Unfaithfully Yours (1948 film)
| Unfaithfully Yours | |
|---|---|
theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Preston Sturges |
| Produced by | Preston Sturges |
| Written by | Preston Sturges |
| Starring |
Rex Harrison Linda Darnell Rudy Vallée Barbara Lawrence |
| Music by | Alfred Newman (musical director) |
| Cinematography | Victor Milner |
| Edited by | Robert Fritch |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Twentieth Century-Fox |
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Release date
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November 5, 1948 (NYC) December 10 (general) |
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Running time
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105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | just under $2 million |
Unfaithfully Yours is a 1948 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges and starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallée and Barbara Lawrence. The film is a black comedy about a man's failed attempt to murder his wife, whom he believes has been unfaithful to him. Although the film, which was the first of two Sturges made for Twentieth Century-Fox, received mostly positive reviews, it was not successful at the box office.
Sir Alfred de Carter (Rex Harrison) is a world-famous symphony conductor who returns from a visit to his native England and discovers that his rich and boring brother-in-law, August Henshler (Rudy Vallée), has misunderstood Alfred's casual instruction to watch over his much younger wife Daphne (Linda Darnell) while he was away, and instead hired a detective named Sweeney (Edgar Kennedy) to follow her. Alfred is livid, and ineptly attempts to destroy any evidence of the detective's report.
Eventually, despite his efforts, he learns the content of the report directly from Sweeney: while he was gone, his wife was spied late at night going to the hotel room of Alfred's secretary, Anthony Windborn (Kurt Kreuger), a man closer in age to her own, where she stayed for thirty-eight minutes.
Distressed by the news, Alfred quarrels with Daphne before proceeding to his concert, where he conducts three distinct pieces of romantic-era music, envisioning revenge scenarios appropriate to each one: a complicated "perfect crime" scenario in which he murders his wife and frames Windborn (to the Overture to Rossini's Semiramide), nobly accepting the situation and giving Daphne a generous check and his blessing (to the Prelude to Wagner's Tannhäuser), and a game of Russian roulette with a blubbering Windborn, that ends in de Carter's Suicide (to Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini.)
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Wikipedia