging around the Lot after shooting Anna And The King Of Siam there a couple of years earlier. In fact Linda Darnell played very much the same role she plays here - an ordinary girl who lucks into a rich older man - as she did for Mank the next year in A Letter To Three Wives where she substituted Harrison for Paul Douglas. This is at its heart a very bitter black comedy but perhaps because he thought it too dark himself or perhaps because he was 'persuaded' by the Front Office, Sturges leavened it from about the seventh or eighth reel with some hopelessly unfunny slapstick involving Harrison who is, above all else, at home with verbal comedy. There are certainly fine moments and the beginning is studded with Sturges one-liners but the ultimate effect is of an unsuccessful meld of bleak humor and slapstick.

In Preston Sturges' last studio film, Rex Harrison plays an orchestra conductor who believes his wife is having an affair. While conducting, he plans various schemes for revenge, each played out with the utmost precision and skill. He grows increasingly paranoid and grows more insane after each plan he came with fails.I expected much more of this, but this was based largely on my liking of SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (1941). Most of Sturges' other films are perhaps not brilliant but at least they were hilarious and make for fine comedy, but this one strains for laughs, that are simply not there. Often hailed as some kind of masterpiece, I failed to see it. I'll take any other of his films for this one. At least they're funnier, hands down.The film is beautiful to look at, very stylish, and masterfully scored, but the main problem is, I'm supposed to root for a deeply unsympathetic character in a story that seems to exist solely to marvel it's own genius and complexity. What's more, Rex Harrison has no talent for comedy whatsoever. He tries hard but to no avail. All we are left with is supposedly witty dialog that has no purpose at all. I wouldn't dare to dismiss any Sturges-film, and perhaps the genius of this film is beyond my reach, but if you're looking for the old-fashioned madness of earlier Sturges, you won't find it here.Camera Obscura --- 5/10