Wednesday 25 September 2013

Prudence and the Pill (1967 Fielder Cook)

I often wondered what this film was like.

David Niven (debonair; having an affair) and Deborah Kerr (playing mostly through gritted teeth) are 'happily married'. Niven's brother Robert Coote and wife Joyce Redman are shocked to find daughter Judy Geeson in bed with David Dundas, a young man who couldn't be more polite when being thrown out of his future in-laws and thus deserves to be welcomed immediately. Luckily he has one of those great film aunts, played by Edith Evans before she was Damed, who's the kind of impulsive old bird to perform this sort of act when visiting her nephew:

The blur in foreground is a speeding racing car. In the film's only good sight gag, Edith Evans' stunt double blithely negotiates a race track.

Here she is with nephew David Dundas, who's ordered a celebratory bottle of Krug '59.
Mix-ups occur when people keep substituting the pill for aspirin, with inevitable consequences. Why the DVD is still classified a 15 is beyond me - I would have rated it U.

Judy (who doesn't have much to do) about to meet Mrs X (Irina Demick).
Keith Michell is Deborah's lover; Peter Butterworth (more recognisable to us as a seedy farmer in Carry On films) is a seedy chemist.

Even then, I think they were playing it safe. It's about as swinging as a cemetery on a Sunday night. (Hmm. Possible film idea ensues.)

Ted Moore shot it: my favourite image is when Demick pulls a golden packet of Benson & Hedges out of her handbag (Moore famously shot Goldfinger and the colour hasn't left him!) Lots of shadows in evidence.

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