Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 6-July-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Grass Is Greener (1960)

It is curious how an impression of sophistication arises when a storyteller treats a serious situation lightly. Stanley Donen's The Grass Is Greener exemplifies this, being the sort of film one imagines well dressed couples going to see after steak-and-martini dinners and discussing with knowing, airy laughs. It is also the sort of film people today might associate with Cary Grant, and in fact the legend (whose talent was actually far-ranging) is one of the principals in the star-studded cast.

Grant plays a British earl whose position, in 1960, does not entail managing serfs or riding to the hounds but rather maintaining a modest life of appearances. He and his beloved wife (Deborah Kerr), along with their two children, occupy a few private rooms in an ancestral mansion that is open to the public for tours. When the kids leave for a holiday (this being a sophisticated story about grown-up matters), the couple settles in for a period of quiet companionship. But they are rattled by the appearance of an American millionaire (Robert Mitchum) who drifts away from a tour and finds the lady in one of the family rooms. They share an instant attraction which bears a strong resemblance to love at first sight. Despite the fact that she is happily married and sends the intruder away, Kerr is overcome by the experience and a few days later heads to London where she knows he will be waiting.

The movie addresses her adultery with arch frankness, using a montage of empty tables and box seats to indicate that the lovers are screwing each other silly behind closed doors. Back home, Grant also adopts an accepting attitude as his suffering is offset by the script's more farcical elements. Jean Simmons makes a splash as a flighty, fun-loving divorcée who arrives to cheer the jilted husband (just as she has been cheering the wayward wife), while the family butler (Moray Watson) gives the classically phlegmatic and devoted servant a modern twist. These two assess or assist Grant's plans to win his wife back after her fling, plans which include inviting the lovers down from London so that everybody is under the same roof.

The broad comedy works for the most part, diminishing the devastation wrought on the marriage without negating it. An underlying theme about the nature of Brits, particularly in contrast to Americans, does not play as well, largely because neither Kerr nor Grant seems especially English. (Sure, they both hailed from the British Isles, but one never thinks of them among the panoply of notable British actors. At least I don't.) What The Grass Is Greener does convey is why the men want to hold onto a woman so destructively confused, thanks to the inherent loveliness of Kerr, and how flippancy is one way to depict the complexities of life that might otherwise defy explication, understanding, or contemplation.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.