Interlude *** (1968, Oskar Werner, Barbara Ferris, Virginia Maskell, Donald Sutherland, Nora Swinburne, Alan Webb, Bernard Kay) – Classic Movie Review 6672

In the original 1939 screenplay for When Tomorrow Comes, Irene Dunne fell for married Charles Boyer, and in its remake, the 1957 film of Interlude, June Allyson fell for continental charmer Rossano Brazzi. And now in 1968 in Britain it is Barbara Ferris’s turn to play a young reporting newswoman called Sally swooning over a famous married composer conductor called Stefan Zelter (Oskar Werner) while he is on his sabbatical.

The result is a classy, poignant romance, likeably played and sleekly crafted by director Kevin Billington, though it seems wilfully out of place and time in the late Sixties, even with some of the foolish trappings of the swinging period added into the mix. Obviously, get your hankies ready – it is an all-stops-out four-hankie, majorly tear-jerking romantic melodrama. Ferris and especially Werner add a lot of class and value, while Virginia Maskell, Donald Sutherland, Nora Swinburne, Alan Webb and Derek Jacobi (in his second movie, as Paul) are considerable assets too.

Humphrey Burton appears as a TV director and John Cleese appears in his first movie as a TV publicist, a colleague of the heroine. Also in the cast are Robert Lang, Bernard Kay, Geraldine Sherman, Gino Melvazzi, Muguette De Braie, Roslyn DeWinter, Janet Davies, Sarah Jane Stratton, Simon Davis, Steve Plytas, Gay Cameron, Richard Pescud, Ernest Fleischmann, Rosalie Westwater and Anjula Harman.

It is tastefully written by Lee Langley and Hugh Leonard, beautifully shot by Gerry Fisher, produced by David Deutsch and Jack Hanbury, with a lovely score by Georges Delerue, and production designs by Tony Woollard.

It is based on the 1937 James M Cain novel Serenade, and Dwight Taylor’s original 1939 screenplay for When Tomorrow Comes, which filmed Cain’s original story A Modern Cinderella.

Singer Timi Yuro performs the title song ‘Interlude’, covered in 1994 as a duet by Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6672

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