Woman in a Dressing Gown

This is Yvonne Mitchell's film, of course, and definitely her best performance. Anthony Quayle is as always one of the most reliable actors there ever was, and here for a change he is to play an extremely ordinary part: this could happen to anyone, and it usually happens sooner or later to everyone. The situation couldn't be more common. Sylvia Syms is beautiful as usual and doesn't have to act much, it's enough for her just to be seen, and she actually plays no great part - she is just the other woman. The acting is all Yvonne Mitchell's.

Of course you have to worry about her, as her heart is torn apart, as her world is turned to shambles, as she desperately tries to find a way out and fails in every single effort, and how she stills goes on just to carry on. She is the most helpless of all, and yet she is the one who carries through and gets through the crisis in a wreck of only shambles, as if you needed to get your whole world totally ruined just to find it all perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened, as if it just had to pass by like an ordinary shower of rain...

The direction is superb throughout with all its diverting manoeuvres focussing on petty dertails for a relief, like a missing button, the baby next door (apparently Mitchell's own), the soap problem with the engagement ring, and above all the shabby old drsssing gown - the very symbol of the film, nothing much, just an ordinary old worn out dressing gown, which you never really get out of...