No Minor Vices

This is a curious existentialist comedy with a touch of Preston Sturges about it.

Dana Andrews plays a medic who dabbles as a psychologist who puts marital bliss with his wife Lilli Palmer in jeopardy when he meets a European artist and musician (Louis Jourdan) who brings chaos to their lives with his easy charm and talent as he reveals their hidden selves.

Andrews has taken things for granted, his wife does everything for him, his secretary is in love with him and his medical assistant wants to be him.

It is a frivolous even an erudite comedy but the story is too light and despite a very good and different performance from Jourdan, Andrews always looks uncomfortable with the material.

I saw this movie as a little girl and fell in love forever with Louis Jourdan. I have just fleeting memories of it, but remember he was so charming and handsome and adorable. I saw Him in a play as a young teen and never really got over it.

Being so young my moral compass was not fully developed and i simply couldn't believe Lili Palmer wouldn't just take his hand and never look back...Would love to see it again.

A whole lot like Preston Sturges's Unfaithfully Your's with a technique originated in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, No Minor Vices is the story of the marital crisis of Dana Andrews and Lilli Palmer brought on by the disturbing presence of artist Louis Jourdan. Of course it doesn't come near being as good as either of the other two works.

The biggest problem that No Minor Vices has is the casting of Dana Andrews in the lead. I don't think that it's an accident that Dana Andrews never did another comic lead again in his film career. The man was just not blessed with the light touch of comedy in his player's persona. The film needed someone like Fred MacMurray or Ray Milland in the part of the jealous husband.

Andrews is a rather smug and self satisfied child psychologist who dispenses advise on everybody's problems asked or not. He thinks that married life is just perfect with a wife who does his bidding at his whim. That is until another guy who is rather full of himself, artist Louis Jourdan enters his life. Jourdan has nothing but time on his hands as his bills are paid by his mother. Charm can come easy when you don't have to worry about bills.

The film could also have used an Ernest Lubitsch or a Mitchell Leisen as well. Lewis Milestone who peaked early in his career with his Oscar for All Quiet On The Western Front is also not a director for classic comedy. Even Billy Wilder would have gotten so much more out of this film.

Not in the best work of Dana Andrews though Louis Jourdan has a few moments I suspect interpolated in the film on his own.

I saw this charming comedy several times in the 1950s, when I was a little girl. I was absolutely enthralled with the suave and handsome Louis Jourdan, who is the personification of what a leading man should be. Lili Palmer, who looked exquisite, was his match. I was able to eat lobster after seeing this, but not as an adult.

This movie used to get me into trouble with my parents because I didn't have a TV in my room and would sneak out of bed at night occasionally when this movie was on, turn the sound down very low and sit on top of the screen in order to see and hear it. But I would still get caught. It wasn't the movie, it was the late hour that would get me into trouble.

I would really like to see this again to see if it still stands up. I know I have always been a Louis Jourdan fan because of it.

Calm child psychologist Dana Andrews encounters artist Louis Jourdan and suggest that he paint people at his office. Jourdan agrees and observes a staff devoted to him and likewise his wife, Lili Palmer' Andrews life is idyllic. Jourdan decides to seduce Miss Palmer.

It's not so much a movie as a stage play with occasional interludes of the characters thoughts recited aloud. The situations are amusing, but as Andrews' life and self-assurance crumble, and he comes to realize that Jourdan's observations are accurate, he grows increasingly frenzied. The performances are excellent, although always too well-mannered to be more than mannered observations in a three-set drama. With Jane Wyatt, Norman Lloyd, and Beau Bridges (age 7) in his screen debut.