Not a big fan, no. It is a good film, I mean well done, but I don't care much for it. I guess it's because I don't feel any emotion for the first half of the film, and only partially in the second. I don't "feel" their love and I don't see what she finds so incredibly irresistible in him. She tried to explain, but he stopped her so no answer there. Personally I liked her husband much more, and didn't see how could she hurt him like that.
I liked that it started with his voice introducing the situation:
"It began in London during the war. I had been wounded and discharged out of the Army, but I stayed on in London for I was a writer and had become interested in another group fighting the battle for England's survival, the men on the home front, the civil servants"
then he goes on saying he met one of those men, Henry Miles (Peter Cushing), and went to his "sherry party", and there he met his wife. Just when Henry was telling him "we've been married ten years" Maurice Bendrix (Van Johnson) can see his wife Sarah (Deborah Kerr) in a mirror, kissing another man. Only because of this he became interested in her and wanted to meet her; when it happens, he tells her that he saw her and he kisses her. Just like that. She doesn't seem annoyed at all, she seems charmed instead. They talk for a while and stay silent for a while, and enjoy both. Then they go to a hotel, and their affair seriously starts.
Next scene is with them seeing each other after she's been away five days, and he's all talking crazy "don't ever leave me again", and "where were you? What's his name?" being jealous, but she was at her mother's house. When Henry comes home and Maurice leaves, he's all upset because Sarah seems calm: "only the moment matters with you, Sarah. First the moment with me and now the moment with him". I so did not like that man, what did he want from her, without any patience!?!
Another bit is narrated by his voice: "In the months we spent together there was hardly a part of London that we didn't explore. I knew now that whether for joy or misery I was committed to this one woman for as long as she would have me, and I marveled that a love I had entered into so lightly could grow into a deep and abiding passion, one which dominated my whole life" - I guess the problem was right here, for me, I didn't "feel" any of that big passion he claimed to have, and his complaints for their situation seemed somehow like child's whims. "I like when you start a sentence with 'do you remember?', it means we have a past as well as a present, we lack only a future" but in those times of war she reminds him that "we're not the only ones living from day to day"; I guess in those days it was difficult to plan ahead, not knowing what will be of everything.
There's a bit of dialog I found interesting: Sarah"it isn't because you're handsome, which you're not; it isn't because you're clever, which you are" - Maurice"not why, how" - Sarah"when I'm not with you everything seems flat and tasteless". Well, there you are, to me it all seemed flat whenever they were together.
I didn't like very much all their talking of her 'dull husband', poor thing, he wasn't dull, he was a good person, a quiet man, I liked that.
Bendrix is always complaining like a child "I'm just a passenger in your life" and "if only we were married", I thought he was boring.
Anyway, here the first half of the film, the beginning of the affair, ends, and the second part starts, with 'the end of the affair'. She goes to him to spend three days together, and they seem happy, she talks about a man giving a speech in the park against God and says "it seems risky at a time like this, being rude to God" . Not long after she arrived trouble starts. A bomb hits. He's injured, a big door fell over him. She prayed for him, she thought he was dead, and is surprised when he comes back in his apartment. She leaves him saying "love doesn't end just because we don't see each other". He stays several days in a sort of "delayed shock", then tries to reach her but it seems she's never home anytime he phones, then he thinks that she hoped he was dead so she could leave him with an easy conscience, and his jealousy turns into hatred. He goes away to forget her, and comes back after a year, rarely thinking of her but always with hate.
He meets Henry and they talk, and Henry seems worried about Sarah. She's not ill, but she's always out who knows where and Henry was thinking of hiring a private investigator to follow her, but after talking to him he's calming down, and forgetting the idea. A nice scene was when Sarah came back home and found the two men who love her looking at her, both jealous in their own way.
Bendrix hires the investigator himself to follow Sarah. He waits for her to come home one day and talks to her "what happened to us, why haven't I seen you all this time? What did I do?", and he wishes he never met her. The investigator tells him of this very encounter, saying she looked very sad, but dumb Maurice don't understand the meaning of it. Instead, he shows the investigator's report and a letter he found to Henry. When the investigator brings him Sarah's diary, he reads it and understand how stupid he had been (I say this, not him). She really loved him, deeply, and when she saw him under that door she prayed "God, don't let him be dead, I'll give Maurice up forever , only just let him be alive" crying. Her diary reads: "now the agony of being without you starts" and "I made him very unhappy, that's why I promised what I did". Bendrix had been so jealous when the investigator told him she was seeing a man in his apartment, but it turns out that that man is the preacher from the park, and she wants to be convinced that there is no God so she wouldn't have to keep her promise, quite a silly thing in my opinion.
When sweet Henry told her he couldn't have made it without her, she says "you're far too modest Henry. You might have done much better without me". Poor Sarah, she was really torn apart. She really loved Bendrix, and blamed only herself for everything.
Sweet darling Henry, after Bendrix showed him that report was broken, and talked to Sarah: "I can't do without you" and "I don't want anyone else", and that he knew all along she could not have children but "it made no difference, I had you. I haven't been much of a husband, but stick it out a few more years, I will try", so she says "I won't leave you Henry, I promise". If Bendrix had not been such a jerk... well, it's not over, he won't leave her be, so she goes out in the rain to avoid him, already ill, and he knew it, but he won't listen to reason. She talks about God but not about her promise to Henry. Bendrix doesn't care about God and wants to take her away, and even arranges everything by himself. When he finally goes to get her he finds that she's ill, and Henry is taking good care of her, and her mother is there and the doctor seemed optimistic, but when he comes down she's already dead. Like she didn't try to fight, life left her.
Honestly I find all this talking about God, even in her last letter, totally not-relevant. God had nothing to do with it. It was all because of the war, and the fear of death, and the uncertainty of everything, and of course his jealousy and his hatred, his talking to Henry and poor Henry pleading to Sarah, and all the time she went out in the rain because of him, and her conflict inside, she didn't fight the illness properly, she had no strength left.
I didn't like this Maurice at all. It was obvious she had made a vow to give him up from the way she looked (I liked her). I found boring so much talking of God as if he had any fault in what was happening, while he didn't. It's too easy to blame God for everything. They had their free will and they made their choices, is what it was.
I knew she would die at the end, it was the only ending for a movie like this. Besides, Maurice was tearing her apart: I blame him entirely.
ITA la fine dell'avventura
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