INDISCREET: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1958) Olive Films
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Norman
Krasna’s play ‘Kind Sir’ provided the basis for Stanley Donen’s Indiscreet (1958); an elegant champagne
cocktail reuniting Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, this time as a pair of
enigmatic lovers who manage to live happily ever after in spite of themselves.
Bergman’s sagging film career had been resurrected by an Oscar win for Anastasia just a scant two years
before. Yet, Bergman’s role in Indiscreet,
that of celebrated actress Anna Kalman, seems eerily to parallel her real life
circumstances – perhaps even poke fun at those peccadillos with a wink and a
nudge. Like Anna, Bergman unrepentantly threw herself into an extramarital affair,
ostensibly unaware, or at the very least disinterested, in its repercussions.
Bergman’s romance
with Roberto Rossellini in 1950 erupted into an international scandal that all
but submarined her professional aspirations to continue acting in America. Public
sentiment instantly turned against her and she was even decried on the floor of
the Senate as a wanton who should be barred from ever returning to the United
States. Bergman’s alter ego in Indiscreet
doesn’t go quite so far down this rabbit hole; her liaison with ‘married’
economist Philip Adams (Cary Grant) tempered by the fact that Adams is a
devilish rake misleading his leading lady. He isn’t married at all, merely
pretending so that Anna won’t get any ideas about settling him down.
Still, and for
its time, Indiscreet is pretty
chancy stuff. Anna is introduced to us as a woman of means who has frivolously
run off with, then just as freely ditched a Greek Ambassador, simply because he
spoke broken English and spent more time and interest on other pursuits apart
from her own. Anna, who resides in a fashionable apartment in London also has a
faithful suitor on the side; considerably younger than she who courts and calls
her on the telephone. Bluntly put: Anna has no shortage of male companions.
Still, she’s bored – un-apologetically and without even the slightest moral contrition
for being middle-aged, single and playing the field.
Anna’s rather
frank and flirtatious pursuit of Philip Adams – a man met quite by accident – is
just as impetuously guided. Anna doesn’t need convincing to accept an
invitation from her sister, Margaret Munson (Phyllis Calvert) and
brother-in-law, Alfred (Cecil Parker) to attend a rather lavish, but stuffy monetary
conference. After all, it is an opportunity to sit and gaze with mounting
adoration at Philip as he waxes about investment funds and rising stock options
that, even when expounded upon by the luscious Cary Grant, are about as
captivating as watching ceiling paint dry.
Anna throws
herself into the depths of their passionate pas deux, even after Philip tells
her that he is married. Alfred, who has been desperately trying to convince
Philip to come and work for NATO finally secures his participation, but only
because being stationed in London will afford Philip the chance to court Anna.
Over the next twelve months the two become inseparable. Stanley Donen’s deft use
of montage effortlessly flips through an album of snapshots illustrating the
natural progression of love, culminating in Anna’s blissfully obtuse happiness;
cause for mild concern from her ever-devoted servants, Doris (Meg Jenkins) and
Karl (David Kossoff).
It stands to
reason that Anna’s heart will eventually be broken. Philip has not offered to
leave his wife for her. Alfred learns from Philip’s dossier that he is a single
man and confronts him with this deception. But then Philip explains his
predicament: that for any man to lead a woman on without divulging that he is
married would be cruel. But to lie up front about a wife where one does not
exist actually has the opposite effect; the man having laid his cards on the
table, thereby giving the woman every opportunity to turn him out beforehand.
In Anna’s case, her choice to remain content as ‘the other woman’ is entirely
her decision, absolving Philip of guilt and responsibility. Alfred doesn’t
entirely respect this analogy, but cannot bring himself to disavow it either.
And herein, one immediately comes to appreciate the absolute necessity in a
star like Cary Grant to play the part. Grant’s inimitable branding as the
uber-sophisticate, chic yet easy going, positively oozes congenial charm. Any
woman could forgive him anything.
However, when
Margaret intrudes on this fool’s paradise, confronting Anna with the truth,
Anna decides that one wily deception deserves another. She grows coy and aloof
toward Philip, deliberately using lines he has heard in her latest stagecraft –
her seductiveness now beginning to sound tinny and insincere. Next, Anna plots a
confrontation. She invites a former suitor to late supper in her apartment,
knowing beforehand that Philip is intending to surprise her there on her
birthday. The ruse turns sour when the suitor suffers acute appendicitis and is
unable to attend the trap. Anna is forced, rather unscrupulously, to use Karl
instead – who is much too old to play the part. Anna’s plan doesn’t fool Philip
and the two find it necessary to confront their fears head on; hers, a middle-aged
insecurity to grow old alone, and his, commitment shy to remain faithful to any
woman unless she believes there is no future in the relationship.
The
button-down ultraconservatism of the 1950 would have shunned any flesh and
blood couple attempting as much double entendre for the sake of their grand – illicit
– amour. Curiously, this austere reviling of passion did not extend to fictional
characters. Our lovers are hardly considered illegitimate – even if they are,
as the film’s title suggests, very ‘Indiscreet’. But Cary Grant and
Ingrid Bergman are self-possessed and Teflon-coated; their sterling star
personas extending far into the fictional realm of their alter egos. As such,
their eroticism is more luxurious than ludicrous; even more rich and confident
in its strength of sentiment.
Freddie Young’s
soft focus cinematography does more than merely flatter its stars. It creates a
sublime relaxation. The enchantment between Anna and Philip remains slightly
blurry – seen through the reciprocated viewpoint of each other’s rose-colored
glasses. At times Indiscreet can be
visually arresting. But Young’s pastel approach to impure love does not subdue
the glamour. Instead, it places the audience amidst this halcyon. We can fall for
Bergman and Grant and their fictional counterparts because the visuals are an
extension of their inner most desire for each other.
And Ingrid Bergman
and Cary Grant have that most intangible of all commodities essential to a
celluloid romance licked – on-screen chemistry. You cannot quantify, label or
manufacture it – even when the actors are clever about their craft and willing
to partake. But once seen, chemistry cannot be denied. Bergman and Grant first
appeared together in Hitchcock’s Notorious
(1946): their relationship in that movie, tempestuous and predicated on a mutual
contempt that reaches its deeper revelation only when one is placed in, and
then rescued from, imminent peril by the other. In Indiscreet this narrative arch is subverted; the two beginning as
friends, escalating to lovers, until one becomes determined to wreck all they
have built upon together.
Primarily
known for his collaborative association on MGM musicals starring Gene Kelly,
Stanley Donen herein illustrates that his artistic eye and sense of critical timing
are adept to handle a variety of genres. Donen would, of course, continue to
exercise his creative brilliance throughout the 1960s in films like Charade (1966) and Two For The Road (1967). In retrospect, Indiscreet seems like a test run for these latter achievements;
Donen experimenting within the boundaries of star power to deconstruct the
fundamental flaws of a relationship. In
this regard, Indiscreet is a very
adult movie; adhering to time-honored elegance, but with Donen allowing his
camera an occasional glance beyond the velvet curtain of this otherwise
light-hearted love affair.
When Bergman’s
Anna – still unaware that Grant’s Philip is unmarried - suddenly catches herself
wishing aloud for their lives to be spent together for eternity, we sense that
strange undercurrent to her moral ambiguity and sexual frustration
simultaneously at play. When Anna discovers the truth about Philip and plots to
give him a taste of his own medicine we become acutely aware of her willful desire,
as powerful as passion, to wreck that mythology he has constructed for them
without her permission, if for no other reason, than she quite simply can. These moody pieces of exposition elevate Indiscreet from trivial froth to eloquent
sophistication. The net result is still a very stylish movie. But underneath
all the Dior and diamonds are two people who would rather be let naked together
and left quietly undisturbed.
Olive Films'
Blu-ray is a vast improvement over the previously issued catastrophes on DVD
from the now defunct Artisan Home Video label.
For one thing, the 1:85.1 aspect ratio has finally been enhanced for
widescreen TVs. Indiscreet gets a
modest single layer transfer, and although colors and contrast improve, the
image is still inconsistently rendered. Freddie Young’s softly focused images
look fuzzy rather than creamy. Film grain is rather thick and unnaturally
reproduced in spots, while practically nonexistent in other scenes. Colors are
subdued, leaving most of the image rather flat. Flesh tones are pinkish in
tone. Still, the visuals are mostly free of age related artifacts that utterly
plagued the old DVD transfers. And the DTS mono audio is a vast improvement too;
not nearly as strident or grating on the acoustic nerve. Both visually and
aurally Indiscreet advances in all
of the expected ways, but it still won’t win any awards. Without a complete
restoration this is likely the best this film will ever look in hi-def. That’s
a shame. Worse still, there are no extras. Regrets. Bottom line: recommended,
but with modest reservations.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
0
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