Unfaithfully Yours

Preston Sturges - 1948
The narrative structure of this is undoubtedly fascinating; various imaginings, and we're not sure they are that at first, of possible scenarios to the situation. A fine idea for a break with the classical narrative, with a touch of Hitchcock. All with that nice music playing. The message being of the artist's ability to convey emotions as such, to move in different ways, and to manipulate.
But the final point is of course that the artist lies, that life is really difficult and complicated and never as simple as art makes it out to be.
The fact that the film can be explained as such is really its weakness. Struges is a cinema of ideas; good and subversive, occassionally a little complex, but always ideas, literary ones really. These, being abstract, are always shown through, rther than in, the image. We are left with an abstract world, where the image really gets in the way. This means the cinematic representation of ideas, such as annoyance, simply gets annyoing. This is a deeply irritating film. It has some nice moments, and a more interesting than usual message (like he says, 'eight reels questioning marriage, the last one saying it's great'), but Sturges style is, ultimately, too uncreative to make much of this.