WIVES AND LOVERS

US, 1963, 104 minutes, Black and white.
Janet Leigh, Van Johnson, Shelley Winters, Martha Hyer, Ray Walston, Lee Patrick, Dick Wessell.
Directed by John Rich.

Wives and Lovers is familiar material. It might have made a screwball comedy in the 1930s. However, it is given 1960s gloss in this version. Janet Leigh and Van Johnson (who had appeared in the 1940s in The Romance of Rosy Ridge) are husband and wife. He stays at home, she goes out to work. He becomes more involved with his assistant, played by Martha Hyer. Is divorce the only possibility?

This is familiar material – done in a familiar way. Other films at the period toyed with this idea of family and divorce including Divorce American Style (also with Van Johnson).

Direction is by John Rich, a prolific television director from the early 50s to the late 90s. He made a few films for the cinema at this period including the Elvis Presley Roustabout.

1. How successful a comedy, for laughs, for people's foibles and insight into modern characters?

2. Comment on the genre of such sophisticated comedies: their stylising, their realism, facial attitudes and situations, sophistication. wisecracks etc? Was the film successful here?

3. The overtones and irony of the title - attitude towards marriage, difficulties, testing etc.?

4. Comment on the film as a picture of modern America. The nature of work, families, American men and women, modern Americans, striving for success, the role of agents, lavish expectations of success, the effect of pressures, basic goodness, happy endings presumed.

5. What did the film have to say about marriage and its quality? The pressures on marriage? Contrast Bill and Birtie with Fran and Wiley, with Gar with Lucinda? The insights of the film on fidelity, love, loneliness, the lure of seduction?

6. What did the film have to say about success and the measure of success: houses, mod-cons, society, society styles, dress, pools, servants. What attitude did the film take? The judgement on families by Mrs Swenson and her attitudes?

7. How attractive a couple were Bill and Birtie? And their daughter? How typical, their life, the details of their life and the impact of pressures?

8. Contrast Fran and Wiley and their way of life, Fran and her cracks, Wiley and his devotion, helping the daughter?

9. Contrast Lucinda and her brittle way of life and parties?

10. Contrast Gar and his Hollywood image, phoniness, his reality and his ambitions?