Interlude (1957 Douglas Sirk)

Based on a story by James M. Cain, Sirk's Munich-set drama seems once again to be about the challenge a couple face when trying to be together. In this case, the challenge is Rossano Brazzi's lunatic wife Marianne Koch. June Allyson (then 40, hardly the 'young lady' she's referred to) is the lover, in turn dated by Keith Andrews; with Françoise Rosay (Quartet, the Halfway House), Frances Bergen, Jane Wyatt. Full of the director's usual symbolism and shot in CinemaScope by Bill Daniels it's a typically elegant and good looking film with a lush music soundtrack of classics and Frank Skinner (though the Wagner seemed to us to be particularly badly played).