THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY
US, 1980, 96 minutes, Colour.
Louise Fletcher, Robert Reed, Wayne Rogers, Bert Convy.
Directed by Delbert Mann.
Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery is one of many television films made in the 70s treating moral themes for the home audience. The film shows a deteriorating marriage. Robert Reed plays the husband. Louise Fletcher the wife. He urges her to have an affair – something which is against her moral stances. However, pushed away, she encounters a man she is attracted to and in fact has a liaison. The film focuses on the consequences for all those concerned.
Louise Fletcher is the central character – a role three years after her Oscar-winning performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The man in question is played by Wayne Rodgers who featured strongly in M*A*S*H. Robert Reed is the husband – the star of The Brady Bunch as well as many other series on television including Nurse and Galactica.
The film was directed by Delbert Mann who had won an Oscar for his direction of Marty. During the 1960s Mann directed a number of very interesting films with human themes and made the transition to television directing many television movies during the 1970s and 1980s.
1. An interesting and absorbing telemovie? A portrayal of contemporary situations? Moral dilemmas? Interesting and persuasive?
2. The American setting of this kind of story - yet its universal interest? Middle America, affluent society, sports celebrities? The trappings of soap opera? Did the film transcend soap opera?
3. The credibility of the issues, the characters? Attitudes of compassion, insight? The importance of circumstances influencing moral dilemmas and judgments?
4. The basic family situation: the home life, the accident, the husband's bitterness, continuing his sports work and manufacturing, the golf clubs, business skills and partners, relying on his wife to promote the clubs and get celebrities to endorse?
5. The husband and his pushing his wife, talking to her and persuading her to go to the tournament, watching the tournament on TV? Relationship with his children? His bitterness, the clashes? The reconciliation? The advice and the help from his friends? The questions of his impotence? His permission for his wife to have an affair? The credibility of their discussions, situation, human reactions?
6. The strength of Louise Fletcher's performance in sustaining the film? As a woman, as wife, mother? Her response to her husband's proposal? Her moral standards, her fidelity to her husband? Her going to the tournament, following it, arranging the business deals? The attraction to Vic? The liaison? Her conscience? The order or her life? Her decisions? Her return home and the importance of the discussion with the air hostess? Coping on her return?
7. Vic as the golf celebrity, his many affairs, his attitude towards the wife. his endorsing the clubs yet the sexual liaison? His experience with her? Respect for her? Allowing her to go?
8. The repercussions for the family? The experience of the wife and what she would bring home to the husband? Continuing the marriage happily or not?
9. The sketch of the hostesses? Their own experiences? The sympathy offered on the plane? Wisdom?
10. The ingredients of the social drama geared for the wide television audience? Identification with characters, situations? Sympathy and understanding? The audience facing the same questions and answering them?
