SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

HeadlinesExotic Boring

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

jonathan_lippman A girl named Annette Gorman plays the daughter. Miss Wood has a tiny role of one of the two girls on the beach in a few insignificant scenes. Sadly most of the punch of the original play about an English family is left at as some of the other reviews imply. It is a strange mishmash to have a British father and an American mother as they keep trying to explain to us the audience. Shoulda stuck with the original British family but it was produced by the husband of Miss Russell and so she being very American they changed it to a great disadvantage to suit her. Still Miss Russell is a formidable talent and does everything she can to make it an Oscar winning performance in my opinion, that elusive statute that she never did win though two or three nominations. This was not one of them though.

blanche-2 Based on a play by Peter Shaffer, "Five Finger Exercise" from 1962 stars Rosalind Russell, Jack Hawkins, Richard Beymer, and Maximillian Schell.The plot concerns the presence of a German tutor (Schell) for the daughter (Lana Wood) in the family, and ensuing domestic problems that come to a boil.Russell plays Louise Harington, an unhappily married social climber who has nothing in common with her hard-working, down to earth husband Stanley (Hawkins). The son Philip (Beymer) joins them for the summer at their ostentatious vacation home, and the tension is immediate. Stanley wants Philip to join him in business, but Philip isn't sure what he wants to do. Then a tutor, Walter, is brought in to teach French to the daughter, and tensions really boil over. For Louise, he represents culture and romance, for Stanley, he's a pretentious annoyance, and for Philip, he represents a threat.Shaffer is a masterful playwright, and perhaps if his play had been correctly adapted to film, this would have been a magnificent drama. As it is, it's an interesting family drama.First off, the family is supposed to be British and in Britain, and the presence of the tutor brings up a lot of feelings about the war and the Nazis. Secondly, there is an underpinning of incestuous feelings between mother and son so that the presence of Walter makes Philip jealous. Both these elements are missing in the film. What remains is Louise's dashed romantic hopes and facing her harsh reality, which releases a firestorm.This isn't a bad drama by any means, it's just not the unusual film that it could have been. The acting is good if a bit overdrawn - that is partially because it is derived from a strong play. And the resolution is satisfying.Disappointing. One last thing - this was produced by Russell's husband, Frederick Brisson. At one point, Richard Beymer was fooling around on the set and Russell said something to him, asking him to stop. He replied that whatever he was doing was no big deal. She responded, "Well just remember this - I'M sleeping with the producer." I think he probably stopped misbehaving at that point.

edwagreen Very good film with Rosalind Russell and Jack Hawkins giving outstanding performances as a miss-matched couple. She is a status climber who married Hawkins for financial security.She is looking for culture. He is looking for his successful furniture business to do even better.The action takes place at a summer resort in California. Son Philip, a Harvard student, comes home to the turbulence and frustrations besetting the house.Russell has hired a German to tutor their young daughter, played by Lana Wood. Max Schell, who had won the Oscar the year before in "Judgment at Nuremberg," is quite effective in a supporting role. Yearning for freedom and to be an American, Schell later admits the involvement of his tyrannical father during the Nazi rule and his submissive mother.Russell's attempted fling with Schell and his telling her that she could be his replacement mother nearly leads to tragedy.A film dealing with inner conflict, status seeking, and desire, it was handled quite well by all concerned.

kallahan What a terrible shame that this film of Peter Shaffer's amazing play was turned into an uneventful melodrama. The amazing dynamics of the five character's interaction on-stage, has been reduced in the film to a domestic, "kitchen sink" drama. Perhaps the close of the Second World War was too close at hand for the film maker and the studio to really trust the power of the play and the horrors of the Nazi Germany. The English family is American in the film, which takes most of the punch from the drama, and the erotic undercurrents of the mother /son relationship pitched against the German tutor, Walter have been set aside. With the raw emotional core of the drama removed, what sadly remains is a stereotypical, Hollywood drama with little true emotion and a film that sadly serves the startling brilliance of the play.