It begins rather nicely, with David Niven the owner of a vast vineyard in Bordeaux that has three time failed to produce the crop on which the village depends. He leaves England to visit the place, warning his proper wife, Deborah Kerr, not to follow. She doesn't listen.
Then we're introduced to an immense, majestic black-and-white château atop a hill in late Fall. What a place to hold a party. The courtyard is the size of Shea Stadium. It has towers, battlements, ramparts, flanking towers, crenels, merlons, machicolations, arrow loops, murder holes, and a moat and drawbridge. "Awfully medieval," remarks Kerr. Wives are always so terribly fussy. I didn't mind the abrasive aspect of the place. It just seemed to be cold all the time.
That covers, let's say, the first fourth of the film, and after that it turns more routine. There's some kind of business going on but nobody will tell Kerr what it is, no matter how hard she pries. We've seen it before: "Rosemary's Baby," "Children of the Corn," and with far more subtlety In "Jane Eyre" and even "I Walked With a Zombie." The business is described precisely be Kerr as "superstitious mumbo jumbo." By the last half everything seems to have collapsed. The director, J. Lee Thompson, appears to have thrown up his hands in despair and had everyone marching around as if hypnotized, their eyes bulging, their steps mechanical -- except for Kerr who is reduced to smashing windows and screaming.
Pretty disappointing.
Then we're introduced to an immense, majestic black-and-white château atop a hill in late Fall. What a place to hold a party. The courtyard is the size of Shea Stadium. It has towers, battlements, ramparts, flanking towers, crenels, merlons, machicolations, arrow loops, murder holes, and a moat and drawbridge. "Awfully medieval," remarks Kerr. Wives are always so terribly fussy. I didn't mind the abrasive aspect of the place. It just seemed to be cold all the time.
That covers, let's say, the first fourth of the film, and after that it turns more routine. There's some kind of business going on but nobody will tell Kerr what it is, no matter how hard she pries. We've seen it before: "Rosemary's Baby," "Children of the Corn," and with far more subtlety In "Jane Eyre" and even "I Walked With a Zombie." The business is described precisely be Kerr as "superstitious mumbo jumbo." By the last half everything seems to have collapsed. The director, J. Lee Thompson, appears to have thrown up his hands in despair and had everyone marching around as if hypnotized, their eyes bulging, their steps mechanical -- except for Kerr who is reduced to smashing windows and screaming.
Pretty disappointing.