We know from Hollywood that divorced couples must be reconciled, and any attempt for one partner to marry someone else is doomed.
Yet here, three years after his divorce, Van Johnson announces that he's grown, and fallen in love with an adult woman. Kathryn Grayson is a willful, turbulent child, an opera singer who psychosomatically loses her voice when her ex- refuses to resume their disastrous marriage. She tells him "you were born to be dominated," and ultimately infantilizes him into renouncing his new engagement and returning to their sick, sick, sick relationship.
The entertaining parts of this film are indeed entertaining, if not memorable. But the parts of this film dealing with medicine, psychology, motivations and relationships are a distasteful mess, shot in Stygian darkness by a cinematographer with a half dozen of the world's greatest film noirs under his belt.
When you wind up rooting for the cold society babe over the eccentric artist heroine, you have a film with a problem. Yuk.
Yet here, three years after his divorce, Van Johnson announces that he's grown, and fallen in love with an adult woman. Kathryn Grayson is a willful, turbulent child, an opera singer who psychosomatically loses her voice when her ex- refuses to resume their disastrous marriage. She tells him "you were born to be dominated," and ultimately infantilizes him into renouncing his new engagement and returning to their sick, sick, sick relationship.
The entertaining parts of this film are indeed entertaining, if not memorable. But the parts of this film dealing with medicine, psychology, motivations and relationships are a distasteful mess, shot in Stygian darkness by a cinematographer with a half dozen of the world's greatest film noirs under his belt.
When you wind up rooting for the cold society babe over the eccentric artist heroine, you have a film with a problem. Yuk.