My Wife's Affair (1961)

Director: Randal MacDougall
Colour

Here’s a film which no doubt had the studio salivating at the dollar signs of controversy: the sex + the scandal = the sales. And yet, even before the swinging sixties really got going, it’s noticeable how little fuss ‘My Wife’s Affair’ caused. Yes, the catholic church condemned it, but back then the Catholic church condemned everything (even ‘Bambi’ was probably flagged up for notice), but the rest of the world carried on with its business as if nothing happened.

Wife Joan Collins comes home one evening and announces to her husband, George Peppard, that she wants an affair. They argue, make up, argue again, but she refuses to relent on her decision. She is bored and stifled by her marriage – she still loves George, but just wants some thrills. This then is a full-on assault on the idea of marriage and the 1961 American ideal of what womankind should be: no longer is she promising to obey, no longer is she promising to even be faithful. And for a while the film revels in the neon decadence of this. Joan’s life becomes one of singles’ bars, casual pick-ups and wild times with young and dangerous friends. Meanwhile George looks maudlin, sulkily drinks a bit too much whisky and eventually takes solace in the arms of an accommodating secretary, the supposedly dowdy Tuesday Weld. But of course even in a Hollywood studio film desperate to scandalise, the old orders can’t be completely shattered. By the end, as this is a film which in reality wants more to titillate than challenge, the order of the happy American couple and the happy American family are reset. Yes there’s a divorce, but Joan is a broken woman existing in whatever purgatory is reserved for wanton sluts, while George and Tuesday are happily married and living in domestic bliss expecting their first child. All is right in the moral universe again.

(It’s over fifty years later and such has been the change in values, that now the woman’s adventures would probably be a lot more graphic, including threesomes and lesbian trysts; while the dull, ditched, reliable husband consoled himself by having comic chats with his more raucous buddies. She may end up okay, but he’d definitely emerge something of a winner. Such is progress).

So a year after the Lady Chatterley trial, why didn’t ‘My Wife’s Affair’ start any fires? Probably because it never catches fire itself. Peppard is a block of finely sculptured ice throughout. I’m not sure what he’s aiming for in his performance, perhaps it’s a solid yet bruised masculinity (or perhaps it’s how good he’d look as an ornate wedding decoration), but it comes across as unyielding and frigid. Those blue eyes don’t look capable of being excited by passion or exciting anyone else, in fact they seem frozen to the point of rigor mortis. And that unyielding coldness is never going to be smouldered by Joan Collins' fitful sparks of sexuality, which like a damp match doesn't ignite no matter how many times it's struck against the side of the box. Collins is the poster girl for a certain type of English actress (see also Hurley, Liz), one with the beautiful face and gorgeous figure to be a sex symbol, and yet on screen she cannot actually radiate sex appeal. Here she poses, she pouts, she picks up and stares admiringly at a copy of Playboy at one point, and yet she never catches fire. What this film needs is a seductress, a siren – what it gets is an overly self-confident little girl who’s been allowed in her mother’s dressing up box. It’s no wonder she only made it big as a middle aged bitch, rather than a young sexpot – middle aged bitch suits her talents a lot more.

‘My Wife’s Affair’ should have scandalised at the time, but didn’t – and now just feels so dated and conservative. It’s a film that wants to be sexy, yet ends up staring at the viewer like a cold, damp fish with a miserable headache.