Once More, with Feeling!

CinemaSerf7/10

Nov 17, 2024

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This is really quite an entertaining game of catch-as-catch-can with the fastidious conductor "Victor" (Yul Brynner) managing to irritate just about everyone including his long suffering wife "Dolly' (Kay Kendall). When she discovers that he is paying special interest to a young pianist, she decides it's time to teach him a lesson and so tells him she wants a divorce. He's not used to listening to anything she says at the best of times, but when she declares that she already has a suitor lined up to take his place, and then his career starts to wobble a bit, he realises that he must get his act together and regain the confidence of his wife before she marries the rather hapless "Richard" (Geoffrey Toone) and puts the kibosh on his whole raison d'être! He comes up with a cunning plan to win her back, but is she at all interested or is she the one really pulling the strings? Though I thought at the start that this might struggle to come off, I did end up quite enjoying the exuberant performance from an on-form Brynner and Kendall was clearly having some fun once the drama gathered pace and the games began in earnest. It's peppered with plenty of classical music and pithy one-liners and with Gregory Ratoff, Martin Benson and Mervyn Johns helping along it's quite a fun story of oneupmanship that did raise a smile.