Indiscreet

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman

Stanley Donen's Indiscreet, from 1958, is a relatively successful adaptation of Norman Krasna's play, Kind Sir. That romantic comedy premiered on Broadway in 1953 starring Mary Martin and Charles Boyer. The play has just six speaking parts and rarely leaves the heroine's drawing room. It seems a throwback to the romantic comedies of Noel Coward and Philip Barry. Perhaps this is why, in the era of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, the play seemed old hat. Brook Atkinson in The New York Times dismissed it as "trivial theatre that is spasmodically entertaining." The paying public was equally lukewarm and the play closed after 166 performances.

Except for a sequence following his lovers as they traipse through London at night, Donen does not attempt to open up the material. Of course when you have two leads with charisma of such seismic magnitude as Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, who needs scenery. This was the first onscreen reunion of the two since Notorious. The locale of the play was changed from New York to London to accommodate Ms. Bergman's European commitments. Donen does utilize some snappy English interiors, particularly the Garrick Club and the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College, but the action of this light comedy is mainly played on the cusp of Ms. Bergman's boudoir. Grant plays a talented bounder who pretends to be unattainably married. This makes the ladies yearn for him all the more I suppose and Ms. Bergman's character, an actress, falls in one fell swoon. Happily, Grant's character is equally ga-ga and gets to display it, at the Painted Hall, as he assays a Scottish jig. Despite his attempts at appearing ungainly, he performs with suave adeptness.

Ms. Bergman, in her first screen comedy (unless you count Intermezzo), is equally a joy. More rich in experience than burdened with age, she radiates delight. It is this feel of love's effervescence that is Donen best contribution to the project. He keeps things light and bubbly even when Bergman is vowing revenge on the lying, conniving Grant. There is a playful feel to the film's celebration of artifice that helps paper over the screenplay's hokey assumptions. However, I'm not sure an audience today would cotton to Krasna's pre-feminist view of a wedding ring as a woman's ultimate goal. That and a clinch for Bergman and Grant are what we get at the end of Indiscreet, a film in which the supporting cast is, for once, superfluous. Still, there was enough of the stars' old rizz to vault Indiscreet into its year's top 20 in box office.