Description

Product Description When an aristocratic British couple (Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr) open their stately home to the public, a Texan oil millionaire (Robert Mitchum) enters their private quarters and successfully seduces the wife. The Earl then tries to win back his wife by enlisting the help of an ex-girlfriend (Jean Simmons), ultimately challenging his rival to a good old-fashioned duel. is the befuddled English earl casually puttering around his tourist attraction of a grand old estate in casual dress while a bull of an American millionaire () crashes into his life and seduces Grant’s sophisticated lady (Deborah Kerr). It’s pure fantasy, of course, with its cool, cultured lovers swapping witty banter with the same calm they swap gunshots in an old-fashioned duel. Have adultery and jealousy ever been so civilised? Stanley Donen never shakes this very British drawing-room comedy of manners free of its talky, stagebound source or its deliberate snail’s pace, but he does manages to bring a lightness that softens the wit with an American lilt. Ultimately, though, it’s all about a crack cast in fine form: Mitchum’s sleepy-eyed insolence, Kerr’s easy elegance, Jean Simmons’s flighty outrageousness, and especially the charm and measured grace that is Cary Grant. — Sean Axmaker